Guild Wars 2

Seera.5916:

Astralporing.1957:

Nokaru.7831:

If you actually tallied the posters, you’d find that there is a 41 page thread mostly consisting of everybody arguing against you.

Correction, mostly involved the same ~20-30 people arguing with each other. Yes, the raiders had a visible percentage majority in this thread, but then (as we already know) raiders are generally more active and overrepresented in forums, and it was a raid thread as well, so it’s no surprise. And if we look at total numbers, then the pro-raider group seems really small.

I’m not likely to raid at all or not much if I do. Probably not enough for legendary armor unless I get really lucky and the precursor is RNG based.

Yet, I don’t agree with Ohoni. There is no problem with content having exclusive skins. So even non-raiders can want exclusive skins.

This right here is what I’m talking about. A sensible position. Thank you for being a reasonable person, and I hope we see some laurel or open world collection based armor precursors for new sets in the future so the mechanical parts of the system are more fair for people like you.

Thank you for being okay with compromise.

This whole argument is based around this idea that you’re going to PUG raids like dungeons.

They flat out said on twitch that PUGs will most likely not be a thing for raids due to the high level of mechanical difficulty requiring your raid group to actually build around one another.

Will people eventually come up with a “Raid PUG Meta”? Of course they will. It’ll likely be whatever party composition makes the “world first clear” video.

If just picking the PUG meta builds was enough to pull off a raid, it’s not a very well designed raid. The whole idea is that everyone in your group really has to be on the ball. Raids are usually not PUG content for this reason. More than one or two randoms in a raid group in most games throws off your timing or performance enough that it’s not worth the failure risk.

Make no mistake that this content isn’t designed around PUGs. It’s designed to encourage people to develop regular raiding groups that learn the content and develop strategies together, and practice them until they get it down.

Lendruil.9061:

Hello,

while i understand the motivation behind the weekly raid-reward, i think that there should be some minor reward added for doing it a 2nd or 3rd etc… time. Most guilds dont have 10, 20, 30 or 40… members, so it probably will be neccessary to run the raids multiple times so that every guildmember can finish it.
It would be nice if the repeated completion of the raid rewards at least with some gold that is equal to doing dungeons in the same time.

Didn’t they say only the boss rewards are on the timer?

I’d imagine the drop rates for the trash are probably quite a bit better than in other content given the increased difficulty.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You are right, I don’t understand. What good does it do to split up the Guild, as far as capping goes, if only one objective can be capped at a time?

Now, I understand splitting up the Guild to try to remove an enemy from an objective, but only to free it for another Guild to capture it belonging to the same Home World.

I guess. Lol. Somewhat confusing. =/

Basically, if you could split a 200 person guild in to 50 person guilds, you could functionally own 4 objectives, thus cutting all of the real 50 person guilds on your server out of the system since those 50 person guilds would have 100% of their roster present to claim the objective, and thus get priority.

The system as the rest of us understand it is simply that the 200 person guild would want to have all 200 members there when a fort is claimed so they could own the fort, which would prevent them from also owning the towers/camps around it unless they all swapped tags to another guild.

I mean functionally there’s not much difference aside from the fact that a percentage system would make it much easier to hog ownership by claiming multiple objectives at once, while the numbers system in stead would require people who wanted to do that to have the entire 200 person guild switch tags and actually be present at each objective.

In the numbers system you’d have to get a lot more trolls together to pull it off, so it’s better, which is probably why anet went this way with it.

They did say that the overall acquisition path is easier, so it’s entirely possible that the drop itself is like the SW boxes (boot box, glove box, etc.) that allows you to pick an armor weight, and each boss drops a specific piece.

That would make sense considering we know the raid is 3 wings, which would mean, at 2 bosses per wing, 6 bosses, which is exactly the same number as armor slots.

On top of that remember they all have more on their drop table than the precursors, and that the rewards are account bound, so there are still reasons to do, say, wing 2 boss 1, even if you already have the precursor shoulders. Maybe you do it for the boss skins, minis, collecting two more so you have precursor sets for all 3 armor weights, or other stuff.

Another (unlikely but we can dream) possibility is that there is more than one legendary armor set per weight.

Ohoni.6057:

Ohoni, you completely skipped over the primary point of my last post:

Weighting too hard toward either extreme of the system is detrimental to the overall health of the game.

That means advocating for either all rewards being content exclusive, or no rewards at all being content exclusive.

Not “skipping” so much as “disagreeing.” Again, one of my primary points is that you can’t split the baby on this one. Because aesthetics are not fungible, because every skin might be someone’s favorite skin, while you may be able to balance out a collector by saying “you can have most of them, but not these, these we’re keeping for ourselves,” and by his perspective that might be fair enough, if you tell that to someone who has several favorites within the “not for you” set, your offer of a “compromise” is nothing of the sort.

The only way that a “some are exclusive, but not all are” would actually work as a balance factor is if each player is allowed to choose which skins are excluded from him and which are not. Otherwise, you cannot say “well you can have 90% of the skins, but we’re keeping the other 10%,” any more than Solomon could say “well you can have the baby from the neck down, but we’re keeping the rest exclusive.”

You’re still more concerned that you, personally, by choosing not to do a type of content will not have access to a miniscule fraction of the total reward pool

Me and every other player in the game, yes. If that is a portion of the reward pool that will interest us, then it would be a noteworthy loss.

Meanwhile, people advocating for unique rewards for specific content only desire that a miniscule fraction of the total reward pool are actually content exclusive rewards

And yet they require that these rewards be kept away from their fellow players who might want them.

That’s the problem here, you keep trying to phrase these as two equally balanced positions, equally fair and I’m being obstructionist for not agreeing with your narrative. “We have one climate change scientist over here, and one climate change denier over here, there are equally valid arguments.” No. Even if the exclusivity players only get a small portion of the rewards fro a numerical perspective, if they are the rewards people actually care about then they are ALL the rewards. You just cannot balance it out like that and call it fair.

If exclusionaries get even a small portion of the skins as exclusive, then they get what they want, exclusive items to chase and to get and to engage in schadenfreude with. In that same scenario, unless someone is lucky enough that he is interested in none of those items, he is getting none of what he’s looking for, because the items he wants are being locked behind the exclusion wall. Why is this concept so difficult to understand.

Again, the only way to balance it out so that some things are exclusive, is if each player can choose for himself which items will be excluded from him, otherwise your proposal just does not fill its expressed purpose as a compromise.

Again, these are identical patterns of dissent. Not having access to a part of the rewards pool because you refuse to do certain content is just as inconvenient as having exclusive parts of the reward pool that give skins you hate.

Again, the root of that dissent isn’t the means by which the rewards are obtained, but a personal decision that doing only your absolute favorite content all the time is more important than content actually having unique and intrinsic reward value.

Your entire position is based on a position of absolute refusal to engage in compromise

The unwillingness to say “okay, if there’s a reward I like in content I don’t, I will engage in it long enough to get the reward and then put it aside”

That is literally the same position as saying “if I think only the most efficient path to a reward is fun I will only take the most efficient path, and thus the raid content I enjoy is worthless”

That rigid thinking is what creates a culture of exclusion, not the path by which rewards are gained.

The compromise approach makes the largest number of people content. Your insistence that but all the people would be happy if we nixed exclusivity is demonstrably false, given the content of this thread alone, the feedback that led to the creation and maintenance of all of GW2s reward systems.

You continue to harp on this idea that people that want exclusivity are mentally deficient, gluttons for punishment, and fundamentally damaged in some way for desiring such a reward scheme. You literally made a corrolary between fraternity hazing and raiding.

At this point you’re not championing the desires of a benign player base or attempting to posit a system which would make people happy. You’re simply interested in disenfranchising people that like something you don’t, and painting your own preference as some kind of moral authority.

Compromise is the status quo, and this entire system is one of compromise.

You, however, aren’t interested in compromise, or the desires of what appears to be if not the largest portion of the player base a portion large enough to drive the continuation of reward exclusivity.

This isn’t a new concept, and Anet has, with raid rewards, precursor masteries, and all post release legendaries firmly planted a stake in the ground and said “Certain content confers certain rewards.”

They flat out said, on stream, that every new legendary will be untradable. If you want it, you will have to go to every part of the game, pvp included, and engage in that content to demonstrate proficiency or at least familiarity with all of the content in the game.

That’s right. As of HoT, rewards exist that literally require you to play everything

If that’s not an indication that your ideal world of getting everything by only doing what you want is not only unlikely, but a scheme they are actively designing away from, I don’t know what is.

I don’t know what you’re still attempting to argue. The people in control of the reward system, the lion’s share of players willing to still engage in this conversation, and the game itself should combine to make it clear to you that your unwillingness to compromise and demand for your vision at the expense of all others is unrealistic and amounts only to pointless mudslinging at people with different play preferences than yourself.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I, also, have heard no mention of percentages in regards to capping objectives. Still, it would not matter if there were percentages as far as splitting up your Guild goes….only one objective could be capped at a time.

Besides, percentages would make no sense; at least, not to me.

No, no, you misunderstand.

Not having all the players in your guild be at different objectives. Actually taking your 200 player guild and splitting it in to 50 person guilds. That’s kind of where this percentage theory falls apart.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

PopeUrban.2578:

lordvroom.1274:

PopeUrban.2578:

What makes you think a quite small guild will get any use out of wvw upgrades in the new system? Claim priority scales based on the number of players representing a guild when an objective is taken. I don’t know what your server is like, but on mine it’s pretty much a given that a guild of less than 20 people wouldn’t really ever get claim priority.
Your server may be different though.

Pope you are misinformed about how Guild claiming works. The current system does not grand favor to the largest amount of players in one guild there. It is based on 2 things: The number of guild players in the cap and the percent of the guild present.

Example: I have a 100 man guild and we capture an objective but we had 20 members present. Yes we had 20 people there but only a 20% roster present.

A small WvW guild with 20 people and 10 people present(50%) will actually gain priority over you in this system because the largest majority of players (in terms of roster%) are in the smaller guild.

EDIT: This is also why some guilds like myself prefer to keep it extremely active (50 member cap) this means when we raid 20 members we have a very solid chance of near 100% claim on any objective where we are present.

There’s a minimum in there somewhere though, right? I mean if it was completely based on percentage in attendance it would be most efficient to split your guild up in to 5 man guilds so you can easily have 100% of the guild representing at each objective, and cap four objectives rather than one, right?

This is the first I’ve heard of any sort of percentage mechanic so I’m interested in where the minimum sits and so on.

Didn’t the Devs state a Guild could only cap (and hold) one objective at a time? I’m not sure how the new WvW works, exactly. I’m not that great of a WvW-player.

They did, but the poster I’m responding to seems to indicate the system is based on percentage in attendance rather than total number of members in attendance. If it is completely percentage based it seems it would be trivial to split up the guild in to smaller sub-guilds as time went on just to cap and hold more objectives at once.

It just seems weird that it would be a percentage based system rather than a flat numbers system and it’s the first I heard of any ‘percentage of the total guild roster" mechanic. Everything I’ve seen on streams seems to indicate the claim system only cares about how many boots a given guild has on the ground at the time an objective is claimed, which seems a better way to ensure larger guilds tend to hang on to larger objectives and don’t have the opportunity to snatch up half the map and push other reasonably sized guilds out of the system.

I’m interested in the math at work here, if there’s some percentage mechanic how does it weight that against total number of member at the objective so it’s not easily exploited by splitting guilds?

Ohoni, you completely skipped over the primary point of my last post:

Weighting too hard toward either extreme of the system is detrimental to the overall health of the game.

That means advocating for either all rewards being content exclusive, or no rewards at all being content exclusive.

You seem to be the only person advocating for 100% homogenized rewards. The people here advocating unique raid rewards (and arenanet, who designed the rewards that way) are simply saying that it is prefereable to have both reward structures present as a compromise between reward exclusivity and reward accessibility

You’re still more concerned that you, personally, by choosing not to do a type of content will not have access to a miniscule fraction of the total reward pool

Meanwhile, people advocating for unique rewards for specific content only desire that a miniscule fraction of the total reward pool are actually content exclusive rewards

In fact, I would not at all be suprised or even upset to see anet implement the non-precursor boss skins as tradable rewards. I also completely expect that beyond the precursor the shopping list for the rest of the crafting components for legendary armor require a vast array of other content, possibly including drops only accessible from the solo boss challenges from the racial mastry lines and a healthy selection of materials only accessible outside the raids if the previous legendaries are any indication.

Canakun.8031:

PopeUrban.2578:

Canakun.8031:

PopeUrban.2578:

Canakun.8031:

Rashagar.8349:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I really enjoy it when people talk about “ending the meta”. But as stated, once one meta dies, another is born. The anti-meta becomes the meta. It’s Metaception!

Well the only reason it will never go away is because there will always be people who believe it’s the only way to play. If people stopped caring about it it would never come back.

I don’t believe it will ever go away, but that’s only because the people who push it will never stop pushing.

A meta isn’t about being the “only way to play,” it’s about being the most optimal, most efficient way to play. Some people like efficiency, especially when they’re grinding content multiple times.

This is true. The meta is only a problem when a meta comp is, as it is now, not just more efficient, but so much more efficient that it can complete a run in literally half the time based solely on build rather than player skill

Take a look back at GW1, take something like the SS necro meta. It was more efficient, but in the end, if you took another well designed group that wasn’t running it, your clear times were at least 90% as efficient. Might stacking zerk meta is able to literally remove 40% of the party and have the same clear times as a balanced non-meta comp.

Nobody wants content to be faceroll, but what people do want is to bring in characters they actually like to play, make some adjustments to traits, weapons, and armor, and still feel like they’re being decently efficient.

It’s not based solely on build.
You still need to know what you’re doing, and have the skills to complete content at half the intended speed.

I’m not going to be one of those people that says “zerk is faceroll” I’ve done it. It isn’t. It requires just as much coordination, not more, than running a balanced build. You blast fire, pop reflects and aegis at the right time, and position yourself well. It’s the same thing any non-meta group composition does. It just happens to pay out stupidly faster clear times for it.

That is totally based upon build alone. Take the same players, hand them a more balanced group, and see if they can even come close to half the same clear time. They can’t. It isn’t because the people playing the might stack meta are good and the balanced group with a condi necro, full prot guard, and random assorted non-warrior DPS is bad. It’s because they picked the build that, through a quirk of game design, is capable of running the content twice as fast or faster, assuming both groups play their toons and their party correctly.

The possibility of completing it that much faster is all about build, class, and skill design and has nothing to do with player skill at all. When discussing balance you don’t balance player skill. You can’t balance player skill. You balance around best case scenarios, assuming the people playing the game are playing their characters with equal degrees of skill in terms of hitting the proper positioning, reactions, and skill rotations.

Didn’t DnT do a full clerics run of Arah path 4 and get it done in under 20 minutes?

For real? This I gotta see. I’ll eat my hat.

Mai Trin, L10:

Warrior: THIEF USE UR SR TO STELTH CANNONS

Me: Just dodge the cannons. We would need more stealth for that.

Warrior: U CAN’T DODGE CANNONS, U STELTH OR DIE

Cannon phase starts, everyone but the warrior successfully dodges cannons and lives.

Warrior (from the floor): TOLD U U CAN’T DODGE CANNONS

I SR the guy and start ressing him while everyone else gets to work kiting mai trin in to lightning

Warrior: UR USING SR WRONG NOOB

facepalm

I’m waiting for the balance patch really.

Phalanx warrior as a required buff isn’t a justification to make phalanx buff more people. It’s a justification to nerf phalanx because it is deemed a “required” buff in comparison to all other avaliable buffs.

If they’re really trying to build a system where there are no required classes, only required roles, then no one class should ever so totally eclipse all other options for the support, damage, or control it brings to the table.

However, if they don’t pass around buffs/nerfs to bring everyone more in line with each other in terms of group utility (for all game modes) the concept of “everyone can be useful as long as everyone brings complimentary builds” is already DOA.

It’s not a false example at all. You’re haping on “picking daisies” so we can call it “killing open world mobs” whatever.

They’re absolutely equivalent when you’re talking about things in terms of challenge ratio. Even if farming the open world or doing a raid pay out equivalent rewards for time spent, the method with the lowest chance of failure is always the most efficient method. This idea that people would choose a more work intensive and failure prone path to the same reward is folly. It’s not equivalent and by the very nature of multiple difficulty levels, logistical requirements, and schedule differences the least difficult method will always be the most efficient, assuming that ideal time/reward ration is somehow identical.

This is why people farm COF path 1, why people farm silverwastes, and why the oft-discussed “zerker meta” is a thing.

You can not balance content around gold per hour and have wildly different difficulty levels. The equivalent but unique approach ensures that there are desirable rewards across the difficulty spectrum by not making those two pieces of content compete with one another.

Will people be upset that there’s a skin they want in content they don’t? Yes.

However, the alternative extreme is people being just as upset because they went through this whole crazyhard raid and got something they could have just done a dungeon path 15 times, or farmed 1200 mobs in the open world for. That is the root of complaints about world boss chests and the old standby “two blues and a green”.

One needs only look at this thread to see the danger of such extremism, and why it’s imperative that there exists in stead some form of compromise.

ODB.6891:

Windsagio.1340:

Plenty of players do use those other gears and enjoy them. It’s not for me or you or OBD or my friend Seth to tell them not to do it or that the gear and style they like is a waste.

Even if it’s not optimal it allows some fun contrast and differences and styles, and I’m all for that (as we all should be).

Saying they’re ‘wasted’ because they’re not optimal isn’t really right, imo. People use them. -especially as you note across the different primary and secondary game modes.

The player action isn’t so onesided outside of these forum discussions and a particular faction in dungeon LFGs

Don’t get me wrong, I think it was definitely a mistake for them to include gear that makes players think tanking and healing were supposed to be viable options in PvE, but I know the ship has sailed on this issue…especially with the announcement of an expansion supporting dedicated healing in PvE less than a month away. I’m just pointing out the real issue that caused all of this back peddling on the original game design advertisement. I’m definitely irritated on the back peddling part, but if they really want to go the route of semi trinity…GW2 style….then I’m warming up to it…so long as they provide the proper tools. If I’m going to play trinity style game play, I want meters, inspect, and role checks. Fractals are one thing….where you encounter so many terrible parties and you can just bail out and find a new group within minutes. Raiding, I imagine, will be a different story altogether. The logistics of getting enough people together…for what I assume are going to be much longer and much more demanding encounters…are not something I would want to fail from unprepared or unqualified raid members. A common thing I see people say on these forums about how they just lie to get into fractal groups, is something I think raiding should have a way of dealing with.

It’s an interesting thought experiment, the whole “how would you fix balance if you could start from zero”

Personally I never had a problem with the lack of hard roles as much as I had a problem with the lack of inherent teamwork. Stat spreads for “tank” and “healer” roles do sort of necessitate at some point that those roles are valuable, which is how we got to where we are now: force people to build these roles to complete content.

If I were to redesign it from zero I think I’d be right there with you, toss out role-focused stat spreads. I’d have made the combo system the focal point for teamwork. I’d have prevented players from self-combos and in stead made certain that combo interactions provided a lion’s share of active mitigation and sustain.

Blasting water is, IMO, a cool interaction because it’s immediate. Someone has to see the water field and go “I gotta get there, and I gotta use my blast finisher on it.” But it takes some of the teamwork element out when the guy making the field is also the guy blasting it.

I don’t find blasting fire as cool of an interaction as it’s just a more convoluted way of saying “gather for buffs”

Going on down the chain, you see this kind of pattern in a lot of the combo interactions. Many of them aren’t super useful, and the ones that are promote self combos much more than combos with the team.

In my ideal world the difference between what a necro, thief, and a guardian bring to the group would be less measured in core stats and specific utility abilities and more in the combo fields they bring to the table. So you would still have this system in which its most imperative that everyone be rather self sufficient, but the majority of that self sufficiency would rely on how you utilize the effects of the people around you rather than relying on the people around to to hit a button and provide aegis, heals, blinds, or whatever.

So a team comp would be a lot more about adjusting your individual play toward the strengths of allies rather than the other way around.

Alas, that ship has sailed. maybe I’ll win the lottery and make an MMO one day, lol.

ODB, keep reading posts past that one, I addressed this point specifically a few posts up

Ohoni.6057:

So then should they make it so that the “daisy picking” is the ONLY way to earn the Legendary armor, while the raids only offer a unique “flower in the hair” headpiece skin? You talk up the ideal of “every content should be rewarding,” but you seem to imply, but not express, the added point that “and the content I want to do should be most rewarding of all.”

Not at all. I’ve said, several times, that I don’t agree with the decision to only hand out legendary armor precursors from raids. Every facet of PvE should have a way to gain that kind of QoL upgrade.

That’s why I mentioned legendary armor of daisy picking and legendary armor of killing a tongue monster.

I am all for equivalent rewards. I am simply against homogenized rewards.

Your primary argument is that there are no equivalent rewards because desirability of skins is subjective, right? My opinion is that because the desirability of skins is subjective you can not use it as a balancing lever.

In the end, you are faced with two extremes, neither of which will make every player happy. You either offer all the rewards for all the things, thus removing any unique rewards from content, or you attach unique rewards to all the content so that no matter what you’re doing you have a special thing.

The end result is the same for the people made unhappy by either system. In the “get all the things anywhere” system, people that are primarily rewards focused will complain they have to do content they hate because it’s more efficient. In the “Get special things in special places” system, people that are rewards focused will complain they have to do content they hate because it’s the only way to get the specific thing they’re after.

Then we have multipage threads about it in stead of people being okay with the idea that a compromise of the two is the way to make the least amount of people completely unhappy.

GW2 as it exists right now, and probably for the forseeable future is a compromise of the two methods. Some stuff can be had via the TP by doing whatever content you want. Some stuff can only be had by doing specific content.

Tossing out either one of those reward paradigms completely would be detrimental to the overall health of the game.

Pretty decent point really. I think back to GW1. Gear stats weren’t really a thing outside of skill runes. You basically chose between more HP or more points in a skill.

However, they went the more traditional ‘stats that do stuff’ route for GW2, so it follows that, if you’re designing gear “for tanks” or gear “for healers” etc. then it follows that your content needs to encourage people, somehow, to actually play those roles.

I think anet has a pretty long histroy of being overly optimistic about player action in stead of taking the measured approach that players are the enemy of balance and will mercilessly exploit any weakness in your system

The current situation likely doesn’t align with anet’s intent for the combat systems, but until now they’re have higher priorities than creating challenging and meaningful PvE combat as the studio has been largely focused on esports and living story narrative, both of which have radically different balance concerns.

PvP actually uses stats that are wasted in PvE, and the LS releases, being largely solo endeavors favor self sufficient damage -wth-a-dash-of-sustain builds which are the overall “damage meta” in the first place.

only now do we see them sitting down and going “okay, maybe we should have more builds than damage with a little support in our game, and the only way to make that happen is to make it as efficient as what people run now”

Overwriting runes is the primary sink for runes. Basically, for runes to retain any sort of value anet intends that they are more often destroyed than salvaged.

This is also why, barring some cash shop options, you’re usually faced with a choice between keeping gear, or keeping the upgrades in said gear.

They designed a combat system with those roles, but they designed content and screwed up skill balance in a way where those roles weren’t really desirable for real play.

They’re doing huge balance passes in hoT to address this some, and the raids specifically address this further.

For instance, in AC explorable the logical “correct” design of the graveling swams is to have a “tank” bust down the hives while the rest of the party defends the NPC, but the whole game was tuned in such a way that it was just more efficient to rapid burst down everything.

I’d assume in the future fixes that tanking won’t be as much about “main tank that holds all the aggro” as it is about “tank keeps a lid on a certain mob or spawner, and healer keeps up sustain on him and the rest of the party”

But, basically, the stats exist because anet wants the roles to exist, they’ve just been extremely lazy about balance and content patches to make it useful.

I’m going to complain now, and stop complaining on tuesday if it’s any good.

Seems like a waste of time to complain after a problem is resolved. I should know. I’m on the thief forums, where all we do is complain.

Christonya.3856:

PopeUrban.2578:

What if acrobatics had all of the thief’s endurance related traits, but did not add effects to dodge, and Daredevil traits focused in stead on enhancing dodge, physicals, or staff exclusively?.

Acro would suck. Acro would have to be paired with DD to be useful. DD would still be a fancy name for acro.

There is no way for DD in it’s current set up to work, because all the traits could be thrown into the acro line and no one would even notice the difference.

That’s the problem. You look at the DD line and say: This is acro right? Oh wait, this is our elite? What…?

Acro didn’t suck when feline grace was pretty much the only reason to take the line. Combine feline grace with endurance thief and acro’s current reactive traits I don’t think it would suck at all.

Just sayin’

Cyninja.2954:

PopeUrban.2578:

I disagree with the copperfed TBH, but that’s only because I have a massive bag of forge stones to make mystic salvage kits with.

Simply put, you get more valuable stuff with the mystic kits, but the copper kit is okay if you just want basic mats.

Using the mystic kit on anything but rares and above is a huge waste of ressources. The mystic kit uses are not “free”. Even without calculating the forge stones it comes down to about 10.5 copper per use (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Salvage_kit).

It’s very doubtful that the 15% chance or rare materials in any way covers this cost (again, that is without even calculating for used gems for Forge Stones). You are essentially spending more copper per salvage than needed, and even with a slight profit (which as far as I remember is not the case), you are spending potential future Forge Stone costs for insignificant gains now.

I tend to pull a lot of t5/t6 mats with them off of greens/blues shrug

I haven’t ever bought forge stones though, I have a massive bag of them from the old system that don’t get used for anything else.

Not saying it is technically more cash efficient as much as it is an easily managable cost for the output. It’s a higher bet for the gambling game that is salvaging, and if you’re still working on 300% MF and salvaging all the greens and blues you pick up the 15% tends to add up by sheer volume, not to mention the massive dump of runes/sigils that pay out pretty decently in comparison to basic kit rates.

Basically, I go “if I’m gonna be salvaging in stead of selling or vendoring, let’s be salvaging as well as possible!”

I disagree with the copperfed TBH, but that’s only because I have a massive bag of forge stones to make mystic salvage kits with.

Simply put, you get more valuable stuff with the mystic kits, but the copper kit is okay if you just want basic mats.

First you have to apply for an elementalist internship, and study with an established elementalist. Prove yourself there and you can probably get your mentor to write you a letter of recommendation to keep on file for when you get your elemental degree.

After that, just apply to as many places as possible, and make sure you attach that letter to your resume when you do.

The Wizland.8435:

Actually, I’ve played thief for 37 hours.

Well dang. I guess I’ll just shut up now. You obviously have extensive experience with the balance history of the class and are fully aware of the long history of constructive balance threads on these forums.

My thinking is that the real ’special sauce" of daredevil is the dodge+ mechanic right? All the other stuff in DD is just more endurance so you can actually use the dodge+

Crazy idea:

What if acrobatics had all of the thief’s endurance related traits, but did not add effects to dodge, and Daredevil traits focused in stead on enhancing dodge, physicals, or staff exclusively?

Acro wouldn’t suck, Daredevil would be useful with or without acro, and you’d have just plain more build choices. You could run a DD without extra endurance, because you wanted to run a bunch of physicals and be more CC focused, and pick a dodge+ that worked for the build. You could run DD+Acro if you really wanted to run a dodge tank. You could run just plain acro if you didn’t want the staff or physicals and still have an evasive build.

Initiative.

Every time I play another class I feel like I’m forced to use skills just because they’re off cooldown or my damage sucks. When I’m playing a thief I feel like I use skills because I choose to use them. If I see something that 20% HP, i get to choose to use dagger 2 twice in a row in stead of hitting 3,4,5 because they’re the only skills off cooldown.

I can do loads more damage on my mesmer, but I just don’t have as much fun playing it, as the cooldowns-only skill system feels like the class is playing me rather than the other way around.

Like, every other class (except revnant, again because of the resource mechanics) I spend most of my time with everything but a few buttons on cooldown, so I don’t feel like I have all that many moment-to-moment choices in combat.

lordvroom.1274:

PopeUrban.2578:

What makes you think a quite small guild will get any use out of wvw upgrades in the new system? Claim priority scales based on the number of players representing a guild when an objective is taken. I don’t know what your server is like, but on mine it’s pretty much a given that a guild of less than 20 people wouldn’t really ever get claim priority.
Your server may be different though.

Pope you are misinformed about how Guild claiming works. The current system does not grand favor to the largest amount of players in one guild there. It is based on 2 things: The number of guild players in the cap and the percent of the guild present.

Example: I have a 100 man guild and we capture an objective but we had 20 members present. Yes we had 20 people there but only a 20% roster present.

A small WvW guild with 20 people and 10 people present(50%) will actually gain priority over you in this system because the largest majority of players (in terms of roster%) are in the smaller guild.

EDIT: This is also why some guilds like myself prefer to keep it extremely active (50 member cap) this means when we raid 20 members we have a very solid chance of near 100% claim on any objective where we are present.

There’s a minimum in there somewhere though, right? I mean if it was completely based on percentage in attendance it would be most efficient to split your guild up in to 5 man guilds so you can easily have 100% of the guild representing at each objective, and cap four objectives rather than one, right?

This is the first I’ve heard of any sort of percentage mechanic so I’m interested in where the minimum sits and so on.

Canakun.8031:

PopeUrban.2578:

Canakun.8031:

Rashagar.8349:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I really enjoy it when people talk about “ending the meta”. But as stated, once one meta dies, another is born. The anti-meta becomes the meta. It’s Metaception!

Well the only reason it will never go away is because there will always be people who believe it’s the only way to play. If people stopped caring about it it would never come back.

I don’t believe it will ever go away, but that’s only because the people who push it will never stop pushing.

A meta isn’t about being the “only way to play,” it’s about being the most optimal, most efficient way to play. Some people like efficiency, especially when they’re grinding content multiple times.

This is true. The meta is only a problem when a meta comp is, as it is now, not just more efficient, but so much more efficient that it can complete a run in literally half the time based solely on build rather than player skill

Take a look back at GW1, take something like the SS necro meta. It was more efficient, but in the end, if you took another well designed group that wasn’t running it, your clear times were at least 90% as efficient. Might stacking zerk meta is able to literally remove 40% of the party and have the same clear times as a balanced non-meta comp.

Nobody wants content to be faceroll, but what people do want is to bring in characters they actually like to play, make some adjustments to traits, weapons, and armor, and still feel like they’re being decently efficient.

It’s not based solely on build.
You still need to know what you’re doing, and have the skills to complete content at half the intended speed.

I’m not going to be one of those people that says “zerk is faceroll” I’ve done it. It isn’t. It requires just as much coordination, not more, than running a balanced build. You blast fire, pop reflects and aegis at the right time, and position yourself well. It’s the same thing any non-meta group composition does. It just happens to pay out stupidly faster clear times for it.

That is totally based upon build alone. Take the same players, hand them a more balanced group, and see if they can even come close to half the same clear time. They can’t. It isn’t because the people playing the might stack meta are good and the balanced group with a condi necro, full prot guard, and random assorted non-warrior DPS is bad. It’s because they picked the build that, through a quirk of game design, is capable of running the content twice as fast or faster, assuming both groups play their toons and their party correctly.

The possibility of completing it that much faster is all about build, class, and skill design and has nothing to do with player skill at all. When discussing balance you don’t balance player skill. You can’t balance player skill. You balance around best case scenarios, assuming the people playing the game are playing their characters with equal degrees of skill in terms of hitting the proper positioning, reactions, and skill rotations.

You sure showed them!

GW2’s itemization vs. skills is handled exactly the same way the first game did it. Passive defenses are supplemental rather than focal. Using active abilities (dodge, block, blind, daze, positioning, etc.) are the primary defenses for every character.

If you don’t like actually having to do things for defense rather than relying on a stack of numbers, you are not going to like combat in GW2, as it is a major part of the design of the system.

Canakun.8031:

PopeUrban.2578:

Heroes were cool when you were limited to 3 of them. You still had to make one friend.

They shouldn’t have made the move to full hero parties until GW2 release, when they were ready to effectively sign off on the game and wanted to make it playable with a drastically reduced player base.

GW2, on the other hand, does not need heroes. All of the story content is designed around solo play, and the group content is designed to make players find and play in groups

GW1 henchies/heroes were a design compromise that enabled them to build a game that was nothing but a series of group dungeons and still have that game be somewhat playable solo. Henchies were better at this as they had a drawback compared to real people. Heroes were cool from a narrative standpoint, but from a design standpoint they totally wrecked grouping and the social elements of the game.

I’m talking about through the duration of your personal/living story, where the characters are there anyway.
They’re gonna be there, why not implement the option to customize them?

Customizing them would serve no purpose, as they’re purposely undertuned so that they aren’t a significant portion of your combat ability and only ever exist as glorified meat shields in the first place.

Not only that, but their presence or absence in those instances is dictated by the plot rather than the player. Look at LS2. It’s important for the story for Kas/Jory to be present in some instances and absent in others. Making them customizable would be an effectively zero sum change that wouldn’t really be worth the effort.

GW1’s story instances were still a game about group compositions, and what the heroes or hencfhies did was replace players, thus it was important that you could build them like players. They don’t replace players in GW2, so there’s no real point in customizing them when they’ll only ever be horrible DPS HP sponges and occasional res bots.

In addition to that, those NPCs have a selection of unique skills that are often plot points. Marjory moving from scepter/dagger to greatsword is a plot point for instance. Kasmeer using time warp in the LS2 or braham using his shield are important design elements of the fight, and so on.

Canakun.8031:

Rashagar.8349:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I really enjoy it when people talk about “ending the meta”. But as stated, once one meta dies, another is born. The anti-meta becomes the meta. It’s Metaception!

Well the only reason it will never go away is because there will always be people who believe it’s the only way to play. If people stopped caring about it it would never come back.

I don’t believe it will ever go away, but that’s only because the people who push it will never stop pushing.

A meta isn’t about being the “only way to play,” it’s about being the most optimal, most efficient way to play. Some people like efficiency, especially when they’re grinding content multiple times.

This is true. The meta is only a problem when a meta comp is, as it is now, not just more efficient, but so much more efficient that it can complete a run in literally half the time based solely on build rather than player skill

Take a look back at GW1, take something like the SS necro meta. It was more efficient, but in the end, if you took another well designed group that wasn’t running it, your clear times were at least 90% as efficient. Might stacking zerk meta is able to literally remove 40% of the party and have the same clear times as a balanced non-meta comp.

Nobody wants content to be faceroll, but what people do want is to bring in characters they actually like to play, make some adjustments to traits, weapons, and armor, and still feel like they’re being decently efficient.

You’re question was already answered. The opener determines the progress. Progress is saved individually.

It does however beg the question:

If a new guys starts the raid at wing with some friends 3 and beats the boss with a group, can he now also opt to start on wing 2, even though he’s never finished wing 1 or even played 2?

Heroes were cool when you were limited to 3 of them. You still had to make one friend.

They shouldn’t have made the move to full hero parties until GW2 release, when they were ready to effectively sign off on the game and wanted to make it playable with a drastically reduced player base.

GW2, on the other hand, does not need heroes. All of the story content is designed around solo play, and the group content is designed to make players find and play in groups

GW1 henchies/heroes were a design compromise that enabled them to build a game that was nothing but a series of group dungeons and still have that game be somewhat playable solo. Henchies were better at this as they had a drawback compared to real people. Heroes were cool from a narrative standpoint, but from a design standpoint they totally wrecked grouping and the social elements of the game.

phys.7689:

The loot really isnt the main issue to discuss about raids anymore, imo.

The big issues are that;
Its the main endgame activity (challenge and goal)
It requires 10 men
It looks like it will need highly specific playstyles and builds (waiting for healer)

Feels like raids are going to highlight all the flaws of raids in other games and have little to no connection to the old gw2 ideals.

Gw2 raids should have been designed to be, easy to attempt
Able to be organically organized
Involve combat that requires reaction and short term prediction over stat crush
Designed to have many ways to solve a problem with various play types (guaranteed dmg bad)
Not require waiting for x role

Really seems like raids are at odds with gw2 design, and seems like gw2 is changing to accomodate raids rather than vice versa. Not looking forward to the effects on the game

Did you watch the stream about raid design? They specifically made a point to address that they go out of their way to design the raid so that there isn’t a situation where “need class X” is a thing.

They are designing the raids around GW2’s combat system, and the changes to the combat system and PvE roles in general have more to do with build variety than raid design.

In fact, the process of designing raids has allowed skill and profession designers to ferret out unbalanced PvE builds and generally work toward a healthier game.

The point is that up until now you only really had to play the entire combat system in PvP. In PvE all you played was damage, reflect, dodge. That was boring compared to the extremely intricate PvE systems we had in GW1 where knowing enemy abilities, key interrupts, target order, range, and party composition was actually important, and the content was actually challenging.

Canakun.8031:

Ald.9418:

Lets not fix a huge problem because it may create another problem down the line. That’s what i got from the OP. Could it happen and will it happen? I’m sure it will, but anything’s better than the current garbage zerker meta.

I’d love to run a full bunker tank and support build and let all the zerkers do their thing but the current content doesn’t encourage it. It’s not required because the current group PVE content is terrible and has been since launch. That needs to change if this games PVE is ever going to be taken seriously.

Are there really great groups that make everyone else look terrible? Absolutely there are. Unfortunately when clear times become the best indication of skill rather than the act of clearing difficult content, then the content is subpar.

This can be fixed by encouraging and requiring different play styles and gearing as well as more intricate boss mechanics. This is what i feel Anet is trying to accomplish and i for one welcome it.

What you’re “getting” from me is incorrect.
I don’t consider the current meta to be an issue.
The point of my post is to let people know that what they’ve caused by complaining about the meta being strict, is caused an even stricter meta to come into existence. This is factual.
The zerk meta was simply the fastest way of clearing content that, theoretically, any build combination could complete. The only factor was time.
The new meta will factor other things into completion. There will no longer be ANY play how you want completion, especially with raids. There will be a strict set of builds and play styles that you MUST adhere to if you wish to participate and clear content.

This is what I’m saying. This isn’t fixing anything. The same people will still clear content, and the same people will still complain about meta strictness. Bearbow rangers and other PHIW builds will still be removed from any group who is serious about completing content.

This. Has. Not. Solved. Anything.
At all.

False. It has solved a very important problem. More than one role is now worth building

It doesn’t matter that people will complain they can’t “play what they want” It fixes the fact that what people want to play, in large part, was unplayable at all

Yes, people will complain that they can’t take their zerk build to a group that’s full on DPS. However, people can also easily swap out builds, just as they did in GW1 to fill another role in stead.

The reason you don’t view the previous meta as a problem is that you’re more interested in content being efficient than you are in content being challenging and engaging. no part of the all-dps meta created challenging content. It created an environment where everything but damage builds didn’t just have problems getting in to pugs or statics, but that it was literally impossible to find a spot because those builds were not needed at all

People will always complain about something, however, people that complain in an environment where multiple roles are both required and valueable in PvE content are simply playing bad builds, whereas people complaining in the current environment are playing good builds that the content doesn’t actually require

That’s the difference.

Honestly, the problem with evasion is that, like stealth, people are more likely to complain “I can’t hit random buttons and deal damage”

It doesn’t matter that it takes a bit more skill to actively evade than facetank with protection and much better EHP, the perception from both the developer and the player base ends up being the same: You got wrecked by an overpowered class in stead of a better player.

See, when you get wrecked by a better… let’s say warrior. You felt like you had a chance, even if you didn’t. You probably dealt damage to that guy, you probably watched his HP bar drop at least a bit. Even if you were massively outclassed in terms of player ability you felt like you had a chance because you saw some of your tools being effectively applied.

The problem with stealth, and evasion for that matter, is when you get beat you feel like everything you did was pointless. You’re either swinging at air or seeing a string of “evade evade evade” and players find that frustrating.

When developers test content in a live environment, they are players, and a lack of objectivity leads to the same result. They believe the class is more powerful that it actually is.

However, when you take a look at the people that have the best understanding of the game’s mechanics and their practical applications, your top tier PvP teams (and going forward your most effective or efficient raiders for the PvE end) you get a completely different story. Thieves have a niche use that isn’t even a thief niche after HoT, and beyond that every other class can fulfill their role better in combat, and thieves boil down to shortbow 5 decap bots.

It’s that story they should be balancing around. That level of play has bled out all but the most effective strategies as a result of the competitive environment.

We need to start by increasing theif durability, but it can’t be through more stealth and evasion simply because our stealth and evasion based defenses are what led to where we are now

These tools create a perception, no matter how incorrect, that we are more powerful than we are because our ability to dictate the terms of engagement allows us to bend these tools to our advantage and display a facade of invincibility when we know we can actually pull it off.

More armor, life on hit, passive healing, toughness, or base HP is not the most fun or skillful way to increase our sustain, but it’s the way most likely to stick and not be nerfed in to oblivion next time designers rotate.

It would be fine if they just plain heavily moderated the most egregious offenders and actually communicated with us.

However, in order to moderate the thief forums someone would have to actually read them in the first place

Runiir.6425:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

uh, necromancers were also designed for attrition in mind, a part of tanking, engineers were originally the kings of control, a vital component to tanking and mob control so by that right they both should be fantastic in that area as well

Mob control in the way engineers did it is not tanking, that is support known as the controller…aka the CCer.

Necro is attrition but lacks the mitigation, known as a DoTer in most MMOs. Massive health pool but again, no real mitigation and frankly not many tools (Reaper on the other hand…has some serious tools to get the job done with the right support so this could work).

Does anyone remember the way they said agro would work way back before launch? Heavy armor and the toughness stat was supposed to have a passive agro increasing effect, thus heavy armor wearers were supposed to have boss agro pretty easily wrapped up. Healing others was also supposed to increase agro (active and passive). Using a shield increased passive agro as well.
Why not just bring this back? It wasn’t guaranteed agro, it simply increased passive agro generation.

GW2’s design (just like GW1) is built around this idea that we’re not really supposed to have a firm idea of aggro control. We’re supposed to be more reactive to enemy aggro than proactive. There are ways around this, positioning-wise, but in general I think the intent is that no aggro-related plan survives first contact with the enemy totally intact.

The more their weight aggro toward stats we can actually control and measure, the more the combat system loses the “you don’t control aggro, aggro controls you” feel that the Guild Wars games have always kinda had.

As a utility? probably not.

If it simply shared a CD with steal? Totally.

I don’t think I’d give up a button for it, as, I mean, with initiative swaps aren’t all that useful for us anyway. It’s almost a non-cost to take a shortbow.

Be nice to have other options though, like have enough mobility to p/p secondary or something, or swap between MH sword and dagger situationally.

I like this idea that endurance regen should scale, or at the very least outside sources of endurance should scale as a percent.

Like, we get an okay amount of endurance from the DD line, but given how reliant that line is on the custom dodges (and as long as they fix the animation lag and other bugs the dodges are great) it seems odd that all our sustain comes from evades which we may or may not be able to use, and which are conditionally dependant on enemy action rather than our own.

Like, why is so much of DD “if your opponent does X and you successfuly counter it, you get Y” when everyone else gets “you press button X and you get Y”

Can’t we get buffs and effects for just doing a thing, and let the counters pay out the inherent reward of, you know, actually just being counters? I mean that’s how everyone else works.

If the point of the line is to make available much more durable thieves, we either need even more endurance, or some form of passive defense (base HP, toughness, or some kind of baseline life on hit) to make that a reality.

Astralporing.1957:

PopeUrban.2578:

What makes repeated completion of a piece of content compelling is the rewards. Those can take many forms, but the one people seem to agree universally are the most fun and interesting are skins.

These are the reasons people are proponents of exclusivity. It’s not about bribery, or limitations, but rather about feeling that what you’re doing is special and different than the other things you could be doing, and that the lasting mark on your character as a result is reflective of the stuff you did.

You do realize, that works only for the people that wanted to do that content in the first place? If you didn’t want to do it (because you don’t like the content, or, even worse, are not skilled enough for it), then it achieves the result exactly opposite. It makes you feel that what you are doing is a boring and painful slog, that saps the fun out of the game.

Besides, of course it is about bribery (“noone would be doing it otherwise”) and limitations (“it would be worthless if everyone could get it”).

In the broadest definition all forms of reward are bribery there is, however, a difference between effective bribery that encourages and rewards different content differently, and ineffective bribery like what you’re proposing, that only rewards the single least difficult and most efficient path toward a given reward

It’s easy to think we live in a world where people would do content just because it’s fun and be happy with getting more tokens from harder content, but it’s simply not true. If it were we’d see it as the predominant reward model. After you’ve done every given piece of content a few times fun takes a back seat to advancement and reward

LS2 is some of my favorite content. I have done it about five times now. However, I’m not going to run it a sixth time because At some point repeating an experience just for the experience is not fun any more

Exclusive rewards encourage people to try new content. They exist to extend, through what you pejoratively term ‘bribery’ and I call ‘fun loot’ the life span of a given piece of content because try as you might, it is impossible to push content at a rate that exceeds player consumption.

You’re going to be repeating something when you play a game like this. The goal of a fun and interesting loot system is that when you repeat something you enjoy you come out the other end with something unique to show for it.

A bad loot system says “yeah, you beat the end of the world like thirty times, here’s the same thing you could have obtained by picking flowers for three months while you watch netflix”

Should there be an exclusive reward for people that pick flowers for three months and watch netflix? Absolutely! Should the end result, mechanically, of all forms of play be the same? Absolutely! Should players expect to have access to every reward in the game if they are not also willing to tackle every type of content in the game? I don’t believe they should.

If I’m not willing to grind out 1200 daisies for the legendary armor of ultimate daisy picking, I shouldn’t have it, the same as if someone isn’t willing to work with a team of 9 people to fight the tongue monster shouldn’t have the legendary armor of tongue monster slaying.

It is my opinion, and it seems to be the opinion of the developers of this game that all content should be rewarding, but all content should not, however, have the same rewards.

Gav.1425:

Why do you think that a random team should be comparable to a team specifically designed for content?

It’s the stated balance goal of the game. Literally “every class can fill any role”

It’s not a matter of random teams. It’s a matter of taking a random assortment of classes and ensuring that if each player in the comp makes build adjustments so that it results in a balanced comp of heavy DPS, support builds, and damage soak builds that the content is actually completable within a reasonable time frame compared to all other group compositions with the intended mix of roles.

As of right now, there is one, and only one role that has any value in PvE, and that role is damage. You can run that role on any class. The problem is that by function of class design one specific comp is not just more efficient, but so much more efficient that it makes it a waste of time to run anything else

Do you really think arenanet intended that all content be completable by nothing but damage builds with a bare minimum of support? It is obvious they view this as a problem, and it’s not the fault of the players, but the fault of how classes, skills, and content is designed.

all damage builds should be a no-go as much as running all bunker builds or all support builds as if your content doesn’t require people to bring a balanced party with a mix of roles, why would you bother designing those roles, or providing gear for those roles?

You should have to make sure you have a good group comp for content. As of right now there are plenty of good comps, but they’re all overshadowed by a single group comp that is 20 times more efficient

That’s a problem, and one Anet seems to intend to fix. When your design goal is that class roles are flexible, and players should have the ability to take any selection of classes and choose builds that make it work, it breaks the entire system when one specific option is not just slightly better (there will always be a comp that is more efficient than others) but so much better that it makes all other options effectively pointless in comparison

Zerk is just as bad as if the meta was “all healers” or “all tanks” or “All engineers” etc. etc.

Healthy balance means not just giving people the option of running multiple roles, but ensuring that in order to complete content those roles are required, otherwise you end up in the situation we are in right now. There is one role, everybody does it, and it severely hampers build options and trivializes content. That’s just bad for the health of the game.

Yeah, you can still train or help your friends. This allows you to work in less “static” groups if you want as you can have a group of say 12 people and still work together to get all 12 of them their rewards for the week, and give people a bit of flexibility for scheduling.

It’s way better than an instance lockout as it allows people to repeat it to help their friends finish even if they already got their loot for the week, or set up multiple “raid days” and allow people more freedom in scheduling and still let people do both days for the trash loot, practice, and friendship if they want.

There will always be a meta, but the prevailing meta for PvE content does not necessarily always represent the most efficient way to run that content as much as it represents the easiest group to form that can run the content the fastest

Take a look back at GW1. There were meta groups for every single piece of content, however those meta groups had a lot of flexibility, and more importantly running the meta wasn’t a massive difference from just running a balanced comp.

GW2s meta problem is that the way encounters are designed, the zerk meta isn’t just more efficient than a balanced comp. It’s actually like 20 times more efficient

That’s broken content, broken class balance, or both.

It’s not that the meta exists that was ever the problem. It’s that the meta is so much more effective than a mixture of damage, support, and control roles that it effectively makes them pointless

I’m sure that going forward there will be new meta, and that’s fine, but you can’t design content around a meta that is literally 20 times as efficient as how developers designed the content to be run because the content is then borderline impossible for everything but one very specific comp.

This means designing content where support and control aren’t supplemental, but vital to completion. Content up until now has been built around this idea that ‘you should be able to finish stuff if everyone just does damage and reflects’ and that resulted in the natural outcome: People build for nothing but damage and reflects.

You can’t expect builds to be useful if content doesn’t require what they bring to the table. Thus, if they want to make tank stats, healing, and control skills viable in pvE, it follows that content must exist that requires those skills.

Past that it’s on arenanet to balance classes so that every one of the can fill at least two, if not all three of those roles if they truly still want to design a game where there are no “required” classes.

A lot of the elite spec stuff seems to be doing that sort of fill-in-the-blanks stuff, adding roles (or at least trying to) to classes that they couldn’t access before.

It’s fine to need a healer, and a guy to tank the trash spawner on the far side of the room while everyone else fights the boss or whatever, so long as druid isn’t the only healer and guardian isn’t the only class capable of tanking the trash spawner, etc.

Unless I’m missing something, druid doesn’t all of a sudden have access to ally targeted heals.

If you want to heal you’ve got to be dealing damage and tagging given what I just saw.

I find it absurd that you’re calling world bosses challenging (or are of the opinion they’re supposed to be) or WvW easy.

World bosses will continue to be autoattack faceroll content with good rewards that reflect their spawn timers and loot cooldowns more than their difficulty.

WvW will continue to revolve primarily around numbers, commander strategy, and willingness of zergs to heed their commanders.

“Druids in a group against a world boss”

So the case you’re trying to make is that a mess of druids will somehow remove the challenge from content that is already designed on purpose to be the least challenging content in the game.

“Druids in WvW”

Fights at that scale already boil down to a few key abilities layered on top of a bunch of damage spam. Having a zerg of druids around blasting heals all over won’t change that except that rangers will gain a valuable zerg battle role like everyone that isn’t a thief. This is no functionally different than fights revolving around reflects and might stacking. It simply broadens that meta without changing it up much at all.

I’m waiting to see the other balance tweaks. The goal isn’t that there are no roles, and it never was. The goal is that players can quickly transition between roles and fill them effecitvely without having to go level up and acquire gear for more characters.

LF 2 healers is fine when the system is built in a way that literally every character in the party, or even most of them, hadve the option of playing a healer with some trait swaps. It’s not fine when one class, that someone had to spend a week or two leveling, is the only viable option.

If we can move back in the GW1 direction where a party of 8 can be randomly selected and simply tweak their builds to complement each other in stead of having to kick out certain classes just to have a decent party comp, we’ll be in good shape.