Guild Wars 2

That’s really, really dumb…

The blue infusion looks so much better than the red one, and not only that but considering you can’t even sell the red one it pretty much just makes it so that CM 99 is both easier and more rewarding (unless you are super lucky with the blue infusion drop) since at least you get toxic spores and (more?) mystic coins.

With people finally reaching the 90 celestial infusion amount, it really shows how lackluster the things you can buy are. The tonic turns you into a small asura that you could just as easily copy with normal character creation, when it should have been like the fractal tonic but cycling through CM skins (both 99 and 100), while the infusion chest gives you an infusion which costs more gold than a normal +5 stat +9 agony infusion, which you cant even sell and changes your look into something super niche.

Overall I liked Shattered Observatory a lot although I do think Nightmare is still a little better (though it’s much better than Chaos). CM mode is pretty crazy to learn, but after your first kill it seems to get much more manageable, in particular making it so you can control the solar flare phases via health percent improved the ability to control how the boss will act by a lot.

The main complaints I have are…

1. The “platform” phases for the 1st boss are complete filler and shouldn’t exist. This only acts to elongate the boss fight for no real reason much like the filler section in swamp. Just make it so the boss does the targeted rush attack every 33%.

2. The Enrage picture overlaps with the Eye making it a lot harder to see.

3. Shattered Observatory CM could use slightly better rewards since it is harder than Nightmare CM which in addition to the same amount of integrated matrices gives the toxic spores needed for toxic focusing crystals. I guess the celestial infusion is meant to be the main way to make money, but it would be nice to get a consistent secondary reward after each run (maybe gives you 1-2 food slot items of your choice similar to the raid CM chests).

Miellyn.6847:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Miellyn.6847:

GoldenTruth.2853:

After having between Deimos this week and last I can honestly say that it is a very cool and good fight except for 1 very simple mechanic; the RNG nature of teleports. Specifically, the main problem is how the tank and AoE-kiter are included in those potentially selected to be teleported to the demon realm.

What this essentially does is give a 1/5 chance for every teleport to screw the group over. The only way to counteract this is to have your second chrono/off tank in zerk with 1080 toughness to sub (which is manageable but dumb). The real problem arises in how this limits AoE-kiter builds as if they put on any toughness they suddenly become the new tank. Now beating the boss even with this 1/5 chance is possible, but it feels like a design error that shouldn’t exist, similar to how it would be bad for xera to teleport the tank. This leads to a feeling of “unfair RNG”, something that is only really prevalent in KC with his bombs vs. ghost spawns. I’m hope that this is a bug rather than intended. Does anyone else feel this way? Does this seem like something Anet should change to make the boss feel more consistent?

TLDR: Boss is good, but the fact that the tank and the AoE-kiter can be teleportation targets feels like “unfair RNG”

The only teleport I know is only happening if you fail to break the add at 25% thats completely avoidable and fine the way it is.

The teleportation I am talking about is the 75%, 50%, 25% green teleport into demon realm phase (where you fight dark Saul)

I never experienced that the tank or kiter got the green circle, but maybe I am just lucky. :/

You are lucky lol, as this happened several time when we were learning, as well as tonight.

I’m hoping it’s just a bug since a bunch of the wings are still buggy. But if it’s intended :(

Miellyn.6847:

GoldenTruth.2853:

After having between Deimos this week and last I can honestly say that it is a very cool and good fight except for 1 very simple mechanic; the RNG nature of teleports. Specifically, the main problem is how the tank and AoE-kiter are included in those potentially selected to be teleported to the demon realm.

What this essentially does is give a 1/5 chance for every teleport to screw the group over. The only way to counteract this is to have your second chrono/off tank in zerk with 1080 toughness to sub (which is manageable but dumb). The real problem arises in how this limits AoE-kiter builds as if they put on any toughness they suddenly become the new tank. Now beating the boss even with this 1/5 chance is possible, but it feels like a design error that shouldn’t exist, similar to how it would be bad for xera to teleport the tank. This leads to a feeling of “unfair RNG”, something that is only really prevalent in KC with his bombs vs. ghost spawns. I’m hope that this is a bug rather than intended. Does anyone else feel this way? Does this seem like something Anet should change to make the boss feel more consistent?

TLDR: Boss is good, but the fact that the tank and the AoE-kiter can be teleportation targets feels like “unfair RNG”

The only teleport I know is only happening if you fail to break the add at 25% thats completely avoidable and fine the way it is.

The teleportation I am talking about is the 75%, 50%, 25% green teleport into demon realm phase (where you fight dark Saul)

After having between Deimos this week and last I can honestly say that it is a very cool and good fight except for 1 very simple mechanic; the RNG nature of teleports. Specifically, the main problem is how the tank and AoE-kiter are included in those potentially selected to be teleported to the demon realm.

What this essentially does is give a 1/5 chance for every teleport to screw the group over. The only way to counteract this is to have your second chrono/off tank in zerk with 1080 toughness to sub (which is manageable but dumb). The real problem arises in how this limits AoE-kiter builds as if they put on any toughness they suddenly become the new tank. Now beating the boss even with this 1/5 chance is possible, but it feels like a design error that shouldn’t exist, similar to how it would be bad for xera to teleport the tank. This leads to a feeling of “unfair RNG”, something that is only really prevalent in KC with his bombs vs. ghost spawns. I’m hope that this is a bug rather than intended. Does anyone else feel this way? Does this seem like something Anet should change to make the boss feel more consistent?

TLDR: Boss is good, but the fact that the tank and the AoE-kiter can be teleportation targets feels like “unfair RNG”

zealex.9410:

Zaxares.5419:

GoldenTruth.2853:

If you didn’t know already you can jump over the orbs without taking damage.

Can you really?? Huh. That would definitely make the fight a lot easier. I must try that out the next time I’m in Nightmare.

i swear to god thats not the case i have tried countless times to jump over the irbs but i stll get dmg and its not lagg or anything what you can do tho stay bac w8 for them to open up and pass between them

Yeah, I was wrong about this. My friend told me this but upon testing it myself it seemed like the orbs just did less damage than one would think, not that jumping worked. I deleted my post when I realized this but it seems someone quoted me.

Amazing fractal and by far my favorite one yet. Level 100 was exactly what 5 man end game should feel like. The biggest reason why this is far superior to Chaos is that the difficulty isn’t just “let’s punish melee players and make range easy” (which is why Chaos feels terrible). Instead, Nightmare is melee viable and fun, especially at that last 33%.

Can’t wait to see what the fractal team has in store for us next (please let it be marionette or scarlet)

This furthers the idea that Anet is very passionate about a game they have no idea how to play. If this balance change isn’t for WvW only, your balance team needs to actually consult with heavily experienced players who understand the effects of what balance aimed at 1 game mode has on another game mode.

Even with JUST the Inspiration nerf you are essentially making revenants obsolete in raids (this is further exacerbated by nerfing naturalistic resonance as well). This makes a mirror comp the only real choice for raids and will push out revenant, thief, guard, and power warrior (due to having 2 mesmers for alacrity and quickness). Raid compositions will basically all be:

2x Mesmer, 2x Condi PS Warrior, 2x Druid, 2x Ele, 2x Ele or 2xNecro (depending on fight).

JPIMP.5236:

You realise how long that would take? That is arguably harder to achieve than a legendary atm due to it being purely RNG not to mention you can get repeat drops of the same item. And if you try hunting gold fractal relics to get the ones you want, good luck.

So…because the collection takes a while to get means that it shouldn’t exist?

Even of they didn’t add a new gold skin as a reward (which they should), it should still exist as as a collection.

Yes, please.

Seems odd there is a normal fractal weapons collection, but not one for the much rarer gold weapons.

After doing both of these T4 fractals with my group earlier today I have the exact same feelings as Eternal Effect

Chaos: High damaging Auto-Attack + Stun on final boss is dumb. The fact that melee is so kitten for this boss makes it the a slow ranged attack fight that most people (myself included) hate. 1st boss is fine.

Swamp: Very poorly tuned. Bloom’s groundpound has such a high defiance bar that our group essentially just ran out of the AoE because if we didn’t have some CC’s up he would essentially murder anyone still in there after a couple seconds (we just broke the shake instead). Projectiles are near instant, they are dodgeable but higher ping people probably have a tough time. Trash mobs still die instantly so you have to wait 1 minute in between phases pretty much doing nothing. Then all of a sudden a champ spawns at the end with a large hitpool (he should spawn at the start so people can wack on him and maybe kill before bloom is back). Our strategy was basically one person kites bloom far away while the rest deal with the champ and poisonblooms, which made this fight way longer than it ever should be.

It’s a lot more complex then simply scaling health/defiance bars. Most of the mechanics are based on having 10 people. In just the first wing this would effect…

- Rez time
- Buff composition
- VG Green circles
- Spiritwood orb capture point thing
- Gorseval Charged Souls soft CC
- Number of backups who can do Sabetha cannons/red bombs

And this would be even more apparent in wing 2 which relies heavily on projectile defense uptime and condion transfers.

Tbh I would very much like a scaling option, but at the same time the effort needed to do it well would be very hard as these bosses would need to have heavy mechanic tweaking as well.

Oh, I finished Sloth on Monday so I didn’t know. Hopefully, it is just a bug then because as you said, it is hard to react when you are used to the noise.

150 LI is probably a little too high for people just starting out who suddenly see they need to raid 9 bosses for 4 months straight. I think a required amount of 90 (10 weeks) or 120 (12 weeks) would work better.

In addition, people should be able to trade ~40 magnetite shards for a LI (60 if you increase the weekly shard cap to 150 like you should), while people who have an abundance of LI and don’t want the armor should be able to trade in a LI for 10-20 magnetite shards.

Further non-monetary incentives should also be provided to run raids other than legendary armor, as once people have enough LI I would guess a chunk of players will start to move to other content once Forsaken Thicket becomes old. In a different thread someone proposed adding a raid collection composed of all the unique skins from the raid which should give a decent amount of AP, a title, and (I wish) a red-color reskin of the ghostly infusion. I think that would be a very good way to incentive continuing to play raids for those who don’t want/finish up their legendary armor which shouldn’t take too many resources.

IMO this wing has the best visual pieces and level design. However, the boss fights are somewhat of a step down from the previous raids.

Siege is about equal to trio in difficulty and fun.

Construct is incredibly easy, and really only relies on one player playing golf correctly.

Xera’s design looks amazing, but so much of the time is spent gliding around that it gets old kind of fast. Difficulty-wise she is fine, though she is probably the easiest of the final bosses and the main difficulties come from leyline gliding fails.

Things I would change/bugfix (going to try and remove any “unfair difficulty”, without really buffing the bosses even though this is the easiest wing).

Siege:

- Reduce cooldown on the “call” special action key. In general one person is going to be moving her and it just feels more annoying when you can’t spam her over (would reduce the difficulty a little, but whenever I babysit her it always feels so annoying).

- Add a white ring AoE around npc so you can tell how far away from her you can get before she starts running off on her own.

Construct:

- Add a fixation noise and <XXX has been fixated> prompt. Currently we get a noise for the easy to see bomb part, but not for the much harder to see and important fixation.

- Fixation is very wonky atm. It seems like when the construct is not targeting anyone (jumping, cone AoE) the statues can fixate on the tank. Then once the tank regains agro they change targets. This also occurs when the fixation target goes down. In general this usually messes everyone up. Make it so when the statue changes fixation target it waits in place for 2-3 seconds before bolting it over to the next target. Once these fixation issues are fixed you may want to reduce the circumference of how far away the statue needs to die from the boss, as it is currently way to forgiving. Perhaps make it so it is the same range as how far the statues need to be to fuse together (currently you can venn diagram them without worry), so we can see the range on that too.

- Currently Green circles that spawn in the phase transition before the core phase disappear prior to the attack. If enough people leave right when the green goes away everyone dies. Just make the circles last longer.

- Cone AoE is very hard to see when everyone also has bombs. make it so he can’t do both at same time.

- Slightly reduce the circumference of the AoE circle on top of the Construct. The several 130 range auto-attacks in this game either can’t hit him without taking a lot of damage, or it is very hard to (so much so it might not even worth attacking him during this part as a 4 or 5 core push is generally overkill on dps anyway.)

Twisted Castle:
- Highlight of the entire wing. Don’t really see any issues with it, it was a lot of fun trying to figure out and can be run through very quickly once people know where to go.

Xera:

- Ley-line gliding seemed to be a potential “RNG” issue that liked to unfairly murder people, as people’s gliders sometimes randomly turn off.

- Wish the madness mechanic played more of a role, as currently it is pretty much a non-issue, especially with the mastery which most raiders will have if not now, then by next week.

My group doesn’t hear a fixation sound either. However, it would be an incredibly welcome addition (as well as a message appearing up top which says who has fixation like Sloth). The weird thing is the AoE bombs that everyone and their grandmother can see make a sound, but the fixation target doesn’t.

Yes, change it please.

Though you should also show us what the legendary armor actually looks like before you ask us to choose the armor type we want for the final product.

Yes please.

Raids have been some of the highest quality PvE content Anet has created and I would love to see more of it (hopefully before the 2nd xpac). That said, raids should not be the only PvE content focus (Fotm can implement a ton of LS1 content into fractals, yet sadly it sound like we are only getting a single new fractal for its next update), but I don’t believe the raid team is the reason for the slow content cycle on other forms of content.

I would love to see them add a collection such as this once all wings are out. Will provide that extra incentive for people even after they get their shiny legendary armor.

randomguy.1283:

cranos.5913:

As expected, the easy-mode raid topic instantly got derailed into a legendary armor debate. I think they’d be much better off introducing a way in open world to get it then spend resources on something casual players don’t even care about. Only the shinies matter anyway.

Which as I pointed out, is completely doable since you can pay raiders to get everything needed for leg armor.

To be honest, with the need for legendary insights it becomes less feasible to do this since even something low like 50 insights over 50 weeks of VG would run up quite a large tab (and lets be honest it will almost definitely need more).

That said I am fine with the inclusion of easy-mode raids if it is implemented in a smart way with rewards that can keep both modes alive. I also wouldn’t mind giving easy-mode raiders legendary armor if they were given a less visually impressive armor (but same stats/stat swap), which could then be upgraded through normal mode.

Guardians are in an “okay” position. A lot of their strengths were not well reflected (pun intended) in wing 1, with them essentially being reduced to a protection field with good dps on non-mobile targets (aka Sabetha).

However, with the addition of Wing 2, although, they still remain in the “not necessary” spot, it is fairly viable to have one for Slothasor, Trio, and Matthias. That said they have yet to fully utilize the guardian’s ability to block/aegis (excluding DH’s F3), and non-hammer builds are unfortunately not desirable.

Currently their are achievements tied to 4 boss encounters which can be considered “hard mode” (Sabetha, Slothasor, Trio, Matthias). In their best case they add a new mechanic (Slothasor), in their worst they don’t do much of anything (Matthias). Nonetheless, as is, most groups will do these achievements only once, and then never run them again as there is no real incentive to rerun them, making them both difficult to find groups for, and somewhat a waste of developer resources. This waste in resources is especially apparent from the the drastic difficulty drop from Trio being hypothetically tied to balancing for this “hard mode”, a mode people will rarely ever run (though honestly I think don’t fully believe this excuse as evidence points otherwise).

Proposed below are suggestions which will increase the prevalence of “hard mode” being run.

1. Add in repeatable achievements based on “hard mode” achievements:
This can be approached several ways, with the achievement being completed every 1-3 times you kill a specific boss on “hard mode”, or every time you kill the entire set of bosses on “hard mode” for that wing (the latter would need to exclude Spirit Vale, as Sabetha is the only one with a “hard mode”). This repeatable achievement may need to be restricted to a weekly basis to prevent reward farming.

2. Add desirable rewards to these achievements which won’t greatly hurt the economy: The easiest solution would be to give X amount of magnetite shards after the completion of the repeatable achievement. These magnetite shards would not be affected by the cap. This would provide an incentive for raiders to do the hard mode (as they are limited in the ways they can get shards after they cap), with minor affects to the economy. A potentially more economically harming reward would be a “Box of Raider’s Supplies” after killing the set of 3 bosses on “hard mode”, which would be a better long-term reward, but would need to be heavily limited to once a week.

Adding a simple repeatable achievement with proper rewards would go a long way in giving this already implemented difficulty setting more prominence in the current raid setting.

LegACy.1296:

Hmm, this my came off topic, but does anyone know how many times the bosses in Salvation Pass need to be killed to complete collection #7-#12 for the Legendary Armor? For example, I know that Gorseval needs to be killed 5 times for the first wing, but I haven’t really started doing collection for wing 2, so I’m asking here.

Just need to kill all wing 2 bosses once. The main thing you need to make sure to get is the water from standing in the fountain after a matthias kill, as this doesnt work in a newly opened cleared instance (similar to the chest from the pre-gorseval torch event)

There may not be a World 3, but Thank You for finally bringing SAB back! Time to farm for some Tribulation skins.

Also I liked how you changed world 2-2 and 2-3. It feels kind of weird knowing how much was cut to make it shorter, but you can still do the non-skips if you so choose/want the achievements, and those levels were far to long anyway.

STIHL.2489:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Myself and others have already discussed the fault in your logic.

All you have really done is whine that it would impede your ability to play the way you want, since you don’t care that others have only asked for the same, Not feeling it.

Not caring either.

Not sure at what point I have “whined”, as all I have done is present downsides to your proposal (I even gave a less intrusive alternative). At this point it is clear that you are either unwilling or unable to address these issues, and it is clear from the posts responding to you that far more people disagree to your proposal than agree (1 person a agreed out of what sounded like spite, multiple people from both sides disagreed).

There is no real need for myself or others to further respond to your proposal, or at least until you address these issues. Luckily, Anet doesn’t tend to take a created system and make it more restricted (which may be an argument for why easy mode may be seen in the future.

Also, I assume that if you do respond, similar to you previous responses it will take a single sentence from the above (probably the part about whining, or this part right here), that won’t address the actual issues proposed. I have little plans on responding back if that is the case.

STIHL.2489:

GoldenTruth.2853:

STIHL.2489:

Anyone but me kinda shocked by the reaction to wanting a Gear Check. I mean it’s the Casuals that are saying “YAH! Put it in” while all the hardcore gamers that were all about keeping difficult and elite are suddenly doing a 180, and whining about some nominal requirement.

My Intention was not flip this, or make a straw-man out of it, I honestly wanted a Gear Check, to Establish the raid as End-Game, but the responses by the elitist seem to have turned it into such, unintentional as it was, it’s still none the less hilarious.

Someone want to explain to be how that happened? I would have thought that the elite players would have backed-up and rallied behind a gear check to ensure anyone not fully prepared could not enter.

Can you all explain to be Why the change of heart?

I’m shocked that you want it.

Ok find the fault in my logic.

STIHL.2489:

In fact, at one time, I was under the illusion that Raids should have been more Accessable, mainly because I thought they were supposed to just be “Content” if you will “80th level Content” akin to any other content of that level range. just a 10 man 80th level Dungeon, like Honor of the Waves just with 10 people.

But then I paused and asked a very powerful question, one that would set my next move. See, I asked “Are Raids Supposed to be End-Game Content” and the answer was informative and eye opening.

From the Mouth of the Developers themselves.

“Raids are 10-player, instanced, elite dungeon content that’s a challenge unlike anything we’ve previously released in Guild Wars 2.”

This changed everything for me. I realized my mistake, and I also realized that, their biggest flaw in this design was to allow people the Illusion they could enter with a 70th level player and have even the slimiest, most remotest chance to survive. That the reason why we are having this discussion at all, is because Anet failed to set a Hard Requirement to enter, and thus deceiving people that this is intended to be available to them.

It’s Not

Nor was it ever intended, and that was their flaw.

Difficulty is not enough, that just makes people bitter, that just makes people feel resentment, and that is what starts these hundreds if not in the thousands by now. Posts.

The flaw was they failed so say clearly “You Must Meet this Requirement To Enter”

Had they put that in, had they made it clear that nothing short of a complete character was going to even be able to do this, there would be no illusions about what the Raid was intended to do and be.

It would have been easy on everyone, no one would have to feel bad about kicking someone for not being optimal, or not fully prepared, they need to have their “Bane Resist” to play this dungeon.

When they get that, then they can play.

It sets a goal for everyone, lets them know clearly if they are ready or not.

Upleveling in fractals just starts topics like this: Why you kick me?

Raids really needed that “Meet this Bar to Enter” to ensure everyone and anyone knew exactly what this content was, what it’s intention was, and where they stood with their ability to do it.

In the end, I firmly believe had they put in a Hard Gear Check, this topic and others like it, never would have existed. What I don’t get, is why you don’t see that as well?

Here is how I see it.

Either there needs to be Check, or there needs to be an Easy Mode.

Leaving things as they are is not a solution.

Myself and others have already discussed the fault in your logic. You are attempting to solve a minor problem in a way that would cause much more problematic ones. In addition your version of a “gear check” does not elicit skill at all, therefore, the true “check” would remain the same as it is now (insights/eternal), just with all the downsides of your suggestion.

Raids aren’t some new thing that only GW2 has done. When asked “what’s the hardest PvE content” the majority of people playing theme park MMOs will say “raids”. A pointless hard check does not need to be in place for something that simple word-of-mouth would do, particularly when it is based on something that is fairly commonplace in MMOs.

I didn’t go into HoT and it suddenly said “sorry this area is harder than you are used to come back in full exotics or better”, and people certainly aren’t given the heads up that Triple Trouble is harder than Megadestroyer. The problem you are trying to address honestly seems like a non-problem to me (and apparently others based on responses to you), and you are the first person I have ever seen bring it up (with a “fix” that would cause many more problems).

STIHL.2489:

Anyone but me kinda shocked by the reaction to wanting a Gear Check. I mean it’s the Casuals that are saying “YAH! Put it in” while all the hardcore gamers that were all about keeping difficult and elite are suddenly doing a 180, and whining about some nominal requirement.

My Intention was not flip this, or make a straw-man out of it, I honestly wanted a Gear Check, to Establish the raid as End-Game, but the responses by the elitist seem to have turned it into such, unintentional as it was, it’s still none the less hilarious.

Someone want to explain to be how that happened? I would have thought that the elite players would have backed-up and rallied behind a gear check to ensure anyone not fully prepared could not enter.

Can you all explain to be Why the change of heart?

I’m shocked that you want it. Point me to more posts, but I only see 1 person agreeing with you and it seems more out of spite to the “hardcore” than thinking it would be a good system.

The reason why you are getting a backlash from people who think the raids are fine as is, is because they have a better understanding of the “difficulty” of the raids. Unlike most MMOs, GW2’s raids are not gear focused (the only boss that is somewhat a dps check is Gorseval, all other bosses should end with plenty of time left on the timer, particularly wing 2), rather the raids are focused on the mechanics. This means that once you have the boss mechanics down, it is much easier to approach on different classes (and honestly the rotation on most classes is very simple). You would propose a forced gear-check on people who already have the necessary understanding of the boss. In fact, agony is one of the worst parts of fractals (or at least was until the update destroyed them), simply because even if you were a better player you could get soft-capped.

What you are proposing is a solution which harms players who like alts, raid experimentation (if you don’t like forced metas then this becomes worse for you), and creates a forced gate for good players for what is honestly not even an apparent problem.

Also, your system is flawed in how you get this new “agony resistance”, as gearing up doesn’t equal prepared for raids. If you wanted a more viable solution to this you could set it up so that the “Forsaken Thicket Mastery Line” plays more of a role in raids and can only be leveled through raiding (or to unlock skill X, you need to beat the boss before it), as this is also account-wide. Even then, the solution I posted is bad because it limits organized group progression (friend misses a day and can’t raid with everyone else). The idea that people can’t understand raids are supposed to be challenging, so we should fix that through an obtrusive system is odd (and not even really a problem).

I don’t care to repeat it, go reread the last few posts in the “are raids a good idea” thread. The TL;DR of it is that if they WANT to do the mechanics, they can, if they don’t want to, they don’t have to. It’s none of your business either way.

Kind of mean towards the end there, but uh, okay, but over the long-term prior evidence in this game has shown that people won’t do the mechanics when content is older, and simply put, why should they place resources in a mode that isn’t really any different than a world boss.

No. If, for example, Sabetha’s flame wall were slower or had more of a tell, then a player who practices to master in in easy mode would go into hard mode and have to start from scratch, because his timing would be entirely off. Meanwhile a new player would still have a terrible time with Sabetha on easy mode because the flame wall would still kill him.

If, instead, the flame wall behaved identically in both modes, but were survivable in easy mode, then a player who mastered avoiding it in easy mode could apply those same skills 1:1 in hard mode.

Start from scratch? They are learning to do the mechanics in easy mode that will ease them into hard mode if they so choose. We both like analogies so here is one; I take a math class which goes over basic algebra (easy mode). I still need to put in some effort, but honestly it isn’t very difficult. If I so choose I take the next class which teaches more difficult algebra but the basic rules are the same (hard mode). Did I learn nothing from the prior class? No it actually helped me understand the basics. so I could do better on the harder class than I would of without the easier one. Your example is closer to just taking the harder algebra right off the bat, but the grading is on a curve that even if you don’t study or even know basic algebra you still get an A.

Also would the person even know the mechanics if he just did it in easy mode. If everyone else does it without the mechanics won’t he just take for granted that VG’s green circle is something that can’t be blocked, or the cannons at Sabetha simply can’t be destroyed. I’d feel bad for the person who thinks he has a grasp on raids after easy mode only to wake up to the fact he doesn’t even understand 1/2 of what is going on.

People who are going to do the bare minimum are going to do the bare minimum. If people would ignore the green circle in my version of easy mode, then they would only bother sending 2-3 people at them rather than 3-4 in your mode.

So you agree that no one will do the mechanics if they aren’t relevant? After all why should they stand in green circles if they aren’t scary, wouldn’t that single guy actually doing the mechanics look silly, after all he is making this boss fight take longer.

In my mode, they may start out sending less people, but what happens when someone misses the green circles and they all wipe? Simple, they add extra people to go to green to decrease the buffer for failure. After all, my suggestions also have boss hp decrease so it isn’t like the timer is going to be a large hindrance to them. Current groups usually already bring a +1 for green circles, bringing a +2 would be a easy solution for easy-mode groups, and even if not more experienced players could be the ones doing it.[/quote]

You shouldn’t be able to ignore them completely, there should be ramifications, just not so immediately lethal as many of them are. They should be trouble enough that people will want to avoid them, just not so deadly that failing to avoid them immediately leads to a reset. It should be no less challenging that other non-raid content, just less challenging than the current raids are.

We are trying to reach the same goals, but approaching it at different ways. I want to ease them into what they should be doing, and have them actually execute it. Then if they so choose, refine it in hard mode once comfortable. You want to land them into a hard mode boss fight where players can choose to ignore mechanics or not. I think you underestimate just how much they could nerf mechanics while still making them relevant. We will go with VG since that’s a pretty basic boss which most people know.

There are 3 main issues when faced with an inexperienced VG group.

1. The bosses HP may be too high when people don’t know their optimal rotations. Boss HP is nerfed, easy fix (I think you agree with this one too).

2. Someone misses the green circles, or goes down on the way there causing their to not be enough people. By reducing the required number the team is more open to choosing how they want to approach this; do they send their 2 best players? do they send 4 players to be safe at the cost of some dps? The point is everyone still needs to be aware of the mechanics and think about how they should be approached, but with 4 people paying attention (2 extra in this example) chances are you wont fail.

3. The lit up floor. This is the real killer, when in conjunction with the green circles players will end up with a bad green causing a wipe. My solution, make it so there is more of a downtime between the lit floor transition. The tank still needs to learn the basics of kiting, the players still need to understand the concept of bad greens (even when they aren’t as punished by it). But at the same time, it is much easier to not die. Honestly I would even have the damage reduced by some extent (just not enough that they could be completely ignored). This is opposed to dropping them off in the middle of what would be a difficult boss fight and telling them that even if they do a bad job, and know they did a bad job they can still go home a winner.

But whatever, like I said I know Anet can’t provide the easy-mode I want. I just don’t want to see an easy-mode devolve into these basic tank and spanks encounters when they can keep the mechanics that make them unique, and just refine those mechanics. I fear that if the damage on these mechanics were simply reduced groups would simply go with a 2 healer meta where everything could in fact be ignored without worry, and mechanics aren’t understood even by people willing to learn. After all, when was the last time someone explained the mechanics of low level bloomhunger to a new person beyond “whack him with your weapon”. At some point I would question why even make an easy mode for raids when resources could be put in making better content to fit these players, preferably also being an avenue that could provide something like legendary armor.

As I’ve said to Doc, sure, some people will ignore them, that’s fine. But if you don’t want to ignore them, you don’t have to. This is better than having a mechanic that plays entirely differently than the real thing, such that mastering it is meaningless to the final version, and if the punishments remain the same then you’re leaving the worst part in. It’s like someone comes to you and says “these hot wings are too spicy,” and your response is “ok, we’ll take out the chicken, but leave in the exact same amount of spice. Enjoy.”

If people were doing easy mode why would anyone do the mechanics if they could just ignore them O_o. When was the last time anyone killed Firestorm first in the Molten Duo fractal when everyone had the achievement. Heck, I don’t even know half the dungeon mechanics that I regularly ran because they were so menial they didn’t matter. Just get on a cannon a press 2, that’s why Zhaitan was such a great boss right :P

Your analogy is wrong, as the mechanics are easier to execute (the boss is easier). I gave you less spicy chicken, but it still has a little kick to it. On the other hand your chicken has no flavor since there is literally nothing distinguishing boss X from boss Y if mechanics can be ignored. Think over the long-term, people will almost always go for quick and efficient rewards when content isn’t new (see dungeons, swamp fractals, etc). 1 month after easy mode would release with your ideas it no one would even attempt mechanics.

If the mechanics are different then they would be entirely worthless.

I said easier to execute not different. The essence of the mechanics would be the same. People still go in the green circle, just if 2 people miss it by accident it isn’t a wipe and you can keep going. But at the same time people need to at least attempt to do the mechanics. Nerfing damage to the point of not even doing the mechanics would truly make them entirely worthless

Except the one that I suggested on page 3, which would be relatively fast and easy to implement, AND be the best overall permanent solution.

As shown above your “easy mode” is essentially making all bosses WoW’s LFR. This mode is extremely controversial with many people touting it as one of the major mistakes Blizzard made. I’m sure some people can find some merit to it, but based on the essence of what Anet is trying to accomplish with raids (and HoT in general) I don’t think they would purposefully sabotage their own work and efforts to make mobs more than just meatbags.

If the mechanics can be completely ignored without real repercussions THEN the mechanics would be entirely worthless.

I don’t think this is necessary. As you say it would add a lot of work. I don’t think there’s too much trouble finding ten people, especially not once they have an LFG that can directly stack up ten people at once, the problem is that you need to find ten GOOD people who know what they’re doing or the whole thing is moot. If the content is flexible enough that you don’t need ten great players, you can make due with five or so really solid players and another five “meh” players and it’ll still work out, forming a ten-man party will be no drama.

Eh, I think that this is very important to allow for people without dedicated groups who want to raid but have inconsistent schedules find groups. When the group number is adaptive players don’t need to feel pressured to choose between irl things and the fear of losing a spot if they can’t show up.

The punishment is the part that NEEDS to go though. The challenge factor of the actual mechanics do not bother me, it’s the consequences of failing them that does. I’m far more likely to succeed at something when I know that I’m allowed to screw it up, than if I feel that screwing it up is a big deal. I have no interest in them making the mechanics “simpler,” like making her flame wall smaller or slower, or making VG’s green circles only require one person in it, or similar cop-outs. I want the conditions for “passing” that element to remain identical in as many cases as possible, I just want the consequences of failure to be noticeable, but survivable.

Without similar punishments mechanics will be completely ignored. They would become tank and spank fights and you would end up with easy-mode not even acting as a training session. Making the mechanics easier to execute, but punishing is the only real way to combat this. Nerfing raids to the point of pointlessness can be seen in WoW’s LFR, something that many people feel greatly harmed the game.

Basically, you’re describing a system that would take WAY more work, and which nobody actually wants because it does not solve the problems people actually have with the existing system.

I know it would take too much work. That’s why I think that they probably can’t create a good easy-mode, as all the suggestions I’ve seen here simply don’t work well, and would just be a short-term band-aid that would harm one of the two hypothetical difficulty modes.

STIHL.2489:

I think before we can really discuss difficulty, first we need to establish if raids are in fact intended to be End-Game Content.

Sure, here you go

“Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, introduces the ultimate challenge: our first raid, which is made up of three distinct raid wings. Raids are 10-player, instanced, elite dungeon content that’s a challenge unlike anything we’ve previously released in Guild Wars 2. These raids are meant to put you and your teammates to the test and challenge you to grow your skills as Guild Wars 2 players. Raids are our answer to what skilled PvE players have to look forward to at endgame—the ultimate test to overcome and defeat.”

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/raids

Seems pretty clear cut that raids are intended to be both challenging and end-game content.

Sarrs.4831:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Accessibility: Raids require 10 people unless you want to cripple yourself on purpose. This in and of itself is a large hurdle for most people as playing organizer/waiting for a group to me made can be a huge hassle. Particularly, for people with an inconsistent schedule. Fixing Raid LFG will help a little, but I would suggest Anet make raids scale from 8-12 people. The mechanics themselves would need to scale based on the # of players (which would make this very hard to balance well), but would be a very good step in making raids more user-friendly as you can bring friends and don’t feel as pressured if you need to go.

I was thinking they should make it scale up to like, 20. Bigger raids actually help a lot when it comes to improving accessibility because you don’t need to swap to alts to bring utility, you can just natively fit whatever your raid group is.

Well ideally it would be 8-15, that way you could form/split a raid group with any number above 8.

IMO there is nothing inherently wrong with making an “easy-mode” for raids, but if they were to do it correctly it would take far more resources than the raid team has (and GW2 should be willing to spend as an MMO that is focused less on raids than most). So here are my non-viable thoughts on a way to create a good version of easy-mode which Anet doesn’t have the resources for.

Accessibility: Raids require 10 people unless you want to cripple yourself on purpose. This in and of itself is a large hurdle for most people as playing organizer/waiting for a group to me made can be a huge hassle. Particularly, for people with an inconsistent schedule. Fixing Raid LFG will help a little, but I would suggest Anet make raids scale from 8-12 people. The mechanics themselves would need to scale based on the # of players (which would make this very hard to balance well), but would be a very good step in making raids more user-friendly as you can bring friends and don’t feel as pressured if you need to go.

Difficulty: I’m seeing a lot of suggestions for difficulty that range from either destroy the whole point of raids being challenging (get hit by Sabetha’s flame wall and survive), to things that just wouldn’t work (medal system based on timer only works on VG and maybe to a lesser extent Sabetha). IMO the punishment for failing mechanics should be the same, but the pressure from these mechanics should be reduced. This should not be faceroll, it should still be a challenge to complete, albeit a much easier one (I haven’t played WoW in a long time, but I guess it would be closer to early normal mode/flex compared to something like LFR)

Example of potential VG changes:
- Green Circles: Need 2 players to stand in them (group of 8-9). Need 3 players to stand in them (group 10-11). Need 4 players to stand in them (group of 12)
- Blue Circles: Teleport players a max of 1600 Range
- Red Orbs: Damage reduced by 30%, despawn faster
- Defiance Bar: Lower amount of CC needed, scales based on players
- Platform Lighting: Increase the time in which no platforms are lit (the transition).

Similarly, mechanics can be changed on all bosses; Gorseval; orb spawn rate, charged souls base speed, ghosts summoned. Sabetha; cannon spawn time, delay before flame wall fires, etc.

However, doing this would also take an enormous amount of time and is even harder considering Anet doesn’t have a PTR to test difficulty balancing for the general populace.

Rewards: Rewards need to be balanced in such a way that people won’t just abandon one version for the other. Unlike other games which have a very apparent gear treadmill (give different item levels), it becomes very difficult to balance the rewards of different difficulties. Suggestions have ranges from 0 rewards and just story (this is a complete waste of development resources as people would run it once and be done) to reduced magnetite shard reward from bosses (this is somewhat more viable, but may deincentivize normal mode running). I would suggest making it so you can’t get any raid specific rewards as drops (normal ascended chests may be fine), but you do unlock the vendor to actually be able to buy boss-specific items for shards. The shards would need to be capped at about 50 (and boss rewards 50% less on kill). You should get replacement parts for the Legendary Armor collection with every other part of the crafting process being the same. The replacement parts would make it so your end skin visually looks like the precursor but with legendary stats. This could then be upgraded once you have the real collection completed.

As I said before though, I don’t think any of this would really work since the developmental resources simply aren’t there. But in contrast, I don’t think Anet should just create a difficulty that isn’t well thought out. That said, the stats, not skin for raid legendary armor at least should available elsewhere (make it so you can craft a worse looking version for same cost without going to raids, or add new armor to different content)

Well that’s one way to deal with the amalgamated gemstone problem >.>

Based on the enormous amount of time the legendary weapon team has spent on fixing bugs associated with the collections, maybe you should rethink your acquisition methods to move it more in line with pre-HoT (or make the precrafting procedure a more simple gold sink), as it seems that the difficulty comes more from making the “journey” than the weapon models.

Also….maybe make a weapon that more than two professions can use….

If your healer is kiting during the other phases he can move to the rest of the party and one of you better ranged players can kite.

Can use a condi druid as an offhealer for that phase.

Try to have high protection uptime during that phase (via guardians, revenants, or druids)

Malchior.5732:

Swagger.1459:

Malchior.5732:

Swagger.1459:

Rym.1469:

Swagger.1459:

Malchior.5732:

Why is everything that requires any amount of skill so heavily frowned upon by such a large margin of the community?
No one’s forcing you to run them if you feel they’re too difficult and their rewards are rightfully exclusive to encourage players to get better and go on the raids and even then we’re still getting people that buy their way through it.

HoT is too hard? Well the only option is to literally L2P. Games should increase in difficulty as you get further, not remain the same and allow sloppy play in the highest levels. If you’re in HoT or any future expansion/raid, you should be expected to know how to play your class well.

If you just want a casual game to play, then you still can do that, but you can’t expect to just brainlessly go through it; you’re going to need to actually try.

Sure, raids take skill, but it’s sad to see these “exclusive” rewards are given for memorizing scripted AI and beating them.

Some of the most competent and knowledgable players I’ve gamed with over the years have participated in pvp areas of games. There were (few are still here) tons of amazing gw2 wvw and spvp players, but sadly there were/are zero “exclusive” rewards for these pro wvw players and a “meh” “exclusive” item in spvp. Sad.

What are leagues then? Badge next to the name is exclusive to PvP, as are the Legendary division titles.

“Their rewards are rightfully exclusive”…

So legendary armor and all those purchasable ascended are only offered to players that memorize scripted AI and beat it..

Sorry, but being competent in pvp areas of any game is much more difficult, yet players get nothing. Oh boy… Some titles and an awful looking back piece in spvp… Yay.

So if you don’t like the rewards, go complain in the pvp section? Some people do enjoy having a title or backpack that most other players will never have.

Now, just memorizing scripted AI seems to simplify the idea too much. Assuming the next wings are more difficult (which they should, because otherwise this is a failure), we should expect complete wipes with a single member committing a single mistake (actually, that could happen in Spirit Vale already, but some errors can be recovered from). You can’t tell me that’s easy just because it’s predictable; it’ll still take long practice hours (or days or weeks for most players).

Also, your “difficulty” in pvp varies a lot. Some metas get unkillable god-tanks or unstoppable killing machines that require essentially no skill and matchmaking that has allowed players to literally farm each other.

Swagger.1459:

But raids ya know… Leet content with the best reward structure lol.

And yet, the rewards for the raid are garbage in terms of gold/hour. I’m sure you get a lot more money playing low-rank PvP than raiding.

PvP here is World vs World and Structured Player vs Player…

Gold? Yeah, let’s talk gold per hour in wvw or spvp…

In raids you earn currency to purchase ascended gear, with more varieties coming. Raids will also get legendary armor… All this for beating scripted AI.

Tell me what players can earn in wvw and spvp compared to raid rewards?

Do you know how long it takes a regular player to get enough tokens to actually get a full set of ascended gear through raiding? Assuming they don’t fail much and always get the magnetite cap, it will take them 13 weeks and a chunk of gold. Minimum. Of course, not including weapons or trinkets.

I’ll use full ascended Zojja’s Heavy armor as an example because that’s the one I made myself for raids. It costs you ~372g to make (can be cheaper if you work harder).
There are 91 days in 13 weeks.
There are 2184 hours in those 91 days.
Assuming you make a paltry 90s per hour by doing sPvP, you’ll have gotten 1965.60 gold total.

Lets be more realistic, though.
Lets say you sleep for 8 hours every single day (728 hours)
Lets say you work/study/whatever for another 8 hours every single day (another 728 hours)
Lets say you play 4 hours per day for those 13 weeks (364 hours)
Now lets assume you make that paltry 90s per hour (which I’m sure it can be much better than that in sPvP, especially with the reward tracks).

You’ll have gained 327.60 gold in that time, just 44.40 gold shy of your goal, which again, can be lowered.
But wait, buying your ascended armor via Magnetite Shards also costs gold! How much? 47.50 gold.

Conclusion: Raid rewards aren’t actually very good and they take a lot of practice and coordination. Actually, the rewards are so bad, that 90s per hour is better than raiding if you want ascended gear or anything else (because remember, Gold buys more than just ascended armor).

I didn’t consider WvW because it’s been established since forever that their rewards are lacking in comparison to anything else in the game. You should go complain about that instead of thinking Raids have amazing rewards, because they don’t.

*also, funnily enough, I got almost all my ascended weapons from casual PvP for no effort!

I’m not going to argue that raid rewards are good (because they really aren’t, especially if your goal is to get a full set of ascended). But you aren’t taking into account the gold you make via raids (4g per new raid wing boss, 2g per old raid wing boss + 1g per event) or the (low) chance of getting an ascended drop normally from the bosses. In addition the total time spent in raid wing when it is on farm seems to be roughly 45 min -1.5 hours per week (x2 for magnetite shard cap), whereas your spvp example is 4 hours per day (28 hours per week). Conversely you can argue that the consumables spent on these bosses, particularly when you are learning the fights negates a lot of the gold reward.

The hardest part of the last phase is the transition directly after the 3rd breakbar. This is because in general, the moment his break bar is broken (even if it is done very quickly) the green circle will spawn in the previous area that is about to light up.

Because of this, it is very important to move him to the next zone BEFORE he does his break bar. Specifically, what you should do is the 2nd time you rotate to the Green colored section you should wait for a green circle to spawn, then have the tank immediately move the boss to the lit up blue region. There is several seconds where the tank will take a lot of damage from both the boss and the lit section AoE, however, his movements are inconsistent in this part of the phase (he stops to use blue teleport at a bad time) and this is generally the safest option. The DPS should hang out on the unlit section until he goes into breakbar mode.

The next green circle will after this will also be dangerous, having the potential to be in a bad spot if you don’t move the boss early but is much more manageable.

There hasn’t been a split between game modes (atleast between pvp and pve) because Anet had not introduced actual challenging PvE content until raids (albeit high level fractals could somewhat fit in this template). Not that this is a good thing, it’s more of a lazy way to only have 1 balance team.

Now that Raids are a thing though making a distinction between balance between game modes is much more important. However, since they have already had the same balance team (which seems to exclusively play PvP) working on the game for so long they probably can’t be bothered to make this split.

Yet even with a balance team that only seems to play PvP they still seem to make terrible balance decisions such as that well of precog change, which not only destroys the skill in all forms of content but thematically makes no sense -_-

Thanks for the update.

Any plans on changing the mistlocks so they aren’t just copy pasted instabilities for 10 levels in a row. Currently we have improper difficulty based on the instability (ex. lvl 56 is Swamp (Bloomhunger) with explosive mobs, which means the instability is essentially ignored because there aren’t really any mobs there anyway), and instabilities that are just poorly designed (lose boons on dodge, enemies steal boons on hit). Wasn’t the purpose of single fractal islands to make it so the instabilities actually mattered and were tailored to the island?

Also any news on when Ad Infinitum will actually be obtainable?

Ylvina.6749:

why not both? but i doubt anything of that will happen..

oh.. does anyone remember the last time they supported fractals? where they did the fractal lvl reset? i still wait for the leaderboards

Sorry, I guess I should clarify that I didn’t mean the question about new islands/rewards as an either-or question, but rather as a ‘what do you think would be the best way to implement islands or implement desirable rewards that will remain relevant after several months.’

In the blog post today Anet essentially confirmed that they will no longer be updating dungeons, and instead will be reducing/removing the main forms of incentive for dungeon runners, essentially killing dungeons for the community. Instead Anet said the 5-man content that they want to be focused on updating is FotM. However, this focus on FotM has neither been shown, and is actually harder to implement with the updated version of fractals.

Although the older version of FotM supports easy implementation of new fractal “islands”, it becomes much more difficult to show this support in the newer version coming with HoT. This is due to how the fractal levels have pre-set mistlocks and islands, meaning that each level has a specific island mistlock combination. This means that if Anet ever wanted to add additional islands they would need to completely change the structuring or remove current combinations.

In addition FotM has had no updates for almost two years. Some may consider the rewards/island revamp an update, but the fact remains that their have been no islands added to the game since November 2013. This seems like a contradiction to Anet’s supposed FotM focus.

Due to these reasons I would like to ask Anet their current plans on how they plan to support their 5-man FotM content with regular updates, as well as how they plan on having people want to continue to play FotM several months after the revamp (once people have all the skins they need, will there be any monetary incentive, either from direct gold or an item that could be sold on TP that is applicable to a larger playerbase than just agony infusions?). The FotM blog post stated some of their plans, however, many specifics have remained open to speculation.

I would also like to ask the community what they think would be the best way for Anet to maintain support for FotM either through the implementation of new islands or through rewards.

I was only able to try this with a PuG, but I also spent a fair amount of time looking at multiple videos of the encounter. I definitely think that this is a very well done 1st boss. There is nothing too complex, but if people don’t do their jobs (boonstrip)/aren’t built correctly (condi/toughness) then they won’t win. Since GW2 is a game without a gear treadmill the difficulty has to come from mechanics and understanding how best to approach them. Half of the reason why raids in other games tend to be harder is not because of mechanics, but because the player’s gear makes it hard to beat at first, but easy afterwards. With that in mind I think that this is a very well designed boss.

The main complaint I have is that due to the extravagant particle effects it becomes very difficult to see the bosses melee attack as well as the teleportation rocks (the rocks are easy to see when there is no AoE from players…but when there is…). I would suggest adding the easy to see red tell to the rocks. The problem with this suggestion is that it would be harder differentiate the bosses lightning strike (though it can be identified by the beam/delay visual) and that if the rocks are placed in the lightning strike it becomes very difficult to see (though this problem is already present). In addition an identifiable sound (like how the lightning strike has one) for the rocks would make it much easier to react to when there are lots of particles.

Pretty bad decision on their part imo. Especially since their reasons for limiting it to 5 players is flawed. There will always be an optimal group, it’s just now that optimal group is limited to specific classes. If buffs could be spread to 10 members there could be variety in how parties would stack might, perma-fury, etc. Now it’s just going to be a requirement to have 2 phalanx warriors every time for maximum might.

An mind-numbing time limited event that promotes selfish player behavior and requires an immense amount of grind to get any rewards?

Definitely a huge step backwards from the previous event design and makes me worried about the reward structure in HoT (though I’m guessing this was side project made by some less experienced dev, while the good devs actually design fun stuff for the expansion).

Griffith.7238:

GoldenTruth.2853:

I agree that protection is kind of a lackluster boon to give for an elite. However, giving stability or resistance for a 4 cost upkeep would probably be too overpowered.

I’d rather see them change the elite to a 6-7 cost upkeep and give it resistance. Revenants have fairly poor condition removal, especially if they want to maintain a pure damage spec. Giving them access to resistance would help make them more durable in all playtypes, but at the same time the higher upkeep cost would lower their dps output (especially because the rest of glint’s utilities also use upkeep). This may still be somewhat overpowered however since you could potentially boon share resistance for 8-9 upkeep.

Alternatively stability wouldn’t be a terrible choice either but the upkeep cost would also need to increase.

The current Upkeep cost is -5 not -4 so it completely stops your energy in it’s tracks. The Elite is also not JUST protection is an AoE knockdown as well which is pretty strong for a 45 sec cd.

Well as is I feel like a lot of people will just ignore the upkeep skill as it isn’t really worth it for the cost. It’s rarer in pvp, but at the same time a single hammer guardian can give a group 100% protection uptime easily.

If they made the upkeep something more desirable people would need to be more strategic with it since they wouldn’t want to put it on a 45 second cooldown, but at the same time could only avoid that cooldown by legend swapping (and losing the skills for 10 seconds) or running out of energy (and being stuck on auto-attack). Since the activated versions of the upkeep skills don’t cost any energy they should try to encourage smart energy usage.

Shrubsy.9720:

GoldenTruth.2853:

I agree that protection is kind of a lackluster boon to give for an elite. However, giving stability or resistance for a 4 cost upkeep would probably be too overpowered.

I’d rather see them change the elite to a 6-7 cost upkeep and give it resistance. Revenants have fairly poor condition removal, especially if they want to maintain a pure damage spec. Giving them access to resistance would help make them more durable in all playtypes, but at the same time the higher upkeep cost would lower their dps output (especially because the rest of glint’s utilities also use upkeep). This may still be somewhat overpowered however since you could potentially boon share resistance for 8-9 upkeep.

Alternatively stability wouldn’t be a terrible choice either but the upkeep cost would also need to increase.

Revenant also has the potential for pretty much permanent resistance on Mallyx, so it’d be pretty redundant. Protection is something it has close to none of.

If you are spec’d into Retribution you get 10% damage reduction when under 75%. The Jalis hammers now give 20% damage reduction and heal you on hit. The Jalis elite gives 50% damage reduction AoE. Two out of three of these protection-like abilities don’t require you to spec into the Retribution line, yet maintain decent damage mitigation, you only need to slot in Jalis as one of your legends.

The only way to maintain a decent resistance uptime is to waste a core specialization slot on corruption and slot Demonic Defiance. This causes you to use up both a trait line and a legend on something that you may not even really want, only to maintain a decent amount of condition removal.

I agree that protection is kind of a lackluster boon to give for an elite. However, giving stability or resistance for a 4 cost upkeep would probably be too overpowered.

I’d rather see them change the elite to a 6-7 cost upkeep and give it resistance. Revenants have fairly poor condition removal, especially if they want to maintain a pure damage spec. Giving them access to resistance would help make them more durable in all playtypes, but at the same time the higher upkeep cost would lower their dps output (especially because the rest of glint’s utilities also use upkeep). This may still be somewhat overpowered however since you could potentially boon share resistance for 8-9 upkeep.

Alternatively stability wouldn’t be a terrible choice either but the upkeep cost would also need to increase.

This is actually a really good idea which would help enhance repeatedly playing FotM the way it is meant to be played. As you said, the rewards would have to be worth it and would need to be something like a 3rd tier of fractal weapons (which is more valued than the gold ones) or fractal armor.

Overall, I really like this suggestion and hope Anet uses it.

Good job Anet, you finally improved FotM rewards only to simultaneously hurt the essence of what makes FotM fun, replacing it with grindy monotony. It isn’t that hard to see what will happen to FotM in the future.

- A few weeks a decent chunk of players will have leveled to 100. People who are a lower level will run the same easy fractal level over and over again to level simply because it is easier than the others. This is a mistake which we can already clearly see in how people exclusively run 40/49/50 and none of the other high levels. By removing all RNG elements people have little incentive to run harder fractals. After all, why run cliffside with no projectile reflection when you can complete swamp with no endurance in 1/5 of the time. The only reason why there may be some variability would be because people want to do the dailies for the pristine relics.

- Several months in people will have completed their FotM weapons collection. At this point there is no incentive to do the dailies, only to find the easiest fractal with the best chance of giving them a golden weapon/fotm tonic.

- In the far future this monotony will only increase because this system heavily encourages NOT adding new fractals. Each level will be specifically tied into a fractal and instability which means they would need to redo their leveling system every time they want to add a new fractal. Not that it seems they have any intention of adding new fractals anyway, after not having anything new for 1.75 years and no news of new fractals in HoT in this blog post.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Impossible Odds gives <Super Speed> which is faster than regular swiftness. Because this is an upkeep skill, when out of combat you will have 10 seconds of super speed before you need to refill your energy.

Upkeep skills can’t be used out of combat because of the way energy regeneration works. When not in combat, energy regeneration pips go to 0 in order to keep the Revenant at a resting 50 energy. Upkeep skills require that the Revenant have pips to get rid of, because they all cost more than the 5 pips that would bring a Revenant from 0 pips to -5.

Okay, then yeah. Revenants need a form of swiftness if they cant really use upkeeps when out of combat.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

It actually will have a 1/2s cast time in the iteration you all get to play, the video didn’t have the latest version. You have to hit so there is play to it, but the reward is high as it’s good added spike as well as healing.

You sure it isn’t going to end up being the same as guardian’s <Litany as Wrath> because it seems almost the exact same and no one uses that heal skill in any playtype.

Recharge 5 energy per second, so we are both wrong it is 9 seconds.

At least I think that’s how it works if my memory is correct.