Guild Wars 2

Yes you can get “Up to the Challenge” before you complete your meta. That happened to me because my Aegis blocked me from getting “Another Goo Puddle” and I was too lazy to get it again right away.

It’s 4. They’re on the minimap.

It’s 5 AP.

One thing that I’d like changed is how often pets get knocked back and interrupted by Ensolyss. I don’t like how my Frost Spirit gets pushed around so much that I have to just destroy it and resummon it eventually.

I noticed that the bombs in the Hallucination Maze targeted defeated players which felt strange.

I think the health on the boss in Tier 4 might be a tad high. It might be because of how the transitions on this boss go though. Currently we fight 33% of the boss’ health in the first phase, 33% in the second, 18% in the third and 15% in the fourth. I think it might feel better if it was 30%/30%/25%/15%.

The achievement is hidden until you complete it.

Login Rewards were introduced December 16th. Notice anything about this? (Graph) (Select “All”)

Doesn’t take much deduction to figure out what the problem is…

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, but like when they release the final raid of that expansion set, whatever that may be, there are places you can go to gear up that would allow you to reasonably tackle that raid, having skipped all the previous raids of that expansion? Like there would be quests or farming locations that would drop gear comparable to what you’d get by clearing the second-to-last raid?

The short answer is yes. The end of an expansion is when you have the most options for gear. I hesitate to comment on Legion since it’s not the end yet. However, one thing Legion does offer that’s new though is that they have a difficult dungeon mode (Mythic) which has its highest level drops loot on par with the current tier of raids. Blizzard has done other things like this in the past, such as Timeless Isle or having dungeons drop powerful gear. (Icecrown dungeons)

Ohoni.6057:

So you’re telling me that when a new WoW expansion comes out, you can go somewhere to get geared up well enough to jump right into the most challenging raid of that expansion, without having to do any of the other raids from that expansion first? That’s interesting.

At the start of an expansion, Blizzard has been staggering the release of their content. Here’s an example of the release schedule for the launch of Legion: (Link) (Some terminology: “Mythic” is hard mode; “Raid Finder” is the fail-proof easy mode; “Heroic” is normal mode; “Mythic Keystones” are basically Fractal Difficulty Scales)

They intend raids to remain the most difficult content, so self-nerfing mechanisms like gear progression will not happen. Raids will always be at the mercy of any balance changes though.

I’m also really puzzled by your WoW comments… There have been so many ways to obtain gear and catch up, even at the start of expansions… I’m guessing you’re going off of very outdated information though.

Ohoni.6057:

“Raid-grinding”? What does that even mean?

Once you reach endgame in WoW, it becomes all about grinding one raid so that you can grind the next, and so on until you run out and they put out a new expansion. That is not GW2, Gw2 is escape from that treadmill, and it always should be. If GW2 is to incorporate raids, they should be TRULY optional, not just “you don’t have to do them, but you’ll miss out on things,” but true “you don’t have to do them at all, because anything you can see in the raid, you can find elsewhere.”

The only people who should EVER be running raids are people who can enjoy raiding.

Uh… No. You can enter any new raid tier without having done the previous ones, because WoW has tons of catch-up mechanics. Gear does only one thing: It self-nerfs content in a positive way, making content easier every week for people as you succeed.

Ohoni.6057:

But WoW is a raid-grinding game. GW2 neither needs nor wants to be a raid-grinding game.

“Raid-grinding”? What does that even mean?

If you go back to Crystal Reid’s first response to this thread, it answers all of the posts that followed for five pages.

Ohoni.6057:

You can pug raids.

Oh! You’ve solved this entire problem then! Apparently raids are easily puggable, and everyone who says otherwise is wrong somehow.

They were your words, not mine.

Ohoni.6057:

I fully believe that EVERY element of GW2 needs to be designed fully around the concept of “can I pug it?” and if it fails that test, it should be reworked. Other games might thrive on tightly wound guild structures, but Guild Wars 2 is not other games, and a lot of us seem to like it that way.

You can pug raids.

I like the Swampland revamp as well. You should check out Cliffside because that was reworked a bit as well.

The new instabilities are cool to me because they actually do something. There’s a lot of criticism for them, but I’m curious if people can even remember the names the Instabilities they replaced.

Lethargic and Boon Thieves were boring and added next to nothing to the Fractal they were in; the same goes for the old Social Awkwardness. Really curious to hear the defense of these old Instabilities other than, “They did nothing, that’s why I liked them.”

If Swampland is too hard, why not do it at a lower scale?

Some tips I have for the fight:

• When you fight Bloomhunger, make sure you are fighting in the green circles because they give you a +100% Endurance buff.
• The champion Oakhearts are stunned for 10s when they are interrupted.
• The leap (knockdown) + stomp is the most common way to die on this fight. Learn the telegraph for that, and you’ll probably never die to this boss anymore.
• If you’ve never used it before, try the defensive fractal potions. They’re not too expensive and make a big difference.
• I found that scale 89 is easier than 77 for Tier 4.
• Trying to break this boss can be a trap for pugs. I wouldn’t bother trying to break the poison shake, but if you have a strong (and safe) interrupt (like Flesh Golem charge) you can try to get his rampage skill.

Here is a reddit link to a dev. response.

You need to shift your AR around a bit, but overall it won’t really cost you anything except perhaps 15-minutes of your time. Aim for 4x +7s & 2x +9s in your armor, with +7s in your weapons and +9s in your trinkets, rings and backpiece. (This configuration is good because it allows you to easily get additional weapons with AR since it’s only +7 in the weapons and not +9s)

You can break down your +12s, +11s and +10s into enough +9s to do this. You’ll probably end up with excess +9s from this, so just sell them and make money.

Nice work.

To sum it up, if you aren’t succeeding in raids because you refuse to be a team player, this is totally working as intended.

Raids are about teamwork. If you aren’t willing to make a small sacrifice to adjust your build to make it better for the team, then maybe raids aren’t for you.

It is 15 seconds long.

This is a really well-written and thought out post.

To add to this, I would like the ability to adjust an item’s horizontal position, even clipping into the ground. This would allow us to lower trees and shrubs in order to get rid of the planters if we don’t want them.

I agree with the sentiment about world boss trophy pieces. As a small guild, the thought of crafting the trophies feels pretty hopeless.

I know this isn’t the first time this has come up, but it would be nice if we could build a trophy for the Bandit Trio encounter. I know many guilds who enjoy crafting these trophies, and it seems like a low-hanging fruit suggestion since the gold trophy already exists in the raid itself as a boss chest. It feels like a bit of waste to not use it the same way all the other boss chests are.

I thought it would be unlikely for this to ever happen since the event was fairly unique as it wasn’t truly a boss. However, since the Bandit Trio is going to award the Forsaken Thicket Mastery, I thought I’d bring this up again. One justification I have is that it should be done for the sake of consistency, as every boss and boss-event would award (1) the Forsaken Thicket Mastery, (2) a Legendary Insight and (3) a piece of a boss-themed decoration for scribes; the Bandit Trio event is the only exception at the moment. Another justification I have for this is that trophies are cool and it would be nice to be able to build the Bandit Trio’s boss chest.

Maybe the small trophy pieces could be Forsaken Thicket Beehives?!

Sounds like a bug.

STIHL.2489:

the AMA made it clear they have moved on to doing something else. They have also made it clear that there is no raid development in the works, and that the only time a new raid might come out is with the next expansion.

Just curious, but what’s the context to this? The Envoy Armor II collection says to me that they’re probably not quite done making raids yet.

Berserker’s Popularity:

• The reason berserker gear is popular is because an entire set of it is more accessible to obtain than an entire set of viper’s gear even though they are fairly equal in their offensive power.

To the OP:

• I noticed you aren’t responding to anyone, so I’m not going to bother going over your post point-by-point. However, everything you want is in the raiding environment. If you want challenging content, that’s where it is; killing the Megasdestroyer shouldn’t be as annoying as killing Vale Guardian. I love raids, but I also don’t want the entire game to be as demanding as they are because I know the game would be empty if this were the case.

Rednik.3809:

Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks?

Blizzard always adjusts the balances of bosses. They actually made some bosses more difficult post-launch. (Hodir Hard Mode, Thorim Hard Mode, etc.) I don’t see what your point is though. All of World of Warcraft’s raids basically self-nerf themselves due to the increasing power of the player’s gear.

Healing druids are really nice for Mai Trin scale 100.

For raiding I think Druid is going to be something that people will have different opinions about depending on their team, but it’s generally safer to go more healing flavored than damage flavored to be more useful to your team. If you need to lower your toughness without losing healing, you can use Magi accessories. The ascended ones are a pain to get (Need to complete Honor of the Waves and Twilight Arbor collections), but it’s a nice thing to work towards while you’re not raiding. You can always use the exotic ones, they only cost a little bit of Karma. The Tiger and Electric Wyvern are pretty good choices for most fights in raids.

If you have any more doubts, you can watch this video about druids: (Link) It’s pretty comprehensive.

I would try the Siege the Stronghold encounter. It’s really forgiving and the first event of Wing 3. (Stronghold f the Faithful) You still need to organize for it but it has no enrage timer and you can take your time and be careful during it.

I hope the next round of Elite Specializations has something like Mesmer Portal. I look forward to your posts then.

I think what you want is more of this: Gerrymandering.

musu.9205:

everyone knows its too expensive to ever be practical

Do you think the WM Portal device is better than the Clockwork Portal Devices? If so, why?

musu.9205:

then use watchwork portal device since its same for you . why argue here . go and craft .

I’m not even arguing anything, just pointing out the facts. If pocket mesmer is so offensive to you, then I’m afraid you missed the boat on that a few years ago.

Rednik.3809:

It’s still too close to mesmer, especially for unique class mechanic. Basically, he is asking for pocket mesmer, which is unacceptable. Though, I guess it’s possible to buff one aspect of this toy while nerfing other. Want 1/6 of original CD? Make max portal radius 1/6 too.

Pocket Mesmer already exists with the Watchwork Portal Device.

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

However, it also will unlock crafting recipes to craft all three types of precursor armor, so anyone wanting to create different types of legendary armor or additional armors for their other characters will be able to do so. Obtaining a Refined Envoy Armor will unlock the corresponding Experimental Envoy Armor skin, so players wanting to unlock all of these skins will be able to do that by creating the Refined Envoy Armors when they have been unlocked.

For clarification, there are 3 skins, right? Experimental Envoy Armor, Refined Envoy Armor, Legendary Envoy Armor.

How do we get the recipes for these precursor armor exactly? Is it free or do we buy it?
If we buy it, what will the cost be for these recipes? Will it be expensive?
Can you tell us the recipe for the crafting the additional Refined Envoy Armor?

Also something confused me. Maybe it’s just reading stuff out of context.

These [Refined Envoy Armor] will be the items you can upgrade to legendary armor in the Mystic Forge

The armors aren’t destroyed- you get 2 complete sets of ascended armor by completing the collections.

Do we put Refined Envoy Armor in the Mystic Forge for the Legendary Envoy Armor? Does this mean someone completing Legendary Envoy Armor is going to have one set of extra ascended armor (Experimental Envoy Armor) and one set of legendary armor (Legendary Envoy Armor)?

CorruptEagle.1948:

5. the core is unable to be moved at the start of the phase or sometimes just wont move in the middle of moving it around.

Do you have a video of this? I have a suspicion about what this is.

Ohoni.6057:

let’s not pretend that if they weren’t working on raids then they would be providing no benefit to the game at all.

Let’s not pretend these most of these raid designers suddenly appeared out of thin air prior to raids existing either. We’ve seen some of their content before: Tequatl, Boss Blitz and Triple Trouble to name a few. Didn’t you have similar grievances with that content?

It’s pretty obvious that the raid team want to keep designing engaging and challenging content like this. Raids were an environment where it seems like their talents can shine their brightest, instead of forcing them to fit their skills into places that just don’t feel quite right. (Like open world)

Ohoni.6057:

It’s not really something that needs “proving.”

Oh, yes it is.

It’s like…

Trying to “prove” your point by comparing large and complex project of software development (like a MMO) to cooking a steak is really ignorant and borderline insulting. Adding more people to a project does not necessarily increase productivity, it actually can (and often does) decrease it. If this doesn’t make sense to you, then you really need to educate yourself more on the subject. (Start here) If you think have the solution to it feel free to publish and become rich, it since there are many systems out there designed to tackle this very problem. (Like Agile)

tldr: making a MMO is not the same thing as cooking a steak.

Also, I’d like to quote a relevant topic:

BobbyStein.2315:

• Output from the raids team isn’t coming at the expense of other projects in development. Raids are made independently of Living World. We do communicate regularly with that team (and we share some resources and assets in both directions) but neither team prevents the other from doing its job.

Arnath.2319:

Content that less than 5% of the playerbase consumes.

Citation needed.

Arnath.2319:

Wasting dev time on content only a small percentage of people will ever see is how games die.

I wonder how many times people (like yourself) re-played Season 2 of Living World compared to how many times people re-play Spirit Vale and Salvation Pass? After just the second week (maybe even the first) I played Spirit Vale way more than what I did in all of Season 2.

STIHL.2489:

Well in WoW it was around 3 – 5% of the population got involved in raids,

I’m not sure what WoW has to do with any of this, but I’m curious: Where are you getting this information from? It’s very inaccurate. A vast majority of WoW’s population gets involved in raids.

• Tier 18 (Current tier, current expansion)
• Tier 17 (Previous tier, current expansion)

If you want to check out last expansion:

• Tier 16 (Previous expansion, final tier)

For people who do not understand what’s on this web site, at the bottom it displays % of players who have done M and H difficulty bosses. (Heroic & Mythic) WoW has 4 difficulty modes: Raid Finder, Normal, Heroic (H), Mythic (M). (Increasing difficulty in ascending order) So many players complete Normal and Raid Finder that this web site doesn’t even track the data because it’s somewhere between 70%-100%+. It’s difficult to analyze, but some web sites try. (MMO Champion)

I wish “Quarterly” said “three months” instead of quarterly.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Are you asking if mai trin can be solo’d in 25 minutes? Did you even try doing a search?

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3yaxc8
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3z5cd1

Those were at the top of my google results, both under 15 minutes.

The first video is sped up by 125% at places, and it’s actually 24-minutes long.
The second video starts after the final cannon phase (when Mai Trin reaches 25%) and has returned at 100% health. This video is 11-minutes long in this one phase alone and he doesn’t even finish killing her. (He disconnects)

I’m not saying it’s impossibles, but these are bad examples.

I linked the wrong item. Oops.

If you’re unhappy with your purchase, it doesn’t actually bind to your account/character. You can buy an Upgrade Extractor Infusion Extraction Device from Fractals of the Mists for 20-silver, remove it from your trinket and re-list it for sale.

The theme of the raid going over your head does not make it bad.

Is the “Remove Desert Borderlands” poll going to require a 75% majority?

These polls are so strange and confusing to me… Some require a simple majority, and this one required a specific, arbitrary threshold.

It makes sense that since “No” was at a disadvantage it needed a lower threshold win. The thing is that “Yes” had only a 2:1 ratio, shouldn’t it have needed 66% of the votes for the majority instead of 75%? Wouldn’t 75% have made sense if there were four options, not three?

The poll should have simply been: “Yes” and “No”, and if “Yes” won it should have had the community vote on the ratio then. Also, it should have been clear that “Yes” had a good chance of getting a new map as well.