Guild Wars 2

Okay, after doing the Raid a bunch, I really like the concept in general, so I want to thank the Raid team for it. But I do see one big problem with it, and that’s the general “aggro timer” on the bosses. I think the timer is intended as a way of making it difficult, but I don’t think it’s really working to do that. I see it doing the following instead…

1. It potentially restricts the viable party composition builds, requiring you to build the party and characters in the party in at least somewhat restrictive ways. This sort of goes against ArenaNet’s usual enouragement of playing in varied ways. But it’s really only the timer restricting this, not the raid bosses themselves.

2. It eliminates recovery options almost completely. Suppose the team makes a mistake against the first phase of Vale Guardian and misses a green circle, wiping out half the team. Let’s suppose you also manage to recover and revive everyone before they’re defeated. That’s an impressive feat… but by this time you could have used too much time for it to be possible to beat the boss, thus making it pointless to do anything except purposefully wiping and starting over. This is just annoying, not to mention counter-intuitive.

3. It seems to push knowledge rather than skill. If you know the boss patterns, they aren’t really exceptionally difficult. I typically tank it, but I’ve tried the other roles too, and even as the tank I’m not finding this really more complex than a lot of WoW dungeon bosses were… except that the timer is there to artificially put pressure on everyone to know everything about the fight and not make any mistakes. I think that the timer isn’t really making it harder overall though, just less fun than it could be if you didn’t have to be so concerned with it annoyingly looming in the background. It kind of reminds me of the Dragon Stand timer, to be honest, which isn’t any less annoying… but that’s another topic.

Overall I’ve just been coming more and more to the conclusion that the timer doesn’t really serve any good purpose for the Raid bosses. It would probably be a bit better if it was split into individual timers for each phase, perhaps. But having an overall timer like it is now is just annoying and makes it less fun than I think it would be without it.

Raids are the only pve content that pushes people to reflect on their shortcomings (builds, rotation, gameplay, common sense)

Vale Gardian is fine the way he is. You shouldn’t be able to beat it while watching TV.

on every game, raid is hard content because any mistake equals failure, raids use human mistake to be difficult/challenging.

They restrict your gear options to have some challenge on surviving, or 10 Nomad party would be the way to go, 100% sure success after 4 hours of AFK auto attacking.

1.
It is supposed to restrict players to play an optimized build, this was announced as challenging endgame content, you are not supposed to get in and beat the boss first try.
2.
There is room for errors! We killed the Guardian on our second kill witch more than one and a half minute remaining. If you are really needing more time some of your team isn’t playing a good build ore dosn’t know what to do!
3.
Knowledg is important, but skill too. You have to know what you are supposed to do and when you have to do it. But you also have to be able to play good enough to make this possible. For example: Your team knows what to do with the green circles, if this is screwed up it is more a problem of skill than a problem of knowledge.

To bring this up again. The timer is there to restrict to a more dmg based build. If it woudn’t exist you could just take 30minutes and tank the boss to death. That wouldn’t be a challenge at all.

While I agree with point one that meta-comps are still a thing and against intended design, that has absolutely nothing to do with raid boss enrage timers. That’s a problem solely centered on class tuning and balance.

1. I disagree, I don’t want people able to facetank everything on the boss because of gear and eventually killing it.

2. On Vale Guardian there is way too much room for error. You can really mess up a lot, we did several times and we still killed him with plenty time left. On Gorseval not so much, but that’s why it’s much more fun to me than VG.

3. How is anything gonna be important when players in nomab will be able to facetank everything and ignore mechanics if timers are gone?

Splitting timers wouldn’t help imo and would just force people to stop using different strategies.

Not to toot my own horn here, but I think I did an ok job of explaining why the raid timers are a good thing in this post? Check it out.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Let-s-talk-about-timers-and-why-I-like-them/first#post5822891

I’ll share a little story regarding your second point. When my group got our first VG kill, we at one point during phase 3 had 9 people in down state. Our warrior was able to throw down a banner before he himself went down, and we managed to get everybody up and then kill the boss with about a minute to spare. If you’re finding that there is no room for error, it is very likely that your group is making a bunch of tiny error that you aren’t noticing which are causing you to significantly lose dps. These could be anything really: sub-par builds and rotations, going down too often, not ccing seekers quickly enough, missing too many green circles, getting teleported (but not going down!) too often (this is a HUGE dps loss), not moving the boss properly during phases 3 and 5, not splitting the group well during phases 2 and 4, etc. etc. etc. Make sure you’re thinking about every possible place for improvement and not just the big ones and you’ll find that the timer really is quite generous. People are downing this boss with several minutes remaining even on quite sloppy runs.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

Okay, after doing the Raid a bunch, I really like the concept in general, so I want to thank the Raid team for it. But I do see one big problem with it, and that’s the general “aggro timer” on the bosses. I think the timer is intended as a way of making it difficult, but I don’t think it’s really working to do that. I see it doing the following instead…

1. It potentially restricts the viable party composition builds, requiring you to build the party and characters in the party in at least somewhat restrictive ways. This sort of goes against ArenaNet’s usual enouragement of playing in varied ways. But it’s really only the timer restricting this, not the raid bosses themselves.

2. It eliminates recovery options almost completely. Suppose the team makes a mistake against the first phase of Vale Guardian and misses a green circle, wiping out half the team. Let’s suppose you also manage to recover and revive everyone before they’re defeated. That’s an impressive feat… but by this time you could have used too much time for it to be possible to beat the boss, thus making it pointless to do anything except purposefully wiping and starting over. This is just annoying, not to mention counter-intuitive.

3. It seems to push knowledge rather than skill. If you know the boss patterns, they aren’t really exceptionally difficult. I typically tank it, but I’ve tried the other roles too, and even as the tank I’m not finding this really more complex than a lot of WoW dungeon bosses were… except that the timer is there to artificially put pressure on everyone to know everything about the fight and not make any mistakes. I think that the timer isn’t really making it harder overall though, just less fun than it could be if you didn’t have to be so concerned with it annoyingly looming in the background. It kind of reminds me of the Dragon Stand timer, to be honest, which isn’t any less annoying… but that’s another topic.

Overall I’ve just been coming more and more to the conclusion that the timer doesn’t really serve any good purpose for the Raid bosses. It would probably be a bit better if it was split into individual timers for each phase, perhaps. But having an overall timer like it is now is just annoying and makes it less fun than I think it would be without it.

“1. It potentially restricts the viable party composition builds”

If raids are going to be really as hard as Anet wants them to be, this would be the case either way. If you can just run some random comp and beat it it’s not as hard as Anet said they wanted it. Working as intended.

“2. It eliminates recovery options almost completely.”

Recovery options depend on how much you mess up. For example, if one player just goes downed not dead, you can rez the person. If 2+ people wype then yes it’s going to be a wype. It’s a raid, it’s supposed to be hard, if you mess up to the point that someone dies it’s supposed to be game over. Working as intended.

“3. It seems to push knowledge rather than skill.”

The timer pushes both knowledge and skill because if you make a mistake and die, it’s probably over. Working as intended.

I’d advise reading the below post too because it’s really well written.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Let-s-talk-about-timers-and-why-I-like-them/first#post5823432

• Over the last 2+ years, there has been a ground-swell of sentiment in the forums over grouping in the game’s hardest content. People claimed to want build and/or gear diversity. What they really wanted was to play their favorite build and/or their favorite gear in any party on the LFG with no effort to make their own group. At one time, dungeons were the hardest content in the game, and they could be done by any comp — if the people claiming to want that could be bothered to do so. they didn’t — they wanted ANet to wave a magic wand and make any group in the LFG want their niche builds.
• To be fair, there was an accompanying sentiment from players who wanted groups at the upper end to want a healer and a tank. This was different than wanting gear diversity, it was a desire for specific roles.
• With raids, there is a need — at least on some bosses — for healing and tanking. So, that itch has been scratched.
• However, all the complaints and infighting about dungeons has led ANet to abandon the hard content that could be done by any group comp. Now we have raids that fulfill the desire to have specific roles. However, the other goals with raids were to provide really hard content and to encourage full use of the game’s combat mechanics. The game’s combat mechanics include those which generate high damage. Content that would allow group comps that ignore the maximize damage mechanics is every bit as limiting as content that allows players to ignore any other mechanic. Also, hard content by its nature means content that players have to be at their best to beat.
• Removing the timer, relaxing the timer, or any other attempt to allow for the expressed desire to play-what-I-want would be backing away from both the “hard” and “use all mechanics” goals.
• If Anet can come up with a better mechanic to enforce the need for maximized play across the entire party and encounter, then I’d be fine with removing the timer. I’ve yet to see one suggested, though.

Well said @IndigoSundown. I will say that the timer on Gorseval is largely irrelevant as the fight is essentially “timed” by dps and if you can phase him before he one-shots your entire group. I don’t even bother to check the timer when I’m fighting him because really it doesn’t much effect the fight. So that might be an example of something relating to your last point.

Frankly I think some type of timer is needed.

The existing timers could be slightly lengthened however.

Or perhaps they could make the first enrage after the timer runs out a soft enrage with another more powerful one coming after.

Orrrr you could do better dps.

Exos.3472:

Raids are the only pve content that pushes people to reflect on their shortcomings (builds, rotation, gameplay, common sense)

Vale Gardian is fine the way he is. You shouldn’t be able to beat it while watching TV.

^

I don’t want raid bosses to turn into World bosses.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Frankly I think some type of timer is needed.

The existing timers could be slightly lengthened however.

Or perhaps they could make the first enrage after the timer runs out a soft enrage with another more powerful one coming after.

….?
The timers are forgiving enough and there are no hard enrages as in party wipe once the timer runs out. The true hard “enrages” (i.e. instant wipes) are hidden behind mechanics.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

Okay, after doing the Raid a bunch, I really like the concept in general, so I want to thank the Raid team for it. But I do see one big problem with it, and that’s the general “aggro timer” on the bosses. I think the timer is intended as a way of making it difficult, but I don’t think it’s really working to do that. I see it doing the following instead…

1. It potentially restricts the viable party composition builds, requiring you to build the party and characters in the party in at least somewhat restrictive ways. This sort of goes against ArenaNet’s usual enouragement of playing in varied ways. But it’s really only the timer restricting this, not the raid bosses themselves.

2. It eliminates recovery options almost completely. Suppose the team makes a mistake against the first phase of Vale Guardian and misses a green circle, wiping out half the team. Let’s suppose you also manage to recover and revive everyone before they’re defeated. That’s an impressive feat… but by this time you could have used too much time for it to be possible to beat the boss, thus making it pointless to do anything except purposefully wiping and starting over. This is just annoying, not to mention counter-intuitive.

3. It seems to push knowledge rather than skill. If you know the boss patterns, they aren’t really exceptionally difficult. I typically tank it, but I’ve tried the other roles too, and even as the tank I’m not finding this really more complex than a lot of WoW dungeon bosses were… except that the timer is there to artificially put pressure on everyone to know everything about the fight and not make any mistakes. I think that the timer isn’t really making it harder overall though, just less fun than it could be if you didn’t have to be so concerned with it annoyingly looming in the background. It kind of reminds me of the Dragon Stand timer, to be honest, which isn’t any less annoying… but that’s another topic.

Overall I’ve just been coming more and more to the conclusion that the timer doesn’t really serve any good purpose for the Raid bosses. It would probably be a bit better if it was split into individual timers for each phase, perhaps. But having an overall timer like it is now is just annoying and makes it less fun than I think it would be without it.

1.The variety you speak of is still there- only that group comps vary between different bosses.

2.No it isn’t an impressive feat – you should not be rewarded for doing poorly. If you failed the circle you die and try again.

3.The timer makes it more skill-based because it taxes your mistakes. Not only do you have to know what to do but also have to do it properly otherwise you’ll fail.
The whole notion of the timer is there to make sure not only are you doing your best but you’re doing your best for 100% of the fight.

Honestly – if you’ve done the raid and don’t understand the purpose of the timer – I don’t even know why we’re bothering here.

The timers are a necessary evil to raid design because they force you and your group to make as few mistakes as possible. It does have the unfortunate side effect that everyone is supposed to be specc’d full zerker, with one tank that has just a bit more toughness than the rest of the group (even the healer shouldn’t go much past zealots armor, maybe a weapon and the rest zerk). I suspect your biggest problem, and it has been my problem when pugging the fight, is that your other players aren’t optimally specc’d or geared and don’t know their optimal rotations. Raiding is basically the “safety dance”, and how it works was perfectly distilled in the WoW boss fight Heigan.

If we want to take gear out of the equation, it’s simple.

Make all gear in raid instances the same as spvp. Nobody has gear. All has 1 amulet giving everyone 1 point in all stats. Now it’s a skill game.

florence.1674:

If we want to take gear out of the equation, it’s simple.

Make all gear in raid instances the same as spvp. Nobody has gear. All has 1 amulet giving everyone 1 point in all stats. Now it’s a skill game.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………….no. Just no. Not even just the highlighted part, all of it.

Why? Raids are supposed to be about skill and all that?

What’s gear for to do with it? Or is it because raiders don’t just want raids to be about skill, but also something with a high bar entry point to deny most at the chance to raid?

florence.1674:

Why? Raids are supposed to be about skill and all that?

What’s gear for to do with it? Or is it because raiders don’t just want raids to be about skill, but also something with a high bar entry point to deny most at the chance to raid?

1. Devalues ascended rewards to the extreme ( AKA, fractal and raid rewards )
2. Celestrial stats is a really really really bad idea, the people who want to hold agro no longer can, the people who want to heal now have tons of other useless stats, the people that want to do direct damage have a ton of useless stats, and the same goes for condi players.

Fortunately, I don’t see anet doing anything of the sort at all. Of course it can be annoying to go get full ascended, but it’s the best option out there imo. Getting full ascended trinkets and a weapon isn’t that hard even.

florence.1674:

Why? Raids are supposed to be about skill and all that?

What’s gear for to do with it? Or is it because raiders don’t just want raids to be about skill, but also something with a high bar entry point to deny most at the chance to raid?

Well for once it would have to be balanced around base stats, which means you couldn’t do any condi/direct damage mechanics, you couldn’t use any other stats for mechanics (like the one with the highest toughness getting aggro) etc.

Also you can do raids in full exotics, so I don’t see how the entry bar is too high. Besides, getting asc. trinkets is really easy as has been said…

florence.1674:

Why? Raids are supposed to be about skill and all that?

What’s gear for to do with it? Or is it because raiders don’t just want raids to be about skill, but also something with a high bar entry point to deny most at the chance to raid?

What High Bar Entry Point? The only Ascended you truly need are Ascended Trinkets. They give the biggest Boost and are really easy to get. ( They are even Account Bound, so you only need one Set of Ascended Bersi or Ascended Sinister for your whole Accound ). The next Ascended Priority would be the Weapons but you are fine with just Exotics. And Armor? Not worth it.

Everyone has the Chance to Raid and to beat the Bosses but they have to put in some effort and Time. Gear is not the Problem here because you can get the Ascended you need very easy and Exotics are also Easy to get.

Look at the arguments.

Raids is supposed to be about skill and learning the raid mechanics.

What is the point to gear then? Is raid about gear collection? If yes, then fine, this current system should stay.

If gear is not important, then why bother having gear? Give everyone spvp amulets and weapons. Then it’s all about group composition and how you synergize skills.

There are already silly arbitrary restrictions on items. If raids are difficult to design around all combinations, why not just impose spvp rules?

My guild has been killing these bosses with like 3+ minutes left, I’m not sure what you’re doing or if you’re even doing more than just autoattacking in full Nomads but you’re wrong.

florence.1674:

Look at the arguments.

Raids is supposed to be about skill and learning the raid mechanics.

What is the point to gear then? Is raid about gear collection? If yes, then fine, this current system should stay.

If gear is not important, then why bother having gear? Give everyone spvp amulets and weapons. Then it’s all about group composition and how you synergize skills.

There are already silly arbitrary restrictions on items. If raids are difficult to design around all combinations, why not just impose spvp rules?

Raids are designed to appeal to a segment of the population that liked to raid in other games. Those games typically had hard gear requirements for raids, not the soft requirement imposed by players in GW2. Gearing up is part of the raid experience in those other games. Taking that away in GW2 would give the people who crafted Asc. gear the impression that crafting it was a waste of time. This would reduce their enjoyment.

Plus, PvE gear (and skin) crafting is what fuels the GW2 economy. Some players like there being a functioning economy. Thus, multiple demographics are served by the status quo. If this means that some players can’t get into a raid PuG… well, all MMO’s have content that is not for everyone.

There is a good number of viable party comps.

Also.. “requiring you to build the party and characters in the party in at least somewhat restrictive ways” LOL.

Since it’s “somewhat” restrictive, it HAS to change? Get out of here with that trash.

I’ve seen two times where a raid boss enraged. Once at Vale Guardian, and once at Gorseval.

Generally, if you’re at the point where you’re hitting the enrage timer, you’re probably about to die either way. Only way I can see timers being an issue is if your damage dealers have very poor builds and/or rotations.

These threads about how ppl want to getting raid content done while semi-afk autoattack style just needs to go away. Seriously, OP, timers are now not an issue. There were kills of VG with 30+ seconds left, Gorse I don’t remember how much left (but time was not an issue whatsoever), and Sabetha is most time-independent boss (about 1m20s left on timer when I killed her).
When ppl know what to do (and mechanics in these 3 bosses are not so difficult to remember, really), and do it right, boss will eventually go down. Of course there will be some accidents, but as long as ppl know what they did wrong, and trying to correct themselves, trying to be better for the sake of people with them, fun and result – raids are just so fun and pleasant thing to do, really.
Of course when you head in in full PTV or nomad gear, or something – you yourself ought to realise you doing something wrong. You need to be good skilled and geared player, and this is an ABSOLUTE fact, like you it or not. Well, even gear dont matter much, just right ascend weapon, right ascend trinkets (easiest to asquire), and you’ll do even with exo armors no problem. But you need to play right and know your class and encounter (watch some guides, or whatever, rest will come with practice).
I myself by no means a top player, or elitist, or whatever. I have respect for ppl I am raiding with, but only when they themselves respects fellow raiders with their actions (things I mentioned before). If they dont respect others by walking into raid in whatever thrash gear they want, dont listen to RL, cant do simple things right, or just take wrong attitude (like “I play how I like, not how needed in raid”), why should I respect them in return?

Well, whatever, my point is slightly off the theme. Just find some good pug. I killed all bosses with pugs easily (not without efforts ofc), and make friends with them. All your problems with timers will disappear, I tell you.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

1. It potentially restricts the viable party composition builds, requiring you to build the party and characters in the party in at least somewhat restrictive ways.

2. It eliminates recovery options almost completely.

3. It seems to push knowledge rather than skill. If you know the boss patterns, they aren’t really exceptionally difficult. I typically tank it, but I’ve tried the other roles too, and even as the tank I’m not finding this really more complex than a lot of WoW dungeon bosses were…

except that the timer is there to artificially put pressure on everyone to know everything about the fight and not make any mistakes.

It takes skill to handle a boss pattern, even if you know it.

The above that you outlined are some of the main things that separate raids from other PvE content. And I mean in general, not just in GW2. They are supposed to be unforgiving. Recovery is supposed to be limited. Restrictive composition is supposed to happen.

None of that is new or different. It’s how 90% of raids are constructed. Think of raids like the PvE Olympics and maybe it’ll make more sense. They are usually designed to push people to the edge of performance.

The problem with raids, as I’ve said before (as have others) and I’m curious to see how they will handle it is, there is no gear treadmill for power, so raid bosses are not going to get easier by gearing up in the drops from that boss. Someone suggested masteries could be a way to handle this – they could add a unique line of masteries that you get points for by defeating raid bosses, only progress through raid XP, and give you percentage bonuses against bosses in a particular wing.

This would solve the issue of treadmill, since the bonuses would not apply outside of raids, and would make it easier to farm bosses that you’ve killed in the past.

Nah, this raid is perfect just the way it is.

Labjax.2465:

The problem with raids, as I’ve said before (as have others) and I’m curious to see how they will handle it is, there is no gear treadmill for power, so raid bosses are not going to get easier by gearing up in the drops from that boss. Someone suggested masteries could be a way to handle this – they could add a unique line of masteries that you get points for by defeating raid bosses, only progress through raid XP, and give you percentage bonuses against bosses in a particular wing.

This would solve the issue of treadmill, since the bonuses would not apply outside of raids, and would make it easier to farm bosses that you’ve killed in the past.

I’m of two minds on this issue.

1. Raid farming in other games got old fast. Peak performance devolved into rote, with occasional lapses made up for by better gear (usually from an earlier run on that raid). I used to dread raid nights. Also, does power creep lessen the draw of harder content by making it easier?
2. Once one has beaten harder content a few times in succession, repetition is for whatever rewards one wants. The thing is, when farming, it seems to me that more players want to get on with it, not struggle each time they go for what they want.

Since we know how raid farms work in other games, I’m curious whether hard content proves to have sustainability if the game systems don’t reward past success with an easier time in the future. It’s probably a moot issue, either way. Once a player or guild has gotten all they want from a given raid, they’ll be on to the next one.

Thanks for the input everyone, I’m glad to read it all, whether you agree with me or not.
Personally I still feel like it would be better to at least split the timer into separate timers for the individual phase sections. That I think would still make sure you had a certain amount of DPS, but without the possibility of ultimately failing late on from mistakes early on.
There are some good points made here though, so thanks for the discussion.

The timer is what makes it a bad experience. You have to find the perfect blend of builds to be able to take inevitable damage, but be able to dish out the damage right back at it, but do it in less than 10 minutes.

The mechanics aren’t hard. The timer is.

TheHeretic.3529:

The timer is what makes it a bad experience. You have to find the perfect blend of builds to be able to take inevitable damage, but be able to dish out the damage right back at it, but do it in less than 10 minutes.

The mechanics aren’t hard. The timer is.

In what MMO are mechanics really hard — other than learning the best tactic and maybe having to time things properly? Timing things properly is also the issue with sustained high DPS. No matter how you slice it, the harder content is supposed to be, the tighter the tolerances will be to succeed and the less accessible they will be to builds and skill lower down on those continua.

Are GW2 raids supposed to be exceptionally hard content or accessible “harder” content? We’ve seen years of reading about how “face roll” the supposedly hard dungeons were, and so has ANet. With that in mind, and after a statement like, “…content harder than anything you’ve seen before…” well, I know what I think the answer should be.

TheHeretic.3529:

The timer is what makes it a bad experience. You have to find the perfect blend of builds to be able to take inevitable damage, but be able to dish out the damage right back at it, but do it in less than 10 minutes.

The mechanics aren’t hard. The timer is.

The timer makes the raid harder because it makes your mistakes matter more. If there was no timer and someone went dead, it’s just a simple matter of rezzing. With the timer, it makes that mistake of the player/players a much bigger deal. It could very well mean that try is a fail, instead of simply just rezzing the guy.

And it doesn’t have to be a “perfect blend of builds”, there have been different comps killing all 3 bosses. It just means you can’t run a totally random comp and still beat it. If you have a problem with this, raids are not the thing for you. That does NOT mean raids are terrible for everyone, it just means it’s harder than you would like.

Play the game… 99% of the wipes are because mechanics and not the timer. Also the second and the third boss have mechanics that wipes you. For ex. even if the second boss don’t have a timer you will still need high dps because you can only use the updrafts 4 times and the timer being there or not does not make a difference at all.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

Thanks for the input everyone, I’m glad to read it all, whether you agree with me or not.
Personally I still feel like it would be better to at least split the timer into separate timers for the individual phase sections. That I think would still make sure you had a certain amount of DPS, but without the possibility of ultimately failing late on from mistakes early on.
There are some good points made here though, so thanks for the discussion.

The point is that you’re supposed to fail late when you make mistakes early on. Last night, my group had three runs in a row on Gorseval where we got him to around 1-2% before wiping. Finally on the fourth run, we took him down. The difference between those first three runs and the last one? A few people got stuck in eggs during the failed runs and didn’t get stuck in the successful kill. That’s what raids are all about. Failing the mechanics will kill you, just as it should.

TheHeretic.3529:

The timer is what makes it a bad experience. You have to find the perfect blend of builds to be able to take inevitable damage, but be able to dish out the damage right back at it, but do it in less than 10 minutes.

The mechanics aren’t hard. The timer is.

There is a direct correlation between higher dps and executing the mechanics more cleanly. The mechanics make the timer hard, and the timer makes the mechanics hard. The timer isn’t a problem if you execute the mechanics cleanly (top groups are currently killing VG with 3+ minutes left on the timer), and the mechanics aren’t super difficult without the time pressure (some are still somewhat difficult, but there’s lots more room for error without the time pressure). The timers are what makes it a fun and challenging experience.

My other issues with raids aside, the timer aspect of raids is one of those tough issues. The absence of it opens the door for tactics that win by cheese and attrition instead of mastery of the mechanics. I imagine GW2 would be even more vulnerable to these kind of tactics when compared to MMOs where dead is dead and there is no second chance.

Yeah, because cheese and attrition will let you survive the, for example, Gorseval oneshot partywipe mechanism.
But please, do go on.

I have a really simple solution for everyone suffering from timer depression.

Grab yourself some tape and a piece of paper of your choosing. Tape said paper over said timer.

Look the timer, is gone and you can stop worrying about it.

Stop looking at the timer and start looking at the fight, and you’ll improve exponentially.

TexZero.7910:

I have a really simple solution for everyone suffering from timer depression.

Grab yourself some tape and a piece of paper of your choosing. Tape said paper over said timer.

Look the timer, is gone and you can stop worrying about it.

Stop looking at the timer and start looking at the fight, and you’ll improve exponentially.

0.o
brilliant

I really hope that everybody need sentinel, dire and nomad gear in next wing. That would be real hard content because you would need to craft new gear again.

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah, because cheese and attrition will let you survive the, for example, Gorseval oneshot partywipe mechanism.
But please, do go on.

I’m just going to leave this here…. :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3vajhn/gorseval_no_glider_challenge/

In all seriousness though, the timer in Gorseval is essentially irrelevant as the dps checks come in the form of these one-shot mechanics. If you don’t dps quickly enough, you don’t reach phase, and the one-shot will wipe your group.

I like the suggestion above. Cover the timer and it disappears. It doesn’t wipe you. It doesn’t matter. Focus on the mechanics and you’ll never have to look at the timers again. (Though I will admit it does help with benchmarking how your group’s dps is for that pull, and being ready for cannons in Sabetha, etc.)

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah, because cheese and attrition will let you survive the, for example, Gorseval oneshot partywipe mechanism.
But please, do go on.

Why, thank you, my good man. I shall.

Unless the penalty for failing every single mechanic results in a party wide wipe, which they don’t, then the importance of surviving mechanics that target one or two players and put them into a down state loses significance, since the DPS loss from that player being in downed state and another player reviving them doesn’t result in a penalty that pushes the group closer to dying to an enrage timer.

Further more, if Anet were to design a raid with mechanics that did not require the coordination of all 10 people to complete and could be effectively completed by 6 people, then effectively, 4 people could die and be carried by the other 6 with the only penalty being a longer raid.

Enrage timers give developers more creativity and diversity in what raid mechanics they design, because they can include one’s that don’t result in party wide wipes or require coordination of all 10 players and then just scale the timer to ensure that everyone has to contribute and can’t be carried.

It’s hard to design raids with unique mechanics that meet that criteria. Most of the ones in WoW didn’t. You could go back to old ones with gear from future expansions and complete them solo, because what made the raids difficult and what made mastery of the mechanics so important was that you were on a clock and the death of a single DPS mattered a lot.

And hell, that was in a game where death was death and the group had one get out of jail free card in the form of a battle rez to recover from a one-shot of a crucial raid member. Healers also had mana, a finite resource that could be depleted if the raid took too long. In GW2, theoretically, without a enrage timer, you need the minimum number of people required to complete the mechanics with a healing rotation to out rotate the bosse’s damage and knowledge to dodge the one shot mechanics and it would be possible to win. It might take you four hours, but you can still win by attrition.

Once the door opens to those kind of tactics, you will begin seeing four or five man teams selling the other spots (Arah, anyone?) for 500-1000 gold where they can just die and go afk and then get rezzed at the end.

softblackcarbon.1537:

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah, because cheese and attrition will let you survive the, for example, Gorseval oneshot partywipe mechanism.
But please, do go on.

I’m just going to leave this here…. :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3vajhn/gorseval_no_glider_challenge/

Funny that the cheese method you linked is not based on attrition and bunkering, but on massive dps. It seems to reinforce my point even more.

softblackcarbon.1537:

In all seriousness though, the timer in Gorseval is essentially irrelevant as the dps checks come in the form of these one-shot mechanics. If you don’t dps quickly enough, you don’t reach phase, and the one-shot will wipe your group.

Yes, exactly. It can be safely removed – if someone is going to cheese the encounter, 99% chance is that the metod used will revolve around high dps anyway.

There didn’t need to be a timer

VG could have had a forth where 2 floor panels light up and he starts to summon 2 lighting rings and cast his globes more often.

2nd boss you can just run out of up drafts.

Don’t know the third boss very well but you can just keep ramping things up and have special attacks fire more often.

But the truth is timer aren’t need you have plenty of ways to make the fight ramp up to a wipe with out having a hard timer.

Samhayn.2385:

But the truth is timer aren’t need you have plenty of ways to make the fight ramp up to a wipe with out having a hard timer.

The timers aren’t hard enrages…. They just increase boss damage (200% for VG and Gor – can’t remember if Sabetha is more). The fight doesn’t end when you reach the timer (though it most likely will end shortly as this means your group’s dps wasn’t very good). Groups shouldn’t be wiping to timers. If they’re wiping to timers, it’s more than likely a mechanics problem causing a loss in dps, or people bringing too defensive builds, which essentially the timers are there to make sure you don’t do. You’ll wipe on Gorseval before the timer is up if your dps is too low, and the platform will most likely break on Sabetha before the timer is up if you’re executing mechanics poorly. Honestly, your suggestions for VG actually make the fight harder at enrage than the current enrage system does. 200% damage on attacks isn’t a huge deal if you can just consistently dodge them.

For Sabetha, aside from increased damage from most or all attacks, I think the timed bombs one-shot the carrier, and presumably everyone else who gets hit.

I think timers work well the way they are right now.
If bosses gained stronger attacks over time without a visible timer on the screen, that wouldn’t change the fact that the timer is still there, just invisible. So why not just show the timer.