Guild Wars 2

Only was able to try it today but based on my experience which was…

Pug random10 man squad, no TS, no gear check, no class check. We wiped over and over again on the first guardian and this was… Awesome. These engagements are doable with coordination but not easy.

This is raiding, and I approve.

Kudos

Ditch the enrage timers, it’s so played out by now. Enrage timers reinforces certain builds and stats which doesn’t fit this particular mmo at all. I can only think the team was short on time cause it feels like a placeholder (which would make sense it’s a beta) and doesn’t even fit the theme of the fight.

The break bar mechanic was kind of just there, i thought it was going to be implemented differently when I first hear about it but it’s effectively a tiny amount of extra health.

Those first 3 trash mobs are a good idea to teach a few mechanics of the fight but should probably have their health reduced and damage increased or something, they’re kinda boring.

I agree- right now the problem is that mechanically, the raid is rather straightforward, but the challenge seems to come mostly from the enrage timer- which means that only certain classes and builds are usable.

This is the opposite of what was expected- i.e. high skill, but class composition is less important.

Instead it’s medium skill, heavy emphasis on class composition.

That said it’s still fun, but it got frustrating when we just throw ourselves at it with a subpar class comp and can’t beat it just because the classes we’re using don’t have enough dps period.

Sadly, it looks like the same meta zerk/sinister builds work best here. Only difference is that some groups are bringing a druid…but as people learn the encounters, I wouldn’t be surprised if even that gets dropped out.

I was really hoping to see a shake up of the meta, especially with all the dev hype, but unless something big changes or unless the later bosses are very different, we’re just going to get more content where people want almost pure DPS builds from everyone.

If I were dev for a day, I’d pump up the amount of unavoidable damage in the raids. This shouldn’t be damage that just 1-shots everyone, of course, but if people are still pushing through without soaking much damage, then there’s no reason to run anything but pure zerk/sinister builds.

The enrage timer doesn’t bother me. What would bother is if my group got a boss down to 2%, and enrage killed us because we couldn’t crank out x amount of dps in time. So I really think the timer should be doubled? tripled? Then get gold, silver ,bronze depending on the time you killed the boss, and the loot is then scaled up or down.

To me, the “raid experience” should be about conquering these challenges, overcoming the mechanics as a group, not doing it on a timer.

The enrage timer is fine, I think the boss should just hit a bit harder to make sure zerker is like, more of a high risk high gain sort of build really.
I also think that in this case either the boss has to much health or the timer is to short, this is to ensure players should be able to play with less risk, so to say.

Just how I feel.
Zerker should be a glass cannon in my opinion, just as nomad should be a concrete wall in terms of durability.

But overall the fight was enjoyable really. I love the druid.

Celtic.1962:

The enrage timer doesn’t bother me. What would bother is if my group got a boss down to 2%, and enrage killed us because we couldn’t crank out x amount of dps in time. So I really think the timer should be doubled? tripled? Then get gold, silver ,bronze depending on the time you killed the boss, and the loot is then scaled up or down.

To me, the “raid experience” should be about conquering these challenges, overcoming the mechanics as a group, not doing it on a timer.

In other words, you’re mad that you might wipe and you want ArenaNet to overhaul their raid system to accommodate for your lack of skill and stubborn refusal to adapt. Got it.

Tried the Raid, got to the last boss, too low dps and general mayhem in a Pug group (as expected).
Thought the first 3 bosses where too easy, or they took too long to kill, again Anet with their hp sponge bosses. High HP does not make for a hard encounter.

But.. my only thought was.. these guys look soo dull.. Like a mini version of the Thematunova boss in Fractals. I get that there probably is a story somewhere about how these energy humanoid slendermen fit in this. But as a first time seeing them I thought that they must be placeholders for something far more interesting/intimidating. Something more Mordremothy..

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.

This is already in my report so they’ll address it, but yes, it’s good they see it here too.

This is my feedback based on a entirely PUG group that I joined on a whim this morning. We got the Vale Guardian to split phase at least twice. No voice chat involved. I played a Necromancer who went condition damage for the boss.

Overall impression (TL;DR):
This was a fantastic first impression. Similar to the first time I did Tequatl but on a much more intimate scale. Having to think about my spec and utilities was refreshing even though I think it could be pushed much further. Enjoyed the experience and I’m looking forward to more.

I’m concerned that this boss is under tuned in certain areas which make it hard see the meta evolving much. I’m also concerned that the ease of access to healing by most classes makes it nearly impossible to truly change the meta with simple mechanics.

Third concern is the lack of analyzation tools that we are given. With enrage timers on the first boss we need more tools to evaluate ourselves and others.

Mechanics:
These seemed tight and varied enough to be interesting. Aggro was more obvious than encounters which makes it easy enough to position the boss. It’s unclear if the aggro mechanic actually directs more damage to the person who’s being target or if it’s just for positioning.

Lighting soaking was the biggest issue and required the most coordination. If there was one far away it was nearly impossible for someone without a blink to get to it. This mechanic seemed fine as missing one was basically or took way too long to recover from. It’s very forgiving but RNG can make it really hard every once in a while.

One thing I will echo is the particle overload. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you are standing in a Seeker AOE or not simply because of the amount of combo fields and/or particle effects that are being thrown out. Being able to turn off friendly effects or at least reduce them could be a huge improvement to the QoL of raids.

I love how break bars are being used and I want to see a lot more of this. I never actually got a chance to experience it but from what I’ve seen in the kill videos they are being put to good use.

Tuning:
I feel like this boss is under tuned particularly in damage output. The enrage timer feel right. But the damage from the boss never felt particularly threatening except when we missed the lightning soaking mechanic. That was basically the only time I got downed or even close to it. I was using my healing well to heal other people who were standing in bad. We had no dedicated healer that I know of. Regeneration and collateral AOE healing completely negated the need for one. This disheartens me a bit because I was looking forward to breaking the zerker meta by more than just making some people go condition damage.

The only way I see this happening is if there is more hard healing checks. Burst or constant pulsing healing that full damage builds simply cannot survive through without some sort of assistance. I also have reservations about how much access full damage builds have to healing without investment into healing power but I’ll save that for another thread.

Enrage/Timer:
I hate hard enrages. It feels cheap. I understand the need for some sort of enrage but I much prefer soft enrages where people will start dying at a certain point but how they play determines how long they survive (From my experience phase 3 of Blackhand from WoW is a great example of this). Fights where the damage steady increases or just increases drastically in the last phase and your first kill only a couple of people are still alive. These type of enrages incorporate every aspect of the group skill, damage and survivability. The style of enrage on this boss promotes one thing, pure damage. Now if the boss’s pulsing damage aura had increased as the fight goes on and by the time you get to the 8 minute mark it was pulsing for half your health a tick you’d instantly have a much more interesting fight without having to have a timer.

Analytics and Tools:
I know this is a sensitive area for the community but with challenging content brings the need to analyze performance. Every group has high performers and low performers. At the very least group leaders need the tools to tell who those people are and how they can improve. While damage meters in the typical sense might not be the best way to go about this for GW2 we need something. It’s frustrating enough to wipe on bosses, it’s even more frustrating for everyone to do mechanics right and not be able to hit an enrage timer and have no way to know why it’s happening.

I realize people are afraid of the stereotype elitist who indiscriminately kicks people from their groups based on damage meters. The reality is this will happen with or without damage meters, and without it’ll be less informed probably based around a profession tier list instead of actual performance.

Bottom line is we need some way to distinguish who’s pulling their weight in this type of content. It’s simply unavoidable if you want this type of content to have longevity.

EDIT: Added Analytics & Tools section.

Well I was able to attempt the raid with 3 different groups over about 3 hours.

Two of the groups weren’t worth talking about . Standard low skill pug groups that couldn’t even figure out basic mechanics.

Instituted character checks and put together a better pug which was much better.

Won’t talk about trash, nothing much to say there, good teaching fights.

We didn’t have TS or a set group comp so we decided to just have everyone get into the circles except for the person with aggro (me), better safe than sorry philosophy. This worked well, we never wiped due to the AOE.

Our team comp was 3 reapers, 2 heralds, 2 druids, 2 chrono’s, one guard.

Our biggest mistake was the reapers. They are still bottom tier DPS and DPS is where we suffered most. We just couldn’t do enough damage to get the boss below 50%.

We made it to phase 2 every attempt, even almost cleared phase 2 once, but our dps was not enough to burst down the individual bosses fast enough. I think in future runs if we make sure we don’t have any necros we should have enough dps to get further. If we swapped out the necros/reapers for sinister engineers I think we probably would have had enough time.

I thought the encounter was sufficiently challenging, with a good mix of mechanics, hp, and situational awareness required. Random PUGS’s won’t clear it, and organized pugs may clear it once the best class comp is known.

The encounter highlighted the lack of DPS meter, and I think one will be required in the future for later encounters. It is hard to tell where your dps is lacking, and thus hard to tell who needs to improve. If an official one is not implemented then people will simply adapt the use of “illegal” ones that are already available.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The encounter highlighted the lack of DPS meter, and I think one will be required in the future for later encounters. It is hard to tell where your dps is lacking, and thus hard to tell who needs to improve. If an official one is not implemented then people will simply adapt the use of “illegal” ones that are already available.

It most definitely did not highlight the need for dps meters – and hopefully the use of the illegal ones will result in some bans. That garbage doesn’t belong in our game.

As far as who needs to improve, one thing I learned from years of having meters in raids – the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

Blaeys.3102:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The encounter highlighted the lack of DPS meter, and I think one will be required in the future for later encounters. It is hard to tell where your dps is lacking, and thus hard to tell who needs to improve. If an official one is not implemented then people will simply adapt the use of “illegal” ones that are already available.

It most definitely did not highlight the need for dps meters – and hopefully the use of the illegal ones will result in some bans. That garbage doesn’t belong in our game.

As far as who needs to improve, one thing I learned from years of having meters in raids – the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

Well what did you find in your raiding experience? were you able to get the boss to 50% within the first 4 minutes? was dps not a problem for you?

If someone is at the bottom then they are the one that needs to improve, so i’m not sure what you are trying to say. They should be the ones that care the most because they are the ones holding back the rest of the raid.

I spent about an hour in the raid late Sunday night when it reopened. Unfortunately none of our guild scheduled times we wanted to try it panned out, so it was a mix of mostly guild that was online and a few pugs.

My feedback

What I liked: The minibosses showed you the mechanics you would need for the big boss. I always liked that in raids. Trash that has no point but to slow you down is very annoying. This was good. Also the visuals of this part of the raid as a whole was pretty cool.

The Vale Guardian was a really cool fight, what I got to see of it (about half way). The mechanics were fun and interesting.

What I didn’t like: It wasn’t very apparent what the minibosses were trying to show us. Okay there’s one that needed condi damage, one needs a measly boon removal, and the other one I’m not really sure. There was something about blue orbs and red orbs but it was never really clear to me what they do. I body blocked the blue orbs as that’s what information I had ahead of time told me to do, but I didn’t really see anything happen when I didn’t block them. We were able to pretty much just faceroll over them on the first try, they felt, like an easy dungeon boss. I don’t want to spend all night on the minibosses, but I felt it should have at least felt threatening.

The Vale Guardian didn’t seem to do very much damage, I felt he could be more threatening. The fight itself was difficult don’t get me wrong, I didn’t beat it. My point is more that I was in about 50/50 offense/defense gear and he didn’t hit me very hard. I didn’t tank the whole time but I purposely stood in front of him most of the fight to test this very thing.

Suggestions: Following from what I didn’t like, I suggest making it more clear what mechanics we are learning. Maybe give lines in /say to the bad guys that hints at it, I don’t really want or need it to be told explicitly by the boss portrait or anything. I think they should be a bit more threatening as well, I just feel I shouldn’t be able to go in with a PUG and steam roll over these minibosses on the first try without really caring about what their mechanics are.

For the Vale Guardian I don’t have many suggestions, he seemed great. Only two things. 1) He didn’t deal very much damage I thought, I think this should be cranked up a little. I don’t want to see him one shotting anyone who happens to be in front of him, but something more than what seemed like 4-5k. Here’s a good way to put it: I was using Heal Gyro and never felt like I was going to die.

2) The first team to beat him did so with about a minute and a half to spare I think it was? That means they only needed just over 80% of the allotted time. Many other teams have beaten him since, probably some faster and some slower. I think his health should be tuned up just a little bit. This is not just because a team beat him, I expected someone to beat him and I’m sure you guys did too because of that message at the end! I just think that a team in the moderately limiting beta gear that probably has a few players on not the most ideal trait setups (to test the elite specs) shouldn’t be able to beat it within a day, at least not with a pretty comfortable cushion. I’m not pointing to any particular team because maybe they all transferred all their gear into their vault before hand, etc, and this isn’t a slight against anyone who was able to complete it I just think it should require a little more is all. If I’m totally off base because the later bosses will make me cry then that’s okay too!

I like how people complain about the tutorial mobs being too easy while they haven’t killed the actual boss and also complain about his enrage timer. Seems to me you just want something to complain about. My feedback will be rather short – my group got the boss to the second split but people had to go so we couldn’t finish it. This is the first encounter in GW2 that actually requires skill and is not about brainless zerging and speedrunning easy boring bosses. All the mechanics worked great and we immediately knew the causes of our wipes. The boss can be killed with different kinds of setups so complaining about the timer is a learn to play issue. If you nerf it from how it is now you’ll be doing a slap to the face to all people who want an actual challenge. I was pleasantly surprised and if the rest of the bosses are as good as this one you’ve done an awesome job with the design. Keep it up!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

we decided to just have everyone get into the circles except for the person with aggro (me), better safe than sorry philosophy.

[…]

Our biggest mistake was the reapers. They are still bottom tier DPS and DPS is where we suffered most. We just couldn’t do enough damage to get the boss below 50%.

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

My group did similarly for the first few pulls — everyone would freak out and run to the orbs, but we kept having trouble getting him past 50%. Then we sorted out who should go to the lightening and who should stay back and DPS and we were getting him to his second transition easily. We ended up putting ranged, high sustain folks in the orb team and it worked out smoothly with nice even burns.

BTW, should I reiterate that for the folks who are claiming that the meta won’t change? We needed tanky ranged players to optimize a PvE encounter

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Blaeys.3102:

the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

If someone is at the bottom then they are the one that needs to improve, so i’m not sure what you are trying to say. They should be the ones that care the most because they are the ones holding back the rest of the raid.

100% agree. I really wish I had a DPS meter so I could get a concrete measure of how well I’m playing and compare sets, builds, etc and really get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. I could know if I am really pulling my weight or not. It would be glorious.

dlonie.6547:

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

Wasn’t it five People you need for the Lightning Thing?

There are a few Cases of Massive DPS Loss that can happen here. The first one is having everyone going to the Lighting. It cuts off the Damage you can deal, just having a dedicated Group to it is more than enough
But the bigger Loss is if your Party is being teleported away. You have to go back to the Encounter and the Boss can Port you really far away. If your PArtymembers are ported almost everytime than you don’t have enough DPS to kill it. But it can be very difficult to see the Port AOEs since there are also big Particle Effects going on.

Edit: Srsly? The Forum censors the 5 after it? What the Hell?

Played once with random pugs. We got 5 revenants, druid, reaper, mesmer and someone else. First 3 guardians was easy to beat but condi can take a lot of time. Sinister gear really required, but exo is ok there.
Vile guradian is a bit annoying. Too many bright and blinking effects like a herd of rainbow unicorns running around. Hard to see a thing. Timer is an another thing. It is just another dps fest. Zerg and nothing more. May be remove it finally or increase time?

heres my feedback:

my whole group was very happy with the amount of coordination thats needed for the boss, and the dmg the boss deals. And no we didnt killed the vale guard, and that makes us cheer even more. On most times we got rekt by the mechanics.

But:
I still dont get why we have to fight against an enrage timer. why is an enrage mode even needed in a skillbased combat system. We managed to get into sec phase with 3 min time left. we got to third phase with 1 min left. on 0 we got rekt, not even getting to 50% boss hp. U always said in streams, that u want it hard, u want to break zerk meta. so why do i have to play zerk or sinister to maybe beat the enrage timer.

Such a “hard” enrage timer isnt even needed. If u want to protect raids getting tanked away by normad gear, go for 20min + timers, but dont doom people with 90% or less dmg effective builds.

So: Do u want skillbased Encounters or Dmg-race Encounters?

EDIT: When i think back, wasnt there a statement before release that said: “bosses will always try to kill u with all forces and not start dealing tons of dmg after several minutes.” ?

Walhalla.5473:

dlonie.6547:

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

Wasn’t it five People you need for the Lightning Thing?

I heard some groups were doing it with 4. Not exactly sure how that mechanic works. Did anyone do any tests on it?

dlonie.6547:

Walhalla.5473:

dlonie.6547:

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

Wasn’t it five People you need for the Lightning Thing?

I heard some groups were doing it with 4. Not exactly sure how that mechanic works. Did anyone do any tests on it?

Tested. 3 are not enough. 4 is enough to prevent a group wipe. 5 will take no damage.

steffen.4317:

heres my feedback:

my whole group was very happy with the amount of coordination thats needed for the boss, and the dmg the boss deals. And no we didnt killed the vale guard, and that makes us cheer even more. On most times we got rekt by the mechanics.

But:
I still dont get why we have to fight against an enrage timer. why is an enrage mode even needed in a skillbased combat system. We managed to get into sec phase with 3 min time left. we got to third phase with 1 min left. on 0 we got rekt, not even getting to 50% boss hp. U always said in streams, that u want it hard, u want to break zerk meta. so why do i have to play zerk or sinister to maybe beat the enrage timer.

Such a “hard” enrage timer isnt even needed. If u want to protect raids getting tanked away by normad gear, go for 20min + timers, but dont doom people with 90% or less dmg effective builds.

So: Do u want skillbased Encounters or Dmg-race Encounters?

EDIT: When i think back, wasnt there a statement before release that said: “bosses will always try to kill u with all forces and not start dealing tons of dmg after several minutes.” ?

enrage timer is needed to force people to do a very good execution. if there wasnt an enrage timer, you could do the raid with 10 nomad guardians.

also the enrager timer isnt tight at all. a 7 min or 6:30 min enrage timer would be even better because 8 minutes is more time than a good group will ever need.

for feedback: the fight is very good in my opinion, especially for the first boss fight in the first gw2 raid ever. it just needs some fine tuning and bug fixes.

I think everything for the fight is mostly extremely well done, however, I find healers are definitely going to be necesarry, and we cannot be stuck with the current healing situation. Druid have like 5 billion heals, and their base healing is ridiculous. Eles have a good amount of healing in water attunement, and their base healing is also a bit ridiculous. Engineers have medkit, which is literally the worst skill in the game. It is literally worse healing than standing there and only applying regeneration and doing literally nothing else, yet it was designed as the engineers answer to be a healer. Please, looking into healing scaling, and base healing for every class, and give us at least a couple of options (guard, engi, and ele would seem good options) that are on-par with druid, but please require healing power to actually be useful.

dlonie.6547:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

we decided to just have everyone get into the circles except for the person with aggro (me), better safe than sorry philosophy.

[…]

Our biggest mistake was the reapers. They are still bottom tier DPS and DPS is where we suffered most. We just couldn’t do enough damage to get the boss below 50%.

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

My group did similarly for the first few pulls — everyone would freak out and run to the orbs, but we kept having trouble getting him past 50%. Then we sorted out who should go to the lightening and who should stay back and DPS and we were getting him to his second transition easily. We ended up putting ranged, high sustain folks in the orb team and it worked out smoothly with nice even burns.

BTW, should I reiterate that for the folks who are claiming that the meta won’t change? We needed tanky ranged players to optimize a PvE encounter

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Blaeys.3102:

the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

If someone is at the bottom then they are the one that needs to improve, so i’m not sure what you are trying to say. They should be the ones that care the most because they are the ones holding back the rest of the raid.

100% agree. I really wish I had a DPS meter so I could get a concrete measure of how well I’m playing and compare sets, builds, etc and really get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. I could know if I am really pulling my weight or not. It would be glorious.

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

I think the raid where rather nice. The most tricky part where the pillars you need to stand in to reduce the damage, by normal means people evade these circles. Maybe these circles should have a different colour?

The mechanics where generally very clear explained trough the first 3 small bosses, visual wise its also fitting. Some buff icons where missing, but you need to hover over these to find out what they do anyway.

The difficulty seems really nice so far. The biggest challenge is to be aware of all the AOE fields, while moving and dpsing, paying close all around attention to the pillars to position yourself quick enough. During the split phase, if you wanna fight all 3 bosses at the same time with dedicated groups the aggro system seems weird. It ended up that the bosses where agroing onto players not even remotely near them.

The mechanics where used really well, you need some kinda support, CC, boonstrip and in general a lot of the mechanics in the game. I think however, this maybe too specific for each encounter considering that each raid is based on 3 such boss fights in succession.

My biggest concern is gear swapping while being in the raid. If you can swap those during the raid you could just swap both, the class youre playing with, and the gear youre wearing, this might lead to scenarios where you need class X with gear Y and Z for this raid to be the meta, limiting quite a few things. I think the classes and players should be set during the entire instance. This would also require you to get a comp and a tactic for the entire encounter, and not just one boss. If you are able to use special gear or traits for each boss fight individually, the encounters will be balanced around that, meaning it will be too hard for raidgroups that dont change gear or classes, or even traits during the encounter, because each boss is balanced around a certain amount of classes that deal with mechanic X and Y and Z.

Another thing that i don’t like is that some classes are far superior in their roles compared to any others. For example healing on druid, conditions on engineer, boons on revenants, ranged DPS on certain classes. Please have a good eye on this in the future, balance is most likely be done around pvp but this might cause problems.

Overall i would rate this part of the raid a full 10/10. Considering the future (not judging the other encounters before seeing them, but the base rules you set for raiding) i am a bit worried. People will always search for the easiest way to deal with these things, for the fastest way of beating things, if the easiest way will be 3 different gearsets in the inventory this could cause some very unpleasant problems in the distant future.

Interesting how you lock threads that criticise the raid yet keep open threads praising it.

That won’t make the raid any better anet.

NoTrigger.8396:

also the enrager timer isnt tight at all. a 7 min or 6:30 min enrage timer would be even better because 8 minutes is more time than a good group will ever need.

sometimes i want the things u smoke. better completle delete the stupid statcombis out of the game and only let zerk and maybe sinister be inside, right? and always argue with 10 normad guards XD. if u want dmg races go to brain afk wow or other games with such an afk fighting system. write ur makro and be happy.

everytime the same: " we need hard enrage timers to prevent normad guards." thats totally wrong!! u dont need hard enrage timers to prevent normads. medium enrage timers (maybe for groups with 75% dmg gear) is more than enaugh to prevent that.
i dont want to be forced playing a 100% dmg build. i want to use builds i have more fun with. doesnt mean i am a worse player.
next u say is: they should bash the timer even harder so u have to build the perfect team combination! just hey go completly opposite the things the devs said. just logic XD

Brujeria.7536:

Another thing that i don’t like is that some classes are far superior in their roles compared to any others. For example healing on druid, conditions on engineer, boons on revenants, ranged DPS on certain classes. Please have a good eye on this in the future, balance is most likely be done around pvp but this might cause problems.

This is a big concern I have as well. Profession balance has previously been strongly leaning towards PVP. With challenging content balance becomes magnified and is already becoming a bigger issue than it’s been before. Previously it didn’t really matter in PVE because you could clear essentially everything with any profession. I can certainly see certain professions being excluded or raids being stacked with 6 of the highest damage profession and 3-4 supporting professions.

Healing balance is another issue. Currently healing power coefficients are balanced off of PVP but this makes healing power to be rather lackluster in PVE. You lose way too much damage for the marginal amount of healing you gain by going full HP. Some classes have a lot more options for healing than others (Thief vs Druid) which is another issue.

Hello, I write here, hoping that my post will be read by the right people.
I haven’t participated in any raid but I’ve seen a few high quality videos, in HD.
I won’t comment on anything about arena, mechanics, difficulty and so.
I just want to stress that, after so many posts about visibility, particle effects, ambiguous animations , then seeing Norn sized opponents, translucent(!!!), covered all over by explosion of colors, it made me very sad.
Please, challenge my mind not my eyes.

Mitch.4781:

Interesting how you lock threads that criticise the raid yet keep open threads praising it.

That won’t make the raid any better anet.

There’s plenty of threads open with constructive criticism. Threads that start to treat the devs as subhuman deserve to be locked.

At the end of the day, you still need to remember that there are actual human beings putting in long hours to create and update this game. That doesn’t mean you have to worship them or praise everything they do, but it does mean you should be at least somewhat tactful with expressing your criticisms.

Enrage timer reinforces the zerker/kick this class meta, pure and simple, good ole boring DPS check. It’s a shame we are seeing a common encounter fall back of traditional mmo raids in the very first fight.

I’m still hoping Vale is the only boss with one, some of the other mechanics in the fight were pretty good. The mentions of gliding make me believe the next bosses won’t be as lame.

Manu.6078:

Hello, I write here, hoping that my post will be read by the right people.
I haven’t participated in any raid but I’ve seen a few high quality videos, in HD.
I won’t comment on anything about arena, mechanics, difficulty and so.
I just want to stress that, after so many posts about visibility, particle effects, ambiguous animations , then seeing Norn sized opponents, translucent(!!!), covered all over by explosion of colors, it made me very sad.
Please, challenge my mind not my eyes.

I’ve never really had a problem with spell effects or I’m just used to them by now but I’m guessing doing this is really time intensive as people have been asking for an option since beta.

Would be nice tho.

Question: what happens exactly when time runs out when facing a foe like the Vale Guardian? Do all players just die immediately? I never had the chance to explore that part of the beta myself.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

How much DPS does an Engi/Ranger pump out at range. I mean I know Engi is solid there but only with perfectly aimed skills, doesn’t always happen when something is moving. Necro with DS can pump out around 8k as max potential (so realistically a bit lower) Is that way below what a ranger does? I know it’s not that bad compared to an engi when you take into account the missing grenades or mortar shots

As for balancing pass, absolutely, before or after, either way it needs to happen. Really can’t say enough how much I think burn and bleed needs a bit of balancing between them, burn a little down bleed a bit up. It’s no surprise the best condi professions are the ones with plenty of burns on top of solid set of other condi’s.

Dahkeus.8243:

Mitch.4781:

Interesting how you lock threads that criticise the raid yet keep open threads praising it.

That won’t make the raid any better anet.

There’s plenty of threads open with constructive criticism. Threads that start to treat the devs as subhuman deserve to be locked.

At the end of the day, you still need to remember that there are actual human beings putting in long hours to create and update this game. That doesn’t mean you have to worship them or praise everything they do, but it does mean you should be at least somewhat tactful with expressing your criticisms.

Subhuman? Please quote where anything that was said that could possibly qualify for such a ridiculous assertion.

Describing the raid as feeble is hardly “subhuman”. Have a word with yourself.

If the times run out, the boss gets a 500% damage buff.

For those of you complaning about the enrage timer, that is needed to keep the challenge of the raid. If you remove the enrage time you remove the dps requirement and you trivialize the content. If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge, because if you remove the timer after the game is released and after two wipes, people will just go to the easy mode and be all tank/healers… and then will complain that is very easy and as no challenge. Also as i said before triple trouble wurm without a timer is pretty easy

had posted this early in the day when the raids was going on in the wrong forum area . and now can post it in the right forum area for the drev,s to see .

the GOOD PARTS i got to say honestly this is the most FUN i had in a long time with a group of people . and not only that but iam very happy Anet drev,s made it so you do NOT crawl up in some Conner like a small scared sick kid or something. and i also enjoyed the bosses pushing you away from them and forcing you to go to them !!!! major ++++ there for you Anet Drevs !!!! and also too i got to say the content looked great . and the skills worked well . shame this is something the Anet Drev,s team could not put into the dungon,s . and from what i saw for the most part i liked and i also loved the open spaces of the boss area all together and as well as being able to see whats going on fully in the game . i can not wait for this to go live on the 23 !!!! and that is my own personal take on this whole new pack . !!!

MFranco.9514:

If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge

I’ll let the devs rise to that challenge.

MFranco.9514:

If the times run out, the boss gets a 500% damage buff.

For those of you complaning about the enrage timer, that is needed to keep the challenge of the raid. If you remove the enrage time you remove the dps requirement and you trivialize the content. If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge, because if you remove the timer after the game is released and after two wipes, people will just go to the easy mode and be all tank/healers… and then will complain that is very easy and as no challenge. Also as i said before triple trouble wurm without a timer is pretty easy

I’ll say I’ve always liked soft timers best. 500% is probably a bit much to call it a soft timer, but hey at least it’s not one of the “and you’re dead” type enrages.

What I’d think is something like if 8 mins is it’s current level and people who are winning are doing so with a minute on the clock. Ok, so 7 mins he gets 50% damage, 8 mins up to 100%, 9 mins 150%, 10 mins 200%… so on. If you’re not killing in the designed time, well you better have a reason why and if you do then you should be able to deal with the extra damage. Being tanky doesn’t let you deal with 500% damage though. Obviously it’d be preferred to just bring the damage to down it in 7 mins, but this allows more options. Playing bad would still result in you getting to 200%+ damage and being tanky doesn’t necessarily let you take that much more damage. And maybe my numbers are too forgiving even, maybe 9 mins 200% 10 mins 300%. Either way. Soft timers are the way to go IMO.

That said I have no problem with what is currently set up, just saying that’s my preference for how enrages are handled. In my experience with other games the tanky option is usually still harder, but it’s just possible.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Jerus.4350:

I’ll say I’ve always liked soft timers best. 500% is probably a bit much to call it a soft timer, but hey at least it’s not one of the “and you’re dead” type enrages.

I actually just reduced this to give you a little wiggle room to (as my raid says) kittenroach the boss down if he’s low enough.

Nice Just always kinda disliked the strict timer. I could type a novel with all the examples and reasons why I feel this way, but that’d be a bit much. Thanks for bringing raiding back, I had almost forgot how great it is, now my heads just whirling in nostalgia.

MFranco.9514:

For those of you complaning about the enrage timer, that is needed to keep the challenge of the raid. If you remove the enrage time you remove the dps requirement and you trivialize the content. If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge, because if you remove the timer after the game is released and after two wipes, people will just go to the easy mode and be all tank/healers… and then will complain that is very easy and as no challenge. Also as i said before triple trouble wurm without a timer is pretty easy

I think enrages are completely necessary.

I think timers are a very cheap way of doing it.

There are much more interesting ways that other games have found to do it. Take Blackhand from WOW for example: https://youtu.be/jHJ_hqJewM0?t=7m45s

In phase 3 every time he does his Shattering Smash there’s a large AOE that starts pulsing from the area that covers about 1/4th of the map. You have to kill him before you run out of room. While you are doing that you are dealing with other mechanics that force you to move and position bombs, eventually people start dying and you generally end up with only a handful of people alive when you kill him. This is an example of a great enrage mechanic.

For those that think that enrages will promote a zerker meta you are correct, but only to the extent that Anet allows it. IF there isn’t sufficient threat to zerker/dps builds then people will obviously run only that but if there are mechanics require external healing then you absolutely won’t be able to run without some sort of dedicated healing.

Not having an enrage timer/mechanic promotes an even WORSE meta, which is just stack as much defense as possible and kill bosses in the slowest most uninteresting way possible.

Pandabro.8743:

MFranco.9514:

For those of you complaning about the enrage timer, that is needed to keep the challenge of the raid. If you remove the enrage time you remove the dps requirement and you trivialize the content. If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge, because if you remove the timer after the game is released and after two wipes, people will just go to the easy mode and be all tank/healers… and then will complain that is very easy and as no challenge. Also as i said before triple trouble wurm without a timer is pretty easy

I think enrages are completely necessary.

Not having an enrage timer/mechanic promotes an even WORSE meta, which is just stack as much defense as possible and kill bosses in the slowest most uninteresting way possible.

This.

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

How much DPS does an Engi/Ranger pump out at range. I mean I know Engi is solid there but only with perfectly aimed skills, doesn’t always happen when something is moving. Necro with DS can pump out around 8k as max potential (so realistically a bit lower) Is that way below what a ranger does? I know it’s not that bad compared to an engi when you take into account the missing grenades or mortar shots

As for balancing pass, absolutely, before or after, either way it needs to happen. Really can’t say enough how much I think burn and bleed needs a bit of balancing between them, burn a little down bleed a bit up. It’s no surprise the best condi professions are the ones with plenty of burns on top of solid set of other condi’s.

I think if they just brought burn down 15% and bleed up 15-20% it would be just about perfect. Which was how it originally was supposed to be in the preview of the condition changes. They changed it on patch day to the current state with no explanation or notice, still have no idea why they did it.

MFranco.9514:

If the times run out, the boss gets a 500% damage buff.

For those of you complaning about the enrage timer, that is needed to keep the challenge of the raid. If you remove the enrage time you remove the dps requirement and you trivialize the content.

By your logic: Not failing a raid-wipe mechanic like lightning field for half the time is challenge and being able to not mess this up for twice as long consecutively is trivial.
I do not understand how this approach of measuring diffculty that you propose works.

Also how is a stat/spec-based DPS requirement an interesting challenge.
Taken that you already fulfill the non-stat mechanic you meet it by simply picking any of the available DPS stat specs and then memorize the best repeatable sets of recurring skill presses that you individually are capable of handling.

A challenge would be to check if you can squeeze out a certain efficiency out of the DPS choices/stats that the gear/spec that you chose give you. The timer may be intended to do this, but it does this indirectly. Taking some more raw dps spec/stats will just look more easy route to go than super maximizing what you actually make of what you picked.
So the top bunch will super maximize what they can get out of what they choose.
For everyone else it will be “take this class/spec/stats or gtfo”.
-> main challenge in the wilds will be to have picked to play the one right class/gear/spec that is in demand and nothing else, not configuring what you happen to like playing so it will fit what’s needed in the encounter.

Even though it may or may not be a requirement through the set timer, its pure existence is highly likely to drive people into believing they must min/max whatever they guess is the optimal setup to beat the timer, instead of getting peeps and then just coordinating who will/can fit which role in that specific group.
Because in the end, when picking your classes for the squad you want it to be as easy as possible, otherwise you would not need to pick and just see what you can make out of whatever you got randomly.
That is where the call for challenge gets turned on its head!

If you want to check for proper coordination, like not everyone running into the lighting field, you do not need a DPS race check. Just check for what you are checking like: "this many peeps in lightning, no more no less. Adding a dps race to ensure some ppl need to stay on target is only an indirect way, which basically serves the same check purpose.
But it also disables other strategy options thus narrowing it down to eventually converge onto a meta path, of which unexiting community repercussions we already know of.

MFranco.9514:

If some of you can show a away of getting ride of the timer and somehow keep the challenge, because if you remove the timer after the game is released and after two wipes, people will just go to the easy mode and be all tank/healers… and then will complain that is very easy and as no challenge. Also as i said before triple trouble wurm without a timer is pretty easy

As I pointed out before, without a timer a full blown Drood Moonkin group would have more leeway to recover from the less deadly mishaps, yet they would force themselves into the additional challenge to perform sufficiently well at meeting raid-wipe mechanic checks for a far longer period of time which is nothing trivial at all.

Also calling Triple Trouble easy is hugely ignoring the encounter’s mechanics.
The Wurm only seems easy for majority of pub zerks that do have an easy job in this encounter, when there is a group of sufficiently skilled peeps mitigating all the deadly encounter mechanics.
Just have your condis/reflect people stop doing what they do, you might see a lot of downed clueless peeps piling up quickly.
The Wurm isn’t easy at all, but as a public event encounter it has room for many many player slots that only have to fill a super easy “beat it hard” role, as long as a core team handles all the difficult stuff to prevent the real difficult part with mayhem all over the place that would eventually erupt when they didn’t.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

How much DPS does an Engi/Ranger pump out at range. I mean I know Engi is solid there but only with perfectly aimed skills, doesn’t always happen when something is moving. Necro with DS can pump out around 8k as max potential (so realistically a bit lower) Is that way below what a ranger does? I know it’s not that bad compared to an engi when you take into account the missing grenades or mortar shots

As for balancing pass, absolutely, before or after, either way it needs to happen. Really can’t say enough how much I think burn and bleed needs a bit of balancing between them, burn a little down bleed a bit up. It’s no surprise the best condi professions are the ones with plenty of burns on top of solid set of other condi’s.

I think if they just brought burn down 15% and bleed up 15-20% it would be just about perfect. Which was how it originally was supposed to be in the preview of the condition changes. They changed it on patch day to the current state with no explanation or notice, still have no idea why they did it.

Mhm that’s exactly my thought. And burn 15% down on base and scaling, that base is pretty high. Bleed I’d focus on the scaling. I’m in full support of their change to make condi’s more dependent on the stat.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Jerus.4350:

I’ll say I’ve always liked soft timers best. 500% is probably a bit much to call it a soft timer, but hey at least it’s not one of the “and you’re dead” type enrages.

I actually just reduced this to give you a little wiggle room to (as my raid says) kittenroach the boss down if he’s low enough.

That sounds very reasonable, thank you very much for this tweak.

i only did about 5 wipes worth of tries in a group of 3 friends and 7 random pugs over the course of an hour or two, no gearing or comping up required because we were more amazed that raiding wasnt disabled than anything, but it was really fun and i look forward to the release even more now. we got the vale guardian down to the end of phase 1 and wiped to the 3 trash mobs on our last try, so that felt like pretty good progress considering when we went in only maybe 1-2 of had any idea what to expect.

i like the way raiding is shaping up, except for 1 thing… the use of break bars on the trash felt like a placeholder. the entire fights with them there was no way to proc a break bar window to get a burn phase or short reprieve from fight mechanics, and suddenly when they hit 1 hp we got a simple cc hard check. i hope this wont be the case for the rest of raiding! i want to see break bars worked in more than that, like with core fight mechanics revolving around breaking the bar like wyvern fights.

insanemaniac.2456:

i only did about 5 wipes worth of tries in a group of 3 friends and 7 random pugs over the course of an hour or two, no gearing or comping up required because we were more amazed that raiding wasnt disabled than anything, but it was really fun and i look forward to the release even more now. we got the vale guardian down to the end of phase 1 and wiped to the 3 trash mobs on our last try, so that felt like pretty good progress considering when we went in only maybe 1-2 of had any idea what to expect.

i like the way raiding is shaping up, except for 1 thing… the use of break bars on the trash felt like a placeholder. the entire fights with them there was no way to proc a break bar window to get a burn phase or short reprieve from fight mechanics, and suddenly when they hit 1 hp we got a simple cc hard check. i hope this wont be the case for the rest of raiding! i want to see break bars worked in more than that, like with core fight mechanics revolving around breaking the bar like wyvern fights.

Those weren’t trash, they were tutorial mobs. They teach you the mechanics needed for each phase of the raid.

Enrage works best when you don’t know it’s coming. That way it requires the players to adapt quickly and choose whether or not to avoid it or heal through it. When you have an Enemy Enrage for the last 10% or so it requires everyone to burst it down.