Guild Wars 2

So far every dungeon boss in Guild Wars 2 can be beaten under a minute with the exception of a handful of them (and fractal bosses).
Making Berserker the easiest and fastest choice for farming those dungeons.

However we’re going to assume Raids are nothing like those dungeons. That bringing berserker on your guardian isn’t going to allow a faceroll through the dungeon. So you bring support or some tankiness? Well, yes and no. The ideal raid team is to have an answer to every problem and what exactly you should consider when going with a raid team. We are going to assume ArenaNet is going to focus on the following:

• No skipping! We are all used to this. In fact, it’s a big reason why players can run through Arah with full beserker gear. You can just skip all the potential threats.

• We can’t stack! One of the easiest ways to deal with enemies is to stack and cleave anything that walks near you to death while using blind to kept your self basically untouched. It would not surprise me that ArenaNet gives foes powerful cleaving attacks, punishing the 10 players thinking they can run through as a ball of death.

• It attacks so fast! Lets face it, 99% of enemies (and ally NPCs) attack like they are falling asleep. While their attacks are deadly, you can avoid it without trying very hard. We are going to assume the enemies are going to hit much faster. The faster the enemy, the harder they hit.

• OH !@#$ the conditions!! How much condition removal do you take? 0? 1? Yeah, assume the worst.

• God kitten we can’t stop it!! It’s charging a super attack? Surely with 10 people you have enough CC? Probably, more like hopefully. Assume the bosses need 10+ CC abilities to stop their ultimate attacks. Since the new CC system is based on CC prowess and not amount, taking 2 thieves might not do the trick for 10 people.

• It’s healing its allies?! Why not? Players can do it, so can enemies. Got to have a quick plan for those pesky healing.

• It can dodge, teleport?!! I mean legit dodging and not the lolwut graveling dodging, having snares, CC (slows? Hopefully…) will stop pesky mobs from dodging everything you got while dishing their own.

BONUS AREA——

What to ALSO assume (but also we hope this is NOT including)

• Bad mechanics. Did you know Captain Mai Trin is immortal? In fact, her ‘ally’ is the only reason why she can be stopped. Assume bosses have a gimmick where players must attract to a certain point on the map where moving 10 players can be a hassle. When in doubt, portal them or leave food to where you want to be.

• Immunity to certain mechanics. You know that Alphard, Serpent of the Waves is immune to conditions for basically no good reason, it’s because his ultimate attack actually kills him if he has any confusion. Assume (but hope no) ArenaNet are giving enemies immunity because the enemy would be too easy because of X mechanic.

• Immunity to reflection and blocking. This is the same issue as above, enemies become to easy when they can be reflected to death. Once again, the problem isn’t the reflection it’s that they have NO other means of attack. Bring reflection and projectile destruction but assume it can fail against certain enemies.

That being said, instead of listing ideal builds I’ll list two and have you guys post what you think would be helpful for the new raid content.

Raid build theory crafts:
Soldiers/Sentinel Minion Master.
When it comes to taking hits like no other look at the necromancer. Because Life Force is ~80% of your health bar, building high vitality can net you nearly 60k health (including full Life Force). To make things even more awesome, life force gain is by PERCENT, in other words, the more health you have the bigger life force you’ll get. Not to mention the life stealing granted from minions, minions removing conditions from you AND Unholy Martyr to remove them from your allies. This is incredibly helpful for a massive condition spike. While you can go Nomads necromancers are not the beast support for healing, go tanky and still hit hard.

Pistol Whip Berserker Daredevil
We’re going to assume the worst when it comes to mobs, punishing stacking at every instance. That said, pistol whip is an amazing shutdown, not to mention fantastic for evasion and escaping via sword teleport. It’s super handy for high damage and probably the safest use for berserkers. If you plan to bring your glass thief, assume your role needs to be focusing down threatening targets.

What build ideas do you have in mind for the new raid content?

Staff wielding guardians in full ascended nomads. I’ll trait for condition removal and support my party with heals.

Ayrilana.1396:

Staff wielding guardians in full ascended nomads. I’ll trait for condition removal and support my party with heals.

A bit overkill but when you got 9 other people to keep alive I can see that. Bring a hammer in your second weapon set and spam your auto attacks for a constant stream of protection and healing from the trait Writ of Persistence.

All raids will be is what we already have for open world bosses but in a slightly more controlled environment, i.e. instanced.

But don’t get your hopes too high. they will add a few in the coming months then abandon them like all the other instanced PvE group content.

Should mention DPS uptime. In most games, melee always does higher damage but because of all the constant need to run out you loose uptime so you’d see some raid bosses where melee would dominate, others where ranged would dominate, and if both had little uptime condi builds would usually dominate over dirrect. Of course if bosses have lots of immune phase transitions, condi uptime drops incredibly because of the ramp up time needed while the burst of physical would win out if you have burn phases. We are already seeing that atm where condis pull ahead of physical but its rare because most dungeon encounters dont last long enough. Assume a raid boss will last longer than a dungeon boss and wont just stand there and take full dps burns. The ultra stubborn on these forums though will think that equates to ‘healers’ and ‘tanks’ somehow, but.. dps is the goal in everygame. Lots of raids in games (though I think lazy) add enrage timers, so they take minimal healers, maybe healers in dps gear or healers dpsing, temp offtanks wearing dps gear, even your maintank occasionally wearing some dps gear; it happens!

TLDR: I think we’re more likely to see condi vs physical shakeups on various bosses and maybe even ranged vs melee shakeups (maybe at least as a 2ndary weapon).

Should add too, I think defensive stats will likely only be more important when little actual damage dealing is done, think just some kitten y puzzle ‘boss’ where survival stats obviously wont be required but might give you more room for error and sloppy play. Thats pretty much what they are now anyway, but if stuff is hard to learn, and again, has little damage required in the first place, I can see it being helpful at least in a learning phase.

So Cbomb lets say they add a mechanic that randomly target the person with the most Vitality. If everyone is zerg it can hit someone importaint like a PS warrior and kill him in zerg gear.
This would maybe make people thing about having a more tanky person in the run.
Or what about this. Some aoe attack will land on the ground somewhere. In order to not die here. You have to all run there and stack before it hits the ground.
The attack does x amound of damage. For every player standing in it, you take some % damage split between the people in the aoe.
If no one goes there, it will just deal the x amound of damage to everyone.
Depending on how much damage the aoe does to start with, it will make you have to have someone able to soak a lot of the damage, like a necro DS, or Ventari gear and use protection, frost aura and stuff like that.
I hope to see some really well thought out mechanics.

When it comes to the builds I would like to use and be a viable playstyle is:

Ventari Revenant.
With Salvation, Herald and the Jalis one.
Being really tanky, and still able to heal with Ventari legend.

If such a mechanic existed, besides my opinion on how bad it would be, it’d be easily countered with a single piece of gear to buff someone’s stats to be the most of that stat (heck, tons of bosses already pick on Ele’s; theyre squishier than anyone). If it was a perm single target aggro through stats alone, you’d need full perm single target healing which dosnt exist. Its a give and take that dosnt work in this game. If they made an actual HP sponge requirement raid wide, again besides my opinion on how bad that is, we could do that without a tank too. Very high lvl fracs used to be countered with a properly timed tome use which is now a singet for the same ‘heal everyone to full’. They didnt give us those typical healing tools because we have active defenses. Healing others are group effects that can more easily be replicated through finishers in water fields if you even need them at all, because we all have dodge. You could also use any number of the other invuln skills/boons/evades in the game without tanking your gear at all. Said PS warrior could just pop an OH sword in a weapon set and block at the right time, or you know.. dodge. Thats what makes this combat system amazing, regardless of how well thats optimized in 3 year old dungeons today.

This assumes any of that is even likely to happen, which I think is not due to how easy it is to counter. Like I said, those stats will be for learning, but once you’ve mastered it, they have no place in min/maxing.

Manifibel.8420:

So Cbomb lets say they add a mechanic that randomly target the person with the most Vitality. If everyone is zerg it can hit someone importaint like a PS warrior and kill him in zerg gear.
This would maybe make people thing about having a more tanky person in the run.
Or what about this. Some aoe attack will land on the ground somewhere. In order to not die here. You have to all run there and stack before it hits the ground.
The attack does x amound of damage. For every player standing in it, you take some % damage split between the people in the aoe.
If no one goes there, it will just deal the x amound of damage to everyone.
Depending on how much damage the aoe does to start with, it will make you have to have someone able to soak a lot of the damage, like a necro DS, or Ventari gear and use protection, frost aura and stuff like that.
I hope to see some really well thought out mechanics.

Shortly after the release of GW2 mobs used to target the squishiest target at almost all times. That was a major hassle but eventually ArenaNet implemented their own AI system.

The way the AI works is it’ll pick targets with certain attacks. It doesn’t matter too much if the target is ranged or melee, it can use ranged attacks on someone melee or walk over to do attack a ranged player, for example as soon as the fight starts the AI rolls a dice.

• Attack 1 – Player 3
• Attack 1 (Clone) – Player 4
• Attack 2 – Player 3
• Attack 2 (Clone) – Player 1
• Ranged Attack 1 – Player 2
• Ranged Attack 1 (Clone) – Player 5

While some attacks will hit other players, they are actually a clone of the same attack with a different target. If you ever wonder why the boss is ONLY picking you for its most powerful attack, it’s because it is literally only picked you.

However it also has what I think is “AI reset” if walking over to your target to do a melee attack is taking to long or if your target constantly goes invisible or simple just evading so much, it’ll roll the dice and pick new target for it’s selected attack. I’m not sure if it resets all the targeting or is it just that single one but I believe it only resets the selected attack.

• Attack 1 (Clone) – Player 4 -> Succeed? -> No -> Reset target.
• Attack 1 (Clone) – Player 3 -> Succeed? -> TBA

I believe the AI resets when a player goes DOWN (not die) but it will attack the player. Minions and clones can also reset the AI but it appears it is harder to hit that threshold.

_

Either way, it is very possible for the AI to have all it’s focus on the tanky targets as long as your team does not take any damage and you tank the damage. At the start the AI will randomly select everyone but eventually it will take priority of all it’s attacks to a single player like so