Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, first of all, I can’t describe how excited I am to see it how the raid will works by myself. Although I am not hard to the core player, I still love group challenge as it gives me opportunity to practice group dynamic and deal with people in general

So one of the boss feature that is mentioned in the recent post is that “they most assuredly will enrage if you take too long to kill them”. I’m not sure what will happen if the boss is “enraged”, but I assume that the simplest form of it is that the boss will have its damage increased or their attack will be more lethal. It is interesting to me because what I can extract from this is that it will give player the incentive to kill the boss faster. Now, I understand that anet is working on the issue where there is a lack of diversity and I’m not saying people will be motivated to go full zerk because of this (it might be however), I only mean that people will try to eliminate the boss as fast as possible by all means.

Here is my thought, how if the boss will enrage if they receive really high rate of damage in a period of time, or put simply the opposite of the currently stated.

First, logically, hostile creatures that their live is threated in general will become more aggressive, or enraged in this context.

Second, it will require players to manage their time and damage output, “should we try to finish it fast with the risk of enraging the boss or should we endure the battle longer?”. It might also relate to the mix of gear stats and build of the players in the squad. And to be honest, I have very minimum knowledge in MMO, but to the extent of my knowledge, I have never seen/heard any content that require such management, so it would be a new experience to me. I will be honest though, even if the mechanism I mentioned suggest different alternatives, it is restricting to an extent. Also, there might be a potential standardized way to do the raid, such as doing it faster is the best and so on.

At the end, I don’t really know what anet want to emphasize with this specific boss feature. I can understand it though if they put the mechanism as it is (enrage if took too long) so the players will take it down faster, thus they are required to fulfill their role to their maximum potential and ultimately finishing the battle in the fastest rate.

Anyway, I might externalize so many aspects in both mechanisms of this boss feature. So what do you think guys?

An enrage timer is all about balance. If you make tankyness an optimal option for a Raid and say they make supporty builds meta there would be no incentive to go zerker. Getting rid of the all zerker meta is important but making them obsolete is bad too because instead of offering diversity it just switches from one pure meta to another to another pure meta. This is going to be great for diversity IF THEY DO IT CORRECTLY lol.

Generally speaking, I don’t like enrage timers, but we will see how they implement it.

Enrage timers are a necessary evil

Otherwise everyone will just load out with the most tanky/support spec and just survive and slowly win, guaranteed.

Enrage timers suck, but they at least require a bit more diversity and skill than a typical “we’ll just make sure we can survive the boss and just slowly dps him while watching a movie”

Personally, I always thought the incentive for taking higher damage characters into a raid should be “do it in five hours instead of fifteen.” Maybe that’s just me, though. I have awkward ideas like that sometimes, can’t help it. I mean, I know how it goes. We can’t have a situation where defensive gear/specs would actually be useful. That’s just not Guild Wars.

The Enrage timers serve an important purpose: While I’m not the biggest fan for them I did suggest something along those lines in the raid CDI. It’s important that a time element is present, to prevent people who may not be using/understanding the mechanics of the fight or fighting well to complete it.

As an existing example: The Ice elemental at the end of the dredge fractal, the mechanic when used correctly causes 10x damage and prevents it from healing, Players completely ignoring that mechanic could eventually kill it, but they failed the test, they did not make use of the conditions set out for the fight. To prevent that from happening the “enrage” so to speak for that boss is that it heals if the buff goes off for too long.

Similarly Liandri, the timer is there to prevent someone running in circles eventually dps’ing her down that’s not really a display of skill but persistence.

As to your suggestion:, DPS management is a thing that occurs in Raids I.E 3 bosses you must keep all bosses within 10% health of each other. Or you must keep boss B above 75% till boss C is below 25%, over do the dps past that , causes 100% retaliation.

Outright punishing DPS, I.E they’re doing all the mechanics correctly and killing it really fast, so lets enrage the boss, is not a good idea, it’s punishing instead of rewarding risk.

In games going full DPS (glass cannon) is seen as a high risk thing , you sacrifice all passive defences for full offence only having your active defences to keep you alive. Since it’s high risk it gets a high reward.
Going full Tank (bunker) is seen as a safe move, your mistakes won’t kill you and you can slowly plod through the content. That’s fine in most content where the punishment is the longer run times. In raids however mistakes/inefficency is punished with complete failure. That is another aspect in ensuring that a player is forced to play to the best of their ability.

TL/DR: Enrage timers are there to promote risky play over safe play/ increase the base skill requirement through the additional pressure of a time element.

It doesn’t have to mean pour on the dps, though, does it? What if the boss enrages if you don’t solve a puzzle fast enough by getting everyone hopping on the correct sequence of colored tiles?

Just an idea that occurred to me reading this thread. There’s lots other things one might have to do fast beyond just hitting hard. The last boss in Glint’s Lair comes to mind, come to think of it. We didn’t directly dps the boss, though we did have to take out little minions fast enough to get the color buff and then scoop up a handy fragile and get to the pylon while both were active. So some dps was needed but mostly it was coordinating the sequence. Not that the boss there enraged, it just took longer and let more errors creep in and used up more resources if you flubbed things.

Zalavaaris.5329:

An enrage timer is all about balance. If you make tankyness an optimal option for a Raid and say they make supporty builds meta there would be no incentive to go zerker. Getting rid of the all zerker meta is important but making them obsolete is bad too because instead of offering diversity it just switches from one pure meta to another to another pure meta. This is going to be great for diversity IF THEY DO IT CORRECTLY lol.

SkiTz.4590:

Enrage timers are a necessary evil

Otherwise everyone will just load out with the most tanky/support spec and just survive and slowly win, guaranteed.

Enrage timers suck, but they at least require a bit more diversity and skill than a typical “we’ll just make sure we can survive the boss and just slowly dps him while watching a movie”

I didn’t mean to say that people should go tanky XD good point though! Well I suppose it will make players to consider their time value if they reverse the current enrage mechanic. It’s kind of making player to think through their build components in their squad. I belive that there should not be meta, BUT if player want to go full damage or full tanky as a mean of challenge or just for fun, but not occasional mean, they can do so. But do consider that they need to kitten the risks either they go full damage or even full tanky, because, as it is stated in the announcement, there are several other mechanisms that will require player to be mobile, for example they have to use glider when the boss going to do that lethal howl in the trailer, so even if . So I hope that if they spend too much time dealing with the boss with my reversed-enrage-effect, there are also other threats that will further prevent players doing damage to the boss, hence if players go to extreme tanky, they will spend a hideous amount of time there (by damage prevention, I’m not emphasizing only about invulnerability, could be healing or crowd control by minions, or that explosive thingy they mentioned they need to be kited or anything really).

Because to compare to current enrage mechanism, it seems like every penalty be given only if you don’t kill it as fast as possible. So I think spreading the penalty over will make it more even??

But again not encouraging too safe play is a good point and also anet stated that they don’t want to make raid take too much time so I agree to an extent!

Why not Enrage Phases as opposed to Enrage Timers?

Basically, meaning burn phases, not out of opportunity(because the boss is particularly vulnerable), but phases with cumulative debuffs which the player cannot sustainabley survive but get removed after the boss loses a certain amount of health.

Those timers are likely being to be related to some sort of puzzle or mechanic that must be completed in order to fully damage the boss during a small time window.
If the mechanic goes too slow (like, for example, during the Claw of Jormag second phase when more than half of the players range an extremely resilient boss instead of helping with the mechanic to make it vulnerable), it won’t be possible to deal enough damage and the boss will enrage.

In terms of DPS, the check will probably be soft enough for “reasonable” setups to succeed (it makes sense to disallow the most tanky setups since they could ignore a lot of the pressure during the fight and focus much more easily on the puzzle).
On top of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the effectivity of raw DPS would have a limit (by making the boss return to invulnerable state after losing some given health during a single burn phase, just like Tequatl does) so a high damage setup cannot succeed either while performing really bad at the puzzle.

Ticky.5831:

Why not Enrage Phases as opposed to Enrage Timers?

Basically, meaning burn phases, not out of opportunity(because the boss is particularly vulnerable), but phases with cumulative debuffs which the player cannot sustainabley survive but get removed after the boss loses a certain amount of health.

There will undoubtably be those but “Enrage” is just shorthand for time limit before a wipe mechanic activates. They come in many flavours but they just basicly mean you took too long. There will be phases like you describe just the word “Enrage” has a specific meaning in this context.

The Enrage timer is there to make sure that you bring some damage. Without the Enrage timer you could cheese every fight with 10 support players. Now we don’t know yet what mechanics these bosses are going to have ,but the said mechanics should be what force you to not bring all damage. So look at it this way Enrage timer = need for damage, Mechanics = need for everything else. As long as ANet has mechanics that require say a tanky person or a “healer” of sorts then we will see great diversity in raid builds. They have already said in an interview that their will be fights where you need a tanky person to absorb some damage for the rest of the party so it seems they are on this track.

Conski Deshan.2057:

The Enrage timers serve an important purpose: While I’m not the biggest fan for them I did suggest something along those lines in the raid CDI. It’s important that a time element is present, to prevent people who may not be using/understanding the mechanics of the fight or fighting well to complete it.

As an existing example: The Ice elemental at the end of the dredge fractal, the mechanic when used correctly causes 10x damage and prevents it from healing, Players completely ignoring that mechanic could eventually kill it, but they failed the test, they did not make use of the conditions set out for the fight. To prevent that from happening the “enrage” so to speak for that boss is that it heals if the buff goes off for too long.

Similarly Liandri, the timer is there to prevent someone running in circles eventually dps’ing her down that’s not really a display of skill but persistence.

As to your suggestion:, DPS management is a thing that occurs in Raids I.E 3 bosses you must keep all bosses within 10% health of each other. Or you must keep boss B above 75% till boss C is below 25%, over do the dps past that , causes 100% retaliation.

Outright punishing DPS, I.E they’re doing all the mechanics correctly and killing it really fast, so lets enrage the boss, is not a good idea, it’s punishing instead of rewarding risk.

In games going full DPS (glass cannon) is seen as a high risk thing , you sacrifice all passive defences for full offence only having your active defences to keep you alive. Since it’s high risk it gets a high reward.
Going full Tank (bunker) is seen as a safe move, your mistakes won’t kill you and you can slowly plod through the content. That’s fine in most content where the punishment is the longer run times. In raids however mistakes/inefficency is punished with complete failure. That is another aspect in ensuring that a player is forced to play to the best of their ability.

TL/DR: Enrage timers are there to promote risky play over safe play/ increase the base skill requirement through the additional pressure of a time element.

Your point is really good, and I agree, I think it is kind of bad if people going very safe and spend too much time in the raids and giving pressure might be the best move for anet to prevent this incentive.
However it seems a little bit one sided while as you said, going full DPS is rewarding while also risky, which might kill the intended diversity (although I have optimist hope that anet will actually tackle this problem with the implementation of raids). But I suppose making a mechanics while it is still risky while your squad emphasizes more into defense plus tank gearing is too complicated to be implemented.

Regarding to whether punishment or not, I find it hard to categorize them and rather let anet decide whether a mechanic would be considered as punishment or added risk to value by the player. But you are right, I missed this point, it is crucial not to or to minimize punishment in the game.

Donari.5237:

It doesn’t have to mean pour on the dps, though, does it? What if the boss enrages if you don’t solve a puzzle fast enough by getting everyone hopping on the correct sequence of colored tiles?

Just an idea that occurred to me reading this thread. There’s lots other things one might have to do fast beyond just hitting hard. The last boss in Glint’s Lair comes to mind, come to think of it. We didn’t directly dps the boss, though we did have to take out little minions fast enough to get the color buff and then scoop up a handy fragile and get to the pylon while both were active. So some dps was needed but mostly it was coordinating the sequence. Not that the boss there enraged, it just took longer and let more errors creep in and used up more resources if you flubbed things.

good thought! I think I missed there might be puzzle, like the one example mentioned by Conski Deshan, too in the boss fight. This far I have only revolved around the monster in the trailer and that lethal howl it does lol! Yeah I agree having sort of timer giving you a pressure, I’m not sure if this will be punishment though?
But if the pressure is necessary, how if the timer is separated from the the enrage effect if it was reversed? So there is a separated timer for the puzzle. One thing I am concerned is that it will be too much burden or too complicated.

Coulter.2315:

Ticky.5831:

Why not Enrage Phases as opposed to Enrage Timers?

Basically, meaning burn phases, not out of opportunity(because the boss is particularly vulnerable), but phases with cumulative debuffs which the player cannot sustainabley survive but get removed after the boss loses a certain amount of health.

There will undoubtably be those but “Enrage” is just shorthand for time limit before a wipe mechanic activates. They come in many flavours but they just basicly mean you took too long. There will be phases like you describe just the word “Enrage” has a specific meaning in this context.

Yeah, I’m familiar with the terminology. I’m just saying “Enrage Phases” should address the same problems as just an “insta-fail” enrage timer.

Or, “I don’t see the point of Enrage Timers when an ‘Enrage Phase’ could be used instead”.

Ticky.5831:

Coulter.2315:

Ticky.5831:

Why not Enrage Phases as opposed to Enrage Timers?

Basically, meaning burn phases, not out of opportunity(because the boss is particularly vulnerable), but phases with cumulative debuffs which the player cannot sustainabley survive but get removed after the boss loses a certain amount of health.

There will undoubtably be those but “Enrage” is just shorthand for time limit before a wipe mechanic activates. They come in many flavours but they just basicly mean you took too long. There will be phases like you describe just the word “Enrage” has a specific meaning in this context.

Yeah, I’m familiar with the terminology. I’m just saying “Enrage Phases” should address the same problems as just an “insta-fail” enrage timer.

Or, “I don’t see the point of Enrage Timers when an ‘Enrage Phase’ could be used instead”.

Its important to time cap fights though – gives more control over the structure of the fight to the devs and enrage phases that you can cancel with damage could be cheesed in some way (icebows I’m looking at you).

I don’t really see the problem with that, unless you are saying that Ice Bow on a non-damage spec would be powerful enough that damage roles aren’t necessary.

I don’t think that’s cheesing. That’s effectively damage/resource loss mitigation through denying opportunity. As long as it incentivizes bringing DPS specs.

I may be missing your point completely though(I haven’t played Ele in years so I’m not intimately familiar with Icebow’s mechanics).

Enrage timer is a DPS check. If you cant kill the boss in X amount if time it goes into one shot mode and its a wipe. Simple as that, DPS check.

Ticky.5831:

I don’t really see the problem with that, unless you are saying that Ice Bow on a non-damage spec would be powerful enough that damage roles aren’t necessary.

I don’t think that’s cheesing. That’s mitigation through denying opportunity.

I may be missing your point completely though(I haven’t played Ele in years so I’m not intimately familiar with Icebow’s mechanics).

Icebows even on defensive characters would likely push through your enrage phases meaning there would be no time limit on the fight, and limitting time so that full defensive teams can’t just soak everything and chip down the boss is most of the point of a classic Enrage timer.

Its there to say “if you cannot kill the boss in 6mins (or whatever you want to set it), you have failed.” Having that changed to “if you can burst X damage every Ymins you can keep going as long as you need” would kinda weaken the concept.

I know, I’m familiar with the term;

To demonstrate;

Enrage Timer; A static timer encapsulating a fight, which after it expires, the bosses strength increases to the point where defeat(of the players) is nearly inevitable.

I’m offering an alternate suggestion.

Coulter.2315:

Ticky.5831:

I don’t really see the problem with that, unless you are saying that Ice Bow on a non-damage spec would be powerful enough that damage roles aren’t necessary.

I don’t think that’s cheesing. That’s mitigation through denying opportunity.

I may be missing your point completely though(I haven’t played Ele in years so I’m not intimately familiar with Icebow’s mechanics).

Icebows even on defensive characters would likely push through your enrage phases meaning there would be no time limit on the fight, and limitting time so that full defensive teams can’t just soak everything and chip down the boss is most of the point of a classic Enrage timer.

Its there to say “if you cannot kill the boss in 6mins (or whatever you want to set it), you have failed.” Having that changed to “if you can burst X damage every Ymins you can keep going as long as you need” would kinda weaken the concept.

Ok, I understand your point of contention then

With enrage timers confirmed, I REALLY hope Reapers/Necro dmg is substantially buffed this next BWE…….or we’re going to see a repeat of the last few years of LFG “NO NECRO”.

SkiTz.4590:

Enrage timers are a necessary evil

Otherwise everyone will just load out with the most tanky/support spec and just survive and slowly win, guaranteed.

Enrage timers suck, but they at least require a bit more diversity and skill than a typical “we’ll just make sure we can survive the boss and just slowly dps him while watching a movie”

There are many other ways to deal with that. Like secondary enemies you have to kill quickly to prevent bad things from happening.

Again, we will see how it is implemented, but the “we have the basics of the fight down and got the boss down to 2% but didn’t meet some arbitrary time limit so we wiped” type of enrage timer isn’t fun and I hope it is avoided.

I just want to know if they will be tuned for exotic or ascended.

Caliche.8463:

I just want to know if they will be tuned for exotic or ascended.

Most likely exotic… unless they require ABSOLUTE MIN/MAXing, ascended stats shouldn’t matter…everything in PvE is balanced with exotics (minus high lvl fractals ofc)
everything in PvE outside high lvl fractals is beatable with just exotics.

I see that trend continuing with raids, especially since anet probably wants a high volume of players doing this content and they stated the only requirements so far are just some masteries…

I highly doubt agony resist will be in raids (until anet states so)

I wonder if enrage timers would be more acceptable if they simply framed them as a logical extension of the situation rather than the boss just arbitrarily entering a state of “Pure Hulkamania”.

For instance, just pointing out that the dungeon is going to collapse or some objective is going to fail in X time.

I know my opinion is leaning towards the making pve mobs imitate players and people dont like that but to be honest there would be no need for an enrage timer if rather than having a large hp pool alone, the bosses could heal themselves on a cooldown. This means that running too tanky as in a 1v1 in pvp would mean you simply do not have enough damage to out damage the boss’ sustain.

It also leads to more counterplay like poison and chill being very valuable and encouraging full use of the combat system which leads to all classes being useful.