Remove enrage timers from raids

Remove enrage timers from raids

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Posted by: Keegers.2573

Keegers.2573

I understand the need for having timers, as to prevent raid fights from becoming too long due to lack of dps. However I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps. If anet is indeed serious about getting away from zerker only, than maybe they should consider another rage mechanic instead of a timer. Or have two separate raid types, normal mode which would be untimed and Challenge mode, which would be timed.

Thoughts?

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Posted by: NovaanVerdiano.6174

NovaanVerdiano.6174

Nah. No need to.
In the worst case they could adjust HP/armor/etc., but timers are fine imo.

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Posted by: dlonie.6547

dlonie.6547

I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps.

I noticed that a lot of groups that followed the current meta strats also failed to deplete his health in time.

I also noticed that one the teams that did beat it had over a minute left and wasn’t running full DPS builds.

I think it’s a bit premature to make the claim that the timer is too short for non-zerk teams to complete the content, and the completions that we have seen seem to contradict that idea.

I’m not opposed to the idea of splitting the modes. Eventually they are going to receive pressure to nerf the encounter for more casual players (well, they already are…..), and I hope that they decide to split out an “easy” mode rather than hit the raids with the nerfhammer that destroyed the dungeons.

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Posted by: Neko.9021

Neko.9021

Even though I find it amusing that timers essentially make damage the most important thing, I think that having a strict, low timer is necessary. Otherwise, a lot of the fear of the raid is gone. You should NOT be able to run more than 2 supports without being punished, otherwise, why not just run 5 Supports, or 10 Supports and lose all fear from all the mechanics?

I also think that splitting up raids in difficulties would split up development resources and, rather than just trying to build good raids in general, they’ll end up skewing towards super easy ones and ones that are far too hard. Keeping it to one difficulty forces them to make actually balanced encounters.

Also, most people should not be able to complete the raids. They’re supposed to be hard. 99% of the content in HoT will be doable by everyone, and raids are supposed to be the hard, instanced, exclusive content, based on sheer skill and organization. GW2 basically doesn’t have this right now.

I think players are just shocked because they’ve facerolled everything up till now, and the arrival of raids now basically show that they, or their group, were not as good as they thought they were. Some people who thought they were gonna do raiding in GW2 may just not be good enough.

And that’s excellent. People should be excluded if they’re bad. GW2 literally does this no where else in PvE. Raids finally give us a way to show who is really good, and who is bad.

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Posted by: Keegers.2573

Keegers.2573

And that’s excellent. People should be excluded if they’re bad. GW2 literally does this no where else in PvE. Raids finally give us a way to show who is really good, and who is bad.

When only 10% of the population is able to even participate in raids, people will complain. If they are to easy, people will complain. I think splitting raids into two modes would help make both parties happy. It may drain development resources from other parts of the game, but I see having a “hardcore” mode and a “casual” mode may be the only way for Raid PVE to be successful in GW2.

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Posted by: Iris Ng.9845

Iris Ng.9845

It’s like asking to remove timers from Tequatl or Triple Trouble. Bad move ;(

P.S. Raids are, by design, for hardcore players only. Dungeons and fractals are where casuals at.

“Raids are like fortune cookies. You eat the cookie and then read the paper scraps.”

- doranduck, 2016 on Lore in Raids

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Posted by: Keegers.2573

Keegers.2573

It’s like asking to remove timers from Tequatl or Triple Trouble. Bad move ;(

What if instead of a timer, you had damage from the boss go up exponentially over a set of time, that way you still are under a time constraint but gives more leeway towards exact timers.

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Posted by: spoj.9672

spoj.9672

Without timers it becomes easy. The more forgiving you make the timer the more players can stack nomads and beat the content slowly. Content can only be difficult if there is a chance of failure. And theres no chance of failure with a 10 man nomads team and no time limit. The stricter the timer the more players have to give up certain defences to increase damage. And therefore rely on skill and coordination to beat the encounter with damage. If anything the timer should be even stricter than it was in beta.

Dont compare it to dungeons. Those were messed up with risk versus reward. Raids seem to be going in the right direction.

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Posted by: Neko.9021

Neko.9021

My biggest problem with having an “Easy Mode” and “Hard Mode” for raids is that it removes something big for players to strive for.

Right now, players just do the very easiest dungeons, and never do any of the hard dungeons. People sell Fractals and Arah because that few people want to do these. Plus, they can use the money they got from doing all those easy dungeons.

If raids had an “Easy” and “Hard” mode, no one would take raiding seriously, even if someone said it was a “Hard mode” kill. Everyone would just say “Yeah, I killed the Vale Guardian” with a party full of Nomad’s characters versus an untimed Vale Guardian. People would strive for the lowest common denominator (as they already do with dungeons), and ignore the hard content.

By making all raids hard, it forces people to respect raids as difficult content that they must either organize and get better for, or just not do at all.

And unlike many other MMOs, GW2 gives plenty to do for less skilled players. Fractals are being revamped, the Verdent Brink has been great, and stuff like grinding masteries or working on a guild hall all are great distractions for casuals.

And by keeping raids exclusive, when someone does manage to beat a wing, or even a single boss, people will look to that person and know that they were part of a truly skilled group. For the first time, GW2 can grant a real sense of accomplishment to PvE players – something that it’s lacked for a long time (see: credit card legendary weapons and RNG fractal skins).

Raids should be brutal and exclusive. The timer should be kept low to prevent players from using too many support characters or too tanky of builds. And no “Easy Mode”, which would ultimately cause people to just devalue raids and never take them seriously.

(edited by Neko.9021)

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Posted by: Eponet.4829

Eponet.4829

It’s like asking to remove timers from Tequatl or Triple Trouble. Bad move ;(

What if instead of a timer, you had damage from the boss go up exponentially over a set of time, that way you still are under a time constraint but gives more leeway towards exact timers.

Soft enrage timers tend to feel more natural, and mean that compositions that have better overall sustain will tend to have a little more time. It’s not as though a full nomad group is going to find it super easy just because they ended up having 15 minutes instead of 10, especially since trying to keep people alive that extra 5 minutes would actually be a struggle.

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

It’s like asking to remove timers from Tequatl or Triple Trouble. Bad move ;(

What if instead of a timer, you had damage from the boss go up exponentially over a set of time, that way you still are under a time constraint but gives more leeway towards exact timers.

That’s exactly what we’re getting, it’s just a harsh amount of damage (already lowered after the beta as per Crystals post). But, yes I agree if they say added 25% damage at 7 mins, then like 50% at 8 mins, 100% at 9 mins, 150% at 10 mins, that’d be ideal as far as I’m concerned. Soft timer, it gets harder, if you take too long you better have a reason for it and be able to survive longer.

That said, GW doesn’t have a trinity system, it’s a more subtle balance. Your tanky guys just need toughness for agro, meaning Rabid on a condi build is pretty much ideal, but maybe Knights or Celestial as alternatives. For healing support again Celestial or maybe keepers if you’re rich. No one should not be focusing on doing as much damage as they can, it’s just that there should be other roles for people to pay attention to as well. Your Healers should not be going to Clerics unless they also intend to tank with toughness (it will screw with agro anyways). Your tanky people shouldn’t need full PVT and surely not all the way to Nomads. GW2 isn’t supposed to have hard roles.

I’m sure people will cite Ele’s but they’re actually a groups most versatile support while doing heavy damage. For a long time the only profession that was truly just DPS was necro and it wasn’t even good at it, now they have some neat support while being decent DPS with Reaper.

Anyways, people should be focusing on damage, timers are needed to keep the pressure of the raid up, otherwise you can just focus on survival and whittle away.

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Posted by: Ensign.2189

Ensign.2189

However I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps.

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that. They were either not built / playing effectively, or the 4 support guys on that team were not setting them up properly – if they were able to DPS at even half effectiveness, they would have readily completed the fight.

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

No, the enrage timers are absolutely necessary to ensure difficulty is on par with what players want and expect. Removing the timer creates a situation whereby players stacking tank stats can weather the boss down at no threat to themselves over the course of an hour. Even gradual difficulty increases are insufficient because it means there’s no real threat associated with the timer until you reach “X minutes” or whatever point would kill you, and all that does functionally is make the timer really drawn out.

No, the timers must stay, and they must be tightly tuned so that the content retains difficulty.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

My biggest problem with having an “Easy Mode” and “Hard Mode” for raids is that it removes something big for players to strive for.

Right now, players just do the very easiest dungeons, and never do any of the hard dungeons. People sell Fractals and Arah because that few people want to do these. Plus, they can use the money they got from doing all those easy dungeons.

If raids had an “Easy” and “Hard” mode, no one would take raiding seriously, even if someone said it was a “Hard mode” kill. Everyone would just say “Yeah, I killed the Vale Guardian” with a party full of Nomad’s characters versus an untimed Vale Guardian. People would strive for the lowest common denominator (as they already do with dungeons), and ignore the hard content.

By making all raids hard, it forces people to respect raids as difficult content that they must either organize and get better for, or just not do at all.

And unlike many other MMOs, GW2 gives plenty to do for less skilled players. Fractals are being revamped, the Verdent Brink has been great, and stuff like grinding masteries or working on a guild hall all are great distractions for casuals.

And by keeping raids exclusive, when someone does manage to beat a wing, or even a single boss, people will look to that person and know that they were part of a truly skilled group. For the first time, GW2 can grant a real sense of accomplishment to PvE players – something that it’s lacked for a long time (see: credit card legendary weapons and RNG fractal skins).

Raids should be brutal and exclusive. The timer should be kept low to prevent players from using too many support characters or too tanky of builds. And no “Easy Mode”, which would ultimately cause people to just devalue raids and never take them seriously.

Problem with that is you’re designing content for a smaller group of players. Eventually someone will say “wait a minute, this isn’t right” Which is very valid.

I’d love if a business model could maintain that but I don’t think any game truly can.

What I’d like to see, especially if every boss is going to use an enrage timer, is when a new wing is opened, the previous gets an easy mode with the timers removed, perhaps if there is a super special item everyone wants from the raid you keep that in hard mode, it’ll serve as a training ground if they really want that reward. But, either way everyone would have the chance to get a taste of the content, just delayed if you don’t want the challenge.

Remove enrage timers from raids

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Posted by: Eponet.4829

Eponet.4829

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that.

Source?

I thought the 14k DPS was only a reasonable expectation in short fights, using the pre bug fixed meteor storm/ice bow and pre-nerf ice bow

7000 dps sounds reasonable for most classes, but easily doing 14000 seems like you’re exaggerating, unless you were intentionally picking out enemies with lower than typical toughness.

(edited by Eponet.4829)

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Posted by: SlyDevil.3952

SlyDevil.3952

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that.

Source?

I thought the 14k DPS was only a reasonable expectation in short fights, using the pre bug fixed and pre-nerf ice bow.

7000 dps sounds reasonable for most classes, but easily doing 14000 seems like you’re exaggerating, unless you were intentionally picking out enemies with lower than typical toughness.

Otimpized dps builds vary from around 12k to 18/19k sustained dps under ideal conditions. Burst dps can go higher, especially if you can get in pre-fight weapon swapping. A sinister engineer can probably be hitting 14k dps, especially with 10 people contributing to vuln as long as they place fields correctly.

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Posted by: Keegers.2573

Keegers.2573

What I’d like to see, especially if every boss is going to use an enrage timer, is when a new wing is opened, the previous gets an easy mode with the timers removed, perhaps if there is a super special item everyone wants from the raid you keep that in hard mode, it’ll serve as a training ground if they really want that reward. But, either way everyone would have the chance to get a taste of the content, just delayed if you don’t want the challenge.

That would be a interesting solution, in a sense give them a special title kind of like “Ahead of the curve” in WoW or a special back piece.

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Posted by: Iris Ng.9845

Iris Ng.9845

You are being too soft, Jerus. Arah didn’t stay difficult for too long. I don’t expect Raid will feel as difficult as we are perceiving it now.

“Raids are like fortune cookies. You eat the cookie and then read the paper scraps.”

- doranduck, 2016 on Lore in Raids

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Posted by: Malkavian.4516

Malkavian.4516

I don’t mind the enrage timers. Though I was hoping something nice would come out of it like say if the boss performed a special move when time hits 0 causing massive damage to all in the party. XD

FOR SKYRIM!!!!!

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Posted by: Mega Skeleton.8259

Mega Skeleton.8259

Enrage timers are fine, though personally I prefer soft enrages, from a design perspective. Like if the room instead of being consumed by aoe 1/3rd (and eventually 2/3rds at a time, it slowly increased until it consumed the whole room, or if the enrage damage increased over time.

Enrages are good though, overall.

[EG] is recruiting!

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Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

My biggest problem with having an “Easy Mode” and “Hard Mode” for raids is that it removes something big for players to strive for.

Right now, players just do the very easiest dungeons, and never do any of the hard dungeons. People sell Fractals and Arah because that few people want to do these. Plus, they can use the money they got from doing all those easy dungeons.

If raids had an “Easy” and “Hard” mode, no one would take raiding seriously, even if someone said it was a “Hard mode” kill. Everyone would just say “Yeah, I killed the Vale Guardian” with a party full of Nomad’s characters versus an untimed Vale Guardian. People would strive for the lowest common denominator (as they already do with dungeons), and ignore the hard content.

By making all raids hard, it forces people to respect raids as difficult content that they must either organize and get better for, or just not do at all.

And unlike many other MMOs, GW2 gives plenty to do for less skilled players. Fractals are being revamped, the Verdent Brink has been great, and stuff like grinding masteries or working on a guild hall all are great distractions for casuals.

And by keeping raids exclusive, when someone does manage to beat a wing, or even a single boss, people will look to that person and know that they were part of a truly skilled group. For the first time, GW2 can grant a real sense of accomplishment to PvE players – something that it’s lacked for a long time (see: credit card legendary weapons and RNG fractal skins).

Raids should be brutal and exclusive. The timer should be kept low to prevent players from using too many support characters or too tanky of builds. And no “Easy Mode”, which would ultimately cause people to just devalue raids and never take them seriously.

Problem with that is you’re designing content for a smaller group of players. Eventually someone will say “wait a minute, this isn’t right” Which is very valid.

I’d love if a business model could maintain that but I don’t think any game truly can.

What I’d like to see, especially if every boss is going to use an enrage timer, is when a new wing is opened, the previous gets an easy mode with the timers removed, perhaps if there is a super special item everyone wants from the raid you keep that in hard mode, it’ll serve as a training ground if they really want that reward. But, either way everyone would have the chance to get a taste of the content, just delayed if you don’t want the challenge.

They won’t do that because it will go against Colin’s speech on it during TwitchCon. Imagine how Underworld is today and the accomplishment it is to solo it. Would it be the same if it were nerfed the next day so that practically any generic team build could beat it?

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Posted by: dlonie.6547

dlonie.6547

I think players are just shocked because they’ve facerolled everything up till now, and the arrival of raids now basically show that they, or their group, were not as good as they thought they were. Some people who thought they were gonna do raiding in GW2 may just not be good enough.

And that’s excellent. People should be excluded have to improve to raid if they’re bad. GW2 literally does this no where else in PvE. Raids finally give us a way to show who is really good, and who is bad.

Well put, just felt that the one edit was need — they don’t need to be excluded if they’re willing to put in the practice :-)

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Posted by: dlonie.6547

dlonie.6547

When only 10% of the population is able to even participate in raids, people will complain. If they are to easy, people will complain. I think splitting raids into two modes would help make both parties happy. It may drain development resources from other parts of the game, but I see having a “hardcore” mode and a “casual” mode may be the only way for Raid PVE to be successful in GW2.

This too. And the pressure from players to nerf content has proven too much for ArenaNet to resist in the past. It’s going to happen at some point. It’s how they handle it that matters. In my opinion, the ideal way to do this would (a) be about a year after the raid is released, and (b) split into easy modes/hard modes.

(a) they should wait, because if the hardcore groups are working on progressing through their 3rd or 4th raid, the first one isn’t as big a deal to beat, and (b) a split is better than a flat out nerf. If they’re going to spend time retuning it, they should at least preserve the difficult version instead of forcing everyone to do the easy mode. This is what we have for dungeons today and it blows.

It wouldn’t go against what Colin said about it always being hard; the difficult mode should always be hard. And to be clear, this isn’t what I want to happen, but I see it happening regardless. And they need to be told to not just flat out nerf it, because that’s been the trend.

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that. They were either not built / playing effectively, or the 4 support guys on that team were not setting them up properly – if they were able to DPS at even half effectiveness, they would have readily completed the fight.

Out of curiosity, does the 20M HP figure include the RGB guardians’ health? 20,000,000 HP / 6 min / 6 zerk players does come out to approximately 7k DPS/zerker, but the DPS downtime from burning the RBG guards through the phase transitions will likely cause a significant increase. That’s a decent chunk of time that you can’t damage the boss.

Also, that number does sound reasonable, but is it accurate? Like, did someone read it with a DPS meter/memory grabber? If so, awesome, it’ll be interesting to see if it changes when the raid is out of beta.

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Posted by: Evapor.6849

Evapor.6849

They could add things like the gambit system I think they talked about doing it for fractals

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Posted by: Ensign.2189

Ensign.2189

Out of curiosity, does the 20M HP figure include the RGB guardians’ health? 20,000,000 HP / 6 min / 6 zerk players does come out to approximately 7k DPS/zerker, but the DPS downtime from burning the RBG guards through the phase transitions will likely cause a significant increase. That’s a decent chunk of time that you can’t damage the boss.

Not entirely sure. It’s a number I’ve seen floating around a couple other threads here and have chosen to run with it. It seems reasonable – based on the videos posted the kills were not exactly clean and there’s still plenty of room to improve on times.

Also, that number does sound reasonable, but is it accurate? Like, did someone read it with a DPS meter/memory grabber? If so, awesome, it’ll be interesting to see if it changes when the raid is out of beta.

I’m basing this on some observed gaps between theoretical DPS (calculated through a spreadsheet) and observed DPS (calculated from memory grabber data). Basically if you compare a really experienced group’s observed DPS to what they would be doing on paper, they hover around the low 80s in terms of efficiency – so around 5/6 of what you would expect them to do – you still need to cast walls and dodge and heal and the like, and you miss a few might stacks here and there and all that adds up to being a bit lower than a perfect kill on paper.

The ‘experienced pug’ number (not super coordinated and vetted, may not have ideal builds, but still clean kills) I’ve been using is 65% – good players with reasonable support and buffing should achieve that.

Both condition engineer and sword herald have theoretical, long term DPS numbers well over 20k, so I’m presuming that a group of solid players getting reasonable, if unoptimized, group support should be putting out about 70% of that – above pug levels, but not too much – which sticks you at about 14k expected during burn phases.

Granted this is based on assumptions and there is a lot of uncertainty, but given the numbers that are being bandied about and conservative assumptions of DPS potential this encounter should be reasonably doable with only 5 DPS players with enough practice, leaving plenty of room for support and tanks. If you’re not killing it with 6-7 DPS, you’re not running effective builds or simply need more practice (the latter is certainly a factor given the downtime over the test weekend – see how things go once it has been out for real for a couple days and people have refined their strategies a bit).

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Posted by: Elitejelly.7462

Elitejelly.7462

I think the timers are fine, however, if this is used on every boss, its gonna get old. For Vale, they might want to adjust the timer a bit.

Theres a couple ways they could use the “Enrage” mechanic.
1. Mechanical Fail: You missed to many of X and he Enrages.
2. Gradually get stronger over time: For this he would gain like X% damage increase every X second(time). This way you don’t draw out the fight so long.

Theres probably a few more we could come up with.

IM SO HYPED FOR HOT I CAN FLIP A TABLE.
(/o_o)/ |_|
hype over.

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Posted by: Ensign.2189

Ensign.2189

This too. And the pressure from players to nerf content has proven too much for ArenaNet to resist in the past. It’s going to happen at some point. It’s how they handle it that matters. In my opinion, the ideal way to do this would (a) be about a year after the raid is released, and (b) split into easy modes/hard modes.

In my mind the mastery system is perfect for this. Once the raid has been out for several months and the very best guilds have their rewards and have moved on, it would be straightforward to introduce masteries that tone down the mechanics of particular fights (take less damage from the floating orbs and passive damage, increased damage against bosses, etc).

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Posted by: Ayrilana.1396

Ayrilana.1396

I think the timers are fine, however, if this is used on every boss, its gonna get old. For Vale, they might want to adjust the timer a bit.

Theres a couple ways they could use the “Enrage” mechanic.
1. Mechanical Fail: You missed to many of X and he Enrages.
2. Gradually get stronger over time: For this he would gain like X% damage increase every X second(time). This way you don’t draw out the fight so long.

Theres probably a few more we could come up with.

The next part of the raid may not even be a boss. So there is the potential for some variability beyond what we saw last weekend.

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Posted by: phys.7689

phys.7689

I understand the need for having timers, as to prevent raid fights from becoming too long due to lack of dps. However I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps. If anet is indeed serious about getting away from zerker only, than maybe they should consider another rage mechanic instead of a timer. Or have two separate raid types, normal mode which would be untimed and Challenge mode, which would be timed.

Thoughts?

those teams can probably win, they just need to be hyper effecient. Less dodging/moving and more soaking dmg in order to do dmg. Its not a playstyle most people who play this game have mastered.

on the otherhand, the best players have been practicing glass style play for 3 years.

If you go glassy, the challenge is not to die
If you go defensive the challenge is to push dps

the former has a lot more practice.

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Posted by: Malediktus.9250

Malediktus.9250

If anything the timers needs to be more strict. It looks too easy atm

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Posted by: Burn.5401

Burn.5401

I understand the need for having timers, as to prevent raid fights from becoming too long due to lack of dps. However I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps. If anet is indeed serious about getting away from zerker only, than maybe they should consider another rage mechanic instead of a timer. Or have two separate raid types, normal mode which would be untimed and Challenge mode, which would be timed.

Thoughts?

As we only know how the first boss works I instantly vote AGAINST your proposal since doing damage AND focusing on survival makes things harder. If you don’t have a timer you can completely gear your raid to be full tanks and do the encounter with a billion mistakes.

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Posted by: Fizz.8763

Fizz.8763

I don’t understand why having most people use damage gear is supposed to be bad. If they balance the damage around making everyone tank up a bit, the boss hp would have to be balanced around that anyway and you’d end up with the same gameplay regardless.

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Posted by: Purple Miku.7032

Purple Miku.7032

I completely support the idea of having enrage timers because if you remove the pressure of having to deal enough damage within a certain amount of time, that’s one less thing to worry about in an encounter and ultimately makes it less difficult. This wouldn’t be a good thing because we don’t want to remove pressure from the raid encounters. If there was no enrage timer then it would be much easier to get this done because then you could take tankier setups and reduce your chance of failing without consequence.

And to all the people concerned about having meta builds focused on maximising damage output… seriously, get a grip. Something referred to as a meta build should be something referred to as the publicly accepted best option available.

The general idea is that you only take as much defensive support as you actually need and all other resources are typically allocated to either the offense or some other utility that’s appropriate. This is how the current previewed raid boss is, and this is how it will always be. For all we know we might get way more complex raid bosses that require even more defensive support, and the same principle will apply to those ones as well.

(edited by Purple Miku.7032)

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

You are being too soft, Jerus. Arah didn’t stay difficult for too long. I don’t expect Raid will feel as difficult as we are perceiving it now.

You bet I’m soft, have you seen this community? There’s an even smaller % of players who want even dungeon level content, and now we’re getting like two or three steps ahead of that. A large portion of the community is going to kitten and moan. It’s going to drown out those that really enjoy it with shear numbers. I think that’ll wear on the support they will receive eventually. There has to be something to bring in the numbers.

I think Easy modes are how you do that. Problem is you can’t give the same rewards and have the normal mode still matter. You can’t give superior rewards without still hearing complaints. It’s a difficult situation no matter how you look at it. But, something needs to happen I think just to bolster numbers. Nerfing the raids is NOT the right answer, that’s just lame. Giving easy modes that replace the content isn’t the answer either. The answer is somewhere in between. Without progressing in gear stats the tried and true method of the content being naturally trivialized such that it opens up to more casual players isn’t an option either.

There’s got to be something though, or we’ll just see the same kittenstorm we’ve seen before. I really think removing the special loot, then removing enrage timer or extended the player cap for a training run option once the next wing is released will be the best option, or at least the best one I can think of right now. “here go learn it, once you have it down you’ll be able to do the hard version and get that special item you were looking for,” maybe add a title to those that get the raid down before the next wing opens?

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Posted by: Enko.6123

Enko.6123

Here’s a simple solution. Kill the boss before the enraged timer expires and get a reward. If it goes down to 0 then either don’t get a reward or get a reduced reward. Still lets you continue on to go to the next boss/wing but encourages people to improve without stopping progress.

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

They won’t do that because it will go against Colin’s speech on it during TwitchCon. Imagine how Underworld is today and the accomplishment it is to solo it. Would it be the same if it were nerfed the next day so that practically any generic team build could beat it?

Unfortunately even Colin’s words are turned around and twisted by ANet to fit whatever their current goals are.

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

Curious, I saw someone say that the speed shrooms will increase attack speed as well as run speed, can anyone confirm/deny that? If so with masteries we’ll have even more damage, meaning even less stressful timers. Again, I have no clue if that’s right, but saw it somewhere and was curious.

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Posted by: SkylightMoon.1980

SkylightMoon.1980

Im very against this. Enrage timers are absolutely necessary for preserving difficulty in these bosses. Otherwise there would be no pressure to execute your play well, but instead could just tank up and out tank the boss for 20 minutes until you’ve done enough DPS, that would be awful.

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Posted by: doddbox.8153

doddbox.8153

Frog masteries will allow you to increase your AS and reset cooldowns, this combined with general experience and strategies no doubt this boss will be face roll in no time. If anything we should be looking to decrease the timer if things become too easy rather than push out pre-preemptive nerfs.

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Posted by: Its Josh.2860

Its Josh.2860

The Enraged timer is really easy to currently beat. With more experience in the raid and game you should be able to improve your dps enough to finally beat the boss.

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Posted by: Thaddeus.4891

Thaddeus.4891

NO the timer is awesome. This give a sense of victory because you can failed if not well prepared enough.

From what I can tell. Group that were able to kill him were usually zerker/sinister (with potentially some healing power), but all had more hybrid build.

It will be super hard to kill him in time with a team using the current dungeon meta. Too many down states and not enough rally while the team is losing DPS by rezzing people.

Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD

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Posted by: VodCom.6924

VodCom.6924

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that.

Source?

I thought the 14k DPS was only a reasonable expectation in short fights, using the pre bug fixed meteor storm/ice bow and pre-nerf ice bow

7000 dps sounds reasonable for most classes, but easily doing 14000 seems like you’re exaggerating, unless you were intentionally picking out enemies with lower than typical toughness.

I’m not an expert on DPS ranking nor speed clear but are these numbers only for single target or for multiple targets ?

7k DPS is what I can sustain for 8 min with the necro pugging build in CoE (I can sustain around 12 vuln on avg and get 25 might on my own. No need for fury since I have deathly perception).

I sometimes look at record runs of arah and a warrior can get more than 30k cumulated damage with 100b on the lupicus. That’s more than 10k dps but it’s not on 8 min average but rather on less than 30 sec long fights.

I’m afraid that sustaining 14k dps on average on a single moving target for 8min is a lot to ask. Of course on 3 or 5 targets this is a piece of cake but that’s not gonna matter for the vale guardian.

Known as Reegar Else, Linda Else, Xiana Else and Thorgall Breakstone

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

Curious, I saw someone say that the speed shrooms will increase attack speed as well as run speed, can anyone confirm/deny that? If so with masteries we’ll have even more damage, meaning even less stressful timers. Again, I have no clue if that’s right, but saw it somewhere and was curious.

Masteries could be a really strong way to ensure profession/build diversity. All professions have equal access to masteries, so if they are sufficiently powerful they could less the power curve of different professions.

How so? Wouldn’t that just mean some professions are overpowered while others become good enough? Personally I think that’s worse, having overpowered things just means there are ways to make the content even easier. Power Creep is my Enemy.

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Posted by: Thaddeus.4891

Thaddeus.4891

Then their DPS sucked. The raid boss has roughly 20 million HP – that’s less than 7k DPS per zerk player. A top flight DPS build should easily do twice that.

Source?

I thought the 14k DPS was only a reasonable expectation in short fights, using the pre bug fixed meteor storm/ice bow and pre-nerf ice bow

7000 dps sounds reasonable for most classes, but easily doing 14000 seems like you’re exaggerating, unless you were intentionally picking out enemies with lower than typical toughness.

I’m not an expert on DPS ranking nor speed clear but are these numbers only for single target or for multiple targets ?

7k DPS is what I can sustain for 8 min with the necro pugging build in CoE (I can sustain around 12 vuln on avg and get 25 might on my own. No need for fury since I have deathly perception).

I sometimes look at record runs of arah and a warrior can get more than 30k cumulated damage with 100b on the lupicus. That’s more than 10k dps but it’s not on 8 min average but rather on less than 30 sec long fights.

I’m afraid that sustaining 14k dps on average on a single moving target for 8min is a lot to ask. Of course on 3 or 5 targets this is a piece of cake but that’s not gonna matter for the vale guardian.

Well it depend on your profession. I think the best source of DPS for that encounter will be Sinister Engineer and not any zerker. We won’t be able to keep the 20k dps of a sinister engineer for 8min, but 12-15k? Probably.

Staff Ele won’t cut it for this engagement so after that, most zerker can in theory reach between 12 and 16k dps in optimal situation. We can probably drop that to 7 and 11k dps.

One important thing is that with 10 players, might, fury and vulnerability upkeep will be comfortable to max out.

Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD

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Posted by: VodCom.6924

VodCom.6924

Staff Ele won’t cut it for this engagement so after that, most zerker can in theory reach between 12 and 16k dps in optimal situation. We can probably drop that to 7 and 11k dps.

I guess eles will have to dust off their good old thunder hammers S/D build ^^

Back on topic : I agree with the others. While my group was wrecked by the vale guard, the enrage timer makes sense in terms of game design and I don’t want to see it removed.

Known as Reegar Else, Linda Else, Xiana Else and Thorgall Breakstone

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Posted by: Burtnik.5218

Burtnik.5218

No, the enrage timers are absolutely necessary to ensure difficulty.

Im not sure what “difficulty” you trying to make here. That raid and it “mechanics” were nothing but walk in the park. The funny part is that AN themself says “zerk meta is gone” yet to beat it..you will actually need zerk. Funny. If they want to make something difficult they gotta look up at other games which already do it right. Trying to cover it behind a small time limit and telling me its there to make it look difficult is pretty much laughable to me. If thats all they can do i hope they wont bother with raids anymore and move out of it.

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Playing Smite since mid s2, f broken gw2.

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Posted by: dlonie.6547

dlonie.6547

I’m not an expert on DPS ranking nor speed clear but are these numbers only for single target or for multiple targets ?

7k DPS is what I can sustain for 8 min with the necro pugging build in CoE (I can sustain around 12 vuln on avg and get 25 might on my own. No need for fury since I have deathly perception).

I sometimes look at record runs of arah and a warrior can get more than 30k cumulated damage with 100b on the lupicus. That’s more than 10k dps but it’s not on 8 min average but rather on less than 30 sec long fights.

I’m afraid that sustaining 14k dps on average on a single moving target for 8min is a lot to ask. Of course on 3 or 5 targets this is a piece of cake but that’s not gonna matter for the vale guardian.

Numbers like “14k DPS” are for ideal circumstances. Flawless rotations, full might/vuln uptime, stationary fights, no dodging, etc.

For an active, mobile fight like Vale Guardian, those circumstances are quite unrealistic. I pointed this out earlier, but I’d like to know whether that 20M HP includes the RGB guardians during the split/phase transition — that’s a lot of DPS downtime if that 20M HP only includes the Vale Guardian and will throw the numbers off significantly.

The funny part is that AN themself says “zerk meta is gone” yet to beat it..you will actually need zerk.

Yes, DPS gear is still important. Top-performing groups will always be in mostly zerker/sinister gear in this game because support/healing/cc isn’t tied to gear stats. They come from traits, weapon, and skill choices.

If you look at the fight, the meta has been significantly upset. Ranged DPS is important. Knockbacks are important. Dedicated condition dealers are important. A tank to manage aggro is necessary. Sustain is required. It’s quite inaccurate to suggest that the meta hasn’t changed.

There’s a lot more going on than than “what gear stats are they using?”

I don’t understand why people are so hell-bent on filling their inventories with alternate sets of gear because gimmicky encounters arbitrarily require them.

(edited by dlonie.6547)

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

No, the enrage timers are absolutely necessary to ensure difficulty.

Im not sure what “difficulty” you trying to make here. That raid and it “mechanics” were nothing but walk in the park. The funny part is that AN themself says “zerk meta is gone” yet to beat it..you will actually need zerk. Funny. If they want to make something difficult they gotta look up at other games which already do it right. Trying to cover it behind a small time limit and telling me its there to make it look difficult is pretty much laughable to me. If thats all they can do i hope they wont bother with raids anymore and move out of it.

You realize they do enrage timers in other games too right.

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

Im not sure what “difficulty” you trying to make here. That raid and it “mechanics” were nothing but walk in the park. The funny part is that AN themself says “zerk meta is gone” yet to beat it..you will actually need zerk. Funny. If they want to make something difficult they gotta look up at other games which already do it right. Trying to cover it behind a small time limit and telling me its there to make it look difficult is pretty much laughable to me. If thats all they can do i hope they wont bother with raids anymore and move out of it.

Based on your response, I genuinely don’t think raids are for you. Responses to your individual remarks follow.

  • The “berserker meta” refers to every single member of a party wearing pure DPS gear with max DPS weapons. The very fact that there are some tank mechanics in raids, serious value in high-CC weapons, and even healers being used in the initial beta wins indicates that the “berserker meta” as it previously applied to dungeons and fractals is not the case for raids.
  • Raids in countless other games already use enrage timers, including ones that function exactly like what we’ve seen in the Vale Guardian encounter.
  • No, really, the timer is there to enforce a certain measure of difficulty and to block the option of everyone wearing full defense gear and taking two hours to beat the boss. That 2 hour run is neither fun nor is it indicative of player skill or content mastery, and thus the skill cap is set higher by mandating a certain measure of DPS to beat the boss in time.
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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

Fixing forum bug for the umpteenth time.

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