Guild Wars 2

Is this how the mentality of the mass works?

A few days ago there was a ton of posts about how meta is important in raids and that casual players who spend their lives on playing general PvE can’t access raids because they don’t feel like following the meta . You can read any thread touching on raids and you will find people saying something exacly like this. But all of sudden it’s no longer a problem the 10-man raid squads are.

Imagine 5-man raid party and then think about the meta.

NO CLASS COMPOSITION DIVERSITY

Meta party composition if we had 5-man raids:

• PS,
• Tempest,
• Tempest,
• Druid (tank),
• Chronomancer, because this class offers more DMG than Revenant due to quickenss and alacrity and with 2 elementalists there would be enough damage even without increased boon duration.

This would be the most optimal composition for almost any of the bosses.

Other classes can forget about being taken into raids. We would rarely see a necromancer and a revenant. But classes like: guardian, engineer and thief wouldn’t be taken into raids.

Think about that. 5-man raids would not only cause the creation of meta builds for raids, but also a strict party composition.

I’m pretty sure that changing the build to go into raid is easier for a casual player than creating a completly new profession + getting an ascended gear only to try out raids.

Of course full-ascended gear would be always required. In a 5-man group each person would be even more responisble for DPS so losing 5% of your stats makes much bigger deal in a 5-man group than in a 10-man group. There would be less people to cover the DPS loss.

PS. A lot of raid related discussions quickly goes off-topic. I wish to remind you that this discussion is not about “tiered difficulties” or any other similar ideas. I urge the group of people who argue about the same thing in every raid related topic to stay away from this one. Thank you.

edit: I misplaced mesmer with revenant.

There is never enough damage. Commander chronotank gonna be a thing.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

There is never enough damage. Commander chronotank gonna be a thing.

I have forgotten how crucial Chronomancer is for Matthias and Sloth.

Absolutely agree with TC.

5-man raids would be beefed up versions of pre HoT dungeon elitism, just on steroids.

It’s amasing how fast people forget how much complaining was going on about lack of gear diversity and the zerker meta.

At best there would be maybe 2 meta groups that work, similar to fractals at the moment (which are faceroll easy content so this might not even be a realistic assumption) but that’s a best case scenario.

With the two Tempest Slots, on some Bosses you have a different Class but pretermined by the Bosses Mechanics.

On Matthias
1 PS
1 Healer
1 Chrono
1 Dragonhunter ( You need some Backup Reflects )
1 Tempest

Sloth
PS Healer Chrono
1 Tempest
1 Necro

With 10 Man you can fill other Slots with different Classes and thus have more Class diversity.

Also try the same Mechanics on a 5 Man Group
Just for Example
Green Circle 4 Man doing this on a 5 Man Group and then possible overlaps with CC Phase? Have fun
Matthias Fire Phase Sacrifice overlapping with Corruption and Well of the Profane? Good Luck getting the Guy out of the Sacrifice

1 Dragonhunter ( You need some Backup Reflects )

covered by druid, axe in second weaponset. most people fail to realize that, whyever thats the case.

everything else: boss hp would need to be scaled down, mechanics need to be reworked, so like only 2 people have to go green or the cooldown of certain mechanics is longer.

but at the other hand…i would have the feeling this isn’t a raid anymore.
i think 10 people is the way to go…not too few people but also on the other hand its not too many.

and for the challenge you can still low man it

Auramancer can cover reflects while attuned to Earth. Every single player will get Magnetic Aura.

• Staff – Magnetic Aura,
• Dagger/Warhorn – Sand Squall,
• Aftershock,
• Rebound,
• Overload Earth.

Plenty of reflects. No one would need Wall of Reflection in a 5-man raid.

Currently you can’t be sure that everyone will get the Magnetic Aura, so WoR works better, but in 5-man group there is a 100% chance that every single party member will be affected by the Magnetic Aura.

As someone who as low manned raids quite a bit, a lot of the people posting “optimal comps” aren’t really seeing the bigger picture with 5 man raids. When your resources are stretched thin, classes that can do a lot of different things suddenly become super useful, because you need to pack as much utility into each party member as you can. Guardian and Engineer are both powerful in such a scenario (as are druid and tempest). Also, chronomancer’s value drops off hard as you lose DPS classes, and with only 5 players you would only really bring a chrono if stack is mostly stationary (assuming there even is a stack) or if you badly need the invulns. Necro is pretty kitten useless in 5 man because their damage has a huge ramp up, they have crap for group buffs, most of their utility is fear+chill, and epidemic requires a much bigger group investment into conditions to be useful with only 5 players. Thief is almost as bad. Everything else is situationally usable.

And really I don’t see how you can say anything bad about class diversity in theoretical 5 man raids when it is already pathetically bad in 10 man. Here’s something I wrote about the downsides of 10 man raids on reddit:

me

each individual is much less impactful in a 10 man squad, and so even though the encounters are more difficult to coordinate they are easier on an individual level. More importantly, many mechanics and skills simply were not intended for 10 man instanced content. Even without any other condi classes, a single necro with epidemic can clear a large number of adds in a couple seconds just because of incidental conditions applied by his 9 teammates. A druid in his subgroup of 5 people, all missing 1 hp, will still prioritize healing those players over someone else who is about to go down, which is pretty clunky. There is virtually zero intentional combo usage in raids because with 10 people attacking the same target it’s too difficult to know what you’re going to get (and perhaps even more alarming is the fact that combos are completely unimportant to raid success altogether).
10 vs 5 players also has a huge bearing on the viability of more flexible classes like engineer, as well as the power of support classes. It’s pretty silly how the optimal comps for every single fight are almost identical, but it makes sense because with 10 players instead of 5, support mechanics become completely insane and you’re essentially forced to add the classes that provide them to your group because they make it so much easier to meet the DPS checks (e.g. there is absolutely no justification for not having a mesmer, druid, and warrior for any fight with 10 player squads, but with 5 there is actually some room for debate depending on what is needed for the encounter).
I don’t dislike the idea of 10 man encounters in general, but if all the raids going forward are going to be 10 man content it would be nice if there were some modification to a number of specific mechanics, skills, and traits because they’re fundamentally unhealthy for raids as a whole.

I love the current raids and of course there are many upsides to having 10 players as well, but suggesting that 5 man raids would be horribly worse for some reason seems pretty far off base.

What you’re forgetting is that the entire purpose of elite specs is to allow all classes access to a larger variety of specialized roles

Currently, there is literally one usable role for various things. However, if Anet does its job with the elite specs, you could very easily end up with a comparable tank/dps/support/whatever build for every given class.

That is literally the direction Anet has been trying to move since the release of the game. That class does not matter, and that any class can equally and adequately fulfill any given role.

yeah, maybe in the future we have a ps warrior, a elixier engi and a lets say condi thief with venoms who all can share 25 stacks of might to the group and all have arround the same dmg & support without one being so much better then the other ones.

or maybe the warrior gets an dps heavy build wich makes him as good as an ele or thief so you can bring him to do deeps instead of his heavy support.

but as long as there aren’t more elite specs wich adds more unique group buffs or also removes some (so you have to choose, either go deeps or support, but not both),
we have to work with what is given…and that hasn’t changed much since the speedclear dungeon days. the setup didn’t change much…a bit got added, but thats it.

status quo is: we have only one elite spec and it nearly all cases its mandatory…or lets say…dumb if you don’t choose to run it.

Well in the Future maybe Play how I want is possible, but more Elite Specs are needed and a Balance Split. A Goal from Anet since Release, and nope Play how I want is not using a Shaman’s Greatsword Warrior and then expecting to be good. Play how I want means having more than enough viable Builds that you could play a Rifle Warrior for example and still be effective. But try to buff Rifle Warrior until it gets Viable and wait for the PvP Section to react.

So for much more Builds to be viable Anet needs to dish out the Balance Split and more Elite Specs, oh and being careful with Balance, then we’ll see more Build that are good Viable etc etc.

There is always going to be an optimal class for a certain role. no matter how many elite specs anet adds.

There is also always going to be special snowflakes that think they, and their build is somehow superior because they picked the details of the build themselves.

There is always going to be certain desirable roles in a given encounter.

5 vs 10 – the number of classes taken for each encounter is actually unlikely to shift very far. I often see 2-4 of a single class in a group comp, and often hear about groups running a mirror comp ( 2 identical 5 man parties).

Mechanically not very much would need to change. Merely HP and BB values for several encounters.

Only having a 5 man version of raids I suspect would remove the possibility of some interesting group compositions.

However the reverse side of the coin is finding 9 other players is making it difficult for many to find or organise groups. Meaning there is no group compositions at all for a group of players.

If ( and this is a big IF) anet is planning to try another raid mode to make things more accessible to more players, I’d suggest allowing both 5 AND 10 man instances of the raid to be formed.
Another alternative would be to consider making “elite instances” along side raids( I’m sure the raid team is perfectly capable of 5 man content). Now we could call these instances raids, or half-raids or even.. “Elite Dungeons”.

I don’t think the 10-man part has ever been the core problem of raids. The problem is that 7-9 of those ten typically have to fill specific roles and each do them very well.

Finding ten people to do a raid with is fairly easy, it should take, at most, twice as long as finding a Fractal/Dungeon group. The hard part is finding the RIGHT ten people, having at least one person in the core utility roles who is up to the task, and solid performers in the other slots.

The way to make finding a raid party easier is to place less of a burden on “getting it right.” Allow for more flexibility in group composition, so that a randomly compiled group of ten members stands a solid chance of completing the boss fight out of the gate, without needing to prune and manage the group composition to get everything “just so.”

The difference between a great raid party and a whatever raid party should be that the former group clears it more quickly, not that the latter group cannot clear it at all because they are lacking in core areas.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t think the 10-man part has ever been the core problem of raids. The problem is that 7-9 of those ten typically have to fill specific roles and each do them very well.

Finding ten people to do a raid with is fairly easy, it should take, at most, twice as long as finding a Fractal/Dungeon group. The hard part is finding the RIGHT ten people, having at least one person in the core utility roles who is up to the task, and solid performers in the other slots.

The way to make finding a raid party easier is to place less of a burden on “getting it right.” Allow for more flexibility in group composition, so that a randomly compiled group of ten members stands a solid chance of completing the boss fight out of the gate, without needing to prune and manage the group composition to get everything “just so.”

The difference between a great raid party and a whatever raid party should be that the former group clears it more quickly, not that the latter group cannot clear it at all because they are lacking in core areas.

As great as that is, there is a giant problem allowing people to have a whatever party. Anet allowed whatever parties to exist and complete Dungeons and that made dungeons become super easy once people figured out how to play the game. If you allowed that for raids, sure casuals could complete raids but anyone looking for hard content will not find it because it was made way to easy because terrible group compositions are allowed to clear it. And since that is the case, raids would become like dungeons and be a failure at what they were made to accomplish.

As great as that is, there is a giant problem allowing people to have a whatever party. Anet allowed whatever parties to exist and complete Dungeons and that made dungeons become super easy once people figured out how to play the game.

Which is only a problem if you’re the sort of player that does not enjoy super easy games. If you do enjoy super easy games, then this becomes a non-issue.

Specific to raids, I think the best solution is to allow both groups to be satisfied. Have one version that requires the current difficult to form and unwieldy min-max groups, and another version that is more loose and freewheeling, and allow players to choose for themselves which they find more fun. Respect their decisions, even if you don’t agree with them, and everything will work out fine.

Dinosaurs.8674:

As someone who as low manned raids quite a bit, a lot of the people posting “optimal comps” aren’t really seeing the bigger picture with 5 man raids. When your resources are stretched thin, classes that can do a lot of different things suddenly become super useful, because you need to pack as much utility into each party member as you can. Guardian and Engineer are both powerful in such a scenario (as are druid and tempest). Also, chronomancer’s value drops off hard as you lose DPS classes, and with only 5 players you would only really bring a chrono if stack is mostly stationary (assuming there even is a stack) or if you badly need the invulns. Necro is pretty kitten useless in 5 man because their damage has a huge ramp up, they have crap for group buffs, most of their utility is fear+chill, and epidemic requires a much bigger group investment into conditions to be useful with only 5 players. Thief is almost as bad. Everything else is situationally usable.

And really I don’t see how you can say anything bad about class diversity in theoretical 5 man raids when it is already pathetically bad in 10 man. Here’s something I wrote about the downsides of 10 man raids on reddit:

me

each individual is much less impactful in a 10 man squad, and so even though the encounters are more difficult to coordinate they are easier on an individual level. More importantly, many mechanics and skills simply were not intended for 10 man instanced content. Even without any other condi classes, a single necro with epidemic can clear a large number of adds in a couple seconds just because of incidental conditions applied by his 9 teammates. A druid in his subgroup of 5 people, all missing 1 hp, will still prioritize healing those players over someone else who is about to go down, which is pretty clunky. There is virtually zero intentional combo usage in raids because with 10 people attacking the same target it’s too difficult to know what you’re going to get (and perhaps even more alarming is the fact that combos are completely unimportant to raid success altogether).
10 vs 5 players also has a huge bearing on the viability of more flexible classes like engineer, as well as the power of support classes. It’s pretty silly how the optimal comps for every single fight are almost identical, but it makes sense because with 10 players instead of 5, support mechanics become completely insane and you’re essentially forced to add the classes that provide them to your group because they make it so much easier to meet the DPS checks (e.g. there is absolutely no justification for not having a mesmer, druid, and warrior for any fight with 10 player squads, but with 5 there is actually some room for debate depending on what is needed for the encounter).
I don’t dislike the idea of 10 man encounters in general, but if all the raids going forward are going to be 10 man content it would be nice if there were some modification to a number of specific mechanics, skills, and traits because they’re fundamentally unhealthy for raids as a whole.

I love the current raids and of course there are many upsides to having 10 players as well, but suggesting that 5 man raids would be horribly worse for some reason seems pretty far off base.

I am not sure how Guardian would be better?! Since Mesmer can do everything better.

Arthas.1074:

I am not sure how Guardian would be better?! Since Mesmer can do everything better.

Everything except Damage, CC, protection, stability, fury, and probably plenty of other crap. Quickness, alacrity, and invulns are pretty darn good but if guardian stuff lets you ignore some mechanics then you may do more damage with the guard over the mesmer (e.g. guardian can block gorseval slams with no DPS loss so teamamtes can keep channeling). In a 10 player squad the mesmer is always better because it can provide quickness to 10 people, but with only 5 players the benefits of quickness and alacrity are severely reduced and classes with a lot of utility like guardian become more valuable because they can deal good damage while dealing with raid mechanics.