Guild Wars 2

MasterBlaster.6827:

Nova Stiker.8396:

NikeEU.7690:

Gorseval is really really challenging and in my opinion will remain unpuggable until the game gets significantly more power creep. But people should refrain from complaining about the tuning until they understand the fight.

Honestly Gorseval felt easier than the Vale Guardian, we got him to 33% nearly everytime, but those kitten enraged spirits make the final stretch very hard.

33% is where the fight becomes challenging tbh, gotta look for so many different things at the same time, it’s just awesome.

Gorseval rage timer is ultimately pointless though, if you don’t have enough DPS the enraged spirits will make him significantly harder to basically unbeatable.

Despite getting him to the final phase many times, only a handful of times we wiped because of the rage timer, even then, he already had 4 of 5 stacks :\

There is an achievement for killing him without any enraged spirit stacks. That should be your goal every pull.

NikeEU.7690:

There is an achievement for killing him without any enraged spirit stacks. That should be your goal every pull.

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

Not to mention it’s no easy task to quickly focus them down when you got 4 or 5 running around. It would be nice if we could get a guardian with a greatsword pull to group them all together.

However we’d lose our DPS and won’t be able to win as none of us had a pure zerker or condi guard >:( we got him to 25% with 0 stacks but the timer would hit 0. Compared to other times we still had nearly 3 minutes but 5 stacks.

I could have gotten my chronomancer and use Temporal Curtain but no one could fully replace my healing/tank role on my Tempest.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

Nova Stiker.8396:

For the DPS role raids you HAVE to run zerkers, vipers or sinisters. Anything else will hinder yourself and your entire team.

Key phrase there is “the DPS role,” implying there are other roles. I don’t think the intent was ever that Berserker/Sinister/Assassin/Viper gear was going to go away. Players in the DPS role are meant to be in suitable DPS gear.

That’s already a much healthier situation for the game than previous PvE content, where (in absolute terms), you’re generally either using the one best meta build or you’re wasting some quantifiable amount of time. The difference is that the enrage mechanic is not all that’s going on. Yes, the enrage mechanic pushes the raid to do as much damage as possible, but you can’t go full YOLO meta glass DPS across the entire raid or some other mechanic is going to kill you instead.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

It is definitely easier said than done, which is why the fight is absolutely brutal and beautiful.

The push – pull of having to give up DPS to deal with mechanics and not having enough dps to beat the enrage is what makes raids compelling content. Keep doing pulls and you’ll get better and better.

NikeEU.7690:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

It is definitely easier said than done, which is why the fight is absolutely brutal and beautiful.

The push – pull of having to give up DPS to deal with mechanics and not having enough dps to beat the enrage is what makes raids compelling content. Keep doing pulls and you’ll get better and better.

I have to agree with this, if you’re a person to give up easily, raids aren’t for you.
The beauty of this content is that you’re running into a massive brickwall and have to practice, try around, change things up until you finally find something that works best for your squad. Even things that look incredibly minor to you or your squad can have a major impact on the outcome of an encounter.

NikeEU.7690:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

It is definitely easier said than done, which is why the fight is absolutely brutal and beautiful.

The push – pull of having to give up DPS to deal with mechanics and not having enough dps to beat the enrage is what makes raids compelling content. Keep doing pulls and you’ll get better and better.

Gorseval is a much better fight than the stupid guardian however 8 pure DPS is barely enough, that’s the biggest issue.

We cannot battle the mechanics for victory because we cannot lose a single dip in DPS, we have the skill, we have the characters and mechanics we need.

We just lack the zerker gear on our characters in the ‘raid that are to end the zerker meta’

I cannot tell you how many times we swapped characters for the best results, that I liked. I tried my daredevil, chronomancer, ranger and warrior for Gorseval. With Gorseval, the challenging part was the kitten orbs and enraged spirits.

What I don’t like is the same issue ALWAYS appears. Sorry, I cannot bring half my characters because we would lose the damage we need for victory.

It’s a sad state when Soldiers will not cut it for DPS, I’m not saying DPS is not important, but for GW2 raids, it’s the MOST important.

So important you need 8 people to not have a single stat into healing power, toughness or vitality.

There are much better ways to design fights that does not include a timer.

Nova Stiker.8396:

NikeEU.7690:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

It is definitely easier said than done, which is why the fight is absolutely brutal and beautiful.

The push – pull of having to give up DPS to deal with mechanics and not having enough dps to beat the enrage is what makes raids compelling content. Keep doing pulls and you’ll get better and better.

Gorseval is a much better fight than the stupid guardian however 8 pure DPS is barely enough, that’s the biggest issue.

We cannot battle the mechanics for victory because we cannot lose a single dip in DPS, we have the skill, we have the characters and mechanics we need.

We just lack the zerker gear on our characters in the ‘raid that are to end the zerker meta’

---

I cannot tell you how many times we swapped characters for the best results, that I liked. I tried my daredevil, chronomancer, ranger and warrior for Gorseval. With Gorseval, the challenging part was the kitten orbs and enraged spirits.

What I don’t like is the same issue ALWAYS appears. Sorry, I cannot bring half my characters because we would lose the damage we need for victory.

It’s a sad state when Soldiers will not cut it for DPS, I’m not saying DPS is not important, but for GW2 raids, it’s the MOST important. So important you need 8 people to not have a single stat into healing power, toughness or vitality.

---

There are much better ways to design fights that does not include a timer.

Soldiers has two defensive stats, with its only offensive stat being raw power. I’d argue that this is a defensively balanced statset. Maybe a Valkyrie or a Cavalier-set might be more suited? Maybe even a mix of either with Knights, though that’s might not cut it either. You’d still be lacking precision, however you can get at least a decent chunk from party buffs. Insignias and Inscriptions for those sets should be cheap, so crafting/stat-changing shouldn’t be too expensive; Raids shouldn’t allow any type of gear to make it.

Out of curiosity though, what kind of design would be better in your opinion? I can only guess that Gorseval doesn’t wipe the party once the timer runs out either, but I don’t know what buff he gets; I only know the Vale Guardian deals 200% (more?) damage upon Enrage, which is clearly no instant-wipe.

The zerker meta is gone since zerker stats are no longer the ONLY stats being used.

Ofcourse the majority of people, who do dps will go full dps 99% of the time. It is like this in every MMO out there.

But now a tank is used, heals are used and so is condi dmg.
The timer NEEDS to be there, otherwise you can go full on tank spec and just slowly kill the boss while he is unable to even touch you -.-

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Yesterday I used my brand new sinister build 12-16k dps build on the vale. He still had 97% health after the timer hit 6 min.

So even if EVery player has this huge dps, we still can’t make it? what is this bullkitten. Unless he has some hidden ‘self heal’ mechanic, this is just so wrong.

This is a joke post, right?

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Nova Stiker.8396:

NikeEU.7690:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Easier said than done, if we focus to much on the enraged spirits when they spawn, the rage timer will tick down to 0 making him unbeatable.

The same issue keeps coming up. I could do X to help beat Y, but we lose the DPS/condi we need.

It is definitely easier said than done, which is why the fight is absolutely brutal and beautiful.

The push – pull of having to give up DPS to deal with mechanics and not having enough dps to beat the enrage is what makes raids compelling content. Keep doing pulls and you’ll get better and better.

Gorseval is a much better fight than the stupid guardian however 8 pure DPS is barely enough, that’s the biggest issue.

We cannot battle the mechanics for victory because we cannot lose a single dip in DPS, we have the skill, we have the characters and mechanics we need.

We just lack the zerker gear on our characters in the ‘raid that are to end the zerker meta’

---

I cannot tell you how many times we swapped characters for the best results, that I liked. I tried my daredevil, chronomancer, ranger and warrior for Gorseval. With Gorseval, the challenging part was the kitten orbs and enraged spirits.

What I don’t like is the same issue ALWAYS appears. Sorry, I cannot bring half my characters because we would lose the damage we need for victory.

It’s a sad state when Soldiers will not cut it for DPS, I’m not saying DPS is not important, but for GW2 raids, it’s the MOST important. So important you need 8 people to not have a single stat into healing power, toughness or vitality.

---

There are much better ways to design fights that does not include a timer.

Soldiers has two defensive stats, with its only offensive stat being raw power. I’d argue that this is a defensively balanced statset. Maybe a Valkyrie or a Cavalier-set might be more suited? Maybe even a mix of either with Knights, though that’s might not cut it either. You’d still be lacking precision, however you can get at least a decent chunk from party buffs. Insignias and Inscriptions for those sets should be cheap, so crafting/stat-changing shouldn’t be too expensive; Raids shouldn’t allow any type of gear to make it.

Out of curiosity though, what kind of design would be better in your opinion? I can only guess that Gorseval doesn’t wipe the party once the timer runs out either, but I don’t know what buff he gets; I only know the Vale Guardian deals 200% (more?) damage upon Enrage, which is clearly no instant-wipe.

If I were to remove the rage timer from Gorseval, give the enraged spirits more damage and prioritizes attacking the targets with the least toughness. Applying conditions like Confusion, Blind and Vulnerability to the targets they are attacking.

Overall, Gorseval is a very good designed fight. Already extremely hard and the issue my guild has was the enrage timer just stopped us from being creative on what we contribute.

You can also remove the 10% damage increase for each one he consumes to he gains periodic boons like might, retaliation, regeneration, protection and resistance. A perma retaliation can be devastating, which, ArenaNet PvP team knows that but apparently the PvE team completely forgets.

Gorseval also needs more health, he felt much squisher than the Vale Guardian. Not to mention he needs condi for some of his attacks. Some poison, boon stealing and blind would make the fight much more challenging as without the spirits Gorseval can be a complete and easy pushover.

The issue I have with Gorseval fight is Gorseval is not much of a threat at all, only the spirits that he eats. Gorseval just needs to be strong, not become strong. Losing the fight in 1 minute vs the 8 minute rage timer still results in a loss

As for the Vale Guardian, that would be a 20 page essay long of personal changes…

CUBEstorm.7192:

In my opinion the enrage timer is one of the biggest issues.

Also some of the mobs have way too much HP to allow other gears setups than “zerkers” (or sinister/viper for dmg resistant enemies).

For example the four big ghosts @ the second boss Gorvoge(?) (and also the walls while being chased by this fog of doom…). They have a big health pool, and the ghosts wipe the whole group if one breaks through, punishing groups which play a bit more defensive and don’t go full damage…

Just looking at the basic mechanics the raids are great. But I fail to understand how ANet wants us to go for build diversity, and yet is still forcing people to go for glassy dmg/condi builds by having an enrage timer.

If you go for to much defense, you are punished. You may say that one druid/ele that goes for healing may be enough , but if this one guy dies, the whole group may be dead too.

And than there is the other topic of testing raids… DnT (who did the testing with other guilds) is, from what I know, very experienced in regards to dungeons etc.

But this is not the average player base! Most people don’t run these souped-up gear compositions they have… Most people don’t play on such a high concentration level, where every button press of the damage rotation is studied in.

For example we have one guy, who doesn’t pay 100% attention the whole time, doesn’t run full glass with his ele. Currently I’m forced to exclude him from raids, just because the benchmark was done with people, who are multiple times better than most players ingame….

I understand that the raids are supposed to be end-game content, but currently I have the impression, that victory in Spirit Vale won’t be archived by very many players.

raids shouldnt be for the average player, and it seems they wont be

You bring DPS to a raid because the goal of the raid is to damage the boss until he is dead. Anything else is secondary. In MMOs with a traditional trinity, the tank and healers are there to support the DPS. The healers keep the tank alive so the tank can keep the aggro and the DPS can do their job.

That red bar over every mob’s head is a health bar. You need to decrease the amount of red to 0 to win. This is what DPS does. If your role is DPS and you are not wearing optimized DPS gear then you should not be there, period.

There is no such thing as “balance” between “doing all the DPS in DPS gear and doing all the DPS in healing gear.” That’s not possible. That’s not possible any more than it’s possible to hammer a nail with a feather.

If you want to bring your nomads to a raid and “do DPS” you are delusional. There is something fundamentally wrong with your critical thinking skills.

Land of Cheese.2584:

You bring DPS to a raid because the goal of the raid is to damage the boss until he is dead. Anything else is secondary. In MMOs with a traditional trinity, the tank and healers are there to support the DPS. The healers keep the tank alive so the tank can keep the aggro and the DPS can do their job.

That red bar over every mob’s head is a health bar. You need to decrease the amount of red to 0 to win. This is what DPS does. If your role is DPS and you are not wearing optimized DPS gear then you should not be there, period.

There is no such thing as “balance” between “doing all the DPS in DPS gear and doing all the DPS in healing gear.” That’s not possible. That’s not possible any more than it’s possible to hammer a nail with a feather.

If you want to bring your nomads to a raid and “do DPS” you are delusional. There is something fundamentally wrong with your critical thinking skills.

InB4 you get flamed and asked “have you beaten the vale guardian?”
I told OP I beat it twice, and I have the proof, and I bet him 9000 gems to prove him wrong, yet he completely ignores my posts and complains that raids shouldn’t not be about killing the boss but singing happy songs while dancing around the mythical creature. I don’t think OP knows what raiding or even the concept of killing mobs to get loot.

TheFamster.7806:

Land of Cheese.2584:

You bring DPS to a raid because the goal of the raid is to damage the boss until he is dead. Anything else is secondary. In MMOs with a traditional trinity, the tank and healers are there to support the DPS. The healers keep the tank alive so the tank can keep the aggro and the DPS can do their job.

That red bar over every mob’s head is a health bar. You need to decrease the amount of red to 0 to win. This is what DPS does. If your role is DPS and you are not wearing optimized DPS gear then you should not be there, period.

There is no such thing as “balance” between “doing all the DPS in DPS gear and doing all the DPS in healing gear.” That’s not possible. That’s not possible any more than it’s possible to hammer a nail with a feather.

If you want to bring your nomads to a raid and “do DPS” you are delusional. There is something fundamentally wrong with your critical thinking skills.

InB4 you get flamed and asked “have you beaten the vale guardian?”
I told OP I beat it twice, and I have the proof, and I bet him 9000 gems to prove him wrong, yet he completely ignores my posts and complains that raids shouldn’t not be about killing the boss but singing happy songs while dancing around the mythical creature. I don’t think OP knows what raiding or even the concept of killing mobs to get loot.

Omg would you shut up. You have done nothing but brag that you beat the Vale Gaurdian, welcome to the club. Welcome to the zerker meta.

The issue is the DPS balance is out of wack, as I stated, if you have 8 out of the 10 people that have anything into vitality, healing power or toughness, you most likely not have enough damage to beat raids.

The issue isn’t DPS, the issue is it’s ONLY zerkers. ONLY vipers or sinisters.
That 1200 power you get from soldiers? Not enough.
Cavaliers? Still doesn’t give enough DPS.
Rabids for condi! Sorry, all that toughness is holding you and your entire team back.

bladex.9502:

Nova Stiker.8396:

TheFamster.7806:

Land of Cheese.2584:

You bring DPS to a raid because the goal of the raid is to damage the boss until he is dead. Anything else is secondary. In MMOs with a traditional trinity, the tank and healers are there to support the DPS. The healers keep the tank alive so the tank can keep the aggro and the DPS can do their job.

That red bar over every mob’s head is a health bar. You need to decrease the amount of red to 0 to win. This is what DPS does. If your role is DPS and you are not wearing optimized DPS gear then you should not be there, period.

There is no such thing as “balance” between “doing all the DPS in DPS gear and doing all the DPS in healing gear.” That’s not possible. That’s not possible any more than it’s possible to hammer a nail with a feather.

If you want to bring your nomads to a raid and “do DPS” you are delusional. There is something fundamentally wrong with your critical thinking skills.

InB4 you get flamed and asked “have you beaten the vale guardian?”
I told OP I beat it twice, and I have the proof, and I bet him 9000 gems to prove him wrong, yet he completely ignores my posts and complains that raids shouldn’t not be about killing the boss but singing happy songs while dancing around the mythical creature. I don’t think OP knows what raiding or even the concept of killing mobs to get loot.

Omg would you shut up. You have done nothing but brag that you beat the Vale Gaurdian, welcome to the club. Welcome to the zerker meta.

The issue is the DPS balance is out of wack, as I stated, if you have 8 out of the 10 people that have anything into vitality, healing power or toughness, you most likely not have enough damage to beat raids.

The issue isn’t DPS, the issue is it’s ONLY zerkers. ONLY vipers or sinisters.
That 1200 power you get from soldiers? Not enough.
Cavaliers? Still doesn’t give enough DPS.
Rabids for condi! Sorry, all that toughness is holding you and your entire team back.

Time to find another more casual game maybe, have you tried Maple Story? maybe Runescape, they have nice casual raids that allow you to afk in tank gear.

Raids in every MMO have always been focused on DPS, as soon as people understand the content they will just stack as many DPS as possible, even in holy-trinity based games.

Also its rather funny you say he has done nothing but brag about killing Vale Guardian, yet all you do is brag about how you got to Gorseval and talk down on people that didn’t.
I’m sorry Anet stepped on your tiny weenie, but you’re just either gonna have to adapt or look for another MMO

You are confusing DPS focused with zerker focused. Get it right. Well, I doubt you can get it right.

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Naturally it’s a must. 80% of your team is there to smack the bosses’ kitten, one’s there to keep everyone alive, and one’s there to mitigate the damage from the boss.

I’m not okay with the fact that your team isn’t necessarily able to actually make it, even WITH zerker/condi gear, simply because some classes are miles behind others.

I like needing to deal the max amount of damage possible, to beat the enrage timer. Hybrid survivability builds should generally be discouraged – which they are. They serve as training wheels, allowing for sloppy play, with a sloppy outcome.

Raids shouldn’t allow for sloppy play.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

That’s every MMO. In 40 player WoW raids you have around 2 or 3 tanks, 5 or 6 healers, and 31 to 33 DPS. That’s 78% to 83%% DPS. Sounds about like the 80% DPS requirement of Guild Wars 2. You’re not going to “tank” something to death and you sure as heck aren’t going to heal it to death. You kill things by doing damage to them.

There is no solution to your problem to be found in any MMO (at least not any MMO that involves killing things).

Also, you’re confusing “DPS” with Berserker or “Zerk”. Sinister and Viper aren’t Berserker. One puts more emphasis on condition damage and the other splits it between condition and power damage. Berserker has no condition damage at all.

There is “power damage” and there is “condition” damage. There is “upfront” damage and there is “over time” damage. What other type of damage are you hoping for?

It is not a must that 80% of the team is DPS. You can easily design encounters where 50% or 80% of the team is HPS or supporter.

WoW has a holy trinity, How easy is it there to switch from DPS to HPS by swapping gear and skills? In GW2 it is very easy to switch roles and to shift the focus from direct DPS to condition DPS or even to HPS.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Let me put it for you in simpler terms.

- Anet made raids targeting specific hardcore playerbase.
- You want Raids to fit your playstyle preferences.
- Raids do not fit your playstyle preference.
- Raids are not for you, you are not the target playerbase.
- Go play something that does fit your playstyle.

Or, adapt your playstyle and complete Raids how ANet actually made them.

There are several different ways to design encounters that would not include an enrage timer. No idea why people seriously think that something like this is a must.

Implement a mechanic per boss, that will basically lead to an wipe if handled wrong and you do not need an enrage timer at all.

frifox.5283:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Let me put it for you in simpler terms.

- Anet made raids targeting specific hardcore playerbase.
- You want Raids to fit your playstyle preferences.
- Raids do not fit your playstyle preference.
- Raids are not for you, you are not the target playerbase.
- Go play something that does fit your playstyle.

Or, adapt your playstyle and complete Raids how ANet actually made them.

It would be quite stupid to make content “hardcore player” exclusive. It is no secret that “hardcore players” are only a tiny fraction of the player base.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

“waaaaaah we have to full glass and actually try to survive instead of slowly wittling down bosses over the course of 30min waaaah”

This is an action based MMO, enforcing mostly full glass specs is the right thing to do in PvE, ANet knows that.

ANet has distinctly stated they do not want that. Enforcing “glass” specs for everyone was never their intention, regardlesd of what you think is “right.”

frifox.5283:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Let me put it for you in simpler terms.

- Anet made raids targeting zerker and viper specs.
- You want Anet to follow their word.
- Anet failed.
- Raids are not for you, unless you are zerkers and vipers
- Go play Dark Souls 2 for the hardcore experience.
I am going to kiss butt and ignore the pathetic ‘hardcore’ experience Anet made.

Let me fix that for you, you’re welcome.

The fact is instead of making challenging content that brings out the most of players skills, utilities and abilities they created a timer to do that for them. Anything can be harder with a time limit, its lazy design.

Gorseval is a complete push over than can be beaten by minor coordination and teamwork, but is suddenly really hard because of that time limit. Imagine that.

The forums were filled with complaints during the beta the lack of imagination with rage timers and the obvious issues those timers would create with needing to go zerker.

They either don’t have the resources or time to revisit this content, the same happened with dungeons, fractals and wvw over the years. My suggestion is check back in with raids 8 months at the earliest and see what’s changed.

You got to remember they had people helping them test that were actually practicing instead, they most likely have little useful feedback right now.

frifox.5283:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Let me put it for you in simpler terms.

- Anet made raids targeting specific hardcore playerbase.
- You want Raids to fit your playstyle preferences.
- Raids do not fit your playstyle preference.
- Raids are not for you, you are not the target playerbase.
- Go play something that does fit your playstyle.

Or, adapt your playstyle and complete Raids how ANet actually made them.

I doubt ANet shares this view-in fact, I bet they would say otherwise, but they can’t share their thoughts as freely as the community can.

In short, I doubt ANet wants every player on squishy DPS gear, because that’s automatically assumed to be “pro”/“hardcore” mode. Their quotes refute this, and so do the ample gear choice available in-game. Player skills have never had anything to do with gear choice anyway, but intended to match any partucular player purpose in the game.

Stop reinforcing the idea that ANet wants DPS gear for raids to prove player “pro-ness”-it’s really based on what used to be, and no doubt they will change these Raids if your playing preference/personal bias-develoling DPS meters and all-ends up being more or less enforced.

If replying ad hominem, please just ignore and feel free to disagree. Enjoy the raids the way you think they are meant to be, anyway.

This thread is flipping ridiculous. As far as the whole zerk meta evolving, it didn’t evolve because content is hard, it evolved because content was easy, and people wanted to get gold the fastest way possible from dungeons. Thus, the zerker meta was born and enforced, not by ANET, not by boss or dungeon mechanics, but by us the players so we could make gold the quickest and fastest way possible. That was, and is, the zerker meta.

This is some major kitten i am witnessing.

Rika.7249:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Naturally it’s a must. 80% of your team is there to smack the bosses’ kitten, one’s there to keep everyone alive, and one’s there to mitigate the damage from the boss.

I’m not okay with the fact that your team isn’t necessarily able to actually make it, even WITH zerker/condi gear, simply because some classes are miles behind others.

I like needing to deal the max amount of damage possible, to beat the enrage timer. Hybrid survivability builds should generally be discouraged – which they are. They serve as training wheels, allowing for sloppy play, with a sloppy outcome.

Raids shouldn’t allow for sloppy play.

Sloppy play isn’t tied to gear-the most common false dichotomy and lie spread out throughout the community. Nowhere has ever officially stated that “passive stats” are meant to train you for “pro gear”, as there’s none in the game, unless Viper’s/Berserker’s makes you feel better about yourself, which is fine but no reason to belittle the “lesser” stat combos (in your mind.)

Nova Stiker.8396:

Sorin.4310:

Nova Stiker.8396:

circuitnerd.5863:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Veneratio.1980:

I hate the timer and if they must have one I see no reason for it to be so low. The mechanics of the fight are great and tough enough that you wipe without worrying about time. If there must be one then 12mins would be a good spot imo.

Oh, I’m not talking about the Vale Guardians timer. Oh no, Gerovage? … Gorvoge? … the boss after him is hands down reaches 0 = GG.

Three of our party members can confirm running Soldiers, Rabids or Cavalier’s will most likely prevent you from beating the second boss.

For the DPS role raids you HAVE to run zerkers, vipers or sinisters. Anything else will hinder yourself and your entire team.

When you say zerker, vipers or sinisters does this mean zerker armor, weapons AND trinkets? or just armor and maybe weapon?

Full glass, right now the biggest challenge is battling the timer. Unless ArenaNet stops kitten ing around and realizes how stupid the enrage timer is, you are punished for playing defensively.

Read: bringing more defensive gear adds some challenge in terms of beating the timer, while taking away some challenge associated with staying alive. In some circles, we call this balance.

Read: Groseval punishes teams that don’t have enough DPS without a timer (even though he has a stupid timer) A full nomad team can never beat Groseval in a million years because of the enraged and charged spirits.

In other words, it’s not more challenge.

There are many more ways to reward DPS outside a timer. Apparently you fail to understand that.

I don’t fail to understand that. What I do fail to understand is how people are having trouble beating it within the first 24 hours of release is any indication of what the norm is going to be a few weeks from now. DnT has shown that a month of testing made the content relatively easy for em. Why don’t you give it some time before jumping to these conclusions?

Star Ace.5207:

Rika.7249:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Naturally it’s a must. 80% of your team is there to smack the bosses’ kitten, one’s there to keep everyone alive, and one’s there to mitigate the damage from the boss.

I’m not okay with the fact that your team isn’t necessarily able to actually make it, even WITH zerker/condi gear, simply because some classes are miles behind others.

I like needing to deal the max amount of damage possible, to beat the enrage timer. Hybrid survivability builds should generally be discouraged – which they are. They serve as training wheels, allowing for sloppy play, with a sloppy outcome.

Raids shouldn’t allow for sloppy play.

Sloppy play isn’t tied to gear-the most common false dichotomy and lie spread out throughout the community. Nowhere has ever officially stated that “passive stats” are meant to train you for “pro gear”, as there’s none in the game, unless Viper’s/Berserker’s makes you feel better about yourself, which is fine but no reason to belittle the “lesser” stat combos (in your mind.)

No, it hasn’t been stated, but it’s what makes sense for PvE.
PvE in this game is all about active defense and preventing to take or at least damage by whatever means you have at your disposal with said active defense. I mean why do you think this is an Action-MMO?
Besides, pretty much every content up to now was clearable in any kind of gear, with any kind of traits. It might’ve taken longer, sure, but it was doable.
Raids are meant to be hardcore content, having strict environments and not leaving much space for error while optimizing your efficiency in every way possible – among it, who would’ve thought, dps, along with support and control, because this is the trinity in this game, not dps heal tank. Guess what, support and control work just as nicely in glass-gear.
This isn’t a failure on ANets part, this is a failure on your part recognizing the fact that this is how raids are supposed to be, not a snoozefest where you can sleep your way through.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Star Ace.5207:

Rika.7249:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Rika.7249:

I’m completely fine with Berserker being needed, and Sinister being needed.

I’m not fine with needing to step down from my Herald Zerker, when my group needs condition damage, because Sinister Revenant isn’t viable, compared to Sinister Engineer.

I am fine with zerker.
I am fine with sinister.

I am not fine with 80% of your team must be zerker or sinister. As it is an absolute MUST.

Naturally it’s a must. 80% of your team is there to smack the bosses’ kitten, one’s there to keep everyone alive, and one’s there to mitigate the damage from the boss.

I’m not okay with the fact that your team isn’t necessarily able to actually make it, even WITH zerker/condi gear, simply because some classes are miles behind others.

I like needing to deal the max amount of damage possible, to beat the enrage timer. Hybrid survivability builds should generally be discouraged – which they are. They serve as training wheels, allowing for sloppy play, with a sloppy outcome.

Raids shouldn’t allow for sloppy play.

Sloppy play isn’t tied to gear-the most common false dichotomy and lie spread out throughout the community. Nowhere has ever officially stated that “passive stats” are meant to train you for “pro gear”, as there’s none in the game, unless Viper’s/Berserker’s makes you feel better about yourself, which is fine but no reason to belittle the “lesser” stat combos (in your mind.)

No, it hasn’t been stated, but it’s what makes sense for PvE.
PvE in this game is all about active defense and preventing to take or at least damage by whatever means you have at your disposal with said active defense. I mean why do you think this is an Action-MMO?
Besides, pretty much every content up to now was clearable in any kind of gear, with any kind of traits. It might’ve taken longer, sure, but it was doable.
Raids are meant to be hardcore content, having strict environments and not leaving much space for error while optimizing your efficiency in every way possible – among it, who would’ve thought, dps, along with support and control, because this is the trinity in this game, not dps heal tank. Guess what, support and control work just as nicely in glass-gear.
This isn’t a failure on ANets part, this is a failure on your part recognizing the fact that this is how raids are supposed to be, not a snoozefest where you can sleep your way through.

Personal attack, as expected, along with assumptions. Just disagree if you are going to do that, and move on.

This community is probably one of the most obnoxious MMO communities I’ve ever seen strictly because of how many people demand for damage to be normalised across all gearsets.

There’s literally no way to make these people happy other than removing power, precision, ferocity and condition damage from the attributes.

-gives up and walks away-

Purple Miku.7032:

This community is probably one of the most obnoxious MMO communities I’ve ever seen strictly because of how many people demand for damage to be normalised across all gearsets.

There’s literally no way to make these people happy other than removing power, precision, ferocity and condition damage from the attributes.

-gives up and walks away-

What the hell are you talking about?

This is a thread about the zerker meta staying around despite ArenaNet saying they want to limit the viability of zerker gear.

Apparently you missed it.

What happened in raids is ArenaNet did their exact opposite intentions, zerker armor is no longer just viable, it’s NECESSARY. So much so that any defensive stats can prevent victory.

So far there is no possible way to beat the first two bosses without more than half your team in zerker armor. The other half in vipers/sinisters.

Instead of making difficult mechanics to concur, they made rage timers. Lazy.

I think this is more of a player skill problem. You are failing your damage rotations in a difficult encounter so you have less leeway. As it should be.

spoj.9672:

I think this is more of a player skill problem. You are failing your damage rotations in a difficult encounter so you have less leeway. As it should be.

I used to think that until we got to Gorseval, he gave us a very interesting problem.

Here is the story: We are a pretty skilled PvP group with great damage rotations, only 4 of us were not vipers or zerkers. We had a soldier revenant, two hybrid dps and a Tempest running celestials. We could only get Gorseval to 25% health with better damage rotations than most people in the game.

After a couple hours of battling we could only really knock him down to 25% each time, the Enraged spirits were giving us issues, each fight ended with him with 5-8 stacks. So focus and quickly kill the Enraged Spirits? Sure! But now our DPS is going to be lower to focus on Gorseval, thus giving the enrage timer plenty of time to get to 0 resulting in a wipe.

So just group them together with pull skills like Temporal Curtain or Binding Blade? Our full zerker warrior hoped onto his cleric guardian and success! Thanks to the CC we were able to quickly group the enraged spirits and keep the boss fight at 0 stacks.

Success? Right? Well no, we lacked the DPS because our warrior had to swap. Upon discussion and chatting we discovered no one had a pure zerker guardian or chronomancer ready at hand. So we were stumped, to take care of the biggest issue at hand, we have to sacrifice DPS, because we did, the boss becomes unbeatable.

tl;dr Lets pretend our entire group had optimal DPS rotations, except in soldiers gear. The bosses would be impossible to defeat. Even if our team were complete kitten s with their damage and spamming 1 and 2, if they were pure zerkers, it would still provide better results than a full soldiers.

omg could we just stop with this garbage. Just craft your armor, equip it, and do what normal humans do: enjoy the game never thinking about it again. Seriously, why is the prefix on your armor so interesting to you? The core of your build is your traits/utilities/weapon choices anyways, not some passive stat bonus.

thrag.9740:

omg could we just stop with this garbage. Just craft your armor, equip it, and do what normal humans do: enjoy the game never thinking about it again. Seriously, why is the prefix on your armor so interesting to you? The core of your build is your traits/utilities/weapon choices anyways, not some passive stat bonus.

oh, we are. But we sure ain’t happy about it, especially ArenaNet lying to everyone. Some of us were actually looking forward to trying out our custom raid gear setup only to discover you got to swap back to your dungeon armor.

Nova Stiker.8396:

oh, we are. But we sure ain’t happy about it, especially ArenaNet lying to everyone. Some of us were actually looking forward to trying out our custom raid gear setup only to discover you got to swap back to your dungeon armor.

And after you had make that custom armor then what? Are you going to make a custom set of armor for every single raid wing? Or are you going to re customize it in the mystic forge every week for the raids? Are you ever going to think about it again?

Raiding in nearly every MMO requires the non healers or tanks to do BIG DAMAGE. The highest DPS is and always will be glass that’s Zerk / Sin or Ramp / Vip in GW2. Anyone not the healer or the tank who isn’t glass is hurting more than they’re helping. The only possible exception is a chronomancer who won’t out DPS an ele but is invaluable because they boost everyone else.

I’ve raided for 15 years and this is what it is. If another set gave higher damage than zerk we would all run that instead, I honestly don’t see what your issue is. You want the option to run PTV as a DPS? Not in my raid you won’t.

Rika.7249:

I like needing to deal the max amount of damage possible, to beat the enrage timer. Hybrid survivability builds should generally be discouraged – which they are. They serve as training wheels, allowing for sloppy play, with a sloppy outcome.

Raids shouldn’t allow for sloppy play.

Clearly PvPers are almost all terrible players.

The only reason that the all glass cannon sets are so prevalent is because the battles are designed to make them prevalent. The fact that the bosses tunnel vision on the person that they should be least interested in attacking gives everyone a fair amount of safety.

Attributes aren’t associated with poor play, they’re associated with what the encounters require. If you look at PvP, you actually see a good amount of stat diversity, because it has much more dynamic requirements. Full survivability healing bunkers tend to run clerics because they need to be able to survive within a small constrained area against multiple opponents long enough for the rest of their team to get there, or at least waste the enemy team’s time long enough that their teammates take the other objectives, while still being useful enough to contribute once the others do arrive, celestial gear tends to be run on all around characters that vary their plan based on the flow of battle, as well as seeing some use on bunkers that want a more offensive stat set to counter glass cannons, marauder’s is popular for offensive builds in heavy condition metas due to maintaining close to berserker type power damage in cases where everyone tunes themselves against conditions over power, while providing reasonable survivability, even berserker stats have their place in builds focused around setting up heavy burst to take out heavy sustain bunkers (who lack the damage to truely punish their full glass cannon nature) as quickly as possible.

Almost every stat set has its purposes for which it’s usable, whereas the raid is tuned to be incredibly one dimensional. I understand that they do have limited AI, but, the fights also seemed designed to promote the sort of playstyle that makes full glass cannon work in general rather than, as it is in PvP, for a purpose.

Nova Stiker.8396:

ODB.6891:

hurrado.2346:

A-net logic to kill the zerker meta… Add timers to the boss so you have to dps like mad to win.

Clearly you don’t even understand what the zerker meta was even about. I’ll enlighten you. The zerker meta was to bring ALL zerker geared players…no healers, no tanks, nothing but top direct damage (builds, gear, etc). That is clearly not what is happening now as you have healers, pseudo tanking, and condition damage builds/gear. Please stop regurgitating things that you don’t understand.

Stop posting when you never gotten past the Vale Guardian.

I can tell you for a fact, after dozen hours of fighting, trying different builds, professions I will tell you what you need for success:

• 1 Tempest Auramancer to tank and heal.
• 1 zerker Revenant
• 2 condi trap rangers/bomb engineers
• ZERKER EVERYTHING ELSE

I cannot stress enough how taking Soldiers, Celestial, Shamans can mean you and your team will never beat raids. If you cannot beat phase 1 in 2 minutes, your team does not have enough DPS.

Good game design?

P.S. A full nomad team would be more build diversity
P.S.S. A fully defensive team will never get past Grosval anyways, so defending the rage time is really stupid.

What on the hell are you talking about? You clearly are another person who doesn’t know what they are talking about. My post had nothing to do with beating the Vale Guardian in particular…it was about phiw tears regarding a false assertion that the berserker meta was even a problem in the new raids in general. Your post was so ignorant that you even proved that there is no berserker meta with your own reply. You are apparently so ignorant that you couldn’t understand your own response. You clearly listed non berserker geared roles in your formula for success. You are the one who should stop posting if you cannot comprehend the posts of others or even your own.

I really miss the hard mode from GW1.
Think about it: a “normal” mode, without the time limit, basically doable with good strategy and coordination and almost every build.
A “hard” mode, like the one we have now or even harder.
Different difficulty, different reward.
I , the non skilled player, can enjoy the game entirely (I’ve payed money forplaying, exactly like the “meta” player), others who seek for challenge are happy as well.
Where is the problem in this solution?

Listen to this, because they’re facts:

For the way the Vale Guardian (that’s all I’ve fought as of yet) is setup, the enrage timer disallows for build diversity among players in the raid.

You cannot have more than 1 person running a fully defensive or defensive support build. You will run out of time and die. Furthermore, you can’t even have people who want to go hybrid. Everyone is either maximum DPS or it’s a failed run. There’s a long list of players who won’t be able to beat this raid boss simply because their build doomed them from the start.

A team of Berserker’s, Knight’s, Nomad’s, Sinister, Clerics, etc is diverse. It will also never beat the raid, which is sad.

ArenaNet said they were attempting to promote more build diversity but this enrage timer does the exact opposite.

Now, I’m a fantastic player. I’m super great. But, I’m very limited in the raid groups I can even attempt to join. I play a tanky healing druid in full ascended Nomad’s gear. I don’t DO DPS. I never die, ever. I picked a stat set that played to my personal strengths and I’m very successful with it. But, I can’t join ANY groups that already have anyone else who’s in even the slightest amount of defensive gear because the timer will go out and we’ll all die.

Me, with my 26k HP, 2700 toughness, near infinite heals and ridiculous hand eye coordination; destroyed because everyone else instantly died because an arbitrary timer reached 00:00.

Roll Berserker’s or Sinister or Viper’s, right? The problem I have with that is…that I don’t enjoy playing that type of character. If I were forced to pick between 1-3 preset builds that have a chance of completing content I’d just uninstall the game and start reading more books. I enjoy what I built and what I built, provided I’m really good at it, should have a decent shot at completing any form on content.

I’ve never complained about about something being too difficult in my life, because I know that if I can’t do it I’m just not good enough yet. The thing with this raid is, I’m more than good enough. I’m just not allowed.

In my opinion, the timer needs to be gotten rid of entirely. I should be able to put 10 people in Nomad’s gear in a raid and have a chance at winning. It’ll take all day but it should still be possible.

I see the raid as the great homogenizer. It’s the great machine that makes people give up every stat set except the few that stand a chance in the raid. That’s poor design. A homogenizer is the exact opposite of a diversifier.

Sure I could say, “what the heck, I’ll just go full glass and invite only full glass and play like that”. But, I don’t want to. So, if I have to, I won’t play anymore.

I’ll continue to attempt it with the groups I go with, but I don’t see any real hope for beating it until the timer is either increased or removed all together.

Maybe you’re results and experiences are different. But I’m talking about mine.

bai long.2085:

Listen to this, because they’re facts:

For the way the Vale Guardian (that’s all I’ve fought as of yet) is setup, the enrage timer disallows for build diversity among players in the raid.

You cannot have more than 1 person running a fully defensive or defensive support build. You will run out of time and die. Furthermore, you can’t even have people who want to go hybrid. Everyone is either maximum DPS or it’s a failed run. There’s a long list of players who won’t be able to beat this raid boss simply because their build doomed them from the start.

A team of Berserker’s, Knight’s, Nomad’s, Sinister, Clerics, etc is diverse. It will also never beat the raid, which is sad.

ArenaNet said they were attempting to promote more build diversity but this enrage timer does the exact opposite.

Now, I’m a fantastic player. I’m super great. But, I’m very limited in the raid groups I can even attempt to join. I play a tanky healing druid in full ascended Nomad’s gear. I don’t DO DPS. I never die, ever. I picked a stat set that played to my personal strengths and I’m very successful with it. But, I can’t join ANY groups that already have anyone else who’s in even the slightest amount of defensive gear because the timer will go out and we’ll all die.

Me, with my 26k HP, 2700 toughness, near infinite heals and ridiculous hand eye coordination; destroyed because everyone else instantly died because an arbitrary timer reached 00:00.

Roll Berserker’s or Sinister or Viper’s, right? The problem I have with that is…that I don’t enjoy playing that type of character. If I were forced to pick between 1-3 preset builds that have a chance of completing content I’d just uninstall the game and start reading more books. I enjoy what I built and what I built, provided I’m really good at it, should have a decent shot at completing any form on content.

I’ve never complained about about something being too difficult in my life, because I know that if I can’t do it I’m just not good enough yet. The thing with this raid is, I’m more than good enough. I’m just not allowed.

In my opinion, the timer needs to be gotten rid of entirely. I should be able to put 10 people in Nomad’s gear in a raid and have a chance at winning. It’ll take all day but it should still be possible.

I see the raid as the great homogenizer. It’s the great machine that makes people give up every stat set except the few that stand a chance in the raid. That’s poor design. A homogenizer is the exact opposite of a diversifier.

Sure I could say, “what the heck, I’ll just go full glass and invite only full glass and play like that”. But, I don’t want to. So, if I have to, I won’t play anymore.

I’ll continue to attempt it with the groups I go with, but I don’t see any real hope for beating it until the timer is either increased or removed all together.

Maybe you’re results and experiences are different. But I’m talking about mine.

Full cleric druid reporting in to say we killed the boss with 36 seconds left on the enrage timer and had a couple of things that limited our DPS time.

We never had any problems with DPS the whole time and we just wiped to mistakes.

I’m not the best playing in the world and no doubt from that write up your skill goes beyond even mine, however I did notice I spent most my time healing and making sure everyone was topped up so nothing could go wrong (downed players do hella less damage) so I really don’t see why you think you can’t run some defensive stats. The only time I’d try to do DPS was on the split phase when we were burning it through anyways.

I’ll have to do second boss tomorrow and see whats different and report back.

and by the way team, I don’t know if you all have raided in other games but they usually might have 2 healers, 2 tanks and 6 dps.

In this we’ve got 1 tank, 1 healer, a class or maybe two dedicated to buffing, a kitten load of stuns, a chrono for buffs and a few other odd bits.

I raided in WoW for ages and when I would dps I don’t think I ever had anything that didnt give me max damage. You’d skip massive survival talents just to make kill happen faster, GW2 has followed the same formula.

bai long.2085:

A team of Berserker’s, Knight’s, Nomad’s, Sinister, Clerics, etc is diverse. It will also never beat the raid, which is sad.

True but a group of Sinister, Valkyrie, Viper, Zerker, Assassin will. Hell there is even a place for a celestial, cleric, zealot or soldier guy.

Now I can’t talk about the second boss, i’m not there yet. But the first boss, you don’t need 9 glass canon and 1 tank. People with this kind of composition are killing the Vale Guardian with 1-2min left on the timer. So you could really have some Marauder, Celestial, Zealot in there too. Hell the tank could be Normad or Knight. So every single gear you mentionned can’t be usefull for the raid. But if we gonna have role in the raid, we need a balance in the team.

A lot of complaining about the trivial Vale Guardian enrage timer. Once you guy to Gorseval you’ll really have something to complain about.

Vale Guardian enrage timer could be decreased by two minutes and still be possible, I reckon

It feels like it’s just there to make sure that you understood the mechanics and don’t have 4-5 tanks, not like an actual deadline in the fight.