Spvp and wvw builds effective and balance are way more importunate then raids pve.
Depends on your own usage pattern, don’t you think? To me, spvp and roaming balance importance is zero. If you want to claim they are objectively more important, you’d need to prove they are being played by more players. Which you can’t do, as this type of information isn’t publicly available. Hence the claim would be essentially empty.
If you do what I did and ask someone to open a completed instance then you can experience the story and cut scenes. In fact you get to experience potentially MORE of the story then if you went into a normal raid. People who play this game are typically impatient and ever since gw1 people have been ratty about people who don’t skip cutscenes so the idea of them letting you go off the optimal path to read the paper scraps is laughable. I’m not saying nobody would let you do it but it’s a much more relaxed environment to allow you to do it.
In terms of rewards there are actually some you can get. I got some green weapons and medallions and empyreal fragments. There’s also a vista and hot mastery point to grab you don’t get a yellow but it’s already more than enough reward in my opinion and it should be for you if you really want the story. Go to silver wastes and get 3 yellows in the same time instead.
All that’s missing really is the encounters but easy mode versions would just be a chore imo because they’ll probably just make them Tanky but no damage so you have to spend ages auto attacking with no threat of dying much like the world bosses. That might be fun for some people but there’s so much of that everywhere else. I can sympathise with people who actually do want the story as it’s pretty important closure stuff from a gw1 perspective but I feel you’re harming the case talking about rewards because it’s just bolstering the stereotype these people are quite rightly fighting against!
So much this. If story/lore is what you actually want, then just ask for a cleared instance.
There are bosses with low armor or short burn phases that make power more effective than condi for the fight. You just asked for bosses clearing conditions.
It was because somebody mentioned how many ways to deal with condi there are, I guess in an attempt to justify condi damage superiority. But aside from that, you probably only have a real edge with a power ele over a condi one at KC. Anywhere else the condi build is just so much simpler and reliable so you most likely will perform at least comparable to the sc/w or staff. Very likely on par. Likely better.
So essentially, one boss out of 13 will clear condis 4 times a week and another one will convert them if you mess the fight badly. Great incentive to go power, huh? Especially compare the ele condi and power builds. One of them is way easier to play, can supply your subsquad with might and fury and has higher damage. Guess which one is it.
I see literally zero reasons to support your demand.
Then do so. Just don’t claim that the “arguments” about the mechanics you brought up earlier are valid. Don’t also try to put words in my mouth and misappresent my position. If you find it so hard to argue against me that you need to present some caricature of my goals in order to argue against them, then maybe your arguments aren’t all that good at all.
I don’t find it hard, I find it pointless. Your position is pretty clear, and – in my opinion – pretty… should I say “spoiled”? It’s clear you won’t listen to any reasons which don’t support your own agenda, so why bother?
Well condi can be countered… hardcountered and softcountered, as opposed to DPS
Meta builds do not bring
- condi cleanses,
- resistance,
- trooper runes,
- generosity and purity sigils sigils
- condition duration removal food (sweet bean buns anyone?)
- condition duration removal runes (melandru? hoelbrak, antitoxin…. it was a thing in WvW?)
- plague signet and condition transference (necro’s?)
- light fields and blast, whirl and projectiles?
and- => CONDITION CLEANSE SKILLS <=
Too bad raid bosses do not use these much.
PvE will always be a priority in this game. Get this already – it’s a PvE game. WvW and PvP are there, but the game was primarily designed as PvE and the majority of its players are PvE. Therefore, PvE will always be a consideration when making balance changes, so long as we don’t have a full skill split. Which we probably never will. And get this as well – as far as PvE balance goes, raids are the only place where builds can actually be measured for efficiency. Of course the balancing will be based around their performance there. What do you expect, balance around Queensdale heart completions?
Let me repeat myself: you’re asking for content created with the intent to be challenging, to get dumbed down to the point of being doable by pressing “1” with a random nonsense comp. It would be quite a big effort to do so and the end result would be ultimately disappointing, as you’d be missing the whole point of it. So you’d still be complaining. I see literally zero reasons to support your demand.
…
I was going to address point by point, but… it’s really pointless. It seems you’ve never raided and you’re asking for changes based on some imaginary situations you’ve conjured up in your mind about the activity. 4N1D standard, cheesus…
Even if you are able to cheese some encounters like that, many others will kill you in different ways. You’ll run out of updrafts on Gorseval. You’ll get your platform destroyed on Sabetha. You’ll get drowned in condis on Sloth and you’ll just get killed on Matthias because no amount of tankiness is going to save you there. You’re just asking for a way to do challenging content by pressing “1”. I wonder why there isn’t one?
You’re welcome to try raiding “with any build”.
Not really, It takes maybe 2 or 3 tries for even really casual groups to grasp mechanics enough to survive the first phase. It’s the greens during the next phases that usually kill people. And notice, that with lower hp and no enrage the group might go with more tanky approach to more easily survive through that.
Dying to greens in the next phases is exactly failing mechanics. Or their interaction, to be precise. Lowering the HP of the boss wouldn’t help. And if anything, going tankier would simply counter it. There are ways to mitigate the constant damage pressure, but these aren’t newbie-friendly either.
But they often fail mechanics due to rushing or getting downed due to going full glass. Without the pressure of the enrage timer safer strategies might get used.
No, they get downed because they’re failing mechanics. There’s no reason to get downed anywhere, except making mistakes. Letting the seekers reach you is a mechanic failure. Not going to greens is a mechanic failure. Dying to retal at Gorse is a mechanic failure (you didn’t CC him fast enough). Being tanky doesn’t do anything of value in raids. The damage pressure is high enough so if you’re making mistakes you will get downed, no matter how tanky you are. It seems counter-intuitive, but full glass is actually the safest option for damage dealers. The tankier you are, the more time you’ll spend in the encounter, the more mistakes you’ll make. Simple. Now, if you have one, by all means take a minstrel chrono. But don’t sacrifice noticeable dps for being tanky. It’s pointless.
With the current powercreep you can steamroll while half asleep all over it. You just need to have one person who either was there before and/or read a guide somewhere.
I was talking about mechanics again. I’ve seen people fail mechanics on Aetherpath, fail them to the point they couldn’t do what we asked them to after explaining. Not everything in this game can be done by selecting a mob and pressing “1”.
People were saying ele is trash in WvW, and WvW does not equal roaming.
Come join us in PvE where we’re not nearly as obsessed with these things. It’s fun, I swear.
Actually, the complain started from pve.
That’s a weird way to spell WvW =P
No, really. My complaints are strictly PvE based.
you all asked for this
No I didn’t. Also I don’t mind condi being a viable alternative. I mind mindless builds being the top dps specs.
Considering that the majority of the GW2 experience for the majority of the population probably consists of pugging or at least filling in their parties with pugs (it is even a given thing in map completion and achievements with dynamic events and such), it actually gives some leeway to the argument “raids should not be in GW2”.
Nonsense. Just today we pugged PS warriors for our guild run. We had a terrible one and a pretty good one. Ended up kicking the former (sorry, had no clue about the fight and the fight was Matthias) and inviting the latter to the guild. The point being, raids are just like any other group content – they are a place where you interact with other players. Some will be bad, some will be good. Some you’ll want to forget, some you’d like to continue playing with. I’ve had the very same experiences in fractals.
I’ve always been Gandara. Again, I have zero interest in roaming. I like large-scale combats in WvW and that’s what I do.
It’s hard to answer objectively. Did the revamped Swamp or Nightmare appear harder when they was first released? Certainly. Are they harder in general when you learn the encounters? I’m not really sure. They are definitely much more rewarding to play, though. And I don’t mean the loot. These became one of my favorite fractals to play.
Kek… I lol’d. This has to be a troll.
Your damage will be abysmal anyway, so pick whatever suits your fancy. You’ll have a hard time finding raid groups to support though, unless you have a static which is willing to experiment.
Ppl just want their character to be in ther talk and kill the mobs and move on they dont care about challenge if they give them that well yes it will take some resources but it will free up their hard creatively alot for future raids and you will get rid of ppl crying so whats there to lose. Ppl want to exerience the story not the fight and they dont care how epic a story can be with difficulty.
I honestly don’t see that happening. First and foremost, I expect most people crying to keep crying, because they’ll get disappointed. FrostDraco is completely right – raids are only fun because they’re an actual challenge. This is how they got designed. Sure, there are some players genuinely interested in the lore and nothing beside the lore, but I’d be really surprised if they aren’t but the smallest minority.
So essentially throwing a lot effort (which could be used to create new content) in appeasing people who won’t be appeased by it seems like an exercise in futility. Furthermore, the follow-up complaints won’t be demanding a story mode, they’d be demanding ANet to stop any work on raids altogether. I’ve seen that happen.
Excellent advise given for the dredge fractal but also don’t forget they are immune to blind so save sandstorm and other blinds for other fractals.
*Were.
In a recent update the dredge in Underground fractal were stripped of their blindness immunity.
I have zero interest in solo roaming either. For me, the beauty of WvW is large-scale combat.
I think you’re underestimating the amount of toxicity that existed in the game. Sure, “elitist” is a new buzzword, but it’s just that – a buzzword. Players were elitists long before raids came. You want to run the dungeon with us? Sure, but only if you know the speed run tactics so we can make it 2 mins faster…. Or “2k AP, lol, kick”. Isn’t that elitism?
Right, Frozen Ground is pretty awesome as well. Been playing Scepter/Warhorn lately and I forgot how much I liked to use it, on Cliffside cultists for instance.
Earth Elemental is also useful, some groups hide behind it on Old Tom, the thing can eat tons of the projectiles before it dies.
Warhorn 4 in Earth is also useful against ranged enemies (especially harpies at Uncategorized). Just… don’t be afraid to use skills aside from your dps rotation when the situation calls for it.
While leveling, I’d recommend you to priorities stats in the order Power > Precision > Ferocity. For the weapons, try them out and see what’s most fun for you. Everything is going to work while leveling. In the endgame both Staff and Scepter (with Warhorn offhand) are used. Additionally, in the endgame you might want to consider going for condition damage build, though it’s mostly good in group content and I dislike the playstyle of the current condi meta build.
Don’t you know? They just want the HP cut in half and enrage timers completely removed lol.
I already said why this won’t work. The players who have a problem to wipe time and again in order to learn the mechanics for a fight will have the exact same problem.
Im not saying the damage-focused approach is bad. It is most likely necessary to maintain the illusion of difficulty for min-max players. Im saying that secondary difficulties (story mode) would open the experience to those players who aren’t as concerned with the mathematics of damage-focused design.
You’re probably right, except it would open a very different experience. My personal feeling is, it would be a disappointing experience. Raids are designed to be challenging, and I don’t think the story would have the same impact if they weren’t. It is true that “challenging” is subjective and depending on skill, but you can’t possibly make something equally challenging for everyone.
And it wouldn’t be trivial to do, it would require a full rebalance of every encounter at the very least.
Enrage timers are primarily a mercy mechanic. They can make the difference between success and a wipe, but it’s extremely rare. In general if you hit the enrage, you’re struggling a lot and you’ll most likely wipe anyway. They don’t really add any significant difficulty.
1. Spirit Raven. Too big, but Raven theme, come on. Also, dyeable.
2. Phoenix. Works super well for fire-themed characters.
If you bothered to read through the end of the post you might have seen the reason. Pressing skills off cooldown is no different than autoattacking. If you’re going to insist on your chimera about “reacting to situations” and “intelligent skill usage”, that’s no longer interesting for me. I explained why it doesn’t happen and why it can’t really happen in games. It’s up to you to accept it or not, but sticking to this PoV makes the debate pointless.
You’re still missing the point. It’s always going to be “mindless” by your definition. It doesn’t change the fact one is harder and less reliable. As such, it has to have an edge.
No, there’s no logical implication to that effect at all.
Or it will be useless.
You are missing the point. You assume it has to be useful. Me, i don’t see any inherent worth in supporting them at all. Quite the opposite.
If they become less useful? Well, maybe Anet will streamline them too.
Remember, that the current long rotations are not a result of some design policy, but just a byproduct of either bad class design (engi), or hatchet approach to balancing (ele). They are a mess that should have been fixed long ago, instead of being raised as an example to follow.
And you’re wrong. Pushing “1” has very limited potential for fun. In general, the more basic a game is, the faster you exhaust its potential to be fun for you. And nobody plays a game which is no longer fun, except pro players who get paid for it. So games should offer more complex gameplay if their creators want to keep the players in the game in question. Hence, said “byproducts” should be the example to follow. They are what’s fun about GW2 combat. They are what gives you an opportunity to have player skill progress. Sure, there’s learning encounters and mechanics, but the more, the better. Because the more skills you have to hone, the longer the game stays fun and the longer you keep playing it.
You’re still missing the point. It’s always going to be “mindless” by your definition. It doesn’t change the fact one is harder and less reliable. As such, it has to have an edge. Or it will be useless.
Boss fights are okay, but I am looking for a few tips for handling non-boss enemies.
1. Sandstorm (Glyph of Storms in Earth).
2. Dust storm (Warhorn 5 in Earth), if you use Warhorn obviously.
Yeah, the only useful builds should have at least 60 positions long rotations.[/sarcasm]
Except “optimal” isn’t the same as “useful”. Having a complex build deliver better result actually creates a choice rather than take it away. Having mindless “rotations” be the top dps options is the absolute worst thing for the game balance.
Maybe for you. Personally, i find the idea of maximizing dps by performing a complicated but set rotation, instead of having to react on the run to the situation, and using skills intelligently, to be the a far greater blight on the game system. It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated the rotation is – it’s equally mindless.
That’s inevitable and beside the point. Generic PvE has to be easy, so it can’t require you to “intelligently use” skills and react to situations. Not really. Endgame content can, but then it’s group content. And the thing about it is, you want to have player interactions. Which pretty much means you’ll have all the intelligent usage and all the reacting offloaded to a few players while others will be focusing solely on dps. It’s just the efficient thing to do. You can’t really avoid it if you want to have any meaningful interaction, and without meaningful interaction what’s the point of group content?
So there will never be the question “to have or not to have a dps rotation”. You’ll have, that’s for sure. The only question is “should a harder one perform better when executed well than a simple one”. And the answer is, yes, it should. Because otherwise there’s no reason to play the harder one. It is more unreliable, more prone to mistakes which makes it lose more in real game scenarios. Which in turn makes it perform even worse. Penalizing players for doing something hard cannot possibly be a good idea. You should be stimulating them to do it, to get better and reward them accordingly.
What is unfair about that is that many PvE players that are casual, role players, and play for the lore/content they will never be able to experience the lore/content in raids because they will never be at the play skill level required.
That specific argument seems pretty moot. There’s a lot of lore/story in explorable dungeons. I highly doubt said players will make it through Arah or TA Aetherblade either. And these have been around for years.
Not true. Arah and TA are both cakewalks compared to any raid area. I’m a raider and I like dungeons. Some of my guildmates are those people that will never be at the level to handle raids. On both Arah and TA I have grouped up with these people and we mostly breeze through. Even the hardest dungeon content is easy compared to raids.
Some of these people have also tried to raid with my group and they just don’t have the skill level to contribute to the group and no amount of healing is able to keep them alive. Many would probably be capable players, but they have lives and families that don’t allow them to spend large amounts of time in game.
Most of them, however, are players from the start of GW1 and love the story, history, and lore of the game. And my previous comments are due to my knowledge that these people are disappointed in not having any access to that lore.
I think you underestimate your guild mates here. Pretty much any player can handle raids, if they are willing to spend the time required to learn the encounters. It’s a steep entry, I agree. But it’s not an impenetrable barrier. I’d argue it was pretty much the same with dungeons, albeit on a (slightly) different scale.
Sure, many players would have troubles taking roles with more responsibility. But for the most part they don’t have to. There are encounters where you can be tasked with something important regardless (Matthias, Sloth, etc.) but there are others where you can simply dps. Surely someone who can deal with the oozes in Aetherblade can handle few White Mantles and a warg at Escort. It’s a long journey, but it begins with just tagging along and doing your best.
What is unfair about that is that many PvE players that are casual, role players, and play for the lore/content they will never be able to experience the lore/content in raids because they will never be at the play skill level required.
That specific argument seems pretty moot. There’s a lot of lore/story in explorable dungeons. I highly doubt said players will make it through Arah or TA Aetherblade either. And these have been around for years.
Yeah, the only useful builds should have at least 60 positions long rotations.[/sarcasm]
Except “optimal” isn’t the same as “useful”. Having a complex build deliver better result actually creates a choice rather than take it away. Having mindless “rotations” be the top dps options is the absolute worst thing for the game balance.
Your logic isn’t sound in this. Take VG for example. 20mil health. Drop that to 10mil and remove the enraged timer. What balance needs to be checked there. They aren’t removing anything from the fight mechanics wise. They have done it for open world bosses.
Second, the encounters are the same, no change in mechanics. So how are they different encounters. Please explain that to me. The only thing that changes the encounter is there is no timer.
And people would still find it difficult. VG doesn’t kill you with HP or enrage, it kills you because you fail mechanics. Sure, lower HP would make the fight quicker, but you’ll wipe time and again in the first 1 min due to mechanics just like now. So if you’re going to learn the mechanics anyway, why don’t you just do it on the normal mode?
By the way, the above is true for each and every boss in the game. Enrage wipes are extremely rare and when they happen, they happen because people died early. Due to failing mechanics.
Build Templates.
Failing to do that, at least sigil swap in legendary weapons.
The reason it was created (challenge) would still exist parallel to the story mode, so no one would be deprived of anything (again, I think they could actually make it harder with the story mode addressing accessibility).
The argument about developer resources is worth discussion, but, again, I think it probably isn’t as great an issue as people think. I believe they could probably develop this concept with little to no more effort than they put into the challenge motes used in wing 4. It would be a better use of the time (most people didnt like the inclusion of challenge motes anyway) and address the issue elegantly.
1. You’re missing the point.
2. You’ve already started doing it. Unlike a story mode, challenge motes serve a purpose.
Yes, a story mode is definitely needed.
I definitely doubt it would change anything. Some people complain about HoT open world being too hard. And the whole point of raids is to offer challenging content. Suppose you dumb them down to Queensdale levels. What’s the point of playing this? To see a story? There’s youtube, you know. It wouldn’t take time and effort from the developers. Time and effort they could have been using for creating new content instead of depriving existing content of the very reason it was created in the first place. And when these same players play through the story and get disappointed – because they’ll be missing the whole point of raiding – they’ll simply complain about devs “wasting time” on this content at all. Sorry, but I just can’t seem to find any positive for this idea.
People can say that players will discriminate or behave badly toward other players no matter what. But there is a difference between that and giving those players an approved tool with which to discriminate.
The game was already full of “approved tools”. AP count, mastery level , visible profession and weapons, I’ve seen all this be used to discriminate. I haven’t seen a dps meter being used to discriminate more. For every case when I’ve seen someone ask another player “why is your dps X”, I’ve had another case seeing a player ask another “why are you playing Y”. So no, there’s no difference.
And this tool wouldn’t be perceived as necessary if Anet hadn’t added raids to GW2. Since we have raids, Anet feels it is necessary to allow this tool, so unfortunately we’re just going to have to live with it. I wish that Anet hadn’t added raids at all.
General baseless hate about raids. Why am I so not surprised?
The main problem with the raids in GW2 is the fact, that they require a group of ten highly equipped players with very good skills. Some guilds do have Teams like that, many not.
You’re wrong here. Gear is helpful but not necessary. All the better gear does for you is leave more room for mistakes. It helps for a smoother experience, especially while learning. But it is not required. All that’s required is for the players to be familiar with the encounters and their mechanics. And guess what, there’s only one way to do that – play raids.
True, many guilds do not have teams who raid. But here’s something you can do about that – step up and organize one. From my experience people are generally curious about this content and willing to give it a shot. Of course, not every guild would still have enough players who would be interested or have the time to do it. It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. But then, you can join 5 guilds at a time.
Condi Tempest. Camp on fire, spam everything. D/F, GoEP, Arcane Brilliance, Feel the Burn or Sigil of Fire, Fiery Greatsword.
This excites me tell me more
It’s a boring, easy build that’s a shame to the profession as it doesn’t even use its mechanic. It should be nerfed to the ground, along with any other brain-dead build with no real skill rotation.
So with the last patch they buffed condition ele to be the top spec in terms of dps, but my question is, did this replace the power ele builds in raids and fractals?
In fractals, I’d say power is still better. All the power builds have better burst and their CC capabilities exist, unlike the ones of the condi build.
For raids… On certain bosses power is probably still a better pick. On other condi will be clearly ahead and it’s much easier to play.
It’s fine. I still remember my first kill, it felt pretty intensive and rewarding. It doesn’t matter that it’s actually easy. It fits the fight, the whole “shrinking arena” stuff and whatnot.
Like I said, power builds in general rely on more conditional modifiers and this adds another layer of difficulty. With SWS pretty much gone this is less expressed now, but still exists. Scholar bonus, for instance. And, in general, condi has seen buffs across the board in the recent patches, while power has generally been nerfed. I’m speaking about meta/near meta builds here. Yeah, shatter mesmers got buffed, but it doesn’t really change anything in PvE.
It’s not like it’s very different comparing the potential of these power builds with a condi ranger for instance. And it’s not like the ranger build is much harder to play than the arcane burn ele.
I always play staff on Xera to clear shards, but I end up having abysmal dps because of it. As a rule of thumb, if it’s large/huge AND it doesn’t move a lot, you’re good to take staff. Otherwise, better pick a different weapon/build.