Guild Wars 2

Davey.7029:

Raids need to be harder.

I dunno, I do think raids need a range. It’d be great if there were a few bosses that were tougher. I think they make a decent floor atm.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Well, I’ll agree that the discussion of value has been a tangent. However, I’m not positive that those demanding Asc. Armor are thinking it’s necessary to beat the raid. It’s my belief they’re using it — rightly or wrongly — to filter out players who don’t think the way they do. We saw the same thing with Berserker gear in dungeons. It was clearly not necessary to beat the path, but it was insisted on because it was a filter that groups could use.

They’re not using it because they think it’s necessary to beat the raid. They’re using it because it’s a filter. It’s a form of credential creep.

When you’re forming a PUG you don’t really have any idea what sort of skill level you’ll get. You could get pros, you could get scrubs. What Ascended gear does is filter down that group to a manageable number of applicants using a metric which correlates to performance. They literally just want less applicants, and the increase in time that they may experience is worth the reduction in applicants they need to consider.

Compare it to real life employment: If half the people have a Master’s in Literature and half the people don’t, even though the Master’s may have no practical application to the job, it’s still a marginal benefit which cuts down the pool by half.

Quick question for anyone familiar with these weapons; can you place a superior sigil in the weapon and then send it to a level 1? If you do will the sigil still work?

TexZero.7910:

It’s at the point where it’s almost better to ignore the post, because it’s painfully clear that productive discussion was never the intended design.

If there’s a filter function on this forum I need to find it. Thaddeus made a few decent responses to me but the thread just keeps going on and on, it feels like the thread is going too fast to actually post while keeping track of anything else.

Ohoni.6057:

This is why we’re discussing an easier gameplay mode, so that going to “metabattle” is less of a requirement. Come as you are, it’ll be ok.

Consider the context of what you’ve quoted.

Lexander.4579:

mouth of mordremoth and instead of gates add the entire DS map meta event before some players have a chance to start complaining that the gates are too weak as well

omg instead of gates they should have the towers

and you have to beat the tower to get to the lordremoth

Lexander.4579:

tbh better replace foefire lords with mordremoths that will achieve 2 goals:

1) unskilled players wont lose foefire anymore because of poor lord management
2) all the PvE players who started flooding sPvP will make themselves at home finally, occasionally they can even have matches where they allow each other to kill their mordremoth to get loot before they begin taking nodes

mouth of mordremoth or the story mode avatar of mordremoth? i can’t decide which would be more fun

3 necros, no support
1 thief, no support
1 ranger bless his heart trying his best but he can’t carry all these necros and thieves

vs

ele and ranger

/crickets

Klipso.8653:

Necro is OP, I have one, I know they are.

but there is an easy fix without actually nerfing them!
all they need to do is make ground target spells reflectable, the only reason necro seems so strong is that almost all of their abilities are immune to reflect.

necro skills are balanced with their projectileless quality in mind, it’s why axe is tuned so low

They make outfits because it’s drastically easier to build an outfit than it is to build 18 armor pieces.

I think it would be an interesting change but it doesn’t really play into the style of the map. The focus should be on the conquest points, not on the lord, and the foefire lord should not be realistically able to survive 3 players with healer support like how the stronghold lord can.

If they were to make a Stronghold variant of Foefire with buffed lords, though, that could be pretty interesting, and if they want Stronghold to survive as a mode they will need to add more maps to it.

CherryChiicake.1378:

Yeah, except when no one will allow the “ascended gear of your stats” that you spent several months making into raids, because it doesn’t figure into a meta build…

Maybe research and plan ahead a little.

Y’know if you can’t manage going to metabattle and checking what a strong build for your class is, you probably aren’t up to snuff to raid.

CherryChiicake.1378:

Well see, it’s a sinister set.

Sinister is, imo, perfectly viable. Depending on class and the runes you take it’s better than Viper’s.

Ohoni.6057:

Not really, but what would you suggest? Making the dungeon tracks slower to progress? I’ve got bigger issues than that with PvP, but again, if you’d like to push for that, be my guest.

Dude we’ve already suggested it.

Tune up the rewards for dungeons.

Burn.5401:

You don’t need to obtain something of such big value by playing a game mode that you can’t even use it in. WvW on the other hand can use something like that. (if anyone still plays it)

That’s the theory they had when they started the game. In fact, they believed that you didn’t need any rewards whatsoever other than the skin. They changed from that idea because it is a bad one.

Avarice.2791:

Make these forums great again!!!!

we should build a wall in front of the raid and make the casuals pay for it

Ohoni.6057:

Second, nothing is stopping you from running dungeons now. They haven’t removed them. Is it harder to find a group than it once was? Yeah, but you can still find one. You might have to actively encourage people to join up, but you can do that. It’s far different from being unable to complete the content at all.

But the PvP track is far and above the better way to get it. It doesn’t depend on you trying to form a group, which depending on wings, may take a hell of a long time. It isn’t limited by daily clears. If you can smash out the wins it awards gear much quicker, hand over fist.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to do it. But doing the dungeons is by far picking the hard path to doing it. The position that PvE should not be the best way to get these skins is, to me, incredibly bizarre, especially from you when you advocate being able to get skins from any mode, with one mode being the best means of obtaining them. Should PvP really be the best mode to obtain these skins, in your opinion? Please answer this directly.

This is, of course, entirely avoiding the argument that running these dungeons was once a viable economic route and now is severely hamstrung. But that’s all subjective. Frankly I think it’s entirely possible that they could do something to adjust this, and I’d be very surprised if they weren’t internally tossing up the ‘weekly/daily dungeon’ idea.

Ohoni.6057:

But you’re making the assumption that dungeons should be super lively. Given that they are three year old content and they don’t plan on changing them any time soon, what is the harm in them being relatively “retired” content. People who really want to run dungeons can find a group to run them, but there’s no particular reason why other players should be encouraged to play them, right?

Well, you think you should be able to get skins in any mode of play, right?

Dungeons are that mode of play for PvE for that dungeon’s associated skins. It stands to reason that dungeons be readjusted, or for another form of pve content to reward that gear.

It seems reasonable to me that the primary intended mode to get this gear should actually be a reasonably viable way to get this gear.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t think that’s necessary.

But dungeons are almost completely dead. The only reason anyone runs them is COF P1 for mastery XP.

If any content needs rewards adjustment, it’s dungeons.

STIHL.2489:

I am all for raids, I think players should have their little sand box to play in and whatever makes them feel special and important, my only issue with a raid at this point, is it’s impact on World Collections, notably Legendary Armor.

not everyone is supposed to get every legendary

Astralporing.1957:

Mostly it’s the time and organizational commitment. I could maybe get my guild to organize so that there are 10 people ready at the same time, but only for an attempt with a reasonable chance of succeeding. Which, we both know, is not going to happen unless everyone is already experienced. And i’m in this game to play with my friends, so i’m not going to look for a guild full of people i don’t care about either.

So it sounds like raids aren’t the content you should be tackling or attempting to tackle.

These raids were explicitly constructed to be a good challenge for a dedicated group. If you want to tackle them, you’ll need to put out the effort to find a dedicated group.

Astralporing.1957:

There’s a “small”, secondary gate in form of needing the right gear too, but i bet i’m going to hear now that not only it’s easily passed, but is not even a gate because even a total noob should be able to do it in exotics.

Well, yeah. It’s easily passed. Thanks for beating me to the punch.

Really, though, Ascended is one of the game’s long-term goals and there’s no reason for you not to be addressing it before you enter raids. “Well I just want to go straight into the raids!” there’s your problem. Chill, master other content first, get yourself up to snuff and then go tackle the raids.

Astralporing.1957:

As the main problem in Raids is time and organization, no changes to Dungeons or Fractals are going to help there.

No, dungeons and fractals can’t fix your schedule. If scheduling is a problem, which for most people it shouldn’t be, then the content’s not really for you.

Are you a doctor on call or something like that?

Astralporing.1957:

Oh no, it’s exactly because raids are a wall. A wall that has been specifically designed to prevent as many players as possible from even trying, just so remaining ones can feel better.

Uhhhh what.

It’s literally
Get ascended gear of your stats: I did this a year ago idk about you
Get some scheduling done: Needing friends for this content is exactly the appeal

That’s it. You can now make attempts and I look forward to your first VG kill.

I don’t think they will ever completely scrap desert bl just because it’s a new shiny. They’ve been stung before by removing content in Living Season 1 so I would not be surprised to see it remain, especially considering it’s almost the entirety of what WvW got in the expansion.

My personal hope is that they have fixed borderlands maps rather than 3×1 or random maps. Blue is always Alpine, Red is always Desert, Green is always X.

ZBeeblebrox.4928:

This. I don’t like the treb, and I never vote for Kyhlo because of that dislike. People in the thread have raised some great points about how it is balanced. I agree with a lot of those points.

However, as someone who has mained condi necro since launch (even when it was trash, before we were the op monsters we are today), I have always hated it for the reason I have always hated “objects” (doors, turrets, even some world bosses before they were changed) in this game: CONDIS DONT AFFECT IT. Oh, and did I mention half my cooldowns do nothing to it either, since staff marks are only triggered by players?

As such, it takes me forever and a day to destroy the thing (if that proves necessary because the other team has a good trebber and my team isn’t paying enough attention to go do it). And, as Exedore pointed out, a mesmer with portal can get the thing back up almost instantly.

A power class like rev, on the other hand, can destroy the thing super quickly and get right back into the fight.

That, to me, creates imbalance in the treb.

Is this necessarily bad, though? It creates an impetus in teams to carry both Power and Condi builds when that may not be a strong option in the meta. Of course, the current meta has room for both of those builds, but we have experienced metas when one of those two was not a viable option.

Broadly speaking taking defensive stats unless you are the tank, or healing power as a healer, is not a good strategy. For that alone I would say Trailblazer’s has a really hard time being a good option.

Astralporing.1957:

“If you can pass the wall, it doesn’t exist”.
But it does.

Though yes, i agree, it’s not primarily skill-based. There are other, far more important factors involved.

What exactly are you having difficulty with when trying to get past VG?

I honestly don’t think that any issues pre-raid are going to actually be fixed by adding an easy mode. You need to find a raid group, you need to find a guild, etc etc. The best way to do that, IMO, would be to address other small-group content somehow, including Dungeons and Fractals, so they can do the job they’re supposed to do and provide a stepping stone for players.

Dungeons are completely out of the picture now, rip
Fractals of the Swamp don’t teach you anything nor do they help players get the friends they need to have a chance at tackling the raids.

But this is all pie in the sky stuff. Frankly it’s pretty late and I couldn’t be bothered reading through the entire thread and getting your concerns but yeah I don’t think the problem of raids being a ‘wall’ is because raids are a wall, it’s because dungeons and fractals aren’t being the ramp up the wall that they need to be.

Thaddeus.4891:

Basically what he said is : LFR require zero effort. At 10:11 he said, regardless of what you are doing, you will get loot. I don’t know what this represent exactly. Does he mean like GW2 dungeon or Fractal. Whatever happen, you will most likely be able to go through them unless you have a pure incompetent team. I don’t see how it’s bad.

I linked it mostly for the context on how lower difficulty options affect the higher difficulties, particularly the parts when he’s speaking about raiding until he meets Illidan or the Lich King. Big parts of the buildup and the atmosphere of those raids is that you can’t simply ezmode your way through and get to them; reaching and defeating them is gratifying in itself in a way that easy modes cannot be, and which easy modes strips from harder modes.

The gear in LFR and similar modes is an entirely different ballgame because of how GW2 gearing differs so much compared to WoW gearing. One of WoW’s biggest problems in the current expansion is that there was, in 6.0 and 6.1 (the first two raid tiers), LFR’s gear drowned out lower tiers of content because of its higher ilvl. It’s not really relevant but if you would like I can go into more detail.

This does not bear much of a direct analogy to GW2 because of how the content rewards are primarily skins and cosmetic based, or raw economics. However, if an easy-mode raid were introduced to GW2 without sufficient limiters to the Ascended drop rate, this could cause catastrophic long-term damage to the game, as Ascended crafting materials prop up large portions of the game’s economy. If you can get ascended armor and weapons from the raids, why ever both crafting… Goodbye market.

Thaddeus.4891:

But his main point is that LFR require zero effort and give equal or similar reward. The thing is, nobody ask for that. To me they should add a WvW Legendary Armor and a PvP legendary armor so the principe of Legendary isn’t blocked behind raid, and then no put any skin as a reward in easy mode. (No legendary armor, no weapons skin, no mini). The reward from easy mode would be gold, xp, ascended trinkets and armor. (maybe in less quantity than the normal raid).

Addressing your first concern here, that is what Ohoni is asking for. He does want a mode where you can ‘play pretend’ with the mechanics, not pay them much heed, and still defeat the encounter, and still progress on your legendary collection and other skins. LFR actually does work for the difficulty scale that Ohoni is asking for; it gets you in, you get to look at the shiny environment and all the moves he does, but barring significant failures you don’t actually fail the boss fight.

I have no problem with legendary armor being added to PvP and WvW. I honestly think that adding legendary armor into the WvW seasons once the revamp is done would be a great move.

Thaddeus.4891:

Anyway. Like I said numerous times. It’s not because Blizzard implemented poorly their LFR, that Anet need to be stupid if they do their easy-mode. The reward should be balanced.

Because of the group nature of raids and how you must form a group to address the content, balancing the rewards to be appropriately enticing without throwing other game elements out of whack is pretty difficult. This is actually another problem that Blizzard’s had with LFR but again, not strictly relevant, I won’t go into it unless you really want me to.

That isn’t to say that ANet can’t do it, but it’s a lot of treading on eggshells which could be avoided by simply saying “No, the difficulty is what it is”, and this is primarily addressing the problem of rewards when there are other problems with introducing an extra difficulty level to the content.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm i think legendary armor will debut in pve raids first ?

Yeah I mean after raids

I don’t think it’ll be legendary armor that we see in the next set of seasons. Possibly another back piece. It’s kinda rough to say.

As far as legendary armor goes where, I think we’ll see it in WvW next.

FogLeg.9354:

And I am fairly certain Anet said in Reddit AMA they gave up on big WvW revamp already because it is too much work.

No, that’s not what they said. What they said was that they were feature creeping the revamp and brought someone new in to prune the creep.

Ohoni.6057:

I know what I want out of GW2’s raids, and I asked for that. WoW has nothing to teach me that I need or want to know.

r u 4 rela?

Like come on man. “I don’t want to experience exactly what I’m asking for and see how it worked in another game!” Sticking your fingers in your ears and going LALALA doesn’t exactly strengthen your argument.

Here watch this. It’s a WoW video but it still has a lot of directed points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ac2sQHJLI

Ohoni.6057:

No, I understand that’s how WoW raids work, it’s one of the reasons I don’t play WoW, and I understand that’s how people want hard mode raids to work. I have absolutely no interest in that and never will, but I am interested in the sort of gameplay experience I described. You can have yours, and I can have mine, and we can both be happy about it.

No, you don’t. Again, do some research. WoW has Mythic raiding, which is the really hard 100+ wipe stuff, and they’ve also got LFR which is the exact mode you’re asking for.

I really do recommend you go see what’s going on in WoW raid content. If multiple raid difficulties is what you want, it’s basically ground zero.

Ohoni.6057:

But that progression needs to seem fair. A wall is not a good idea.

While there does need to be a difficulty curve;

Firstly, this assumes that the progression model is raid to raid to raid with nothing preceding it. There’s no reason to think this when there are multiple modes of content which lead into raids. Frankly, a big part of why raid models don’t work is because dungeon models don’t work.

Secondly, there is a difficulty curve in the raids. As I’ve said, VG is easy. If you can beat VG, then there is no wall. There may be one for you but that’s because you’ve got absolutely no experience and you despise challenge and effort.

maybe they should just focus on making wvw not suck for now

Ohoni.6057:

Which is why I keep having to tell people that I have no interest in that experience and never will, but I DO have an interest in a content type that includes all the things the current GW2 raid offers, except that experience.

you’ve already got that content man its the rest of the entire game

Avarice.2791:

If you create a nerfed version so that you can avoid mechanics THEN YOU ARE NOT RAIDING FOR THE MECHANICS.

avarice gets it

The only upgrade component that I go out of my way to use is Sigil of Speed. While leveling you kill tons of stuff, get tons of swiftness, get to your next kill quicker. Really helpful.

Possibly get another nice On Kill sigil, possibly heal on kill, but it doesn’t matter too much.

Ohoni.6057:

It would be very disingenuous of them to show a precursor track that is relatively easy to pass, but then to offer later tier tracks that are much harder to pass, making them realistically impossible for many of the players who completed the earlier track, and thus rendering all their efforts completely worthless. You can’t ramp the difficulty after the race has started.

No that’s actually how progression in video games works. Early stages are easy, late stages are hard.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure about that. Being able to advertise a raid might help you fill an empty slot faster, but it’d be very luck of the draw who you get, whereas the current system allows you to be slightly more discerning. It might end up being faster, but leading to less successful parties.

The current system is already very luck of the draw. There’s absolutely no reason to think that it isn’t, or that there would be any meaningful change one way or the other with an LFG restructuring.

Ohoni.6057:

Btw, I haven’t tried this myself for obvious reasons, but wouldn’t it be possible for one or more members of the raid party to leave that party, advertise on LFG, acquire the needed extra people, and then they all rejoin the raid party? What is the process for getting knocked out of a raid for not being in the party?

That is possible, but again, it takes a lot of micromanagement.

Ohoni.6057:

Again though, it’s not that I don’t see the benefits of an LFG change or think that it’s not worth it, I just don’t think it’ll cause any massive sea-change in raider populations. I think it’ll mostly be the same people doing it, just having a slightly more convenient time of it. The people who don’t raid at all still likely won’t, and it’d be nice for them to have an option to solve their issues with the existing raids.

Being able to more easily find a group does solve a lot of issues.

Your issue is that you’re not willing to learn the mechanics. I don’t think that’s an issue most people have.

Having people who ’don’t raid’ and neutering the raiding so that more of those people do raid is really bad. We’ve already told you why. Trust me, there are people, including me, who have a lot more experience with raiding than you do. We’ve seen how these systems play out in practice.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s entirely up to the player which he values more. Personally, I prefer to get experience while winning, but those that prefer to gain experience while failing will always have that option available to them.

You haven’t raided. You don’t know what I’m talking about.

If you don’t want the gradual improvement until success then don’t raid. You’re completely missing the key thing that makes this mode of content gratifying.

fishball.7204:

If you want this legendary armor then you have to raid to work for it.

There’s no easy mode PvP for the legendary backpiece, I don’t see why there should be an easy mode raid for the legendary armor.

There kind of is an easy mode PvP for the legendary backpiece; instead of pushing into deeper divisions and getting the backpiece faster, you just slum your way to Ruby each season. It takes longer to get but it’s much easier, and personally it’s a big part of my strategy to get the class achievements.

Ohoni.6057:

Eh, again, that’s nice, but I don’t think the existing LFG is so bad that it will make a significant difference in practical terms. It’ll make things more convenient, less of a hassle, that’s all good, but I don’t think it’ll actually result in more successful raiding runs.

It’s actually pretty bad, just from the point of view that a raid cannot easily refill when raiders leave because raid advertising only goes one way- only people looking for a raid can advertise, not the raid itself. A fix in this direction could be a drastic improvement.

Ohoni.6057:

People who are motivated enough to raid are motivated enough to use the existing LFG system for that purpose. People who can’t be bothered to use the existing LFG to raid, but would use the new system to find groups easier, likely wouldn’t be all that useful in the hard raids themselves.

Not necessarily. Again, this feeds back into the first point; raids cannot advertise, individual puggers can. Someone may not be willing to advertise themselves but they would be willing to respond to advertisements.

This also isn’t quite how PUGs work in practice. A lot of the time in a raiding environment PUG groups are done not for the sake of clearing content (though they are) but they’re put out to recruit members. 8-man guild group can clear the content fine so they put up the LFG to try to find 2 more on bosses that are hard to screw up like VG, if they get any gems they recruit them. This strategy which seems kinda rough in the current system gets a hell of a lot of breathing room with a new system.

It also ignores how PUGgers effectively use the system which is to join groups purely to get experience. You’re solely fixated on “did they kill the boss” because for some reason you think it’s only worth doing if you win. But a PUG player might gain valuable experience by doing the fight or valuable advice from another raid member, which is all an experience which is lost when they can just resort to easy mode.

Also the raids aren’t that hard. VG is basically tank positioning 101 and basic checks for the rest of the raid.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

You can do fractals of the swamps with 0 AR. Dodge very well or play ranged. My friends and I do this daily for champ fractals.

Or body block. Just plant your hitbox behind someone who DOES have the AR needed.

Silverkey.2078:

Spirit watch is a nice conquest map on its own (I mean outside of the orb). The orb should maybe give you a new set of skills to make it balanced (you can’t use your own dash/block/whatever) and maybe appear only at set time so that people still focus on the conquest part of the game. But it could be fairly frequent (more frequent than the buffs in Temple).

That’s too complicated, IMO.

It should just be “the orb spawns at 14:00 and every 2 minutes after”.

I love the irony of thread necromancy on a thread about Rise!.

Ascended armor only seems like it really gets good when you’re running Versatile Power Infusions.

Part of me hopes that Versatile Power Infusions go the way of the dodo, just because of this off-chance that people are gonna say “you don’t have Versatile Power Infusions in all your 8-9 defensive slots? KICKED”. But idk that seems extreme and I hope people are more sensible than that.

Malediktus.9250:

You skipped the room where you need 5 people

Yeah, I was just thinking this, how do you get past that without 5 people?

I also dunno if there are other explorables or story dungeons with mechanics like this.

No, the achievement track for Divisions Cleared is not based on how many you have currently cleared. It just increments whenever you clear a division.

Drakz.7051:

None spec team vs adv spec team will always end with adv winning. But instead of having a separate pvp and pve builds they lump them together and just nerf skills instead of fixing issues so they make pve worse because people abuse a skill in pvp.

Like when they removed some visual effects but claimed it wasn’t because it affected pvp performance xD

But none of the elements that are overpowered or underpowered in PvE are overpowered or underpowered in PvP. There’s no need for a skill split.

What skills would you split to better balance both PvE and PvP?

I’d probably still play ranked. It’s free transmute charges and money until you hit Ruby, at any rate.

tichorum.2415:

To avoid Skyhammer and Spirit Watch? Of course.

Ooo, that’s a good point.

I thought the balance in the pre-hot patch was actually quite good, once the elementalists got toned down.

It’s impossible to say how good balance would be in the current state of the game, with the new amulets added and the old bunkery amulets banned, but I don’t think it would be worse.

Broadly speaking, I think it would be really fun if there were a mode with only core specs. I like the idea of game modes with manipulations like that.

Also broadly speaking I wish that core specs were more viable than they currently are. Part of the problem with elite specs at the moment is that, in most cases, not taking the ES is rarely if ever viable.

I think a good idea would be to have “weekly” dungeon bonus.

All the dungeons remain otherwise the same but otherwise, each week, on a cycle, one dungeon gets significantly boosted rewards. Instead of say, 60s and 60 tokens, for example, you’d get 1g50 and 150 tokens. Swap out the money for materials if ANet is worried about the cash injection.

And maybe a bonus on top of that for doing each wing once that week. Another chest with, idk, 200 tokens.

maddoctor.2738:

Can I ask what does WoW dungeons/raids has to do with GW2 dungeons being abandoned?

He thinks that there’s a cyclic pattern between raids being emphasized and in exchange dungeons being de-emphasized, which is untrue.

TPMN.1483:

“They stopped making dungeons because they believed that other forms of small group content, scenarios and Timeless Isle, were better.” — and they went back to making more dungeons. QED

Dude that was the end of the expansion. They’ve always made new dungeons with the launch of new expansions.

I assumed you were familiar with the expansion cycle of WoW.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Tweaking is not adding content.

Part of me’s optimistic. I think they could add a bit; they’ve apparently got several items in the pipeline and I don’t see why we wouldn’t have a chance of seeing one.

They may also be dropping some of those legendaries. Whether that constitutes content or not, though, is up for debate.