Guild Wars 2

Im a big fan of GW2, and for the first time I met something which is a deal/game breaker for me.

Whilst enjoying the world pve following a large mob run around and killing champions previously ignored but now worth killing I found something out (perhaps?)

Only the top dps % get loot!?

With a smaller group was getting loot fine, as the commanders merged (after some bickering on map chat) no more loot. I was on my hunter which I use mostly for support/healing (I know get a better spec etc) but basically this mechanic (if verified) is basically saying play dps if you want loot in large groups.

Not great imho.

Edit:
I was doing enough damage before others joined the throng. I am doing 900 a hit on shortbow for about a minute before mob falls, looking at combat logs. This is not just tag and run, I am taking part but I am not a dps spec, I have other characters for that.

If you are referring to that fact that you have to deal a certain amount of damage in order to credit- then yes it has been like this since before launch.
It is known as mob tagging.
There is no cap on loot

It’s always been like this, kind of. It’s not really “top DPS%” as much as “you have to meet a certain threshold of participation in the event”. Counts for loot, as well as xp/karma rewards.
In other words, I can’t for example, put one shot in on a champion then run off or swoop in when it’s only got a few HP left, and then still get credit/loot when the rest of the mob kills it. However, as long as I do actually participate in the fight, (which seems to include even attacking other enemies spawned by the event in some cases) I always have gotten loot no matter how meager my DPS actually is. And yes, I’m also the guy who runs around the perimeter of the fight rezzing the downed folks and playing support more often than not. You just have to get your shots in while you do that.
Anyway that’s been my experience.

I always get loot in PvE things… No matter many people there are. I just follow the crowd, fight, and loot.

I was doing enough damage before others joined the throng. I am doing 900 a hit on shortbow for about 20 -30 seconds before mob falls, looking at combat logs. This is not just tag and run, I am taking part but I am not a dps spec, I have other characters for that.

Colesy: I have plenty of zerk dps characters, what i am ascertaining if that I have to perform that role in order to do “soft” world pve. On Gandarra and Cursed Shore has got very busy lately.

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Best answer so far. Thanks.

Being in a party helps in the mechanic.
Obviously in terms of mechanics if the mob is alive longer with less people you reach that threshold. This could be what is happening? people on the server mentioned what I said in OP, hence me coming to forums for more information.

The threshold is a percentage of damage. What it’s there to do is this. If you’re fighting a champion and some guy comes along and takes a couple of shots at it and then leaves, hoping to get a reward….letting you do all the work…well that protects you. Otherwise, people would do the least amount they could for the reward. It sucks that we need stuff like this, but we do.

There are still people that will run tag stuff in a bunch of events, but finish none of them, thus getting credit for everything while doing minimal work. They make loot faster than I do. I just don’t care. I’m not going to scale up an event other people are doing for my own profit and then leave them to handle the problem. I don’t think that’s fair.

I tend to do those types of farms with my guild, so we’re all doing what we do, forming our own zerg so to speak, in parties, where we dont’ have to worry so much about thresholds.

draven.4796:

I was doing enough damage before others joined the throng. I am doing 900 a hit on shortbow for about 20 -30 seconds before mob falls, looking at combat logs. This is not just tag and run, I am taking part but I am not a dps spec, I have other characters for that.

Colesy: I have plenty of zerk dps characters, what i am ascertaining if that I have to perform that role in order to do “soft” world pve. On Gandarra and Cursed Shore has got very busy lately.

Don’t worry about support, these groups are focused on fast kills and if you fall behind too far you can be left behind. I will stop for a moment to revive someone who falls near me, and usually receive the same consideration if I fall, but I don’t focus on it.

Many events and bosses scale according to the number of players so they don’t die too fast. A champion that is challenging to a group of five would last all of three seconds against 20, so the devs buff their hp to keep them alive longer. This also means that while you might do 10% of the damage in a small group while reviving and doing other tasks, in a large group this might fall to 3% and you don’t get credit for the kill.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t place banners, put up barriers, revive downed PCs, etc. but the larger the group, the less any one person has to do these things. At a certain threshold even the buffed hp is trivial and it’s just a matter of throwing damage at the boss until it dies.

Vayne.8563:

The threshold is a percentage of damage. What it’s there to do is this. If you’re fighting a champion and some guy comes along and takes a couple of shots at it and then leaves, hoping to get a reward….letting you do all the work…well that protects you. Otherwise, people would do the least amount they could for the reward. It sucks that we need stuff like this, but we do.

There are still people that will run tag stuff in a bunch of events, but finish none of them, thus getting credit for everything while doing minimal work. They make loot faster than I do. I just don’t care. I’m not going to scale up an event other people are doing for my own profit and then leave them to handle the problem. I don’t think that’s fair.

I tend to do those types of farms with my guild, so we’re all doing what we do, forming our own zerg so to speak, in parties, where we dont’ have to worry so much about thresholds.

For Events and for event completion I agree with you 100% for the reasons you have given. But for champions it doesnt make any sense to run off as your loot will fade away?

The effect of this change if your right about it being a % threshold, pretty sure i joined in late on Boom Boom in Pavilion and still got chest, just means that I wish I was on a less populated server or that I should only play my berserker warrior/mesmer in order to hit the threshold in time. This is pretty poor, which ever way I look at it, unless the group lowers the threshold considerably, its already a challenge to get to a champion in Cursed shore in time, and that’s while following a commander as best I can with slow load screens and WvW on release like frame rate. I wasnt alone probably the only one who could be bothered to post

Tolunart, today is the first time, but then this is the first time I thought id check out the cursed shore champion run. Was fine until the champions merged their zergs, after that slow framerate, those at the back of the horde arrived to dead champions. Its probably a population problem then.

draven.4796:

For Events and for event completion I agree with you 100% for the reasons you have given. But for champions it doesnt make any sense to run off as your loot will fade away?

The effect of this change if your right about it being a % threshold, pretty sure i joined in late on Boom Boom in Pavilion and still got chest, just means that I wish I was on a less populated server or that I should only play my berserker warrior/mesmer in order to hit the threshold in time. This is pretty poor, which ever way I look at it, unless the group lowers the threshold considerably, its already a challenge to get to a champion in Cursed shore in time, and that’s while following a commander as best I can with slow load screens and WvW on release like frame rate. I wasnt alone probably the only one who could be bothered to post

It’s not a change, it’s always been like this, but since they buffed champion loot more people are hunting them, which means you’re more likely to run into it.

They had the same problem when they added the bonus rare chest to open world bosses:

Map chat: “Wurm’s up!”
<teleport to waypoint>
<loading screen>
Map chat: “Wurm’s dead!”

Bosses would spawn and die in five seconds or less. It didn’t take long before they buffed the hp or changed the sequence of events so that the bosses hung around for 30 seconds or so to give more people time to tag them.

Now the champions are the new shiny, so everyone rushes them and last five people to arrive get nothing. In two weeks they’ll have 50% more hp and it will be easier to tag them. For right now bring a high-dps ranged weapon and just concentrate on killing the champs.

It does suck that the devs have to do this, but it’s not their fault. If all MMO players were considerate of others, we wouldn’t have griefing, kill stealing, node stealing, spawn camping, bots, exploits, mass bans, and forum mods and cs employees would sit around all day playing solitaire.

draven.4796:

I was doing enough damage before others joined the throng. I am doing 900 a hit on shortbow for about 20 -30 seconds before mob falls, looking at combat logs. This is not just tag and run, I am taking part but I am not a dps spec, I have other characters for that.

Colesy: I have plenty of zerk dps characters, what i am ascertaining if that I have to perform that role in order to do “soft” world pve. On Gandarra and Cursed Shore has got very busy lately.

Well, just stick enough DPS in to your stats so that you can reliably do enough damage to get the boss loot.

Running full glass would be easier and there’s practically no downside to it, but everybody has their own preferences.

OP, it’s terrible practice to talk about things you know nothing about…

As others have explained, you simply have to do a certain % of damage to the boss. I.e.: you actually to have to do something worth your presence. If you’re not getting loot then you were completely irrelevant in killing that monster, so no, you don’t deserve a reward.

The reason you might find yourself needing more damage as more people join the fight is because the boss’s own health scales with people present, and since you require a certain % of that health, as more people join you need to do more total damage.

If you’re not just tagging and running, then either you’re doing kitten all damage (bad gear, bad build, overestimating how much damage you actually deal, etc) or there was a glitch (happened to me a couple of times, though it’s rare).

colesy.8490:

Stop running a bad build and actually do enough damage to tag the boss, problem solved.

isn’t that what the OP was talking about? In this case “bad build” is a build that is not a pure dps specced.
Mind you, in some of the orr crowds, i have problem tagging champions even with my pure berserker warrior – they just melt too fast. The mob hps do not scale linearly, and with big enough zerg it’s quite possible to get to the point when avg dmg caused on a mob per person is significantly lower than the tag threshold.

Astrolporing thanks. You hit what I was verifying on the head.

The non holy trio of dps, tank, healer was what I liked about the game, but essentially what people posting bad build etc are saying there is only 1 role, damage.

The popularity of cursed shore on my server and the lack of scalability of the champions has pretty much killed those encounters for me, as I am sure even with my full berzerker warrior the framerate combined with how quickly they “melt” means dont bother.

With the way it was before the “change” sorry that this change is a bit old 2 weeks? I been busy on Liadri, it didnt matter all were welcome to chip in and could get something out of it as long as they hit the champ, boss, etc. I prefer it how it was, I didnt really have any issues with event tappers (not that prevalent when I play) as mentioned above, you could still do the event and everybody got something out of it.

ProxyDamage I came here to know more so there is no cap on how many people can recieve the loot, which is good to know! If server transfer were possible again for free, maybe the populations can balance and the bosses can stay alive long enough for non pure dps builds to get 5% or whatever on the champs.

Alternative? bosses take too long to kill, nobody wants that

draven.4796:

ProxyDamage I came here to know more so there is no cap on how many people can recieve the loot, which is good to know!

Well, there is a cap – just not a kittene. For example, if tag threshold is 2% damage, then at most 50 people can receive loot. More if the mob heals, but less due to condi damage which is not counted for cap (this is important, in bigger zergs mob is usually under constant burning, bleed, poison, often confusion as well. This adds up to a huge chunk of hps).

It’s very minimal. If you’re arriving at the last second [aka hearing from it in chat], you don’t deserve anything anyways.

I have gotten credit using Guardian staff, a very low dps weapon, and I’ve also gotten credit against world bosses arriving in the last 15 seconds of play.

I do find that it matters where you are as well unless that is a bug. I can tag the bosses in the Pavillion a few times and it is enough to register a reward. Same with Frostgorge champs. But in CS I was only getting drops from a few of the champs. What made it odd is that my guildies were only getting drops from the same champs. I kept asking in map chat if others were having the same issues getting bags from every champ but I got no replies. Yes I was wearing mostly zerk gear with some MF stuff thrown in, on my warrior with a DPS build.

There is no hunter in this game. You mean ranger, and I run with my ranger also, and even if I am mapchatting I still get enough loot. So you are either very badly geared, or just not running optimal. Try adding a GS to your weapons. Gives you a nice run to the boss also.

In Frostgorge Sound I get champion loot every time. In Cursed Shore it is much more unreliable.

I play on Desolation, meaning it is always a giant zerg on peak hours.

I play with a guardian, using staff (not much dps).

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Which in itself is fine if the thing didn’t go down in 2 sec others trying to keep up would actually get to tag these things, but they are dead so fast you don’t get time to tag them.. you are competing with others to actually hit the thing in time so you get the tagged loot..

What we need is multiple avenues of content that gives rewards, not one or two single ways that everyone camps to death..

Your best option is to join a group. The % dmg threshold stays at the same % but the damage counts from all 5 party members. Usually in a group of 5, 1 hit from each person is enough to get credit.

Also there is really no support/healing role in this game. The only role is damage. There isn’t a single instance in the game where support/healing is more helpful then damage. You can spec full into damage and still apply all the same strength boons and conditions to help with support. I would suggest looking into more damage specs which also apply boons/conditions without focusing on them.

Since boons apply the same buff and conditions apply the same debuffs regardless of spec, you will always be better off speccing damage.

The minimum damage dealt required to get loot is actually pretty low. I can’t imagine how you can not receive loot even if you bring a support build character.

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Vayne, do you happen to have a link on that one? I’ve been hearing conflicting statements on the validity of being in a group while in the Crown Pavillion area. Some seem to think that the advantage of grouping was removed, while others say it is still part of the game mechanics.

I been thinking about this more.

If it is a % of mobs hitpoints then it is capped.

Example if the threshold is 5% of the mobs hitpoints then only 20 people can get loot. (20×5 =100%)

If it is a bug then great, maybe the “in-game” support will do something about it

Neural.1824:

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Vayne, do you happen to have a link on that one? I’ve been hearing conflicting statements on the validity of being in a group while in the Crown Pavillion area. Some seem to think that the advantage of grouping was removed, while others say it is still part of the game mechanics.

I have no idea of how it works in the pavillion, but it does SEEM to work that way in Orr. I’d have trouble finding a quote…I only have annecdotal experience. It seems like I can hit something once or twice while in a group and still get some credit, but I don’t get credit if I hit something once or twice and I’m not in a group. Again, this is just personal observation and could be completely in my head.

Does it apply to the pavillion…no real idea.

Vayne.8563:

Neural.1824:

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Vayne, do you happen to have a link on that one? I’ve been hearing conflicting statements on the validity of being in a group while in the Crown Pavillion area. Some seem to think that the advantage of grouping was removed, while others say it is still part of the game mechanics.

I have no idea of how it works in the pavillion, but it does SEEM to work that way in Orr. I’d have trouble finding a quote…I only have annecdotal experience. It seems like I can hit something once or twice while in a group and still get some credit, but I don’t get credit if I hit something once or twice and I’m not in a group. Again, this is just personal observation and could be completely in my head.

Does it apply to the pavillion…no real idea.

I have the same experience as Vayne. by myself it takes attacking the champ from full health until it dies for me to get credit. If I arrive late no credit. While in a group I get credit even if I only get in a single hit at the very end.