Guild Wars 2

For full disclosure, I completely agree with you, but I can’t really change ANet’s mind on their corporate policies unfortunately. I wish they would be more forthright about their targeted schedules, while making it clear that they’re targets and not definitives.

Raids should not have an easy mode with access to all of the rewards, especially not legendary armor. Not all legendary gear is for everyone. You can’t have the legendary PvP backpiece without playing ranked PvP. Notice how they’re not making it available to people who only play custom arenas? That’s intentional, and it’s the same reason why raids at their current difficulty are the only way to get legendary armor. They don’t want to devalue peoples’ accomplishments by making it easier to acquire.

Additionally, they added a search filter to the LFG in the most recent patch which has helped tremendously with finding people looking for raid groups. If you search for the boss name you’re looking to kill, you’ll find other people searching for that same boss. It isn’t a substitute to a raid category in the LFG, but it is a very useful temporary way of bypassing the issue.

As for some way to show “skill”, the best way to do so is to simply watch them play. You can always replace them if they’re bad.

TexZero.7910:

Not that it’s a matter of trust here, but shouldn’t this be something Anet says ?

Yeah, unfortunately they won’t say anything until it’s a definite yes that it’ll make it because people construe that as a promise. They made the mistake of talking too openly about schedules back in 2012, and it bit them hard in the coming years. Their policies are very strict about it now.

They’re targeting it for the Spring patch in April, but we haven’t received confirmation if it’ll make it or not.

Iris Ng.9845:

I still don’t think the reward is bad (denial stage) since my group gets nice loot every time. I’m just not the right person favored by RNG – woe is me.

I agree with this that it’s not too bad, but I do still think the “rare + exotic” loot should be “exotic + exotic” instead. At least that way you have a good chance of picking up some nice sigils/runes and making an extra 2-6g in addition to the boss gold reward.

I also stand firmly behind the notion that every boss for every raid wing should always reward 4g. The idea that Spirit Vale’s boss gold rewards will be cut in half when the second wing launches is insanity; the rewards will be painfully bad for the time investment then.

It increases your boon duration by 33% chance for 7 seconds when you swap to a weapon with that sigil. This only affects new boons created after swapping weapons and while this boon’s effect is active.

Ryn.6459:

I doubt i could survive one axe hit on my ele back then

I could.

I really think it’s power creep in the players that we’re experiencing and not that the actual bosses are significantly weaker. I think the L70 now = L50 then is pretty accurate overall, especially since some of the L80+ bosses really do hit like trucks. I mean it’s not like dungeons are easier—they weren’t even changed outside of liquid rewards—but my guild group still completes the fights significantly faster and takes significantly less overall damage from everything therein even in full DPS gear.

I greatly support this endeavor and am posting to leave my endorsement. I realize it will take a month of effort for Lawton, but it is a month that carries more value for me than the other low hanging fruit you might be working on. Either way, thank you for the effort!

So one thing that everyone in this thread is missing is that dodging with Lotus Training and Death Blossom have combo finishers. What fields are most commonly used in raids? Fire and ethereal. Both of these, when you whirl through them, create lots of added conditions. I can maintain upwards of 8 burning stacks on VG and even more on Sabetha through the use of whirl finishers inside of Wildfire fields. This adds a substantial amount of damage that simply autoattacking with quickness lacks.

Also, the idea that Sinister gear is better than Viper’s is very wrong. Daredevil condition DPS relies primarily on poison, it’s true, but so many other damaging conditions get created between Skelk Venom / Lotus Training / Death Blossom / Whirl Finishers that maxing Viper’s is hands down better. The extra condition duration on the burning from whirls alone is critically important for overall DPS and makes Viper’s irreplaceable. Also don’t forget that with Viper’s you can use Berserker runes which are great.

tl;dr: Daredevil > Critical Strikes, Viper’s > Sinister

The only part about the build that I haven’t ironed out yet is:

• Havoc Mastery or Brawler’s Tenacity (w/ Impairing Daggers)
  The big difference here is that BT also benefits your heal skill and gives you extra endurance, which in turn helps with more whirls and more damage mitigation. Practically I lean towards BT because the extra survivability makes up for minor teamwide mistakes against the raid bosses or RNG in enemy attacks (ie. getting double blue gooped by Gorseval’s spirits).

Lord Kuru.3685:

Did they ever get back to us on that?

They got back by saying that they wanted to disincentivize dungeons and are no longer supporting them. That means they will never respond plainly about the change to GL.

steffen.4317:

honestly, i rarely see a squad kicking 1 person and 9 others remain.

My experience hasn’t been that terrible, but it could just be luck of the draw. I think the best way to make it not end poorly is to not call it out in general chat. Just whisper the person and let them know they’re being removed and then remove them. If they flame you afterward, block ’em and move on.

I do agree that it sucks waiting for the group to fill, but there really isn’t anything anyone could do to speed that up. You’re at the mercy of whoever is LFR at the time, really.

Even the pugmeta has great diversity.

• Revenant
• Warrior
• Ranger
• Mesmer
• Elementalist
• Thief
• Engineer
• Necromancer

Guardian is accepted by some pugs, though many are still hesitant. I see it more frequently being taken for Sabetha, unsurprisingly. Outside of that, though, I see literally every other class get used in pugs. Naturally, the “meta builds” are what people expect with those classes, but…. That’s how it will always be in any online game like this. People want to minimize risk, and removing the “play how I want” builds from the equation helps a lot with that.

Heibi.4251:

In the concept of the meta and standardized comps that person would normally be kicked. But if he usually runs with friends it doesn’t matter.

The ranger is expected by the vast majority to switch to Druid only – which means healer spec.

Raids are by and away the most gear and class diverse PvE environment in-game, with literally every class right now being functional in some fashion. Since you don’t want to accept that, all I’ll say is good luck finding people to raid with who will accept you playing how you want.

This is the reason you should ignore silly prerequisites like The Eternal, AP, and Legendary Insight counts and just grab people who have the right build/gear and go from there. After a single run it is painfully obvious who doesn’t know what’s going on, and you can easily remove them from the group then.

Raids are pretty epic for my group, and everyone still gets really excited about every kill we get. Maybe it’s because we’re a fairly casual group and our wins are still through the skin of our teeth, but we enjoy it a lot. The only part that’s tough for me is sometimes it feels like herding cats, but such is the way of things with any larger group content.

They still drop. I get them frequently. Just make sure you’re killing mobs that drop loot, otherwise you’ll never get one. For instance, if you spam Swamp constantly you’ll never get one because the only things that can drop them there are the neutral Firefly enemies and some Spiders you never actually fight.

Coulter.2315:

Erm “The Melandru’s Home for Wayward Gorillas” was a major landmark in Orr.. L2Lore.

Erm… That’s exactly my point. There will be similar, equally-justifying lore for Slothasor.

Heibi.4251:

I kind of gave up on raids after spending hours and hours and hours trying to beat the first boss. It always came down to mechanics and not enough DPS. Did not enjoy it. And it really shouldn’t be called a “raid”. It should be called an “Elite Boss Fight.” There’s no raid involved.

Too much meta(which I thought ANeT was trying to do away with – especially when one of them said “goodbye, zerker” or something to that effect) and exact class combinations – not to mention the alienation of an entire class, unless they are running Druid only. That is just bull kitten. ANeT locked ranger into one specific build because they won’t up the dps ability like they did so many other classes. Everyone else got more attack and ranger, already lacking dps, got Druid. So it’s heal or go home.

And of course the creation of a new in game business of selling access to beating a boss. Thanks, ANeT. Not looking forward to anymore “raids.”

Oh, and locking Legendary Armor behind only one aspect of the game is bull kitten as well.

• You’re against adapting your build to what is most useful for the content, which is one of the hallmarks of challenging group content.
• You’re against picking up another class to fill another role, which further solidifies that you lack the adaptability to succeed in this content.
• You’re against “the meta”—of which there will always be one—and are singling Berserker stats out as a problem when there is more gear stat and role diversity in raids than anywhere else in PvE.

I’m sorry, but I truthfully think you’re setting yourself up for disaster. This kind of content, by design, isn’t for everyone, and it’s very much not a surprise to me that you have such vitriol to spew at it given your mindset. Hopefully you can enjoy the game elsewhere, as the devs won’t—and certainly shouldn’t—change the content to appeal more to you.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’ll be interested to see how this fits into the lore… because based on what i’ve seen so far… it doesn’t… at all…

And Risen Orrian Gorillas made any more sense back at release? Seriously, if we can make a Gorilla boss fit into the lore we can make a Sloth boss fit just fine.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

So what I’m reading is “It will be implemented, but we have no idea when exactly”, is that right?

Basically, but I can’t make promises on the development team’s behalf.

bladex.9502:

I heard we’re also getting Fractal leaderboards this year, Kappa

We won’t get to finish our legendaries without ’em, so yes, we actually are.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Any update on this?

The team is definitely aware of the issue, though I am unaware if they’re going to get it into the 2nd raid release or not at this point. Hopefully they do.

TexZero.7910:

You could be drawn more into reading about exploits, because you are more involved in reporting them and getting status updates, than acknowledging the rather large outcry even if its not as loud for new content.

Have no fear, “new content” has been a fairly prominent feature of my reports for as long as I’ve been a specialist.

TexZero.7910:

So if you got offended by that, sorry.

Don’t worry, I’m definitely not offended. I just wanted to clarify that I take great pride in the fact that the forum specialist program has enabled me to improve instanced PvE for players even if they don’t acknowledge it, and that I spend a great deal of time ensuring that what actually goes into my reports is as representative of the majority of players as possible.

Conner.5803:

To me, the only rewarding part is the daily achievement for it.

This is the exact problem they would be aiming to solve.

BloodyNine.7504:

That is cool at least. Though I still expect a three or four tier collection. The one we have now only being the first. Unless it has been confirmed to be otherwise?

We don’t know what future collections will look like, or how many there will be. I suspect tier 2 will be a lot like other legendary tier 2 collections in that it’ll ask you to make hundreds of mithril/elder wood armor pieces and to collect bandit crests and other such currencies. Tier 3 and tier 4 are anyone’s guess, though, if they’ll even exist at all.

BloodyNine.7504:

Very well a possibility. Or, when you open that chest. You start 6 new collections! All with 3 or 4 levels! Should I stop giving them ideas?

It has already been confirmed that you will build the legendary armor as a set, not piece-by-piece.

Ryn.6459:

Unfortunatly, after the novelty (is that word correct? Cant check right now) has passed people will go back to 3 swamp runs. New fractals and new instabilities wont solve the problem.

They’re aware of the problems involved with reward schemes right now that incentivize doing Molten Duo/Swamp constantly. I would expect some work to be done on the dailies and other things to encourage people to branch out more this year, particularly in higher level fractals.

cranos.5913:

The real question however, is will they bring back the pre-HoT dmg from bosses? Atm there is 0 risk in glass gear. Booooooooring.

I seriously doubt this, though I wouldn’t put it past them to create instabilities that create enough threat that the “weak” current bosses in addition to the instabilities would be sufficient to beat teams.

No I really think considering that you DC once a night and ruin someone’s game that it makes sense that you’re getting longer and longer dishonor every time it happens. I agree with Pyriall.1683, you should simply not play Ranked or Unranked during times when your ISP notoriously DC’s you.

In the Chest of Legendary Crafting Materials you actually get both the 7 Mystic Clovers and the 8 Obsidian Shards. I know because I accidentally picked it once, woops!

cranos.5913:

And they will be just as fun as the current ones. Long, no damage, random fears, losing boons, fun times! >_>

I’m fairly confident they’ll be revamping the bad instabilities like Boon Thieves or Boon Fumbler at some point this year as well.

TexZero.7910:

Jokes aside though, that seems like your opinion and not that of others, there has been greater public outcry for new fractals and instabilities rather than fixing every minor exploit inside them.

I’ve read dozens of threads here and on Reddit where people have cried out for ages for exploits to be fixed rapidly, and that sentiment has been echoed in-game to me by literally hundreds of players.

Also, just so we’re clear, fixing an exploit and moving it through QA ASAP isn’t going to push back new Fractals any. You’re not going to lose out on new Fractals this year because they decided to fix an exploit two months earlier than they otherwise might’ve.

Ryn.6459:

Also, I dont want the same old dungeons, I want new ones.

They will be adding new Fractals (plural) this year.

skullmount.1758:

But thats the thing, they can never compete with the veterans. They’ll never be able to get the AP from the old LS ‘episodes’ or holidays or content (like the JPs from old borderlands), so they’ll never catch up with the veterans, unless the veteran stops playing. So the cap is pointless and thus should be removed, or like thisisit suggested and each year the cap is raised X amount. And dailies are the only reliable way to even get close to the radiant/hellfire/pinnacle skins, since lately all collections/event achievements give you so few AP points.

This is a logical fallacy. Just because there exists historical AP that new players cannot get in no way invalidates that with a 15k AP limit new players can set that as a goal and compete with old players in that regard. Having an upper limit creates a goal for people to achieve; if there is no upper limit then there is no goal.

There are no developers allocated to dungeons, nor will there be as far as I’m aware. Their corporate stance is that dungeons are unsustainable and that they will support Fractals as their end-game 5-man instanced content. It is, for better or worse, simply how it is.

I think they should bring them back similar to how they brought back the aetherized skins. Make them available from some in-game content so that they can be earned.

Please never remove the daily AP limit. It is an important milestone for an account and serves as an upper threshold so that new players have something attainable with immense effort so that they can compete with other older veterans on the AP leaderboard.

See Colin’s recent post on the subject here.

ArenaColin

Love the short term problem solving – wish it was easier for us to to do a quick short term fix. (sadly nothing with LFG is easy or quick)

I did want to quickly point out the team is aware of the recent discussions around things that aren’t working (or missing) from LFG and have it included in the list of “resolving outstanding issues” that is our goal for the spring update in April.

Not entirely sure what will actually make it yet LFG wise since it’s all in development – we’ll give more details once we’re sure.

I would expect other profession mechanics like projectile management, stealth, enemy boon management, and major in-combat mobility to play larger roles in the upcoming raid wing(s).

That said, I think the green circle mechanic on VG and flamethrower on Sab are exceptional to those who were saying they’re bad. I think critically threatening mechanics are super important to the raid experience, and having things that can autodefeat you are important to that. There are still plenty of pressure-based mechanics present in all of the fights as well, and the ramping up of pressure throughout the encounters are all very well articulated (orbs/traps on Gors, floor deadzones on VG, heavy bombs/ceiling collapse on Sab). Honestly, if these sorts of mechanics bother you about raids, I genuinely think you’re trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole; raids are built on the existence of these mechanics and increasing pressure throughout an encounter to meet the rising needs of the mechanics.

It would be fairly cool if this were implemented. I have a couple fairly useless backpieces that I would love to convert into Viper’s stats or something. I think this is probably more difficult than it seems at the surface, though, but definitely would be awesome.

Yes, somehow the public domain is treating use of the tree as being a terrible player, so lots of pubs are doing it as intended to show how super good they are at the game. Pretty cool, though definitely surprising. At this point I’ve given up on pubbing it and am just doing it as intended (and much faster) with my guild. It has definitely improved my experience vastly.

Regardless, I pinged ANet again on this last night and emphasized the importance of fixing exploits like this sooner rather than later. Hopefully it pushed them down the path of resolving it rapidly.

[VZ] is still recruiting! We keep chugging on doing the things we love doing. As always, if you have any interest in the things we do as a guild, contact one of the officers! Any of them would be happy to talk to you and see if [VZ] is a good fit for you. Good luck out there!

Blackarps.1974:

Not true. Anet doesn’t like players getting rewarded for 0 effort. They solved the problem before of engineers using turrets to gain EXP when the game came out. AFK’ing for loot, exp, karma, etc is a no-no.

Exactly my point; they don’t like it and GMs seeing it will kick them to character select. They’re not going to ban the players or something unless the person keeps doing it even after being told by a GM to stop. @ OP: Feel free to report these people as “Botting” (even though that’s not what it is necessarily). That should alert ANet GMs to the issue to address it.

They’re not botting, nor are they really breaking any rules directly (and they’ll get kicked out automatically after 45m), but it certainly is against the spirit of the game. I’m sure if a GM saw them they’d get kicked back to character select, but no further action would be taken. That’s my take on it.

I love the game far more now after HoT than before. The addition of HoT content has been welcomed and I enjoy all of it.

DGraves.3720:

But that’s bad math.

If you have a 6s bleed for 120/s versus a 12s bleed for 100/s you get 480 more out of the second bleed… If you stop attacking for the full duration. If you apply one bleed every second at 120 versus 100 you simply do 20 more damage. It’s just that simple.

But that does explain the difference in how I think about it though.

No, you’re thinking about it a bit wonky. If you keep attacking, you’re stacking extra bleed stacks with the second build than the first, magnifying your damage. Let’s take your example further.

If you have an attack you can do once per second that applies:

1. 1 stack of 6s bleed @ 120 dps
2. 1 stack of 12s bleed @ 100 dps

Then over 12 seconds you have:

1. 6 stacks of bleed on target @ 720 dps
2. 12 stacks of bleed on target @ 1200 dps

The benefit of condition duration in that case should be obvious. The only time condition damage is better is if the fight ends in 6 seconds (some open world mobs).

It’s fairly simple, actually; condition duration helps DPS far more than condition damage. Let’s say you have a bleed that ticks for 100 damage. I could increase my condition damage by a bunch and maybe get that up to 120 damage, or I could increase my condition duration by a bunch and get a second tick which brings it to 200 damage. This simple example, magnified by the application of dozens of burns/bleeds/poisons, is how condition builds compete with and beat out power builds in DPS.

DGraves.3720:

Why?

Because if the enemy dies before your conditions run out, stronger conditions are better. But if the enemy doesn’t die in the length of your conditions, then condition duration would’ve been better.

Thaddeus.4891:

Level 51-80 ya.

Level 81-100 pure garbage.

I don’t mean the reward is garbage, but there is just no reason to do those level. The instability are frustrating and badly done, the mobs are just HP sponge making them even longer, and there is no reason to do them since you gonna get the reward from level 51-80 anyway.

I agree. Many instabilities are poorly designed, and I’ve talked with the Fractals team about that. I’ve also talked to them about adding another daily to the 76+ range to further encourage those higher levels. I can’t say what they’ll do with that information, but I would expect some more change there later in the year when we get new Fractal(s).

Thaddeus.4891:

Ah cmon. There were dozen of forum post about underwater Mosman and it took them like one year to fix it. And it’s not like the fix was so hard to do. The second you touch the ground, the Mosman reset. Pretty straightforward.

You presume a lot. They actually attempted to fix it at least twice in the past, and after at least one of those fixes players stopped using it even though it still existed, so they had no way of knowing that it still worked.

Thaddeus.4891:

And anyway, they could ask the community. Make post asking the community to point exploit in fractal.

They have; it’s part of why they made that exploits@arena.net email chain. They do not want them discussed on the forums.

savacli.8172:

As far as forwarding exploits to you (Rising Dusk) and the e-mail? How do we even have confirmation that they’re being reviewed? Still goes back to the problem of communication. We could bombard both resources yet we had little to no confirmation or even acknowledgement that the team has at least pinned up our concerns on their to-do list. Sorry, but a post from the resident Forum Specialist doesn’t quite cut it. At the very least can we get a thread where our requests are acknowledged?

I suppose the better question is what do you want? Do you want the Fractals team to dedicate a significant portion of someone’s time to keep the community up-to-date on every happening on their end or do you want that person to instead focus on adding new Fractals content to the game? They’re adding new Fractals, they’ll fix the exploit, and quite frankly I don’t think the current state of Fractals is nearly as dire kitten many people claim on the forums. Numerous players of non-56/67/77 levels in-game have said to me that they’re quite happy with the state of things, just as many people as those who have said the opposite on the forums. Neither of these groups represents even a remotely large fraction of the playerbase, but it goes to illustrate that it’s far more divided than it might seem if you only read the forums. People are playing other levels, people are having fun, and people are actually enjoying them a lot more now than they did before HoT.

savacli.8172:

Revamp/compensation of dungeon rewards…../crickets
Acknowledgement of exploits…../crickets
Rework of higher fractal compensation…./crickets

• They’re not touching dungeon rewards.
• I’m acknowledging to you that they know and they will get addressed.
• Higher level Fractal rewards are fine. (Seriously, they’re actually pretty great right now..)

bladex.9502:

If they care so much about bugs/exploits, then why didn’t it get fixed 2,5 years ago when people first started making Reddit threads about it?
There’s tons of well known terrain exploits within dungeons, fractals, raids and even open world, and anet doesn’t give a kitten about them.

ANet doesn’t notice all Reddit/Forum threads about things like this because they are doing their jobs on a day-to-day basis. Please forward all exploit reports to me and double down on them by sending them to exploits@arena.net. I will ensure that they get reported up.