Guild Wars 2

For anyone that wants to know. The initial attack on Illusionary Duelist is like a .2 power coefficient. I don’t know if the Torch change is good enough to make it worthwhile, but I doubt it.

Is anyone actually worried about mesmer being outclassed by Ventari Revenant?

Quickness might not be unique, but it’s still very, very rare.

The only other real source of group quickness is the Guardian’s Feel My Wrath, which is a 5 target limit without enough duration to even maintain it on 5 people unless you’re running 2 guardians who all have high boon duration. At worst it just means we’ll go back to Chronomancer + Revenant instead of 2 Chronomancers, and that’s only if the time warp change and well of action changes are enough to make it possible for 1 chronomancer to maintain it.

Fay.2357:

Cynz.9437:

MrTJpwnz.4710:

I have seen one lfg requiring bdgm, imo if you want to see other ppl’s dps just get arc instead of bdgm. But it is their group, their requirements so if you don’t like it then don’t join

Yeah until everyone and their mother requires them, just like with LI. Make own group? Yeah, i did. Guess what? People have been complaining that LI requirement i put were too low and nobody wanted to join because of it. The moment i put them higher, the group filled.
Same will happen with dps meters. Anet should have never allow them in game. It adds nothing but toxicity to raiding.

If you can pull your own weight in dps, then there’s harm to getting a dps meter. The people fighting the most against them are the ones that would get kicked if people knew how badly they were playing.

Or people that have had a boss fail due to people waiting until the last possible moment to disengage from a boss that really doesn’t even have a very punishing timer, to deal with a mechanic that has the potential to wipe the entire party if it’s not done, and then misjudging how long it’ll take them and end up forcing a recovery that either kills people, or at the very least slows everyone down even more than if they had been willing to er on the side of caution.

It’s mainly an issue on Vale Guardian green circles, but you can see the attitude in other cases too, I think it’s just more pronounced on Vale Guardian because as the very first encounter chronologically, it attracts more new people.

SorionHex.1327:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t often agree with you, but I do agree with this one. The story is fractured enough seeing as no new players can play Season 1 at all. They boiled down the entire year and a half into a three minute video.

I’d like to play this stuff too, but I don’t want to raid to do it.

And for those of you who say going into an empty raid instance (which is problematical anyway) is the same thing, I can assure you it’s not.

Nor is watching a video on youtube.

I disagree that it’s as relevant to the lore as you claim. Saul’s current state actually has very little bearing in the grand scheme of things in regards to Living Story (The game’s main big story), and so in GW2, I can agree that this is yet another side story. We can’t just have kittenty awful stories in Raids. They might have maybe been able to do a new Fractal for it, rather than a Raid wing but eh.

Pretty much every MMO ties in their main story with Raiding content, I think the only problem is there’s no highly casual equivalent to Raids like WoW has LFR level raiding.

The simple fix for this is a highly unrewarding but easy/fair to complete Raid level for casuals who just want to get through the story (again like LFR in WoW.)

tl;dr: It’s not only fine for it to be in Raids, but it’s also the best place for it. The fix here is to add an LFR level raid instance for people who want to see the story and get small rewards (no Magnemite shards, or at most a super small amount for a successful completion for the week). Probably bosses at half HP and some reduced mechanics, also more merciful timing on mechanics.

Really, the reduced mechanics thing is the main issue. Most people are able to deal enough damage to deal with most bosses (which is also why I haven’t bothered with getting a DPS meter). The real issue that makes raids irritating is people not dealing well with mechanics that require relying on other people that all too often aren’t able to do it.

For instance, an LFR Slothsazor:
- Transformed Slubbling is invulnerable.
- No cooldown on transformations per person
- Poison applies to every person, but it will only damage the person that it’s associated with, and once you get a person that was downed by it back up, the poison corresponding to them fades.
- When mushrooms in his location re-spawn, regardless of fixation, Slothsasor moves to the nearest unpoisoned spot.

So people see the mechanics without everyone needing to have mastered them. It would be effective for teaching raids too, since the mechanics are still there, but they’re mostly personal rather than group wide. Essentially going from “One person screwing up can kill you all”, to “One person can carry everyone.”.

Because chronomancer damage isn’t high enough to justify not having them tank.

I’m expecting a PvE damage increase considering that mesmer damage is either mediocre damage while also being completely conditional (ramp up time and single target only) with a super boring playstyle (Condition pistol phantasms) that prevents you from doing much to support without cutting your damage significantly, or just overall terrible (Condition shatter/any power build)/

Jubilant.7280:

Eponet.4829:

The one to Rule.2593:

As Somone else who also trains people in raids, I don’t expect people to know the fight right off the bat, but I do expect them to bring the right tools for the job and not waste everyone’s time, this includes meta builds and exotic gear. If you won’t show willingness to adapt to benefit everyone, I don’t want to train you

Sorry, I salvaged my exotic gear when I made ascended versions, and I am /not/ grinding another set of leadership runes because you want exotics. Seriously, what was ANet thinking when they decided that the Dragon’s Stand runes should have the same cost as the ones from the other HoT areas despite Crystalline Ore being ridiculously less common than the other currencies.

Also, I seriously feel that you overestimate how important meta builds are. If you’ve PUG raided as much as I have, you might have noticed that most problems are from bad in combat decisions (Prioritising damaging the boss over getting to the green circles on Vale Guardian, Not throwing bombs on Sabetha, pulling transformed slublings into AoE on Slothsasor, etc.), and not from having a bad build.

Heck, the first time that I killed Sabetha, we had one DPS die to the very first flame wall and still killed her with plenty of platform health remaining.

This is an MMO RPG game. All MMO RPG involves a certain amount of grinding. Anet has already optimized the game to be more Casual friendly with the elimination of quests, experience loss upon death and even provide free repair for your gear so dying is less punishing. Leadership runes are one of the most grindy runes and admittedly I don’t run with them. However, I have played Chronomancer and have learned a lot from other raiders so I can augment here and there, like having full Commander’s armor for high dps check bosses (Gorseval, SAB, Xera, KC, Statue) and where the boss is more mechanical, I have a Minstrel armor set. Both of these sets have Runes of Durability for added toughness. So there are always variations if you don’t want to farm for the meta builds, but you will have to ask experienced raiders what type of gear do they run. Currently, I’m farming a new armor set to copy meta battle (cause I swapped back and forth using insignias) to have a 3rd armor set to maximize dps output even further without losing boon duration which means I will need Runes of Leadership. Overall, I understand DH might be boring at times, but I remind myself that this is an MMO RPG, a grindy game and those that have the best gear grinded a ton.

I feel that you missed the point. Why would I bother grinding a second set of leadership runes so that I can run exotics (which was the requirement), when my ascended gear is strictly better (Other than the backpack which is exotic so that I can use Doubloons).

Insisting on exotics is a completely ridiculous requirement.

The one to Rule.2593:

As Somone else who also trains people in raids, I don’t expect people to know the fight right off the bat, but I do expect them to bring the right tools for the job and not waste everyone’s time, this includes meta builds and exotic gear. If you won’t show willingness to adapt to benefit everyone, I don’t want to train you

Sorry, I salvaged my exotic gear when I made ascended versions, and I am /not/ grinding another set of leadership runes because you want exotics. Seriously, what was ANet thinking when they decided that the Dragon’s Stand runes should have the same cost as the ones from the other HoT areas despite Crystalline Ore being ridiculously less common than the other currencies.

Also, I seriously feel that you overestimate how important meta builds are. If you’ve PUG raided as much as I have, you might have noticed that most problems are from bad in combat decisions (Prioritising damaging the boss over getting to the green circles on Vale Guardian, Not throwing bombs on Sabetha, pulling transformed slublings into AoE on Slothsasor, etc.), and not from having a bad build.

Heck, the first time that I killed Sabetha, we had one DPS die to the very first flame wall and still killed her with plenty of platform health remaining.

Zenith.7301:

and male norns are depicted as simpletons.

Correction: Young male norn are depicted as simpletons. The elders seem to show more wisdom.

I’ve been using a mix of Berserker and Commander gear to hit around 66-68% boon duration with fried golden dumplings and no utilities (Because Bountiful Sharpening Stones are expensive) (Leadership Runes and Sigil of Concentration) and haven’t had much cause to use anything else other than sometime switching knight rings on and off.

Even in WvW it hasn’t been terrible since the added might and quickness duration are surprisingly relevant.

Let’s not forget Estelle’s Minute+ long unavoidable, unstunbreakable stun.

People would have a field day if mesmers got /that/.

The big issue with marauders is that the class that would benefit the most from it (elementalists) are one of the few for which it is a significant damage loss due to their traits pushing their crit chance over 100% with high precision gear.

It’s reasonable for thieves, but only if you’re able to consistently stay at high hp in order so that the bonus crit damage when above 90%hp trait is better than the bonus crit chance. If you do use the bonus crit chance, marauder’s becomes a problem again.

It’s not a noticable damage loss for the other classes, but already have the base hp (or in the guardian’s case virtues/protection/armour) that it shouldn’t be particularly scary.

Mypinkbunny.4513:

though you can just ask in the raid lobby for someone with a cleared wing 4, and look at the lore that way. i understand people wanting an easier raid but as a disabled gamer i still clear raids each week. i think if you put the effort in to learn and get better raids get very easy

I don’t think you grasp what raids are. Your contributions are insignificant given the fact that they’re designed for 10 people.

The first time I finished Sabetha, I just did typical chronomancer things and occasionally threw bombs at the people on the jump platforms while having no idea at all what the mid fight bosses did, and we had one person that died to the first flame wall (so basically it was 8 experienced players and one buff bot that just did basic things)

The first time I completed the escort it was with 5 people that I had just completed Spirit Vale with that hadn’t left afterwards. I had no idea what was going on, and they basically completed it with the five of them.

The first time I completed the Keep Construct I just gave people buffs and occasionally stood on a spot of light (and eventually noticed the orange/white buffs and started picking the right orbs up) while mechanics happened that I had no idea about because I hadn’t expected to do it, and thus hadn’t actually looked it up. (I’m guessing that the group that I did my first escort with apparently didn’t feel like looking for another chronomancer).

For most people, yes, the raids are easy for any particular person, but that’s not the issue for most. The fact that you’re disabled and managed to complete them doesn’t mean that just by getting better you can do them.

The most important thing about raids isn’t how good you are, but the people that you’re with. A cat could beat the raids if the others are competent, but not even the best player ever could do them solo.

The constant implication that the people that don’t beat the raids are unable to do so because they’re bad at the game is not only wrong, but also incredibly insulting.

Nilkemia.8507:

- Kasmeer is nowhere to be found. Save for a few mentions of her earlier in Season 3, we haven’t seen her at all since near the end of the HoT story, with no explanation as to where she’s been or what she’s been doing since then. The past few parts could be excused for this, but not in a story focused back in Divinity’s Reach. Aside from a letter from E mentioning her, nothing…I can’t see her just hiding out while Jennah and Anise and Logan and many others are putting their lives on the line for their home…which makes me worry that the story writers forgot her, or have something bad/contrived in mind.

My friend suggested that Kasmeer might be Queen Jennah while the real Queen Jennah’s kept in a safe place.

I suggested to him that she made some errors in acquiring her elite specialisation and got lost in time.

I actually picked the wrong one because I figured that those kinds of codes aren’t meant to keep stupid people out, but are to keep everyone without the code out, so it would make the most sense that the “correct” answer would be something that makes no sense at all.

Not that I’m saying that bugged mechanics should stay that way, but in the mean time if you want to kill it, having 2 mesmers switch to domination/inspiration for blurred signets and inspiring distortion if they’re not already using them should compensate for the circles spawning in electrical floors.

I’d suggest a marauder amulet if you want to get a bit more survibability on a power build and guardians already have pretty good self healing, is almost competitive with berserker damage wise, and also given that you get 3 for free from the HoT story achievements.

Vitality is probably the most important stat for survivability since an open world build is going to be more than capable of healing up damage, so their only real issue will be dying to burst damage before they can, which is possible due to their low base HP.

It’s worth noting that vitality is not a percentage increase to base hp, but a flat increase. As such, it’s even more important to low base hp classes than it is to high base hp ones. (12,000 → 17,000 is a much higher percentage increase than 17,000 → 21,000)

It works the other way around as well, with toughness being less valuable for heavy armour classes than it is for light armour ones.

I really liked it.

Logan really surprised me. I hated him during the personal story, but he actually came across as likable in this chapter. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed that he didn’t join DW, but I totally understand his position.

I was also a tiny bit disappointed that Canach didn’t want to join since I really liked him, but it’s fine, I imagine that he’ll be around, you don’t need to be part of the same group to be friends.

I didn’t really have much feeling toward Demmi. I actually didn’t even remember who she was, but apparently she’s an Order of Whispers character, so that’s understandable given that I went with the Priory. I imagine that for the people that did play through it they had much more of an attachment.

My only 3 real complaints were:

- Unbreakable unavoidable stun prior to Estelle’s encounter during the first part. It’s… pretty aggravating to end up in CC lasting more than a few seconds that can’t be avoided or stun broken.

- The room in the last encounter is too small for the GW2 camera. Fighting with the game itself rather than the enemies inside it is less than enjoyable.

- If it’s going to keep being referenced in the story, then the whole Xera ritual investigation thing needs to be covered in an instance that doesn’t force you to cooperate with other people, because most other people end up ruining the story with constant out of character chatter.

I was never even introduced to Canach and I still like him, though I do feel that perhaps part of that was the fact that we weren’t expected to be great friends with him at the beginning of season 2 like Braham, Rox, Marjory, Taimi and Kasmeer.

The broken continuity was still pretty jarring, but it felt a lot more natural than the other recurring season 1 characters.

One other character that I found to be great this episode was Logan. He came across as much more likable. I actually really disliked him in the personal story, but something seems to have changed with this one, and I’m not even entirely sure what it was.

Also, did I see a spoiler that feedback will be buffed to reflect siege weapons? That would be great.

Sublimatio.6981:

Eponet.4829:

The difficulty isn’t in the gameplay, but in the fact that you need to rely on other people to do it, and thus spend way more time actually trying to make and maintain a group than you do actually playing the game.

thank you Captain Obvious. welcome to group content

You’re the one that implied that people could get through it by just playing better.

Soloed it with my usual open world power/illusion/chronomancer (Was using a fried golden dumpling though) shatter build. Sword/Shield – Greatsword, Berserker/Commander mix for 100% boon duration when Sigil of Concentration is active.

It wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was definitely a horribly designed encounter purely due to the camera. I really have to wonder if it was actually playtested, the walls/roof are just way too close and make moving it quite jerky.

It’s hard to get engrossed when you’re constantly fighting with the camera.

Sublimatio.6981:

if you want to experience raid story, learn to play and do it. dont get bitter, just get better.

No one has managed to get through the raids by just getting better. Encounters are literally impossible to complete without needing other people to do things for you.

The encounters aren’t incredibly difficult, if they were soloable and had NPCs that did the job of other players, pretty much every role would be incredibly easy content.

The difficulty isn’t in the gameplay, but in the fact that you need to rely on other people to do it, and thus spend way more time actually trying to make and maintain a group than you do actually playing the game.

Fluffy.1932:

Eponet.4829:

Wouldn’t it be better to use a sigil of concentration instead of paralysation on the mace?

Condition PS warriors can’t maintain might as well as greatsword warriors do, so I would imagine that when using M/Shield, the might stacks drop a bit.

Generally with 10 people you’re not going to be running into massive break bar issues, so wouldn’t the extra might duration from a sigil of concentration be better?

You would be getting 33% extra boon duration exactly when you are less able to stack might. The drop in might comes from the stacks from your gs wearing off while you are not able to reapply them quickly. Having might stacks from your mace last longer doesn’t affect how often you can apply those stacks. The point the concentration sigil would become useful is when the might stacks you applied while under the effects of the sigil start to end, however this is the same time that you would be swapping back to gs and spiking over the cap anyway. Thus you don’t get much from the concentration sigil.

I agree that you shouldn’t hit break issues with 10 people, which is why I put a force sigil in my mace. You get a bit extra damage for those few autoattacks.

Fair point. What about a Sigil of Battle then?

The 2 stacks from it would last until weapon swapping back to the greatsword becomes available again, and then for a few seconds after while you ramp back up.

NikeEU.7690:

There is no such role in gw2 raids as a person who waits around to give stability at key moments.

It’s not exactly stability, but I love it when I find a second chronomancer at Vale Guardian and we just give the group distortion so that everyone else can ignore the green circles and all go melee.

Then, even if one of us misses distortion due to a lag spike or the like, we still have 5 people to recover, whereas the biggest issue with PUG raiding on that boss is that even when you put 5 people on chasing it, you’ll almost always end up with 2 people not getting to it in time.

Anyways, Chronomancer is probably the closest to a pure support class. They provide some excellent buffs, can share buffs, and when traited into inspiration can “block” attacks for up to 5 people through a minor trait that applies a second of distortion onto allies when they grant it to themselves.

and yes, ignore NikeEU. He’s currently right, but generally a troll. He actually managed to get his guild kicked out of raid testing because of it.

Wouldn’t it be better to use a sigil of concentration instead of paralysation on the mace?

Condition PS warriors can’t maintain might as well as greatsword warriors do, so I would imagine that when using M/Shield, the might stacks drop a bit.

Generally with 10 people you’re not going to be running into massive break bar issues, so wouldn’t the extra might duration from a sigil of concentration be better?

Marjory clearly overreacted, but I can see the merit in what she’s doing.

Braham… seems completely unreasonable, though I do blame the PC for not mentioning the fact that even the elders of the tribe say that the story of the tooth is just there to keep the most reckless people from charging off against Jormag.

One weapon that can scratch Jormag in the entirity of the army is… not a great plan. It would make much more sense to see if elementalists could potentially study the enchantment and reproduce it, or at least create something of similar or greater effect.

ANet doesn’t want you to be forced to pick a particular race because of their racial skills, hence why they’re generally bad. However, Revenant is unique, in that they already have skills that they don’t want to use because of the energy costs on some of them.

As such, if Revenants had racial skills, they would be at major risk of having their power be influenced significantly by their race.

During Living Story 2, Rytlock borrowed a crown in order to use it in his attempt at a ritual to purge the ghosts from Ascalon with the promise to return it afterwards as it’s an object of significance for the humans.

Since then, the topic of it has never even come up. By this point, shouldn’t we have asked about it? If he lost it in the mists, or wants to hold onto it a bit longer since he plans to try the ritual again, he would just need to say so. As it is, he comes across as a jerk.

I’d bet that whenever the new expansion comes out, it’ll come with HoT. So, you could just wait until then.

Blaeys.3102:

Ten player instances do not necessarily equal challenging content. In fact, a single player encounter can be made just as, or more, difficult in most cases (as proof, look at pretty much any hard single player game).

and this is why raids being the most difficult content is a horrible policy to sit on, because it absolutely cripples solo/small group difficulty.

The raid encounters aren’t difficult, they’re actually incredibly simple. The only reason that they’re looked on as being so are

1) Tedium in forming a group for it since it requires so many people
2) The fact that there are so many other people that you can’t control who could make a mess of things

If we cap single player difficulty to content that can’t[ be too difficult because of all the uncontrollable potential fail states (mandatory other players), then we’ll never get anything interesting.

baliwsirg.4396:

Quite a late reply for a thread:

I would like to suggest that we get at least one instance in LS3 to knock some sense into Braham. If Marjory goes rogue because of Lazarus, we should get a chance to knock some sense into both Kasmeer and Marjory.

This sounds like a great setup to add more dungeons, given that the story modes for most of the original ones were based around reuniting Destiny’s Edge. We could have the same for Dragon’s Watch.

We’ve had hardly any additions since release, with just 1 path to Twilight Arbor, and 3 dungeons that 1) absolutely require a group, ruining the solo experience, and 2) Only have 1 path.

Vukorep.3081:

they dont make them clumsy

Other than the fact that they apply confusion (damaging themself when they try to do something), torment (hurting themself when they try to walk), cripple (can’t walk effectively), and weakness (50% fumble chance)

or cry from pain and frustration

You must be new if you don’t think that people haven’t cried from frustration over mesmers, thieves in particular, which is amusing given that at the time that I kept up with PvP, they were a mesmer counter.

HanSolo.9458:

Greetings!

Im currently leveling a thief, going with d/p with shortbow. Is it good for wvw and pve events? I appreciate any nice builds Im struggling between necro tho, but i heard theyre not in that good shape. Thanky for the replies in advance

I’m pretty sure that D/P thief will be good for WvW. They can achieve permanent stealth while inflicting respectable condition damage without revealing themselves.

For PvE, D/D outclasses it. Enemies don’t dodge the same way that players do, so you can reliably hit your cloak and dagger.

Eleazar.9478:

I undertsand why, GS is a mainly a defesnive wepaon with good burst damage, cides that evade frame is pretty long and can be proced twice, either way GS on ranger is not ment to be good for sustained damage sword is supposed to take that niche

The only problem that I have with it is that greatsword is the one with the “rush in” gap closing attack, which seems at odds with it being a defensive weapon. Meanwhile the sword’s main movement skill is a gap maker unless you jump through a hoop every time that you use it.

It’s a bit weird.

Does anyone know how much damage that heralds are capable of causing?

The only recent figures that I was able to find were there
http://www.qtfy.enjin.com/dps

However, looking into the build that the linked to, in the rotation video they were maintaining facet of nature, and using facet of darkness when in Glint despite the fact that the facet doesn’t actually do any damage.

Since current support teams no longer need the boon duration and fury. Does anyone have any figures from a herald that didn’t use those and instead used the energy on using more sword 2s, or potentially even dropped glint entirely in favour of a Jalis/Malyx set?

Clownmug.8357:

What reason does a power build have for spamming shatters? The healing from Restorative Illusions is gone when Continuum Shift ends, so the only benefit would be condition clearing.

Spamming only benefits condi because every shatter is dealing damage. Power only has Mind Wrack doing most of the damage, Cry of Frustration is just a little bit extra, and the others are mostly defensive.

Why should power shatter suffer when it’s the condi builds that are unbalanced?

Slight correction, the daze one is also useful offensively in PvP/Solo PvE when traiting in domination since regardless of whether or not it dazes, it still applies 5 stacks of vulnerability which then makes follow up attacks hit harder. Using it prior to a greatsword+mind wrack burst used to pretty standard for mesmers before chronomancer caused condition mesmer to outclass the power build.

For solo PvE, I’ve been running domination/illusions/chronomancer traited for quickness, might, alacrity and vulnerability from shatters, and in the case of enemies that don’t survive long enough to justify focusing on phantasms (pretty much everything other than bosses) have had much better results than I did with phantasm builds.

Since time warp isn’t necessary to provide permanent quickness anymore, would it be worthwhile to use a racial elite skill like Mistfire Wolf, Sylvan Wolf, or Hounds of Balthazar on bosses that don’t require significant amounts of CC for extra damage?

Fay.2357:

OriOri.8724:

Windwalker.7421:

Not sure about AA, but I never understood why #2 got a huge damage buff in PvE and nothing for PvP. I can’t recall anyone ever thinking BF did too much damage for the fact that it roots you in place to do it, and it takes quite a while and 8 hits to apply. We all know that Retaliation has a bad habit of out damaging (or close) BFs own damage.

It doesn’t have to be 100 Blades with a 2.5s Blur, that’s not what I mean, but it sure could use a solid boost in damage IMO. It should also hit 5 targets, what is up with the 3 target limit? Seems outdated and unnecessary to me. This would help Power builds a tiny bit.

However, I agree that I’d much rather see boosts to more underused weapons, which MH Sword simply is not. (And mainly for it’s pretty significant defense.)

It wasn’t buffed in PvP because mesmers are already too OP in PvP /s

There really wasn’t a good reason to not buff it in PvP as well

Blurred frenzy is a 2.5s evade that simultaneously deals damage roughly equivalent to autoattacking and is on a fairly short and traitable cooldown.

That’s quite a lot of stuff it does. What exactly do you have as justification for it doing more damage? HB is slower and has no defense. Pistol whip has an activation time where it can be interrupted, and unrelenting assault deals drastically lower damage to multiple targets. Why should blurred frenzy deal more damage than it already does?

Because mesmer/chronomancer damage is abysmal compared to every other prof in the game. I’m not saying that blurred frenzy in particular should deal more damage, but something is off when the maximum personal damage build that gives up almost all supportive aspects is in practically the same spot as Phalanx Strength warriors damage wise.

As long a chronomancer boons are so demanded and chronomancer damage is absolutely abysmal, pretty much any other tank is going to live in their shadow.

Yes, monsters can crit.

Fun fact, the thrown rocks by the enemies in Bloodstone Fen will only knock you down when they crit. If you have stone heart active and are in earth attunement, they can’t interrupt your gliding.

I’m not convinced that a new weapon would be a good solution to mesmer’s damage issues. Attempting to fix it via weapon skills would just make everything else completely worthless.

I’d rather that they just add in significantly better damage multiplying traits. A lot of the major complaints that people have about mesmer damage (high ramp up time, horrible AoE) would be fixed if the shatter focused playstyle’s numbers were buffed to the point where it’s actually playable.

Blaeys.3102:

(continued from above)

Broken storylines
Another big issue with the current raiding model is the inevitable fragmentation of the storyline – and disenfranchising of lore/story focused players. I know a lot of raiders disagree, but – for me – the first raid was the introduction of the story in Season Three – and definitely our primary encounter with the new antagonists.

There are a lot of people who love this game primarily for the story experience. Making it difficult to experience that story inevitably leads to disenfranchised players.

And, even worse, I do not see it getting better in the future. I really don’t know how they can use the current raid model to tell part of the Tyrian story without excluding many people who actually enjoy the story. I realize some devs tried to justify it by saying “you can go into a cleared instance,” or by adding the story as text descriptions to an NPC, but both of these ignore a simple truth – we do not want to be told the story, we want to experience the story (we are playing a video game, not reading a book or watching a movie).

Watering down non-raid content
This one is a little more subtle, but is still an issue. By calling raids “challenging” it seems as if they are giving themselves permission to forgo adding any challenge to the rest of the open world game. Even the so called open world raid bosses – the unbound guardian and sloth in Ember Bay – are jokes. The sloth especially is a pale shadow of its raid counterpart – with ZERO mechanics other than a timer (in the form of the slublings it eats). It just moves in a circle and takes damage. To say that they are giving players a taste of raiding in that fight is beyond insulting. The same is true of the lackluster fights in the living story steps they have given us so far (the latest was just a zerg of mobs similar to most open world events).

Just as bad – and probably one of the absolute worst things that came from raiding – is that Arenanet has completely abandoned other PVE group content above 5 players. A recent thread on Reddit showed us that there are zero plans for new guild missions in the foreseeable future. Given the popularity of missions when they first came out (much more than raids, imo), that is unforgivable.

These two are my main issues.

HoT brought us basically no challenging single player content at all. The original dungeons and Living World Season 1/2 achievements kind of filled that role, while remaining inclusive due to the ability to bring in other people to help if you really needed it.

Since Heart of Thorns, pretty much nothing at all has been added. We’ve had no new dungeons, barely any fractals, break bars that for a lot of classes can be near impossible to break solo where originally you could work them down to 1 stack of defiance and then save your last CC to interrupt a high impact attack (Mainly colossus rumblus, since Grast was kind of inconsistent), and the new Living Story achievements have been a complete joke.

Warcry.1596:

I’m fine with it being raid only. Those that want it, can work for it. Those that don’t want it, like me. Don’t have to. The raid is boring and uneventful for me =/
I personally have more enjoyment out of content where one’s equipment didn’t determine pass/fail

You seem to have the wrong idea about what raids are. It’s not a case of working for it, it’s a case of whether you know the right people that determines pass/fail.

No matter how good you are, at least around about 80% of it is who you know. Forget doable in greens, they’re doable while dead if you end up with the right people, and flat out impossible with the wrong ones or on your own.

zoomborg.9462:

From what i’ve seen so far, even though it definitely is complicated it comes with some perks like not actually pulling the boss around during last phase but stacking on it and healing through active areas. It makes concentrating on distorting greens easier and lowers the risk of separated players not getting the distortion share, the aoe is actually pretty small if im not mistaken. Saffice to say, it’s not worth trying unless the dps is optimal since the overall risk is higher.

As someone that has to PUG the raid, it’s so much easier to find a chronomancer that can handle it than it is to find four people to get to the circle in time. Now we just need to get distortion share up to 10 people and Vale Guardian at least will be tolerable.

Blackmoon.6837:

Anyone with half a brain knows to bring a stun break and pop before Sword 3 is used

What?

Sword 3 is an immobilise, and even if stun breaks worked on it, you’d want to pop it after, not before.

Chris McSwag.4683:

Mesmer in general(and chrono in particular) have unsurpassed team utility, but i really miss a viable dps spec for it. It doesnt need to be top dps in the game, but it would be nice to be able to some damage without having to spam mantras.

PS Warriors do more damage and provide equivalent support.

Druids do more damage, provide better support, and are one of the best burst healers in the game.

I’d like to see a off hand that doesn’t make phantasms, and instead has attacks that shatter illusions and deals enough damage to actually justify using it over phantasms.

Ramoth.5162:

Personally, I never hated doing the hearts. They were part of the map completion process. This resetting makes it more difficult for map completion and reminds me way too much of the rep farming in WoW. Forced into it there just to get my flight form in the new lands. Now, it feels as if I am doing that stuff again. Wasn’t my cup of tea in WoW and won’t be here.

Well, it’s not as if they have anything exclusive gated behind completing them however many numbers of times.

You can map complete everything else and then move to the hearts last, and the only thing that you can buy that’s limited per day are the petrified wood, which you can gather from the logging nodes.

I hated rep grinding too, and I’d probably hate the hearts if they were the only source of petrified wood too, but they’re just options. I’ll probably just ignore them most of the time, do they when I feel like it and still get enough wood for an ascended trinket eventually.

Dragon.8762:

Is there any MMO out right now with a solo friendly raid mode? I mean think about it. It’s supposed to be completed with a group of people not one or two players. Otherwise it’s not even a raid.

Besides that, there isn’t that much story in the raids. Most of it is just reading notes. You can pretty much get a full recap of the raids from squad leader Bennett in the bloodstone fen map. He not only voice acts the story of the raids, but he also shows a cinematic about them.

Well, you can solo around 85% of WoW’s raids with ease. I wouldn’t be surprised if specific builds with good play have the potential to push it to around 95%. Wait until the next expansion and the power creep naturally makes the old ones soloable.

There are a few mechanics that can’t be completed by everyone (e.g. The green dragon in ICC that you need to heal to full, so… non-healers would be out of luck). In these rare cases, Blizzard goes out of their way to alter the encounter so that they are possible to complete solo.

There’s also LFR for people that don’t want to schedule their life around a consistent group, or spend hours on LFG. It’s not solo per say, but you don’t have to deal with the typical raid player, and you’re probably okay to just turn off chat and try to figure it out yourself instead of getting spoilers.

OnizukaBR.8537:

So if no drops just want to see the story? Just join a cleared instance the story is all on notes on the map, there 0 story in the fight, so why you still didnt join a cleared instance if thats all you want?

Notes about what happened in the past are a terrible form of storytelling. The story was meant to be experienced in real time. An empty instance doesn’t accomplish that.