Guild Wars 2

You will nvr get legendary armor or do raids by using loot stick on the boss and not dodging a single thing. Mechanics can only add so much difficulty, the timer is to Ensure people don’t snooze fest through it in ‘tanky’ gear. If everyone wore nomads in vg than you won’t even need to stand in green circles anymore, the aoe won’t kill you, red circles won’t kill you, you’ll just stack on him and 1 to death. I’m sry OP but raids are obviously not for you atm seeing how you describe dying so much, there’s such a thing as dodging. Sry to break it to you but the hardest content should nvr be a snooze fest of ‘tanky’ players.

Zach.2618:

If everyone wore nomads in vg than you won’t even need to stand in green circles anymore, the aoe won’t kill you, red circles won’t kill you, you’ll just stack on him and 1 to death.

Some people would do that, sure, but most would still try to run as much damage as possible. Almost no dungeon sections have hard time-limits, yet Soldiers armor didn’t become the meta there.

Hello Jaymee, may I suggest you to try out wvw? You can play the build you want whenever you want. Tank, healer, DPS, balanced, it’s up to you. WvW is actualy the only game mode that encourage players to try different builds. You will never be blamed for your choice.

But yea, if you want to stick in pve and try to beat raids, you will need the pew pew gear because of timers. I’m pretty sure Anet will nerf the first wings in a year or two so everyone can at least enjoy it. Good luck !

Raid bosses are going to have enrage timers and will always be a dps check. If you don’t plan on being the main tank for raids then you will have to work on being dps, that requires you to drop toughness for more power or condi, and learn to mitigate damage in other ways. There’s only room for 10 players in these new raids, 1 tank type, 1 healer type and the rest a mix of dps and support.

Only problem I see with raiding in this game is that it will require you to farm up different dps sets in order to change your strategy for certain bosses, while in a game like WoW you’re farming one dps set and only worry about boss mechanics. Supposedly the fights will start to require ascended geared players as well.

The 15k ap required is laughable though, but something that was already expected to happen. Enjoy the drama with raiding, I’m sure there’s more to come as players get on to the harder bosses.

There’s another solution nobody has mentioned. The OP should start their own LFG and say that casuals are welcome. The group will fill, and they will get to experience the raid for themselves. They may even have fun, even if they don’t beat it.

There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they advertise the group appropriately.

Honestly , this isn’t much different from how I learned dungeons — I started my own LFG and said I was new but willing to listen and learn. People came and helped me. Just start your own LFG and be honest.

Jaymee.1560:

This is simply bugging me, it is.

I am not one to run the Berserker build, I don’t like it, I have tried it many times in the last 3+ years and it just doesn’t mesh with me. Yet it never hindered my gameplay until… now… seemingly.

I run a tank build, so does my husband. If not Tank then Condition. This is my choice. This choice never seemed to affect how I far I got into the game until the release of the Raids.

It seems almost impossible for me to get into a raid party. I see people starting up Raid parties with the following demands:

15k+ AP, full set of Ascended Berserker Gear, that MUST be pinged to squad leader before he even CONSIDERS you to be apart of the party.

This to me is… absurd, I’m sorry.

Tangled Depths Meta. I still have yet to learn this event, and I WANT to, yet just the other night, no one doing it would take me in their squad because I wasn’t running berserker.

Listen, I understand completely why this build is strongly coveted, but… but not everyone can run that build successfully.

Is it really fair to punish those of us who are not Berserkers? Heck, even me and my husband last night set up out alternate account to have a Beserker Reverent. I ran her and kept dying left and right left and right, left and right…

Listen, playing the game of “Let’s see who dies first” may be for for you, but it isn’t to me. I’m allowed to partake in these events too, ya know. And I am hitting a point now where I am beginning to not even want to play at all cause people won’t let me join the events.

Don’t punish me…

It’s not absurd, it’s what’s required to be successful (the Berserker gear, that is — the other rubbish about ascended and AP is meaningless). Your tank gear will not be successful. It’s not punishment. It’s nothing personal. Your gear, from a raid perspective, is inadequate. If you’re not able to be successful in general Guild Wars 2 with Berserker gear, you will not be successful in raids with any gear.

Now, you may be thinking “well, I’m tanky, so at least I can fill that role.” Sadly, no. A fully outfitted “raid tank” in Guild Wars 2 is in full Berserker with the exception of wearing 1 or 2 Knight’s or Cavalier’s earrings. That’s it, that’s the full kit. This is why I hesitate to call the role “tank” but for lack of anything better…

Raids are intended for people willing to adapt and do what’s required to be successful. For some, that’s replacing all their Berserker gear with Viper gear. If success called for Soldier or Nomad or Sentinel or Cleric or Knight, then people would be replacing their gear with those stats. You say you want to get into raids, well, this is going to require replacing your gear with Berserker (or functional DPS equivalent for your role). Again, this is nothing personal and it’s not punishment.

If you’re not meeting with success outside of raids in Berserker (or like) gear, then you have 2 tasks ahead of you. You need to replace your gear with Berserker and you need to practice. Practice staying alive with it. Practice in fractals, practice in dungeons, practice and improve your game to the point where you’re successful with Berserker outside of raids. Once you reach that point, you can successfully fill a raid spot. Until then, you simply can’t.

Astralporing.1957:

Blaine Tog.8304:

But while it’s fair to petition ANet for better design, it isn’t fair to rail against the players who are merely reacting to that design. That’s just silly.

Which is why OP is aiming his complains at developers, not players. It’s Anet that messed up.

ANET didn’t mess anything up. This content is exactly what it was supposed to be. Difficult/hard/challenging content. Content that requires more than just berserker gear (they have successfully included condi, tank, healer, and beserker). Content that requires more than just stacking on a boss and spamming dps….there are tons of mechanics that require movement, coordination, and accomplishing specific/crucial tasks during the encounters. Content that requires more than active defenses to survive…hence the need for healing. Content that can’t be face rolled by 10 nomads…hence the timer. Content that isn’t tedious and boring…like puzzle requirements. This content is exactly what it was designed to be….there is nothing they did wrong.

Coming here complaining about not being able to force others to include you is what’s ridiculous. Coming here requesting bans for players that want to make sure you don’t waste hours of their time by being selfish/incompetent is what’s ridiculous. This entire thread is pretty ridiculous. Its common sense to make your own group if there aren’t groups out there that want to play the way you want to. There is no one punishing you.

You choose your own experience in this game based on how you build your characters, the content you choose to attempt, and the people you choose to play with. I have no interest in PvP, so I don’t bother trying to play that game mode in gear that I know will likely get me destroyed and cause any PvP team I try to join…to fail. I’m not on the PvP forums complaining about the way that content is designed…just because I refuse/fail to adapt to that content. If I want those PvP rewards bad enough, then I will adapt and play that content the way it is designed.

What’s messed up here is the sense of entitlement. Raids are one part of this game. A very small part at that. They are one small part of PvE. This game’s PvE is about 70% open world content. You still have dungeons, if you really want that content. You still have fractals. You still have WvW. You still have PvP. You do also have Raids…you just have to be willing to adapt and put in the effort to complete that content. Threads like this, expecting to be able to force yourself upon others…to have everyone else just deal with whatever you want to do….while at the same time wanting to ignore their expectations…or even punish them for having expectations…is just too much.

OP, the reason they are so specific for raids is that at this point, 2 weeks in, most people have failed the first raid boss (as it should be). Once you get to a point where you are constantly failing (and of course blame everyone but yourself), you begin to start getting very selective on who you bring in. For the first fight, condition builds are actually fantastic, but for all we know they have condition covered and they need zerker DPS.

With raids it actually will work like that. You could have 9/10 filled and just need a Druid for the last spot. You will kick everyone who isn’t a Druid who joins, because that’s what you need. Raids are very different from dungeons. You can’t quite get away with the “play in whatever armor and whatever build” mentality. To complete it successfully in the time limit, you need to discuss builds, raid class make-up, coordinate 3 different groups (at a certain part).

It’s not casual friendly. Raids have never been casual friendly. These raids were designed not to be casual friendly.

Serophous.9085:

That isn’t Anet’s fault. That’s players enforcing those rules (and the 15k AP requirement is LOL).

It was obvious from the start that once someone found a successful raid comp, everyone would start copying it and trying to enforce it. This was a given.

As for the TD meta, there was a guild helping with the meta last night I believe, people in my guild were talking about it. Its probably the hardest meta in the game at the moment, and people needed to learn it in order to beat it. I’m hoping the guilds that help get more pugs in to learn it will spread and it gets completed more.

It is anet’s fault. They put in timers on both raid content and world bosses, if you’re not pushing the envelope on DPS, you’re not going to make the timer on Garent or any of the raid bosses. In these 2 specific cases, it is anet’s fault.

In content without timers? Yeah, it’s player behavior wanting to do things faster yeah, perhaps that’s the biggest reason, but anet is still partly at fault for the way the game works fundamentally.

In Most MMO’s your base survivability goes up as you get better gear, now, you can spec to get even more survivability, or spec for more damage, but wearing the top tier of gear still means you have more health, more armor, etc, and often a class’s primary stat will somehow augment their survivability, agility helps rogues dodge in WoW, might helps a champion parry in LotRO. As a result, if you’re well geared, you can survive the incoming damage provided you get some Heal over Times or area heals, and aren’t the primary target, and avoid a few one shot mechanics like red circles and stand behind the boss to avoid frontal cleaves.

GW2, your base survivability stays at the base level unless you gear for more survivability specifically, at the cost of losing damage, yes you can go PVT armor and have double survivability, but end up losing like 2/3 of your damage because you have a 4% crit rate and 150% crit damage only, and in this game when bosses are scaled high enough, every single hit is a one shot mechanic, even if you build full toughness and vit, you’re at most going to survive 2 hits and die on the third if you face tank a boss., so it’s just not worth it. It’s better to avoid damage than build to absorb it.

A big reason for why everyone is so squishy in this game, is the downed mechanic. You might say because it has active dodging and blocking, but there are several other MMO’s that also have dodging and blocking and yet none of them have your character as squishy as GW2. In TERA you can build your dps class full dps no survivability, and still never get one shot by anything, even the biggest telegraphed hits are survivable and your healer can keep you up. In TESO it’s similar, there’s some big hits, but nothing will one shot a light armor magicka dps glass cannon build (outside of PVP), you can survive and be healed up. But those games don’t have a status that is in between being alive and being dead, that you can be quickly ressed out of in combat by anyone (or if left alone long enough, rally yourself, either by killing something or bandaging). That is the mechanic at fault. Downed. If as soon as you ran out of HP you died completely, a lot of the game’s mechanics and how squishy you were wouldn’t really seem fair to most players, and we wouldn’t be as squishy, you’d need to be able to heal through the damage.

But because a single attack does not kill you, it “only” downs you, you can theoretically get brought back to your feet and keep fighting, it’s no worse than being stunned, theoretically.

Now that theory goes out the window when your class cannot move while downed and you get downed in a powerful aoe like a wyvern fire trail during mouth of mordremoth, or downed right on top of a seeker orb, you will die, even if someone tries to help you up you will die so fast you don’t have a chance to get up, even if they try to warbanner you up, you will die before the cast finishes.. but hey! Theoretically you weren’t one shot!

Downed ruins every single mode of play in this game, and really doesn’t add anything fun except “no other game has it”

So tl;dr, it is Anet’s fault because of boss timers and the downed status.

Devildoc.6721:

Serophous.9085:

That isn’t Anet’s fault. That’s players enforcing those rules (and the 15k AP requirement is LOL).

It was obvious from the start that once someone found a successful raid comp, everyone would start copying it and trying to enforce it. This was a given.

As for the TD meta, there was a guild helping with the meta last night I believe, people in my guild were talking about it. Its probably the hardest meta in the game at the moment, and people needed to learn it in order to beat it. I’m hoping the guilds that help get more pugs in to learn it will spread and it gets completed more.

It is anet’s fault. They put in timers on both raid content and world bosses, if you’re not pushing the envelope on DPS, you’re not going to make the timer on Garent or any of the raid bosses. In these 2 specific cases, it is anet’s fault.

I think that perhaps “fault” isn’t the right word here. That’s Anet’s design. To say it’s Anet’s “fault” is like me saying it’s my mother’s “fault” that her chili is so good — and that I want to eat lots of it.

All I can say is, you’re not missing much.

Land of Cheese.2584:

Devildoc.6721:

Serophous.9085:

That isn’t Anet’s fault. That’s players enforcing those rules (and the 15k AP requirement is LOL).

It was obvious from the start that once someone found a successful raid comp, everyone would start copying it and trying to enforce it. This was a given.

As for the TD meta, there was a guild helping with the meta last night I believe, people in my guild were talking about it. Its probably the hardest meta in the game at the moment, and people needed to learn it in order to beat it. I’m hoping the guilds that help get more pugs in to learn it will spread and it gets completed more.

It is anet’s fault. They put in timers on both raid content and world bosses, if you’re not pushing the envelope on DPS, you’re not going to make the timer on Garent or any of the raid bosses. In these 2 specific cases, it is anet’s fault.

I think that perhaps “fault” isn’t the right word here. That’s Anet’s design. To say it’s Anet’s “fault” is like me saying it’s my mother’s “fault” that her chili is so good — and that I want to eat lots of it.

Well, it’s not really the same.

You may feel that your mom’s chilli is so good you can’t resist it, but you’re not going to fail anything if you don’t eat it, or eat less of it.

So, you could (with some willpower) choose not to eat it.

Whereas, if Anet design something, with a timer, that rewards those who go full DPS and makes those, who don’t, run out of time; it’s no longer really a choice.

That’s assuming that is the case, which it seems to be, at least to an extent.

If they had wanted to premote more defensive builds, for example, they would have extended the timer, but made the boss attacks more punishing.

It is entirely in their hands how they chose to design this and if they chose to make the timer the hardest to beat part, they were indicating the highest damage gear via that design.

Therefore, if Zerker is needed, it is their fault.

I guess it’s mostly semantics, in the end, though.

Not going to read through all the replies. That said, one of the main reason players ask for beserkers is that one of the best ways to stay alive as a beserker…is to play with other beserkers. Once you have played content with maximized damage you’ll understand the difference between that and playing with a lot of variable build players. Another benefit of playing as a beserker is that it kind of throws you into the deep end of the pool. By that I mean it kinda forces you to learn to utilize dodges, blocks, blinds, blast finishers, etc…to stay alive, which believe it or not makes you a better player.

As for the AP deal…anything after about 2k is useless as a measure. By 2k a player has learned most ins and outs of the game. Ofc there are always exceptions…but it’s all we have.

Edit….as for the enrage timers….I agree those are bad…..who cares if a group wants to take hours to complete it…that should be their prerogative

Andraus.3874:

This is hard content. If you don’t like it then play something else. There’s plenty to do with ignoring raids. These fights are tough. If you have half the group running stats like vit and toughness you are not going to win. It’s just not going to happen so hence the gear checks.

People that put time and effort into getting ascended for raids feel that they want to play with people that also put the time into getting ascended. Sure it’s not super necessary outside of trinkets and weapons. But people put a lot of work into getting ascended and they can choose to party up with others that did too for raids. Overall raid DPS is slightly increased if the whole raid has ascended and you can’t blame people who put the work into getting full ascended for wanting that.

If you don’t want to play that way it’s fine you can make your own raid group. Granted you probably will get a lot of people who are also rejected from raids for running the wrong builds and stats making it impossible to win but that’s just my opinion.

So the solution is quite simple to this. Just make your own group if you have a problem finding one. Just realize it’s going to be very hard to win and most likely impossible. You can blame this on Andt if you want but there are a lot of people that were wanting challenging content. Of course there are people that want casual content too and gw2 has plenty of that so you can always choose to play that content too.

So…. You can play your way. Make your own group. Don’t force people to play your way (no gear ping, no meta or whatever).

Go back and re-read the whole post.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Such nonsense.

I ping for no man.

I might ping for a woman, but she doesn’t play GW.

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Harper.4173:

Was zerker needed to clear dungeons? No – yet it was still enforced.

I think my idea would work for dungeons, too. But, I’m not sure there’s enough people doing them to make it matter any more.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Do you really want to raid in this game, with people like Harper, anyway?

I can’t think of anything worse, frankly.

…and the first boss isn’t anything to write home about, either.

I hate myself for saying this, as I’m annoyed with Blizzard, but if you want to raid, play WoW.

Do LFR and then join a good guild, with nice people and try out some Normal and then HC and finally, if you want to, Mythic.

The raids are better there and they come in different difficulties (the first one queueable).

They kind of messed up LFR, in WoD, but hopefully it will be better in Legion.

The gear is, also, less variable – so, you can be sure the raids are designed around that gear.

The game looks older, but it is immeasurably better from the raiding POV.

Maybe this game will, eventually, catch up; I hope so.

But, I honestly think some fundamental things need to be changed for that to happen.

Land of Cheese.2584:

Devildoc.6721:

Serophous.9085:

That isn’t Anet’s fault. That’s players enforcing those rules (and the 15k AP requirement is LOL).

It was obvious from the start that once someone found a successful raid comp, everyone would start copying it and trying to enforce it. This was a given.

As for the TD meta, there was a guild helping with the meta last night I believe, people in my guild were talking about it. Its probably the hardest meta in the game at the moment, and people needed to learn it in order to beat it. I’m hoping the guilds that help get more pugs in to learn it will spread and it gets completed more.

It is anet’s fault. They put in timers on both raid content and world bosses, if you’re not pushing the envelope on DPS, you’re not going to make the timer on Garent or any of the raid bosses. In these 2 specific cases, it is anet’s fault.

I think that perhaps “fault” isn’t the right word here. That’s Anet’s design. To say it’s Anet’s “fault” is like me saying it’s my mother’s “fault” that her chili is so good — and that I want to eat lots of it.

No, fault is definitely the word to use here. Enrage timers/dps checks really aren’t all that fun and I don’t find myself asking for more of them.

Let me explain this a bit more.

See, before boss timers became a thing in GW2, in like, dungeons, while yes, people did run a berserker speedrun meta, it was perfectly possible to form your own group and play your way, my guild has run 5 clerics minion master necromancers through Arah explorable for instance. It takes longer.. but you can do it.

With timers? That kind of “play your way” is out of the question. You either build your team for efficient DPS to beat the timer, or you fail.

Without the timer? You could build more tanky and focus on surviving and doing the mechanics correctly, while whittling the boss down.

With the timer? you need sinister or berserker’s dps for almost the entire raid, with only the chronomancer, healer, and tank (if neither the healer nor chronomancer is the tank themselves) being possible exceptions.

Harper.4173:

Pretty much – Anet made hard content for hardcore players when they made raids. All these complaints are coming from people that haven’t realized they’re not the intended demographic for this content.

You may be right, but do you really believe that they also intended to keep non-hardcore people out?

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

I always figured that “play how you want” came with the unspoken assumption that “what you want” is “to be successful at the game.” That some people feel the stat spread on their gear (that no one else can even see) is more important to them than “success” just boggles the mind (or at least my mind!)

Daddicus.6128:

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

What irony? People are free to play how and with who they want. If someone want to play with people with the best gear and build possible, he can ask it. And if someone don’t want to play with those people, he can group up with other people. Everybody is free to play with who they want.

The problem is that even if there is a LOT of those kind of post (like one a day sometime). Still people have a hard time finding themselves a group with like minded people to play with. Well apparently since they still post this kind of topic. I guess that if they had an easy time getting a group, they wouldn’t post that.

But that’s an never ending QQing imo. People QQ because people all want zerker. Condition become good. People still QQ about it beserker. Now tanky gear, healing, zerker and condition are all good in raid, People still QQ about zerker.

Devildoc.6721:

No, fault is definitely the word to use here. Enrage timers/dps checks really aren’t all that fun and I don’t find myself asking for more of them.

And other people are ok with enrage timers/dps checks and find them fun and find themselves asking for more. It’s a design choice. It’s not bad or good, it’s just one choice available to Anet and they choose this one. Of course some people won’t like and other will like. It’s not objectively a bad design, but subjectively people will find it good or bad.

Raids are serious business..

People demanded a format requiring explicit roles as a “traditional” RPG may offer. This pretty much entails one tank, one or two supports, and the rest DPS.

So they made one.

And now the same people are whining that the number of tanks isn’t outnumbering the number of DPS.

I’m gonna say it straight: If anyone who suggested the idea of “traditional” style play thought it was going to happen to incorporate exclusively more tanks or supports, you have no knowledge on how optimization works or how people optimize their playing styles.

The best you could achieve is a slight shift in the “meta” that changes things from “all berserker” to “all berserker except the required players”. This is because people either:

A: Don’t want to spend time raiding and want the rewards faster because they nerfed the hell out of the other PvE options, or generally do not have interest in the content.

or

B: Most people are just copy-pasting the setup used by some min-max PvE players who play for speed runs. OF COURSE THEY’RE GOING TO OPTIMIZE DAMAGE. THAT’S HOW SPEED RUNS WORK.

Consequently, making the dungeon require x gear on y class is just as strict of a “meta” requirement as parties kicking non-DPS. It’s a zero-win situation and those who complained demanding for this kind of content are fools to believe in a situation where “everything is viable”. That’s not how game design or balance can even theoretically work when humans are involved. Actually, it’s provable that such design is literally impossible to achieve.

There will always be an enforced “meta”, be it game-design or community-driven. Always. Period. No objections. Even in perfectly-balanced games, they still exist and can encroach levels of meta-meta-analysis in regards to human psychology.

Do not think for a second this will ever be resolved nor achievable in full by ANet or any game company. If you’re not playing a meta spec, you’re SOL. The reason why dungeons were made to be completed by any and all builds initially was because of the principle that they could at least be completed by anyone and not required. This loosened the grasp to being upheld by the community, which as normal, analysis and reward-driven play lead to optimization. This leads to the norm, which leads to rejection when not followed.

A game-driven “meta” demanding stricter roles (raid content) forces the game backwards in its design towards exclusivity in content and ultimately destabilizes the game community and player morale as a whole. The player-driven “meta” will also still exist as a subset of possibilities allowable by the game’s designation. This leads to internal optimizations, and so on.

Anyone declaring that this is resolvable is arguing contrary to principles of human behavior and the study of game design. Objectively speaking, anyone stating this type of problem can be truly resolved is factually incorrect.

Thus, for those who begged and begged for a change and are now upset they are not able to fulfill the role they want to play: I have no sympathy.

And for those who just want to play their way and do not care about trying to resolve the problem: Complain about the design inhibiting all styles, contrary to the dungeon design, and play the old style of content, or quit. Look for others like you. There are many, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Fighting against the notion of an optimal strategy is impossible. Rallying to play cooperatively sub-optimally and allowing for the option to complete said content without designated roles or design is your only available option.

Thaddeus.4891:

Daddicus.6128:

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

What irony? People are free to play how and with who they want. If someone want to play with people with the best gear and build possible, he can ask it. And if someone don’t want to play with those people, he can group up with other people. Everybody is free to play with who they want.

The problem is that even if there is a LOT of those kind of post (like one a day sometime). Still people have a hard time finding themselves a group with like minded people to play with. Well apparently since they still post this kind of topic. I guess that if they had an easy time getting a group, they wouldn’t post that.

But that’s an never ending QQing imo. People QQ because people all want zerker. Condition become good. People still QQ about it beserker. Now tanky gear, healing, zerker and condition are all good in raid, People still QQ about zerker.

Devildoc.6721:

No, fault is definitely the word to use here. Enrage timers/dps checks really aren’t all that fun and I don’t find myself asking for more of them.

And other people are ok with enrage timers/dps checks and find them fun and find themselves asking for more. It’s a design choice. It’s not bad or good, it’s just one choice available to Anet and they choose this one. Of course some people won’t like and other will like. It’s not objectively a bad design, but subjectively people will find it good or bad.

No, they’re inherently bad because they limit build choices. You can’t successfuly beat enrage timers with anything but a heavy amount of glass cannon dps.

Devildoc.6721:

No, they’re inherently bad because they limit build choices. You can’t successfuly beat enrage timers with anything but a heavy amount of glass cannon dps.

And that’s your opinion, but not mine.

TBH honest, i’m not a fan of straight overall timer for the boss, but I’m a very big fan of dps checks like gorseval fight where you need to dps him enough before he does it’s big attack twice in a phase.

Have the humility to understand that other people like other kind of stuff than you. Some people wanted that kind of stuff for raids and I’m aware that it’s not something that everybody like.

I don’t like everything in the game, but I’m able to understand that other people might love it that way and it’s cool with me.

Thaddeus.4891:

Devildoc.6721:

No, they’re inherently bad because they limit build choices. You can’t successfuly beat enrage timers with anything but a heavy amount of glass cannon dps.

And that’s your opinion, but not mine.

TBH honest, i’m not a fan of straight overall timer for the boss, but I’m a very big fan of dps checks like gorseval fight where you need to dps him enough before he does it’s big attack twice in a phase.

Have the humility to understand that other people like other kind of stuff than you. Some people wanted that kind of stuff for raids and I’m aware that it’s not something that everybody like.

I don’t like everything in the game, but I’m able to understand that other people might love it that way and it’s cool with me.

Eh, I think asking people for humility is a lot easier when you’re not also asking them for money.

Not you personally, obviously, but Anet.

People bought the xpac and now find that almost nothing is designed for them, anymore.

At the very least, IMO, they could have thrown in an LFR-style version, with occasional ascended drops.

Fortunately, I’m more interested in WvW, in this game.

Although, that has also largely taken a nosedive, since HoT.

At least EotM is still relatively fun, most of the time.

Tigaseye.2047:

Eh, I think asking people for humility is a lot easier when you’re not also asking them for money.

Not you personally, obviously, but Anet.

People bought the xpac and now find that almost nothing is designed for them.

At the very least, IMO, they could have thrown in an LFR-style version, with occasional ascended drops.

Fortunately, I’m more interested in WvW, in this game.

Although, that has also largely taken a nosedive, since HoT, as well.

At least EotM is still relatively fun, most of the time.

Ok on that I agree with you. But that’s a totally different topic then. Raid is a big success because it was made like it was suppose to. It was suppose to be the hardest thing in the game, Check. It was suppose to improve the diversity in build/gear, check.

Now if we talk about the fact that the expansion wasn’t worth 50$. Or that a lot of poor choice were made (nerf to dungeon reward, fractal redesign, etc) Then I’m with you. But like I said, that not a problem with raid. It’s a problem with HoT.

Thaddeus.4891:

Tigaseye.2047:

Eh, I think asking people for humility is a lot easier when you’re not also asking them for money.

Not you personally, obviously, but Anet.

People bought the xpac and now find that almost nothing is designed for them.

At the very least, IMO, they could have thrown in an LFR-style version, with occasional ascended drops.

Fortunately, I’m more interested in WvW, in this game.

Although, that has also largely taken a nosedive, since HoT, as well.

At least EotM is still relatively fun, most of the time.

Ok on that I agree with you. But that’s a totally different topic then. Raid is a big success because it was made like it was suppose to. It was suppose to be the hardest thing in the game, Check. It was suppose to improve the diversity in build/gear, check.

Now if we talk about the fact that the expansion wasn’t worth 50$. Or that a lot of poor choice were made (nerf to dungeon reward, fractal redesign, etc) Then I’m with you. But like I said, that not a problem with raid. It’s a problem with HoT.

Well, from what I understand, it’s gear diversity to a very limited extent.

As in, the tank might get to gear slightly tanky and the healer slightly healerish; but, mostly, people are still in very specific DPS gear.

I just wish they would end the pretence.

Reduce the gear to a far more manageable pool of gear.

Officially state which gear is for what.

Leave people less confused and less inclined to blame other players.

They know what they balanced raids around.

So, just tell people, get rid of any totally useless gear (as in, the least optimal for any gamemode) and be done with it.

Jaymee.1560:

This is simply bugging me, it is.

I am not one to run the Berserker build, I don’t like it, I have tried it many times in the last 3+ years and it just doesn’t mesh with me. Yet it never hindered my gameplay until… now… seemingly.

I run a tank build, so does my husband. If not Tank then Condition. This is my choice. This choice never seemed to affect how I far I got into the game until the release of the Raids.

It seems almost impossible for me to get into a raid party. I see people starting up Raid parties with the following demands:

15k+ AP, full set of Ascended Berserker Gear, that MUST be pinged to squad leader before he even CONSIDERS you to be apart of the party.

This to me is… absurd, I’m sorry.

Tangled Depths Meta. I still have yet to learn this event, and I WANT to, yet just the other night, no one doing it would take me in their squad because I wasn’t running berserker.

Listen, I understand completely why this build is strongly coveted, but… but not everyone can run that build successfully.

Is it really fair to punish those of us who are not Berserkers? Heck, even me and my husband last night set up out alternate account to have a Beserker Reverent. I ran her and kept dying left and right left and right, left and right…

Listen, playing the game of “Let’s see who dies first” may be for for you, but it isn’t to me. I’m allowed to partake in these events too, ya know. And I am hitting a point now where I am beginning to not even want to play at all cause people won’t let me join the events.

Don’t punish me…

you got anet to partially blame for this , by making everything a timer race , take the new maps for example 2 hour wait times for them metas to start and then some events only have up to 2-3 minutes to fail and failing said events punishes the whole meta event as a whole , even the raids are a huge DPS race for the same reason.

so unless you can run non berserk or condi burst while keeping up 20 stacks of might on you and others and possibly other boons, you’ll be more of a hindrance than actual help ingame

You need zerker because Raids are a DPS check.

DeceiverX.8361, your post is exactly correct. It’s length will unfortunately discourage many readers. Can you say it in less words without it sounding like just your opinion?
It would go a long way towards making a lot of players understand the real long term effects of raiding, as it’s designed, on this game as a whole.

Tigaseye.2047:

Well, from what I understand, it’s gear diversity to a very limited extent.

As in, the tank might get to gear slightly tanky and the healer slightly healerish; but, mostly, people are still in very specific DPS gear.

I just wish they would end the pretence.

Reduce the gear to a far more manageable pool of gear.

Officially state which gear is for what.

Leave people less confused and less inclined to blame other players.

They know what they balanced raids around.

So, just tell people, get rid of any totally useless gear (as in, the least optimal for any gamemode) and be done with it.

Good DPS Gear : Assassins, Zerker, Sinister, Viper and Rabid (Not Rabid for raids because of toughness, but otherwise it’s like only 5-10% less dps than Sinister in full ascended). Even some piece of valkyrie is good for some profession. Herald full zerker or with 1 valkyrie pieces is the exact same dps with a ranger in the group.

Good tank gear : Soldier, Knight, Celestial, Rabid, Trailblazer, etc (probably more)

Good healer gear : cleric, magi, zealot

There could be more diversity for the healer tbh. I would like to see condi, healing power, precision or healing power, power, precision or healing power, power, precision, ferocity, etc

Tigaseye.2047:

Do you really want to raid in this game, with people like Harper, anyway?

Nope. Well, yes, if s/he isn’t being hardcore at the time.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Great idea. Let me ask you this. Have you won a raid? If so, Was gear check required? Was it a group of people you already knew and therefore knew their gear/build?

It’s fine I’d be completly for this but I can tell you the chances of the casuals ever winning a raid boss would be very very low. Nobody has a ton of raid experience yet. But my experience has been winning only after joining a group that required gear check, certain armor, food check and making sure everyone was running the right builds. I tried several times with groups that didn’t require it. Or they required gear check but didn’t mind when a few people were running the wrong trinkets or gear. First group I go with that does require gear check with specific build and stats and I win. Granted skill level and rotations are important so I got lucky to be with competent players. And it could be that the other groups just had bad players. .

But if you really think about this how are two different lobbies different than just advertising on the LFG. Gear check build check food check = “elitists”
Anyone that advertises otherwise = non elitist.

So problem solved I guess.

Daddicus.6128:

Tigaseye.2047:

Do you really want to raid in this game, with people like Harper, anyway?

Nope. Well, yes, if s/he isn’t being hardcore at the time.

Well, good, because I’m sure Harper doesn’t want to play with you, either. You see, Harper is interested in being successful, killing the boss, and winning the encounter. You’re not.

Tigaseye.2047:

Well, from what I understand, it’s gear diversity to a very limited extent.

As in, the tank might get to gear slightly tanky and the healer slightly healerish; but, mostly, people are still in very specific DPS gear.

I just wish they would end the pretense.

Reduce the gear to a far more manageable pool of gear.

You’re embracing a fallacy. A gear prefix does not have to be relevant to all players in every game mode to deserve being in existence. A given prefix is irrelevant in raids. So what? Maybe its relevant to a player who likes to run around PvE doing what s/he wants. Maybe it’s relevant in WvW.

Tumult.2578:

DeceiverX.8361, your post is exactly correct. It’s length will unfortunately discourage many readers. Can you say it in less words without it sounding like just your opinion?
It would go a long way towards making a lot of players understand the real long term effects of raiding, as it’s designed, on this game as a whole.

I’ve tried to rephrase the concept many times. It ultimately always ends up a bit lengthy because the information contained in such an explanation has to drive the point home that such systems are actually very unhealthy for the game. Simply stating so yields no reason for people to understand why this is and is usually dismissed as equivocal to those who promote the dungeon elitism mentality.

That’s raiding for you. It’s the same in every game.

Unfortunately, it’s the same in every game.

Right now Raids need a single higher armor player, and the rest zerker and condi. The raid hasn’t been out for very long, but people are starting to see how much DPS you can get from some condi specs (reaper/engi)

So if you play condi, you can get in, but be prepared to be geared for the highest condi DPS you can push out (same with pure zerker)

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Zerker dungeon meta wasn’t really a problem for everyone else because you could always just toss together your own group of misfits and force your way through; it would take a little longer, but you’d still be able to complete most paths without too much hassle. Now that there’s a strict timer, though, clear speed absolutely matters. Rather than break the zerker meta, ANet has merely altered it ever so slightly and then made it mandatory.

This.

ANet did its bit to break the “all-zerker” meta, which was their goal. They combined this with what is to date harder content than the game has offered. The harder content is, the less wiggle room there is for error. Dungeons offered content that was doable with any comp, albeit that some comps found them super easy and others had to struggle. In a game where both skill and passive character attributes like build choices and gear offer variance in effectiveness, tighter tolerances in the game mechanics mean that players are going to exercise tighter restrictions in selecting teammates.

In the end, ANet is very much responsible for the exclusion. Players are setting the restrictions, but Anet designed the content and put rewards that players would want in there. A desire for Legendary Armor may have a slight correlation with a “raid mentality,” but it is likely slight.

Pretty much – Anet made hard content for hardcore players when they made raids. All these complaints are coming from people that haven’t realized they’re not the intended demographic for this content.

But ANET took their money even so.

GW2 is now simply like WOW, Rift, etc. etc. where content is designed for the trivially small minority (5% or so in the case of WOW before LFR) yet everyone pays the same price for the game.

Land of Cheese.2584:

Daddicus.6128:

Tigaseye.2047:

Do you really want to raid in this game, with people like Harper, anyway?

Nope. Well, yes, if s/he isn’t being hardcore at the time.

Well, good, because I’m sure Harper doesn’t want to play with you, either. You see, Harper is interested in being successful, killing the boss, and winning the encounter. You’re not.

No, if you read his other posts, Harper is mainly “interested” in telling other players he doesn’t care about them, or their concerns and then acting surprised when people react badly to that.

Oh and in himself, obviously.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Tigaseye.2047:

Well, from what I understand, it’s gear diversity to a very limited extent.

As in, the tank might get to gear slightly tanky and the healer slightly healerish; but, mostly, people are still in very specific DPS gear.

I just wish they would end the pretence.

Reduce the gear to a far more manageable pool of gear.

You’re embracing a fallacy. A gear prefix does not have to be relevant to all players in every game mode to deserve being in existence. A given prefix is irrelevant in raids. So what? Maybe its relevant to a player who likes to run around PvE doing what s/he wants. Maybe it’s relevant in WvW.

I’m not saying they should reduce it to one set.

But, the sheer number of sets is overwhelming., ATM.

Personally, I would prefer the WoW route, in this situation, where all armour has a certain amount of power stat and Stamina and then, the secondary variations (two of them, basically) happen beyond that.

I dislike that I have felt the need to promote WoW twice on this thread, but still.

On other threads, I might have criticised them twice.

But, there are just certain things they do better, in my eyes at least.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I don’t think it’s out of line to object to the way Anet’s designed these raids, though, particularly since they made such a big to-do out of “ending the Zerker meta.” Surely it must be possible to create hard content for hardcore players that actually gives tankiness value, right? Heck, as I understand it, even the healer is supposed to go full damage and just rely on their base heal values to cover everyone. I’d also like to see content that’s actually challenging and not just a matter of everyone memorizing and executing a complicated script in a precise way, but at this point my faith in ANet’s ability to achieve even the design goals they set for themselves in more than a surface way is fading.

But while it’s fair to petition ANet for better design, it isn’t fair to rail against the players who are merely reacting to that design. That’s just silly.

In a sense they did the “zerker meta” if by the “zerker meta” you define groups that brought only zerker in content.
That’s done – you now have groups that must bring things other than zerker in order to clear the raid. Otherwise it is impossible.

Apart from that they also provide a role for a “tank” but to give “tanky gear” a place and make it viable for more than one party member would mean making the raid too easy.

Also how do you provide something that’s “actually challenging” without making players memorize a script and execute it perfectly? What does this “actually challenging” mean for you? How do you design an encounter that’s not a script.

What you perceive as better design might not be what I perceive as better design.
I might actually like the current design of Raids and simply want them to stick to this formula.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Jaymee.1560:

15k+ AP, full set of Ascended Berserker Gear, that MUST be pinged to squad leader before he even CONSIDERS you to be apart of the party.

Such nonsense.

I ping for no man.

Enjoy Raiding then

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Play how you want means exactly what it means – Each has a right to play his own way.

I have a right to play my way. You have a right to play your way.
I have a right to choose whom I play with.
You have a right to choose whom you play with.
If your way of playing and my way of playing are so different that we ruin each other’s enjoyment and cannot meet our goals when we play together then both of us have the right to not play with each other.

Just because you and I are both free to do whatever in game that does not mean I am under some contractual obligation to play with you.

I only with to play with people who play like me. You are free to play like me and we’ll play together or you’ll play the way you want and we simply won’t play together.
It’s not that I’m forcing you to change the way you play – I’m simply telling you that you can’t force me to play with you unless I consent to it.

Your solution – although I didn’t see it – has been proposed ( even by myself) ever since the old dungeon zerker meta.
If we could separate our groups it would be ideal.

Tigaseye.2047:

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

but other people are just as allowed to avoid you and not play with you if they don’t want to.

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

But, regardless, why is my idea wrong? Wouldn’t setting up a separate raiding lobby that requires certain gear completely solve the problem? The elitists get their sandbox, and the casuals get theirs.

NOTE: The idea of setting up a lobby has been put forth in another thread. This idea would create two lobbies instead of just one.

Do you really want to raid in this game, with people like Harper, anyway?

I can’t think of anything worse, frankly.

…and the first boss isn’t anything to write home about, either.

I hate myself for saying this, as I’m annoyed with Blizzard, but if you want to raid, play WoW.

Do LFR and then join a good guild, with nice people and try out some Normal and then HC and finally, if you want to, Mythic.

The raids are better there and they come in different difficulties (the first one queueable).

They kind of messed up LFR, in WoD, but hopefully it will be better in Legion.

The gear is, also, less variable – so, you can be sure the raids are designed around that gear.

The game looks older, but it is immeasurably better from the raiding POV.

Maybe this game will, eventually, catch up; I hope so.

But, I honestly think some fundamental things need to be changed for that to happen.

Well – you might want to raid with people like me simply because you might actually want to get your stuff from the raid and not just re-run it endlessly.

Apart from that Tigaseye assumes I want to Raid – and while I would like to I would want to do it in a far more laid-back manner.
That isn’t possible however since Legendary Armor is locked behind Raids and I require that armor.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

Pretty much – Anet made hard content for hardcore players when they made raids. All these complaints are coming from people that haven’t realized they’re not the intended demographic for this content.

You may be right, but do you really believe that they also intended to keep non-hardcore people out?

Pretty sure they did. If they didn’t we’ll see a nerf to raids anytime soon.

Thaddeus.4891:

Devildoc.6721:

No, they’re inherently bad because they limit build choices. You can’t successfuly beat enrage timers with anything but a heavy amount of glass cannon dps.

And that’s your opinion, but not mine.

TBH honest, i’m not a fan of straight overall timer for the boss, but I’m a very big fan of dps checks like gorseval fight where you need to dps him enough before he does it’s big attack twice in a phase.

Have the humility to understand that other people like other kind of stuff than you. Some people wanted that kind of stuff for raids and I’m aware that it’s not something that everybody like.

I don’t like everything in the game, but I’m able to understand that other people might love it that way and it’s cool with me.

Timers are a really boring mechanic because it says “my way or the highway” I mean you can learn the strategy, and execute the mechanics flawlessly but still fail just due to a gear check. When the only difference between success and failure is gear? That’s a boring mechanic.

I’m SLIGHTLY less critical about forcing a really narrow spectrum of gear stats in an instanced raid but it doesn’t belong in open world events at all. Open world events are a large PUG where you really have no control over what people on the map are wearing. I say as long as you can organize people to execute the strategy you should be able to complete open world events, rather than requiring a gear check for an open world PUG.

The only way to try to enforce what people are wearing in an open world event is to be a part of a massive guild like TTS where they can spam maps until they find one that is completely empty, and then fill it with nothing but their guild, but 99% of the guilds in game cannot effectively do that. In fact, TTS can’t even really do that entirely in guild, there are always PuGs joining and they just give them the teamspeak info. Luckily the triple worms, while requiring a good amount of coordination and each having a strategy that needed to be executed, had a timer generous enough that it didn’t have any real gear requirements (though a condi geared team did help), it actually sort of helped that for most of the boss you could not crit, so you didn’t need zerker, and the fight was balanced around dps not being able to crit.

You can crit Chak Garent, and therefore, everyone being in optimal dps gear (zerker/sinister/viper) is paramount, because the fight is tuned assuming that everyone in the lane is in optimal dps gear, and the timer is fairly tight. Organization and strategy isn’t enough, having enough people in optimal DPS gear is necessary., but a gear check on an open world map that anyone could join? Not cool.

Elitism is disgusting…

TexZero.7910:

I cannot find it but i can swear i recall a dev saying something along the lines of ….“Everything has a meta.” Might have been an interview or something.

Raids are going to be no different.

You can either be stubborn and not adapt to that, or be flexible. Your call, one has 0 chance at success in raids, the other has a much greater chance.

As long as you do not dissect this in context just looking the word “meta” is no use at all.
Actually everything has a ‘meta’ ! As most oftenly used as meaning that above all things there is a further strategizing/pattern creation/scheming layer above it when groups of people interact.

The way that “meta” is misused on the forums in the gw2 context on the other hand means something that formerly was more fittingly called out as “cookie cutter play”, meaning that brainless people just use a random premade cutter shape to do what they do.
Which is what GW2 “meta” is about: People just copy-cat-ing anything that a website or the most prominent forum troll announces without further reflection of the matter presented. Which leads to lots of people playing with a template instead of playing themselves, thus leaving them a lot less qualified in the game that they might be if they had spent a few minutes thinking it though themselves.