Guild Wars 2

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

Game hasn’t come out yet…

Kidel.2057:

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

Difference in condi damage between Engi and Ranger isn’t huge, but yes condi needs looked at (bleeds need to go up, burns go down as the professions hurting focus on bleeds much more)

Healing, well lets be honest, druid’s going to get nerfed, this was the first beta pass.

Scrapper is not what Engis will be playing, it’ll be Condi Engi most likely with Pistols, bombs, nades, and FT explosive/firearm/tools. If you’re looking for damage it’s not scrapper, that’s your more defensive/cc build.

Has anyone even played a Raid yet? To my knowledge it didn’t work during the Beta weekend. It is ludicrous to think the Raids aren’t being designed with all the elite specializations in mind.

EDIT: I stand corrected as @Kidel kindly pointed out.

Kidel.2057:

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

In time they will do that as I believe that’s why they’re doing elite specilizations. They’re adding various roles that classes can do.

Jerus.4350:

Kidel.2057:

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

Difference in condi damage between Engi and Ranger isn’t huge, but yes condi needs looked at (bleeds need to go up, burns go down as the professions hurting focus on bleeds much more)

Healing, well lets be honest, druid’s going to get nerfed, this was the first beta pass.

Scrapper is not what Engis will be playing, it’ll be Condi Engi most likely with Pistols, bombs, nades, and FT explosive/firearm/tools. If you’re looking for damage it’s not scrapper, that’s your more defensive/cc build.

Fun fact. Engi puts so much bleed out that you see 9k tics sustained. If it goes up then it’s even worse. No need to touch condi values, just condi output on classes. Even on trait for condi dedicated builds.
Not factoring burn damage however. Engi is a monster with bleed out of everything and burning on top of it.

Schurge.5194:

Has anyone even played a Raid yet? To my knowledge it didn’t work during the Beta weekend. It is ludicrous to think the Raids aren’t being designed with all the elite specializations in mind.

It worked for short periods in the first 3 days and also the whole last (extended) day.

You will find classes being shoehorned into one or two builds by the meta. Which will change as balancing happens.

There are plenty of classes that can spec healing lessening the need for a Druid.

If the other nine people boost their own sustainability, who cares what the 10th class is?

The biggest problem is burn. Burn needs to go down 20% and bleed needs to go up 20%.

This would bring down the burn giants, and bring up some of the lowly bleed based classes.

Necro in particular relies heavily on bleed making it one of the lowest dps condition classes.

Sinister engineer just needs a nerf overall, since it has high burn, high bleed, AND high direct damage.

Druid will certainly be nerfed, saw lots of videos of druids winning 4v1’s lol. Which should give a bunch of different healing options.

As it stands, unless balance is adressed, there’s no reason to run classes that don’t fit into this setup :

1 tank ( which can be multiple things )
Power revenant
Warrior
Chronomancer
Ele or another revenant
4 Sinister Engi
Druid

Anything else is pure handicap to the overall utility and damage of the group, which is something that definitely needs to be addressed.

Jerus.4350:

Healing, well lets be honest, druid’s going to get nerfed, this was the first beta pass.

Agreed.

Don’t factor Druid into any of this as its too raw and unpolished at the moment. It was rushed out at 50% of where it should be so its far away from being in a state where you can accurately judge its capabilities.

Well, to be fair, we only saw the first boss encounter of the first raid wing. Maybe there will be a good spot for the condi engi in the first raid wing, but wait, Anet is going to release two more wings. Things can happen, stuff might change.

The first group to clear the beta raid (and I belive only two guilds managed to clear it) did use condi engi’s, but they also used Zerker gear on other classes. Anet said Raids would get rid of the zerker meta. The first group to clear the beta raid proved them both right and wrong. Zerker is still very viable, and condi classes will be really popular.

So just because someone cleared the first raid encounter with zerker and condi engi’s, does not mean it will be too strong, it means the ones who were playing had really good cooperation and individual skills, and managed to pull it off.

What if one boss has a mechanic that turns all conditions into massive regenration? I wouldn’t want 4 sinister engi’s in my squad if that was the case… So yeah, lets just wait and see what happens, okay?

We had more or less one boss fight. With an enemy only vulnerable to conditions. And on a arbitrary time limit (cus we need moar reason to max our dps mentality). The sinister engineer have for some time now been considered the top dps build for an extended fight and this also happens to be a condi build. Its not surprising to see people bringing lots of engineers for this first go we have at the first of three raid bosses (without trash/filler encounters). Of course i don’t think this is healthy, but id argue that we do need to see the complete raid before we start nerfing professions based on this one encounter. Just as easily as there was a boss immune to physical damage there could be enemies immune to burn or have other similar gimmicks (take the flamethrower lady, throw in a lot of spawning fire elementals immune to burn which will overwhelm your party unless destroyed quickly etc).

They are clearly experimenting with how to encourage us to use tools not frequently utilized in pve (boon strips, healing for example) but i do hope that they give us a little bit of wriggle room for the “enrage” mechanic so that the optimal route will not always be to fill the free spots with as many of whatever class happens to be the top dps at the time. I think “soft-enrages” like giganticus is a better option to hard time limits, players can choose more defensive builds, but that means it gets harder to stop grubs in time until the stacks on giganticus have built up to outweigh whatever defensive bonus you got and might encourage more crowd control etc.

For the raids we can have a boss that uses a heal skill regularly for example. A straight up maximum dps team can outpressure that heal but become more vulnerable to damage themselves while a more defensive, slow-but-steady team might be unable to outpressure the healing unless they make sure to bring other tools for the job like making sure that every single heal is interrupted through the breakbar in time and stripping valuable boons frequently.

Of course stronger classes will be wanted, this is the way of every mmo that has ever had raids. The solution will be the same as those mmos. If you have the people to form the perfect group you do it, if not, you take what people/classes you can find and fill your holes. The second option isnt perfect but its better than not raiding at all, and I think itll be done a lot more than people waiting to form the most optimal group.

DH will be meta…I say meta….do you hear me ? META !

… METAllic with the juggernaut :P

Seriously people if you want to be taken serious, don’t put drama in your topic title, it’s so immature.

“I’m worried about class balance in raids.” is so much better then “It WILL kill raids” . Is this to much to ask…

Nocta.5274:

As it stands, unless balance is adressed, there’s no reason to run classes that don’t fit into this setup :

1 tank ( which can be multiple things )
Power revenant
Warrior
Chronomancer
Ele or another revenant
4 Sinister Engi
Druid

Anything else is pure handicap to the overall utility and damage of the group, which is something that definitely needs to be addressed.

Basically this.

You can’t replace Druid with an equivalent. There is no equivalent.
You can maybe replace 1 engi with 1 condi Ranger, but that’s all.

If you don’t have 3 you will need something with toughness gear to keep boss hate from Scrappers (vale guardian goes to the one with more toughness), lowering your overall dps and lowering your condi dps A LOT.

So either nerf Red Guardian raw dps immunity and lower Engi condi damage, or raise some class condi damage as well, while providing some way to keep hate on you without having Scrappers steal it.

Also please give other classes viability as healers. Ther cannot be 1 druid mandatory in any group.

Leodon.1564:

Jerus.4350:

Healing, well lets be honest, druid’s going to get nerfed, this was the first beta pass.

Agreed.

Don’t factor Druid into any of this as its too raw and unpolished at the moment. It was rushed out at 50% of where it should be so its far away from being in a state where you can accurately judge its capabilities.

I don’t thing it’s going to get nerfed, I don’t think it should be nerfed at all.
First of all they’ll just probably move a good part of the healing from base to healing power multiplier. Nomad Druid will just be as strong as zerker Druid is now, and it’s fine.
Maybe I’ll add a cd or a different charge rate to Celestial Avatar. 2-3 seconds to fully load it and nocd+13 condi cleansed with no icd is a bit too much.

What should be done is to make other healers able to compete. To say like “ok, no Druid tonight, do we have at least a Ventari Revenant with healing gear?”

And I believe this is what Colin said at Pax.
Am I wrong? Didn’t he say he didn’t want people to be forced to wait for a specific class?

Kidel.2057:

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing, but last time I checked ranger and necromancer still are “unbalanced” in terms of PvE in that they are sub-par to others. The first time Ranger becomes relevant again everybody starts crying like the world is ending.

I don’t want Rangers to not be relevant. I’d love for us to stay in a good spot (my second oldest character is a Ranger), as for Necro.
And you may want to check it again, since condi damage is now important and Rengers have a lot of it (not in Druid spec, of course). Reaper is just awesome, so yeah, check again.

But, just to be clear, Druid was in every single group that beat the first raid boss.
That’s a fact. This is not “being relevant”, this is “being mandatory”.
It was the only healer of choice. No other healer could have done the same. If Druid is nerfed then we are screwed. So please just buff other healers and put a cd on Cele Avatar, otherwise the class is just immune to conditions (lol) and it’s “sustained burst” instead of “burst” as intended.

There is a HUGE difference between “in a good spot” and “mandatory”.

I just want a second choice when making a group.

Trying to decided what is going to work before the community at large accually get a chance to sit down and go over the raid in an attempt to perfect your raid composition is…

Silly. Silly is the nicest word I could come up with.

Calm down, take a deep breath and play the content a bit. the numbers are clearly being worked on, so there is no need to min/max kitten this early. More so, with a complete lack of access to the content in question, all of this is just speculation.

Sarif.1827:

Calm down, take a deep breath and play the content a bit. the numbers are clearly being worked on, so there is no need to min/max kitten this early. More so, with a complete lack of access to the content in question, all of this is just speculation.

We are giving feedback, constructive feedback, as they asked. Numbers are not going to be figured out easily without it.

They’re reducing the base healing of druid cele avatar and making healing power more effective while using it. So you can’t just run zerk and be just as effective as someone who has alot of healing power. Of course they should probably do this with every class and water fields or we will still be stuck with druid being the only healers.

Nothing like saying something is pointless before its released.
Unless saying its pointless is pointless because no one knows.

you guys trying to give feedback and all but is all pointless. why ? cuz pvp.
if anet dont separate pvp and pve we wont see the changes all the classes need, cuz pvp.

Druids are being tweaked, though they might still be the reigning champs for healing/support. I’m a little worried about this but I’m hoping they will be buffing other professions healing potential to at least be competitive.

Otherwise there’s no real reason to panic about class balance yet. We’ve only seen one boss and only two groups beat it which is an incredibly small sample size. If the first wing comes out and patterns start to develop I’m sure we’ll see some balance changes coming.

There are some inevitable balance issues because PVE has never been under such a scope for balance so it’s taken a second seat to PVP balance but it’s way too early to tell.

Kidel.2057:

… or raids will kill the community.

Engineers is far better at condi damage then anything in the game and Druid is too much superior to Ventari, Guardian, Ele or any other healer in the game.
So basically everyone in raid will look for Scrapper and Druid, and kick almost everything else.

What I think woould be correct is to redesign raids to make other classes useful, or make the other classes at least comparable to scrapper and druid in terms of condi damage and healing.

Let me just point this out : nothing will kill raids – the massive carrot of Legendary Armor at the end of the stick ensures that raids are going to keep people invested for a while.
They may hate raids – they may dislike them -but they’ll do them if only for the armor.

Plus once raids are nailed down I can probably foresee 1-2 slots in a 10-man group being sold for great profit to those unwilling or unable to do raids any other way.

Have to agree that raids with requirement of pushing party dps to the limit. Class balance will be an issue soon.

This raid boss needs about 7k-10k/s per member dps to bring down. It’s obvious that players will gravitate to engi and revenant for that.

Chronomancer is also a very solid option and worth a slot in raid, alacrity + quickness + boon strip + CC is too good to ignore

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem is burn. Burn needs to go down 20% and bleed needs to go up 20%.

This would bring down the burn giants, and bring up some of the lowly bleed based classes.

Necro in particular relies heavily on bleed making it one of the lowest dps condition classes.

Sinister engineer just needs a nerf overall, since it has high burn, high bleed, AND high direct damage.

Druid will certainly be nerfed, saw lots of videos of druids winning 4v1’s lol. Which should give a bunch of different healing options.

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Optimal rotation.

3.5k direct damage, hardly high considering

6.8k bleed DPS, yes it can spike high with shrapnel grenade even as high as 14k, but still you average down to 6.8k

8.6k burn, which is again why I say that a nerf to burn would be a slight hit to engi but with a paired bleed buff it’d balance out ok, but also help other professions raise their standings.

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

Exciton.8942:

Have to agree that raids with requirement of pushing party dps to the limit. Class balance will be an issue soon.

This raid boss needs about 7k-10k/s per member dps to bring down. It’s obvious that players will gravitate to engi and revenant for that.

I still feel safe throwing the Reaper card in there. I think they’ll be able to hold their own. We’ve only cracked the surface of it’s potential rotations and no one’s really taken a full look at the math. But, we’re hearing reports of 42k gravediggers, seeing regular 30-35ks in practice. With a 1.5s cast or about that, we’re looking at 20k dps if you’re only hitting 30k, for spamming 1 on a pretty easily landed ability. Yes it’ll need below 50% to get there but still, there’s potential there, above 50% they really don’t look too shabby if I’m right and a full Dagger/GS/RS rotation works out how I think it will.

Engi/Ranger for condi, Rev/Reaper for power. High dps and durable.

Kidel.2057:

But, just to be clear, Druid was in every single group that beat the first raid boss.
That’s a fact. This is not “being relevant”, this is “being mandatory”.
It was the only healer of choice. No other healer could have done the same. If Druid is nerfed then we are screwed. So please just buff other healers and put a cd on Cele Avatar, otherwise the class is just immune to conditions (lol) and it’s “sustained burst” instead of “burst” as intended.

There is a HUGE difference between “in a good spot” and “mandatory”.

Druid will be nerfed/adjusted.

There is a bug in the way astral force is generated through staff that allowed Druids to change into Astral Form practically at will (took 2 to 5 seconds to generate enough astral force) in this past beta. Astral force generation is going to be adjusted and normalized across all weapons per the Ranger dev.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

There are plenty of classes that can spec healing lessening the need for a Druid.

If the other nine people boost their own sustainability, who cares what the 10th class is?

At a guess, the players in the soon-to-be raid PuG meta. You know, the ones who’ve been stacking against walls after FGS nerf? The ones who held onto 4W/1M long after CoF1 farm nerf? The ones who want to discriminate and so will, even when their criteria is passe or plain wrong? Those people. 90% of the drama in the forums over exclusion comes from people who want neither to meet peoples’ criteria nor to be excluded. There will be as much or more exclusion in raids as there has been in dungeons.

Nevertheless, Harper is correct, the carrot in raids will make them a thing for a long time. That is, of course, unless the OP were to read, “Class unbalance (sic) will kill Raids for me!”

I’m glad that all this extensive Raid testing has shown us that the Druid is the only reliable source of healing for raids. It couldn’t possibly have been that the Raid groups were using Druids because this was the first and only weekend for them to be played before release resulting in an over abundance of players playing Druid vs. other classes.

That couldn’t possibly be a major factor it would make waaaaay to much sense.

Nocta.5274:

As it stands, unless balance is adressed, there’s no reason to run classes that don’t fit into this setup :

1 tank ( which can be multiple things )
Power revenant
Warrior
Chronomancer
Ele or another revenant
4 Sinister Engi
Druid

Anything else is pure handicap to the overall utility and damage of the group, which is something that definitely needs to be addressed.

Serious question, I might have missed something but dont buffs still only work on 5 people? I assume they are taking warriors for banners and chronos for alacrity and so on, so wouldnt you need 2 of each of those?

Jerus.4350:

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

If I’m able to get better DPS numbers on Engi after playing the class for 30 minutes while barely knowing which buttons to press than when playing a flawless condition Necro rotation, I really don’t think anything is overexaggerated. Just Napalm alone seems to do close to as much damage as putting up all your conditions and spreading them as a Necro. Obviously it isn’t going to stay up as long as Necro’s bleeds/poisons/torments but that’s what the other 8 or so abilities which apply conditions as an Engineer are for.

At the same time, people are throwing Gravedigger numbers around that I’ve yet to see anything close to whereas you can clearly see the crazy sustained numbers that Condi Engineers are putting up in all the raid videos since pretty much every raid went with 3+ Engineers.

Hidden.2103:

Jerus.4350:

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

If I’m able to get better DPS numbers on Engi after playing the class for 30 minutes while barely knowing which buttons to press than when playing a flawless condition Necro rotation, I really don’t think anything is overexaggerated. Just Napalm alone seems to do close to as much damage as putting up all your conditions and spreading them as a Necro. Obviously it isn’t going to stay up as long as Necro’s bleeds/poisons/torments but that’s what the other 8 or so abilities which apply conditions as an Engineer are for.

At the same time, people are throwing Gravedigger numbers around that I’ve yet to see anything close to whereas you can clearly see the crazy sustained numbers that Condi Engineers are putting up in all the raid videos since pretty much every raid went with 3+ Engineers.

Some nice numbers there and I mean absolutely no offense to the player (they beat the raid not me ) but they’re not optimizing either (it’s a new build and a lot to explore). That raid went with 2 Engi… ehh I’ll just quote em

Ted – Celestial Guardian
Dazed – Berserker Druid
Lumi – Berserker Warrior
Meg – Berserker Revenant
Arrow – Berserker Revenant
Josh – Berserker Revenant
Eva – Berserker Chronomancer
Enko – Sinister Engineer
Ambro – Sinister Engineer
Ather – Berserker Reaper

Now, don’t get me wrong, Engi is certainly the best condi build right now, closest is Ranger which is still a bit away, then guard maybe berserker as far as I know. It’s unfortunate but condi necro… and power necro (not reaper) is in a sorry state we’ve all been pointing out for a while.

Balance surely is needed, a witchhunt on Engi because of a theoretical damage potential doesn’t fix anything though, nerf engi down and we may just move to a ranger stacked raid, nerf that and a guard/berserker stacked raid, none of this helps the professions that are FAR behind.

Know why people brought so many condi Engi’s? Because we need condi damage to kill some stuff. Why 3 Revs in each? Because it’s amazing power damage while providing every major boon you could want. A slight nerf may be warranted for Engi but I’m far more concerned with bringing the professions that are leagues behind up to snuff than I am with toning down those at the top. Every profession should be able to put out around 15k with both power and condi IMO.

Have some faith, young grasshopper. Dungeons are quite different from raids. You can’t go out and find 10 good engis in a jiffy because you want engis or something. If the raids are at all challenging, that’s so not how it works.

You need people who can work together and are good at both damage and raid mechanics. Sure, some classes will get passed up on occasion in elite guilds/groups, but as a general rule, pulling good numbers and doing mechanics well is what makes you stand out in a raid.

What makes me scratch my head is… how the heck people are gonna figure out who isn’t pulling their weight without damage meters.

Random.4691:

I’m glad that all this extensive Raid testing has shown us that the Druid is the only reliable source of healing for raids. It couldn’t possibly have been that the Raid groups were using Druids because this was the first and only weekend for them to be played before release resulting in an over abundance of players playing Druid vs. other classes.

That couldn’t possibly be a major factor it would make waaaaay to much sense.

Other healers have been tested too, as well as other condi dps.
Even WP in his stream tried to use full cleric ventari rev and could not keep up. And they had a condi necro that they had to replace with another scrapper.

And yeah, please don’t nerf engi and druid (maybe a bit on cele charging), but buff other classes in condi and heal roles, otherwise we’ll be forced on a 4engi1druid party setup

Kidel.2057:

Random.4691:

I’m glad that all this extensive Raid testing has shown us that the Druid is the only reliable source of healing for raids. It couldn’t possibly have been that the Raid groups were using Druids because this was the first and only weekend for them to be played before release resulting in an over abundance of players playing Druid vs. other classes.

That couldn’t possibly be a major factor it would make waaaaay to much sense.

Other healers have been tested too, as well as other condi dps.
Even WP in his stream tried to use full cleric ventari rev and could not keep up. And they had a condi necro that they had to replace with another scrapper.

And yeah, please don’t nerf engi and druid (maybe a bit on cele charging), but buff other classes in condi and heal roles, otherwise we’ll be forced on a 4engi1druid party setup

Curious (his videos are too long for me) did they try to solely rely on the ventari for heals? Seems like your healing guy should be providing background heals while players use their individual healing and the team uses water fields together to finish it off. Maybe that’s just me.

That said I completely agree with the idea of bringing other professions up to par. Right now I think Condi Engi and Ranger are the only ones suited for that role, Condi guard a bit behind and Berserker warrior looks promising though I haven’t really taken a good look. The rest need serious work. (though condi mesmer is promising in an ideal situation it’s just impractical, plus chrono is too good not to use).

If you’re looking for reasonable PvE class balance from ANet . . . good freakin luck on that. Real honest efforts from them on that would require admitting they need to split PvE from PvP balance. Not gonna happen. Look forward to Raids with mult-Engi or Multi-Rev or Multi-whatever with probably no more than 5 of the classes consistently represented (3 with multi representation and two for specialties).

I find it both sad and funny that while only a short while ago the “zerker meta” was the most evil thing in GW2 right now this whole “class imbalance” has risen to take its place somewhat.

The same people that thought the “zerker meta” was exclusionist and terrible now find themselves in a spot where exclusion is harder, the criteria stricter and all of this happened as a result of people crying out for ‘more diveristy’ blindly failing to see that you’ll never have a more diversity rich environment than the one in which any class and any gear combo could complete (dungeons).

Welcome to HoT. Enjoy your stay – here’s your complimentary engineer.

it’s pretty much the opposite lol, raids will kill classes with 0 usability in raids not the other way around

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem is burn. Burn needs to go down 20% and bleed needs to go up 20%.

This would bring down the burn giants, and bring up some of the lowly bleed based classes.

Necro in particular relies heavily on bleed making it one of the lowest dps condition classes.

Sinister engineer just needs a nerf overall, since it has high burn, high bleed, AND high direct damage.

Druid will certainly be nerfed, saw lots of videos of druids winning 4v1’s lol. Which should give a bunch of different healing options.

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Optimal rotation.

3.5k direct damage, hardly high considering

6.8k bleed DPS, yes it can spike high with shrapnel grenade even as high as 14k, but still you average down to 6.8k

8.6k burn, which is again why I say that a nerf to burn would be a slight hit to engi but with a paired bleed buff it’d balance out ok, but also help other professions raise their standings.

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

It takes a lot of skill to pull off the full rotation, but there are really just 4-5 priority skills that make up 80% of that dps. Sure it is hard to get the last 20%, but you can get most of the way there with much less work.

Even still, those numbers are just crazy. Necro the “king” of bleeds can only get to ~7k sustained with 9k burst bleed. And they have to sacrifice all burning damage to get there, and they do no direct damage (about 400 dps). They do get ~1.2K dps from poison with 3k poison burst, and 1.5k torment (moving).

But they are a far cry from engineer.

Harper.4173:

I find it both sad and funny that while only a short while ago the “zerker meta” was the most evil thing in GW2 right now this whole “class imbalance” has risen to take its place somewhat.

The same people that thought the “zerker meta” was exclusionist and terrible now find themselves in a spot where exclusion is harder, the criteria stricter and all of this happened as a result of people crying out for ‘more diveristy’ blindly failing to see that you’ll never have a more diversity rich environment than the one in which any class and any gear combo could complete (dungeons).

Welcome to HoT. Enjoy your stay – here’s your complimentary engineer.

This. For a long time now, some people have been saying, “Be careful what you ask for, ANet might give it to you.”

Raids are likely going to please people who: (a) want harder content than dungeons offer; and/or (b) want to play the dedicated tank or healer, with all that hard content entails. This includes: having the correct gear for your role; having the correct profession for your role; and having the correct build for your role. Raids will not be the panacea for anyone whose beef was “gear diversity” or “I want PuG groups to want my build no matter what it is.”

Kidel.2057:

Random.4691:

I’m glad that all this extensive Raid testing has shown us that the Druid is the only reliable source of healing for raids. It couldn’t possibly have been that the Raid groups were using Druids because this was the first and only weekend for them to be played before release resulting in an over abundance of players playing Druid vs. other classes.

That couldn’t possibly be a major factor it would make waaaaay to much sense.

Other healers have been tested too, as well as other condi dps.
Even WP in his stream tried to use full cleric ventari rev and could not keep up. And they had a condi necro that they had to replace with another scrapper.

And yeah, please don’t nerf engi and druid (maybe a bit on cele charging), but buff other classes in condi and heal roles, otherwise we’ll be forced on a 4engi1druid party setup

First off 1-2 days in beta is not even remotely enough time to come to a conclusion, second WP is an average player, he seems to be an ok guy but to pretend he is some kind of Gaming God and assume that if he couldn’t do it, it clearly won’t work is just ignorant at best.

There will be other classes capable of healing the raids, a large part of success if the person behind the class.

In 6 months it will be pugged and in 1year you will see those pug groups grabbing the first 8 DPS and 1 healer then going. There will be some groups that will still need to have the perfect group but to get a completion it won’t be mandatory like it will be for the first 6 months. It will just make it easier and faster. So for all those “casuals” that are stubborn and won’t play the “meta” they will just have to wait to enjoy the raid.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem is burn. Burn needs to go down 20% and bleed needs to go up 20%.

This would bring down the burn giants, and bring up some of the lowly bleed based classes.

Necro in particular relies heavily on bleed making it one of the lowest dps condition classes.

Sinister engineer just needs a nerf overall, since it has high burn, high bleed, AND high direct damage.

Druid will certainly be nerfed, saw lots of videos of druids winning 4v1’s lol. Which should give a bunch of different healing options.

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Optimal rotation.

3.5k direct damage, hardly high considering

6.8k bleed DPS, yes it can spike high with shrapnel grenade even as high as 14k, but still you average down to 6.8k

8.6k burn, which is again why I say that a nerf to burn would be a slight hit to engi but with a paired bleed buff it’d balance out ok, but also help other professions raise their standings.

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

It takes a lot of skill to pull off the full rotation, but there are really just 4-5 priority skills that make up 80% of that dps. Sure it is hard to get the last 20%, but you can get most of the way there with much less work.

Even still, those numbers are just crazy. Necro the “king” of bleeds can only get to ~7k sustained with 9k burst bleed. And they have to sacrifice all burning damage to get there, and they do no direct damage (about 400 dps). They do get ~1.2K dps from poison with 3k poison burst, and 1.5k torment (moving).

But they are a far cry from engineer.

You’ll never hear me disagree that Condi necro needs a serious buff in PVE (no clue in PVP, I really couldn’t care less about that game mode).

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem is burn. Burn needs to go down 20% and bleed needs to go up 20%.

This would bring down the burn giants, and bring up some of the lowly bleed based classes.

Necro in particular relies heavily on bleed making it one of the lowest dps condition classes.

Sinister engineer just needs a nerf overall, since it has high burn, high bleed, AND high direct damage.

Druid will certainly be nerfed, saw lots of videos of druids winning 4v1’s lol. Which should give a bunch of different healing options.

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Optimal rotation.

3.5k direct damage, hardly high considering

6.8k bleed DPS, yes it can spike high with shrapnel grenade even as high as 14k, but still you average down to 6.8k

8.6k burn, which is again why I say that a nerf to burn would be a slight hit to engi but with a paired bleed buff it’d balance out ok, but also help other professions raise their standings.

Lastly…. This is all theoretical. This rotation is one I haven’t seen someone able to record fully. 70% is probably what I’m able to achieve if that. I’d be impressed if anyone would even recite the rotation in order let alone pull it off.

Anyways I think the Engi hate is a bit overexaggerated by theoretical numbers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is free to record themselves pulling off the perfect rotation

It takes a lot of skill to pull off the full rotation, but there are really just 4-5 priority skills that make up 80% of that dps. Sure it is hard to get the last 20%, but you can get most of the way there with much less work.

Even still, those numbers are just crazy. Necro the “king” of bleeds can only get to ~7k sustained with 9k burst bleed. And they have to sacrifice all burning damage to get there, and they do no direct damage (about 400 dps). They do get ~1.2K dps from poison with 3k poison burst, and 1.5k torment (moving).

But they are a far cry from engineer.

You’ll never hear me disagree that Condi necro needs a serious buff in PVE (no clue in PVP, I really couldn’t care less about that game mode).

It needs it there too…

Sizer.3987:

Nocta.5274:

As it stands, unless balance is adressed, there’s no reason to run classes that don’t fit into this setup :

1 tank ( which can be multiple things )
Power revenant
Warrior
Chronomancer
Ele or another revenant
4 Sinister Engi
Druid

Anything else is pure handicap to the overall utility and damage of the group, which is something that definitely needs to be addressed.

Serious question, I might have missed something but dont buffs still only work on 5 people? I assume they are taking warriors for banners and chronos for alacrity and so on, so wouldnt you need 2 of each of those?

The Rev and Ele/other rev can provide 25 mights stacks and fury. You could run 4 rev’s and have 25 might, fury and protection for 10 people without a war. In the example, war provides half rev/ele other half. Don;t forget engie’s and other classes will be blasting fire fields for even more might. The plus side of bringing a PS war is empower allies, banners and 250 extra healing power for the healer.

Rev’s and engie’s (most of the dps) won’t need much alacrity, the war, ele etc will benefit from it a lot. One chrono will help spread the buffs, slow, quickness, alacrity etc 2 is nice but has to be balanced against the dps loss vs gains. In a full rev/ engie party the chrono may not even be worth it. If the team had lots of classes e.g. war’s/ venom share thief etc that benefit from alacrity, then 2 chrono’s are possible and maybe desirable.

What the raid has shown us though is the definition of viable and meta have changed. The old definition of viable was completing the dungeon with said party whilst meta was completing the dungeon as fast as possible.

The new definition of viable has merged with the meta definition because it’s all about just completing the fights as timer’s alter’s the “as quick as possible” factor since they’ve been designed to take most of the timer, even if you are super quick. For example, assuming a group took the whole 8 min’s to kill the Vale Guardian, the fastest runs will probably only be 2-3mins less than that. Compare that to fractals/ dungeons. Viable runs with any builds can still take 30mins+ compared to a 5min speed run. That will change in raids.

Because of this change though, it means random builds won’t work and certain amount of group dps will be needed. As such, by taking certain classes, you may not have enough damage output to beat the timer even if those said player’s played flawlessly. Currently engie’s and rev’s are edging it on the dps front (ele’s ice bow nerf combined with moving boss really hurst their dps) that’s why you see these 2 classes banded about a lot. The fact Rev also bring’s a ton of boons greatly increases it’s desirability.

By bringing classes with lower dps, that needs to be balanced by them bring some kind of support/ benefit. PS War’s benefits are obvious, some other classes not so. The knockoff effect of this, bringing 1 sub optimal class is a little drag on the team but all the content should be doable. Bring 2, gets that much harder. When you get to 4 sub optimal classes, the dps loss can get to the point that the raid is not even completable.

Anyways, people are just speculating for now, the raid boss may be tweaked and nobody know what lies ahead, so for now don’t worry.

Kidel.2057:

I don’t want Rangers to not be relevant. I’d love for us to stay in a good spot (my second oldest character is a Ranger), as for Necro.
And you may want to check it again, since condi damage is now important and Rengers have a lot of it (not in Druid spec, of course). Reaper is just awesome, so yeah, check again.

But, just to be clear, Druid was in every single group that beat the first raid boss.
That’s a fact. This is not “being relevant”, this is “being mandatory”.
It was the only healer of choice. No other healer could have done the same. If Druid is nerfed then we are screwed. So please just buff other healers and put a cd on Cele Avatar, otherwise the class is just immune to conditions (lol) and it’s “sustained burst” instead of “burst” as intended.

There is a HUGE difference between “in a good spot” and “mandatory”.

I just want a second choice when making a group.

Not really

I know at least one group that had no druid and used eles and engys for heal and blast and they beat the boss with it.