Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

Rauderi.8706:

Much agreed, Xil. Hard timers are boring, immersion-breaking, and deny build experimentation.

I agree that something should happen over time so a full-defense party can’t just faceroll things, but a death countdown should never be a standard for good, complex fight design.

How many people are experimenting with their builds currently when doing raids? I’m sure people have all gone full zerker and failed so there’s more to it than that.

I see people using this phrase often. Exactly how are timers immersion breaking?

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

Forgive the sarcasm, but …woo. Such choice, many playstyle. Wow.
If you’re not doing that, you’re bringing down the entire raid, because the devs decided that using highly experienced playtesters was a good idea for balancing the encounter.

So, looking at the bad-design/time-limited option using fluffy hypothetical numerical comparisons, the party is on the hook to do 12.5% of the boss’s HP per minute, while contending with environmental mechanics. Each player, then, needs to do 1.25% per minute. Except you have tank and heal, which won’t be damage spec’d, so it’s more like 1.4%.
If a defensive party can buy just 30 seconds, the necessary dps drops by roughly 6%, given them breathing room to deal with other mechanics. But that’s 30 seconds of enduring mechanics that could rightly make them fail. In a proper soft-enrage scenario, their odds of surviving damage and mechanics damage drop every few seconds, so it’s still riskier to draw out the fight. It becomes about actually balancing defense and offense than “don’t screw up, not even once” and having your dps utterly fail because someone mis-timed an Eviscerate somewhere in Minute 2 of the fight.
Even in a hard enrage scenario, an 8 minute fight should take 7 minutes, with the last minute allowing for variation.

When I say “immersion breaking,” I don’t just mean someone’s head-canon or a group’s RP.
To go from “hard fight, we can do this” to “suddenly dead because cheap mechanic said so” doesn’t feel good. It hardly makes sense. There’s no story in it. Unless the story is baddie finishes some mcguffin task that explodes all the things, then by all means put a timer on it. But it shouldn’t be a standard.
Soft enrages come with a building tension and the possibility of clutch win. Players are gritting teeth and yelling “Go go go go!” into their mics, making desperation plays and sacrifices so the rest of the team might pull it off, while, numerically, the game is smugly continuing to amp up. “110% damage not enough for you? How about 120%? More damage, more!” until the party endures for a win or they can’t sustain and inevitably topple.
So, if the fight already has a compounding damage mechanic where the boss gains stacks of power when the players fail, let that be the limiter rather than an arbitrary timer.

eldrin.6471:

TD meta is a pushover compared to raids. and when did the people that played this game since launch ask for this crap? Anet decided to screw over there own player base to draw in a few raiders from wow.

Raids are designed to be challenging because it’s instance-based, I don’t have too much problem with it. Chak Gerent, on the other hand, is a meta event for open world.

So I’m about to craft my third ascended armor set but I’m having trouble deciding what to go for now in light of raids. I already have Assassin on Mesmer and Berserker on Necro. I was thinking getting a condition or healing set. I like healing as an ele and it worked fine in exotics vs Vale Guardian. The main problem I see though is that I think we’re slowly gravitating towards more damage oriented support. I think a few weeks from now no one will be running pure dedicated healers anymore and all the tanks will only have just enough toughness to have aggro and go full damage. At the same time, conditions don’t seem to be Ele’s strong suit. While they can definitely pile on some heavy burns it seems that in a dedicated party you’d rather have a second/third/fourth engi over a condi ele.

So far the builds I’ve traid is a condi/tank ele, a condi/heal ele, a heal/tank ele and a standard staff DPS ele. All work nicely but I just don’t really feel like I’m contributing anything that someone else can’t do. Im leaning towards just making another Berserker set and call it a day but I’m not sure.

What do you guys think Ele meta is in raids right? Would you invest in a healing or condi damage set for an ele at this time?

Nivik.2961:

Just looking at the stats on this set up; is this not the “tailor made” perfect set up for an auramancer support tank. Boon duration, tuffness, vitality, and healing power…and to boot the name on this ascended set is Maklain’s minstrel insignia….I feel like Karl is trying to help us out here ; )

What I’m seeing is increased uptime of 40% damage mitigation for your allies with added uptime of regen vigor and might(boons we share in abundance with aurashare). Aura’s are going to heal significantly with the healing power as well. Then not to mention obviously the mandatory tuffness and vitality stats.

I don’t have a lot of experience in the raid and am looking to fill a support role with my auramancer, does this seem viable guys?

I certainly would not recommend this sadly, as losing the dps of one party member really cannot be made up by just the boon duration and healing alone. Ive tried a very tanky build with healing and some condi damage and it just didnt feel like it contributed enough considering how weak the actual first boss’s damage is. Im going to switch over to full trailblazer when they fix it.

I don’t really understand why Fire is used over Arcane though. All the raids I’ve been in I’ve had 5 or more boons on me all the time. If you play Fresh Air ele that means anything other than OLA spam is a DPS loss so there is no use for the power boost or 10% fire dmg boost you get. The only time you go out of air is to reset your cooldown. Arcane gives you boon duration, often alot more than 10% dmg, more vigor uptime and elemental attunement. Especially since it’s no longer Ele’s job to provide might and fury as other classes do it better, i’d say maximizing personal DPS is the best choice. That means maximizing OLA damage. Hell, most of the time the air cooldown resets so fast that casting drakes breath or cone of cold takes another second that I could have spent in Air and used Lightning Whip.

Fire should only be used on staff builds and the only reason it was ever used on D/X in fractals and dungeons was because there were no revenants and Ele could give long fury the easiest.

Not commenting on the rest of the post but is it fair to compare the cost of the highest priced bonus version of HOT to the lowest priced base version of the original game ?

Wasn’t the most expensive version of GW2 originally something like $150?

Ayrilana.1396:

I hate being forced to do the story to get MP.
I hated being forced to do JP’s to get MP.
I hate being forced to kill specific champions to get MP.
I hate being forced to do entire event chains to get MP.
I hate being forced to kill things to get MP.
I hate being forced to do PvE to get MP.
I hate being forced to do scavenger hunts to get MP.
I hate being forced to do adventures to get MP.
…
Etc etc etc etc

Not everything in the game will be something that you enjoy.

Don’t try becoming an author on a professional basis … it’d be a desaster.

How old are you? Let’s talk about split time reaction when you’re 45+ and have had a rather stressful work-day. At 20:00 I’m not at my best and even at my best I’d lose hands down against a 16 year old – age does that to people.

So before HoT you had no guild hall and you were happy…… now you have a chance of having a guild hall, but can’t get it …. so having no guild hall now makes you unhappy?
why do you suddenly feel the need for a GH if you don’t like people… just find a cool area to meet and call it a hideout!

So i remember when the forums used to be a place for advice or ways to interact with players. Now its just a festival of complaining.

When will all the major problems that are flooding the forums be fixed?

I want to come back to the old forums!

TD takes too long, is unforgiving of the normal open world issues with absolutely needing to coordinate everything, and the map confuses and frustrates a lot of people with its design.

As time goes by, it feels like more and more players are losing patience for the long wait for the Gerent fight and the frequent failures despite full maps and organized commanders that they’re giving up and not even bothering to set up for the final push any longer.

I’m worried about the overall sustainability of this map is it now stands.

It depends on what tier you got during the day and night, the higher the tier, the more crowbar you will get. Airship cargo can give you 25 airship parts if you are lucky, and if you kill lots of mobs you should have a lot of nuhoch hunting stash (nuhoch mastery 1) that can give you 105 airship parts (?), again, only if you are lucky, normally they only give 5. I think killing bosses at night also gives you some airship parts. At the end, it’s a matter of your luck. If you’re unlucky, then yes it’s really slow.

Does anyone else find this theme to be pretty underwhelming? I’m a fan of most of the music in HoT, but this one theme feels really lackluster, especially for an epic battle. After playing through the DS meta 2-3 times, I had to mute the music at this part since it was actually starting to detract from my experience. A theme similar to “Shadow of the Dragon” would be much more fitting imo.

Lightning Xv.8705:

Considering other games with multiple raid tiers have a tiny raid population compared to the whole its not worth it here for a raid.

The vast majority of WoW players disagree. That game is basically built around eventually funneling people into raids. They even have a PUG raid finder now. It is the most successful MMO out there and routinely makes #1 on MMO lists. Hardly a tiny raid population.

“No one loses” How about the dev time required to build and balance the new tiers. And they still wont be inclusive to the majority of the player base.

This is a fair point, but doesn’t have a lot of substance backing it. No one here knows the time it would take them to balance a lower difficulty mode and how that time could be better spent. I imagine balancing it wouldn’t be as difficult as you make it seem if they removed the #1 stumbling block, enrage timers and limited the awards.

If this is to be the ground work for future content, best they start now than walking down this path and realizing they made the same mistakes other top selling MMOs have made and have since undone.

and before someone complains about paying customers….you got EXACTLY what they said they had in store for you.

This is irrelevant. The OP and others didn’t want this and are asking for a different mode. They are asking for a change, which is fair. If people didn’t ask for changes you wouldn’t have got raids to being with. Arena Net encourages people to give feedback. Recall the CDIs? Raids are one such result of those.

Already seeing it in my fairly friendly guild. A secret core “raid” group going in for a few nights in a row, not asking anyone else if they want to come. Seen this repeated in all the guilds I’m a member of.

Thank God they don;t actually drop gear with higher stats is all I can say.

Kormeg.2469:

Before coming back to GW2 for HoT, I was playing FFXIV. In that game I considered my self both a casual and a raider. (you could do each wing of alexander normal in ~20-30 mins). I never did Savage cuz that was hard as balls and I didn’t have the time.(I was gearing up for it in anticipation though).

I think GW2 can fulfil that same idea.

…Just as long as rewards are appropriate and both modes are available simultaneously.

Agreed. I don’t see why there needs to be such a big division in satisfying both hardcore players and casuals. Let there be both for everyone. That means all content. Just like in GW1.

Warlord.9074:

circuitnerd.5863:

Warlord.9074:

I don’t agree with having an easy mode for lazy players. I use that term instead of casuals. Just because a player is a casual doesn’t mean they are too lazy to understand the game and communicate effectively.

There is a whole subset of players in this game that go throughout every aspect of it getting carried by others. You cannot be carried in this raid. It requires you to gear up, have an optimal build for your part, communicate, teamwork, and understand your class and the mechanics of the fight.

If you cannot do this which is very basic you will never finish this raid.

You don’t have to carry those in the easier mode. You don’t even have to do it. You get the option of something harder. I do not see how this affects the hardcore players at all. They get what they want in hard mode. Normal mode doesn’t affect them 1 bit.

How about no easy mode and we just dont let players get something for free for once in this game.

Why are you so adamant on not letting those with less skill a chance at enjoying raids as well? How does an easier mode affect YOU? It doesn’t!

Warlord.9074:

I don’t agree with having an easy mode for lazy players. I use that term instead of casuals. Just because a player is a casual doesn’t mean they are too lazy to understand the game and communicate effectively.

There is a whole subset of players in this game that go throughout every aspect of it getting carried by others. You cannot be carried in this raid. It requires you to gear up, have an optimal build for your part, communicate, teamwork, and understand your class and the mechanics of the fight.

If you cannot do this which is very basic you will never finish this raid.

You don’t have to carry those in the easier mode. You don’t even have to do it. You get the option of something harder. I do not see how this affects the hardcore players at all. They get what they want in hard mode. Normal mode doesn’t affect them 1 bit.

Harper.4173:

People do something for the challenge once or twice – after that they farm it.
If they went with this Raids would become a farmfest – it would be a PR disaster and the community uproar would be huge.

Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria would surely ensue… ahem

Then they could not allow that. The biggest draw to raids reward wise is likely the legendary gear. They could just not allow that to be acquired by story mode raiders.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids should only have one mode, the hardest possible mode available. If you want easier content, dungeons and fractals are still available to play. Raids are not designed to be inclusive, they are designed to push players to get better. You say you’re a casual and a good player, so if you get with a good group you should be able to beat it. You may fail many times, but when you beat it that will be an incredibly satisfying moment—Those moments are what raids are all about; the catharsis from defeating a seemingly insurmountable foe is incredible. You, too, can enjoy these bosses if you’re willing to put forth the effort and join a group to overcome it.

I do not see the point in the hardest possible. Why can’t there be 2 modes? People can either choose whether they want Hard or Normal. Mordremoth has Normal and Extreme modes, all of GW1 missions had both. This gives all players a fair chance at it. I’m not saying nerf it. Some players may simply not be able to get as good as those who can beat it currently. Having 2 modes does not interfere with those who want to do it the way it is now.

Seeing as probably the majority of people are not going to be able to complete raids or even get beyond the Vale Guardian due to difficulty I’d like to make the suggestion of having 2 different modes for raids.

As it is right now it could be “Hard mode.” And for “Normal mode” the boss has somewhat less health, his attacks do a little less damage, and a timer more like 12 minutes.

Changing the rewards for Normal to be less giving than Hard would be key. For instance the recipes would be exotic instead of ascended and so on.

I’m making this suggestion because I personally probably won’t get to see the enemies you guys have designed beyond the VG and would love to fight them. I’m a good player, but not the best.

This lets both the “casuals” and “hardcore” players experience it more attuned to their level of play.

So what’s to prevent “hardcore” players from farming the Normal mode? Well nothing technically. But they won’t get the better rewards AND those who truly want the challenge still have it.

If you could, please take my suggestion into account Arenanet. I think it would satisfy everyone.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Palador.2170:

But it does mean that putting out a first expansion that turns away from casual players is a very questionable idea, at best.

Are you suggesting that the new maps and new story content are not casual? A marginal increase in general PvE difficulty doesn’t scare away the casual players; there’s tons of new content for them.

Are you suggesting that a two-hour cycle, zone-wide meta event with above average difficulty and requiring multiple points of coordination is casual? Or Hero Challenges with champions on timers?

I feel I should point out that something can be non-casual friendly and still not be hard core friendly or even difficult. A lot of HoT is not built for casual players, but it’s also not enough of a challenge for hard core players that are looking for things like raids. The end result is something that I don’t even know the proper name for, but it’s not in step with what made base GW2 popular.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Nearly 90% of the game is designed for those players. GW2 is incredibly successful, has won numerous prestigious accolades, and has a very high concurrency for players three years after initial release; for all intents and purposes it’s faring splendidly.

Now count 2 and 2 together, will you? The game is greatly intended for “casual” players and it is doing well. Could it be that it is doing well BECAUSE it is intended for “casual” players?

Against Vale Guardian, if your tank is stacking by the red pillar for Stage 1 (which is a great spot btw) DO NOT use Sword 3. We had one of our pug Revs throw himself out of the ring twice from doing this. This will instant kill the Rev.

Yes Tempest will be welcomed in PvE content. The Tempest is a DPS increase for the old staff builds and are pretty good even with dagger mainhands (though the DPS difference between staff and dagger is pretty big).

Here’s a video of a Tempest from the [KING] guild in the new fight using full zerker (looks like) with Dagger/Focus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elV5EiNU4dM#t=5m50s

Staff support ele for WvW has been pretty untouched and is still good, even there adding Tempest could be a good addition depending on the build.

Only thing that stands out to be pretty meh is:

• Warhorn
• Ramp up time for Water Overload
• Radius of Fire Overload (but that’s not too big a deal)

Looks bad. Low damage honestly. Dire Staff Ele isn’t going to do much.

But it JUST OCCURED to me that no one has posted what Eles should probably be running in raids if they want to be DPS (D/F Tempest).

I should probably get on this.

Flame Burst does nothing when there’s no target selected. This isn’t a nerf. It’s a buff. It stops you from wasting Flame Burst when you lose target.

That worked with Flame Burst? Mine would often fire at nothing.

How is Ele a contender? How can our 2 conditions compete?