Guild Wars 2

Kraggy.4169:

Belzebu.3912:

The problem is with tank gear you could just lame out all the content and win, even if it would take 3 hours to beat all bosses.

And the problem with that would be .. what, exactly?

No, seriously, why do some people care so much how OTHERS complete content?

Rage timers are simply there to make the elitists feel good about themselves and be able to look down on those not as skillful at pressing 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-2-1-3-1-4 for minutes on end.

If someone or group can beat something in an hour let them, stop worrying about the ‘peen’ value of your phat lewt being devalued by the ‘casuals’ getting some too.

This isn’t kindergarten, bad players shouldn’t get the same rewards as good players. Any bad players can equip full zealots, drool on their keyboards, and eventually kill a boss. Doing so shouldn’t give you rewards.

I know, it’s a shock to the system, but in the real world excellence is rewarded and incompetence is not (usually anyway). So far Anet hasn’t released any PvE content that distinguished between the two until raids.

Distaste.4801:

Timers create artificial difficulty(AKA lazy design). They can work when there are locked in roles(holy trinity) as a means to test DPS since tanks/healers are constantly being tested, but in GW2 we don’t have those roles so it really only works to kill class/build diversity. They need to embrace what makes GW2 unique, otherwise players might as well go play WoW or FFXIV since they have far better raids.

I really hope they add mechanics that force raids to heal so much health per second on an NPC over the course of a fight, absorb X amount of damage, max out conditions on a boss or he wipes you, or to evade X amount of times. It would at least force people out of berserker or to see why timers like that in GW2 are fairly dumb.

As for those saying that full soldiers players would cheese the raids without timers, then build mechanics that require full concentration, as full concentration wains quickly in long battles. Players make mistakes and as the fight goes on those mistakes should add up. There are literally tons of examples of raids and mechanics to draw from, they just need to make sure they fit GW2.

This is so false it hurts.
I just came out of a group -we got Vale to 2-3 percent and wiped. There is immense pressure on all members of the party near the end – regardless of what role you’re playing.
Build diversity is there – class diversity is there -you’re just not even looking at it.

It would at least force people out of berserker or to see why timers like that in GW2 are fairly dumb.

Lol – people are already out of berserker gear. Do you want ALL the people out of berserker gear? Do you want berserker gear deleted?
We already have different people in different gear sets.

As for those saying that full soldiers players would cheese the raids without timers, then build mechanics that require full concentration, as full concentration wains quickly in long battles. Players make mistakes and as the fight goes on those mistakes should add up. There are literally tons of examples of raids and mechanics to draw from, they just need to make sure they fit GW2.

You can’t really build mechanics that are hard if the gear makes them easy. The whole point of Soldier’s gear is to make the fight more manageable – which in turn defeats the purpose of mechanics making it harder.
Also – mistakes do add up even with the current Raids – dps loss, out of position situations, getting downed, improper rotations WILL come back to bite you in the kitten during the last phases provided you actually make it that far.

Fay.2357:

Kraggy.4169:

Belzebu.3912:

The problem is with tank gear you could just lame out all the content and win, even if it would take 3 hours to beat all bosses.

And the problem with that would be .. what, exactly?

No, seriously, why do some people care so much how OTHERS complete content?

Rage timers are simply there to make the elitists feel good about themselves and be able to look down on those not as skillful at pressing 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-2-1-3-1-4 for minutes on end.

If someone or group can beat something in an hour let them, stop worrying about the ‘peen’ value of your phat lewt being devalued by the ‘casuals’ getting some too.

This isn’t kindergarten, bad players shouldn’t get the same rewards as good players. Any bad players can equip full zealots, drool on their keyboards, and eventually kill a boss. Doing so shouldn’t give you rewards.

I know, it’s a shock to the system, but in the real world excellence is rewarded and incompetence is not (usually anyway). So far Anet hasn’t released any PvE content that distinguished between the two until raids.

I can’t believe how much the above missed the mark. But each to their own. That are what forums are all about. Always amusing reading such strange points of view though.

Your ‘real world’ and ‘excellence’ analogy is laughable. As just one example to the counter: I’m sure the artist’s and the like of the world would be amused, and little more, at your careless comment.

Just because someone takes longer to do something doesn’t mean they’re a ‘bad player’ as you put it. In fact one could just as easily argue the other way, because for a longer time they have to be dodging, getting into the green, etc etc, and dealing with all the other combat mechanics. No ‘build/meta’ etc, negates those combat mechanics, so either you’re able to do them or not.

Finally; the more ways to enjoy content the better. It’s a fairly common sense rule.

Timers are lazy way of making content hard.
These excuses of implementing timers to make raids hard and make groups not being able to sell raid spots reminds me of certain game developers implementing ridicolous anti-piracy protections, making no impact on actual pirates but giving the shaft to everyone that bought the game.

Making defensive group can be countered by applying gradually raid-wide debuff that destroys armor or makes players exhausted or whatever. Even making healers heal less over time and players do lower damage over time… Options are endless.
Timer just comes down to abruptly cutting the fight and making players restart it. That’s very bad game mechanic and propagates toxic community and zerker meta which is already spread like plague.

out of curiousity, is it really impossible for a defense based team to be twice as effecient at soaking damage?
knights alone should offer a 20% decrease.
though bringing more healers per team is probably the purest solution.
Im sure it would be hard, require a different team build, and might even be more difficult, but isnt that what defense people say they want? an encounter tuned around them playing defensively, but still difficult?

Personally, I think a timer is a good thing, but I’m tired of bashing my face into the wall and hoping the wall breaks before my face. I think the timer should be relaxed a little (perhaps 10-20 minute timer rather than the current 8 min). That way you still have to have a good party comp, master the mechanics and you can’t just sit there and hit him with wet noodles for an hour and eventually win.

If Anet wanted to break the DPS only stacking meta…well it didn’t work as well as they’d hoped. What’s the point of having cleric gear in the game or any other gear with toughness? All the “tank” needs is a singlar piece of armor to put his/her toughness over the rest of the group’s. the “healer” just needs to be a class with AoE heals, and staying alive wasn’t the problem in the groups I’ve been on. You still have to be spot on with knowing the mechanics and it is a hard fight. I like that. It’s good, but a hard fight, and needing 99.9% DPS only gear so you can beat the clock is just not my cup of tea.

I have and play many zerk characters, but I do think the timer needs to be relaxed a little.

5 tank 5 healer setups using high/low toughness weapon swap as an aggro mechanism between them will let you wail on VG until it dies even past the enrage timer (it is only 200% and the current unavoidable damage doesn’t pressure zerker+1 player sponges) but it’ll fall flat on the next two because of the non-timer DPS/mechanic checks. Last I checked my groups haven’t cleared a boss with 10 full glass full DPS trait setups either, so I’d say the full party full glass zerker meta is as viable as full defense.

The problem I see is that if raids were balanced around 95th percentile execution at, say, 1500 toughness, then it would be “1500 toughness meta” instead of “zerker meta”, and we’d be right where we now. Challenging content doesn’t just mean new challenging mechanics, it also means reinforcing existing ones such as ’don’t stand in red circles’. Defensives negate half that and therefore take the “challenging” out of “challenging group content” until we end up at just “group content”, or world bosses. And if raids become the next world bosses, what sense of achievement or accomplishment would there be for killing one?

While I do agree that the game letting you choose your own stats may be misleading for anyone hoping to to cover up ‘I can dodge a tell 50% of the time’ with ‘I can double up my toughness and live’ while maintaining the same effectiveness, here where the combat system is a measure of skill, that means you are doing less damage. And that makes damage output a reflection of individual skill. And since Anet stated that this is balanced around the best, that makes damage the best measure of who clears it and who does not. There’s just no argument that surviving mechanics longer means it’s just as skillful because those mechanics pose no threat to you anyway.

Can they release a 2-man or 10-man story mode with no loot? Sure. Will enough people run it to justify the development time? Probably not.

How about giving players a shot to “Stop the clock” so to speak, by for example Breaking their Break Bar or beat spawned enemies within a set sub-timer?

There is an easy solution here. Make raids act like “challenge mode” in fractals.

By default:
There would be no timer and teams could take as much as they want. It also allows people to run different types of spec and not be forced into max DPS. The key here is that most pugs don’t even hit the timer. The content would still be really challenging.

Challenge mode:
Keep the 8 minute timer and increase the loot rewards for those who beat it. Maybe add a title or other achieves as well.

There, you have something for everyone now.

I am curious about how many people who are so opposed to the enrage timer on Vale Guardian are getting constantly teleported away because of Unstable Energy Spike, then cry foul when they see they’re not on track to defeat the boss. Unstable Energy Spike is a marvelous skill because it doesn’t always kill you, but you always lose damage on the boss whenever you fail it. The enrage timer is one of the reasons this matters, and without it Unstable Energy Spike would need to deal way more damage or kill you outright.

How many players complaining about the enrage timer are actually playing the mechanics of Vale Guardian well. By this I mean, using only 4 players maximum in the Distributed Magic to increase damage uptime on the boss; never getting teleported by Unstable Energy spike; splitting their damage evenly during the transition; etc.

I also wonder how many players are merely presuming they will die to the enrage, instead of actually dying to it.

Nokaru.7831:

I am curious about how many people who are so opposed to the enrage timer on Vale Guardian are getting constantly teleported away because of Unstable Energy Spike, then cry foul when they see they’re not on track to defeat the boss. Unstable Energy Spike is a marvelous skill because it doesn’t always kill you, but you always lose damage on the boss whenever you fail it. The enrage timer is one of the reasons this matters, and without it Unstable Energy Spike would need to deal way more damage or kill you outright.

How many players complaining about the enrage timer are actually playing the mechanics of Vale Guardian well. By this I mean, using only 4 players maximum in the Distributed Magic to increase damage uptime on the boss; never getting teleported by Unstable Energy spike; splitting their damage evenly during the transition; etc.

I also wonder how many players are merely presuming they will die to the enrage, instead of actually dying to it.

I never even get a chance to get teleported, because almost every group has people saying “I can’t catch the AoEs, because I’ll lose damage.”, so I end up needing to fill in on the range team, and never stay in melee long enough to run out of dodges.

We’re getting condition engineers saying that because of a damage bonus (To direct damage only) trait in close range when the rest of the group is like, dagger/dagger elementalist, heralds, non-longbow berserkers, and the like, who can’t deal ranged damage at all, and chronomancers, for whom using a greatsword screws up well support, all while the engineer’s water field on the AoE location provides us with a great way to sustain the damage we’re taking without a dedicated healer.

TheSwede.9512:

How about giving players a shot to “Stop the clock” so to speak, by for example Breaking their Break Bar or beat spawned enemies within a set sub-timer?

I’ve already made a suggestion like this. Do it like Tequatl. Once the split happens the clock stops until you face him in rejoined form.

VG timer is quite easy to beat tbh. Most glass cannon groups that finished it have it around or a little below the 2 minute mark. Our kill for example was 1:40min on the clock and it was by no means a clean kill, nor did everyone have full ascended. Going from that, a more defensive group that has a decently executed kill should be able to beat it too without a problem. So how about we stop blaming the timer so much and look at learning the fight properly?

And for all the ppl saying “such variety much wow” there have actually been a lot of different comps that beat it with a lot of different builds. Guess ppl still haven’t figured out after 3 years that gear doesn’t determine a playstyle but skills do…

The timers arent even hard timers. You can take longer and still beat the boss. Its just not something you want to do.

As someone pointed out in the first page, Anet should design encounters that kills you because of the mechanics, not the timers.

For example, right now if you miss the green area in vale guardian it won’t kill everyone, it just downed some and you can heal them anyway. It’s a bad design. It should kill everyone and punish you for not completing the mechanic.

If there’s no timer, with a sub-optimal damage group you would need to deal with more of those green areas because it takes you longer to beat the boss. Just think for a moment of last phase taking 10 long minutes with the electricity sections killing people (no matter the gear, could be a 30% health per tick) and the need to move the boss at the exact second to not die or make green areas appear where they shouldn’t.

It would “still” be challenging, but not because of a timer. It would be challenging because it’s an endurance fight and someone would make a fail eventually. However this would rely on player skill and not on gear checks… and it’s where vale guardian design fails right now. It rewards gears check above players skill.

Note: I already killed this boss, I just don’t like the timer.

Elrey.5472:

For example, right now if you miss the green area in vale guardian it won’t kill everyone, it just downed some and you can heal them anyway. It’s a bad design. It should kill everyone and punish you for not completing the mechanic.

It’s not bad design because it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s punishing you for failing, but it gives a small chance to recover. The enrage timer is there to ensure constant bad play will result in failure, but an occasional error is fine. It’s the first boss, so it has some room for mistakes.

Just because you disagree with it does not make it bad. The designers are fully aware that a mechanic which downs you is more forgiving than a mechanic which defeats you. That’s why Gorseval has mechanics like that, and Vale Guardian does not. One is meant to be easier than the other.

The fact of the matter is this: The timer is there to punish you for dealing poor damage, because dealing damage is a major aspect of this game. It isn’t there to make you deal amazing damage. As far as the enrage goes, it isn’t an instant-wiper either; it’s 200% more damage, not an instant wipe. You’re able to still kill him while he’s enraged.

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

The build experimentation argument is bullkitten, and you knew it if you had allready beaten it. There were very diverse raid comps that cleared the content, some of wich had Chronos, Reapers and Tempests, while others did not. In the raid all that matters is your skill, and the skill your party mates have. It was even cleared with a daredevil.

i think i used like almost 10 different builds just for the first boss till i managed to get to the point it was working optimal with our team and against the encounter. its pretty funny tho, most people who complain about the raid or bosses and stuff havent even beaten it to actually see the entire picture and how everything comes together.

as i stated in another post:

The game wasnt designed for raids and stuff in the first place and gw2 players are not designed to use anything other than one gear they used the last 3 years and so on.
so while the timer supports high dmg making the timer way higher for example will make the raid so easy, basicly everyone can just build full tank and faceroll the boss even if it takes longer.

And if i look on other mmos and i pretty much did my first raiding back in the wow classic age where you needed 40 people and stuff
you allways have those timers in some way and i dont even think raids work without enrage timers at the moment. If you can have like as much time as you want basicly everyone will faceroll it. Raids put pressure on you thats why raids are awesome. while all games manage to allow all people to experience almost every content including the raids especially in the first weeks where people try out whats working without having any guides or stuff like that, raids are not meant to be casual content and never will be. Even other mmos prove that they can add the same raids with super low difficulty and low loot aswell this wont change the fact the main raids (the not easymode difficulty) is not created for people that play 2 hours a week in mind

i actually think they did a pretty good job so far

Take my upvote. The actual raid content and combat is hard enough for 99% of the gw2 community without the timer. Those saying that you can just tank it into easy mode are wrong on two fronts. One, tanks are still going to need to be in the upper echelon of playerbase skill given how mechanically demanding the raid is. Two, the effective zerker runners are still completing the raid more efficiently, and thus are earning more for their time put in.

Let’s not make raiding something that is exclusive to only elitist guilds, rather lets make raids something that dedicated players can enjoy.

Anet said that will make a way the game not be just meta Zerk. Time = more Zerks = More Boring = play with a bad immersion = there is go the list of bad things.
If the problem is the reward just make the reward tied with the number of wipes and not like it is now.

I think the timer’s are fine, players are beating the encounters so this proves that there is nothing wrong with the time frame. You need to put in work, gear properly, and learn the mechanics. I’m not saying this is the case for OP but for the players that can’t be bothered to gear appropriately and just expect that the content should be nerfed because they can’t/won’t put in the effort is garbage.

The timer adds excitement.

I have only managed to beat the gaurdian (first boss) so that’s all I can speak about here. But I think the timer adds a lot to the fight.

For example, when he places down his blue aoes, you could dodge out right away, but then your stuck not dpsing for quite a long time. Knowing that your up against the clock incentivizes you to be riskier, waiting till the last second to dodge out.

For the green circles, you could send all your dps characters over there to make sure that even if a player cant make it, the party doesn’t wipe. But the timer forces you to be riskier. Sending 4 (as an example), and then if even one player is downed the party will wipe.

When he splits into 3 guards, you could just have everyone stay in their respective zone, to avoid the pulsing damage from the mobs your not color attuned to. But because time is of the essence, once your mob dies, you run to the next one to help. Entering a high risk scenario.

A lot of players seem to like to claim that an enrage timer is ‘artificial difficulty’. I disagree. If the only thing I had to do was slap on some zerker gear but play exactly the same, then sure. But that’s not the case. The timer fundamentally changes how you fight in a good way.

I’m glad there is timers and even fail safes for the bosses i.e. you get wiped when the platform is destroyed to counter safe-spot sploits.

thrag.9740:

A lot of players seem to like to claim that an enrage timer is ‘artificial difficulty’. I disagree. If the only thing I had to do was slap on some zerker gear but play exactly the same, then sure. But that’s not the case. The timer fundamentally changes how you fight in a good way.

This guy gets it.

I agree last night I was kicked for group saying lack of dps this really confuses me since I’m in top gear dragonhunter with a 83 percent critical chance and hitting between 23-26k constantly with my base attack hitting 5-6 k every shot. Honestly the raid timers will most likely be the reason I quit gw2. Other then a single trinket I could change from power toughness to power precision furiocity I really can’t get much stronger. At this point the timer is just horrible if a single kill reaches end phase players start kicking for dps lack. If timers are how a net wants to go that’s fine but there’s a lot of classes and builds that just plainly will not be accepted in raids for lack of dps. I will note out of the 50 or so try’s to kill vale guardian every single time I’ve reached final phase 5 the timer had under 1 minute remaining. A net is going to kill their raid content before it even begans with these timers did a net even test n see how hard it is for a group of 10 to do 22 million damage in. 8 minutes while dodging attacks heck no they didn’t. I agree I love hard content and challenging but I don’t believe it’s fair to throw classes that aren’t the highest dps class under the bus. Congratulations you spent hundreds of gold on gear for raiding wait dps to low kick it’s madness. If a net is going to keep timers then make them long enough most builds can play sure I can go power zerker thief and do more damage but I should not be forced to abandon classes I enjoy to be able to complete content.

I think the timer is right where it needs to be, it forces your raid to be on point. This shouldn’t be easy, and if you look at the over all raid it’s not just a DPS check. It’s a SPEED check, coordination check, composition check all in one.

Also, you cant exploit these fights in their current mechanics. The timer pretty much garuntees that along with many of the mechanics. This is the first REAL challenging PvE content in GW2 where people don’t just use some exploit to make the fight easier.

The biggest accomplishment here though is that for once, good coordinated play is being rewarded; and rewards aren’t just handed out to everyone like candy because they have a pulse.

I’ve been waiting three years for this; Keep it up Anet, this is good stuff.

Nokaru.7831:

thrag.9740:

A lot of players seem to like to claim that an enrage timer is ‘artificial difficulty’. I disagree. If the only thing I had to do was slap on some zerker gear but play exactly the same, then sure. But that’s not the case. The timer fundamentally changes how you fight in a good way.

This guy gets it.

This is my opinion as well.

I’m usually a fan of soft enrages, but they are more difficult to design well. The advantage with soft enrages is it gives more flexibility to the composition. Say if a boss starts getting a stacking buff over the course of the fight that increases his damage by 10% a stack, eventually the damage will be so high its unsustainable, but it gives opportunities and validity to more defensive oriented stat combos to help put up with it for a longer length of time. It also opens up new design opportunities to let the player slow down those stacks (say he consumes it from some flower you can DPS down before he reaches, or casts a spell that puts up a breakbar that if channeled fully, will increase his damage unless you can break it very very fast).

It’s a generally a more interesting choice than just requiring the group puts out X DPS or you’re dead.

Still, there’s some validity there.

The timer isnt a hard gate. You dont wipe as soon as the timer runs out. Have you actually played the raid?

As the raids currently stand, I can’t play with my friends who play tanky builds, since I’m tanky as well.

(please don’t say, “just get DPS gear”. That’s like me saying, “Hey! This basketball is deflated!” and you reply, “Then play golf.”)

I completely understand the argument of a full group of tanky players being able to have a much easier time, and that’s not good. The thing is, the mechanics are what you should be fighting against, not an arbitrary timer. I’m all for a mechanic that required your group to have a certain amount of DPS, but as it stands…1 tank…MAYBE on healer…8/9 DPS? That doesn’t include my friends.

We’re talking about game developers here. They’re creative. If they took the timer away or made the timer longer they have~ other~ ways~ of making the fights more challenging to compensate. Just because you can’t imagine them doesn’t mean a professional game designer can’t think up something.

All I want is to play the raids with my friends. We’re all great players, very skilled. But, it seems that’s not enough at the moment.

As a person who killed the Vale Guardian (cause I do have friends who play DPS builds primarily) I also agree that the timer is just a bit silly.
The timer is not an issue if you have 8/9 skilled DPS players at all, but it still kills the point of fighting the mechanics, it’s just a simple race around the timer type of a thing.

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

As a person who killed the Vale Guardian (cause I do have friends who play DPS builds primarily) I also agree that the timer is just a bit silly.
The timer is not an issue if you have 8/9 skilled DPS players at all, but it still kills the point of fighting the mechanics, it’s just a simple race around the timer type of a thing.

Having no timer kills the point of fighting the mechanics, you can just tank through everything and kill it eventually.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

As a person who killed the Vale Guardian (cause I do have friends who play DPS builds primarily) I also agree that the timer is just a bit silly.
The timer is not an issue if you have 8/9 skilled DPS players at all, but it still kills the point of fighting the mechanics, it’s just a simple race around the timer type of a thing.

Having no timer kills the point of fighting the mechanics, you can just tank through everything and kill it eventually.

And that is a problem because…?
What you’re essentially saying is that there shouldn’t be any build diversity in this game.

Xillllix.3485:

And that is a problem because…?

Because it nullifies the challenge of the encounter and forces it to be balanced around maximum defense, which does nothing but force everyone to use defensive gear and slow down the fights considerably.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xillllix.3485:

And that is a problem because…?

Because it nullifies the challenge of the encounter and forces it to be balanced around maximum defense, which does nothing but force everyone to use defensive gear and slow down the fights considerably.

Somebody out there must have enough imagination to come up with something better than a timer.

Xillllix.3485:

Somebody out there must have enough imagination to come up with something better than a timer.

If that’s all we’re concerned with, then the answer is sure. They could spend further development time and effort implementing new skills that the bosses get when the enrage timer expires and make the wipe mechanic work that way. The crux, though, is that it requires development effort, and I don’t think it’s a worthwhile use of development effort. I’d much rather they work on more new content.

Why is the timer even a conversation piece? Take away the timers of all the bosses and there are still mechanics which prevent success. Take the second boss, for example. I’d love to see a group try to go much past the timer there considering there are a maximum of 4 gliding phases.

In the Vale Guardian kill, the timer is realistically not an issue. People more frequently fail because they screw up the mechanics. A longer/nonexistent timer isn’t going to change that. You can tank the boss enrage. You can’t easily tank the mechanics.

Melanion.4892:

Why is the timer even a conversation piece? Take away the timers of all the bosses and there are still mechanics which prevent success. Take the second boss, for example. I’d love to see a group try to go much past the timer there considering there are a maximum of 4 gliding phases.

In the Vale Guardian kill, the timer is realistically not an issue. People more frequently fail because they screw up the mechanics. A longer/nonexistent timer isn’t going to change that. You can tank the boss enrage. You can’t easily tank the mechanics.

While that may hold true for VG, Gorseval is a completely different game, part of what make him more difficult is he is a hard DPS check. If you don’t DPS enough in X time you’re not going succeed, take away the timer and it becomes dull and boring because the timer is very much imo part of the mechanic.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xillllix.3485:

And that is a problem because…?

Because it nullifies the challenge of the encounter and forces it to be balanced around maximum defense, which does nothing but force everyone to use defensive gear and slow down the fights considerably.

So what if it forces people to use defensive builds? People who like to tank and spank should be able to do it, hardcore people who like to be full glass cannon and do it as fast as possible should be able to do it without the timer on it as well.

You say that it would force people to use the defensive gear and slow down the fights, this way you force people to use the most offensive gear and make the fights super quick.

Nullifies the challenge? You mean the fake difficulty introduced with the timer? I guess our points of view for the word challenge have different meaning.

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

You mean the fake difficulty introduced with the timer?

It’s not a fake difficulty due to the reason that the timer is forcing you to play more perfect a.k.a. proper class rotations, well-timed dodges and many more. The lack of a timer is putting everyone back to spam 1.
Btw. Even at Gorseval we were able to get him into 7 updraft phases. We only needed the four updrafts and got along with some strategy to pass by the others.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xillllix.3485:

Somebody out there must have enough imagination to come up with something better than a timer.

If that’s all we’re concerned with, then the answer is sure. They could spend further development time and effort implementing new skills that the bosses get when the enrage timer expires and make the wipe mechanic work that way. The crux, though, is that it requires development effort, and I don’t think it’s a worthwhile use of development effort. I’d much rather they work on more new content.

If this timer causes the raid content to be appreciated by only a few people.

Don’t forget, if people can’t get past the first boss, you can make 100 bosses inside the raid dungeon but most won’t ever see it. That is truly an epic waste of development time.

Urosh Uchiha.9732:

Nullifies the challenge? You mean the fake difficulty introduced with the timer? I guess our points of view for the word challenge have different meaning.

It’s not fake difficulty because it actually forces people to focus on improving their rotations in order to make the time. As a DPS class against VG, for instance, if there were no timer you could realistically slack off on rotations and eventually beat him if you were familiar with the one-shot mechanics. Because there’s a timer, however, it forces all players to optimize rotations while also dealing with those one-shot mechanics. The combination of these behaviors results in an increase in actual skill-based difficulty.

florence.1674:

Don’t forget, if people can’t get past the first boss, you can make 100 bosses inside the raid dungeon but most won’t ever see it. That is truly an epic waste of development time.

That’s the nice thing about raid wings. People can play different wings with their friends and experience different bosses even if they haven’t beaten the previous wing. Your concern is exactly why ANet designed it this way.

I think they should swap hard enrages with soft enrages: For example the boss spawns more adds, more aoe, hits 30 % harder after a min and so on.

Getting killed by are a hard enrage timer is an immersion breaker. Back in GW 1 when you didnt do the required DPS in UW or DoA you just got overwhelmed by add waves for example.

Also in order to allow build diversity I would push the timer slightly back. Give people room for different builds. Guild Wars was always a game where you could play meta/speedclear or slower clear with your own favourite builds.

On top of that with the lack of meters, nobody can prove that his build is viable and so people that dont play metabuilds from websites/guides will eventually have their access to raid teams denied, despite having a good build.

With these steep timers everyone is forced into meta builds and this is not how this game used to be. Let people wipe on mechanics and only in extreme cases on a soft enrage timers.

Random.4691:

Melanion.4892:

Why is the timer even a conversation piece? Take away the timers of all the bosses and there are still mechanics which prevent success. Take the second boss, for example. I’d love to see a group try to go much past the timer there considering there are a maximum of 4 gliding phases.

In the Vale Guardian kill, the timer is realistically not an issue. People more frequently fail because they screw up the mechanics. A longer/nonexistent timer isn’t going to change that. You can tank the boss enrage. You can’t easily tank the mechanics.

While that may hold true for VG, Gorseval is a completely different game, part of what make him more difficult is he is a hard DPS check. If you don’t DPS enough in X time you’re not going succeed, take away the timer and it becomes dull and boring because the timer is very much imo part of the mechanic.

In both encounters, I meant take out the timer but don’t necessarily take out the timed aspects of the fight. Gorseval might not have an enrage timer, but you’d need to keep up the DPS in order to kill Gorseval before he one shots the whole raid and before you run out of updrafts to use. Removing an enrage timer doesn’t exactly stop this part of the fight. In reality, I don’t think it’d change Gorseval at all. You’re still going to have to work to phase the boss so that you don’t use too many updrafts.

Ongar.8170:

I think they should swap hard enrages with soft enrages: For example the boss spawns more adds, more aoe, hits 30 % harder after a min and so on.

Getting killed by are a hard enrage timer is an immersion breaker. Back in GW 1 when you didnt do the required DPS in UW or DoA you just got overwhelmed by add waves for example.

Also in order to allow build diversity I would push the timer slightly back. Give people room for different builds. Guild Wars was always a game where you could play meta/speedclear or slower clear with your own favourite builds.

On top of that with the lack of meters, nobody can prove that his build is viable and so people that dont play metabuilds from websites/guides will eventually have their access to raid teams denied, despite having a good build.

With these steep timers everyone is forced into meta builds and this is not how this game used to be. Let people wipe on mechanics and only in extreme cases on a soft enrage timers.

It already is a soft enrage…..

bai long.2085:

As the raids currently stand, I can’t play with my friends who play tanky builds, since I’m tanky as well.

(please don’t say, “just get DPS gear”. That’s like me saying, “Hey! This basketball is deflated!” and you reply, “Then play golf.”)

I completely understand the argument of a full group of tanky players being able to have a much easier time, and that’s not good. The thing is, the mechanics are what you should be fighting against, not an arbitrary timer. I’m all for a mechanic that required your group to have a certain amount of DPS, but as it stands…1 tank…MAYBE on healer…8/9 DPS? That doesn’t include my friends.

We’re talking about game developers here. They’re creative. If they took the timer away or made the timer longer they have~ other~ ways~ of making the fights more challenging to compensate. Just because you can’t imagine them doesn’t mean a professional game designer can’t think up something.

All I want is to play the raids with my friends. We’re all great players, very skilled. But, it seems that’s not enough at the moment.

I have a question for, im legitimately curious, if your group is skilled, why not use dps gear, its not like you need the defence, and gear doesnt change the playstyle of a build, it simply changes the numbers that the build can put out, so why do you guys like playing tanky builds as oppossed to dps ones? you are all skilled players so you dont need it to survive.

Arenzo.3298:

bai long.2085:

As the raids currently stand, I can’t play with my friends who play tanky builds, since I’m tanky as well.

(please don’t say, “just get DPS gear”. That’s like me saying, “Hey! This basketball is deflated!” and you reply, “Then play golf.”)

I completely understand the argument of a full group of tanky players being able to have a much easier time, and that’s not good. The thing is, the mechanics are what you should be fighting against, not an arbitrary timer. I’m all for a mechanic that required your group to have a certain amount of DPS, but as it stands…1 tank…MAYBE on healer…8/9 DPS? That doesn’t include my friends.

We’re talking about game developers here. They’re creative. If they took the timer away or made the timer longer they have~ other~ ways~ of making the fights more challenging to compensate. Just because you can’t imagine them doesn’t mean a professional game designer can’t think up something.

All I want is to play the raids with my friends. We’re all great players, very skilled. But, it seems that’s not enough at the moment.

I have a question for, im legitimately curious, if your group is skilled, why not use dps gear, its not like you need the defence, and gear doesnt change the playstyle of a build, it simply changes the numbers that the build can put out, so why do you guys like playing tanky builds as oppossed to dps ones? you are all skilled players so you dont need it to survive.

Sure. I’ll tell you.

I don’t want to play in DPS gear because I prefer (in all the MMOs I’ve played) to have the highest defenses possible. It’s fun for me.

On a personal note, I’m a martial artist and I train to take hits just as much as I train to dish them out. I love the feeling of being kicked in the head and just brushing it off.

I’d say, for me, it’s my own personal ideals that affect how I like to play my games. I want to outlast and I want to be able to absorb as much damage as possible without being defeated.

To answer your question: It’s all about fun. And I don’t have fun playing a glass cannon.

They add all of these new stat sets to the game, then not only force people to use zerker for raids because of the timer, but also force certain classes as well. So you are a zerk dps or condi engineer, other than that bugger off…Remove the timer and let people form groups with whom they wish. The mechanics are fun and challenging enough without timer. At the very least make the time limit doable for more class-build combos.

Scandi.5693:

They add all of these new stat sets to the game, then not only force people to use zerker for raids because of the timer, but also force certain classes as well. So you are a zerk dps or condi engineer, other than that bugger off…Remove the timer and let people form groups with whom they wish. The mechanics are fun and challenging enough without timer. At the very least make the time limit doable for more class-build combos.

Full zerker/viper Teams beat Bosses with multiple minutes left on the Timer, you are nowhere near forced to bring certain Professions/Gear and even then the enrage isn’t even a hard enrage (except gorseval).

I still think there is a simple way to retain the challenge/prestige of the raid without closing it off to everyone else – simply remove the enrage timer and replace it with the gold/silver/bronze system used in dynamic events and adventures. For example, on VG, beating the boss in less than 8 minutes would reward gold, less than 10 would reward silver and anything past 10 would reward bronze.

Simple solution that would open the experience/content to more people without taking away from the challenge and prestige top end raiders are looking for.