Guild Wars 2

So before everyone goes ‘oh look another n00b crying’

I killed the Vale Guardian, but not with the character / build i like playing. (IMO, certain classes are WAY better than others for raids \cough heralds, condi engi) So then i thought ’let’s hope the rest is a bit different’.

- Escaping the ghosts is even more a DPS check
- Gorseval’s mechanic is easier than Vale Guardian but just requires even more DPS

I haven’t gotten any further, but i’m pretty sure you’ll mainly just need DPS.

Don’t get me wrong
Timers are good, as indeed you could otherwise just all be tank/healers and take 15min to kill a boss no problem.

What i would like to see
More complicated mechanics that force build diversity / synergy. You can swap skill / traits for free outside combat and between bosses. So for me, personally, raids should have mechanics like:

- Boss does a massive knockback sometimes, everyone without 2 stacks of stability is knocked out of arena and dies
- Boss has a massive attack that can only be avoided by stacking 10 stacks of blind on the boss (yes i know blind doesn’t stack, just an example)
- Boss immune to dmg, can only reflect his projectiles. Classes without a reflect would have a different role (like killing some adds or standing in certain location)
- Boss with crazy AoE patterns all the time, or just a bullet hell boss.
- Gorseval’s wall doesn’t take normal dmg, players need to throw 10 rocks into it that fall into the arena. They spawn far away so mobility is needed (teleports, etc)
- ..

This is the first raid. Of course it doesnt include every single mechanic gw2 gives you. Quite some things already found their use that weren’t used too much before.

Condi, hard CC (breakbar) , boonstrip, blinks (green circles), soft CC (Gorseval)

Memphisjz.1405:

So before everyone goes ‘oh look another n00b crying’

I killed the Vale Guardian, but not with the character / build i like playing. (IMO, certain classes are WAY better than others for raids \cough heralds, condi engi) So then i thought ’let’s hope the rest is a bit different’.

- Escaping the ghosts is even more a DPS check
- Gorseval’s mechanic is easier than Vale Guardian but just requires even more DPS

I haven’t gotten any further, but i’m pretty sure you’ll mainly just need DPS.

Don’t get me wrong
Timers are good, as indeed you could otherwise just all be tank/healers and take 15min to kill a boss no problem.

What i would like to see
More complicated mechanics that force build diversity / synergy. You can swap skill / traits for free outside combat and between bosses. So for me, personally, raids should have mechanics like:

- Boss does a massive knockback sometimes, everyone without 2 stacks of stability is knocked out of arena and dies
- Boss has a massive attack that can only be avoided by stacking 10 stacks of blind on the boss (yes i know blind doesn’t stack, just an example)
- Boss immune to dmg, can only reflect his projectiles. Classes without a reflect would have a different role (like killing some adds or standing in certain location)
- Boss with crazy AoE patterns all the time, or just a bullet hell boss.
- Gorseval’s wall doesn’t take normal dmg, players need to throw 10 rocks into it that fall into the arena. They spawn far away so mobility is needed (teleports, etc)
- ..

You want a “challenging content” while you had just an “exclusive” content.

Rather than ask for some truly “challenging” boss mechanics you should just reroll and become a truly exclusive pro raider viper engi too :P

GW2 is about maximizing DPS. Always was, always will be.

Raid enrage timers reflect that perfectly.

People can play Zealot, Sinister, Cleric, Viper, Berserker, Assassin, Rabid, Carrion. They need a lot of CC, they need to stack blast finishers on water fields. They can play any class as long as they fit a role. It depends on what works for you.
The only thing you can not do is go way too tanky. That is a good thing, if you ask me. You yourself already mentioned why.
Also, some classes might dominated the current focus on damage, yet others would completely dominated if something else was the main focus.

Raids already require the highest build diversity we have had to bring so far.
Hell, I had to run Burnzerker with longbow and offhand mace+shield because both conditions and CC were needed. Never would have seen that coming.

Henry.5713:

Raids already require the highest build diversity we have had to bring so far.

Bingo. Besides this, DPS is and should remain important going into future raid wings because it, quite frankly, wouldn’t be hard otherwise. If you could get by in half the team in Nomad’s it would just not be a challenge, and the challenge is the most important part of the content.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Bingo. Besides this, DPS is and should remain important going into future raid wings because it, quite frankly, wouldn’t be hard otherwise.

OP has a point, though. There are ways to make content difficult without timers. You can make really intensely technical fights where tanky gear and tactics makes the fight a little more forgiving in one way, and dps gear and tactics make the fight more forgiving in a different way, without either approach being objectively easier than the other by much.

You’re right, there are ways to make the content hard without timers and they’ve already done that. They’ve made the content hard without timers, and then added the timer to ensure that players couldn’t cheese it with super tanky builds and 30 minute encounters. This creates an all-around satisfying and consistently challenging experience.

Memphisjz.1405:

What i would like to see
More complicated mechanics that force build diversity / synergy. You can swap skill / traits for free outside combat and between bosses. So for me, personally, raids should have mechanics like:

- Boss does a massive knockback sometimes, everyone without 2 stacks of stability is knocked out of arena and dies
- Boss has a massive attack that can only be avoided by stacking 10 stacks of blind on the boss (yes i know blind doesn’t stack, just an example)
- Boss immune to dmg, can only reflect his projectiles. Classes without a reflect would have a different role (like killing some adds or standing in certain location)
- Boss with crazy AoE patterns all the time, or just a bullet hell boss.
- Gorseval’s wall doesn’t take normal dmg, players need to throw 10 rocks into it that fall into the arena. They spawn far away so mobility is needed (teleports, etc)
- ..

So beside the fact that this is their first Raid and there is room for improvement, i will just add one thing:
To increase the difficulty further you can just force players to play with a low defence build and implement the mentioned mechanics.

Even if they add some of this stuff players could just swap to more tanky gear and kill the boss. But if they add a mechaninc (like the high need for dps) than you also have to look for your health, do damage and do whatever mechanic is needed to kill the boss. It is just one step more challenging to do it with little defence.

And as mentioned before, you can play a Tank, a condi DPS, a Healer, a power DPS, and a DPS Support class, with a lot of different classes, playstyles and builds. So you can choose what you want to play.
Keep in mind that this was announced as challenging content, so you need to switch to an optimized build, you can’t just play something that is not efficent, because groups who min/max their builds and equipment would just burn through it.