Guild Wars 2

I just read a couple posts saying that “now that ascended is required…”

Is that true? I’m a decent player, but not a gear grinder. Out of my, what, 13 characters, ONE of them has ascended trinkets and ONE ascended armor piece; working on a second now. Everything else is exotic.

Is ascended actually required, or just recommended?

Recommended.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3mz8ta/crystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around/cvk6djq

Its recommended. Nothing about raids will require agony resistance, so all you get out of it is a few more stat points.

Also note that full ascended comes out to ~10% stat increase but armor is only 2% of that, so if you want most of the stat increase, just get weapons + trinkets. If you want to min/max your toon, thats what armor is for.

Ok thanks. Thats kinda what I thought, but I wanted to confirm.

Weapon+trinkets yes. Armor probably not.
But prepare multiple sets with different stats.

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

FWIW, i really like the idea of having to “dig” into your party comp, skills etc in order to traverse the raid. GW2 has a fracking amazing and fun build system. It’s really encouraging to see that it’s being utilized as a tool to design difficult and diverse challenges for us to conquer. I look forward to the conversations with guildies as we work together to build the most effective team to tackle a specific boss’s or room’s mechanics!

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

Which in reality means required by all teams except the guys who like someone enough to carry them and risk failure.

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

If it’s possible for a group in all ascended to come within 1 minute of failure, do you really think that groups won’t be highly selective about allowing people with only exotic in?I imagine that most groups that succeed won’t have that comfortable a margin, and any group that fails by 10-20 seconds is going to turn on the Exotics players first.

No no, they’ll turn on the thief first

Ohoni.6057:

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

If it’s possible for a group in all ascended to come within 1 minute of failure, do you really think that groups won’t be highly selective about allowing people with only exotic in?I imagine that most groups that succeed won’t have that comfortable a margin, and any group that fails by 10-20 seconds is going to turn on the Exotics players first.

this is why the dev made the tweet, the tweet is accurate. Their goal is to have most groups ask for ascended.

you are better off trying to change aquisition of ascended, at the end of the day, any difficult encounter would be noticeably easier with 12.5+ more dps. Exotics never had a chance for difficult content as long as ascended exists.

The problem is not that it requires acended. The problem is how absurd it is to make ascended armor.

I don’t think anyone is complaining about ascended weapons, but the material costs to make ascended armor is stupidly high, especially bolts of damask, and having to make a berzerker, a sinister, and MAYBE a knights/valkyrie/cavalier set is dumb.

Full ascended armor+weapons is around 600 gold. That’s 1800 gold for three sets, or basically nearly the cost of a legendary.

Now apply that per armor class because most of us have all classes at 80, it’s now 5400 gold to make zerker+sinister+tanky armor sets for the three armor classes.

Just nerf the time gates and material costs of ascended armor and weapons. Alternatively offer ascended chests up for sale on karma/laurels/fractal currency.

I am fine with Ascended gear as long as there is no more bullkitten AR mechanics related anymore.

you are better off trying to change aquisition of ascended, at the end of the day, any difficult encounter would be noticeably easier with 12.5+ more dps. Exotics never had a chance for difficult content as long as ascended exists.

Yes, I don’t think this would be as much of a problem, so long as they:

1. Make Ascended armor about 10-15% of its current cost, still more than ten times the cost of comparable Exotic armor, but not the crazyland it currently sits at.

2. Allow crafters to make “Ascended Blanks” that contain all the “cash value” elements, that can be sold on the TP. Then players who don’t want to craft at all can buy those, throw them into the Mystic Forge along with the various account-bound materials, and get their own Ascended armor. The cost to the crafter would be identical to a normal piece of armor (minus the account-bound stuff), and the cost to the end consumer would be that price, plus whatever mark-up the crafter put on it, plus his account-bound resources, so likely +15-30% gold cost.

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage.

…running almost pure dps setup. Seeing as the damage difference of full exotics and ascended in such a build is around 15%, the same group in full exotics would take 50-60 seconds more. Which would put them right on the timer.

And again, that’s for an almost pure dps stat set group. Even slightly more tankier groups can forget having exotics at all.

it’s recommended in the same way Zerker gear is “recommended” for dungeons.

Calcifire.1864:

it’s recommended in the same way Zerker gear is “recommended” for dungeons.

Nah. You can do dungeons without zerker just fine. For raids however, the mechanics will enforce both ascended gear, and zerker meta. Because apparently that is more hardcore, or something.

Since we know the community will use this confirmation to twist recommended into required, will there be any plans to improve the acquisition of ascended?

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

Astralporing.1957:

Calcifire.1864:

it’s recommended in the same way Zerker gear is “recommended” for dungeons.

Nah. You can do dungeons without zerker just fine. For raids however, the mechanics will enforce both ascended gear, and zerker meta. Because apparently that is more hardcore, or something.

sigh Of course DPS will be necessary in a raid, or else you could bunker your entire team, no one would ever die, and you would be able to clear the raid boss in an hour of combat. Forcing some measure of DPS is critical to both ensure enough danger that it is fun, but also to manage the time demands of the encounters. I would like to remind you that every single win from this past beta weekend involved at least 1 non-pure DPS build per team, and in one group’s case 2 such builds… oh and the win with 2 non-DPS builds had ~1:20 left on the clock, which means they had a lot of leeway for less DPS than they had.

Randulf.7614:

Since we know the community will use this confirmation to twist recommended into required, will there be any plans to improve the acquisition of ascended?

Even the first Kill will be used as an Argument to say " Raids will Require Ascended Stuff and is impossible for others"
But to be honest, in every First Kill, there is Room for Improvement. Having it killed with one Minute less on the First Kill? Get better and it will be two Minutes and three Minutes, also the First Kills themselves are not really optimised. A few Ports happened ( DPS Loss ), some Positioning kitten ( also DPS Loss), not being able to use the Speed Shrooms is also something that made it harder ( The Shrooms make you attack 10% faster ). And there was the Squad UI that didn’t really help by being not there.
I’m pretty sure that we will see this Boss and probably the others being defeated by Exotic Groups also with having enough Time Remaining.
So no Requirement

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

Astralporing.1957:

Calcifire.1864:

it’s recommended in the same way Zerker gear is “recommended” for dungeons.

Nah. You can do dungeons without zerker just fine. For raids however, the mechanics will enforce both ascended gear, and zerker meta. Because apparently that is more hardcore, or something.

sigh Of course DPS will be necessary in a raid, or else you could bunker your entire team, no one would ever die, and you would be able to clear the raid boss in an hour of combat. Forcing some measure of DPS is critical to both ensure enough danger that it is fun, but also to manage the time demands of the encounters. I would like to remind you that every single win from this past beta weekend involved at least 1 non-pure DPS build per team, and in one group’s case 2 such builds… oh and the win with 2 non-DPS builds had ~1:20 left on the clock, which means they had a lot of leeway for less DPS than they had.

Rising Dusk, lets be real, based on what you saw, do you think there will be many successful teams that do not ask their members to have ascended gear?

Now im not saying it should require exotic, but i think this whole pretend that everyone will not expect you to be wearing ascended for this content is pure kitten.

Ok, once we accept that for the most part everyone is going to be expected to get ascended.
2 things come into play.
1) what does one have to do to get ascended gear
2) how many armor sets are people expected to have.

people saying ascended isnt that hard to get miss the point, its either time gated, or fairly expensive.
time gated means a level 80 will most likely spend AT LEAST one month (if they have a lot of playtime, and can get all ascended in the most effecient way possible)
expensive means they will spend a substantial amount of time grinding the most effecient gold earning activities, which are generally the least engaging, least raid like contents in the game. (silverwastes farms, eotm, etc)

And as for the gambling means, aside from the fact fractals needs high level before you can attempt to roll the dice, Luck varies from person to person, and even am above average luck person will probably be gearing up for 1 month plus via that method.
BTW statistical inevitability is a matter of perspective, and in the moment, your chances never increase.
IE you can say someone who tries 1000 times is likely to get some ascended, but in reality, if they didnt get it 999 times, they are no more likely to get it than the guy who tried 2 times.

The point? ascended grind is about 1-3 months per set, which is too long doing repetitive boring content from when you hit 80, or decided to get ascended from zero resources, for it to be a gate to this content.

you really think itll sound good to tell your returning player friend or new 80 friend cool, in about a month you ll be ready to try a raid with us! Or your casual (1-2 hour 5 days who plays challenging content) friend in small guild, dont worry you can just buy it in a few months of play.

Some people will certainly enforce ascended gear. Min-maxers aren’t going anywhere.

Some people won’t enforce ascended gear. Casual players and guilds aren’t going anywhere.

My guild won’t be enforcing it. We’ll recommend it and help people who want it get it, but there won’t be hard exclusions for just having exotics.

I can’t even count how many posts I see from casual players complaining that min-max groups are excluding them. At the same time, I very rarely see posts from casual players actively looking for a casual group to play with. Why do they jump to “This is wrong, these people need to be forced into my playstyle”, rather than simply saying “I don’t enjoy playing that way. Anyone else want to join up with me and play this other way?”

If people don’t want to play with groups that enforce BiS gear, they need to find new people to play with. There are less hardcore sections of the playerbase. We’re out there, they just need to look/ask.

BTW, shameless plug time :-P If this post caught anyone’s attention, [ARES] is recruiting. You can find more about us here and here.

dlonie.6547:

Some people will certainly enforce ascended gear. Min-maxers aren’t going anywhere.

Some people won’t enforce ascended gear. Casual players and guilds aren’t going anywhere.

My guild won’t be enforcing it. We’ll recommend it and help people who want it get it, but there won’t be hard exclusions for just having exotics.

I can’t even count how many posts I see from casual players complaining that min-max groups are excluding them. At the same time, I very rarely see posts from casual players actively looking for a casual group to play with. Why do they jump to “This is wrong, these people need to be forced into my playstyle”, rather than simply saying “I don’t enjoy playing that way. Anyone else want to join up with me and play this other way?”

If people don’t want to play with groups that enforce BiS gear, they need to find new people to play with. There are less hardcore sections of the playerbase. We’re out there, they just need to look/ask.

BTW, shameless plug time :-P If this post caught anyone’s attention, [ARES] is recruiting. You can find more about us here and here.

kudos to you and your guild, though i dont think game will encourage much success with undergeared teams. We ll see.

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

phys.7689:

kudos to you and your guild, though i dont think game will encourage much success with undergeared teams. We ll see.

Nor should it. These are raids, they’re supposed to be punishing. ArenaNet has already been generous enough by not forcing ascended gear. They gave us that flexibility, but it’s up to us as individual players to use it.

People that want to play the raids more casually will be able to if they just reach out. If they don’t have top gear it will be a bit tougher. If they want that edge, they can work for it.

What’s happened in the past with us (waaaaay back before PvE died) was we’d typically have at least 2-3 experienced members in a party, and one or two people who were learning the ropes. It’s a lot of fun for us to take someone in fresh, watch them learn, teach them, and eventually turn into one of the skilled/experienced regulars. As long as they have a good attitude and are fun to play with, actual skill level isn’t as important to us.

I expect raids to be similar. We’ll have say, 7 experienced players in the instance, and leave room for a few who are just learning to play their classes at a high level of proficiency and are just starting to learn the mechanics of the game. We probably won’t blaze through the bosses in this group, but we’ll have fun doing it since that’s what we enjoy about GW2.

And we’re not special. We’re not the only ones. People who are worried about exclusion really need to find a more appropriate group of players to team up with.

phys.7689:

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

I’ll just quote an earlier response:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

It’s also worth pointing out trinkets. The bulk of the stat increases come from ascended trinkets and they’re thrown at you from pretty much every game mode. You even get some just by logging in daily and saving up laurels.

Getting a decent amount of ascended gear isn’t really a grind at all. Armor can be if you want to craft it, but you can get “enough” ascended gear to be useful without much trouble, and collect the other pieces as they come.

Dante.1523:

phys.7689:

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

I’ll just quote an earlier response:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

which i responded to already.
he is thinking of this like person who has been playing for years.
fractals is nothing new, by the time you hit 35, While i do enjoy it, Having to repeat something 40-50 times for a 8% chance per day, per peice.
that means on average, it would take someone with average luck 12 runs X 6 pieces or 72 runs after they hit 50, with a daily timer.
thats average luck btw, for someone who is slightly below average luck that could easily be 2-3 times as long (note the people who couldnt get ascended rings even though they were level 25 when fractals came out, before they added pristine relics, and that was like a 30% chance)

That is not including all the other crap, and you are still talking about a time lag of 1-2 months before you can seriously be considered for raids.

1-2 months is not required to reach the skill level of raids.

dlonie.6547:

It’s also worth pointing out trinkets. The bulk of the stat increases come from ascended trinkets and they’re thrown at you from pretty much every game mode. You even get some just by logging in daily and saving up laurels.

Getting a decent amount of ascended gear isn’t really a grind at all. Armor can be if you want to craft it, but you can get “enough” ascended gear to be useful without much trouble, and collect the other pieces as they come.

its grind or time gate, rings i will say have the best aquisition method, accessories, and amulet require a signifigant time gate. backpiece is a signifigant grind gate

Its not really better to tell people who want challenge to do boring stuff for a month or log in and log off before they are ready.

The methods of aquisition for ascended overall, are not engaging, and far too time gated. I feel like you will lose a lot of players before they can even attempt a raid with those type of hurdles before playing.

phys.7689:

Dante.1523:

phys.7689:

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

I’ll just quote an earlier response:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

which i responded to already.
he is thinking of this like person who has been playing for years.
fractals is nothing new, by the time you hit 35, While i do enjoy it, Having to repeat something 40-50 times for a 8% chance per day, per peice.
that means on average, it would take someone with average luck 12 runs X 6 pieces or 72 runs after they hit 50, with a daily timer.
thats average luck btw, for someone who is slightly below average luck that could easily be 2-3 times as long (note the people who couldnt get ascended rings even though they were level 25 when fractals came out, before they added pristine relics, and that was like a 30% chance)

That is not including all the other crap, and you are still talking about a time lag of 1-2 months before you can seriously be considered for raids.

1-2 months is not required to reach the skill level of raids.

Well I can’t talk for people that have been playing consistently since launch, but I started doing fractal 50 + 40 daily about 6 months ago. Since then I have gotten around 4 or 5 sets of armor out of the chests.

But like others have mentioned, armor makes has the smallest overall impact on stats. Far more important are trinkets and weapons.
You can easily get full trinkets in a month if you consistently do fractals and guild missions, taking up around 60-90 minutes a day. On top of just the trinkets you also have a chance for other ascended Equipment.
And like I have said before, if you are not willing to invest that time, then I don’t think that raids are aimed at you.

phys.7689:

dlonie.6547:

It’s also worth pointing out trinkets. The bulk of the stat increases come from ascended trinkets and they’re thrown at you from pretty much every game mode. You even get some just by logging in daily and saving up laurels.

Getting a decent amount of ascended gear isn’t really a grind at all. Armor can be if you want to craft it, but you can get “enough” ascended gear to be useful without much trouble, and collect the other pieces as they come.

its grind or time gate, rings i will say have the best aquisition method, accessories, and amulet require a signifigant time gate. backpiece is a signifigant grind gate

Its not really better to tell people who want challenge to do boring stuff for a month or log in and log off before they are ready.

The methods of aquisition for ascended overall, are not engaging, and far too time gated. I feel like you will lose a lot of players before they can even attempt a raid with those type of hurdles before playing.

It’s a soft requirement. Nothing will stop you from starting with exotic and working on Ascended in your free time to give yourself a little bump.

If you’re ready for a raid you should be able to farm some fractals which again has a bit of a ramp up to get to all your rewards but it’s something to work on.

Then you can work on your crafting and get ready there.

It’s progression, I mean I’m with you, I’d love if all PVE was just like PVP and i just chose my stats and was of no need to put any work in other than doing the content. That’d be great for me. But, that’s not the game, it’s not an RPG and we’re not going to get it. There will be some progression in this game.

phys.7689:

Rising Dusk, lets be real, based on what you saw, do you think there will be many successful teams that do not ask their members to have ascended gear?

If you had the choice between someone on your raid team that had ascended gear or someone that had exotic gear, of course you’d pick the one in ascended gear because any advantage is significant. With 1:20 left on the clock, a sub-optimal team composition, and a number of poor rotations and bad downs… The first kill still happened. That gives a lot of flexibility for really good teams to do just as effectively in exotics and still win in time. It won’t be a requirement, but that doesn’t mean that pubs and/or guilds won’t still enforce ascended gear. That’s their prerogative, and quite frankly it makes sense to have as large a numbers advantage as possible before even considering player skill.

phys.7689:

BTW statistical inevitability is a matter of perspective, and in the moment, your chances never increase.
IE you can say someone who tries 1000 times is likely to get some ascended, but in reality, if they didnt get it 999 times, they are no more likely to get it than the guy who tried 2 times.

You’re right of course, but statistically the likelihood that they don’t get any ascended pieces in 1000 runs is so statistically insignificant that I’d speculate no one has ever had that happen in the history of the game. RNG is RNG, but the chances to get stuff from Fractals are high enough that RNG is very unlikely to mess with you forever.

phys.7689:

you really think itll sound good to tell your returning player friend or new 80 friend cool, in about a month you ll be ready to try a raid with us! Or your casual (1-2 hour 5 days who plays challenging content) friend in small guild, dont worry you can just buy it in a few months of play.

Having participated in this content and spent a lot of time watching videos, reviewing comments, and so on, I am fairly confident at this juncture that my casual guild with people who use all exotics will be able to beat this encounter no problem. Then, as we beat this encounter repeatedly for a few weeks, people will loot ascended items from this encounter that they can leverage in the further encounters. That sounds perfect to me.

Either way, one beta weekend and less than 12 hours of playtime with the first encounter is insufficient for us to know for sure whether exotic is sufficient. Before we cry havoc about this, we should seriously wait until we actually get the content and can for sure find our for ourselves.

phys.7689:

its grind or time gate, rings i will say have the best aquisition method, accessories, and amulet require a signifigant time gate. backpiece is a signifigant grind gate

I suppose it’s a subjective thing. I don’t consider most of the trinkets to be grindy. It takes some work and some collecting, but a couple weeks of guild missions, a couple dozen low-level fractals, a bit of WvW, clicking on login chests, etc. seem like a reasonable amount of effort in my opinion.

Its not really better to tell people who want challenge to do boring stuff for a month or log in and log off before they are ready.

But they won’t have to, that’s the point — if they’re in a guild with experienced players, they’ll probably take them on runs in exotics. If the guild refuses to take them without ascended gear, they are probably a bad fit for that guild. Why join a hardcore min-max BiS-only guild when that’s not how you want to play?

Also keep the coming guild changes in mind. “Repping” is going away, so it will be easier to join a “raid only” guild on the side.

The methods of aquisition for ascended overall, are not engaging, and far too time gated.

Armor is definitely a pain in the kitten . For me anyway, I always have to go grind dragonite, and although the chest farm is far, far faster than the old ways of getting them, it’s just not fun. But they’ve also increased the ascended chest drop rates, so it seems to be getting better.

I feel like you will lose a lot of players before they can even attempt a raid with those type of hurdles before playing.

Again, those hurdles only exist socially. Certain players and groups of players put them there, and these are the groups that casual players shouldn’t be trying to join anyway.

dlonie.6547:

I suppose it’s a subjective thing. I don’t consider most of the trinkets to be grindy. It takes some work and some collecting, but a couple weeks of guild missions, a couple dozen low-level fractals, a bit of WvW, clicking on login chests, etc. seem like a reasonable amount of effort in my opinion.

This is an important point as well. It’s incredibly easy to get ascended trinkets, which contribute a huge deal to stats.

dlonie.6547:

I feel like you will lose a lot of players before they can even attempt a raid with those type of hurdles before playing.

Again, those hurdles only exist socially. Certain players and groups of players put them there, and these are the groups that casually players shouldn’t be trying to join anyway.

Bingo.

Isn’t the Exotic crafting backpacks only a small fraction off ascended? Or is it still large enough to be hugely impactful? I know the rings/earrings/neck are certainly worth getting. But, those aren’t that hard. What is it 2 weeks of guild missions for an Earring?

Again I’d say the big thing is that it’s a soft requirement, you can be working on the raid while you work on maxing your gear.

A lot of people are preaching that the purpose of tight enrage timers are to keep all bunker teams from cheesing the content.

What we are actually seeing in the community however – including by several in this thread – is a general shunning of ANYONE not wanting to play zerker or sinister.

There needs to be a place in raids for those players who want to play a little tankier – who want to focus on soaking up damage so the rest of the team doesn’t have to.

So, yes – all bunker teams shouldnt be viable, but people playing bunker builds should still have a place in the typical raid. In fact, I saw this very clearly in the beta boss fight – one or two bunkers absorbing the orbs actually increases the damage the group can do on the boss.

Designing fights or balancing enrage timers around everyone playing the same way would be bad design. That is true of all bunker groups, but it should be just as true of all zerker (or all pure damage) groups.

So, to the few perpetuating the hate for non-meta builds or people wanting to play bunker, stop and think about what youre really saying.

Blaeys.3102:

A lot of people are preaching that the purpose of tight enrage timers are to keep all bunker teams from cheesing the content.

What we are actually seeing in the community however – including by several in this thread – is a general shunning of ANYONE not wanting to play zerker or sinister.

There needs to be a place in raids for those players who want to play a little tankier – who want to focus on soaking up damage so the rest of the team doesn’t have to.

So, yes – all bunker teams shouldnt be viable, but people playing bunker builds should still have a place in the typical raid. In fact, I saw this very clearly in the beta boss fight – one or two bunkers absorbing the orbs actually increases the damage the group can do on the boss.

Designing fights or balancing enrage timers around everyone playing the same way would be bad design. That is true of all bunker groups, but it should be just as true of all zerker (or all pure damage) groups.

So, to the few perpetuating the hate for non-meta builds or people wanting to play bunker, stop and think about what youre really saying.

I think it’s quite contrary. I think a lot of people here have experience with raids. Enrage timers are something that needs to be there or more the idea. If you’re going to tank up, you need to have something that increases the challenge for you otherwise it’s just getting easier but longer. That’s not challenging content.

Also I believe each team that beat the raid brought a Pillar, I’m hesitant to call it a tank, but really it was a tank. We saw NA bring a tankier Engi, LoD bring a Cele Guard, and just in general someone had the toughness to keep agro and survival to live through that. I wouldn’t be surprised if we later saw a fight where we needed to hold 2 bosses in separate areas meaning 2 people with toughness to pull agro (or something to hold agro).

Also, Crystal already loosened up the Enrage by decreasing the buff, with your extra sustain in a more durable group you should be able to last longer into the enrage than a team that focuses offense and just fails the timer. I don’t think she said the number but she seemed to imply that it was less harsh and finishing it past the enrage timer would be doable, but how reasonable it is to survive /shrug.

Anyways, I don’t think you’re wrong in that there should be benefits for alternate build options to have value, it’s just that enrage timers are needed to put pressure on the damage side of things. As i said before I’m a fan of soft enrages, where it’s a gradual or light ramp up that would kill more offensive teams that simply failed but be something that a more defensive team could push through at least for a decent amount of time.

Blaeys.3102:

What we are actually seeing in the community however – including by several in this thread – is a general shunning of ANYONE not wanting to play zerker or sinister.

No, I really think you’re just being paranoid here. I speak as someone who played a healer in literally every elite instance in every game I’ve played in the past; I love the healer role a lot. Ultimately, though, the healer was only ever brought because it was necessary to keep the DPS players alive, and speed clearing involved minimizing healing such that you could maximize DPS. It’s always about maximizing DPS, even in those older games. So in a game like GW2 where you don’t have healers, the natural progression is the full party being pure DPS. In raids, however, there is some value for a tankier more supporty character, and that’s great too. If that’s necessary, that’s what we’ll do to win. If it ends up not being necessary, we’ll eventually phase that role out as well. That’s the nature of the beast, and is in no way a hit against people who enjoy tankier roles.

Enrage timers are necessary to encourage sufficient DPS, not all-out DPS. And based on the beta, it’s pretty effectively tuned right now. 8 DPS/2 Support compositions were finishing with ~1:20 left on the timer. That’s solid.

Blaeys.3102:

There needs to be a place in raids for those players who want to play a little tankier – who want to focus on soaking up damage so the rest of the team doesn’t have to.

This role already exists and literally every successful run of the boss so far has included a tankier person. I mean, the [LOD] kill had a hammer tank Warrior in it.

shrugs I’ve seen more acceptance of non-zerk/sinister gear over the last few days than I’ve seen in years.

Remember that your role is more tightly tied to your traits and skills than your gear. You can still play support in DPS gear in this game, it just means you’ll still have decent damage output while still carrying out a support role.

I really, really like not having to change gear to change roles. Think about it — a set of gear, trinkets, and weapons takes up, at minimum, 14 inventory slots (assuming no underwater, and only two-handers). It’s nice not having to lug around a separate set of gear for when I want to do healing vs dps vs buff support vs. cc, etc etc.

I’ve found it useful to view gear stats as training wheels in this game. You can sacrifice some damage output to beef yourself up while you’re learning, but eventually you can learn to play well enough that DPS gear and smart utility/trait choices are all you need for anything.

Just because high-end play doesn’t require lugging around and swapping out 15 pieces of gear every time you need to adapt doesn’t make it a bad system.

First, I think the Vale Champion is an extremely well designed fight and I have no issues with it whatsoever. This is about how many forum pundits approach the game.

I also have no issue with enrage timers. They are needed to make sure that damage is important to the fight. I do, however, think they need to be (and seem to be) designed to allow for support builds to have a role as well. Basically, the enrage timer shouldnt be a primary factor in defining the difficulty of the fight – that should come from the fight mechanics – with the timer simply serving to discourage cheesing the fight.

To the point that anything not zerker or sinister is “training wheel” gear. While that is true to a degree now in the live game, it shouldnt be- and it does feel like we are moving away from that.

It shouldn’t be about “I die alot so I need that gear.” Gear should be another strategic decision the game asks you to make. Nomads/Soldiers/Ect gear should be there to supplement and optimize a legitimate playstyle with a real place in raids.

It should be there for the player that cannot dodge because they need to take the hit so others dont have to (the orbs in the Vale fight are a great example). The active part of their playstyle comes from contributing some to damage and blocking/distorting/etc – supplemented by the vitality or toughness to take a hit or two every now and then. Similar examples could be developed for healing power builds.

Just as all Nomad should be frowned upon, all zerker (sinister) should not always (or even most often) be the preferred team comp because that isnt strategic and it limits how people can play.

Personally, I think enrage timers should be balanced around 5-6 primary damage dealers and 4-5 support classes. This sets the boundary and discourages all nomad groups. The true fight difficulty should then come from how well the group learns, plans around and deals with the actual fight mechanics.

I like the direction this game and raids are going – now we just need the playerbase to catch up.

I don’t think PVT should ever be desirable. Knights/Rabid/Celestial, yes, they should, but we’re already seeing that. I think by the time you get to PVT it’s more annoying than fun. I think they did a great job on this raid, I was very worried but it seems solid, if they continue to build with that design I’ll be happy. I wouldn’t mind wanting another Rabid/Knights/Celestial person being needed. I wouldn’t mind wanting your “healer” in Keeper/Celestial. But, I don’t want it to go to the point where we really have to tank up hard. That just seems contrary to what makes this game good, the focus on actively defending yourself. Healing is actively helping your group, and toughness allows you to manipulate the agro, both a bit different than just raising passive defenses.

dlonie.6547:

I’ve found it useful to view gear stats as training wheels in this game. You can sacrifice some damage output to beef yourself up while you’re learning, but eventually you can learn to play well enough that DPS gear and smart utility/trait choices are all you need for anything.

I strongly agree with this. I’ve said it everywhere and I agree, training wheels is exactly the right way to view a lot of gear stats. I do think that as far as PvE goes there are three roles that are determined solely by gear stats.

• Power Damage
• Condition Damage
• Healing

Now healing doesn’t scale great right now for most classes and in general isn’t necessary for Fractals/Dungeons, but it as a function is unique compared to the damaging roles. I think those three things are really the only case where gear drives builds. That all said, I find all other gear stats simply serve as a difficulty slider that players can adjust as they see fit. Maybe you only need a few Knight’s pieces or maybe you don’t need any, but you’re still doing the exact same thing as a class regardless of how many pieces of Knight’s you have. These three roles are the strategic choices you make, Blaeys.

That said, I don’t mind Toughness interplay with aggro mechanics on bosses. Having that interplay just means that someone who’s in a healer or DPS role (if valid) may see some benefit from running added toughness. This may make more sense on the more naturally durable DPS classes like Necromancer or Warrior.

It’s hard to say for sure, but it’ll be fun no matter what.

P.S. I really hope we can buy Keeper’s recipes for Karma in HoT. Those should be really fun if healing is meaningful in raids.

P.P.S. I also agree with Jerus that the combat is based around active defenses, so having everyone be tanky because it’s mandatory would be a crying shame.

It’s too early to say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see other gear sets rising in usefulness. I’m not super crazy about it, and I hope it’s not a hard requirement (for the inventory reasons I mentioned earlier), but a bit of tankiness is pretty helpful in the Vale Guardian fight. When the lightning team needs to get to the AoE while it’s on an electrified floor and being swarmed by seekers, some tanky stats definitely come in handy. Perhaps not required for a coordinated team that can sustain via water blasts, etc, but definitely helpful for the bulk of the playerbase.

Some other things to consider that might give some hope for more diversity:
- This is just the first encounter, and we’re seeing mechanics that push condis, boon stripping, tankiness, mobility, and sustain. The requirements for the other encounters will undoubtedly add more mechanics that break the “mitigate’n’spank” nature of current GW2 PvE.
- So far we’ve had roughly 12 hours to play with this boss, and the more experienced groups were approaching the encounter from the current “meta” mindset. Not saying they didn’t adapt or try new stats, but for 3 years all we’ve really known is direct DPS, blinds, evades, and blocks. We aren’t used to thinking of other approaches, so there may be very viable solutions to some of these encounters that don’t use the existing meta strategies, and we just haven’t discovered them yet.

Again, super early to call it one way or the other, but I think we’ll see more diverse approaches appear once we have time to really play with strategies.

Edit: and god yes, I agree so much with the toughness influencing aggro. Allowing one player to tank opens up so much more possibilities, and it can be easily done with just a couple pieces of toughness gear in an organized group so you won’t need to swap everything. I think an environmental buff (like Slick’n’Sparki) is another good way to add that mechanic without potentially locking us into subpar gear.

Rising Dusk.2408:

P.S. I really hope we can buy Keeper’s recipes for Karma in HoT. Those should be really fun if healing is meaningful in raids.

Doh, yeah deleted that part when I edited to rephrase. Really hope Keeper and Sinister gear become easier to acquire. Sinister gear isn’t bad but trinkets are tedious. I’d really like if they opened that up a bit. I’d say Nomad’s too but really no one should be using that (Sentinels as well).

About the agro with toughness. It’s actually always been there, it’s just each boss handles agro differently, and even the ones that did really like toughness it was still inconsistent. Watching these raids it seems they strengthened that factor. In fractals it’s heavily based on proximity for many of the fights, toughness being pretty solid as well, but then you have other factors or even maybe just RNG thrown in to prevent being able to have a fully designated tank purely.

That said, doing Clerics guard Fractals it really feels very similar to the trinity. I can sit back and DPS from my max range (dipping in and out of 180 range on my engi) while the tank keeps him still and me healed.

I feel these raids are going to bring some of that back, but with a feeling similar to how the high end of other games do it. Where your healers and tanks aren’t just healers and tanks but also trying to hybridize themselves to pump out as much damage as they can in addition to performing their role. (I miss my fully DPS geared Celestial healer in DCUO solo healing the hardest raid, kept you on your toes )

Rising Dusk.2408:

P.S. I really hope we can buy Keeper’s recipes for Karma in HoT.

Would be nice. Already have my Guardian in full Keeper’s, exotic armor and ascended GS/stave – need accessories, though. Do those even exist at ascended?

Nimarrodd.7823:

Rising Dusk.2408:

P.S. I really hope we can buy Keeper’s recipes for Karma in HoT.

Would be nice. Already have my Guardian in full Keeper’s, exotic armor and ascended GS/stave – need accessories, though. Do those even exist at ascended?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

^ IMO, that’s the most useful page on the wiki

And it looks like keeper’s ascended gear is not yet in the game.

dlonie.6547:

And it looks like keeper’s ascended gear is not yet in the game.

Yeah, what I was afraid of. :/

Thanks for the link, though!

Nimarrodd.7823:

dlonie.6547:

And it looks like keeper’s ascended gear is not yet in the game.

Yeah, what I was afraid of. :/

Thanks for the link, though!

Unfortunately, the Keeper’s Ascended Recipes only dropped from the Marionette fight, so they are mostly gone.

However, you can still make a full set of Keeper’s gear by making any other ascended gear, crafting some Zealot’s Inscriptions or Insignias and then using the mystic forge to change the stats. It’s not optimal, but at least it’s an option.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

I beg to differ. I figured I would run fractal 49s for a bit until I got at least 2 or 3 ascended chest drops and then craft the rest of the armor. After 2 weeks of 49 and 40 daily, I have still yet to get a single chest drop. That’s not including the 2/3 weeks of doing 31-39 daily without getting an ascended chest drop.