Raid Timers lazy way to increase diffuclty

Raid Timers lazy way to increase diffuclty

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

Enrage timers are a lazy way to sieve certain builds. There are more ambitious clever and elegant way to accomplish.

But enrage timers are not equal to DPS races per se. The mechanics of the encounters determine the kind of race. 25 million damage required within eight minutes create a DPS race. 20 million healing required within eight minutes create an HPS race. Encouters with other combinations of HPS, DPS and length of boons conditions or CC create other types of races.

If you want to go the lazy with enrage timers then at least create more variety than simply checking DPS in each encounter.

The only encounter that checks DPS is Gorseval.

What are the other encounters are checking? HPS? Boon duration? CC?

All of the encounters check all of these things.

Since we always see 8-10 DPS-focussed builds it seems the same DPS-focussed weighting is used in all encounters. Otherwise we would see more tanks or healing-focussed builds in certain encounters. And the enrage timer would sieve raid compositions with 8-9 berserker/viper-based builds more often.

And what is wrong with 8-9 dps people out of 10 in one raid? 80%-90% of people probably want to play dps classes.

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

Personally I never look at the clock while I am raiding. But if the timer bothers you there was a great suggestion here while back as to how to fix it.

Step one: Find a piece of dark colored tape.
Step two: Put it over the clock in the corner of your screen.
Step three: Play and enjoy.

/thread.

This person gets it.

They should just remove the timer but keep the enrage.

Now no one knows the exact time the boss will go into raid-wipe mode!

Except I’ll just time it with a stopwatch. Why would I want less information?
People want to beat raids reliably – they want as much information and help that they can get.

I know that, heck by having an in-game enrage timer Arenanet gets ahead of WoW in terms of not needing a mod for that kind of information.

I suppose people want a more ‘authentic’ boss without having to see a static timer in the corner, but it helps so much more than it impacts how you view each boss with said timer.

Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I mean – I find people demanding a more “authentic” experience that just “hides” stuff from the screen absurd. It is still there.
What people should ask for is a toggle: timer shown, timer hidden. But even that’s a waste of developer resources honestly.

Most people will use the timer.

If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

Enrage timers are a lazy way to sieve certain builds. There are more ambitious clever and elegant way to accomplish.

But enrage timers are not equal to DPS races per se. The mechanics of the encounters determine the kind of race. 25 million damage required within eight minutes create a DPS race. 20 million healing required within eight minutes create an HPS race. Encouters with other combinations of HPS, DPS and length of boons conditions or CC create other types of races.

If you want to go the lazy with enrage timers then at least create more variety than simply checking DPS in each encounter.

The only encounter that checks DPS is Gorseval.

What are the other encounters are checking? HPS? Boon duration? CC?

All of the encounters check all of these things.

Since we always see 8-10 DPS-focussed builds it seems the same DPS-focussed weighting is used in all encounters. Otherwise we would see more tanks or healing-focussed builds in certain encounters. And the enrage timer would sieve raid compositions with 8-9 berserker/viper-based builds more often.

The reason you see 8 damage builds+tank+healer is because vew raids only do VG and quit.

The timers are generous enough on VG and Sabatha to go more tank. Unfortunately this messes with the targeting mechanic of VG though, and is barely useful for Sabatha because her mechanics are mostly due or die and a bit more tank won’t help (except for the last phase maybe, but if you’ve gotten that far you’d probably rather get her killed asap).

Why only VG raids? Since if you go tank you won’t pass the Goreseval dps check and my guess is few people run with tank setups for VB only to switch to damage at Gore.

To answer you question, VG and Sabatha both check mechanics and raid interaction via:

- positioning
- objectives during different phases
- player interaction with one another
- CC

So no, dps, hps and cc are not the only things encounters are designed around.

There is multiple reasons why raids are dps heavy, most of them have nothing to do with timers in the current raid wing. All you need to do is actually understand the fights.

(edited by Cyninja.2954)

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Posted by: Coulter.2315

Coulter.2315

Enrage timers are a lazy way to sieve certain builds. There are more ambitious clever and elegant way to accomplish.

But enrage timers are not equal to DPS races per se. The mechanics of the encounters determine the kind of race. 25 million damage required within eight minutes create a DPS race. 20 million healing required within eight minutes create an HPS race. Encouters with other combinations of HPS, DPS and length of boons conditions or CC create other types of races.

If you want to go the lazy with enrage timers then at least create more variety than simply checking DPS in each encounter.

The only encounter that checks DPS is Gorseval.

What are the other encounters are checking? HPS? Boon duration? CC?

They are mechanics fights primarily (99% of wipes on VG and Sab will not be from the enrage timer, they will be from not standing in the right place or reacting fast enough).

I’m curious, have you fought these bosses? Astral complained here but hasn’t fought Gorseval (or at least had no idea how the World Ender and “Gorseval has trapped your soul!” worked).

I really don’t understand why people with so little experience with the bosses feel they should argue with a device used for balancing boss encounters for over a decade is suddenly “lazy” when it gives control to the devs for balancing (I have explained all this before but here’s a quick recap).

Quick recap on why timer is good:

1. Lets them balance around a raid makeup that can kill within the timer, so they don’t need to have burst mechanics that are nontrivial for DPS raid groups and damage mechanics that are nontrivial for Tank raid groups (they will fail at one of these at least without the constraints of the timer).

2. Its part of the mechanics of the fight, a DPS check (like Gorse).

3. Allows devs to control the flow of the encounter (difficulty ramping up as timer gets closer to enrage or having mechanics which trigger on a timer).

4. Human attention span gets drained after so long, its good that a boss kills and resets after a set time.

Timer is good, years and years of raid development agrees with me – are you a better designer than everyone at every major MMO for over 10 years? If so why aren’t you designing your own game?

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

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Posted by: Ragmon.6350

Ragmon.6350

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?

I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?

I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.

You missunderstand what people mean by tank group.

When others are refering to “tank groups” they mean people should not be able to stack defence to make boss attacks useless or circumvent the difficulty of the encouter.

While traditional trinity games allow for easier designs in boss battles to up the required amount of tanks (offtanks, multi enemy bosses, debuffs, etc.), a game designed like GW2 where damage mitigation comes primarily from avoidance and active defences is very hard to balance around with defensive stats.

Think about following:

- how would GW2 be if arenanet removed all the defensive stats from gear?

Answer:

- with some minor tweaking here and tehre, the same as now. They already removed some of the tankier stat combos from pvp.

People need to move away from this notion of tanks in GW2.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?

I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.

Because using a fulltank/healing group with no enrage timer would degrade the difficulty of the encounter to the point where anyone could complete the raid with little consideration for mechanics. They simply trade doing defensive actions for time spent doing the raid.

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

You missunderstand what people mean by tank group.

When others are refering to “tank groups” they mean people should not be able to stack defence to make boss attacks useless or circumvent the difficulty of the encouter.

But at the same time, stacking dps to circumvent boss mechanics is somehow perfectly all right

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

You missunderstand what people mean by tank group.

When others are refering to “tank groups” they mean people should not be able to stack defence to make boss attacks useless or circumvent the difficulty of the encouter.

But at the same time, stacking dps to circumvent boss mechanics is somehow perfectly all right

No one said that, but the way GW2 is designed, it’s easier to create content which fits dps heavy comps over tanky comps.

Stop sidetracking.

Also, please elaborate on which content or mechanics get skipped in raids with high dps?

All I can think of is Goreseval by making him skip phases or not summon adds. Problems which could easily be addressed with minor patches and the damage required to actually pull this off is beyond anyone in this thread complaining about timers would ever achieve.

EDIT:

Still waiting on any type of constructive ideas on how to create raid design content from people who do not like timers. All I see so far is b***ing and mo***ning without any suggestions of how to improve things.

(edited by Cyninja.2954)

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Posted by: SlyDevil.3952

SlyDevil.3952

Did you know if you do enough dps at sabetha you don’t have to kill some cannons 4 times?

Hahaha, checkmate.

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Posted by: Neox.3497

Neox.3497

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?

I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.

The first reason with that is that 95%+ of the players have DD gear already. This would mean all of them would have to change the gear or craft a new one.

The second problem is that right now the “healer” and “tank” roles are not balanced between the professions. Most prefossions can’t even take that role and anet would have to change most of the professions to be similiar strong. Heck they aren’t even able to balance the DD role for each profession perfectly which normally shouldn’t be that hard.

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?

I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.

The first reason with that is that 95%+ of the players have DD gear already. This would mean all of them would have to change the gear or craft a new one.

The second problem is that right now the “healer” and “tank” roles are not balanced between the professions. Most prefossions can’t even take that role and anet would have to change most of the professions to be similiar strong. Heck they aren’t even able to balance the DD role for each profession perfectly which normally shouldn’t be that hard.

Actually at the moment all the classes are useful to bring for damage, except maybe guardian on VG. Any class can tank too, the only thing that is limited to certain classes would be a healer.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

Did you know if you do enough dps at sabetha you don’t have to kill some cannons 4 times?

Hahaha, checkmate.

While I do see that you are making a joke, speeding up an encounter (while taking higher risks with less survivability in damage gear) is not bypassing or circumventing boss mechanics.

It’s just that, you cut the fight shorter by doing superior damage in very squishy gear. Granted active defences means you are not that squishy since you can mitigate most/all damage through skill and dodge use, which is more along the lines of player skill than skipping. If this were so easy though, every pug would have cleared the raid day 1 within 2 hours (let’s be honest, most designated groups did within a day or week anyway, but the overall difficulty of the raid is not part of the discussion in this thread).

The problem with tanky gear is that eventually you can just soak the damage making all the active defences you would usually have to use unneccessary unless it’s instant kills.

I’ll repeat myself, the only encounter in this raid wing at the moment which suffers from to high dps skipping designed boss skills is Goreseval due to developer oversight. Something I do believe should be fixed.

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Posted by: Henry.5713

Henry.5713

A certain amount of DPS should always be required for anything you do in this game.

GW2 gives the players too much freedom in how to build their characters. It allows you to come up with the most crazy of hybrid builds. There is no need to even have to pick between being a healer or a tank.
The most tanky of builds run THV gear like nomad. You can actually run ten of these in your raid. People who are already impossible to kill on their own with their selfheals. Not even talking about the healing they throw at eachother.

Someone said it is just as hard as a full party in berserk gear. Fights would just be marathons insteads of sprints then.
Honestly, it looks more like a casual walk in the park to me.

The timers might been a unimaginative idea compared to the limited updrafts or the platform mechanics. They are still needed if raids are supposed to be even remotely difficult.

Also, the timers are nothing but a way to check your overall damage or something to judge records by once you master any of the encounters.

(edited by Henry.5713)

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

GW2 gives the players too much freedom in how to build their characters. It allows you to come up with the most crazy of hybrid builds.

I don’t agree. There is plenty of room in the game for the large variety of builds. The plethora of gear choices enables a large variety of skill levels and inclinations do their thing in WvW, normal PvE and in PvE. This is a good thing.

The problem occurs when doing harder instanced content. There is a belief among some players that every gear prefix has to be wanted in raids (or dungeons). This is a fallacy. A gear prefix need be valid only in one game mode, and only for some players, for its existence to be justified.

By definition, a hybrid build is not as good as a dedicated build at doing the things the dedicated build is, well, dedicated to. Hybrid builds are less efficient. By extension, a call for hybrid builds to be meta in raids is a call for raids to be able to be done less efficiently than a dedicated group can manage.

That’s not to say that a hybrid build cannot nor should not fill a role in a raid. Hybrid build tanks can be (and are, unless I miss my guess) a thing. Even hybrid healers can be made to work. The thing is, though, that replacing an all-glass meta with an all Soldier (or Nomad) meta is no better for diversity and worse for those who want to play as efficiently as possible.

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Posted by: SlyDevil.3952

SlyDevil.3952

I’ll repeat myself, the only encounter in this raid wing at the moment which suffers from to high dps skipping designed boss skills is Goreseval due to developer oversight. Something I do believe should be fixed.

You no more skip skills on gors than on sab or vg by doing high damage. If she dies earlier and doesn’t use her last flamewall, have you skipped anything at sabetha? Have you skipped anything at vg if you have 4 minutes left and he didn’t cast 12 other greens? Have you skipped anything at gors if you miss a cc phase? Or if you dps past a world eater? His important phases he goes invuln for, if being forced to interact with certain mechanics was required, you’d be seeing an invuln phase for it where you have no choice BUT to deal with it.

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

Even now all big mechanics are armor ignoring and most also ignore your health. So even without timers 10 nomads wouldn’t be really good.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

I’ll repeat myself, the only encounter in this raid wing at the moment which suffers from to high dps skipping designed boss skills is Goreseval due to developer oversight. Something I do believe should be fixed.

You no more skip skills on gors than on sab or vg by doing high damage. If she dies earlier and doesn’t use her last flamewall, have you skipped anything at sabetha? Have you skipped anything at vg if you have 4 minutes left and he didn’t cast 12 other greens? Have you skipped anything at gors if you miss a cc phase? Or if you dps past a world eater? His important phases he goes invuln for, if being forced to interact with certain mechanics was required, you’d be seeing an invuln phase for it where you have no choice BUT to deal with it.

That’s not the point. Things you do skip with Gore if you dps hard enough:

- he will not spawn adds while he goes invulnerable with his 4 summons → that is not by design

- if you overdps and skip a world eater you do skip the entire mchanic of having to destroy a wall and use the gliding

While I don’t see this as major problems, I will admit that they are essentially things that make the fight easier if you have the dps. Still those are the only 2 things I could think of that do not fall in the “he doesn’t use this skill x-amount of times more”. Part of understanding the other sides arguments is giving ground and accepting or aknowledging problems when they are there.

If players advocating for more tank bring these things up I will aknowledge when they are correct. As it stands though, those 2 minor differences do not an argument make in my opinion. So the entire argument that hard dps groups get to ignore boss mechanics is flawed for the current raid wing.

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

There are other ways. Lets us take the Vale Guardian. We have three pillars there. You can simply implement the pillars into different phases. The Vale Guardian splits into three components during certain phases. Now we can assign one pillar to each “small guardian”.

We have now several options. First one could be an invulnerability of the small guardians provided by the pillars. To break the invulnerability you have to destroy the pillars that harbor a certain HPS value. If you can overcome the HPS the small guardian will become invulnerable and the encounter will progress. This will sieve group compositions with too low DPS.

Second option could be a recharge of the pillars to destroy the small guardians. To recharge them you have to overcome a certain DPS. If the group composition is too low in HPS the encounter will not progress.

In both cases no enrage timer is needed to sieve cheesy build or group compositions. Since GW2 has no holy trinity and the classes are very flexible you can create a large variety of encounters inside a wing where you have to adjust your builds to be successful. You also learn more about your class than a limited aspect with mainly one DPS rotation.

Especially with Dynamic Events you have much more freedom to create that are not DPS-heavy (no cheesy DPS groups) since this kind of encounter works without a boss you have to kill.

(edited by Belenwyn.8674)

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

I think I wasn’t too clear. I acknowledge there are clever ways to avoid direct enrage timers by the kinds of DPS checking mechanics you describe but make no mistake, whether it’s a number of DPS checks IN the encounter or one big final one on the boss with a timer, it’s still the same thing.

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

I think I wasn’t too clear. I acknowledge there are clever ways to avoid direct enrage timers by the kinds of DPS checking mechanics you describe but make no mistake, whether it’s a number of DPS checks IN the encounter or one big final one on the boss with a timer, it’s still the same thing.

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

One solution would be a reverse toughness/healing power check. A certain threshold triggers certain events. You are too heavy and break through the floor. Your weight triggers a trap that makes the boss invulnerable. Excessive healing power summons more adds.

Or the encounter scales upon a certain healing power and toughness level.

(edited by Belenwyn.8674)

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Posted by: Sykper.6583

Sykper.6583

I think I wasn’t too clear. I acknowledge there are clever ways to avoid direct enrage timers by the kinds of DPS checking mechanics you describe but make no mistake, whether it’s a number of DPS checks IN the encounter or one big final one on the boss with a timer, it’s still the same thing.

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

One solution would be a reverse toughness/healing power check. A certain threshold triggers certain events. You are too heavy and break through the floor. Your weight triggers a trap that makes the boss invulnerable. Excessive healing power summons more adds.

Or the encounter scales upon a certain healing power and toughness level.

I hate to burst your bubble, but from a development and a player standpoint those kinds of checks you suggested would be a logistical nightmare.

Can you imagine how many times a group has to retry the encounter from scratch before they find the exact formula of toughness or healing power so they can actually attempt it?

Can you imagine the work involved to develop these limitations and compute calculations of the raid’s stats before and during combat where such values might vary thanks to buffs like Banners?

You could bring Blizzard Raid Devs over and they too would be scratching their heads. Those particular suggestions on making a tank/healing friendly encounter are Not the way to go.

If you want something of that nature, you instead create encounters made with those roles in mind to dominate. Create an encounter where you need to have different toughness players or tanks rotate between a boss and side-bosses while the DPS and heals run everywhere. Maybe create a healing based encounter where you need to upkeep regeneration and revive NPCs to survive. Things like that are better suited and more practical to balance.

Suicidal Warrior.
Putting Perspective on Zerg Sizes since 2012. Common Suffixes for 40+ include ~Zilla and ~Train
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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?

There are other ways. Lets us take the Vale Guardian. We have three pillars there. You can simply implement the pillars into different phases. The Vale Guardian splits into three components during certain phases. Now we can assign one pillar to each “small guardian”.

We have now several options. First one could be an invulnerability of the small guardians provided by the pillars. To break the invulnerability you have to destroy the pillars that harbor a certain HPS value. If you can overcome the HPS the small guardian will become invulnerable and the encounter will progress. This will sieve group compositions with too low DPS.

Second option could be a recharge of the pillars to destroy the small guardians. To recharge them you have to overcome a certain DPS. If the group composition is too low in HPS the encounter will not progress.

In both cases no enrage timer is needed to sieve cheesy build or group compositions. Since GW2 has no holy trinity and the classes are very flexible you can create a large variety of encounters inside a wing where you have to adjust your builds to be successful. You also learn more about your class than a limited aspect with mainly one DPS rotation.

Especially with Dynamic Events you have much more freedom to create that are not DPS-heavy (no cheesy DPS groups) since this kind of encounter works without a boss you have to kill.

This may be a good idea, but it should do this AND have timers. There’s no reason to not have timers even with these ideas implemented.

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

I think I wasn’t too clear. I acknowledge there are clever ways to avoid direct enrage timers by the kinds of DPS checking mechanics you describe but make no mistake, whether it’s a number of DPS checks IN the encounter or one big final one on the boss with a timer, it’s still the same thing.

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

One solution would be a reverse toughness/healing power check. A certain threshold triggers certain events. You are too heavy and break through the floor. Your weight triggers a trap that makes the boss invulnerable. Excessive healing power summons more adds.

Or the encounter scales upon a certain healing power and toughness level.

Now this is just a stupid idea that adds nothing to an encounter…

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

That’s actually very simple. Every time players fail to perform the boss mechanics correctly, the boss gets a buff. (or in general the encounter gets harder in some way). Eventually, if ultratank/heal is all the players depend on for encounters (as some people suggested will happen) they will get overcome anyway.
So, instead of time-based enrage, use an incremental, failure-based one.

DPS specs would get threatened by this faster than bunker specs, but at the same time they’d have to pass less checks, and (if any good) would likely finish well before fatigue could cause them to make mistakes. Bunker builds would have more leeway to make errors, but at the same time they’d have many more chances to make them, and would have to be even more careful to not make some in the early stages

Another possibility is to introduce some obstructions, easy to pass using dps, that do not need to be cleared, but when left alone might make fight more difficult. So, for example, boss spawning adds in reqular intervals. Dps players can kill them fast easily, while full bunkers would get eventually overwhelmed (but might detach one player to be “bait” and keep nuisances occupied somewhere away from the main group).

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

(edited by Astralporing.1957)

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Posted by: kolompi.1287

kolompi.1287

Dungeons (if dead) are not dead due to anti-glass kvetching. The dungeon liquid gold nerf was to “entice” players to move to raids and fractals, which is the group instanced content ANet wants to support.

The liquid gold that was added to fractals (or so ANet claims)?
For 3 years the forums were full of complaint threads crying about the evil zerker meta and how we need raids so we can finally play healers and whatnots.
I do wonder how those guys like the raids where they will not only be kicked for running some special hybrid support healer necro, but also kicked for good reason (because the raid does not allow such gimmicks).

ANet is like a puppy, if you tell them the same thing long enough, they will do that eventually.

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Posted by: doddbox.8153

doddbox.8153

ITT: people who want 10 bunker builds to be meta

Raids already factor in coordination, player skill, positioning and awareness to the point where one person can screw up a kill.

If you can’t play without toughness gear and 3 healers then you probably shouldn’t be doing raids in the first place

very special guild tag [tX]

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

Dungeons (if dead) are not dead due to anti-glass kvetching. The dungeon liquid gold nerf was to “entice” players to move to raids and fractals, which is the group instanced content ANet wants to support.

The liquid gold that was added to fractals (or so ANet claims)?
For 3 years the forums were full of complaint threads crying about the evil zerker meta and how we need raids so we can finally play healers and whatnots.
I do wonder how those guys like the raids where they will not only be kicked for running some special hybrid support healer necro, but also kicked for good reason (because the raid does not allow such gimmicks).

ANet is like a puppy, if you tell them the same thing long enough, they will do that eventually.

If you design encounters in a certain way you create a certain kind of group composition. If you design encounters mainly in one way you create a meta. Monotony creates monotony. It does not matter if you design content for five or ten people.

As long as the developers create only encounters with the title “Kill the Boss!” you get mainly one group composition. The fist raid wing is a great example for it.

As soon as the devs think outside the kill-the-boss-box we will see enconnters with a higher vareity of group compositions. Variety creates variety. With a group of ten players like in raids it is also easier to create multi-dimensional encounters with different simultaneous tasks that favor different approaches via adapted builds.

There is still hope the the second raid wing will introduce a broader spectrum of encounters. More courage for the devs!

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Posted by: TheFamster.7806

TheFamster.7806

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

Tour

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Posted by: Valento.9852

Valento.9852

Timers are the most common stuff, and I personally have no issue with it. Expected. Common. It is ok… move on.

Attempts at ele specs:
Shaman
Conjurer

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

That’s actually very simple. Every time players fail to perform the boss mechanics correctly, the boss gets a buff. (or in general the encounter gets harder in some way). Eventually, if ultratank/heal is all the players depend on for encounters (as some people suggested will happen) they will get overcome anyway.
So, instead of time-based enrage, use an incremental, failure-based one.

DPS specs would get threatened by this faster than bunker specs, but at the same time they’d have to pass less checks, and (if any good) would likely finish well before fatigue could cause them to make mistakes. Bunker builds would have more leeway to make errors, but at the same time they’d have many more chances to make them, and would have to be even more careful to not make some in the early stages

Another possibility is to introduce some obstructions, easy to pass using dps, that do not need to be cleared, but when left alone might make fight more difficult. So, for example, boss spawning adds in reqular intervals. Dps players can kill them fast easily, while full bunkers would get eventually overwhelmed (but might detach one player to be “bait” and keep nuisances occupied somewhere away from the main group).

As before, this AND a timer is better than this without a timer, even if it’s a good idea.

None of these suggestions remove the need for a timer.

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

Dungeons (if dead) are not dead due to anti-glass kvetching. The dungeon liquid gold nerf was to “entice” players to move to raids and fractals, which is the group instanced content ANet wants to support.

The liquid gold that was added to fractals (or so ANet claims)?
For 3 years the forums were full of complaint threads crying about the evil zerker meta and how we need raids so we can finally play healers and whatnots.
I do wonder how those guys like the raids where they will not only be kicked for running some special hybrid support healer necro, but also kicked for good reason (because the raid does not allow such gimmicks).

ANet is like a puppy, if you tell them the same thing long enough, they will do that eventually.

If you design encounters in a certain way you create a certain kind of group composition. If you design encounters mainly in one way you create a meta. Monotony creates monotony. It does not matter if you design content for five or ten people.

As long as the developers create only encounters with the title “Kill the Boss!” you get mainly one group composition. The fist raid wing is a great example for it.

As soon as the devs think outside the kill-the-boss-box we will see enconnters with a higher vareity of group compositions. Variety creates variety. With a group of ten players like in raids it is also easier to create multi-dimensional encounters with different simultaneous tasks that favor different approaches via adapted builds.

There is still hope the the second raid wing will introduce a broader spectrum of encounters. More courage for the devs!

If encounters are balanced for variety, they are balanced for easiness. Difficulty and variety are mutually exclusive, get over it.

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Posted by: DGraves.3720

DGraves.3720

The sole problem with timers is that they create a false level of difficulty. The fact that you only have so long to complete something does not actually change the way players play; it would be different if DPS wasn’t the preconditioned base where players really were trying to outlive enemies but that was never a problem.

“Zerker, zerker, zerker!” is what they cried, not “Knights, Knights, Knights!”

In reality a timer only pushes the concept of a Zerker meta rather than undoing it. It’s as if saying “Hey, here’s a great idea, let’s punish you for playing with anything but purely offensive stats.” This inflates artificial difficulty because you have no defense so as far as they are concerned they don’t have to produce terribly challenging content to kill you because the playerbase plays like they have a deathwith to begin with.

Timers = kitten.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

The sole problem with timers is that they create a false level of difficulty. The fact that you only have so long to complete something does not actually change the way players play; it would be different if DPS wasn’t the preconditioned base where players really were trying to outlive enemies but that was never a problem.

“Zerker, zerker, zerker!” is what they cried, not “Knights, Knights, Knights!”

In reality a timer only pushes the concept of a Zerker meta rather than undoing it. It’s as if saying “Hey, here’s a great idea, let’s punish you for playing with anything but purely offensive stats.” This inflates artificial difficulty because you have no defense so as far as they are concerned they don’t have to produce terribly challenging content to kill you because the playerbase plays like they have a deathwith to begin with.

Timers = kitten.

We can all stand around and hate on timers, but I haven’t seen anything that exchanges a timer for something else to prevent cheesing the raids with ultratank/heal raid groups; the whole point of the enrage timers in the first place.

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

The sole problem with timers is that they create a false level of difficulty. The fact that you only have so long to complete something does not actually change the way players play; it would be different if DPS wasn’t the preconditioned base where players really were trying to outlive enemies but that was never a problem.

“Zerker, zerker, zerker!” is what they cried, not “Knights, Knights, Knights!”

In reality a timer only pushes the concept of a Zerker meta rather than undoing it. It’s as if saying “Hey, here’s a great idea, let’s punish you for playing with anything but purely offensive stats.” This inflates artificial difficulty because you have no defense so as far as they are concerned they don’t have to produce terribly challenging content to kill you because the playerbase plays like they have a deathwith to begin with.

Timers = kitten.

I’m sorry, but the STATS you use arent the same as the WAY YOU PLAY. You can tank in zerker, but is it still tanking? Of course, its exactly the style of gameplay you WANT, is it not?

Also saying that timers are “pseudodifficult” is ridiculous, they add a constraint on how to beat an encounter and therefore make it more difficult, to claim otherwise makes no sense.

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Posted by: Coulter.2315

Coulter.2315

The sole problem with timers is that they create a false level of difficulty. The fact that you only have so long to complete something does not actually change the way players play; it would be different if DPS wasn’t the preconditioned base where players really were trying to outlive enemies but that was never a problem.

“Zerker, zerker, zerker!” is what they cried, not “Knights, Knights, Knights!”

In reality a timer only pushes the concept of a Zerker meta rather than undoing it. It’s as if saying “Hey, here’s a great idea, let’s punish you for playing with anything but purely offensive stats.” This inflates artificial difficulty because you have no defense so as far as they are concerned they don’t have to produce terribly challenging content to kill you because the playerbase plays like they have a deathwith to begin with.

Timers = kitten.

Watch this..

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Posted by: kolompi.1287

kolompi.1287

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

Hey, they are thinking creatively. They are not ignoring the mechanic, they are outsmarting it. How entertaining it is, that’s entirely subjective.

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Posted by: Astralporing.1957

Astralporing.1957

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

Well, you have just proved what was being said in this thread – that timers are just a lazy cover for poor mechanics. If the devs concentrated on the mechanics, instead of pushing most of the difficulty on the timer, you wouldn’t have seen anything like that.

As before, this AND a timer is better than this without a timer, even if it’s a good idea.

None of these suggestions remove the need for a timer.

On the contrary, there’s no need for a timer at all. The only reason why you think so is because encounter mechanics Anet made are not very good at making boss fights challenging.

If encounters are balanced for variety, they are balanced for easiness. Difficulty and variety are mutually exclusive, get over it.

If you think that the main challenge lies in taking a proper gear setup…

We can all stand around and hate on timers, but I haven’t seen anything that exchanges a timer for something else to prevent cheesing the raids with ultratank/heal raid groups; the whole point of the enrage timers in the first place.

Then i suggest you actually read through the thread.

Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

Well, you have just proved what was being said in this thread – that timers are just a lazy cover for poor mechanics. If the devs concentrated on the mechanics, instead of pushing most of the difficulty on the timer, you wouldn’t have seen anything like that.

This is ridiculous, the timer doesn’t help nor hurt them break the mechanics here, while i agree anet should fix the mechanics so they shouldn’t be able to do this, it has absolutely nothing to do with if there are timers or not.

As before, this AND a timer is better than this without a timer, even if it’s a good idea.

None of these suggestions remove the need for a timer.

On the contrary, there’s no need for a timer at all. The only reason why you think so is because encounter mechanics Anet made are not very good at making boss fights challenging.

If encounters are balanced for variety, they are balanced for easiness. Difficulty and variety are mutually exclusive, get over it.

If you think that the main challenge lies in taking a proper gear setup…

We can all stand around and hate on timers, but I haven’t seen anything that exchanges a timer for something else to prevent cheesing the raids with ultratank/heal raid groups; the whole point of the enrage timers in the first place.

Then i suggest you actually read through the thread.

Timers by definition always make an encounter more difficult because they add a new constraint to the encounter.

If you think that fun lies in taking a certain set of gear, then you don’t understand how fun works. Taking glass cannon gear will always be more difficult than taking tanky gear (unless stats are made irrelevant, which is something that could work) therefore anet SHOULD be designing the encounters around the majority of people in glass cannon gear.

Obtena has read this thread and still not a single person has given one good reason for why timers shouldn’t exist, he’s right.

(edited by randomguy.1283)

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Posted by: TheRandomGuy.7246

TheRandomGuy.7246

How many people actually go past the enrage timer and then die to 200%-500% boss damage boost? I have seen it like 2 times. Once in beta and once during the first week.
Anet release some stats pls.

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

They killed the Boss about 50s before the enrage times even started. Seven of ten players used DPS-builds and gear. They were furlongs away from being an ultra tanking/healing group.

If encounters are balanced for variety, they are balanced for easiness. Difficulty and variety are mutually exclusive, get over it.

A well designed encounter focussing on protection, healing and supporting several targets is as challenging as an kill-the boss-enconters. The only difference lies in the group composition and the rotations players have to perform. Points like positioning, coordination and player interaction are still valid.

(edited by Belenwyn.8674)

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Posted by: Coulter.2315

Coulter.2315

A well designed encounter focussing on protection, healing and supporting several targets is as challenging as kill-the boss-enconters.

You know Protection, Healing and Support is used in the current setups involving raid timers, right?

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

They killed the Boss about 50s before the enrage times even started. Seven of ten players used DPS-builds and gear. They were furlongs away from being an ultra tanking/healing group.

Which only proves the point even more that timers are needed. The damage they brought was:

Everyone else was using a metabattle-ish full DPS build. We just grabbed whoever was around and their classes covered the ground well;
1x A/A Warrior with some PS sprinkled on top
1x Hammer Guardian
2x Revenant (Strength variant)
2x Condi Engi
1x Chronomancer

and yes, they “only” had a base trio healer setup. Now imagine:

- the damage dealers were not random pugs but instead seasond raiders (not saying the ones that joined were crap, but you get my drift)
- there were no timer

Using only 3 healer setup allowed for massive cheese in this fight already circumventing one of the bosses major mechanics. No timer would mean that any group could load up on vita gear (yes, the aoe is 80% flat damage of max life, but the other attacks are not so vita would help buffer against downstate).

The setup shows perfectly what over heal and tank can do to encounters in a game designed the way GW2 is.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

We can all stand around and hate on timers, but I haven’t seen anything that exchanges a timer for something else to prevent cheesing the raids with ultratank/heal raid groups; the whole point of the enrage timers in the first place.

Then i suggest you actually read through the thread.

Yeah, I have and I have still yet to see something that does timers better than timers already does at preventing content from being cheesed, even the ones you made.

Timers are boring and not clever? Yup, but they work really well and they are easy and cheap to implement.

(edited by Obtena.7952)

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Posted by: randomguy.1283

randomguy.1283

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/

To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.

They killed the Boss about 50s before the enrage times even started. Seven of ten players used DPS-builds and gear. They were furlongs away from being an ultra tanking/healing group.

If encounters are balanced for variety, they are balanced for easiness. Difficulty and variety are mutually exclusive, get over it.

A well designed encounter focussing on protection, healing and supporting several targets is as challenging as an kill-the boss-enconters. The only difference lies in the group composition and the rotations players have to perform. Points like positioning, coordination and player interaction are still valid.

Wrong, this is blatantly false because you could have ALL of that AND a dps check AT THE SAME TIME. You’re acting like these things are mutually exclusive when they are not.

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Posted by: Blaeys.3102

Blaeys.3102

I agree with the OP on this one.

I would be (kinda) okay with a dps check if all professions could bring competitive dps to the fight. As it stands, they most definitely cannot, meaning the raids favor those who have played the high dps professions for the past three years. In other words, bringing the right profession is MUCH more important than bringing the right player, which makes for much of the nastiness you see associated with raids.

If they want to use enrage timers to provide the illusion of difficulty, then they need to fix that disparity. If not, they need to build fights without enrage timers (imo).

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Posted by: TexZero.7910

TexZero.7910

Timers are a double edged sword.

We need them to improve, because there’s no proper tools in game to help see where you are failing. We need them to keep the fights from being too drawn out.

However, we also need slightly better mechanics to prevent the facetank it till it dies, and the DPS it till its dead approach. Additionally having a more natural enrage, platform dying etc is always cool.

Basically unless we have the right tools in place, raids will always be primitive in design.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

I agree with the OP on this one.

I would be (kinda) okay with a dps check if all professions could bring competitive dps to the fight. As it stands, they most definitely cannot, meaning the raids favor those who have played the high dps professions for the past three years. In other words, bringing the right profession is MUCH more important than bringing the right player, which makes for much of the nastiness you see associated with raids.

If they want to use enrage timers to provide the illusion of difficulty, then they need to fix that disparity. If not, they need to build fights without enrage timers (imo).

Actually, it’s the opposite; the more people in a raid, the LESS likely you need to bring the ‘right’ professions to the raid because the smaller contribution your damage to the overall raid is, good or bad.

Enrage timers aren’t there for the difficulty, it’s there to ensure you don’t get 5 healers and 5 tanks bouncing aggro and cheesing the raid.

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Posted by: steffen.4317

steffen.4317

Timers are a double edged sword.

We need them to improve, because there’s no proper tools in game to help see where you are failing. We need them to keep the fights from being too drawn out.

However, we also need slightly better mechanics to prevent the facetank it till it dies, and the DPS it till its dead approach. Additionally having a more natural enrage, platform dying etc is always cool.

Basically unless we have the right tools in place, raids will always be primitive in design.

i dont get it. lets assume gors + sab dont have a timer:

1. if u need to use 2 updrafts on the first phase of gorseval, there is no tool/timer needed to tell u, ur going to fail. even my 4 years old sister knows: 4/3 < 2

2. sabethas plattform got a healthbar on the event window. if u see sabetha is on 70% and the plattform is on 60%, there is again no need for any kind of timer/tool.

i agree 100% with the OP, timers are a lazy way, BUT i would never want to lose the vg timer. vg is a well designd boss (my opinion), without any kind of skill, that could create an own timer.

As many pointed out correctly, gorseval and sabetha ALREADY GOT non visual enrage timers. even with out the given 7 and 9 minutes u couldnt cheese them. sure there need to be some aprovements:
GORSEVAL:
- spirts (between the phases) sould be immun to imobilize, so u cant stall them forever
SABETHA:
- Plattform “lifebar” need to be rescaled and be designd on: minimum canon shots + 0 heavy bombs = ~10 min
sidefact: u cant place people forever on the canon plattforms, cause they get a sniper debuff. even nomad guards will get killed with a high debuff. + the canons always shots, cause they are invul for the first shots.

In my opinion Gorseval and sabetha are the best examples for a lazy way to implement enragetimers. And be honest people, u all hate the fact, bosses kill u without a reason only cause the time runs out. enrage reminds me on a dev statement pre gw2 release: “u encounter a boss and he will always do his best to kill u”. isnt that against “X mins are over guys, played enough, i got something on stove.”

(edited by steffen.4317)