Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve been trying to get into a good EU raiding guild since the launch of raids, to no avail. I figured I could PUG it, but hearing an explanation and then failing the boss for the 7th time in a day, kind of made it a void effort after a while.

Now, the current issue is that raid groups require you to have legendary insights, which I’ve never been able to gather.

You have to be able to be experienced at raids to participate at raids, and if you missed out in the beginning by looking 24/7 for a group, you’re in deep kittene now.

This has basically killed my joy of playing the game. I was SO excited for legendary armor, but I can’t even start the first collection because I can’t get a single kill.

I was wondering if anyone else has less incentive to play as well, because most of my irl friends that play GW2 have left a month or two after the expansion for different reasons…

How did the other people do it if they didn’t pug it? How do other games do it? Don’t they make raiding guilds?

Maybe you should set up your own raiding guild. Nothing fancy, no storage or guild hall. Just people like you who want to start raiding and they join your guild to give it a try. That gives you a group of like minded people at your level who can work with you on getting raids done.

This is not really the raid’s fault. It’s partially the nature of the content, but it’s also the fact that it’s just REALLY hard to find like-minded people in this game. There aren’t any good tools out there that let people find guilds that have a similar mindset.

Trust me when I say there are plenty of guilds out there that need someone else consistent for their group and are willing to teach as long as you learn at a good pace. I know because I’m in one of them. We have about 6-7 solid raiders, 1-2 that aren’t cut out for it but we consistently need more people so we have to keep them along.

On the flip side Raids have made me play this game WAY longer than I should. I’ve been gearing up multiple characters for raids, gathering ascended and actually min/maxing my characters. Before HoT I didn’t see a point in min/maxing because everything was so easy. Raids have given me that drive and I think I probably would have quit a few months ago if I wasn’t intent on finally clearing the raid wing.

I see pug practice runs a few times a week in the LFG. It seems like that is the type of thing you are looking for. As far as linking insights go it is silly. You can simply paste a chat link code if you’d like to get around that lol. But yeah there are plenty of guilds that host practice runs and end up needing a few more so they pug it on the LFG. I’d suggest getting in one of those guilds.

For me it wasn’t so much raids as the fact that with raids they nerfed dungeon enemy damage while buffing dungeon enemy survivability for some reason.

It turned them from fun to run solo/duo/with new players into dull and tedious encounters.

Raids aren’t really a replacement, since part of the fun of dungeons was the fact that I could grab literally the first people that signed up, or even just not take anyone if no one showed up and it would be possible to beat. Of the raid bosses, only the Vale Guardian is theoretically possible to solo, and that would very likely take forever.

Anet just failed. Back to tank and heal…it is just a joke lol. Good basic game with a lot of potential ruined by cry-babies who wanted holy trinity and big groups.

Did you actually try applying to raid guilds? If you show your skills and attitude they will likely to accept you as a trial and then later promote you as you improve and attend raid regularly. I was worried about these things happening and my solution is at least to try applying to established guilds and ask for trial run.

In regards to the training LFG’s, they’re a great initiative but otherwise don’t accomplish much. Having helped lead a few myself the groups will generally set aside an hour or so and work with players completely new to the content. In none of the training nights have I seen a kill. So, what can a trainee say about their experience? I’ve spent an hour wiping on VG? I guess that’s better than no experience but not by much.

The way I see it if you have no experience with the raids your best best is to apply to a guild with a built-in “raid training” or who are otherwise collectively new to Raids as a guild themselves (such as some of the more casual ones). That way you’re having to adapt less to the team and are able to spend more time on your own skill development.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking to join a group for a kill you’re going to need to be experienced/skilled as few groups want to spend the time teaching a new player when all they want is to walk away with shinies that night.

As far as the “why not just join a raiding guild” suggestion many have made to OP? The problem I’ve seen with raid guilds in is the timing of their raids or their rep reqs. Either their raiding hours are outside of the scope of a player’s availability, or they require [near] 100% rep. Availability is subject to irl conflicts so I don’t have anything to say there. Though for folks that already have a home guild with plenty of friends and family, I can’t see someone turning all that loose for a guild that might meet their raid needs.

Eponet.4829:

For me it wasn’t so much raids as the fact that with raids they nerfed dungeon enemy damage while buffing dungeon enemy survivability for some reason.

It turned them from fun to run solo/duo/with new players into dull and tedious encounters.

Raids aren’t really a replacement, since part of the fun of dungeons was the fact that I could grab literally the first people that signed up, or even just not take anyone if no one showed up and it would be possible to beat. Of the raid bosses, only the Vale Guardian is theoretically possible to solo, and that would very likely take forever.

need 4 people for green circles, solo is impossible

Just get a chat code for insights like everyone else.

Bloody.2089:

Anet just failed. Back to tank and heal…it is just a joke lol. Good basic game with a lot of potential ruined by cry-babies who wanted holy trinity and big groups.

Hahahahahahahaha. Yeah we all know how good dungeons were.

The concept of raids in is really good. And it is the best PvE content in GW2 right now. Yes it has some flaws (profession/role balancing, missing DPS meter, ‘slightly’ bad loot) but the combat and mechanics spit on dungeons and fractals.

Also what’s your problem with the holy trinity?

But that doesn’t even matter anyway because the raids in GW2 don’t really have a holy trinity. Anet was just smart enough to give the players a way to have more control over the boss via “tanking” aka “being the guy who moves the boss”. Not to metion that the third boss doesn’t even require a “tank”.

Raids really fit to GW2. The only thing that it made unnecessary are the combo fields. But these simply get awful if you have 5 or more players anyway and they weren’t perfectly design for “MMO”-PvE since the beginning anyway.

I think raid mechanics aren’t too bad but it feels really lazier than dungeons to me. In dungeons we’d used to have reflects, stability, stealth, vuln stacking, fury stacking and other things to pay attention to but nowadays all that is automatic or unused.

Sure the fight mechanics are alright but the profession mechanics … not really being fully utilized.

My 2c

The one to Rule.2593:

Eponet.4829:

For me it wasn’t so much raids as the fact that with raids they nerfed dungeon enemy damage while buffing dungeon enemy survivability for some reason.

It turned them from fun to run solo/duo/with new players into dull and tedious encounters.

Raids aren’t really a replacement, since part of the fun of dungeons was the fact that I could grab literally the first people that signed up, or even just not take anyone if no one showed up and it would be possible to beat. Of the raid bosses, only the Vale Guardian is theoretically possible to solo, and that would very likely take forever.

need 4 people for green circles, solo is impossible

Invulnerability actually negates the green circle damage, and while running 2 signets with blurred inscriptions, a mesmer/chronomancer has enough uses to make themselves immune to the explosions every time they occur so long as they time their uses correctly.

The big problem is actually the phase split. I haven’t had the gear to test it out, but I’m not sure that even a full tank built chronomancer can sustain against all three damage auras simultaneously on their own. They absolutely destroyed my berserker set though.

Perhaps nomads could do it, but imagine how long it would take.

fishball.7204:

I think raid mechanics aren’t too bad but it feels really lazier than dungeons to me. In dungeons we’d used to have reflects, stability, stealth, vuln stacking, fury stacking and other things to pay attention to but nowadays all that is automatic or unused.

Sure the fight mechanics are alright but the profession mechanics … not really being fully utilized.

My 2c

My guardian buddy complained about those issues as well. He was really disappointed to no longer have the need for reflects, partywide stability, aegis, etc.

I am hoping to see some usuage of our fields. Something unique to the game so far like: Fire fields to light a fire, ice fields to freeze, lightning fields to electricute something, water fields to extinguish fire, etc.

All we can do is hope that we might have our wishes fullfilled in the second raid wing.

Raids make you play more. Fractals make you play less.

savacli.8172:

In regards to the training LFG’s, they’re a great initiative but otherwise don’t accomplish much. Having helped lead a few myself the groups will generally set aside an hour or so and work with players completely new to the content. In none of the training nights have I seen a kill. So, what can a trainee say about their experience? I’ve spent an hour wiping on VG? I guess that’s better than no experience but not by much.

The way I see it if you have no experience with the raids your best best is to apply to a guild with a built-in “raid training” or who are otherwise collectively new to Raids as a guild themselves (such as some of the more casual ones). That way you’re having to adapt less to the team and are able to spend more time on your own skill development.

Unfortunately, if you’re looking to join a group for a kill you’re going to need to be experienced/skilled as few groups want to spend the time teaching a new player when all they want is to walk away with shinies that night.

As far as the “why not just join a raiding guild” suggestion many have made to OP? The problem I’ve seen with raid guilds in is the timing of their raids or their rep reqs. Either their raiding hours are outside of the scope of a player’s availability, or they require [near] 100% rep. Availability is subject to irl conflicts so I don’t have anything to say there. Though for folks that already have a home guild with plenty of friends and family, I can’t see someone turning all that loose for a guild that might meet their raid needs.

Well if a trainee say about their experience : ’’I’ve spent an hour wiping on VG? I guess that’s better than no experience but not by much.‘’ Then they just don’t get Raid, they just want an easy time with reward at the end.

Raid is about wiping to learn the mechanics, then wiping to practice the execution. That’s how most raiding group learned the mechanics and that’s how most people should learn the fights. If that’s too much for them, good luck finding 9 good players ready to carry them.

But true enough finding a raiding guild can be challenging. The lack of infrastructure in-game doesn’t help either, but it still hard to find a guild with people or relatively equal skill, people that you like to play with and that play around the same time as you.

If you can’t find a guild that fit your needs, the best would be to create one. So many people want to get into the raid, but most people just don’t talk with others and try to improve their situation much.

The raid is awful and boring and a low quality budget design. Those legendary armors look good too…

The massive gaming world is not stupid. Many of us have played a thousand games since we were kids. Many of us can identify low quality and low investment elements to games.

The raid boss mechanics are based off of subpar profession and subpar power designs, and the devs are trying to squeeze out “roles” from convoluted and mashed up classes.

Toughness to tank is a cheap design. Healing “roles” are a cheap design and some of the worst I’ve expirienced. Not having difficulty settings to instanced content is a cheap design. Not having build savers in the game is a cheap design. Not even having a lfg section is a cheap design…

The devs unwillingness to blow up and redo professions ultimately hurts game modes like wvw, spvp and raids, but it seems they do not care about the number 1 factor of this game.

Also, the devs are trying to add in some type of story and lore to build immersion, yet they created raids to where you are sucked out of that immersive expirience by having to wait an hour to get a group together, memorize the changing boss gimmick every 30 seconds, force players to build their characters how the devs want and not how players want and to get on team speak and listen to random voices blabbering out commands… All this immersion breaking stuff and waiting and mess, instead of having fun, being inclusive and building a really strong raiding community.

I use to play a game where I could play what character and role I wanted, there was zero waiting to form a team, difficulty settings were there to challenge all types of skill levels and I was immersed into the expirience through my character and didn’t have to listen to yakking in my ear.

Professions and the raid are poor quality. Such a shame because GW2 has some good combat mechanics like freedom of movement, good responsiveness with powers and a general “smoothness” to gameplay. This game could have been one of the top fantasy games, but they dropped the ball.

To me, raids just became a chore. That, and I run into the same situation week after week. We get a good group, and then someone gets bored and doesn’t want to raid any more. We look for someone(s) new, train then up, wipe a couple of times, and by the time we get the new person(s) up to speed we once again lose someone to boredom. I have looked for guild roster guilds to fill in the nights when my home guild doesn’t do runs, but I run into the same problems I mentioned above: the scheduling of the group’s raid nights conflict with mine (my fault since I commit to a lot irl) and/or some groups pose a rep requirement which I don’t care for.

Personally, I’m just in it for the Insights since we have no clue how many will be needed for the Legendary armor. Outside of that I run my Fractal daily and move on to a different game. I already got my 163 masteries, Eternal title, Legendary Staff, and all 9 of the spec weapons. Since both dungeons and fractal got gutted (rewards and difficulty, respectively) I was hoping that Raids would fill in the gap for all the free time I had. Nope, still gotta wait for our healer/tank/etc to log on before we can raid. There’s nothing else I see worth the grind currently.

Not sure what to make of your post TC. Are you talking about actual raid guilds or just get a pug to take you along?

If you ment actual raiding guilds, could you name a couple which you’ve tried to get into? The actual guild, not just their A-team which has the content cleared.

The one thing every raiding guild is looking for is new members, see savacli right above my post. A raiding guild without new members dies out eventually.

What raid guilds do not want though is ride alongs who think they get to join experienced raid groups and get carried all the way, then leave once they have their achievements/items. It’s the same as in every other MMO which has raiding. Once content is cleared, everyone is a raider and wants to tag along.

It certainly is more difficult now than when raids got introduced, but it is not impossible and most raid guilds would welcome interested members. Somehow I don’t get that kind of vibe from your original post though. It’s okay, we all need to vent sometimes.

Failing only 7 times in a day? Dude, in the beginning i failed way more often. You should try harder.

knyy.6427:

Failing only 7 times in a day? Dude, in the beginning i failed way more often. You should try harder.

My first PuG group thought that the 8 minute timer was for the first phase, and actually reached it before the phase change.

fishball.7204:

I think raid mechanics aren’t too bad but it feels really lazier than dungeons to me. In dungeons we’d used to have reflects, stability, stealth, vuln stacking, fury stacking and other things to pay attention to but nowadays all that is automatic or unused.

Sure the fight mechanics are alright but the profession mechanics … not really being fully utilized.

My 2c

Exactly this ! Dungeons are harder mechanics wise due to 5 individuals on form to get every active defense working. Instead we get cheesy one shot kill shot mechanics (sab flame wall which renders 80% of the time due to ANET bugs) requiring 10 people to be reasonable on form.

Now activity / logins etc are all dropping and time available once its cleared that’s it… May as well login next week.

TPMN.1483:

fishball.7204:

I think raid mechanics aren’t too bad but it feels really lazier than dungeons to me. In dungeons we’d used to have reflects, stability, stealth, vuln stacking, fury stacking and other things to pay attention to but nowadays all that is automatic or unused.

Sure the fight mechanics are alright but the profession mechanics … not really being fully utilized.

My 2c

Exactly this ! Dungeons are harder mechanics wise due to 5 individuals on form to get every active defense working. Instead we get cheesy one shot kill shot mechanics (sab flame wall which renders 80% of the time due to ANET bugs) requiring 10 people to be reasonable on form.

Now activity / logins etc are all dropping and time available once its cleared that’s it… May as well login next week.

Agreed, it’s extremely frustrating to have a near perfect run ruined at the last second because of something stupid like someone just barely missed the green circle or Sabetha’s Flax shot decides to bug out and target someone in the Zerg rather than the designated decoy who’s been baiting the shot the whole encounter.

I disagree with that Savakittenhat’s the goals of the raid mechanics. If someone miss the green circle, it’s their fault and as a team you have to deal with it, it’s a team content, not a single player content.

Still, I agree with TPMN and Fishball. I won’t go as far as saying that dungeon have harder mechanics because that’s not true. It could have been true if they tweaked them a bit and we didn’t had so much power creep, but it not the case so.

Dungeon ask you to provide more profession mechanics, that’s true, but they that’s it.

Anyway, I would love that anet include a lot more profession mechanics into the next raid. I want to see boon rip/corrupt being important to keep the mobs from having too much boons, I want to use reflect, condition removal,

My gripe is that it’s a cheap mechanic. Missing 1 green circle is sometimes recoverable depending on the team’s overall health, but 2 misses in a row (since you’re still trying to recover from miss 1) is a wipe. I don’t mind the occasional killshot, but the running to green occurs way to frequently, imo, to be able to deliver that amount of massive damage continuously throughout the fight.

Not that I think it’s a much better mechanic but at least against Gorsy is you miss a spirit it’s not an insta wipe but rather you made the encounter more difficult for yourself. Miss enough spirits and that does eventually lead to a wipe.

I agree of the profession mechanics though. Something like Mark T-B34RC3 from CoE where you can prevents buffs from reaching the boss through projectile management. Though prevent the turrets from being destroyed (make them unreachable) otherwise it just becomes another DPS-able object.

Just do what 99% of this community does, ignore this content.

I would expect other profession mechanics like projectile management, stealth, enemy boon management, and major in-combat mobility to play larger roles in the upcoming raid wing(s).

That said, I think the green circle mechanic on VG and flamethrower on Sab are exceptional to those who were saying they’re bad. I think critically threatening mechanics are super important to the raid experience, and having things that can autodefeat you are important to that. There are still plenty of pressure-based mechanics present in all of the fights as well, and the ramping up of pressure throughout the encounters are all very well articulated (orbs/traps on Gors, floor deadzones on VG, heavy bombs/ceiling collapse on Sab). Honestly, if these sorts of mechanics bother you about raids, I genuinely think you’re trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole; raids are built on the existence of these mechanics and increasing pressure throughout an encounter to meet the rising needs of the mechanics.

savacli.8172:

My gripe is that it’s a cheap mechanic. Missing 1 green circle is sometimes recoverable depending on the team’s overall health, but 2 misses in a row (since you’re still trying to recover from miss 1) is a wipe. I don’t mind the occasional killshot, but the running to green occurs way to frequently, imo, to be able to deliver that amount of massive damage continuously throughout the fight.

I completely disagree, I think that’s one of the best mechanics you can have. There is no difficulty if you can make several times the same error without much consequences. The green circle is pretty simple and effective mechanics. You got to look around and go on the circle and the time you get is more than enough. Everytime you miss 1 circle that directly because someone made an error.

A cheap mechanics would something random that you can’t counter like several of the instability in fractal. The green circle is perfect if you ask me and I want more of those kind of things. I get me back to the very first fractals where we could go in level 40+ where AR would make no difference. Each agony attack would one shot dead you like the Flamethrower at sabetha. You had to counter the attack, your team couldn’t recover if too much mistake were made and it was one of the best content in the game. Something challenging actually punish you for doing a mistake, not give you 100 differents way to recover from doing the same mistake over and over.

Thaddeus.4891:

savacli.8172:

My gripe is that it’s a cheap mechanic. Missing 1 green circle is sometimes recoverable depending on the team’s overall health, but 2 misses in a row (since you’re still trying to recover from miss 1) is a wipe. I don’t mind the occasional killshot, but the running to green occurs way to frequently, imo, to be able to deliver that amount of massive damage continuously throughout the fight.

I completely disagree, I think that’s one of the best mechanics you can have. There is no difficulty if you can make several times the same error without much consequences. The green circle is pretty simple and effective mechanics. You got to look around and go on the circle and the time you get is more than enough. Everytime you miss 1 circle that directly because someone made an error.

Eh, that’s a fair call. I guess I’m more so frustrated with the bugs associated with that mechanic. E.G. Vale Guard will randomly stop following tank and chase someone random (we did check for potential max toughness values through traits), or he will get stuck in place and be unable to move. Thus, in both cases you get a bad spawn. That’s where I wish the punishment being less severe or at least punishing in a different form (buff VG/nerf players) upon a fail.

savacli.8172:

Thaddeus.4891:

savacli.8172:

My gripe is that it’s a cheap mechanic. Missing 1 green circle is sometimes recoverable depending on the team’s overall health, but 2 misses in a row (since you’re still trying to recover from miss 1) is a wipe. I don’t mind the occasional killshot, but the running to green occurs way to frequently, imo, to be able to deliver that amount of massive damage continuously throughout the fight.

I completely disagree, I think that’s one of the best mechanics you can have. There is no difficulty if you can make several times the same error without much consequences. The green circle is pretty simple and effective mechanics. You got to look around and go on the circle and the time you get is more than enough. Everytime you miss 1 circle that directly because someone made an error.

Eh, that’s a fair call. I guess I’m more so frustrated with the bugs associated with that mechanic. E.G. Vale Guard will randomly stop following tank and chase someone random (we did check for potential max toughness values through traits), or he will get stuck in place and be unable to move. Thus, in both cases you get a bad spawn. That’s where I wish the punishment being less severe or at least punishing in a different form (buff VG/nerf players) upon a fail.

What you want is less bugs (something everyone wants), be careful when you want less bugs not to ask for mechanic changes when the mechanics are good and fair.

savacli.8172:

Eh, that’s a fair call. I guess I’m more so frustrated with the bugs associated with that mechanic. E.G. Vale Guard will randomly stop following tank and chase someone random (we did check for potential max toughness values through traits), or he will get stuck in place and be unable to move. Thus, in both cases you get a bad spawn. That’s where I wish the punishment being less severe or at least punishing in a different form (buff VG/nerf players) upon a fail.

Well there is several situation that can cause that.

1) Your tank is down. In that situation VG will agro on the second highest toughness. Even if your tank go down for 2-3 sec, this can scew things up because usually the 2nd highest toughness is a Druid far away on the last green circle.

2) Your tank get teleported. You might not see it or realize it unless the tank say something. But if the tank get teleported it might look like the boss go for someone else.

3) The CC attack. While he does this attack, he stop following the tank obviously, and at the end of the attack he will need to reset the aggro. If you don’t cc fast enough, he will hesitate to follow the tank just long enough to screw you up. That’s not a bug, that just mean that you don’t cc fast enough.

It’s easy to call bug the second something happen that you don’t know the reason. I’m not saying that there isn’t bug at all, but several of what you think is a bug, might just be a mistake your team made, that you are not aware of. Tbh, VG is super easy and I see very very little bugs and if your team have a decent experience, they usually can make it work.

The raids are well designed and fun if you have the right group, but they do bring to light a major flaw with the current game.

As it stands, there are specific group compositions and professions that better ensure success by an extremely large margin – to the detriment/exclusion of others. Worse, putting together those groups doesnt require skill – it requires the ability to use Google and being enough of an kitten to tell people proficient in the professions that aren’t part of that composition they can’t play with you.

I know it’s impossible for every profession to be just as viable as every other profession in terms of damage output (given the crazy reliance on enrage timers by the devs), but they should be close enough to offer roughly the same chance of success. For example, a warrior shouldn’t be able to do double the damage of a ranger (maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Im guessing it is close to accurate).

The goal should be to “bring the player, not the profession.” Unfortunately, the opposite is true – especially as groups just begin to raid (I realize experienced groups can down it with many comps – Im not talking about that). Anet needs to level the playing field – make raids about player skill and group cohesion rather than making success so dependant upon specific group compositions.

Thaddeus.4891:

savacli.8172:

Eh, that’s a fair call. I guess I’m more so frustrated with the bugs associated with that mechanic. E.G. Vale Guard will randomly stop following tank and chase someone random (we did check for potential max toughness values through traits), or he will get stuck in place and be unable to move. Thus, in both cases you get a bad spawn. That’s where I wish the punishment being less severe or at least punishing in a different form (buff VG/nerf players) upon a fail.

Well there is several situation that can cause that.

1) Your tank is down. In that situation VG will agro on the second highest toughness. Even if your tank go down for 2-3 sec, this can scew things up because usually the 2nd highest toughness is a Druid far away on the last green circle.

2) Your tank get teleported. You might not see it or realize it unless the tank say something. But if the tank get teleported it might look like the boss go for someone else.

3) The CC attack. While he does this attack, he stop following the tank obviously, and at the end of the attack he will need to reset the aggro. If you don’t cc fast enough, he will hesitate to follow the tank just long enough to screw you up. That’s not a bug, that just mean that you don’t cc fast enough.

It’s easy to call bug the second something happen that you don’t know the reason. I’m not saying that there isn’t bug at all, but several of what you think is a bug, might just be a mistake your team made, that you are not aware of. Tbh, VG is super easy and I see very very little bugs and if your team have a decent experience, they usually can make it work.

Nope, we figured those “odd” movements out in the 123 list you provided during week 1 of the Raid release in my group.

What I’m referring to is that during the luring stages he will spontaneously turn to run towards a different player regardless of their proximity or toughness. For example, the tank will be healthy and up on his feet while VG will randomly turn around and start chasing the Tempest for a few seconds before resuming his chase of the tank again.

The second issue being that he seems to get caught and stuck altogether. The two most common places I’ve seen him get stuck are on center circle and on pillars. Once again, he’ll be chasing the tank and act as if he’s glued to the perimeter of that center circle. Of course VG halts movement during his “Statue of Liberty” break phase, but in this case the guy just randomly stops outside of that breakbar attack as if to say “Sorry guys, I’m kinda tired now”. We tried having the tank run around from different angles, but nope, he stayed stuck on the outside of the circle. We’ve gotten him to wedge out of the pillar though a couple times.

I still feel like the green circle is a cheap mechanic, but I am being outvoted by the majority here. So I will continue to respectfully disagree, but I acknowledge the majority here feel the mechanic is on par with the encounter.

@ Blaeys

True enough. But the situation improve. They kind of screw the dps balance out the window with the specialisation update and HoT. Even if at the same time they improved it a little with Reaper fixing necro and condition damage in PvE. But they really need to put most profession more on par in term of dps. A dps druid make around 18k max compare to the 30k of a Tempest. Each profession should be able to do a decent direct damage and condition damage. We have the same problem with Healing as right now Druid and Elementalist are just so much more powerful than any other.

@ savacli. Maybe it’s the blue aoe attack? He turn away from the tank each time he does this attack. You are right that there is some bug with VG movement. He sometime go strait for the Middle before changing direction and going toward the tank sometime for us. We just didn’t found those bug to be frequent and impact full. But again we find VG to be a bit too much easy, so it’s never hard to recover from those bugs. They should fix it anyway.

I’ve found VG gets stuck on the pull quite a lot recently, seekers and teleports spawn but he doesn’t move to the tank until someone jumps around in melee range (sometimes for quite a few seconds).

Haven’t seen him act oddly after the pull (remember he faces another target to cast teleports), but this behaviour I’ve seen could be a recent bug which appears in other parts of the fight too.

Eponet.4829:

The one to Rule.2593:

Eponet.4829:

For me it wasn’t so much raids as the fact that with raids they nerfed dungeon enemy damage while buffing dungeon enemy survivability for some reason.

It turned them from fun to run solo/duo/with new players into dull and tedious encounters.

Raids aren’t really a replacement, since part of the fun of dungeons was the fact that I could grab literally the first people that signed up, or even just not take anyone if no one showed up and it would be possible to beat. Of the raid bosses, only the Vale Guardian is theoretically possible to solo, and that would very likely take forever.

need 4 people for green circles, solo is impossible

Invulnerability actually negates the green circle damage, and while running 2 signets with blurred inscriptions, a mesmer/chronomancer has enough uses to make themselves immune to the explosions every time they occur so long as they time their uses correctly.

The big problem is actually the phase split. I haven’t had the gear to test it out, but I’m not sure that even a full tank built chronomancer can sustain against all three damage auras simultaneously on their own. They absolutely destroyed my berserker set though.

Perhaps nomads could do it, but imagine how long it would take.

good luck trying to beat the enrage timer in full tank gear, especially full nomads.

The one to Rule.2593:

Eponet.4829:

The one to Rule.2593:

Eponet.4829:

For me it wasn’t so much raids as the fact that with raids they nerfed dungeon enemy damage while buffing dungeon enemy survivability for some reason.

It turned them from fun to run solo/duo/with new players into dull and tedious encounters.

Raids aren’t really a replacement, since part of the fun of dungeons was the fact that I could grab literally the first people that signed up, or even just not take anyone if no one showed up and it would be possible to beat. Of the raid bosses, only the Vale Guardian is theoretically possible to solo, and that would very likely take forever.

need 4 people for green circles, solo is impossible

Invulnerability actually negates the green circle damage, and while running 2 signets with blurred inscriptions, a mesmer/chronomancer has enough uses to make themselves immune to the explosions every time they occur so long as they time their uses correctly.

The big problem is actually the phase split. I haven’t had the gear to test it out, but I’m not sure that even a full tank built chronomancer can sustain against all three damage auras simultaneously on their own. They absolutely destroyed my berserker set though.

Perhaps nomads could do it, but imagine how long it would take.

good luck trying to beat the enrage timer in full tank gear, especially full nomads.

The enrage timer on VG isn’t actually an instant wipe. In theory, with a sustained enough build, while avoiding everything that is avoidable, you could survive it. It’s not even about gear. If you attempt to solo it, you expect that you’re going to have to survive the enrage.

It’s why I said VG was theoretically soloable, not Gorseval.

Have there been already any serious 10 men nomads tries/attempts (also failed ones) on VG yet?
Because when I was running into the raid with my casual guild for the first time I took some soldiers gear on my guard to tank for them and I felt quite invulnerable in all phases until all of my mates were dead. I really don’t have to add that I had to actively try dying when I was the last man standing or it took very long to respawn. ^^
Since we weren’t able to reach the time limit due wipes in the last phase I don’t know about surviving the enrage with 10 players in such gear.
I am very interested to see at least attempts with 10 nomads.

Derigar.7810:

You have to be able to be experienced at raids to participate at raids, and if you missed out in the beginning by looking 24/7 for a group, you’re in deep kittene now.

Yup, this happens in every MMO and which is why I rushed raids asap.

Problem is that most people that are capable and interested in the raid have already finished. The ones that are left are usually bad.

Maybe a small handful are capable. It is just a hassle to find out which is which.

I’ve been in the late-comer situation and the best you can do is just to suck it up. That’s what anet asked for when they came out with raids.