Guild Wars 2

So, I played GW2 when it first came out, and had a lot of fun with it — at first. Fractals rolled around, and they were fun, but you can only do the same thing so many times before it gets boring. So, I quit at about the beginning of Living Story season 1.

Flash forward a few years, and here I started playing again ~3 weeks ago. When I heard about new fractals, a raid, and all kinds of challenging content, I just had to come back! So, now I have an 80 Engineer and Elementalist (both fully geared out), I’ve been raiding in MMOs for upwards of 12 years, and all that — yet, to date, I’ve not even set foot inside the raid.

I’ve been listing myself in LFG for a week and a half or so, I’ve been asking around in chat, and so on. But, there’s just no one pugging a raid, or filling a spot, or any of that. And no guilds are recruiting that actually go into the raid.

So, what exactly is the issue? Is the raid in GW2 just one of the hardest in the genre or something, or are people just being silly?

Raiding was the main reason I came back to the game. : / And it doesn’t seem like I’ll even set foot in the raid any time soon.

One word:

Elitism.

And this is why the game, which prospered so much at launch, didn’t feature any kind of “elite” or arbitrarily “difficult” content. And also part of why, HoT, an expansion featured as pleasing the “hardcore” crowd has failed in the eyes of a bulk majority of players when looking at sheer numbers.

Strictly speaking, not many people care. And those that do are likely too exclusive to not care about anyone not involved in their personal affairs.

Don’t have the skill or reflexes. Don’t have the desire to sit through the necessary hours per attempt to try it.

Edit: from threads on the forum where people gave their age, a lot of people who play this game may well be older. They may not have the desire to raid or the time to for it if they do.

Not afraid of raids, but raiders.

Organizing a 10 person team. In 7800 hours I haven’t met 9 other people who are regularly in the same time zone and have the same availability as I on a regular basis.

You can not enjoy raiding without being afraid of it. I can raid. I don’t enjoy raiding.

Your best bet, OP, would be to post in the Dungeons/Fractals/Raids subforum that you are looking for a guild that wants another raider. Post your profession, availability and region. You might get lucky. Relying on PuG’s when your experience with them so far has been “nothing going on,” is not going to work out well.

Good luck.

I’m not afraid of raiding, but after spending too much time trying to assemble a group that just involves people leaving whenever someone else joins, it’s just not enjoyable enough to justify the time.

Dungeons were far better in that I could actually just solo or practice the encounters on my own while I waited for people to join, the fact that you can’t list squads under LFG is also an issue, as it means that once you go over 5 people, at least one person needs to leave the squad, at which point, chances are that they’ll be doing nothing other than looking for people, which isn’t an enjoyable time.

TLDR: Not enough fun to justify the necessary time spent preparing to have fun

“raids” in general in the MMO world have a long-standing bad reputation (a lot of it deserved), and so bringing raids to GW2 carries a lot of baggage.

Also, a lot of people specifically liked this game because it avoided the “raid or get out” mentality of many big-name MMOs.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

“raids” in general in the MMO world have a long-standing bad reputation (a lot of it deserved), and so bringing raids to GW2 carries a lot of baggage.

Also, a lot of people specifically liked this game because it avoided the “raid or get out” mentality of many big-name MMOs.

Because Hard things are hard.

Hyper Cutter is pretty spot on about the about people liking this game because there are no raids. I really miss the Guild Wars 1 Underworld and Fissure of Woe.

there are a lot of raid guilds these days…for the only purpose of raiding

however, all those raid guilds need “raid leaders” and is hard to fill
furthermore, the leader of those raids guilds had to go extra mile to arrange people to different teams. people who might not keep their promise to participate on timely and regularly fashion. theres a lot of work here so you can imagine the number of people wanting to fill that role. lastly, there are a lot of people that think way too highly of themselves and look down on some raid guilds. be unappreciative and such…. so, all in all, rarely get any thing done.

to put it simple, the community is becoming more and more unfriendly for guilds to function.

pug LFG will be in even worse situation

elitism, kitten-retentive players who make the game very unenjoyable, I really really dislike forced team content – especially given the mentality of the “Pro” players.
I love playing with roamers, much more down to earth, realistic, don’t whine and are elite by nature without having to impose their preferred game play on anyone else. Then the whole standing around forever while they judge anyone that wants to join.

I’m really disappointed that they made sab a suggested 5 man team, fortunately i was having fun solo with it, wish it was more open world….but i avoid anything that I have to go in with a pre-set team …I hate hate ….Hate ( extra hate added for good measure ) that mode of game play.

Ironically enough though, i do love people, just not those types.

Mcfrumpy.9385:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

“raids” in general in the MMO world have a long-standing bad reputation (a lot of it deserved), and so bringing raids to GW2 carries a lot of baggage.

Also, a lot of people specifically liked this game because it avoided the “raid or get out” mentality of many big-name MMOs.

Because Hard things are hard.

Hyper Cutter is pretty spot on about the about people liking this game because there are no raids. I really miss the Guild Wars 1 Underworld and Fissure of Woe.

I wouldn’t mind something like GW 1 Underworld or FoW but those are NOT raids. They were expansive zones where bosses didn’t have an enrage timer. You could go in, take your time, do the quests, and have a good time with friends.

The artificial difficult involved with rage timers is what I object too. I didnt’ need to use special builds to run UW or FoW with my friends if I wasnt’ speed running. Here you have to use the right guys, playing together with the right builds, very often using the right food. It’s not solving a problem, so much as doing something over and over again until you get it right. That’s okay for people who enjoy that but it doesn’t hold my interest.

It’s not that i am afraid of raids. I just strongly dislike the gameplay they promote. In short, they are not fun.

I assume for those who are it’s more a fear of failure and/or other people than anything.

Raiding tends to be the most difficult PvE content there is and as such there will be wipes. Sometimes many, many wipes. When progressing in WoW raids it’s not uncommon to have over 100 or even 200 wipes on the more difficult bosses.

Some people can’t handle that, and/or are afraid they’ll be blamed for the wipes and treated like trash due to the perceived attitudes of other raiders which aren’t always accurate but since negativity tends to stand out more than anything else that’s what people tend to expect.

I’m not afraid of raids, I’m just not interested in that type of content. Always someone ordering you around, telling you what to equip, where to stand, what skills to use. That’s just not my thing but I’ve got no problem with raids being in the game. I’m amazed that the devs did not give raiders a dedicated LFG channel or some sort of “lobby” to help them assemble and prepare.

There are plenty of raid guilds out there and they do advertise in LA chat.

A lot of comments here seem to be based on heresay or speculation. I started raiding last week; it definitely needs effort, but the whole elitism stance is fairly baseless and not exclusive to raids. Dungeons and fractal players screamed zerk only for the longest time too. I’ve generally had really good pug experiences raiding. Team setup requires patience, but its not impossible. Set up your own team and you can specify the experience level. Ive also set up training runs before where experienced players joined and offered to teach.

I’d hardly say “most people” dont care about raiding, most of my guild raids, and it didnt come together when raids were introduced, we generally had people interested in it, whether it was inter guild raiding or pugging.

i like raids, and i did them on a regular basis in age of conan, with the guild i was in then.
They did sunday evening raiding with guildies who wanted to come along.

Only toth amon(i think he was called) they did with a special team.
It was allways fun to do the raids with them.

Think i will do them in gw2 as well when i find a cool guild that suits my needs.
In gw1 we did all of the hard content with the guild, without forcing builds on to people. We were just a group of fun loving people that took their time to
get things done.

when you want to pug it, its like in gw1, if you dont run a so and so build and have
so and so experience you cant come( some even would say your scrub).

You could try to form your own group, but i doubt it will work for raids.

Ramoth.9064:

A lot of comments here seem to be based on heresay or speculation. I started raiding last week; it definitely needs effort, but the whole elitism stance is fairly baseless and not exclusive to raids. Dungeons and fractal players screamed zerk only for the longest time too. I’ve generally had really good pug experiences raiding. Team setup requires patience, but its not impossible. Set up your own team and you can specify the experience level. Ive also set up training runs before where experienced players joined and offered to teach.

I’d hardly say “most people” dont care about raiding, most of my guild raids, and it didnt come together when raids were introduced, we generally had people interested in it, whether it was inter guild raiding or pugging.

When I want to make a dungeon group,. I put up an ad, dungeon path casaul, fun run and I get people pretty kitten ed fast.

I’ve never not beaten a dungeon with any group I’ve gotten that way.

Try that with a raid sometimes.

Tahlie.4259:

So, what exactly is the issue? Is the raid in GW2 just one of the hardest in the genre or something, or are people just being silly?

Players are doing the Raid with their friends and guild members is probably the best reason you can’t find random groups.

The LFG in this game sucks balls. It’s as bad as when people in SWTOR asked you to link your achievement or pm them your dps parse numbers to join a raid or in Neverwinter Online when you spammed your gear score hoping you had the biggest stick to find groups. It’s not limited to raids either, fractals, PvP…less so in dungeons since the reward nerf.
With LFG messages like “zerk only, exp only, eternal title only, only meta builds, etc” is it any wonder that people shy away from a lot of party content outside of big open world zergs in this game? Aside from the few people doing teaching runs (see the players helping players for example) the community is just toxic as kitten to anyone trying something for the first time.

As a former raid leader I really don’t feel like bothering with the effort of putting together raids anymore, it’s just not worth the time or effort. I guess that makes me part of the problem, but somehow, I can’t find it in me to care.

I dont Think ppl are – the problem is findin a Group and get started – THAT takes AGES wich makes it not Worth the effort.

For 3 years you did not need a group for any of the core content. Sure dungeons and fractals but that was solved with a LFG where you don’t know the people and before the LFG it was stand outside the instance and spam say chat. Outside of a dungeon or fractal guild players ‘soloed’ instances (joining pugs). Raids come out and all of a sudden these solo players have to make 9 new friends. For a lot of people they either choose not to or because of casual content for 3 years can’t get into a guild or static raid group because they are required to do more than just to auto attack. There was also no build up to raids, an instance or new dungeon that gave the player base a taste of what raids were going to be so these players that play alone know what to expect.

So, I’ll reiterate a lot of what others have said already:

• Not afraid of raiding
• Haven’t played them yet
• Was concerned about what they would do to GW2 when they implemented them
• Don’t particularly care for their set up or what they promote
• Not into “stand around and wait” for ‘x’ number of people (wasn’t that the entire reason they got rid of tanking, and monking, and instancing, hench, and 8 person parties in the first place?)
• I don’t know 9 other people that I wouldn’t strangle for being kittenholes

" right guys, right builds, right food "

Forced content, forced anything really, is a turn off for some people. In any rpg I play there is my class, my build, my chosen play style. If it works well with others in a group scenario thats great. If it doesnt I’m more likely to skip whatever it is thats not working, than change my character. See, its in the name itself ‘role playing game’. I have a certain image of my character in my head. Requiring me to modify that in order to fit in somewhere is a huge intrusion in my personal (digital) space. Thats not to say I would not be open to learning new things. Its more of an aesthetic thing, here’s an example: I like playing a GS Reaper. GS Reaper doesnt work in pvp => I dont play pvp. That applies to any game mode really.

So, am i the only one?

Personally dislike raiding because the time they generally take to get ready, time in them to deal with, the issues with getting everyone on at the same time, the gear score stupidity, the elitists etc..

As a carer for my father i just don’t have time to spend in Raids for hours on end anymore…

There is a lot of hearsay in this thread. I doubt that many have even put forth the effort to raid.

People are afraid of raids because they are afraid to fail. It’s hard to fail most content in this game. Open world has a reputation of “press 1 to receive loot.” You just can’t do that in raids.

I don’t think people remember dungeons when they came out. They were hard. No one had the right gear. No one knew the dungeon mechanics. No one knew their classes.

Now they’re easy because people know what to do. It’s even easier for new players because they can mimic the experienced ones.

The same thing will happen to raids. I found VG hard the first couple of weeks. But I was inexperienced, and the group was inexperieced. Now it’s much easier. Because people know what to do.

So try out raids. Fail. It’s ok. That’s how I learned. I tried sloth every day the first week it came out, and didn’t beat it. Now I do. Because I learned the fight, and so did everyone else.

It’s actually a lot easier for you now, because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can have an experienced player tell you exactly what to do. Exactly what build and gear to bring.

So join a pug group. Create one (I don’t raid on a schedule – I pug every week). Join a guild. You can be the solution. So just do it.

People ain’t afraid of raiding.

1) First not everybody is playing raid. Hard to estimate how much player are doing raid to be honest. It’s probably between 5 and 15%.

2) The LFG is a mess for raid. No sub section, LFG doesn’t work with squad, etc. It doesn’t push people to play in pugs.

3) Raid need a lot of pratice and it can be hard to find a group at the same level as you. So most players prefer to have their own guild to raid with people they know and have similar skill in the game then them.

4) Finding a good guild is always a problem whatever your game. It’s not different for raiding guild. There isn’t much place to advertise, some raid don,t like to advertise. In the end, it’s not because you didn’t find any guild recruiting that there isn’t any. Also, those guild eventually become full and new guild need to form to recruit more players.

Game isn’t balanced for beans.

The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.

But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.

Doam.8305:

Game isn’t balanced for beans.

The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.

But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.

If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?

Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.

Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.

That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.

Absurdo.8309:

Doam.8305:

Game isn’t balanced for beans.

The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.

But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.

If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?

Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.

Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.

That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.

I wish it was a matter of skill. That’s the thing. Raids are not at all indicative of skilled play. It’s just optimization and then executing on it. There’s not much intrinsically difficult on the personal level so much as build-dependent and so long as the raid leader knows how to order people around. Removing the timer would make them a lot more approachable and remove much of the elitism associated with fixed builds. The pug dungeon community was quite large. I’ve never joined a zerk/AP requirement dungeon group nor have I started one, and some of the pug groups I have joined have rivaled some guilds’ speed clear times, despite the groups not being fully optimized or people abiding to a strict strategy deemed by the community as “necessary.”

Given the opportunity to play as they want to, they’ll complete the content together. Raiding should be hard on skill, not hard on build-dependence and composition.

Im 53 and disabled and dont like taking abuse from elitist teenagers.
Its not the raids so much as the people and attitude they attract.

DeceiverX.8361:

Absurdo.8309:

Doam.8305:

Game isn’t balanced for beans.

The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.

But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.

If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?

Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.

Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.

That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.

I wish it was a matter of skill. That’s the thing. Raids are not at all indicative of skilled play. It’s just optimization and then executing on it. There’s not much intrinsically difficult on the personal level so much as build-dependent and so long as the raid leader knows how to order people around. Removing the timer would make them a lot more approachable and remove much of the elitism associated with fixed builds. The pug dungeon community was quite large. I’ve never joined a zerk/AP requirement dungeon group nor have I started one, and some of the pug groups I have joined have rivaled some guilds’ speed clear times, despite the groups not being fully optimized or people abiding to a strict strategy deemed by the community as “necessary.”

Given the opportunity to play as they want to, they’ll complete the content together. Raiding should be hard on skill, not hard on build-dependence and composition.

Optimization and execution can describe all pve content, since you are facing non player characters. And the “execution” can demonstrate skill.

There’s actually a lot of variety in terms of composition, once you know how the fight works. Many are strict on composition for the first couple of weeks because people are new to the fight and they want to try a composition they know works. But after it’s out for a couple of weeks, people relax a bit. I don’t have set compositions when I lead wing 1 parties.

I still don’t get where the so-called elitism comes from. I have not seen it, at least in my experience. What I have seen is players that actually put forth the effort beat raids.

eldrin.6471:

Im 53 and disabled and dont like taking abuse from elitist teenagers.
Its not the raids so much as the people and attitude they attract.

If I came into this debate without knowing anything about either “side,” I would find this comment incredibly dismissive.

What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.

DeceiverX.8361:

Absurdo.8309:

Doam.8305:

Game isn’t balanced for beans.

The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.

But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.

If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?

Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.

Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.

That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.

I wish it was a matter of skill. That’s the thing. Raids are not at all indicative of skilled play. It’s just optimization and then executing on it. There’s not much intrinsically difficult on the personal level so much as build-dependent and so long as the raid leader knows how to order people around. Removing the timer would make them a lot more approachable and remove much of the elitism associated with fixed builds. The pug dungeon community was quite large. I’ve never joined a zerk/AP requirement dungeon group nor have I started one, and some of the pug groups I have joined have rivaled some guilds’ speed clear times, despite the groups not being fully optimized or people abiding to a strict strategy deemed by the community as “necessary.”

Given the opportunity to play as they want to, they’ll complete the content together. Raiding should be hard on skill, not hard on build-dependence and composition.

How would you suggest making a raid hard based on skill if it’s easy based on build and group comp?

• You could lower the time between tell and attack, or reduce the time tolerance on re-positioning. Result: You’d lower the numbers of players who can complete it, not increase accessibility. There would be no impact on any PuG meta other than reducing the overall number of players who want to raid.
• You could remove the timers. Result: You’d have dungeons 2.0. The raid would be easier overall and there would be no impact on the skill needed to complete it. You might see people start raid parties allowing a choice of various types of gear — you might not. The PuG meta would still call for certain builds, gear and tactics because people who want to optimize would still do so. If it’s not needed for basic success, it would be deemed necessary for efficiency.

Why are people so afraid of spiders?

Because, there are, in fact, many spiders which are incredibly dangerous around which you should exercise extreme caution. And people aren’t educated enough to know the difference so they exercise the same level of caution with all spiders.

Same thing with raids. Raids are terribly designed anti-casual and anti-fun content in the majority of games where they appear. Not to mention ANet has a lousy track record when it comes to challenging content. They haven’t just failed to make content which improves players skill level and graduates them to higher tiers of content difficulty, they’ve largely spent the last three years creating content which punishes experimentation and learning at all.

So when ANet says “This is the most challenging content we’ve made yet!” many players read it as “This is the worst content we’ve made yet!”, the term ‘challenging’ has just become synonymous with punishing, frustrating, uncreative, time consuming, boring, repetitive, and most of all unclear. They content just doesn’t teach you anything or provide any clear learning paths, and then rather than improve the content and give it those paths to where the game has a reasonable gradiation of difficulty, they either remove content or nerf it to be so unrewarding as to be almost entirely abandoned.

There was a glimmer of hope with the last season of the LS and the new areas of Drytop and Silverwastes when ANet seemed to be finally making spawns, mobs, and events which had clear strategies for players to exercise and eventually excel at. It was really basic but excellently structured.

And then HoT came out, and oh boy did that little glimmer of hope die ever so fast.

The game isn’t at a point where players are willing to give new content a chance because of how little work ANet seems to be willing to put in to making their content clear and accessible, I know I’m not willing. I can’t even get myself to complete the HoT areas or play for more than an hour or two a week, some weeks not at all, let alone get in to raiding. Which makes me sad, I really loved this game, and once upon a time had the highest hopes for it.

I do raids and I like doing it but the immense time investment is something that can put me off a lot.

Just look at all the absurd amount of time you can easily waste putting parties up and how quickly it can all fall if just one of the member leave for whatever reasons.

There is also the never dying syndrome of elitist pre-selection that sometimes get to ridiculous levels. I’m fully ascended myself and have killed a few bosses a few times but when I see requirement like must show at least 10 proofs of boss defeats I’m like, really?

This reminds a lot of the time you wanted to do Hall of Heroes but most only admitted rank 6 or higher. You needed to play to get higher ranks but no one would take you because you couldn’t play…

I know Raid guilds is the “solution”, and I did just that, but I can easily understand what many find repulsive in raids. You have to be ready to waste a lot of time… a lot of it.

My first and only experience with the raid was 3+ hours of trying to figure out how to get past the VG and resulted in zero rewards. I’ve decided my time is better spent on other things ever since.

Jaded from previous games for the trouble of
- Organizing a group of 10 people motivated exclusively by personal greed (this takes 3 hours).
- Waiting for the tank to get out of the bathroom cause it took 2 hours to find a healer
- Entering the raid, wiping on the trash in the first 4 minutes and 3 people ragequit the raid, taking you back to square 1.
- Not having enough raiders in the guild so you have to fill with 3-6 people (see above greed).

Add with guildwars:
- Being a sub-optimal class
- not knowing builds/rotations
- being unable to afford the build
- not having masteries unlocked (everyone’s waiting on your kitten to get back from spawn after they took the shortcut that you can only unlock from raiding)

The issue OP is having is mostly a result of two things:
1.) There is no incentive to teach the raid fights to newcomers
2.) The current framework for finding players to raid with is extremely poor

Can you blame pug groups for being somewhat exclusive with who they take? It will take hours longer to teach someone the fight and beat it than it will to just wait for an experienced player to come along.

At the same time, if someone wants to get into raiding it can difficult to build your way up to being an experienced player. Even if you are willing to group with nine other inexperienced players, finding players who are willing and available to come with you for multi-hour spans more than once is a huge pain in the kitten .

OP, the best way to approach this problem is to get into a guild that does raids. It doesn’t have to be a guild dedicated to raiding, just one that has people that raid and are willing to teach. I’m in a large guild, and not everyone raids, but the people that do are very friendly and we often take newcomers on training runs. If you really are “fully geared out” and you aren’t a huge kitten you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting into one of these guilds.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

My first and only experience with the raid was 3+ hours of trying to figure out how to get past the VG and resulted in zero rewards. I’ve decided my time is better spent on other things ever since.

When raids first came out it took us multiple days of raiding to kill Vale Guardian. Now we can easily clear the whole wing in under a half hour. No one is pretending that learning to raid isn’t a large time commitment, but if you have dedicated players that are willing to learn and improve themselves then it is can be a very rewarding experience (not just in terms of loot =P)

Absurdo.8309:

There is a lot of hearsay in this thread. I doubt that many have even put forth the effort to raid.

People are afraid of raids because they are afraid to fail. It’s hard to fail most content in this game. Open world has a reputation of “press 1 to receive loot.” You just can’t do that in raids.

I don’t think people remember dungeons when they came out. They were hard. No one had the right gear. No one knew the dungeon mechanics. No one knew their classes.

Now they’re easy because people know what to do. It’s even easier for new players because they can mimic the experienced ones.

The same thing will happen to raids. I found VG hard the first couple of weeks. But I was inexperienced, and the group was inexperieced. Now it’s much easier. Because people know what to do.

So try out raids. Fail. It’s ok. That’s how I learned. I tried sloth every day the first week it came out, and didn’t beat it. Now I do. Because I learned the fight, and so did everyone else.

It’s actually a lot easier for you now, because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can have an experienced player tell you exactly what to do. Exactly what build and gear to bring.

So join a pug group. Create one (I don’t raid on a schedule – I pug every week). Join a guild. You can be the solution. So just do it.

I’m not afraid to fail if its just me. I don’t like my failings dragging a group of other players down, however. Makes me feel bad for wasting other peoples’ time. And I certainly don’t much care for being raged at for it either.

There’s a “butter zone” so to speak where you can get in early and fail with everyone else, learn as everyone else learns, and be fine. But past that point, then you’re the one holding back the group while everyone else knows what they’re doing, that’s what I don’t like at all. I don’t want to be the “lame duck”.

Its why I don’t do dungeons, don’t do fractals, and don’t do raids. I missed out on the learning period for all of those things so now its a lost cause in my eyes. Even with new raids, the experienced raiders are still going to have a better idea of what to do than I would having never touched a raid before.

There’s the whole ascended thing too. I’d rather spend my time and gold on fun skins and multiple equipment sets for all my characters as opposed to just spending thousands equipping one character to the “max”. Besides some ascended trinkets here and there (Amulets on all characters since you get them for laurels, one character with all the Sinister trinkets from LS2), I have basically no ascended gear. One staff I crafted for the skin, one chest piece from my one and only ever ascended drop, one backpiece I made for the skin. So not only do I not meet any experience requirements, I also don’t even meet what most consider the basic gear requirements either.

Ramoth.9064:

A lot of comments here seem to be based on heresay or speculation.

Absurdo.8309:

There is a lot of hearsay in this thread. I doubt that many have even put forth the effort to raid.

You two are hilarious. I think I will continue that blasphemous thought process on a whole new level. If Arena Net does not see positive scaling statistic of people participating in Raid content via the long-term, it will be next on the chopping block. Though I have a feeling that adventures might get that treatment first. Due to their lack of quality in design/polish and people diminishing participation (sad to say). In that they will halt their development for other things (like legendaries) down the line.

While I am fine by all content in the game. Particularly with raid content taking out the ludicrous open world boss scaling issues. While reeling it back into an actual small group personal instance. The problem is what happened with the switched mentality of catering too much to the hardcore.

That pendulum finally swung too far with HoT focusing on that hardcore demographic. Especially when you break the stepping stool that gets people to that content. Dungeons and Fractals allowed people to slowly get there. However the stagnant nature of them, as well as the nerfs (before HoT came out) killed a great deal of that prospect. Now you have a three story roof with no ladders. While the people at the top are throwing stones at the people below, not realizing their own player base is shrinking. Due to the first raid not even being fully complete and peoples patience being very limited. That’s without me even mentioning the time sink itself.

The other glaring problem is ascended gear. Exotic gear alone can get the job just fine in raid. The stigma of people believing that you need acceded gear also drives them away. Especially when the one the lead designers of the raid tweets out a comment telling us so. It’s just like when they told us that Canach Lair fight instance in Southsun was on the level of being elite dungeon content. That was a straight out fabrication. Yet people believe that was originally the case. One solution would be dwindle down the materials/grind needed to create ascended gear to make them a bit more obtainable. Beyond what there is now. So people can experiment more outside of the norm with their gear, without the fear of being punished for selecting a “bad stat.” Or something that does not fit their overall play style.

Electro

I’m not afraid to fail if its just me. I don’t like my failings dragging a group of other players down, however. Makes me feel bad for wasting other peoples’ time. And I certainly don’t much care for being raged at for it either.

There’s a “butter zone” so to speak where you can get in early and fail with everyone else, learn as everyone else learns, and be fine. But past that point, then you’re the one holding back the group while everyone else knows what they’re doing, that’s what I don’t like at all. I don’t want to be the “lame duck”.

Its why I don’t do dungeons, don’t do fractals, and don’t do raids. I missed out on the learning period for all of those things so now its a lost cause in my eyes. Even with new raids, the experienced raiders are still going to have a better idea of what to do than I would having never touched a raid before.

There’s the whole ascended thing too. I’d rather spend my time and gold on fun skins and multiple equipment sets for all my characters as opposed to just spending thousands equipping one character to the “max”. Besides some ascended trinkets here and there (Amulets on all characters since you get them for laurels, one character with all the Sinister trinkets from LS2), I have basically no ascended gear. One staff I crafted for the skin, one chest piece from my one and only ever ascended drop, one backpiece I made for the skin. So not only do I not meet any experience requirements, I also don’t even meet what most consider the basic gear requirements either.

I would agree with you about getting in early making it easier to find a group. But at some point, if you want to do the content, you have to just go for it and learn as you go. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or seek advice from the more experienced players you are with. Even stuff like “I don’t understand how to dodge this attack” isn’t a stupid question – it was a kittenshow at sloth for a while until we learned the mechanics of tremor and shake, and knowing the best way to avoid those makes the fight much easier. Also don’t be afraid to bring more defensive traits/skills if you can fit it into your build. It’s tough to learn the mechanics if you die early every time. And for the love of god if you don’t know what you’re doing don’t play elementalist.

Saying you won’t do fotm is completely stupid, I have seen some insanely clowny stuff at lower tier fotm and I have literally never seen anyone rage about it. I’ve seen people go in with green items and kitten. No one cares as long as you meet the AR (easily affordable with just trinkets). For most of the scales 40 and below you could do them with 3 people anyway.

As far as raid gear goes, minimum is ascended weapon + trinkets. That’s pretty affordable honestly. Anyone who won’t take you only because you have exotic armor is an idiot. Not saying people won’t do it, but it is nowhere near as common as people think. Any experienced raider knows how little of a benefit ascended armor gives. I see people on the forums here say all the time that they don’t want to have to get ascended armor because it’s too expensive. That’s a BS excuse. I know experienced raiders who still use exotic armor on some characters (generally for alternative rune sets). It’s fine. You can make your armor solely from magnetite/raid drops/fotm drops if you’re patient.

Absurdo.8309:

What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.

Something like “Can you change your class?” or “Don’t use x trait here because Y is a lot better.” or even “We are looking for a warrior but you entered as a ranger. Change class or leave.” is extremely offensive in gw2.

My two cents:

I waited until I got all ascended gear to start raiding and did it with my family and guildmates. I was excited and ready to go.

Then I played it.

Not only was it VERY different than the raids I used to do in WoW, it seemed that it was entirely built around gimmicky mechanics. Each boss and mini-boss was a long fight where the boss had unbelievably huge HP. I was extremely disappointed in the lack of mobs in the first half of the raid. It was really just moving from one gimmick boss to another. Perhaps that’s what “challenging” content means.

My take is that GW2 raids is just not fun. I know many of my guildies think the same. We did it a couple times and then were just bored with it. I love GW2 way more than I ever did WoW, but Siege of Orgimmar this is not.

IMHO, I think they should do more dungeons, drop the fractals push, and let people play “how they want” again.

Tahlie.4259:

So, I played GW2 when it first came out, and had a lot of fun with it — at first. Fractals rolled around, and they were fun, but you can only do the same thing so many times before it gets boring. So, I quit at about the beginning of Living Story season 1.

Flash forward a few years, and here I started playing again ~3 weeks ago. When I heard about new fractals, a raid, and all kinds of challenging content, I just had to come back! So, now I have an 80 Engineer and Elementalist (both fully geared out), I’ve been raiding in MMOs for upwards of 12 years, and all that — yet, to date, I’ve not even set foot inside the raid.

I’ve been listing myself in LFG for a week and a half or so, I’ve been asking around in chat, and so on. But, there’s just no one pugging a raid, or filling a spot, or any of that. And no guilds are recruiting that actually go into the raid.

So, what exactly is the issue? Is the raid in GW2 just one of the hardest in the genre or something, or are people just being silly?

Raiding was the main reason I came back to the game. : / And it doesn’t seem like I’ll even set foot in the raid any time soon.

I think the raids are only being done by a relatively small number of the population. I pugged this raid when the first wing came out, but it’s easy to get frustrated before long by problems that pugging and raiding just naturally provide.

At the time, it was challenging enough that pugging meant I was doing a lot of repeating and dying. So, eventually, pugging became less and less popular and people raided with their guilds. You’d think you could get into a raiding guild, though.

Personally, unless people pug the raid again in the future due to players having figured out how to do it relatively easily, I probably won’t finish the whole thing. I just don’t want to make more ascended gear at this point (I’ve made A LOT of it) and I’d have to make sets I never made in order to raid, so it’s not worth the time, mats, and money to me to gear out. I’d rather spend the next several months doing something more fun than gold grinding or mat grinding or both.

Raiding has MANY requirements. It’s certainly NOT for everyone. Every boss is different and has a different set of mechanics to learn and master. The composition of the group also varies from boss to boss. Think of it as many very difficult puzzles requiring experience, build, and gear. The MOST important thing is a group of 10 people that get along well.

Being in a good guild is probably the most important first step. Sure you can PUG it, but wow, you really need to get lucky to find the right group. Raids take LOTs of practice and patience. The better ‘instructor’ you have the smoother the experience. Fortunately my guild has about a dozen ‘hard core’ raiders that have no problem spending hours and hours learning how to beat the raid. The other dozen ‘casual’ raiders like myself then learn from them and to some extent get ‘carried’ through. VG is pretty easy with a decent build, but Gorseval is a real DPS check with the last nerfs that came out.

Everyone has to work together bringing the right thing to the table. It is NOT a walk in the park like most of the rest of GW2 content.

I just find fixed-size group content in preset instances incredibly boring, no matter how “challenging” that content might be. You know you are doing the same as every other group before or after you. After 3.5 years I still haven’t even done all dungeon paths and my fractal level is somewhere around 19. Why would I do something, that is as boring to me, only more demanding on the ppl around me and myself?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Absurdo.8309:

What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.

Something like “Can you change your class?” or “Don’t use x trait here because Y is a lot better.” or even “We are looking for a warrior but you entered as a ranger. Change class or leave.” is extremely offensive in gw2.

If you find this abusive or offensive, then I’m not sure what to tell you.

Asking to change a trait or skill seems helpful to me, if it’s coming from an experienced player. I’m not sure why it would hurt your feelings. It takes a couple of clicks.

As someone who organizes pug groups, I’m pretty lenient on class choice, at least for wing 1. But I understand why others aren’t, and that’s their prerogative.

Obviously, if the lfg asks for a certain class, and you’re not that class, then you have no right to join the group. It’s their group, not yours, and they make the requirements.

Even if there was no explicit class requirements in the description, I would be ok asking you if you had another class, provided that you just joined the group. There’s nothing wrong with trying to maximize group effectiveness. And some classes are not the best at certain roles. If you can’t fill that role, and you haven’t committed any time, how are you harmed? Just find a group where you can fill the role they need. Or make your own.

As some general advice: People often ask: “What class should I gear up for raids?” The answer is always: multiple. If you limit yourself to one role or class, and that role is already filled in the group, then you’re out of looking. Being versatile is golden in raids.

Absurdo.8309:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Absurdo.8309:

What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.

Something like “Can you change your class?” or “Don’t use x trait here because Y is a lot better.” or even “We are looking for a warrior but you entered as a ranger. Change class or leave.” is extremely offensive in gw2.

If you find this abusive or offensive, then I’m not sure what to tell you.

I’m pretty sure he is arguing for your side, trying to discredit the other one.