Guild Wars 2

Greetings raid community! As a fractal player I have a question: is there any raid content that could be cleared based on the following critera?

A) A full 10-player group is used;
B) All players have at least exotic 80 gear;
C) The players are experienced in higher-level PvE GW2 content but not necessarily raids and are willing to talk and take instruction;
D) The players are LFG randomers using the in-game chat to communicate;

and most crucially

E) no restrictions are imposed on what classes, builds or stats any player uses.

Or to put it another way: would I be wasting everyone’s time if I hosted a raid group without imposing class and gear restrictions? I don’t mind if the harder content is out of reach – just if any content is possible at all.

Siege the Keep
Trio
Carin

All 3 are able to be taken down with those requirements.

That said, it’s obviously not viable that high end content has minimal “communication” as coordination is at least somewhat required for the other bosses (and to some extent even those).

I would say that Tex gave you 3 encounters that answer the heart of your question. However, I want to point out the slight contradiction between requirements C and E.

You say that no restriction can be placed on builds, while also saying that the players are willing to take instruction. But these are contradictory in my view.

For example, if you have a warrior in your group and that warrior is running powerful synergy and you ask them to run phalanx strength instead because group wide might is too low, does that violate your rules?

Working together with your team (creating a strategy) goes hand in hand with tuning your build. It is impossible to separate the two.

No restrictions whatsoever and play whatever you want, how bad it may be, will probably prove to be quite hard to clearing most of the raidbosses. You can cut a lot and you can definitely beat a raid where all classes are played with a variety of builds. However, you’d probably want a healer, get some people who bring at least decent might,…

So cutting people slack on builds and gear, yh it’s very possible to clear a raid, but if you do “play whatever” a lot of bosses will be difficult. Remember aswell it’s harder for a new and unexperienced group to pull of these shenanigans than for experienced raiders

Sad thing is I witness more then once the truth (or fallacy?) of this.

From them reqs, it do seem to be contraindicatory of ur specs (as been noted). As I mention I seen these behavior in pugs at unpredictable moments. A warrior can (and will) yolo join to a vg group and be readily geared in fire runes, hammer or sword/shield, with all the best utilities like endure pain, dolyak signet, and shake it off! for (ostensibly?) grp stun break. Only problem here.. in truth and, no offense but, it’s pure garb. Not that I saw dont run it in pugs, just don’t expect ppl to not catch u on it and get insulted and/or react with open hostility toward ur build. No one like carrying someone with a build that cries ‘carry meee!’ (or well OP might disagree so I dunno lo)

So yeh u gotsta be a bit less inclusive when it comes to ur comp bro. Like I wanna say, try out escort or somthin with running yolo ‘phiw’ builds. If it goes smooth then aite, stick wid it. But if not, u gotta impose some.. failsafes bro. Dats all I gotsta tell u

But yeh otherwise I jus gotta echo what some dude was sayin. Cairne is leik rly comp-friendly mode like bro u wuldnt believe it. I did it this wk with a noob(ish) grp and we was silent run and didn’t rly know lotta what was goin on. So ye we had a yolo rev in our grp too, leik fun times. So after few tries we get every1 make it past two swipes w/o no one dyin or falling off, so dat was nice. But our dps was prty awful tbh, I mean guess what we make it 30% and we alrdy hit enrage. Then I was like, kitten we gonna fail dis our dps is garb.

But guess what, we made it. More then 5min past him enraged easily but was smooth sailing yeh, at end one dude was leik, yo I heals for leik 1 million health so yw bros. an I was like ‘noice, we beat enrage.. legit’ cos dat was true. I never done it so far after enrage neither yknow. So anwayd I had to dip out, but dats the truth like cairne he don’t rly get angry even when it say he enrage, so dunno.

all builds welcome is a waste of time

all players welcome as long as they are willing to adapt is how you start to build a guild/static and this is what I recommend advertising for if you want to teach new players or learn to lead.

Professor Sprout.1560:

Greetings raid community! As a fractal player I have a question: is there any raid content that could be cleared based on the following critera?

A) A full 10-player group is used;
B) All players have at least exotic 80 gear;
C) The players are experienced in higher-level PvE GW2 content but not necessarily raids and are willing to talk and take instruction;
D) The players are LFG randomers using the in-game chat to communicate;

and most crucially

E) no restrictions are imposed on what classes, builds or stats any player uses.

Or to put it another way: would I be wasting everyone’s time if I hosted a raid group without imposing class and gear restrictions? I don’t mind if the harder content is out of reach – just if any content is possible at all.

With that … all the raid content can be completed. Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent.

Some of your players may have to change their builds over time, and it will help to gear up to ascended, but those are things that you can figure out and that will be implemented by players who look at their own performance and want to improve.

They are also significantly aided by actually raiding. As you identify weak spots, people committed to success will step up and fill them. It may or may not look anything like the “meta” that qt use for their record times and low-person clears, but it will absolutely cover and complete the content.

The only thing that would stop you is if you have players who don’t actually want to step up to complete the raid — not “stick with their build”, not “play the right class”, just not actually put the effort into doing mechanics right.

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers. If your group is really good at high level pve stuff, and interested in clearing the raid, and willing to accept that some failure lies on the path to success…

you got this.

“All builds welcome” is a coin toss

My group has been completing escort successfully under most of those requirements, with the exception that eight of us use VoIP to communicate (the others typing) and about 6-7 of us are there each attempt.

Some of us bring the same prof all the time and some swap to fill whatever niche is missing, e.g. we use a chrono to port people to the towers, and it runs smoother with a PS warrior and some sort of healing (passively from eles or actively from druids). With that in mind, no one has been required to change their gear or build — at worst, someone will describe what they use that works well.

That said, I wouldn’t try the OP’s experiment. Success in raids is a combination of six elements: experience, player skill, individual builds, team comp, team compatibility, and in-the-moment communication. (Some more important than others.) Even though you can succeed ignoring these pillars of group gaming, each one you ignore makes things more difficult. Why make things that much harder on you & your team except to prove it can be done?

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers.

It’s both.

nagr.1593:

Snip

Why do you write like a 15 year old upcoming gangsta-rapper all of a sudden? As much as your previous wall of texts were filled with anecdotal evidence and a significant lack of self-evalutation, at least they were comprehendable.

To OP: I would stretch it as far as most bosses can be cleared with pretty much any comp, but in the event you lack offensive buffs and/or dps you will need to have a way to deal with the increased pressure once you hit enrage. Another possible issue is that characters with the highest toughness arent necessarily built to tank, but that can be worked around of course. Good luck!

Astralporing.1957:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers.

It’s both.

Technically true, though all the numbers I have seen suggest that the “raw numbers” part is low enough (on the order of 10k/s/player) that it’s achievable without too much hardship?

…or maybe I’m off on that, I don’t know. Does anyone have the actual numbers recorded anywhere for health &c. for the bosses, along with enrage timers? We could math it out from that if they did.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Astralporing.1957:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers.

It’s both.

Technically true, though all the numbers I have seen suggest that the “raw numbers” part is low enough (on the order of 10k/s/player) that it’s achievable without too much hardship?

those numbers are different for different bosses. For some they’re lower, for others they’re higher. And the hardship in achieving those numbers depends a lot on which class/build/team setup you play

So say you find 10 people that are interested in raiding. And you do an “all builds welcome” raid attempt. You’ve got one full healer druid, a couple 5 signet rifle warriors, a standard staff thief, a chrono with random gear and no plus boon duration, a couple eles in full soldiers gear, a necro in knight’s gear, and a couple others. And you head into wing 1 and try to bring down VG. And after multiple wipes you get familiar with all the mechanics of the fight and you’re positioning properly, you’re not getting teleported, and you’re standing in greens. And then you start hitting the enrage timer and wiping to it. And even with perfect execution of mechanics you’re still hitting enrage timer with 40%+ on the enrage timer. So then what do you do? Would you start kicking people? Would you start asking/telling others to modify their gear? Do you tell the warriors that they have to change to a PS build? Is it still an “all builds welcome” raid at that point?

Bottomline is this. META compositions are used for efficiency to make the boss die as fast as possible. Really experienced groups can go with compositions far from the meta and still clear everything.

So the question is this. Are u referring to a static group? Is each and everyone an experienced raider? Then u can do w/e you want.

Are u referring to average pug groups? Then u are probably wasting your time.

with a few small ajustments, I’d say for some bosses: yes

What bosses: Siege (escort), Cairn, Trio.
What is needed: 1 or 2 healers. Can be druid, tempest (staff or d/w), herald, or even a guard or war healer. But you really need someone who can help everyone stay alive.
Some kind of buffer will help, might/fury etc. They make a huge difference.

I think your main problem is something completely different, to find 10 people that have actual exp in high end gw2 content and not already have ok builds. And I mean real exp. not people that are use to being carried through T4 fractals by pugs that dont know notice that they are dead/useless 99% of the time.

In my exp. people that actually can do T4’s, and be usefull there. All have ok builds, they might not be 100% optimal/meta, but they are not truly bad. But I do also see people join T4’s and just not be usefull (pure longbow power druids, that dont cc, spawn spirits, give GotL or spotter etc

What I kinda want to say is, if you by open to all, mean: can 10 people who all ignore mechanicks, who go afk in the middle of the fight, or who is alt-tabbing every 30 sec to check facebook complete the raids, then prob NO

But if you mean: can 10 people who pay attention and want to work for it, but who dont have meta builds do raids, then YES (atleat some of the bosses)

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

So say you find 10 people that are interested in raiding. And you do an “all builds welcome” raid attempt. You’ve got one full healer druid, a couple 5 signet rifle warriors, a standard staff thief, a chrono with random gear and no plus boon duration, a couple eles in full soldiers gear, a necro in knight’s gear, and a couple others. And you head into wing 1 and try to bring down VG. And after multiple wipes you get familiar with all the mechanics of the fight and you’re positioning properly, you’re not getting teleported, and you’re standing in greens. And then you start hitting the enrage timer and wiping to it. And even with perfect execution of mechanics you’re still hitting enrage timer with 40%+ on the enrage timer. So then what do you do? Would you start kicking people? Would you start asking/telling others to modify their gear? Do you tell the warriors that they have to change to a PS build? Is it still an “all builds welcome” raid at that point?

Precisely. Raids are a game of hard numbers, and usually there’s no way around specific requirements (except, in some cases, for equally specific alternative team setups). No matter how skilled and experienced in the encounter’s mechanic people are, many team setups are just non-viable (and i use viable correctly here).

Instead of thinking individual builds it’s better to think about what role the build achieves. If you end up with 10 healers or tanks you’re gonna have a bad time. Having a balanced composition of dps, healers, tanks and supports will aid you with your fight more than having an individual meta build.

Astralporing.1957:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

So say you find 10 people that are interested in raiding. And you do an “all builds welcome” raid attempt. You’ve got one full healer druid, a couple 5 signet rifle warriors, a standard staff thief, a chrono with random gear and no plus boon duration, a couple eles in full soldiers gear, a necro in knight’s gear, and a couple others. And you head into wing 1 and try to bring down VG. And after multiple wipes you get familiar with all the mechanics of the fight and you’re positioning properly, you’re not getting teleported, and you’re standing in greens. And then you start hitting the enrage timer and wiping to it. And even with perfect execution of mechanics you’re still hitting enrage timer with 40%+ on the enrage timer. So then what do you do? Would you start kicking people? Would you start asking/telling others to modify their gear? Do you tell the warriors that they have to change to a PS build? Is it still an “all builds welcome” raid at that point?

Precisely. Raids are a game of hard numbers, and usually there’s no way around specific requirements (except, in some cases, for equally specific alternative team setups). No matter how skilled and experienced in the encounter’s mechanic people are, many team setups are just non-viable (and i use viable correctly here).

And you believe that is a problem? I certainly don’t. When designing challenging content there needs to be a balance point. Balancing around very offensive team comps is really the only option because it doesn’t trivialize other setups. If you want to use a super defensive comp and fight a few minutes into enrage, that is possible. It is viable. However if you balance for those super defensive comps you end up with every boss being as easy if not easier than Mursaat Overseer when using more offensive setups.

It could take an entire game overhaul to change that. For example, removing downed state and removing damage avoidance by dodging, distortion, blocks, etc. (i.e. constant unavoidable damage) which is terrible mechanic.

ButterPeanut.9746:

And you believe that is a problem? I certainly don’t.

I don’t remember answering a question about whether it is good or isn’t. In fact, i was very careful not to go in this direction.
What i was commenting on was just the thread’s question – viability of “all builds welcome” option. And the answer is, that no, due to raid requirements, that option is not viable.

Whether that’s good or not is a matter for different discussion.

It is viable…

… But it is 0 functional and has a really high chance to fail.