Guild Wars 2

Dahkeus.8243:

NikeEU.7690:

maddoctor.2738:

Obtena.7952:

No, they should not balance around the best comp for lots of reasons, including for the very reason this thread is complaining about; lack of diversity.

I was wondering, on which comp do they balance the game?

That’s easy. Take the boss HP, divide by seconds in enrage timer, divide by 10. That should give you an idea of what sort of comp the devs consider baseline.

Technically, sure, but that DPS value doesn’t really make sense considering boss mechanics that completely stop DPS:

VG – Split phases
Gorseval – Add phases and World Eater means you either need to have significantly above enrage DPS or need to factor in DPS stops on glide phases
Sabetha – Secondary bosses and loss of a DPS person to take out cannons.
Sloth – Break phases and loss of DPS character for slub
Bandit Trio – Time between bosses appearing
Matthias – Sacrifices
Escort – Escorting, lol
KC – This fight is really just a set of burst phases made available if you get the mechanics right.
Xera – kittening mini games, lol

In other words, there’s no boss fight where this math really plays out.

However, this does show that mechanics make a major impact on success, which is why the whole meta vs non-meta dichotomy is kittening stupid.

A group that nails mechanics perfectly will easily down a boss with terrible builds or great builds with terrible DPS rotations.

A group that plays perfect builds with perfect rotations will still wipe if they don’t pull off mechanics.

The point is that number is really really low. So even with invulns phases the number is still really low.

MashMash.1645:

NikeEU.7690:

Wow who would have thought a guild in an mmo would disband because different members had different priorities? This is surely the first time this has ever happened.

Oh hey, its the guy who got his guild kicked from raid testing.

Please bless us with your wisdom senpai. Also, any more leaks?

And yet my guild is still here and better than ever while we are discussing your dead guild. Evidently I know a quite a few things you don’t.

maddoctor.2738:

Obtena.7952:

No, they should not balance around the best comp for lots of reasons, including for the very reason this thread is complaining about; lack of diversity.

I was wondering, on which comp do they balance the game?

That’s easy. Take the boss HP, divide by seconds in enrage timer, divide by 10. That should give you an idea of what sort of comp the devs consider baseline.

Wow who would have thought a guild in an mmo would disband because different members had different priorities? This is surely the first time this has ever happened.

No one is capable of 50k dps in an actual raid. Please show me a video of a raid boss kill with someone getting 50k dps.

If I’m reading these comments right, you guys want ele nerfed to be easier to play so there is less gap between a good ele and a bad one, right?

What a shame if his 300 viewers didn’t buy the game and anet went bankrupt as a result.

I wasn’t referring to the indirect dps contributed by support classes. I was speaking specifically to the “dps classes.”

I don’t think anyone would disagree with you that necro is in huge need of a buff.

[Quote]

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.[/quote]

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.

Torolan.5816:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I don’t know, I don’t think it’s unusual for the game to settle a bit after HoT, but seeing as how the biggest drop-offs came when raids were added, and this drop-off leveled out a bit after LSs3 was added, I think that at the very least the claims that the raids were good for the game are well exaggerated.

Not correct. The drop happened in Q2 2016. This was after the initial two quarters of increased revenue likely due to sales of HoT. Some of those HoT sales were to players who wanted to raid. In fact, anyone who wanted to raid had to buy HoT.

The fact is that HoT in general did not appeal to as broad a group of players as ANet might have liked. The expressed reasons included: linked core/no discount for vets; timers on meta events; HoT mob difficulty; verticality/difficult-to-navigate maps; perceived grind; no free character slot; and not enough content for the price. In all of that dissatisfaction, there were few if any statements that someone wasn’t buying HoT because it introduced a raid.

Then there was the lengthy content drought. Some people want to blame that on raids, but that’s ludicrous. A small fraction of the live team worked on the raid full time. A similar number of devs were moved to LS production from LW 2.0 production in March, and their inclusion did not advance the timetable for LS3 at all. Much more likely was that the effort needed to revamp HoT to address some of the complaints was to blame for the drought.

Your confirmation bias is showing again.

Although what you say is largely true (especially HoT being light on content, a plattformer and rushed out of the door), the part where you write that raids were only met with hoorays and cannon salut is certainly not. Numerous people wrote in several hotly contested topics back then that they fled from other games to escape raids and will leave again. Wvw and PvP both tanked significantly after HoT too, as did revenue in general.

You are also right when you say that you can´t attribute the drop of revenue on raids only for the reasons you stated. But I am curious how you explain how visibly(I don´t know what happened behind the curtain of Anet of course) designing largely around content for a minority of players and only threw some morsels for all the other game modes except another minority content, ESport PvP, can lead to a growing player base? I am seriously curious about that.
Please refrain from using the many people raid approach, even the large number you can assume from Anet saying raids did well makes them not a majority of players.

The complaint at launch and beyond for gw2 in the greater mmo community was that it had no real end game.

I am 100% sure that pre launch anet figured pve end game would be wvw. You’d go do dungeons and stuff to gear your character and then go into serious wvw. but that’s not how it worked out for a variety of reasons not the least of which is that dungeons weren’t as challenging as they thought they would be.

Simply put gw2 needed challenging instanced pve content. Call it raids or whatever or make it new hard mode dungeons or fractals whatever. It could have been done 1000 different ways. But it was a real need.

You might think it’s trivial but when someone with no gw2 experience asKS me “does it have a legit pve end game” I can happily answer that yes it does. UNLIKE most posters I have an anet partnership affiliate link so I can see how many free to play accounts and hot box sales I get through my account and I can assure you that raids have definitely helped sell the game.

if you want to look for causes of falling revenue look no further than the steady erosion of the middle tier pvp community and the death of WvW. Earlier in the games life the’s were huge masses of players,especially in wvw and they are gone for good. RAIDS had nothing to do with wvw losing 80% of its population.

cranos.5913:

I see a lot of people ask for a nerf to PS. While I’m all for creating options and I don’t think there should be just one master class at stacking might I sincerely doubt it’s going to solve anything.

“A single class should not be able to stack 25 might.”

Well think about it, how else are we going to get that might? Do this and the meta next balance patch will be 2 PS 2 Druid 2 Chrono 2 DPS and 2 Rev. Note that in this meta there’s even less diversity and more class discrimination since you’ll be required to take revs as the secondary might stackers.

You’re absolutely correct but you see most people don’t have the capability to see what the result of things like that.

Most people thought soi nerf = chrono dead. WRONG it made chrono twice as popular. People who don’t understand how things work just don’t get it.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

Zerk Power Druid swapping between NM and MS based on encounter, weapons too
Power PS
Chrono running appropriate encounter builds
2 Eles swapping weapons and builds based on encounter

This except I would argue that condi ps is almost always better in practice than power. Also I would advocate replacing an ele with a hammer guard for certain fractals like mai where hammer let’s you control her movement so you rip stacks faster and ultimately get a faster kill.

Burning arrows should be moved to Arms major tier and two of the Fury based traits should be merged to make room. The missing tactics trait could be made up by some support option relating to warhorn, shouts or banners.

You can do whatever you want in the open world. In raids or even fractals carrying banners with you is rarely an issue.

Rednik.3809:

TexZero.7910:

It’s actually why a one difficulty mode works. It makes balancing infinitely easier as there’s not 256k variables to work through to point to as the source of the problem.

But that’s neither here nor there, and you really should stop pushing the easy mode agenda.

Saying that balance must be done around one fragment of one game mode with only small minority of overall players playing it – is very funny indeed.
How about being sane developers and doing other way around?

If the devs balanced around what the majority of players did ice bow and fiery great sword would be in their prenerf states and bear bow ranger, rifle warrior and staff guardian would have been repeatedly nerfed.

So you can see why your guideline is a very poor position for the developers to base their design around, right?

Dinosaurs.8674:

which makes it relatively unimportant whether you play well or not

This is very true. Part of the problem is playing warrior well is extremely hard, and without a DPS meter its largely undetectable. Using a memory reader you can see a Power PS who is really good pull 18k DPS at Sabetha. A bad warrior may only pull 15k, but without the meter you’d never know. The first 15k dps for warrior is easy, the last 5k is actually challenging, especially in a real raid scenario.

We need a legit DPS meter.

To be fair Crystal Reid said raids were designed with enough room for skilled players to do impressive things the devs never planned for.

I was referring to effective writing not proper spelling and grammar. you could either take what I wrote as constructive criticism and grow, or you can get defensive and attack me. THE choice was yours and you picked the immature option. it’s always a sad day when an opportunity for personal growth is wasted through prideful thinking.

Don’t blame people for not reading when you are overly verbose. part of being an effective writer is being succinct and purposeful. IF you work on developing those skills your next post won’t be ignored or ridiculed.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

I’ve done a lot of dungeons and fractals when can I get my raid rewards?

I don’t know, I never said that you can get it from doing “PvE”. So, I’m still waiting your answer, I really want my ESL reward.

You misunderstood my request. I want a tournament with easier competition that gives the same reward as tournaments with pro level competition.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Raid rewards are gated behind raids. ESL pvp rewards are gated behind pvp. Even you can understand the comparison.

I did a lot of duels and unranked matches which are pvp. Where I can get my ESL pvp reward?

I’ve done a lot of dungeons and fractals when can I get my raid rewards?

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Why are pvp esl rewards gated behind challenging tournaments? I don’t like competitive pvp but I would like the opportunity to have $100,000 prize. Please introduce a pvp tournament format tuned to my skill level and support it with full prizes. ANYTHING else is an abandonment of your community and original manifesto.

So raid rewards are gated behind tournaments? Oh, nvm, you just trying to troll with meaningless post, I get it.

Raid rewards are gated behind raids. ESL pvp rewards are gated behind pvp. Even you can understand the comparison.

Fluffy.1932:

I was thinking about this in terms of a warrior filling a dps role in a dungeon/fractal/raid group. It would never be better than other classes at dps, but how good could it get? This means that I’m assuming there are other people there to give you buffs, so I was assuming 100% quickness uptime from the resident chrono.

Full dps condi berserker gets 27k dps on small hit box wuth realistic raid buffs and 29k wit full buffs. 30.5k vs large hit box with full buffs.

This is likely as good as it gets for warrior unless anet buffs heavily.

Why are pvp esl rewards gated behind challenging tournaments? I don’t like competitive pvp but I would like the opportunity to have $100,000 prize. Please introduce a pvp tournament format tuned to my skill level and support it with full prizes. ANYTHING else is an abandonment of your community and original manifesto.

There are very very few random deaths in raids. When we are first learning the fight people would die all the time and say “oh that was bad rng”or some other excuse. AS we mastered the fight those random deaths disappeared. Did anet tweak the rng or nerf the mechanics? No, we just learned the fight better and learned how to compensate for the difficulties.

Saying that people are randomly dying and you don’t understand why is part of the process of raid progression. OVERCOMING it and learning is the fun part.

Raids aren’t actually that polarizing. THERE are just 3 or 4 malcontents on this forum who enjoy making long posts about non-topics.

Neither I nor anyone else who read your post thought you were trolling especially considering your post history where you brag about not knowing other mechanics.

When I say trash build I don’t mean the difference between rev and guardian. I don’t mean thief vs ele. I mean meta ele build vs Shamans venom share thief healer.

And there are bad players on good builds. Bad players on bad builds. THERE is almost never good players on bad builds who aren’t intentionally trolling

The bomb didn’t appear below you. You walked into a red circle. It’s fairly uniform across every mmo that red circles are not to be stood in. Would suggest that you fractal and dungeon more then once you’ve gotten the bad aoe circle mechance down you will be significantly more useful to your squad and will not need to be carried.

Shadowstep.6049:

NikeEU.7690:

Astralporing.1957:

Aldath.1275:

The fractals, dungeons and raids can all be clared by any team comp with knowledge of the scenario and boss mechanics. Period.

Nope. Dungeons and fractals? Yeah, possibly, even likely, depending on the skill of the group. Raids? Nope. Not on all bosses anyway. There are some minimum requirements there that not all group comps would fulfill.

Is that an objectively bad thing? there is optimal, there is suboptimal-but-viable, there is reasonable and there is unreasonable. Is it too high a bar to ask people to run at least reasonable builds?

I don’t think so. I think the base line of have a healer, enough cc and meager dps needed to beat enrage isn’t a very constrciting paragdigm. That’s all it takes to qualify as reasonable. If that is too restricting for you I’d suggest that raids just aren’t for you the same way ESL pvp isn’t for me.

People run viable builds but nobody wants them because everyone and their mother just blindly follows elitists guides that most can’t even execute properly.

Makes sense to me. If you can’t run a good build properly why should I expect you’ll do any bether running a trash build? I’LL take my chances with bad player on good build vs bad player on bad build.

Astralporing.1957:

Aldath.1275:

The fractals, dungeons and raids can all be clared by any team comp with knowledge of the scenario and boss mechanics. Period.

Nope. Dungeons and fractals? Yeah, possibly, even likely, depending on the skill of the group. Raids? Nope. Not on all bosses anyway. There are some minimum requirements there that not all group comps would fulfill.

Is that an objectively bad thing? there is optimal, there is suboptimal-but-viable, there is reasonable and there is unreasonable. Is it too high a bar to ask people to run at least reasonable builds?

I don’t think so. I think the base line of have a healer, enough cc and meager dps needed to beat enrage isn’t a very constrciting paragdigm. That’s all it takes to qualify as reasonable. If that is too restricting for you I’d suggest that raids just aren’t for you the same way ESL pvp isn’t for me.

Back in my days PSAs actually provided a public service.

Shovel Face.4512:

The raid community is still as ignorant as ever.

I think you are projecting your own ignorance a bit if you think Ele is preferred to Thief for DPS considerations.

It’s great in raids with proper support. It’s especially strong in fotm still.

Brazil speculates about banner nerf on teatime and someone runs to the forums to post about the “inevitable” nerf. Lol

fishball.7204:

NikeEU.7690:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Really all we need is for [qT] to make a Reddit thread that outright says what most of us know that Heralds are still perfectly valuable as one of the DPS options due to offensive support, great CC, and good-enough DPS. Once that happens, people will get in line, but for now all pubs really have to go on is Reddit overreaction.

You can take it from me, Revs are still quite good in raids

I trust this guy from qT more than you

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/58unld/revenant_and_raids_as_of_halloween_patch/d93l6n5/

We tested rev as a dps class in a full clear (3 wings) and it’s damage was terrible tbh. It’s on PS Warrior level without beeing half as useful. We really tried to find a spot for rev but unfortunately it’s in a very bad spot right now.

There is hyperbole in that quote. Rev is virtually indistinguishable from hammer guard in terms of team comp result.

Edit: read the replies. Particlar pretty much shows the hyperbole to be hyperbole. As I’ve said in multiple places, dealing in percentages is irrelevant when discussing nominal amounts.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Really all we need is for [qT] to make a Reddit thread that outright says what most of us know that Heralds are still perfectly valuable as one of the DPS options due to offensive support, great CC, and good-enough DPS. Once that happens, people will get in line, but for now all pubs really have to go on is Reddit overreaction.

You can take it from me, Revs are still quite good in raids

AndyS.5630:

NikeEU.7690:

OK I’ll explain how the theorycraft works. Most everyone uses berserker stats and has the same might and crit chance. So the only difference in how ap adds dps on are % modifiers and coefficients per second. So clearly ap will benefit a power ele more than a condi necro. But for a group of 6 berserker characters it will interact more or less the same for each within a range.

I’d work it differently. 150 Ferocity is 10% crit damage. Considering that everyone is so close to 100% crit chance and Berserker’s gear brings critical damage to around 220% the buff is around 10/220 or around 4.5%.

Rather than focus on percentages I think it’s far more productive to deal with nominal dps. I am sure there will be reliable benchmarks for all meta builds that will demonstrate the exact value of AP for every class.

Acording to dekeyz spreadsheet a staff ele with normal raid buffs and no alacrity gains about 1100 from AP. With alacrity its right on about 1500.

I think the flaw of talking in percentages is we need to measure the nominal gap between rev and ele and see if AP closes it. I think it’s extremely likely based on estimates and in game testing that it does and the other rev buffs are icing on the cake.

cranos.5913:

NikeEU.7690:

maybe idk, think I’d rather go for a d/wh ele.

Dwh ele makes like 28k dps small hit box.

Rev makes 26k dps small hit box.

Rev solves any Might, Fury or Protection issues your team has due to buffing the condi ps and making like 4 might of its own. It let’s your mesmers use scholar runes or run dps food. It buffs each member of the group by about 1.5k dps. 26k + 6k = 32k.

Yes yes, no one in my guild likes rev mate. I’m not hating that much on it. Not rly convinced on that 1.5k tho. Sounds a bit like nemesis math when you take the same amount for each member.

If you don’t like rev guardian is also helpful with might generation and prot.

OK I’ll explain how the theorycraft works. Most everyone uses berserker stats and has the same might and crit chance. So the only difference in how ap adds dps on are % modifiers and coefficients per second. So clearly ap will benefit a power ele more than a condi necro. But for a group of 6 berserker characters it will interact more or less the same for each within a range.

That said it’s easy to test for yourself. Assassin’s presence alcan be toggled on or off at your leisure.

[Quote]

maybe idk, think I’d rather go for a d/wh ele.[/quote]

Dwh ele makes like 28k dps small hit box.

Rev makes 26k dps small hit box.

Rev solves any Might, Fury or Protection issues your team has due to buffing the condi ps and making like 4 might of its own. It let’s your mesmers use scholar runes or run dps food. It buffs each member of the group by about 1.5k dps. 26k + 6k = 32k.

I wouldn’t consider what is an obvious bug to be worth basing decisions like that on

Jerus.4350:

NikeEU.7690:

We tested 5 man sub squad dps.

On large hit box 2 ele as dps was the winner by so far no other option makes sense.

In small hitbox double ele and 1 ele 1 guard and 1 ele 1 rev were roughly equal with the rev perhaps being slightly ahead due to more consistent buff uptime.

The worst was 1 ele 1 thief which was noticeably worse than any of the others which was surprising. My guess is because thief doesn’t help with might or fury. It would be worth trying rev plus thief and no ele on a small hit box but we didn’t think of it.

Did ya’ll try Condi Ranger/Engi? And was that Guard Hammer? Think it’s worth noting the 2 Ele means all your DPS are nice and squishy and you don’t have perma protection (druids can provide good but not complete coverage) where with the Rev or Guard you’d have complete coverage.

Seems to me that there is still a fair amount of options, just instead of Rev having a ‘guaranteed’ slot you now have 2 mesmers. And, well, no thieves :/

Condi ranger in a dps role is intriguing because the ability to take sun spirit frees a slot on your healers bar to bring stone spirit for better buff coverage. That’s a pretty big selling point to me. Also better fury uptime due to two tigers per squad group.

Fay.2357:

NikeEU.7690:

We tested 5 man sub squad dps.

On large hit box 2 ele as dps was the winner by so far no other option makes sense.

In small hitbox double ele and 1 ele 1 guard and 1 ele 1 rev were roughly equal with the rev perhaps being slightly ahead due to more consistent buff uptime.

The worst was 1 ele 1 thief which was noticeably worse than any of the others which was surprising. My guess is because thief doesn’t help with might or fury. It would be worth trying rev plus thief and no ele on a small hit box but we didn’t think of it.

Seems to me like it’s simplest to just use double ele then. With a bit of build swapping between encounters it’s either best dps or within margin of error of best. That way you don’t have to muck about with swapping characters or whatever to avoid losing dps on big hitboxes.

For pug groups ele-rev might be more reliable just because you never know if the other people have any idea how to play their classes, so that helps with boon upkeep.

Ele-thief will be low because of the alacrity dps loss for thief. If they just made initiative regen affected by chill and alacrity, this would be easily fixed.

One additional thought, I recall Venomshare condie thief being at least potentially competitive in dps with other builds a few months back. Since venom cooldowns do benefit from alacrity, did you test out that build?

Double ele is probably a good all round option but you limit your access to Protection and quality cc and possibly Fury.

I think guardian in 1 of your 4 dps slots is very reasonable due to dps that scales vs big hit boxes and has buff support and protection.

I think rev is similarly useful but perhaps less so vs big hit boxes. Rev also allows his groups mesmer to run scholar instead of leadership which is nice.

Both guard and rev have very good cc help with might help with fury and guardian even has quickness assistance at the start of the fight.

We tested 5 man sub squad dps.

On large hit box 2 ele as dps was the winner by so far no other option makes sense.

In small hitbox double ele and 1 ele 1 guard and 1 ele 1 rev were roughly equal with the rev perhaps being slightly ahead due to more consistent buff uptime.

The worst was 1 ele 1 thief which was noticeably worse than any of the others which was surprising. My guess is because thief doesn’t help with might or fury. It would be worth trying rev plus thief and no ele on a small hit box but we didn’t think of it.

It’s not a knock against qT at all btw, it’s a knock against people who see “rev 26k ele 31k” and assume that means ele is better without considering all implications. I don’t think qT would endorse people using their numbers to jump to conclusion prematurely

Did some of you even watch the video? Hammer dh is dead? What build did you see Marcel using in that fast xera kill? Hammer dh.

Rev is dead? Can you do arithmatic? Look at ele small hit box dps. Subtract 1.5k for losing assassin’s presence. Look at rev small hit box dps. Add 6k dps for assassin’s presence on 4 other party members. Tell me with a straight face that a second ele beats a rev vs small hitbox.

Typical overreactions by people who need to be spoon fed by qT.

SlyDevil.3952:

Rising Dusk.2408:

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Zerk druid with riceballs and druid runes? Toss in a couple pieces of zealots or a staff if needed.

The nerf to CA healing coefficients is likely to be a lot worse than requiring a small band aid to cover up. The question will be, can your group keep up Scholar bonus with kitten berserker heals, or will you benefit more from Magi.

Let’s pretend I’m forming a raid pug. I put up an LFG. People join. Their personal skill could range from 1-10 with the average being 5, ofcourse. I cannot control that. It’s impossible to pre-screen for skill. This is a variable outside of my control as a raid leader.

So what variables CAN I control? Basically only builds and tactics. Certain tactics only work with certain builds and vice versa. If I can ensure that our tactics are 10/10 and our builds are 10/10, we can live with 5/10 player skill and be successful.

If I didn’t screen for builds it would be leaving one easily controllable variable to chance. What kind of raid leader would I be to do that? The kind that wastes peoples’ time and wastes my own time and achieve no results.

No, I am sorry to tell you that unless you are the organizer of the raid you have no say in the matter other than opting out of the group if you refuse to be a team player. Hopefully now you understand why people want set builds: they are seeking to reduce as much variance as they can in a pug in order to maximize their chances of success. Allowing all 10 players to play whatever they want and however they want is the least successful strategy that a raid leader could pursue.

Blaeys.3102:

Now that the “challenging content” is here, it is time to logically expand on that content to create a system that encourages advancement, fits with the other storytelling tools in the game and opens new experiences for players with multiple playstyles and interests.

It already does all of those things. Guess we can close the thread now since the existing raid satisfies your requirements.

They said in the Fractal CDI thread ages ago that they dont have the resources to dedicate to an armor for fractals. Seeing that legendary armor is taking almost 2 years of development to come out, I would have to assume thats true.