Guild Wars 2

I still think the best practice raid mode is playing the raid itself in a training context. It doesn’t make sense to me to dull the mechanics of the fight and call it a ‘practice’ mode when that kind wouldn’t even remotely prepare you for the actual encounter.

maddoctor.2738:

Maybe the Raid will be inside the Foundry!

I’m getting DoA Trenchway flashbacks.

I brought this up to the Fractals team back when I was a forum specialist, and I still think it’s very relevant now. A Fractal armor set for all weight classes is something we truly need in the game, and having it be either a legendary armor or a collection achievement to get the ascended pieces would be an incredible journey.

Sartharina.3542:

… why a 60-second combat lock?

Presumably so you don’t immediately start regenerating HP back to 100% and to maintain some measure of thoughtfulness in the proper usage of the item (ie. Don’t use if surrounded by fifty Chak).

I like getting my dailies just playing regularly in ranked play. It’d be pretty annoying to have to play unranked or custom arenas for the extra 2g. I think they should get rid of the class wins and simply have it be “win a game”.

I agree with the majority of posters thus far; it should be fixed. Thanks for asking!

videoboy.4162:

It’s also the only currency, besides silver and copper that has an upgraded version. But, unlike silver and copper, it doesn’t automatically upgrade to the next highest currency as you collect it.

Silver and copper aren’t currencies, they’re units of a currency. The currency itself is ‘coin’ whether you’re talking in units of gold, silver, or copper. In case you don’t believe me, take a look at your in-game wallet.

fishball.7204:

The fact that you can buy the +5 agony for 25 relic then sell it back for 75 keeps it going for a long long time.

This sounds like an oversight of the AR update.

danizmax.4329:

Thanks for the link. I must say, I’m a bit angry, Anet keeps doing dumb things without good reasons, or explanations why they do it…

Just sell it on the TP, and then buy as many +7’s or +9’s as you want. It’s worth more the way they did it, so you’re better off this way. Your anger is irrational.

videoboy.4162:

I guess that’s why they removed all the other lower versions of items you could upgrade to the better versions. Oh wait…

It’s a currency, not an item. They will never let you upconvert normal relics to pristine relics.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Or they could… you know… make the ascended salvage drop rate not TOTALLY INSANE so that even normal people can afford the Fractal Reliquary.

This is an extremely good idea assuming they only adjust the value of the ascended amulet salvage item. The idea of spending 1700g on the item from the TP is awful, and yet I’d love to be able to dump Fractal Relics daily.

Astralporing.1957:

Specifically, that most players do not care about challenge and would rather go for a safer run than a faster one.

This is very true; people want safe runs because it’s not fun wiping repeatedly with people you know nothing about just to get something done that you do literally every day. That said, if boons weren’t so risky and condition damage weren’t so much stronger than power damage you’d see a lot of other much safer compositions show up in T4 with things like Chrono/Herald protection sharing or even DH Hammer protection spam making a comeback.

The Fractals team itself recognizes the problems I’m talking about here, so I’m fairly confident they’re taking actions to fix it up in a coming release.

Ubik.8315:

With the DH/druid meta this is a particular issue if the team stacking those classes arrives first. Good luck getting 2 DH and a druid off point. XD

It’s especially egregious in the current meta, I completely agree, but I think it will be a problem with any meta down the road as well. A larger capture point would do a lot of good I think.

So I’ve played an obscene amount of Capricorn and there are some things I really like about the map, and some things I dislike about the map. I think it’s one of the better maps overall, and with very minor tweaks could easily become one of the best maps.

Things I love about the map:

• Large distance between points means rotations are important and increases the importance of winning team fights.
• Lots of LoS spots all over the northern and southern parts of the map encourage tricky playing.
• The LoS and areas around middle point make for some exciting burst/evasion plays. It’s like the best parts of TotSS and LoF middle points combined.

Things that need to be fixed about the map:

• The bell being a snowball mechanic means the late game isn’t as exciting as it could be since there is little chance for a comeback. My recommendation here would be to make it worth 25 points for both teams the first time it spawns, 50 points for both teams the second time it spawns, and 75 points for both teams the third time it spawns. Doing it this way makes it more of a gamechanger and potential comeback mechanic. This will also make it much more enjoyable to watch matches on the map, which is important.
• The bell capture point really needs to be a large capture point like the archway. Right now layering AOEs makes it a little more of a clusterkitten than it should be, and fights on it aren’t as exciting as they could be. I think making the bell capture point larger would also make encounters here more fun to observe.
• Both spawn points need to be angled so that players spawn facing out of their main door. Right now they’re both at a weird angle (but especially blue) which is a silly thing to have to deal with.

I think with minor adjustments, this could be a fifth ranked map quite easily, and hope that it gets added to the rotation next season! Good job, devs!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s a lot of work to create multiple versions of an instance and it commits ANet to additional future work to make sure they can continue to deliver it after changing traits/skills, AI, etc. I’d rather they focus their limited resources on other aspects of the game.

Bingo. The overhead here is massive for very little effective gain. If they start adding raid variants like this, it really cuts into their ability to deliver new content on a reasonable schedule.

How cool would it be to have a new raid wing as part of the Ring of Fire island chain? I’m pretty hopeful as part of our continuing exploration of new zones in LS3 we’ll get a new raid wing.

LeeLoo.6287:

Can we get some feedback or Anet thoughts on the matter from any of the devs?

They can’t do that; it would have sweeping repercussions. All we can do is hope that they’re hearing and make adjustments accordingly.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

You missed GotL. That’s 15% extra condition and power based damage that cannot be stripped by boon thieves. Also the 15% damage increase is very very noticeable and it’s a huge bump in dasmage. Yes minion healing is nice too. GotL is the main reason and the fact that spirits exist too.

This is all true, but 99% of pubs don’t stack close enough to get those stacks. If we want to talk about the actual optimal composition, it’s 1 Condi PS Warr, 1 Condi Druid, 2 Condi Necros, and 1 Chronomancer. Played well this will result in massively improved clear times of every T4 fractal.

The important thing to remember about ~4 Necro is that it’s faceroll by design. It’s intended to require low effort, no stacking, no buffing, and enables you to just yolo everything. If a Druid honestly runs around trying to give people GotL stacks in this comp, it’s going to be pretty fruitless. At best Sun Spirit is useful and you can heal people here and there if they’re being particularly bad. This is why when I get a 5 Necro comp in T4 Fractals the clear times are even faster than you’d get with a Druid just because of the fifth Epidemic and the fact that the Druid is underutilized.

A condition PS Warrior would contribute more to team DPS than a Druid even if the Druid kept the Jagged Horrors alive forever. The entire purpose of the team composition is to care as little as possible and faceroll through everything at the cost of being incredibly suboptimal. It’s for this reason that I’ve always felt the Druid is a little out of character.

Maybe if it’s a Magi’s Druid just so players don’t have to dodge any more it would be OK.

I’m going to take this lovely image as an opportunity to chat about the most common pub compositions for Fractals.

I don’t think this really says anything about Necromancers or Druids per se, but rather says a lot about the way every fractal is constructed, including the bosses even. Honestly, I think the Druid is completely unnecessary in the comp because it’s basically impossible to die as a remotely competent Necromancer in T4 Fractals.

• There are always a number of targets present, so Epidemic is always relevant.
• There are no DPS checks or enrage mechanics, so taking a bit longer but being much safer is very valuable for runs with players you don’t know anything about.
• Most enemies aren’t remotely threatening to competent players, but are noob-killers that prey on players who don’t know how to handle their classes or the fractal’s mechanics.
• Toughness scaling at high levels strongly encourages condition damage builds and not power builds.
• Many encounters outright encourage range with more melee-punishing mechanics than range-punishing mechanics (ie. Imbued Shaman / Archdiviner / Molten Duo / Mai Trin)

Even if they nerfed Necromancers to oblivion, it would just become 4 condi Engineers and a Druid, or whatever. The lack of build diversity is entirely due to the fractals’ mechanics and the overarching toughness mechanics.

Alternatively, I think it should be like the Slubling Tonic / Ghostly Infusion where you can sell it on the TP. Either way I absolutely agree; something must be done so that you can recoup value from it.

These sigils don’t work on any mobs specific to the raids themselves (Escort/Trio/Boss Adds). The only enemies in raids that allow you to build stacks, if memory serves, are the Pocket Raptors just before VG.

• Make the Trebuchet vulnerable to condition damage.
• Have the Trebuchet directly influence points somehow. Currently it is a loss in almost all cases to use the Trebuchet instead of being on a point. If a player has to commit to it to use it, then it needs to be rewarding. An idea here would be to make a Trebuchet hit grant 1 point per hit to the Trebbing player’s team.
• Unlike all other map mechanics, it doesn’t employ a player’s skill with their class to take advantage of the Trebuchet. This is actually a really bad thing, because it means you have to train yourself on the exact power-up levels to hit certain points or else you’re less than useless, and this is incongruous with all other maps. If it were up to me, I’d simply have three skills on the Trebuchet that target clocktower, windmill, and mansion and will do all of the work for you of hitting the point if pressed.

Recruiting continues!

If any of the things we talk about in the OP sound good to you, reach out to myself or one of the other officers and chat with them about the guild! They’ll see if you’re a good fit, and if so they’ll send an invitation. Either post here or message me if you have any questions about the guild, the things we do, the kind of people we are, or whatever!

As before, we’re definitely looking for people interested in raids to go with us on any of our days (Mon/Fri). If you’re interested in learning and are willing to get the gear and build needed, definitely let us know!

I actually just did this last night for a guildie. You have to activate the challenge mote and then everyone has to vote to ‘do the challenge’. Once that happens you’ll get an achievement buff on your bar and when you kill the boss you’ll get the item. If you don’t have the achievement buff, you won’t be awarded the reward.

This website (http://qtfy.enjin.com/builds) is what you should be referencing for all up-to-date raid builds and rotations. This page (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/) has the full DPS benchmarks for every relevant build and class right now.

I agree with the philosophy that you should watch videos and learn bosses well before ever stepping foot in the arena. First-hand practice is far more valuable than guides, but I learned all bosses strictly by studying and then trial by fire, and in all cases succeeded in those first runs.

As for how many people raid, it’s hard to say. IWN’s metrics from GW2Efficiency are pretty compelling, and the conclusions are well determined. I’ve always felt that the raiding community is a healthy size throughout the week, but overall well less than 10% of the population. Only ANet knows for sure, but that’s just my gut instinct.

pranker.3748:

Actually Dungeons were primarily ran because of the different themes each dungeon had, because of the story behind it, different weapons and armors, challenging etc.

And—unfortunately—all of those things are exactly the overhead that made them unsustainable. A new weapon set for every dungeon, major terrain-building overhead, the need for major story elements, custom enemy models and animations, etc. Fractals suffer none of these problems or they’re all substantially reduced for them

pranker.3748:

I remember doing dungeons in the first few days all in rare gear, mixed stats, could barely get past AC graveling. As time passed people got better at them, yet Anet released no updates nor did they release new dungeons. It was like that basically for 3 years. Towards the end they were primarily ran only because of money, I agree, but at first it was more to it than just that. Lack of new content (dungeon wise) made players hate them and everyone was just searching for new ‘’to go too’’ PvE place after a year or so post release (which came with Fotm 20/30/40/50 but same story happened as with dungeons).

I remember all of that too. I ultimately agree that it’d be awesome if ANet had the staff and capability to expand Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids all in unison. That said, dungeons have huge overhead as discussed before, and their attempts to create new dungeons resulted in a lot of work for very little gain.

Fractals are in a great place right now. Some may argue that they need to be harder, but this is mostly a result of power creep in the classes than the content itself. Mistlocks are uninspired right now, but they know and that’ll change going forward. I’ve seen firsthand that introducing new players to Fractals inspires the same wonderment that you and I experienced 4 years ago with dungeons… We’re just a bit jaded having seen one thing and now knowing another.

pranker.3748:

Don’t think there would be anything wrong if we got new dungeon every now and then. Even if it’s based on LS or personal story areas and mobs. We need to scratch that ‘’wonder whats in that chest today’’ itch and some content is just so dull and seen one too many times.

Ultimately, yes, we need a steady stream of new, instanced, PvE content. Fortunately, raids are great and that team has done a wonderful job of creating a sustainable pace. Additionally, the raid team has helped the fractal team with a number of things and they appear to be setting a good pace for themselves as well. I’m looking forward to what they produce, especially with the continuing story of the Chaos Isle fractal.

• Raids would be easier with this change, necessitating major rebalances for which the team doesn’t have time.
• There would be reduced team diversity because you’d pick 1 of every relevant support type and then fill the rest with DPS. Fewer support players is bad in this case.
• Changing boon share across all game modes breaks balance in places like WvW. Making it PvE specific breaks open world. Making it raid specific breaks consistency.

This will never and should never be changed.

R O C.6574:

ROI? The dungeons were always very active until they nerfed the rewards. There was a good full year where all i did was PVP and dungeon runs.

Return On Investment. Basically, for ANet to continue updating dungeons and adding new ones, it would take a large amount of effort and provide little gain to the actual company. Fractals make a lot more sense for them to work on because it’s less effort and the players like new content there just as much as they would new dungeons.

Dungeons were active because they were extraordinarily lucrative. I don’t agree with the way they nerfed gold rewards, but the fact that basically no one played them following the nerf was very telling that people on average were running them strictly for loot and not for the content itself.

Lendruil.9061:

Adding a few T6 mats will nobody motivate to farm the raidbosses over and over again, but it’s a nice reward for people that are helping out others that need raid kills later in the week. As it is now, if I am helping others later in the week, or others are helping me, the food cost is already higher than the reward that you get.

I agree that it would be a nice incentive without singularly motivating people to run it repeatedly. I think the only issue with this suggestion is that at ANet adding a faucet for items like that requires the involvement of the economy team, which takes the economy team away from whatever their doing, and so on and so forth. It’s really not as simple as just chucking some T6 bags at players. While I don’t think any of that is prohibitive, I think the raid team is being kept busy enough that they might not rank it highly on their to-do list.

pranker.3748:

I don’t think you fully understand the problem at hand. Right now you have a wave of rewards from cleaning the wings, after that it’s complete kitten. The elite content gets wiped a side by some brain afk meta map event chain.

Yes, but the things you quoted me saying still apply. I really don’t think ANet wants to incentivize rerunning raid bosses repeatedly. It’s incomparable to meta maps or PvP or something like that because those activities are dynamic by design, whereas a raid boss—even if you change up comp or there are errors to recover from—ultimately goes basically the same way every time. You could probably make some pretty cogent arguments against that, but I think that’s where ANet is coming from regardless. Part of the problem is that big rewards from raids are awarded when the boss is killed (which varies a lot for different groups), whereas rewards from PvP or WvW are ultimately time gated by the reward track system.

I get that you’re upset about it. Paul and the rest of the raid team are hopefully reading this thread and will see the collective thoughts on it and maybe do something about it. Suffice it to say that I think they’d need to make a conscious design shift in their philosophy on raids to adjust the weekly timeout or let people farm them ad nauseum. It’s not something they’ll be able to just do. Hopefully that makes sense.

Fractals are intended to be the end-game 5-man content that ANet is supporting going forward. They’re not going to suddenly start supporting dungeons and fractals, as there just isn’t the ROI for it to be worth it.

Fixing the forum bug.

I don’t oppose daily rewards or anything, but I do think that for the average raid player you go through everything once per week and then by that time the weekly reset has hit and you can do it again. It also serves to extend the lifetime of the content if you’re incentivized to do every different boss/event only once per week. I seriously don’t think it’s realistic to expect that a majority of raiders finish all 9 bosses in 2 hours Monday night. Adding a daily reward I could see a number of my friends running 9 bosses daily and then quitting the game after a couple of months (a number of my friends are pretty obsessive about always getting maximum raid rewards). I’m pretty sure the weekly lockout is specifically to discourage those burnouts.

I also think this will be even less of an issue the more raids get introduced, which is definitely part of the design. The raid team, by my understanding, is going to keep producing raids at the pace they always have, and we should see something before the end of the year from them.

Furthermore, I still stand by my previous post that as a raider who clears everything generally every week, I feel pretty well rewarded by the content. I get a lot of gold, great gold value out of the guaranteed exotics on average, good ascended turnaround, magnetite shards converting to gold or to ascended gear, etc. It feels good as it is. Now granted that doesn’t take into account a player beating a boss repeatedly back-to-back, but still.

We’re still recruiting in case anyone had any doubts!

We’re definitely looking for raiders that meet our times and also are casual and fun while still being good players. Outside of that, anyone is welcome to the guild who likes the kind of guild that we are (casual / friendly / fun / not-demanding / etc). If those things sound good to you, let one of the officers know in-game and we’ll see if you’re a good fit!

Honestly? I think having done it for so long that raid rewards are pretty great as-is. You get a guaranteed exotic every kill which for me averages pretty high in value between great sigils/runes and high-value stat combinations. Magnetite shards have a lot of effective value in gold either in ascended gear, skins, or gold. Finally, you have a chance to just get ascended stuff for free, and the 2g from the kill is nothing to scoff at either.

Now while I agree that re-running a boss isn’t very rewarding, I think the idea is to discourage re-running bosses to reduce the potential for burnout. Eventually, they’ll have a very large number of bosses to run across 2+ raids and it’ll be very difficult for a majority of players to clear everything in a given week. I think it’ll work out in the end.

That all said, I wish Fractals had similar usages for fractal relics as Raids have for magnetite shards.

I don’t find it difficult to do. Did it last night for Sab with full pubs and killed it in 4 pulls. The hardest part of it, IMO, is finding a caller haha. I just never feel like doing it in pubs.

Malpractice.7850:

Secondly, engineers need to be given something to make them desirable to bring, given their very difficult rotation. It should be rewarding in some way.

Higher toughness bosses/enemies with nothing to epidemic bounce off of favors Engineer heavily right now, those just don’t really exist in the current raid. Maybe once ANet does whatever they plan to do with Epidemic (who knows) we’ll see more Engineers.

Also, Revenant gets used in basically every raid group. That’s pretty high in demand IMO!

You’re right. It’s not optimal; it’s easy and is a nice safeguard and carry class if you end up on a team with really bad players. That’s why it’s so popular.

Crazy to think that even with 5000+ posts I don’t break top-ten. Some of you guys are really dedicated! Very cool statistics!

Amineo.8951:

Just because you’re different doesn’t mean everyone is like you, you’re speaking for a minority again

While you’re correct that not everyone is like me, there are more doing it that way than people realize. I’ve run as the 10th player in a lot of 9-player groups who are extremely friendly and are willing to help their pals through bosses and to teach them the ropes. Just last night I was in a full pub run of Matthias where 3 people had never killed the boss, had the stuff explained to them, and then we went on to kill it in 6 pulls. That’s better than most experienced runs I get on that boss! Really, my ultimate point is that it’s not as bad as you think. All it takes is a little initiative and dedication and you, too, can be killing everything every week.

Esquilax.3491:

Ya right, except you won’t let average player into your group because we haven’t already done raid 100 times. Public groups are out of the question for someone wanting to start raids.

My only personal requirement when I make a pub is that they understand the mechanics well enough to not need them explained. If they are bad players who die repeatedly and consistently fail the mechanics, they’ll be removed from the group after a few failures so it doesn’t affect the entire team too badly. I don’t think anything about that is particularly unfair.

Esquilax.3491:

Join a guild raid? Most already have their “core raid team” maybe sometimes they might run a “pitty party” and kill 1 boss with some member who aren’t in the inner circle for charity work, but nothing serious.

Speaking as a leader of one such guild, you’re absolutely incorrect. I am willing to bring any serious member of the guild to any boss and explain the whole fight and work it through with them. If they’re an extremely bad player and can’t stay alive through anything, well, then we bring them to easier encounters so that they can practice. Obviously if they show no signs of improvement or willingness to improve, I’m not going to keep bringing them. Again, nothing here seems particularly outlandish or unfair to ask of players.

Esquilax.3491:

This exclusivity is why raids are bad.

The perception that all or even a majority of groups are exclusive is what’s bad, as it’s just not true. I see training runs grouping up and learning all of the time and have even helped them out. I personally lead a guild that brings total new raiders into difficult encounters and witness them thrive. The exclusivity is self-imposed; people see groups asking for requirements and then assume that all groups have requirements and then give up. If you’re serious about wanting to be a raider, you can do what we all did back in the day—gear up appropriately, practice a lot with your class on DPS rotations and skill usage, watch a lot of videos, and then get in there and try it!!

Raids are the only thing that’s keeping the difficulty-seeking player base interested and logging into GW2 consistently. It may not be an enormous subset of the playerbase, but it’s a significantly vocal and valuable subset. It also gives average-skill players something to work toward in a PvE sense so that there feels like real end-game content.

I hope for me and other people like me that ANet continues developing raids well into future expansions and beyond.

P.S. Assuming that raids are somehow responsible for low revenue numbers is unfounded and ridiculous.

Raids were never meant to replace Dungeons, Fractals were. Raids are their own end-game PvE content with their own design philosophies. Fractals are being actively developed as the end-game 5-man PvE content. It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone like the OP who might like smaller scale PvE wouldn’t like 10-man raids.

That’s not a bad idea, honestly, but I already can’t die without trying very hard! It feels grossly unnecessary to get even more sustain, haha. xD

Yeah I’ve been at about 3 weeks with no ascended boxes as well, but I’ve gotten a few golden fractal skins instead. It’s all RNG, of course, but I agree that it feels bad. Would be nice if fractal relics worked the way of magnetite shards and could be used to buy guaranteed rewards over time.

As always, we’re still recruiting!

We’re definitely looking for raiders that meet our times and also are casual and fun while still being good players. Outside of that, anyone is welcome to the guild who likes what we propose in the first post. If those things sound good to you, let one of the officers know in-game and we’ll see if you’re a good fit!

It’s harder to damage after 50% because the platform vanishes and you cannot maintain proper melee rotations successfully. If you want to prove this to yourself, bring a Ranger to this fight and just Longbow spam the entire time. You’ll find that your numbers both above and below 50% HP are the exact same given the same buffs.

With all of the power creep I just low-man dungeons when I want to go. My guild and I consistently 3-man any dungeon path we feel like doing, even with suboptimal group compositions and the works.

Necromancers are at this point where I call my T4 Fractal build the “Miniyolomancer”. I just run into basically every encounter headlong with no regard for my personal safety and kill everything. The only difference between my build and the meta raid Necromancer build is that I run Plague Sending everywhere and my utilities are CPC, Epidemic, Rise!, and Corpse Golem (Lich only for some encounters). The general idea is that with enough minions it’s basically impossible to die even if you just facetank everything and you still clock in at a consistent 15k DPS even without Lich Form or your last utility.

The other classes are still great, but require much more effort to do well on. I definitely suggest a condition Necromancer if you’re just feeling out T3/T4 and want to learn how the mechanics have changed before using a higher skill build.

Jerus.4350:

It’s specifically to do something like say I want to play a Condi warrior that I don’t have geared up with AR. I don’t play it often, don’t want to play it often, making it not worth investing in a full set of 150AR gear. But, I want to screw around with it today, so I can forfeit my daily earnings (or just pay in general) to play it in them for the fun of it.

I know it’s a weird request, I’d be losing gold doing it, but getting to have fun with some things that I don’t normally use and isn’t worth the 100’s of gold investment for full AR gear.

That makes sense. The biggest issue though is even if it was at a gold loss, if you picked up an ascended armor box out of it you’d still be at a net positive. I have encountered a lot of bad players who would pay money to RNG the T4 daily ascended boxes, and that would be bad for the community. Currently those folks buy the T4 dailies that get sold, but at least in that respect they don’t hurt anyone else by pretending to be experienced and then failing horribly.

One thing I personally do is get ascended trinkets for everyone since they’re so accessible. With high enough AR in the trinkets alone with the 15AR potion, you can probably do T3 without issue. If the motivation is just to play with friends in T4, though, that doesn’t really help. Maybe if the fractal relic cost were high enough on a +150 AR potion it would be OK because presumably no one else but a really relic rich player could afford it. I don’t know if ANet would find this a very convincing reason to implement it, but who knows.

In order of importance to the raid and assigned roles in specific bosses, I recommend the following.

• Revenant / Warrior

Both generally get assigned to Mortars on Trio, Mushroom duty on Sloth, and timed bomb on Sabetha. Outside of that they stay in melee and punch things, which makes it pretty easy to pick up. Warriors have a more complex rotation than Revenant to both maintain might and do good damage, so the absolute easiest is Revenant.

• Guardian / Engineer

These are the odd classes out, but do offer some useful niche roles here and there. People like having a Guardian for Matthias for backup reflects and good DPS, while Engineer is great for VG due to extreme CC and great condition damage. Outside of that, these classes aren’t in extreme demand and thus when brought to other bosses typically don’t have many roles to work. They’re also middling in bulk and so don’t die easily.

• Thief / Necromancer

Both are incredibly bulky either through dodges or raw EHP, and are basic damage dealers. Thieves will get used on Sab cannons, both will hold Gors spirits depending on group composition, Necros will likely have to throw kegs at Narella in Trio, but otherwise there isn’t much here to worry about. These are fairly middling in difficulty, but on the lower end and aren’t that hard overall. The hardest part is the DPS rotation as little adjustments can make a big difference.

• Elementalist

Still in the damage dealer category, but harder than Thief and Necromancer due to added roles and reduced bulk. Elementalists will be clearing orbs at Gorseval, will be burning ice patches at Matthias, can be holding spirits at Gorseval, will be doing cannons at Sabetha, and will need to time invuls and blocks well to mitigate damage and stay alive against threatening bosses.

• Ranger / Mesmer

These are very difficult in different ways. Mesmer has to be able to time evades and blocks against extreme burst, and has to be able to provide quickness and alacrity with solid uptimes, and has to be able to move the toughness-based bosses effectively and know where to go and when. The Ranger, on the other hand, has in my opinion an equally difficult job at keeping people alive. While this shouldn’t be too bad in elite groups, in pubs your ability to pull off clutch plays will save runs or doom them depending on your skill. Both of these are the hardest roles in raids, and are not for new players.

Hopefully this all helps.