Guild Wars 2

I always wanted raids, but I wanted them like the GW 1 elite areas with more sophisticated boss designs. Sure we got the more sophisticated boss designs, but we didnt get what made the elite areas in GW 1 so special and close to my/our hearts.

In those elite areas you wiped – for example- because you got overun by adds.
And then you have an interesting situation to deal with. Do you need more aoe dmg, more single target spike dmg, more protection, more heals, more support, a flesh/spirit wall, a tank, an imbagon, even an obsidian flesh tank with bonds? The possiblities seemed endless. This made the GW 1 elite areas so special. You got an experience you got nowhere else. In GW 2 on the other hands with the timers and everything, you are pushed into a stricter meta.

So I think raids are a great idea, but make them closer to the GW 1 elite area experience.

A lot of GW 1 veterans remember the times when they raided/speedcleared such iconic locations like the Underworld, Fissue of Woe or Doman of Anguish. While such elite areas where 8 men content, Urgoz and the Deep where even 12 men content.

One of the outstanding aspects of those elite areas was that trash encounters were often more challenging than boss encounters. Boss encounter mechanics on the other hand were sometimes not as sophisticated as they are now. So for a remade Underworld raid we could use a “best of both worlds” approach: Challenging boss and trash encounters.

While it was a good choice to introduce raiding into GW 2 with a new location, I cannot wait to – hopefully – one day revisit those locations that once where like a “living room”.

Who else wants to see the old elite areas back as updated raids? How would they need to be modified and which elite area from GW 1 should be remade first?

Once upon a time
player A said “raids are too hard”. Player B replied: “No, they are already too easy, you just need to play better.”

To get rid of this neverending discussion you need more than one difficulty.
Lets take a look at some models:

One difficulty: Progress
Two difficulties: Casual, Progress
Three difficulties: Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge
Four difficulties: Tourist, Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge

Tourist mode: Mechanics do nothing
Casual: Mechanics have to be executed, assignments have to be made
Progress: More mechanics, up the numbers
Cutting Edge: Even more mechanics, even higher numbers, almost no room for error

Personally Im not a fan of tourist mode as it can lead to bad play.
The other three modes (Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge) are viable and can also be compressed into two difficulties.

I think they should swap hard enrages with soft enrages: For example the boss spawns more adds, more aoe, hits 30 % harder after a min and so on.

Getting killed by are a hard enrage timer is an immersion breaker. Back in GW 1 when you didnt do the required DPS in UW or DoA you just got overwhelmed by add waves for example.

Also in order to allow build diversity I would push the timer slightly back. Give people room for different builds. Guild Wars was always a game where you could play meta/speedclear or slower clear with your own favourite builds.

On top of that with the lack of meters, nobody can prove that his build is viable and so people that dont play metabuilds from websites/guides will eventually have their access to raid teams denied, despite having a good build.

With these steep timers everyone is forced into meta builds and this is not how this game used to be. Let people wipe on mechanics and only in extreme cases on a soft enrage timers.