Guild Wars 2

Jahroots.6791:

NikeEU.7690:

The fact that fractals has tiered difficulty with progressive rewards and people don’t use them but rather QQ about the top tier being too hard says a lot about what easy mode raids would look like.

The issue is that Tier 4 of fractals used to be much easier. Players invested in ascended gear and infusions with reasonable expectations to be able to continue playing the content at that level of difficulty.

I believe the bottom line for most of issues low and middling skilled players have with instanced PvE group content is risk vs reward.

We got too used to low risk (risk being defined as chance of raging teammates, party wipes and absolute failure to complete the instance) and high reward (gold, tokens and drops) activity. Now that the overall design seems to be shifting towards high risk and low-moderate rewards, some people are displeased. This is natural.

If you took a bit more of an objective view of these matters, I’m certain you can understand that although you’ve gained the sort of instanced content you enjoy others have not.

If you were more objective you’d see thefe is a simple solution: go down a tier and practice until you’re ready for tier 4.

Saying you got used to easy mode tier 4 and now it’s not face roll and you deserve face roll is just entitlement. Also level 100 non cm is pretty easy you just have to have some pracTice with the mechanics. Instead of complaining on forums try to use your time to productively increase your play experience.

The important thing to remember is qt uses golem numbers for benchmarks. If you look at their weekly kill videos on their channels you can see the actual boss dps in each encounter. Obviously numbers will be far higher than pug groups due to better strats and buffing but you can get a reasonable idea.

Also a few weeks ago LOD posted their spreadsheet for dps on each boss so you can see their data too.

TexZero.7910:

Sooloo.1364:

While it may be fine for the few that find this new content easy, there are a great many that do not. It’s an easy thing to tell people to just learn and practise, I dunno about most people but I play a game to relax, not practise or work. And with family life and commitment outside of games 90% of my guild won’t touch this, for said reasons. I’m not asking for a nerf or easier content but keep in mind that when you make something like this, you’re not making it for the whole community.

It quite literally has tiers for this reason. Do the easier tiers to “relax”.

The fact that fractals has tiered difficulty with progressive rewards and people don’t use them but rather QQ about the top tier being too hard says a lot about what easy mode raids would look like.

Bumping this for visibility. Cannot complete the collection and progress to Aurora.

Berserk mode lasts 15 seconds. Regardless of anything. Whatever you think you’re observing is all in your mind.

A boss whose auto attacks hit frequently and are high damage. Like vale guardian level attacks but 3x as rapid.

I’ll take your word for it. I just remember the swotor branch of dnt during brontes nim progression and it being insanely painful.

You were raid leader in swotor? How did you handle Dread Master Brontes in nightmare mode if you think gw2 raids are hard?

A lot of these anti dps meter anti raids anti meta posts and threads are written with the worst, most broken english. Quite often I wonder how much of the toxicity they perceive is the result of bad communication due to poor English skills.

I can only imagine what MMO it is out there that lets people get away with playing zero-skill maximum defense face tank gear and get away with it.

TexZero.7910:

NikeEU.7690:

I currently have 0 LI I’ll never get into a pug =((((

It’s just a travesty that your own guild doesn’t take you amirite ?

They ask me to ping gear and I ping apothecary gear on ele I got after wooden potatoes video and I get kicked. Some guild.

They said 2 years ago legendary armor would be a raid reward only. Why are these threads popping up now? Please don’t tell me that this all came as a surprise to you?

I currently have 0 LI I’ll never get into a pug =((((

I don’t mean this to be rude at all so please don’t take it that way…

Instead of seeking more power from gear progression you should dedicate the next 1600 hours towards getting good at actually playing your classes. How many of your characters can you replicate meta golem benchmarks on? Have you killed all raid bosses including wing 4 challenge motes? Have you got to Legendary in a pvp season? Have you gotten top 50 on pvp leader board in a season?

These are all goals you can give yourself that would be an expression of some sort of skill and dedication to the game besides garbage gear progression. If you find gear progression is more fun than skill progression gw2 isn’t the game for you.

Current raid modes are easy mode and have rewards so there you go /thread ?

[Quote]

That’s the attitude I’m arguing against. Just because someone doesn’t enjoy raiding doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have access to Envoy armor.
[/quote]

I dont enjoy interval training or track workouts but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to run a 16 minute 5k right?

Why do you feel entitled to rewards for content you don’t have time to do? I get it you were time crunched so you didn’t have the option to raid. Fine. Do you not have the mental wherewithal to adjust your goals to your limitations? I’m a competitive cyclist but I wasn’t born with a huge red blood cell count or a high v02max so I’ll never be pro or anything close to it. But I set reasonable goals for myself within my capabilities. Ask yourself why your goals don’t match your capabilities.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

NikeEU.7690:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

If you completed just one wing, one wing per week since release, you would have enough for a full set, and plenty left over.

“If”, being the important word. When you say it like that, it sound sooo simple. Beleive me, it isn’t for many.

Here is the rub: so what? So you don’t raid enough yo have the li to finish your set today. So what? It will be there waiting for you once you do. I consider that to be generous considering all the other things your limited playtime locked you out of. You probably haven’t crafted every new hot legendary yet right? You’re time gated out of those too, to the extent that you need a lot of playtime worth of gold to make them.

At the rythm I can reasonably play this content, I will have to pay for quite a few run if I want to see that armor before GW3 comes out (I will pay, I won’t stop at 2 pieces).

So what you say? Well, it is disapointing considering that filling my equipment with legendary tier stuff is a good part of my end game fun and long term goal in this game. I was looking forward to the armor since a VERY long time. And playing WvW, the legendary functionally is really nice to me.

It is quite easy to say “so what” when you are not the one on the receiving end of a decision that is disapointing. A decision that is quite frankly very hard to defend on many level.

It’s actually easy for me to say “so what” when your position is that you want rewards without playing. The amount of LI needed has been known for months if not years and yiu either made time for it or you don’t and if you don’t that was 100% your choice. Anet didn’t make “a decision” suddenly out of the blue they, it was no surprise. As much as you seem to care now why didn’t you care 9 months ago?

Your end game goal is legendaries in all slots very good mine too. You play less than I do so I’ll have it done before you simple as that. You want rewards do the work. Don’t want to do the work then don’t complain. Want to do the work but don’t have the time? I’m sorry but you must have an important obligations to take care of and that was your choice too.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

If you completed just one wing, one wing per week since release, you would have enough for a full set, and plenty left over.

“If”, being the important word. When you say it like that, it sound sooo simple. Beleive me, it isn’t for many.

Here is the rub: so what? So you don’t raid enough yo have the li to finish your set today. So what? It will be there waiting for you once you do. I consider that to be generous considering all the other things your limited playtime locked you out of. You probably haven’t crafted every new hot legendary yet right? You’re time gated out of those too, to the extent that you need a lot of playtime worth of gold to make them.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

NikeEU.7690:

Maybe, just maybe, you should have considered tgat you might want legendary armor when it was announced 2 years ago and plan ahead.

To be fair, I’ve always tried as best as I can (and continue to do so with various degree of success), to fit a raid here and there each week since day one.

I also planned my armor so kitten well in advance that I had saved all the mats I expected would be required before raids were even out. Remove LI from the equation, and I would have had the armor the day I could get the precursor.

All this to say, planning is not the major issue where LIs are concerned for a lot of players.

You can plan time for a raid among your play time, but many won’t even start before you have to say gn because you work early tomorrow. And even if you can start and try, not all raids are a success. Some weeks I had 0 LI. And many others week, I couldn’t realistically fit raid in my schedule at all without sacrificing unreasonable things.

Heck, even when you pay for a run, you have to have enough time for it. Some times, the spot I was proposed for a run I was willing to pay for wasn’t realistic for my schedule.

A major difference a raider has with the rest of the community is also that he rarely feel he sacrifice other part of the game to attend raid. It is their favorite part. When you are a WvW player, or PvP player first, you have to sacrifice your precious play time when you decide to go for the carrot at the end. I play to have fun too…

I’m sympathetic with players who have limited playtime but in the end you either prioritized it or you didn’t and if you didn’t there is nothing to complain about now.

Maybe, just maybe, you should have considered tgat you might want legendary armor when it was announced 2 years ago and plan ahead.

I don’t want the fractal backpack I hate fractals I want the exact rewards I want in the exact game mode I want. How dare you try to tell others how to enjoy the game.

No problem with legendary armor in other game modes. Just as soon as I can get the pvp legendary backpack in raids I’ll be happy with the trade off.

Deviating from the meta is fine if it makes logical sense. If you’re doing it because snowflakes gotta snowflake and it doesn’t have any upside in the fight you’re being selfish and hurting your team.

Worth explaining the meta wasn’t chosen by fiat it was chosen because it was us simply the most effective builds and synergies. Adhering to it isn’t because you bow to authority it’s because you are trying to maximize your value to your team. Agajn deviating from it is fine, so long as the deviation makes sense. For example, warrior meta uses shattering blow. At the samarog fight many warriors deviate by swapping out shattering blow for wild blow to help with the heavy cc requirment. This is a deviation that makes sense and trades away damage for utility. Logical deviation. If you want to run On My Mark instead, for example, that is a bad deviation and you’re stealing from your teammates.

Joxer.6024:

As suggested i do have a condi ranger and he is fun as, but we needed a condi PS so I stepped up. Its going ok but I have to ask, how does everyone hit those dps numbers on the golem? I hit 20k and most times can average 17-18k but I see vids of guys in the 25 +!
Does lag play into it that much? on the videos it seems that the adrenaline bars are filling up so dang fast. I watched Nike’s vid on the "other’ rotation and have been giving that a go but still cant crack 25k.
Now, my thinking is a lot of it has to do with keys and not using both hands. I am still a bit of a clicker, left over from 8yrs of WOW so not an easy thing to change. Also used to macros and all that but I have keybound a lot of my important skills so that my left hand/fingers get a work out and also my mouse has a few bound to it but I just cant help but think a lot of it is how fast I am hitting the keys. Then again a cd is a cd and they only go so fast, right?
Any thoughts that anyone could share would be most appreciated as I really would like to improve. Another factor is I am somewhat new (4 months maybe) to Warrior so that may be some of it as well.
KK, thanks heaps and back to the dummy….sorry…Golem!

Lag can play a factor if ping is over 200. But realistically most dps is lost due to slow skill queueing.

Everytime you’re slow queuing the next skill your character starts an auto attack animation which you then interrupt. These little half second windows of lost time add up over a 2 and 3 minute rotation to be a lot of lost dps. Ideally you should try to queue skills faster to ensure you waste as few animations as possible, but not so fast you interrupt your current skill.

As far as clicking goes it’s certainly related. I would highly suggest a gaming mouse with side buttons bound to dodge, weapon swap, f1, heal, and your elite. This should make life a lot easier on you. Lastly, skill clicking can be overcome by using good key binds and practice. Just force yourself. You’ll play like a total noob for a week until you get it but then you’ll be better than you ever were.

Every class has either easy access to perma swiftness or has an IMS signet or trait. This is a bad idea.

Astralporing.1957:

NikeEU.7690:

In other games it doesn’t work well. People who do the ultra easy mode stick with it and don’t progress.

See how anecdotal evidence works?

That’s not anecdotal evidence, that’s a factually untrue claim. There are people that advance that way. You can at best argue about how many of those exist.

You don’t have the data for that claim. The overwhelming majority do the story mode and are done. Only a marginally tiny section use it to break into raiding and become real raiders. How small is this number exactly? Neither of us know, but you can be sure Anet doesn’t feel its worth the resources to create additional modes to cater to this tiny group of players.

Oddly enough the entire concept of an infantile mode of each fight is nonsense. If people wanted to use easy mode as a stepping stone you’d only need one boss for that. And really with cairn and escort we have tgat so the stepping stone theory is pretty much bunk.

I’m a alot more sympathetic to people who want a story mode of each raid for the sake of experience but that is NOT the same group of players who want easy mode for training purposes. And obviously a minimal rewards story mode for each raid is significantly more work for the devs and it’s not entirely clear how how many people that group of players actually is.

Astralporing.1957:

NikeEU.7690:

So no, I don’t want people with the narrowest, most myopic, most exclusionary view of fun and good gameplay imaginable having any influence whatsoever.

Are you sure there aren’t other parts of the community, also very vocal on forums and other social media, for whom this description would also be a good fit?

No one group has the market cornered on bad ideas and stupid people, but the question I was answering was why I didn’t want those specific groups having influence and I gave rather specific reasons why. Would I want the average raid pug running gw2? No to that either. But the question was in regards to the awful gw2 facebook community and the comments on fansites articles that attract the lowest common denominator and I think I made my point about them clear enough.

Someone suggested that they are customers too, and I agreed. 98% of content is designed and developed for that sort so I don’t feel their victim mentality about the other 2% is at all justified.

FrizzFreston.5290:

NikeEU.7690:

God help us all if the comments section on massively op or gw2 facebook starts driving developer priorities.

Because that would be a lifethreatening disaster how exactly?
It’s really no different than comments anywhere else.

No, the comments in those specific platforms are incredibly tilted towards care bears whose idea of fun is the opposite of immersive skill based game play regardless of gametype. The only updates they praise are QOL updates and story content… but only of the story content is easy enough to do on the first attempt. Should you die a few times learning the mechanics (a LA Caudecus at the end of ep4) that is horrible, terrible to them.

So no, I don’t want game direction dictated by a subset of players who are happiest when their game play is little more than a glorified cut scene. Do those players deserve content? Yup. They have it, the other 98% of the game.

These are also, incidentally, the first group of people to accuse others of being toxic, of flaming people they don’t know, accusing the devs of having sinister motives, and generally spreading negativity. As beaten down the wvw community is or the ESL pvp community is you don’t see those players commenting on massively op articles saying that other players are kitten on the community.

Heaven forbid someone on the Facebook group asks for.help.with their pve build and you suggest something like a meta build. You aware these inclusive friendly community players will kick and ban people for suggesting it?

So no, I don’t want people with the narrowest, most myopic, most exclusionary view of fun and good gameplay imaginable having any influence whatsoever.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

The people for whom our current raids are too hard or too socially grueling for will never progress upwards regardless of how many graduated steps you give them.

Because… you said so? Cuz, you know, in other games that system works just fine.

In other games it doesn’t work well. People who do the ultra easy mode stick with it and don’t progress.

See how anecdotal evidence works? You say a I say b and we reach a place we’re it doesn’t matter what either of us say and we have to defend our ideas on their own merits instead of saying “it works/doesn’t work in other games.”

God help us all if the comments section on massively op or gw2 facebook starts driving developer priorities.

Dungeons: use the LFG groups fill fast

Silverwastes: there is almost always a squad you can join to ferry into a populated map.

We don’t need to turn this into a single player game.

The assumption that infantile mode raids is a gateway to the current easy mode raids is a flawed premise. The same people who start in infantile mode and would Pl matriculate upwards are the same people who would have been able to start with our current easy mode raids without the infantile. The people for whom our current raids are too hard or too socially grueling for will never progress upwards regardless of how many graduated steps you give them.

Are you looking for feedback or are you trying to educate us?

Oh look blaeys chiming into a thread about easy mode raiding.

On stream last week the Condi thief had a 38k pull on overseer. Tgat was higher than normal but 37k isn’t crazy

I like when people think condi ranger 31k on mursaat overseer is OP but condi thief build getting 38k is no problem. If condi ranger needs a shave then condi thief needs a complete nerf.

Ozzrel.9825:

NikeEU.7690:

For support classes their personal dps plus the support they bring has to be of value in excess of a pure dps class or else the concept of support classes are meaningless.

That is absolutely true, however the problem with warrior is that banners aren’t exclusive to PS build. If there ever is another might stacking build, you would still bring banners on dps warrior which would do 30k dps (or whatever it will be without signets) and still have the 11k from banners, basically replacing one of the dps classes with a 4th support.

That isn’t a problem to me. Having a core spec buff that is desirable is a good thing that will keep professions relevant.

A bad example would be an elite spec that brought a can’t miss unique buff because it locks that profession into using the same elite spec forever. Having a core spec that can adapt roles as new elite specs are introduced and still retain a good place in the meta is the goal we should work towards for every class.

For support classes their personal dps plus the support they bring has to be of value in excess of a pure dps class or else the concept of support classes are meaningless.

If we reckon that dps classes benchmark on average 32k dps we can take that as our baseline.

A condi druid benchmarks at 20k and brings about 20k more in buffs.

A berserker chrono benchmarks at 9k dps and bring around 25k for quickness and 12k for alacrity.

Condi PS makes 26k dps and brings 3k for ea and 11k if he brings both banners.

These are valuable contributions for sure but the gaps aren’t lightyears apart. With condi druid and warrior at 40k and chrono at 45k the premium for playing support is justified.

The only issue really is that there aren’t any other support options in the ball park until the expac. Asking for nerfs now is misguided wait to see how new alternatives work.

Having 1 spot in a 10 man squad reserved for warrior is called good balance. That should be the eventual goal for every class.

@Feanor.2358 I’m not sure your point. I wasn’t talking about condi ps. Pure dps condi warrior has bad dps relative to other pure dps builds so asking for it to be nerfed is weird.

Also, what most people miss here is that the current balance is excellent except for Revenant and necro to a far lesser extent. A lot of the ideas people are posting would not improve the current balance and in fact make it worse. Im happy people discuss these topics but most people don’t even understand the problems so the solutions they offer are pretty bad.

Ozzrel.9825:

As far as personal dps is concerned, the balance seems fine right now. Most of the balance issues are with the buffs different classes provide:

Warrior – Currently too strong. Has some of the best offensive buffs (banners and EA), while also being the only might stacker that is currently use (the alternatives are guard and rev, both of which have issues). Condi PS damage should be lowered, condi dps build should be kept as is until another class becomes viable for stacking might (then the dps build can be nerfed too – you shouldn’t have both dps and strong buffs).

Guardian – Good dps, good healing, but no useful offensive buffs. That is a tough one. Unless you buff the dps to silly levels, they will never be the optimal pick for the dps slot.
However, like someone said in this thread, having them as dps/healer hybrid might be the way to go.
Maybe adjust virtues/radiance to be better suited for that role?
That will also make burning aspect of guardian actually useful for something. Merging battle presence with absolute resolution would be a good place to start, allowing them to be taken at the same time as permeating wrath.

Revenant – Tries too do too many things at once – and fails at all of them. This one needs an extensive rework – there is no one change that will fix them.
Having them be able to make more specialized builds would be nice – focusing on either dps or buffing, not trying to do both at the same time.

Thief – Probably the most simple of all classes. They just do dps – and that is what they should do. Having them as one of the higher dps classes is completely fine.

Engineer – Another simple case – dps and a minor buff. Harder to play than other pure dps options, but also rewards the players that master it with higher dps potential. Fairly balanced.

Ranger – Strong dps with easy rotation with damage build, stupidly OP buffs with the healer build. When a single class takes half of the raid squad slots, you know there is a problem.
For the dps build – a slight reduction in damage would be enough.
Druid on the other hand is probably the most overpowered build in raids right now. A druid can use full dps gear and do a decent chunk of damage, provide some of the strongest damage buffs to the team and heal, all at the same time.
At least some of these aspect should be nerfed. I think spotter should be moved somewhere where it is more accessible to cranger while being out of reach of druid and the base healing of druid should be reduced so they would actually have to use healing gear. Guards would get personal dps and healing, druids would get healing and damage buffs. Balance.

Elementalist – More damage on big hitboxes, less damage on small hitboxes. Whether that is a good thing is debatable, but at least that is some sort of balance.

Mesmer – I think chrono is in a fine spot. Currently it is the only quickness stacker, but in the future, if another quickness stacking build becomes a thing, it can be balanced against chrono by having higher personal dps (to compensate for lack of alacrity).
DPS mesmer could be better, but that is something that should probably be addressed with the next elite spec – that way it won’t affect chrono damage.

Necromancer – Power necro is bad. Blood magic is bad. Condi necro relies on dysfunctional combo system.
The easiest fix for condi necro would be changing combo field priorty. That would make them reach their potential dps much more reliably, and would put them in a good spot, especially in fights where epidemic is used.
Power necro – where is the damage? Axe, dagger, GS, all of the weapons are bad. Shroud skills are worse than auto attacking with your weapon. Damage modifiers? What damage modifiers? Power necro needs some big buffs, and shroud needs to be made useful for power builds.
Blood Magic – the support trait line that does absolutely nothing. Life Siphoning should scale better. The damage with power, the healing with healing power. That way a power necro would be able to take it to increase group dps, while a healer necro would be able to provide meaningful group sustain (or maybe even both?). Staff should be reworked to be a better support weapon if healer necro is ever to become a thing.

Why would you nerf the warrior dps condi build? It has lower dps than all the other dps builds and if you want extra utility from it you have to lower the dps further. If anything the damage should be buffed so it’s a viable.alternative to other pure dps builds.

This has nothing to do with precog. It has to do with Aegis in general. Before this change Precog was the ONLY reliable way to do CM. Now, you could use 2 guardians in your DPS slot and dont need Precog at all.

Bosses condi ranger isn’t top dps on: cairn, overseer, samarog, deimos, sloth, kc, xera, vg, gorseval, sabetha.

How is this top dps again?

I’ll make it more clear: condo thief is the highest dps class at around half of all raid bosses. It doesn’t need a 7% boost.

So you think condi thief needs a 7% buff? One of the top dps builds in the game doesn’t need any more buffs.

I like that people think might stacking is what makes warrior so valuable.

zealex.9410:

NikeEU.7690:

Sigil and rune swap are meaningless if you can’t also swap Stat infusions. I suggest you stop thinking of legendaries as the replacement for all your other gear and just look at them as cosmetics with upside when a particular Stat set is no longer meta.

you can take out infusions for a really small price tho.

It’s faster and more convenient to swap to an alternate armor set than to extract infusions and reinstall news ones. If this is supposed to be aboUT convenience this isn’t very convenient.

Blaeys.3102:

In all reality, no matter what people try to justify here on the forums, the issues that existed 10 months ago still exist today – probably to an even greater degree with most LFG groups expecting people to understand everything prior to joining.

Non meta groups are rare – and often strongly discouraged by the raiding community. Meters have given pugmanders a new way to justify kicking people. LI requirements are still a thing , but have been supplanted by minature or title requirements by many groups.

So, again, if you had issues with the raiding scene 10 months ago, I seriously doubt you will find it engaging and less frustrating today.

Don’t listen to this guy he doesn’t actually raid. Thief is top dps so long as you are willing to change your build as needed between power and condi.

Sigil and rune swap are meaningless if you can’t also swap Stat infusions. I suggest you stop thinking of legendaries as the replacement for all your other gear and just look at them as cosmetics with upside when a particular Stat set is no longer meta.

If you keep worrying about people judging you while ignoring real solutions offered youre wasting your own time to defend you ego from nonexistent attacks.