DPS is part of the game, just accept it. It’s the same in ANY MMO : max DPS with what will allow you to survive. If you can’t beat the boss fast enough and the enrage timer kills you because you are using defensive gear and don’t deal enough damage, then switch to more offensive gear. Clearly better players are able to survive without the defensive gear and raids are supposed to be challenging… not everyone will succeed, especially if they want their hand held. Using offensive gear (berserker, sinister), ADDS to the challenge. Contrary to what a lot of people imply, using berserker gear doesn’t mean you aren’t making use of your class mechanics and it also doesn’t mean you aren’t using support skills and traits.
One of the main complaints people used to make about berserker gear was that it allowed players to destroy bosses before their mechanics even kicked in. Well, clearly that isn’t the case here. Instead, it allows you to complete the boss. As an added bonus, you’re a glass cannon so everything is more tense and difficult. It’s an added challenge in this context instead of removing all challenge through sheer power.
The irrational hatred of everything DPS so many people have in this community is really annoying.
The enrage timer is NOT just a dps check. You cannot and will not succeed the fight if you just DPS a boss and don’t do anything else. You need to survive and make use of the fight mechanics.
You want to see what a pointless DPS check is? The old Simin (Dwayna in Arah p4) was a pointless DPS check. The boss couldn’t kill you, but if you didn’t do enough DPS you were screwed, even if you understood the mechanic. It wasn’t challenging, you could stand there for hours fighting her and eventually get lucky.
Trust me, I know. I made the thread that got Simin hit with the nerf bat back when I was a mediocre player and couldn’t beat her after multiple PUG attempts (didn’t have a guild back then) even in full zerker gear. I’m still happy about it though because it was a POINTLESS dps check in a game mode (dungeons) that offered no other similar DPS checks. It was completely out of place for the game at the time and was NOT fun in any way, shape or form. So ArenaNET made it pretty simple and once you understood the mechanic you were now able to beat her relatively easily.
Raids are a different beast though. You aren’t expected to be on the same level to complete a raid vs a dungeon.
An enrage timer is the game telling you : hey, if you want to beat this boss, not only do you need to understand the mechanics, you need to be skillful enough to do it quickly or we will wipe your party.
Part of that is the added challenge of being a glass cannon and doing enough damage. An enrage form like you propose would be incredibly boring : have 10 people in clerics/sentinel gear and just take 2 hours to kill everything, but be essentially invulnerable even when boss reaches “max enrage”.
It is entirely expected of this game mode that you need to beat an enrage timer. It’s an endgame challenge where you are expected to be a good player, geared properly, patient, have good teamwork, etc. Every boss in raids will probably have an enrage timer, it’s part of the challenge of raids.
Like others have pointed out, the timer is somewhat lenient and groups beat the encounter without perfectly optimized strategies. This is good as it means the raid is somewhat accessible. You’ll still need to be a decent player to beat it very likely, but it won’t be just SC caliber players beating it is what I mean.
