Guild Wars 2

First off, the aim of this post is (hopefully) for the developers of the raid instances to read this and take it with them for future raids. Optimistically thinking, sure, but nothing will change if you don’t speak up.

I want to keep this fairly short and simple and I also don’t want this to topic to be derailed by asinine comments.

At first, I was under the initial impression that raids were going to be done in an almost “pseudo-Holy-Trinity” system. Essentially, groups would require a couple healers, a tank, and the rest a mix of various DPS classes. This notion of mine was reinforced with the majority of the elite specializations being somewhat centered around either support or defense for a team. (We see this with Druid, Herald, Chronomancer, and Tempest as four examples). Furthermore, an ArenaNet post that is now far down the page-list read that raids would be the new “challenging” content. This is not meant to come across as “elitist”, I simply disagree and do not find the raid challenging. What am I getting at here? Well…:

(Trying to keep this as short as possible) As a first initial impression from the first raid “area”, the mechanics are interesting though not particularly challenging for the first three targets; no need for tanks or healers if your party can strafe. Move forward to the boss: it is just a combination of the three targets we fought beforehand all compiled into one. Yes, things get more tougher but it’s not particularly hard if your group is well coordinated and organized through means of voice communications. This is not my issue though. My issue is that everything that raids were implied to have simply do not exist. Instead of having to work on group unity with builds that compliment and mesh one-another, we get more of the same that we have been doing for the past three years. Instead of this pseudo-Holy-Trinity, once again, we get more of the same that we have been doing for the past three years. This is the ‘infamous’ “Berserker-Meta”. Now once again, I’m not looking for this to be derailed by hostility, this is my thoughts and observations.

I feel like the main “culprit” of this, if you will, is the timed boss at the end. This timed boss essentially forces people to not run anything that would reduce your damage so instead, people are almost forced into the glassiest of builds. I understand that the boss doesn’t need to be killed in the eight minute time limit, though you have to think, what’s the point of the timer if you’re not supposed to kill it within that allotted time? This reinforced this Berserker-Meta that is not new or innovative and is something that more and more people are becoming more and more bored with. In turn, this is off-putting more and more people to raids altogether (from my circle of friends and guild mates). Because raiding is the future to GW2’s end-game, we need to see some changes. All of this is making raids not new, not innovative, not challenging and simply not interesting nor engaging.

The solution? It could be as as simple as removing the time limit on the end boss. You want raids to be challenging? Perhaps have that 200% damage buff persistent throughout the entire fight forcing the implied notion that a pseudo-Holy-Trinity is needed. There are likely other solutions too, this is just my two cents about raids.

This post was rushed together but I think my point was made. Thanks for listening and hopefully we can see some improvements for the future wings and hopefully make some changes to the current ones.

Thanks!

In order to beat the raid bosses, you need a healer and a tank. Admittedly, in GW2, the healer can also be the tank.

But you need DPS, dedicated healing, and a tank to control aggro. Seems pretty trinity to me. The fact that GW2 has its own take on how these things work is besides the point. Each game decides how they want to interpret the concept of trinity roles in a game. Regardless, most groups that succeed in the raid encounters have been doing something like this:

• 1 Healer (99% of the time a Druid, admittedly, but the occasional Tempest has been known to show up from time to time)
• 1 Tank (Many classes can actually do this just fine. This role can also be consolidated into the Healer role as well. Classes that do well include, but are not limited to, Engineer, Mesmer, and Guardian.)
• 8 DPS (All classes can do this)

If what people wanted from raids was a trinity in GW2, they got their wish in raids. The “meta” of raids is most certainly a trinity. A hard trinity even. Most groups have a dedicated tank, a dedicated healer, and everyone else dedicated DPS. There’s nothing soft or “pseudo” about it.

So basically what you’re saying is have boss do more damage so there can be more healers and more tanky builds so that you can slowly poke the boss to death?

That sounds less exciting than being on your toes, doing damage, avoiding getting hit and having the healer burst heal you when you’re in danger.

IMO, your suggestion takes out the “perfect execution” out of raids, and leads it to a battle of atrition with more forgiveness for mistakes.

And I agree with Neko. Maybe tune down the enrage timer a bit if you will, it lets you be more flexible on which dps classes you can bring…

Sigh again… Enrage timers =/= All DPS. A lack of sufficient damage pressure to players is what causes people to take all glass DPS.

Enrage timers or mechanics discourage an opposite meta which is worse than an all DPS meta. Enrage timers or mechanics are essential for adding complexity to an encounter which forces players to make decisions based on damage or survivability and min/max to get the best of both. You don’t want mechanic overload, it makes bosses confusing and not very much fun, so a simpler approach is to make fun mechanics that you have to deal with WHILE trying to do as much damage as possible.

That said, I think there are better ways of doing enrage “timers” than are currently in the encounters we’ve seen. Soft enrages are much better, encounters where pressure is slowly (or quickly) tuned up until you cannot possibly survive any longer. For example AoE fields that progressively cover the area you have to move around in or boss damage ramping up in a final phase until no one can survive.

How many different topics on enrage timers can we get? This is going to break the record for all the repeated anti zerk threads there were in the past.

oh but it wont break the mounts threads

spoj.9672:

How many different topics on enrage timers can we get? This is going to break the record for all the repeated anti zerk threads there were in the past.

Just wait for the day where they combine both (not like they haven’t already started)

You know, it’s not even an “anti-zerk” thread; I’m not hard-charging for it to be removed completely. It serves its purpose in speed clear dungeons and perhaps earlier Fractal levels respectively. It’s simply just time for something different for raids.

Include more difficult mechanics that are more damaging to the squishy members forcing people to actually think harder about build set-ups. It’s too easy to just throw together berserker armor and away you go. There is no challenge. Scale down the HP to make the fights less time consuming if you have to.

My two cents is just to make the content more challenging instead of more of the same thing that we have been doing for 3+ years.

T_T The squishy members survive because there is a tank and a healer to protect them. The healer incorporates Healing Power and the tank incorporates Toughness. Is that not enough?

Yeah but weskay, how does making content more challenging involve wearing gear that isn’t berserker? Unless you would prefer it to be assassins/sinister or something? If so that’s already the case. If you’re referring to wanting more people using tanky gear then that’s a different story.

If you wear gear that gives you vitality/toughness then you are sacrificing offense for defense, thereby attempting to make it easier for yourself. That’s fundamentally different than what it seems like you’re trying to do.

Also condi builds deal higher sustained DPS a lot of the time than direct damage ones do depending on the class, so technically it’s not really a berserker meta as you’re suggesting it is.