Guild Wars 2

I wonder if anyone has ideas for Anet to improve the diversity on Raid/Fractal parties etc.

I have seen friends have to switch from a longtime class because they don’t get into groups and that seems rubbish to me when the whole main concept of the game was any character is goood and that Healer Tank DPS was to cease.

Yea and thats why you start your own groups for fractals.
a T4 listing gets filled just as a 4 necro druid or meta pots food title and soda can pic group gets.

For raids well they are a diffrent beast entierly.

There is not good solution to high level instanced boss fights. These should be challenging because people who do them are really only looking for the challenge, so there will be dps check and healing check and utility check. Since classes are not balanced you are pretty much required to bring in best dps, best healer and best utility or the whole thing will fail and group gets nothing out of the hours spent.

One thing to do would make those fights shorter. People avoid any chance of weird classes/builds because it takes bloody long time and is painful to restart. If the whole thing would be fun little battle, lasting 5-10 minutes max you would get more people willing to just “ah, let’s try it”.

Other way to actually move away from class/build-specific groups is to make dps/healing of each player way less important and build whole fight around the movement and use of environment. Move here or you die, glide or you die, use this kitten-gun-attached-to-the-submarine – none of these actions require specific class or build. Devs use these too, but only to add extra layer of difficulty ON TOP of usual dps check and healing check. They just need to reduce damage you do with normal skills/attacks and also reduce damage you take during the fight.

Finally, you can build non-class and non-build requirement into boss fight by not allowing any classes or equipment. Everyone entering the instance will get pre-defined skills and equipment so everyone starts with equal challenge. However, I imagine this to be extremely unpopular in a game where showing off equipment is pretty much only reason to keep playing.

At least T4 fractals you can play with any class. People will only ask you to switch to another character if, for example, the group already has a healer and you join as last member with your healer druid. In my experience, players notice it themselves immediately and either leave or switch class.

Those T4 LFGs that read “pots + food, Chrono + Healer” don’t mean that Revenant is a useless class in fractals, there might already be one in the group and they simply lack a boon provider and a healer. If you really want to play your preferred class and cannot find a group, do what others here suggest and open your own LFG. That way you can fill the random or dps slot yourself and ask for a healer or buffer.

I’ve not seen someone being kicked from a T4 group for the wrong class, unless the LFG clearly stated that the group wants a chrono and someone joined with a thief, and refused to switch characters or leave.

An LFG group without such requirements can have 5 thieves or 5 necromancers, and that’s just fine. If you end up with a group of 5 healer druids, you’ll have a tough run though, because you cannot heal the boss to death. It’s all about group composition, not discrimination of single classes.

It sucks and it’s apart of every kitten MMO, what i would like Anet to do is change AR from character to account based, would have been great had they tied it to the fractal Mastery, with HoT release, if AR is account i can jump on any character the pug nation wants, main is Guardian and it’s the only character i got 150 AR on..

Linken.6345:

Yea and thats why you start your own groups for fractals.
a T4 listing gets filled just as a 4 necro druid or meta pots food title and soda can pic group gets.

For raids well they are a diffrent beast entierly.

This.

The best and easiest way to run fractals is make your own group. That way you are not slave to other peoples demands.

That being said, as far as viability, T4 fractals have become so easy, any combination of classes can complete them. Meta comps just do it faster (warrior, chrono, tempest, +2) or safer (4 necro + druid) compared to most other comps. That’s the reason why people usually ask for certain classes. It’s far from vanilla fractals though where guardian was almost essential in a pug group to succeed.

Fractal Challenge modes (CM 99 and CM100) are a different thing, I doubt you were talking about those though.

You have no rights to a group you don’t want to start yourself. Just the basics of the lfg system.