Re rewards: I’ll just point out, again, that all game modes have exclusive rewards.
Really only deserves one sentence at this point.
I feel like if you want the equivalent of infantile mode for raids, it wouldn’t really help with accessibility. It would be a one and done — people would go in just to see the encounter.
I think this is a false assumption – and, of course, there would still need to be rewards, just not at the same level as the current raid level, and definitely not legendary armor. Maybe something along the lines of half the magnetite and a decent chance at a vanilla ascended drop (which would give new raiders another new way to gear for the real raid encounters as well).
And, again, I don’t think the escort method is a good way to include easier modes. It only waters the raid experience down for everyone. Let the developers design the encounters the way they feel works best – and then implement motes to address accessibility and/or the need for greater challenge on a fight by fight basis.
To expound just a bit more – the more I think about the idea of training motes, the more the idea seems like the right way to go. It would give raids an alternative path forward when their group comp or skill levels don’t quite measure up. A group can still go in and wipe against the regular vale guardian 10 times – but rather than throwing in the towel on the 11 attempt, they can simply activate the training mote for the experience of the fight, to move on to Gorseval (in the situation that their group comp better fits that encounter) or to gain the lesser reward so members can progress their gear a tiny bit before the next raid.
And, it has the added benefit of opening the content to more players. I do believe it would be content people of all skill levels would repeat – just for the fun of it.
This seems a lot of work. You’re asking anet to double their effort on all raids, past and future.
I’d rather have 2 different encounters than the same encounter twice. Similarly, I imagine those who like open world would riot if they had to wait on a hard version of each map.
You can raid. Right now. At an easy difficulty level. No ascended gear required. What more do you want?
I doubt very seriously that adding motes would double the work, so I think that is an unfair assessment. The models, the settings, the voice work and most of the mechanics would remain exactly the same. At best we’re talking about simply tweaking numbers (probably not the way they would go) – or removing/adding simple mechanics/timers/etc.
As an (admittedly untested) example, adding a training mote might be as simple as adding a couple of NPCs to help the players with damage and ccs. That is hardly doubling the work.
And, it’s worth pointing out, that Crystal even talked about the possibility of adding motes to encounters in the recent developer AMA. While she was talking about challenge motes, the concept of a story or training mote would obviously work the same way.
They’ve stated it’s a lot of work. And you’re not just asking for a numbers shave, but balanced rewards, and a difficultly level similar to dungeons.
If it was so easy, why do fractals take forever to come out?
I feel like if you want the equivalent of infantile mode for raids, it wouldn’t really help with accessibility. It would be a one and done — people would go in just to see the encounter.
I think this is a false assumption – and, of course, there would still need to be rewards, just not at the same level as the current raid level, and definitely not legendary armor. Maybe something along the lines of half the magnetite and a decent chance at a vanilla ascended drop (which would give new raiders another new way to gear for the real raid encounters as well).
And, again, I don’t think the escort method is a good way to include easier modes. It only waters the raid experience down for everyone. Let the developers design the encounters the way they feel works best – and then implement motes to address accessibility and/or the need for greater challenge on a fight by fight basis.
To expound just a bit more – the more I think about the idea of training motes, the more the idea seems like the right way to go. It would give raids an alternative path forward when their group comp or skill levels don’t quite measure up. A group can still go in and wipe against the regular vale guardian 10 times – but rather than throwing in the towel on the 11 attempt, they can simply activate the training mote for the experience of the fight, to move on to Gorseval (in the situation that their group comp better fits that encounter) or to gain the lesser reward so members can progress their gear a tiny bit before the next raid.
And, it has the added benefit of opening the content to more players. I do believe it would be content people of all skill levels would repeat – just for the fun of it.
This seems a lot of work. You’re asking anet to double their effort on all raids, past and future.
I’d rather have 2 different encounters than the same encounter twice. Similarly, I imagine those who like open world would riot if they had to wait on a hard version of each map.
You can raid. Right now. At an easy difficulty level. No ascended gear required. What more do you want?
Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.
That is true of pretty much any organized group content in MMOs, from dungeons to raids on through to these events. Organization/coordination is always the hardest part of the game.
But it is beside the point. Organized guilds need more to do in larger groups. Guild missions were an amazing addition to the game – one that brought people together to have fun, regardless of the difficulty or group size. With the last guild mission added more than 3 years ago, that has been woefully missing from GW2.
It’s fair to ask for it. Perhaps they could add some missions to the HOT maps.
I just think that the hardcore world bosses — that is, triple trouble and pre-nerf gerent — were a failure because the large organization required became prohibitive for most groups.
I feel like if you want the equivalent of infantile mode for raids, it wouldn’t really help with accessibility. It would be a one and done — people would go in just to see the encounter.
And if you wanted a mode that actually attempted to train players, and provided balanced rewards, you may as well make a new raid. New content > repeated content.
I think most of the people who want easy mode just want the rewards. Maybe not Blaeys, but the others do.
And, well, if you want an easy raid that gives raid rewards, you got it. Escort.
Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.
don’t teach yo mama how to do sex. she knows.
that being said, it’s clear the discussion is pointless as the rational thoughts and arguments are continuously met with ridiculous statements that don’t have any reflection in the real gameplay. i only hope if the balance team reads this thread, they would see the unfairness necro suffers from and not the emotional and paranoic thoughts of some of our contributors here.
Somehow, I think everyone agrees necro needs a buff. Everyone also brought their other agendas to the table, which is stifling discussion.
The issue is simply that group damage per second is the ONLY measure of success in the current raid model – and that is unlikely to ever change.
Every profession can stay alive fairly easily (and kinda has to for the group to be successful) – so the fact that necros have more survivability is completely irrevelant in this game mode.
As long as professions like necros, engineers, revenants, etc do not increase the average damage output of the group (via either their own damage or group buffs), then they will always be considerably less valued than warriors, chronomancers, druids, elementalists who do up group damage.
The raid meta model isn’t the only makeup that can down raids (obviously), but the massive difference between its potential damage and that of lower performing group comps/playstyles/builds/etc has raids in a pretty bad place right now, imo.
This is not entirely true — condi necros can provide good utility on sloth and Matthias, but they are not high dps. Certain classes can provide important utility on other bosses as well.
I don’t think it’s a problem with raids per se, but balance. Anet seems to be incompetent or indifferent towards pve balance. Raids just bring that to the forefront.
Forming a 10-man squad is a problem (that even Anet admits it as a problem) and it’s not going to be fixed anytime soon. I do make my own squads pretty often at all time frames and it does not fill within minutes at all. You see, newbies don’t tend to join pug training themselves (go figure), or leave as soon as they realize it’s going to be an arduous experience, so every 2 or so wipes you have a 15-30 min average interval to get the next players to fill up your group again.
Exp runs while easier to get kills with, also take a lot of time to fill when you start from 1 squad member, and there’s also the amazing phenomenom of having 6 to 7 people on the LFG tab all trying to find a squad for the same boss I’m announcing for half an hour, and they simply refuse to join on me for raid because it’s not a LF1M or LF2M full group already. I call this the “Chak Gerent” effect because it’s the same with TD meta where people in a full or nearly full secundary map are all trying to get into a primary map instead of doing the meta there themselves.
In the end, it all boils down to the low amount of people actually raiding. Of course, no statistics are available directly to us but it’s clearly harder to find a group than it is for fractals, and not only because of the 10-player requirement I believe. Consider for example that players with 40+LI’s only become a majority among those with 4000+ hours of playing the game, according to gw2economy (which is not the most reliable tool as well, but players with the most playtime do often put their API’s there…). Furthermore, you can look at the raiding tournament hosted by players themselves this weekend: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5f7uiv/all_elitists_are_toxic/ . It didn’t have much participation at all (one of the starting brackets didn’t even fill if I recall, it was something like 7 guilds on a 10-guild bracket), unlike PvP where (in spite of being quite unpopular) the bracket was quite large. If these brackets amount to any sample of the actual population actively playing these modes raids are actually an elite thing (in the sense that a low % partake in it).
In sum, and in spite of what one’s guild activity/static groups make it look like, there are not enough people raiding, which is not unhealthy at all for the game itself, but very unhealthy to the raiding environment, as everyone is locked into the “social” aspect of finding a fixed group instead of a plug&play challenging activity like PvP or WvW are. That is detrimental to new players (social barriers being harder than ability barriers is a huge thing on group behavior research), and leads experienced players down the road of stagnation.
All that said, I enjoy running with the 2 raiding guilds I’m part of, both training and exp runs are both fun and profitable, but I do miss the aspect of simply log on and go get a raid done that some other games have. Here it is log on, ask about on the guild, then go sit on your kitten for up to a whole hour until a group of people join your LFG, who will leave after 3 wipes.
I mean, raids are on a weekly lockout, and fractals are daily. Of course it’s easier to find a fractal group.
Also, I’ve never seen a group take an hour to fill.
Notice for example, that something mentioned by the devs as an option they’re considering (the 5-man instancing), would also do nothing for the current raids, and yet it is considered to be a possible solution for raid accessibility.
Where is the quote where dev mentionned that 5-man instance is a possibility for raid? I’m interested (i might have missed some quotes )
There’s no quote. It’s a misunderstanding on a dev goal to have 5-person fractal groups have an easier time finding five more players.
This comes up a lot so I’m going to jump in quickly since it’s a new post.
Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did. I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.
Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK) and you’ll see more of that in the next release. You’ll still see encounters that live up to previous raid expectations for mid tier and final bosses. And if you think Matthias is a chump then we have something for you as well.
Accessibility in terms of “Hey, my 5 man Fractal group wants to try raids, but we can’t find 5 other players!” is also something we talk about. It’s just a much more difficult problem to solve.
@Blaeys
You know that this topic about accessibility is polluted by people winning about wanting raids rewards in easy mode…i would like having a conversation here, but some people have their own agenda and don’t care at all about raid accessibility, as long as they can have raid rewards..@Absurdo is right about accessibility, even if I think the fact that some professions are not wanting now ( mostly in pug) doesn’t help either going into raids.
I agree that the reward conversation is a non starter. This needs to be about accessibility. Greater effort/difficulty should most definitely garner greater rewards. That is something Anet has always stuck to since the very beginning (story vs explorable dungeon rewards, achievement rewards such as Liadri title, special mini in Aetherpath, etc). There is no basis for people to expect anything different with raids (and, if it were up to me – prestigious rewards throughout the game would be MUCH harder to get).
The problem with Absurdo’s responses (and the reason I try not to respond to him when possible) is that he (and a few others – on multiple sides of the conversation) insists on lumping everyone into two big piles and making this a SIDE A vs SIDE B discussion, when their are definitely more than two sides. Then, he (and others) takes it too far by hurling insults and names at the people he disagrees with (his “sickening” comment above is a good example – he even once said a guild was “bad” because they didn’t offer players a raiding experience – and these are 2 of many examples of what I consider unproductive conversations).
You (Hyperion) and I, for instance, agree on some things and disagree on others – but, most importantly, we understand that the answer isn’t to shut the conversation down – it’s to debate civilly and respect others even as we disagree.
My point in my response earlier this morning was to illustrate that, no matter what, this topic isn’t going away anytime soon. I even respect – and agree with him – that the raid tournament was well received – but it really doesn’t have anything to do with the point I was trying to make. I definitely do not think challenge should be removed from raiding in any way whatsoever (in fact, more is needed). The accessibility discussion I want to have is solely about adding to the raiding experience – not taking away from it.
Like it or not, the conversation about adding greater accessibility will naturally reoccur – both in game and on the forums – as people become more disillusioned with the current raid model in GW2. There has to be a compromise – a solution that works for a greater number of players. That is why this conversation is important – and why we need to – as a general rule – disregard (even outright ignore in some cases) the “us vs them” posts that continually crop up throughout these discussions.
Hmm … wow.
So I’ll just note that:
- I’m responding to suggestions actually put forth in this thread.
- I put forth constructive solutions for people looking to get into raids.
Seems counter productive to address anything else. I’m also unaware of any new input from anything in this thread in a long while. I’m happy to be wrong on this count.
It is worth nothing that, since Saturday (of a holiday weekend in the states), there have been at least 4 new threads – by what appears to be at least 4 separate people who have not been part of the discussion to date – appear across the various subforums expressing concern about the accessibility of raiding, the disparity between professions/builds in raids and the negative impacts those elements are having on the game.
And, in almost every thread, the same 2-3 people advocating against tiered difficulty are doing everything they can to shut the conversation down. It is telling that, in the face of that kind of criticism, we still see so many expressing this concern.
Without a doubt, these kinds of concerns are going to continue to crop up and will most likely only become more prevalent (both in game and on the forums) – especially as new raids are introduced to the game and the gap between experienced and beginner raiders grows wider and wider.
People aren’t whining. They aren’t making things up. There is a legitimate desire for tiered difficulty in the game.
I mean, as long as we can point to useless statistics, there was also a raid tournament this weekend, which achieved several thousand views.
And let’s differentiate between “whining” and “how do I get into raids.”
Some people come seeking legitimate advice on how to find groups. Others whine because a group booted them from running an off meta build.
And, frankly, it’s easy to get into raids if you want to.
- I see training runs on the lfg every day
- Major guilds host training runs, usually in Sunday.
- Not all groups require LI.
It’s also sickening what’s being suggested here. Despite a new fractal and three new living story chapters, the easy moders still want more. They want easy modes out of raid development. They want living world to continue on schedule.
I thought this was the season of thanks, not greed.
Your solution is just a waste of dev ressources.
To you, perhaps, but then raids at the current difficulty level are likewise a waste of dev resources to me.
Plus, let’s not forget that your main purpose (as everyone reading you know it) is to have an easier access to raid rewards, and to the legendary armors, and not to train.
Nah, that’s me. He is raiding, and from his earlier suggestions, unlike me, he’d rather have easy mode raids with lesser rewards than no easy mode with other way to get leg armor.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Ohoni raids, at least anytime recently. And I think he wants full access to rewards in an easy mode, just at a slower pace.
I d have a bit of a problem with the white mantle portal device reward since it removes the uniqueness of Mesmers portal. As for a permanent revive orb, that really seems like something of a BLTC item, not a raid reward
I do like the portal device, but I don’t think it should be unique to raids because it provides some minor utility. Perhaps making it sellable on the tp or a recipe for a crafted version?
I don’t think it competes with mesmer because the cooldown is so high.
To the OP, I think raids could provide unique:
- Auras
- Finishers
- Travel bundles / toys
- Tonics
- Aerodome portal scroll
- Raid merchant express
And variation had largely been the modus operandi of guild wars 2. Maps range from queensdale to ruins of orr. Dungeons from COF to Arah. Jumping puzzles from the easy ones to not so secret and the new volcano one. HOT maps from verdant brink to dragon stand. Fractals from duo to nightmare. And raids from trio to matthias.
Variation is more content for everyone.
Using the logic you do (comparing fractals to fractals, JPs to JPs, etc), they would need to make an entire raid that is easy mode – to offset those that are harder – which would double the time between challenging raids.
I do not think that is a good solution.
The challenge mote/training mote concept allows for difficulty variation with (imo) minimal effort (definitely less effort than designing entire raids for one group or the other) while keeping the spirit of the originally designed encounter intact.
They have already expressed a willingness to consider challenge motes. Extending that process to create greater accessibility through story motes (or whatever you wanted to call them) seems like a very valid option – and a good way to put this issue to rest.
Escort and trio are much easier compared to the other encounters.
We already have double the time between the harder raids. Under both scenarios (Escort and Xera versus 2x Xera), there’s the same amount of time between the harder raids. The third (imo non optimal) option is to just forgo all easy raids and only release encounters like Xera and Matthias.
Finally, the devs expressed interest in challenge motes that change the dynamic of the encounter (like needing to keep karde alive in sabetha). No challenge mote is just a straight increase (or decrease) in health / damage.
Again, the raid developers said raids are not set up to handle multiple difficulty modes, like fractals. It’s not just tweaking numbers, despite how easy you claim it is.
And, I would not be content if raids had the same release schedule as fractals. Two versus nine encounters per year.
Again, would you rather have escort and xera, or two versions of xera? The raid developers have adopted the former (and in my opinion better) philosophy.
Which is why I listed tweaking numbers as only one option. It might have been better if I hadn’t added any examples, as I’m sure the developers would come up with a better method than I ever could.
And the developers themselves were just yesterday on Reddit talking about the possibility of adding in challenge motes – which are basically the same as tiered difficulties. Logic dictates that the process could be used to develop a story or training experience using that same methodology.
And to your question – of course it makes more sense to offer multiple versions of Xera. I don’t know why anyone would think otherwise. The idea is to open the entire experience to more people. The half and half approach only serves to give everyone less compelling content.
As an example, using motes, they could go back and make escort more difficult with a challenge mote (possibly adding jade construct minibosses on the turret platforms and giving the boss at the end proper raid hardcore mechanics, as an example) while simultaneously making Xera more accessible via a training mote.
That just makes sense.
Also – Ive been trying to work on cutting back on the back and forth with other players, and to avoid any questions directed at specific people rather than discussing the issue – which is why I tend to not respond to you replies. You and I have a tendency to get trapped in continuous circles of response, counter, response, etc. to the point it drowns out other people. I think that is something we can all work on a little to keep the conversation less cluttered and moving in a productive direction.
Ok — if you think the 2x Xera answer is better (or as another poster put it better, 2x VG versus VG and Gor), then we’ll never agree. And, to be clear, the raid devs think having intro raids, like trio and escort (and to an extent VG), is the best answer.
Going more into opinion zone, I’m not sure how anyone can think less content is better, especially after the content drought that plagued the first six months of HOT. Raids got a lot of hate back then because it was the only new content.
And variation had largely been the modus operandi of guild wars 2. Maps range from queensdale to ruins of orr. Dungeons from COF to Arah. Jumping puzzles from the easy ones to not so secret and the new volcano one. HOT maps from verdant brink to dragon stand. Fractals from duo to nightmare. And raids from trio to matthias.
Variation is more content for everyone.
Yea we need dechallenge motes in raids already, anet have showed they can do the opposite with fractals.
Time to twist it around in raids.
This would probably be the easiest way to accomplish what we are talking about here – and they did talk about the possibility of adding challenge motes in the recent Reddit AMA. That isn’t a far leap away from a “training” or “story” mote (which would probably do WAY more to get more people into raiding than traditional challenge motes).
As far as actual functionality, it could be as simple as lowering health/damage output, tempering/removing mechanics or something like what maddoctor recommends in another thread – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Plea-for-a-Raid-Story-Mode/first#post6406465.
As far as the developer resource issue, if the resources exist to create challenge motes as described in the reddit response – given the outcry for some kind of tiered difficulty, the implementation of de-challenge motes (or whatever they want to call them) seems like a more logical use of their time (and, of course, ideally, both dechallenge and challenge motes would find a place in raids).
Again, the raid developers said raids are not set up to handle multiple difficulty modes, like fractals. It’s not just tweaking numbers, despite how easy you claim it is.
And, I would not be content if raids had the same release schedule as fractals. Two versus nine encounters per year.
Again, would you rather have escort and xera, or two versions of xera? The raid developers have adopted the former (and in my opinion better) philosophy.
I am disappointed it’s a lvl 25 fractal+. Thaumonova when it released gave a grace period of being to just go in experience it. The highest any of my guild is lvl 20 in fractals, so we gathered together in advance to do it…only to find it shut out to us.
Really hoped we could at least experience it straight off the bat for t1 at least once.
I am looking forward to at least getting to it though after hearing all these great things!
I’m sure anyone in lfg would be willing to open it for you if you still want to try it.
I really like this fractal. Bullet time is fun. Boss mechanics are fun. Dodging aoe’s is fun.
My only (very very very minor) complaint is that I have no idea what the cones that come from the player do. I know it has to do with the ghosts spawn. I just don’t know if I’m supposed to look at the ghosts, other players, the boss, or away from the the players and boss.
It’s basically a spit attack that will dmg other players if you look at them.
Ok, so just don’t have the cone aoe’s on players?
I made my own LFG. People joined, insisted on build-gear check, left when I refused or didn’t give an answer they liked. After hours, abandoned LFG. I don’t have enough friends interested in raiding. I cannot get a group via LFG due to elitism. Therefore, I cannot raid.
And I have heard plenty of similar stories.
On the other side, after 250+ raids, I have never seen a non-commander insist on a gear/build check. When I see bad players or bad builds in the group, I just leave the group.
Yep, all of the above! If you already have all 3 Infinite potions, and have the relics to spare (hint: convert a bunch of your otherwise useless Pristine Relics), it’s definitely worth the upgrade.
You can also turn in the non-infinite potions for relics now, which helps.
I really like this fractal. Bullet time is fun. Boss mechanics are fun. Dodging aoe’s is fun.
My only (very very very minor) complaint is that I have no idea what the cones that come from the player do. I know it has to do with the ghosts spawn. I just don’t know if I’m supposed to look at the ghosts, other players, the boss, or away from the the players and boss.
Yesterday, multiple groups in my guild did level 25 and level 100-challenge mote versions of the new fractal. The comments coming out of the latter included “that was amazing – it felt like a raid”, “That was frustrating but really fun”, “Oh dang, oh dang, oh dang, the pain, my face, my face, the pain, the pain”, and several others I can’t repeat here.
But more importantly, here is what we learned -
- A tiered system spanning between easy and blistering hard is VERY possible in this game.
- No one doing the level 100- challenge mote thought the experience was less epic or difficult in any way whatsoever because of the existence of the level 25 (a common concern from people in this thread about raids). This proves that the idea that easy mode will somehow diminish the efforts of those doing harder difficulties is completely unfounded.
- I doubt that the developer resources needed to make the different versions was really that significant.
- People doing the lvl 25 (which we took a lot of people in to see) really enjoyed it as well. They found it fun and interesting – and it will likely get many of them actually interested in fractals again. The people doing the lvl 25 didn’t care that they weren’t doing the hardest version. They were just happy to be there
Now, I respect that raids are not fractals – that the underlying system is different, but yesterday proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could make and implement such a system for raids in GW2. Anet needs to expend the effort to migrate future raids to a similar platform. It doesn’t need to be 100 levels – it can simply be 2 or 3 tiers instead.
This is needed. It is needed so that Anet can use raids as story telling platforms. It is needed to drive greater interest in raids. It is needed to help alleviate content droughts. It is needed to avoid creating unnecessary rifts and tensions in the community. It is needed to open the fun of raiding to more people. It is needed to accommodate for the SEVERE performance disparity between professions/builds/playstyles. And, yes, it can serve as a training tool.
It is just plain out needed.
They have stated several times that the amount of resources is significant. I’m not sure why the easy moders keep claiming this. Raids are not fractals. I think the raid versus fractal output makes this clear.
It’s great that you had groups beat level 25. Will they continue to play at that level, or was it a one-time thing?
Crystal said that they ship easy raids as well as hard ones to get newer players interested. Would you rather have escort and xera or two versions of xera? Because that is the choice you face.
Looks like you have a guild. Why don’t they host training runs? Why don’t they allow off-meta builds? This seems to be a guild problem, not a raid problem.
There is also the problem of going from 10% to 20% or from 20% to 50% which means the actual result might be number in-between the 2 values and we simply don’t know which one.
As a note to everyone: do not use gw2efficiency to prove a point.
We did prove that 90% + of efficiency users bought HoT tho. If your main problem is that we don’t know the % of players that has LIs between 20-50 % I’m pretty sure the guy who runs the page have access to that data and you can contact him.
Also I’m pretty sure the majority of people with 1-2 LIs aren’t really intrested in raiding at all, probably they went in to unlock the masteries. Also keep in mind the site can’t tell who acquired their LI’s legitimately from those who just bought a run.
Regarding the argument about reading the active raiding population from that site; I believe there is a solution for that too, though it takes some effort to get decent data. You just need to check the highest percentage of players who gets at least one LI each week. For the sake of argument lets say it’s 10%. I remember someone saying gw2eff has 100k registered accs, that means 10k player. This way you can also determine what percentage of players actually clear all 3 wings .
Now of course this only considers those who have made a gw2eff account, meaning in reality this number is most likely different, therefore it would be wrong to interpolate this data for the whole gw2 population, but I don’t see why it can’t be a decent indicator.
This whole line of discussion seems pointless. Anet has the data on raids, and they’re happy with it.
Plus, when you compare to the number of players who participated in the pvp league (using pvp tickets) you get similar numbers.
Yes, I have it, and it gives the effects of all 3 potions. Saved me 2 shared inventory slots.
This is one of most absurd oversights, on par with previous one with stat combinations locked behind raids. If someone don’t enjoy doing particular activity he should not be locked from basic game stuff because of it. Raid masteries should not block mastery progress.
It’s so absurd, that mastery progress is also locked behind adventures and map exploration, which some players also hate!
… or just do escort.
What’s the difference between this mode and wiping after the first stage? The satisfaction of beating the boss? I’m not sure what lore elements this would add.
As far as rewards go it will be the same as wiping. But you will be able to progress further and “wipe” on all bosses and not just the first one. So teams can continue and see the entire story of the Raid (as was what the OP wanted).
Personally the reason I’d love to have a story mode (I don’t want to call it “easy”, rather story) is because I want BIG encounters of the lore/story to appear in Raids. I want to fight the other 4 dragons, Lazarus or even Caudecus in a Raid and not in a Living World instance. But for that to happen there needs to be a framework that provides access to players who do not like Raiding and without it they would be excluded from experiencing the storyline. We don’t want another Arah Story Mode right?
That’s my ultimate goal for a raid story mode. I dread to see the time we fight Lazarus, a super powerful ancient Mursaat that absorbed a Bloodstone, and is weaker than a random White Mantle leader like Xera or Mathias. And in the “story” mode they might be easier, but the “raid version” would change that.
Hate that this recommendation has gotten lost in some of the noise the past few months.
If I recall when I made this suggestion last time it got drowned in posts about “training” sadly. And all threads on Raids have lots of noise!
The straightforward method to solve this “problem” is to have selectable bosses (perhaps in a completed instance).
I posted a proposal for a story mode in the very first thread about it on these forums, months ago. The idea is centered around the following:
a) No re-balancing or tweaking of boss mechanics
b) No re-balancing or tweaking of rewards
c) Very little development time required
d) Gives access to the full story experienceHow do we all the above? I will explain with examples, because that’s the best way of doing it.
The trash mobs before VG are the same as always, no change here is needed. Then the team starts the fight with VG itself. The fight is the exact same as always, only it terminates after the first split (or before the first split, that’s debatable). Basically you remove the later phases of the fight.
At Gorseval, once again the encounter will terminate after the spirit phase, or before the spirit phase (debatable).
KC will terminate after the first burn phase. Xera will terminate before the gliding platform part.
Slothasor is tricky because it’s the same fight for the entire duration, he gets one new attack at 50% and that’s it. I’m not sure about Sloth.
Sabetha is also tricky, following the other examples terminating at Kernan would make the most sense, but then you’d “miss” two champion bosses with their own dialogue.
I don’t think Escort/Trio need any new termination point, and for Escort specifically it wouldn’t make any sense.Basically you remove later phases from the fights, in a similar way how games like WoW add extra phases in their higher difficulties. If something like this is implemented they could ADD more phases later on to create a hard mode (in the same manner as the easy mode, add a new phase). There is no extra mechanical balancing needed. If doing only the first phase is way too easy, they could make it so you go through 2 phases instead and ignore the third one.
As for rewards they stay the same as if you wiped at the next phase. If you wipe at Phase 2 of Vale Guardian you get some shards for finishing Phase 1, if you win the story phase then you get the same shards. I mean you can already go farm shards by wiping at phase 2 of VG repeatedly, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. No other rewards, those that depend on killing the boss will require actually killing them going through all the phases.
PS: I’ve been in training runs, and in some pug runs and I’ve never seen a group wipe at the first phase of VG, even when they were newbies with exotic gear.
This is actually a very good idea – and would solve just about any issue I can think of. For Slotahsor and any future single phase encounters, it might be as simple as cutting his health in half, but still considering as having only finished one “phase” when tabulating reward.
Hate that this recommendation has gotten lost in some of the noise the past few months.
And, if a moderators sees this, this thread should be merged into the preexisting one on this topic.
What’s the difference between this mode and wiping after the first stage? The satisfaction of beating the boss? I’m not sure what lore elements this would add.
Next thing you will say is to count free accounts too, or alt accounts, or bank accounts. Not to mention there is no middle statistic and it goes from 50% to 20%, which means there is a possibility from 21% to 49% to indeed be raiding. It’s not exactly accurate
Again, if you have no data saying that any of these accounts are not paying any money, then you cannot exclude them from pool. Ergo, we are talking about 100% of them. And probably real data is even worse for raiders, because getting API key for gw2e requires some determination.
You can argue about data all day, but there are all flaws in your analysis. If you looked at the number of players who’ve pvp and wvw, SINCE HOT, it’s similar to those who’ve raided.
If you don’t like the data set, then don’t use it. But you seem to make outrageous claims with it.
There is a little more to it than just easy versus hard. For me, the bigger issue – and reason we need tiered difficulty in some form, is the disparity between top and bottom performing professions/builds/comps.
To enjoy raids in their current form, you most likely have to change your build and/or exclude friends who play low performing professions. And even that would be okay if there were some way for people who don’t want to make those sacrifices to realistically enjoy raids.
Right now, the difference between a fresh air elementalist or PS Warrior and a hammer scrapper or longbow ranger (or about a dozen other enjoyable playstyles) in terms of raid viability is not 5-10%; it’s probably closer to 75-100%.
And that is unlikely to change anytime soon. The only way to fix it would be to basically make more professions play the same – something that they would have NEVER have even considered a few years ago, btw, because at that time, the focus was on fun and unique gameplay. .
People who are unlucky enough to enjoy the lesser performing professions and builds are essentially locked out of 90% of raid groups right now – and in those they can play in, they significantly reduce the chances of success.
Now, individuals/groups willing to make the changes deserve higher reward. I’m not debating that. But those people who enjoy playing scrappers or axe necros or whatever should have a way to enjoy raids as much as anyone else (even if the reward is lesser).
That to me is the big issue. Yes, it is partly player created, but it is still an issue that isn’t going away anytime soon. And, even if it does go away, it could easily reappear with any balance patch with little to no warning.
I still think there should be tiered difficulty simply because people would enjoy it – it would add fun to the game (something Anet used to care a lot more about, imo) – but the issue I outline above is probably one of the bigger aspects to this issue.
This is no different than pvp and wvw. You cannot use any build there and be successful.
Plus, I just think balance is terrible (especially with engie and necro). Can’t fault raids there.
To be honest, the ideal solution is to have a selectable spirit shard track. But that takes work, and I’m fine with the status quo.
As others have said, do escort. If you can do dragon stand, you can probably escort.
I’ll note that there’s no difference from someone who hates raids and someone who hates adventures, from a spirit shard perspective. You need to do both to unlock the shards. But, I see a lot of whining re raids, but none from the adventurers.
AND, this was not even a feature at release, but something patched in later. If raids had an extra spirit shard reward from the start, would you still complain?
I’m just going to ignore that there are a million threads on this topic. And that your reddit thread was poorly received.
There’s nothing stopping you from experiencing the story right now.
1) If you want to see what the fights are like, just fight them. Not sure what story you get through beating them.
2) Go to a completed instance to see what it’s like after the bosses.
3) The npc at the beginning of wing 3 will summarize the story.
If you really care about the story, you would have done any of the above.
Yes, this topic has been discussed to death. And, sorry to OP, but there’s nothing new in this suggestion.
Here are the common responses:
1. This is a lot more work than you think. Multi-modal content is a lot more than adjusting some values.
2. The fractal release schedule is really slow. Even with the new fractal next week, the fractal releases don’t hold a candle next to raids. I don’t want raids to go the same way.
3. Easy modes, as you frame them, would not serve as long term content. That is, there’s no reason to do them if you can beat the normal mode (assuming rewards are balanced)
4. Easy modes offer nothing to players who can already beat them.
5. There’s tons of other easy content in this game, why does everything need to be easy? There’s no hard mode silverwastes, for example.
6. Groups train just fine on normal mode.
7. Other hard content in this game has no easy mode. See arah and Aetherpath.
8. Other content serves as a stepping stone into raids. If you can beat t4 fractals and the dungeons, you can raid.
There seems to be 2 low-hanging fruit already: necro and engie.
Necro dps is low compared to other dps classes. I would recommend reverting the lich form nerf.
Engie dps is complicated. That said, groups brought them before the slick shoes nerf because of its excellent cc. I would recommend reverting the slick shoes nerf, at least for pve.
There’s other problems with balance, but I believe these are easy fixes that would make these classes more desirable, even if they’re not optimal.
Having an entire class’ worth dependent on a single skill is a horrible idea. It puts that class in a position where it’s either amazing or total crap depending on the usefulness of the skill, it ruins the class’ flexibility, and it creates a situation where if that skill gets nerfed the class suddenly becomes terrible (i.e. what happened to necro and kindof rev).
Necromancer just needs more damage on its skills in general. Substantial damage buffs to 5-10 skills is probably the way to go.
Engineer has better DPS than other classes that actually get used. It’s is total crap because it needs all its utility slots to deal that damage and – despite being a “jack of all trades” class – is completely inflexible and unable to change skills or traits without losing a substantial amount of damage. I’ve written this elsewhere but I think best way to address these problems in pve is:
1.) In the explosives line, Glass Cannon (and maybe Shaped Charge) removed and replaced with something more specific to explosives
2.) Pistol autoattack bleed damage increased, rifle auto damage increased, hammer damage substantially increased.
3.) Alchemy line gains a trait which increases damage on allies affected by elixers.These are fair points, but I don’t think the developers have the desire or the means for complete structural changes.
I view these as quick fixes that immediately give these classes more of a spot on the team.
I agree that more expansive changes are ideal. The resources for them seem lacking though.
For necromancer I don’t see why it’s an issue. In the last patch something like 6 skills received damage buffs. If they had just made the numbers bigger for pve necro would be in a fine spot (albeit with power builds). Besides the existence of epidemic necro is actually a well designed class in pve, it just needs a numbers buff on scepter 1 2 3 dagger 5 and some power skills (I’m fairly ignorant about those so I can’t comment on which ones).
For engineer though you are right, I doubt even a minor rework is anywhere on anet’s radar. As an engi main it’s sad but that’s probably the way it is. Still, a very easy quick fix for engineer would be to buff weapon autoattack damage. If weapon damage were comparable to at least one kit’s damage for any build it would open up at least one utility slot. If the hammer auto was good enough then the scrapper line could be taken as well.
These kinds of numbers buffs happen every single patch so I don’t see why it would be difficult.
The numbers buff on necro was, well, sad. I’m not even sure what the point was. It gives little confidence that anet has the drive to do it.
Well, I guess the guy complaining about how hard it is to complete raids with the new changes is wrong then. If it’s not harder to complete raids, then there isn’t really a problem here. I’m glad we can agree that this thread is really unnecessary complaining.
I mean, if after all this, your response is “nothing changed” then my response is “then nothing to complain about”. Anet spent their time, put in some changes they wanted and if the result is zero sum effect on raids, then all this complaining is for nothing …
Now, I’m pretty sure you’re going to come back and change up your tune a little bit because certainly, anyone can see that this does affect the way people think about how they do raids and make the comps … YES? So perhaps glib answers aren’t so good if you are being honest about including yourself in a discussion?
Furthermore, as I’ve already illustrated, Inclusivity is not restricted by optimal comps because raids can be completed with non-optimal comps. So, no, that association is nonsense.
The point people have been making for 9 pages now is this:
Before changes: More classes are optimal, more comps (5-5, 4-4-2, 5-4-2, 7-2-1) are used without any big significant differences.
After changes: Less classes are optimal and if you use anything else aside from the 5-5 comp you see a significant change in performance.
Now whether you care about optimal or not is entirely your opnion and if you wanna believe it’s unnecessary complaining then so be it. But there’s no need to play ignorant. You know what changed and there’s no need to dismiss that.
I never argued what is optimal so don’t bother making that a point to argue with me.
You can all continue to argue that these changes screw with optimal builds/compositions, but that really ignores the fundamental concept that the raids aren’t designed and balanced around those optimal builds/compositions in the first place and therefore, that argument is entirely irrelevant.
I mean, the whole statement that if you don’t choose the optimal composition, your performance degrades goes without saying. The only real problem that anyone should be concerned about is when the number of compositions that are solutions to raids becomes dangerously low. That actually doesn’t happen in raids … not yet anyways.
The real problem you see is that players artificially lower the number of solution compositions, not Anet. This is a player perception issue and people are using class changes as scapegoats for their own perception of what works and not work.
Is there room to meet in the middle here?
Currently, all bosses are beatable with less than 10 players. Under your view, then, it would be acceptable for a class to have 50% effectiveness than another because the boss would still be beatable if you brought that sub-optimal class as the tenth player.
It seems wrong to just ignore inter-class balance just because the bosses are still beatable.
There seems to be 2 low-hanging fruit already: necro and engie.
Necro dps is low compared to other dps classes. I would recommend reverting the lich form nerf.
Engie dps is complicated. That said, groups brought them before the slick shoes nerf because of its excellent cc. I would recommend reverting the slick shoes nerf, at least for pve.
There’s other problems with balance, but I believe these are easy fixes that would make these classes more desirable, even if they’re not optimal.
I’m not saying there aren’t opportunities for individual class improvements that could make them more raid-desirable. In fact, it might not be obvious, but I think that’s why these kinds of class changes are made; even though they are nerfs, they give Anet the ability to maneuver with changes to the class later.
I’m sure this isn’t the proper thread to discuss those things. Those kind of useful suggestions just lost in the “OMG Anet ruined the game” noise this thread started out as.
I’m not sure I follow this logic: make a class less desirable now, so it’s more desirable in the future? If that’s the goal, then they would couple those changes. As it stands, it just makes certain classes less desirable for an undefined period of time.
I agree the OP was hyperbolic, but I don’t think even the OP seriously argued that position. Just click-bait to start the thread.
There seems to be 2 low-hanging fruit already: necro and engie.
Necro dps is low compared to other dps classes. I would recommend reverting the lich form nerf.
Engie dps is complicated. That said, groups brought them before the slick shoes nerf because of its excellent cc. I would recommend reverting the slick shoes nerf, at least for pve.
There’s other problems with balance, but I believe these are easy fixes that would make these classes more desirable, even if they’re not optimal.
Having an entire class’ worth dependent on a single skill is a horrible idea. It puts that class in a position where it’s either amazing or total crap depending on the usefulness of the skill, it ruins the class’ flexibility, and it creates a situation where if that skill gets nerfed the class suddenly becomes terrible (i.e. what happened to necro and kindof rev).
Necromancer just needs more damage on its skills in general. Substantial damage buffs to 5-10 skills is probably the way to go.
Engineer has better DPS than other classes that actually get used. It’s is total crap because it needs all its utility slots to deal that damage and – despite being a “jack of all trades” class – is completely inflexible and unable to change skills or traits without losing a substantial amount of damage. I’ve written this elsewhere but I think best way to address these problems in pve is:
1.) In the explosives line, Glass Cannon (and maybe Shaped Charge) removed and replaced with something more specific to explosives
2.) Pistol autoattack bleed damage increased, rifle auto damage increased, hammer damage substantially increased.
3.) Alchemy line gains a trait which increases damage on allies affected by elixers.
These are fair points, but I don’t think the developers have the desire or the means for complete structural changes.
I view these as quick fixes that immediately give these classes more of a spot on the team.
I agree that more expansive changes are ideal. The resources for them seem lacking though.
Well, I guess the guy complaining about how hard it is to complete raids with the new changes is wrong then. If it’s not harder to complete raids, then there isn’t really a problem here. I’m glad we can agree that this thread is really unnecessary complaining.
I mean, if after all this, your response is “nothing changed” then my response is “then nothing to complain about”. Anet spent their time, put in some changes they wanted and if the result is zero sum effect on raids, then all this complaining is for nothing …
Now, I’m pretty sure you’re going to come back and change up your tune a little bit because certainly, anyone can see that this does affect the way people think about how they do raids and make the comps … YES? So perhaps glib answers aren’t so good if you are being honest about including yourself in a discussion?
Furthermore, as I’ve already illustrated, Inclusivity is not restricted by optimal comps because raids can be completed with non-optimal comps. So, no, that association is nonsense.
The point people have been making for 9 pages now is this:
Before changes: More classes are optimal, more comps (5-5, 4-4-2, 5-4-2, 7-2-1) are used without any big significant differences.
After changes: Less classes are optimal and if you use anything else aside from the 5-5 comp you see a significant change in performance.
Now whether you care about optimal or not is entirely your opnion and if you wanna believe it’s unnecessary complaining then so be it. But there’s no need to play ignorant. You know what changed and there’s no need to dismiss that.
I never argued what is optimal so don’t bother making that a point to argue with me.
You can all continue to argue that these changes screw with optimal builds/compositions, but that really ignores the fundamental concept that the raids aren’t designed and balanced around those optimal builds/compositions in the first place and therefore, that argument is entirely irrelevant.
I mean, the whole statement that if you don’t choose the optimal composition, your performance degrades goes without saying. The only real problem that anyone should be concerned about is when the number of compositions that are solutions to raids becomes dangerously low. That actually doesn’t happen in raids … not yet anyways.
The real problem you see is that players artificially lower the number of solution compositions, not Anet. This is a player perception issue and people are using class changes as scapegoats for their own perception of what works and not work.
Is there room to meet in the middle here?
Currently, all bosses are beatable with less than 10 players. Under your view, then, it would be acceptable for a class to have 50% effectiveness than another because the boss would still be beatable if you brought that sub-optimal class as the tenth player.
It seems wrong to just ignore inter-class balance just because the bosses are still beatable.
There seems to be 2 low-hanging fruit already: necro and engie.
Necro dps is low compared to other dps classes. I would recommend reverting the lich form nerf.
Engie dps is complicated. That said, groups brought them before the slick shoes nerf because of its excellent cc. I would recommend reverting the slick shoes nerf, at least for pve.
There’s other problems with balance, but I believe these are easy fixes that would make these classes more desirable, even if they’re not optimal.
The gap in performance between professions – ESPECIALLY in terms of pure dps output and boon sharing – is far too wide to be healthy for the game.
I don’t think the data supports your position. The gaps between dps classws are relatively small and the differences largely situational. The only issue is that the pug community always seeks a one size fits all solution so they just “learn” ele is best and don’t bother understanding when it isnt.
Fair enough, but if it is a perception issue, then it is one that we need to fix – and that is something that leading raiding guilds can help with by posting realistic raiding guides and builds for professions like scrappers, reapers, dps mesmers, guardians, etc – and by providing tips, spreadsheets and videos that show that these professions/playstyles do not drop the dps of the raid squad significantly when they replace the current go to professions (ele, warrior, daredevil).
Why should they do anything if they are going to be attacked by posts like this? You could also make these spreadsheets and guides.
Edit: And they post fast kills or low-squads or 10-class kills …
(edited by Absurdo.8309)
It will always be almost impossible for them to achieve any semblance of balance between the professions given the complexity of builds, the boon system and group composition factors in this game. The only way they could do it would involve watering down every profession to the point that they all feel the same to play – something none of us really want.
With their current raid model, it will always be about a handful of professions (currently Mesmer, warrior, ele, druid, sometimes necros), to the detriment of all others. It is just the nature of a limited raiding model.
It is a bad system – with no real solution – that only adds negativity to the game, while also turning almost every player who doesn’t want to be left out of raiding into carbon copies of builds they find online.
I’ll just note that pvp and wvw are like this too. And, unlike raids, they actually balance with an eye towards those game modes.
Yes, metas and preferred professions exist in both of those game modes as well.
The difference is that suboptimal meta builds in WvW don’t matter as much because that game mode is more about macro-strategy (where and when you take objectives and positioning to ensure a numeric advantage over the enemy when possible). In PvP, balance is still an issue, but Anet offset that by giving people a rewarding experience (literally and figurately) even if they fail or cannot move past the lower brackets. Neither of those things can be said of raids.
Err … you can say this about raids too. Sub-optimal builds and comps beat raid bosses all the time. I’ll give you that you don’t get much for failure though. (You don’t get anything for failure in wvw ether though).
Heck, some posters in this thread think this discussion is a non-issue because any composition can beat raids.
Personally though, I think anet can rethink raid balance, as, barring engineers, it was in a pretty good place pre-patch. And I think engis can be brought back in if they unnerf slick shoes.
It will always be almost impossible for them to achieve any semblance of balance between the professions given the complexity of builds, the boon system and group composition factors in this game. The only way they could do it would involve watering down every profession to the point that they all feel the same to play – something none of us really want.
With their current raid model, it will always be about a handful of professions (currently Mesmer, warrior, ele, druid, sometimes necros), to the detriment of all others. It is just the nature of a limited raiding model.
It is a bad system – with no real solution – that only adds negativity to the game, while also turning almost every player who doesn’t want to be left out of raiding into carbon copies of builds they find online.
I’ll just note that pvp and wvw are like this too. And, unlike raids, they actually balance with an eye towards those game modes.
You have suggested this several months ago. Saying this is a new conversation is disingenuous.
We’ve already “discussed” all the competing interests here:
1. A mode to tell the story
2. A mode to train
3. A mode as an alternative to get the rewards
4. A mode that offers easier content
Not all these interests align, but this has been discussed to death.
I’ll address the one new rationale in your post: class diversity:
1. Other game modes, like WvW and PvP, also have metas and class/build exclusion. You can’t “play how you want” and be successful.
2. You can play trash builds if you want in raids, but that doesn’t mean other players need to play with you. It’s fair for your teammates to ask you to contribute to success.
Plus, I’m unsure why trash builds need to work in raids? They work fine in the content it’s meant for.
Finally, I use the phrase trash builds, because several groups will take sub par but close to meta. Scepter guard is even one of the guard meta builds.
I’m not sure what you want to discuss — this has been discussed to death, and your posts don’t add anything new.
Honestly there are pages and pages of text, and I’m still not sure what the point is.
I think it’s “I want easier content. Only raids suffice.”
Nah, “I want the things these other people have without putting in the same amount of effort”.
No matter which way you push or pull the discussion they never budge on eventually getting the same skins as everyone else, up to and including legendary armor.
Yep, I guess I should demand that all those exclusive HOT map skins through raids, because I don’t like to grind dragon stand.
I have a great idea. I’ll propose easy-mode raids, when there are 3 threads on the topic.
I’ll attack anyone who criticizes my idea by calling them names.
I’ll also attack players who criticize my long text posts.
Yeah, sounds great. That’ll show em.
This is getting silly guys. I know it’s difficult to take the subject seriously but let’s at least pretend.
Honestly there are pages and pages of text, and I’m still not sure what the point is.
I think it’s “I want easier content. Only raids suffice.”
If the main complaint is “I want easier content,” then why don’t you pester anet for more open world or fractals? Seems odd (or disingenuous) that you focus on raids.
Thank you Absurdo for finding the quote.
It’s far more relevant and specific than just tinfoil ‘evidence’ with the faintest references to raiding and more strongly points to other issues.
Raiding as of right now is by far the most successful part of the expansion, the Music is probably the only other thing I can think of that has been a resounding success. The map alterations, HPs, Legendary Weapons, Story, all other things that have been changed or improved upon…they are more culpable in why HoT had issues.
Dismissing those issues and stating that Raiding is the sole cause is being insincere and foolish.
They gave people raids and don’t gave anyone anything else except some grindy maps. People want to play the game and they see…
1. Old fractals. For almost four years. With ONE new one, being a ragtag mix of old ones.
2. Old dungeons. With nerfed rewards just because.
3. Old pvp. Oh, no, actually less than old, because they removed soloQ, paid tournaments and almost whole hotjoin system. But hey, you cangrindplay seasons for a backpack.
4. Slightly updated WvW. Hey, 2 new maps over four years!
5. Open world maps. You can grind zerg events over and over again, yay!
6. Raids, great and shiny, with more exclusive items than pvp and wvw together. Oh, raids are slightly hard for you because small community and hard to start doing them without experience? Too bad, go to something previous.
So, only real new things to play are raids and open world grind maps. Both have serious problems if you don’t have a particular mindset, and judging by financial result, majority of players lack it.
And they are staying there, watching at “successful raids” and “new maps are here, why you are not happy” and all asking one question – “Where is my content, dude?”
So are you done blaming raids? Perhaps you should blame 1-5 on your list.
This thread has become a pointless back-and-forth:
- Pages of exposition only to say “I want easy mode”
- Dismissing arguments with “Nope”
- Asinine metaphors
It took me five minutes to remember the last constructive suggestion. I think it was a boss week/end where damage was increased by 10%, and perhaps the rewards were doubled.
There is no way they can make an easy mode to satisfy everyone, because everyone wants something different out of it.
Whether it’s rewards, training, lore, or just easier content to do.
Also, your difficulty ratings are hilarious. The easiest raids (escort, trio) are like dungeons. The medium tier (vg, gor, sab, sloth, kc) are like arah. The hard tier (matt, xera) are a bit harder.
And this is all relative, of course, because pug groups can and do beat all of these every week. Even those with no insight requirements. (I can attest to that, having been in with requirements and without).
And your metaphor is hilarious — I’ll have to refrain from responding because the urge to troll would be too great.
Edit: for posterity
Otherwise we would have had medieval battlefields littered with amputees because they’d been training since childhood using live steel, and modern soldiers dying in the thousands in basic training because it would be nothing but live fire exercises with opposing forces determined to kill them if at all possible.
(edited by Absurdo.8309)