Guild Wars 2

Another good option is the following

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR5ZnMdA9dgdfA2eAEliliAzYA8ACAJBhfwz7d4mcfuA-TxRBABQqEkm9H4S5Hf6AwU9nHuAAA8AAIFgeStA-e

Basically, a PS Tank who can bring might, banners and EA to the party while tanking. A bit of the same principle of a ChronoTank. Merge a buffing role with the tank to free a place for a proper dps.

Well you are level 60 how much dungeon did you do?? You just have access to 12 of the 33 dungeons path (story/exp).

You dislike dungeon or you don’t like doing them more than a couple of time? There is way better ways to level up than dungeon now that their xp were nerfed.

For your question. Fractal is for level 80. You probably don’t want to get into them until you also have a full exotic gear from dungeon. And they will help you toward getting ascended gear. Raid are a long way from where you are now. You want to comfortable in dungeon and fractal and have at least ascended trinket and weapons before you go into raid, which are a LOT more difficult than dungeon or fractal.

HOPE III

Synergetic Generator at Fungus among us. I did the fungus among us adventure for more than a week now. Each day I do Silver, open the box, use the Synergetic Generator, double click it, and nothing. I tried at the end of the adventure, at the start, nothing. In 1 or 2 week, I’ll have everything else finish, just waiting for the bug to be fix.

Wow some weird opinion in here. There is 4 professions that use sword for PvE in a high end build.

- Condition Berserker, but you mostly use Bow, swapping to Sword/Torch only maybe 1/3 of the time at max, sometime even less.

- Zerker Herald. That’s the best dps profession with a sword and it also camp Sword. It can be Sword/Axe or Sword/Shield. Axe will be a bit more offensive, and shield a it more defense. But it doesn’t change much since you will mostly be sword auto-attack. This build doesn’t really use a secondary weapons. They usually carry a Hammer when range is needed or a staff when cc is needed. But otherwise you want to stick to sword the more possible.

- Zerker Chronomancer. They usually play Sword/Sword with either Sword/Pistol or Sword/Focus. So you always gonna have 1 sword in your hand. It’s not as good as a dps, but it give two of the best possible buff with Quickness and Alacrity.

- Finally, you have the Zerker Ranger with Sword/Axe + Lonbow (or GS). It will mostly camp Sword, have decent dps and decent buff. Probably the less potent of the 4, and the sword is hard to master because the auto-attack lock you in a animation so it’s hard to dodge. Still a good build.

You also have some decent build like Sword/Pistol Thief or Daredevil. Better against thrash, it lack a bit of dps against bosses, but it’s not so bad.

The guardian is pretty much the worst at that in PvE. Sword is lacking on every points. The only advantage is the teleport. It have more use in sPvP.

Viable? Yes like anything is. Good? Nope.

The dps is just bad. Not the condi ele part, that’s fine. But the build you are using?

Condi Elementalist is actually one of the top 3-4 condition build. Engineer and Warrior behing on the top. Reaper isn’t too far behind and his simpler rotation make him competitive against certain raid boss. And finally condition Ele, which is probably on par with Reaper in some situation. The main problem with condition Ele is that the vast majority of his dps come from field, which don’t work well against moving boss. So in fractal like Snowblind or raid boss like Sabetha it do great, on fractal like Dredge or boss like Vale Guardian, he will be behind.

Look that this. Particular is probably one of the best advocate for condi Elementalist.

To be clear. I’m not saying that you will be terrible. But you have a lot of point where you lose dps and all of that accumulate. Scepter/Warhorn less good than Dagger/Focus, Dire instead of Viper/Sinister, no dps utilities, etc,etc

I don’t know why you would want to much resistance. With dire, earh, water, and your utilities.

For raid, forget about it, unless you are a tank. You have so much toughness than the boss will be agro on you that’s for sure. As a tank you will do the job. Not the best tank because you don’t bring the dps/cc/sustain or a Tank Scrapper, nor the Quickness/Alacrity of a Tank Chronomancer, or the Sustain/CC/DPS of a Tank Reaper or the Protection/Boons of a Tank Dragonhunter. But you will do the job.

Omg the mayhem Junkpile is doing these days on the forum lol.

IMO the difference in dps between engineer and necro is not calculable when on circle duty. It really depend on luck and skill. For exemple. I don’t think I miss much blowtorch anymore and maybe miss between 2/3 and 1/2 of my bombs because I always run to the boss after a circle. It also depend on the placement of seekers. If you have to push or immobilize more seekers then you dps will suffer.

Personnally, I prefer my engineer because of the 2 pushback and 2 immo for the seekers and the additional group healing the turret bring. But both are solid choice that work well. The engineer will bring more quality of life for the seekers and healing, while the necro will be more focused on the boss while doing circle.

I’m curious. Does 2 Viper Reaper can take care of the Red Guardian by themselves like 2 engineer can? This doesn’t change a thing because 3 or 2 condi on Red Guardian doesn’t really change the total speed of the 2nd and 4th phase. I’m just curious.

maxinox.6283:

softblackcarbon.1537:

Condi engi is considered the better class for VG because it is much better at running green circles than the other condi builds. Engis provide several knockbacks and ccs that reapers are missing, as well as water fields and blast finishers for aoe healing, both of which reapers lack reliably. Their condis still tick while they are running circles (though they do lose dps when they leave the boss, that is true), but the loss of dps is largely irrelevant in actually killing the boss as the timer is so lax. You’re much better off bringing the survivability and ease of circle running, than slightly more consistent dps with reapers from range and the number one thing that causes wipes is people missing/going down in green circles, rather than lack of dps. Lack of dps usually stems from other issues and not from losing out on dps when people run circles. Prioritizing the circle team’s survivability over slightly higher dps will almost always lead to more success in the fight.

tl;dr – engis are better because of the utility they provide, rather than their dps. They’re not the only class that can be successful though.

You may not play condi reaper so :
The condi nec can stay far from the boss and don’t drop DPS (you only go on the boss for KS4 and mushroom in P1)
You use Suffer! to kite red orbs
You use KS3 to CC red orbs when you are in green circle
You can use KS4 on green circle for heal or rally an ally on you

The survability of a necro is HUGE since you can go on KS on demand, it absobs damage if needed.

For the CC phase I always take a WH in my second set for the daze in addition to golem charge and KS5.

If you team have no trouble with the CC you can take the lich and your DPS will be FAR FAR HIGHER than engi.

In conclusion, it’s okay to have an engi for the knockback (other class can do this) but you can’t say “engi is the best for VG”

I very doudt that reaper with Lich have far far higher dps than engie. Do you have numbers or video to back up that claim?

Not saying it’s a bad dps. I think that condi reaper is very good. IMO both engie and reaper are on par in that situation, or at least very close. Keep in mind that when you say that :

‘’The condi nec can stay far from the boss and don’t drop DPS (you only go on the boss for KS4 and mushroom in P1)’’

The same can be said for the engineer. They have the same range of 900 so they can both stay relatively far from the boss and drop a bit of dps. The engineer only go on the boss for Bomb 2 and 3 and mushroom in P1.

That would be the best PvE build for GS + Mace/X

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR5PnsABddCGCBEEhl4BrKA0AqXy7v+3CMLF9iiRA-ThRBABXt/o8DPdDPcRAA4JAQp6PmpEEA-e

Now from there you can swap thing up to fit your needs. That’s what you should aim for, but people can’t find it hard to play first when they aren’t very experienced in the game and die a lot more. You could swap some zerker gear with celestial or soldier for exemple. Keep in mind the more you swap, the less dps you gonna make.

View that as a offensive vs defensive spectrum. The more you swap for defensive gear, skills and trait the less dps you gonna do, but the more resistant you gonna be. Find the right balance for you.

There is a lot of option to choose from. First of all what weapon do you like playing with? Here a list of different combo that work well together in no particular order.

Power build
- GS + Longbow
- Hammer + Longbow
- GS + Mace/Torch or Focus
- Hammer + Mace/Torch or Focus
- Scepter/Torch or Focus

Condi Build
- Scepter/Torch + GS

Air is better against single targets and Fire is better against multiple targets. Since dps is more important against bosses than trash mobs, pretty much everybody use Force + Air.

Zach.2618:

What trap?:o sry I’m not up to date with online behavior such as traps lol I nvr understood how can words trap someone. Is he trying to capture me?:o

Look at his signature.

Voluptus.3509:

Why do you think it’s any harder to hold the boss where you need him and dodge when people call for blue? I guarantee you that jumping around between circles, dodging around seekers, running into melee every 20 seconds and then right back out again is a LOT more pressure, and a lot harder, than maneuvering the boss slowly from place to place and dodging once in a while when someone calls blue.

I didn’t said that any job was harder to do than any other role in a squad. I’m just saying that you give to 1 person the responsibility to tank, attack the boss and heal at the same time, he may screw up at some place. I just prefer to spread the job and not focus it on one person.

I don’t know for your druid. But mine doesn’t run in melee every 20 seconds. Our druid stay in Staff at medium range for most of the fight running circle. Pretty chill out job tbh. Our Druid isn’t the most hardcore player too, so I prefer not to give too much pressure/responsibility on her.

Voluptus.3509:

Disagree because of two things.
1) Druid contributes far more to DPS through buffs than it or any DPS / Tank ever could by attacking but ONLY if it’s able to put those buffs on the melee group. If you have it working at range, you loose all that DPS.

So by putting a “good” DPS in there and taking those buffs away from melee it ends up with less DPS, not more… and this was a big point in the OP.

Unless your Tank is a Chronomancer wich buff the party by a lot more than a Druid.

Now if you compare any other tank than Chronomancer (because Chronomancer tank are just op). Then it come down to the numbers. Does the difference in dps is good or not?

What compo would work best

- 2 PS Warrior, 3 Herald, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Druid/Tank, 2 Condi Engineer, 1 Condi Berserker squad compo or

- 2 PS Warrior, 3 Herald, 1 Chronomancer Tank, 1 Druid, 2 Condi Engineer, 1 Condi Berserker squad compo or

- 2 PS Warrior, 2 Herald, 1 Chronomancer , 1 DH Tank, 1 Druid, 2 Condi Engineer, 1 Condi Berserker squad compo or

Not saying one of those is best, I just had to pick a compo that change the less between a Chrono Tank, a Druid Tank/healer and a another type of Tank.

softblackcarbon.1537:

I agree that there is definitely a range of comps that can be very successful at this boss. I’m simply trying to recommend a comp new guilds can strive for that will lead to the fastest success at killing the boss. Clearly generalizations will never be 100% correct and the ideal will always depend on your specific group. We find the ideal comp just by taking the strongest class of each role and making a group from them. It’s very possible that DnT’s comp is higher DPS (and it probably is) than the "ideal’ comp that I listed, however it requires much more precise play (holding the boss as still as possible for as long as possible) in order to be as effective as they made it. Maybe ideal is the wrong word – fine. But I think the comp I listed is a great starting point for people trying to figure out what classes to gear up and bring into the VG fight (and to show it’s not the only option, I listed my group’s comp as well).

That’s my point. Just remove the word Ideal and we’ll be good.

Ideal is a standard of perfection or excellence. Let’s talk about good group compo, not ideal group compo because that concept is just bullkitten right now.

softblackcarbon.1537:

The ideal comp looks something like this (though a large range of comps can and have been successful):
3 Condi engi
3 Herald
2 PS war
1 Chrono tank
1 Duid healer

I think that everybody should scrap the word ’’Ideal’’ from their vocabulary for at least a couple of months. Nobody know what is ideal. We are all testing so much different thing. For exemple, DNT kill Vale guardian 4:03min left on timer with

2 PS Warrior
1 Condi Warrior
1 Condi Engineer
2 Herald
2 Tempest
1 Druid
1 Chrono tank

Is that the ideal compo? I don’t know, nobody know. We’ll test thing out until we find out. And even there, I think raid a bit too complexe to have 1 ideal meta compo. I guess we’ll develop a bunch of different compo that work well.

UnbentMars.9126:

Thanks for the guide! Are you recommending zealot stats or what is the sta balance you go for?

It can’t be zealot if he gonna tank too. I would say cleric would be the best option there. Maybe some magi if you feel you don’t have enough vitality.

Well the only problem I see is the type of stats available for healer.

You pretty much only have 2 options.

Zealot or Magi. Zealot is way too expensive for nothing and you can’t get any ascended trinket even if that’s probably the best set for Druid healer. That’s why so many people are using Magi.

All the other stats have some toughness, which is ok in small quantity, but a full cleric healer would have way too much toughness compare to most tank.

They should reduce the cost of Zealot to make it more par with other stats set. They should make zealot trinkets available. They should make ascended magi available in rings, amulet and back item.

They should add other type of stats like Healing Power, Power, Precision or Healing Power, Vitality, Power. Or even one new 4 stats setup like Healing Power, Power, Precision, Ferocity or Healing Power, Power, Precision, Concentration. Or stuff for condition healer like Healing Power, Condition, Expertise, Precision for example.

Voluptus.3509:

While doing green circle duty I have never seen six minutes at the end of phase one. Not even close. This is a problem.

Really? We are not very good, but we always have 6:50-6:20min at the end of phase 1 depending if he made mistake or not.

I won’t said using the Druid as the tank and healer is a bad idea. It’s been done and it’s a good strategy. But personally, I really don’t like that option. Why?

1) The circle group don’t have a good dps whatever they do. They are in range, don’t necessarily have 100% buff on them, have their attention focus on something else, etc. So if you can put the Druid, that always is in range and doesn’t have good dps anyway, it’s a win win. That leave 1 place for a better dps or for a tank with higher dps to stay on the boss.

2) The melee group don’t really have any pressure on them. They have 2 threats. The seekers and the blue teleport, both of which they should be able to evade completely with cc and dodge/positioning. At the same time, the Green Circle team have a lot more pressure on them. They will get hit by the circle from time to time and they might have to run on a circle while the floor is illuminated. And if someone from the melee group can down without cause too much problem, a down in the circle team can be catastrophic.

3) This put too much responsibility into 1 person. The tank role is probably the most important in the fight. A good tank, with good timing make all the difference, especially in the 5th phase. If he also need to keep an eye on his allies for heals, well… I’m not saying that it’s too hard, or that’s impossible. I’m just saying that he put a lot of responsability on the same player. I prefer to spread thing up a bit.

Zach.2618:

Junkpile.7439:

What kind of noob think that players who wear PVT lack of skill.

Wearing pvt doesn’t mean you have a lack of skill:) unwillingness to change to suit your party needs with the reason of feeling safer in your pvt is a lack of skil^^ in the right context any gear can be used, just depends on your party:)

You felt right in his trap. You don’t know Junkpile yet

anduriell.6280:

Actually i wasn’t that tanky and not that healing just good enough to keep everyone in the confi zone (when i was able to because running to the greens and healing everyone is not that easy) , being in medium armor it is impossible to tank. My toughness was 1.8K.

WOW that’s a lot of toughness. Our tanks have between 1400 and 1600 toughness. And 1600 toughness we need to swap thing up to reach that. How being a medium armor make it impossible to tank?? Necro and Mesmer thank like crazy are they are Light Armor. One of the most popular tank for Gorseval is Engineer a medium.

- Race is only about looks and don’t alter your gameplay. There is some racial skills, but they are usually bad and almost never used on purpose. Anet don’t want to punish a players for choosing the wrong race.

Most powerful profession will change a lot over time, but here some of the most of powerful profession in each game mode in the moment.

- PvE : Mesmer, Warrior, Elementalist, Revenant and Engineer.

- PvP : Necro, Mesmer, Elementalist, Engineer and Revenant

- WvW : Sorry I kind of stopped to play WvW before HoT so I’m not sure. Before HoT it was Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Mesmer and Elementalist. Don’t know what changed since.

Most fun : Can’t answer that. It depend what you find fun. I like Engineer because it’s complexe, but other players dislike it for that very reason.

Wizzzi.4197:

And? It doesn’t matter. I bought it. I payed them. So why am i supposed to pay more to have the same content as 1 month player… It’s injustie to veteran player who bought it 3 years ago and want to have all content…

5 years ago I paid for a good computer. Now people can buy a better computer for half the price I paid 5 years ago.

THEY STEAL US. ANARCHY.

Rising Dusk.2408:

savacli.8172:

This pretty much goes back to the fact that there’s no LFR or enchanced LFG tool to help facilitate this.

I want to iterate once more that this will happen but it is not easy for ANet and will take a lot of effort.

See I’m higly skeptical of that. Ya of course if they gonna make a complete overhaul of the LFG or if they have difficulty making Squad work with the LFG, that I could understand.

But just adding some section in the LFG? Adding a section Raid or a section Maguuma for the 4 new maps?? Is that so much complicated to do? They did it with fractal, changed the name of the section. So why raid and the new 4 maps are SO MUCH more difficult? Hell they could even use current section and just rename them. Half of the LFG is unused. Nobody post in the WvW section and PvP isn’t far from it. People just don’t use that tool for that type of content.

IMO, they want to overhaul the LFG at some point in the future and until then, they don,t want to touch it. Even if just a really really small amount of resources just to adapt a tiny tiny bit the LFG would do wonder for the players. Changing a tag or two on the LFG ain’t hard.

Ertrak.9506:

This is what I don’t understand when people say the raids are “casual friendly”.

How exactly are casuals, let alone new players such as my self, even supposed to get experience to be able to join teams? And that’s ignoring the gear requirement.

Even with the small exception of players that will allow someone to join with exotic, people are more and more requiring people to be experienced to join (from what I’ve personally seen, that is). Even guilds are requiring their members to “register” to even form a team.

I can’t even raid with my own guild (assuming the off chance happens that someone can’t be there) without fear of kittening people off simply because I’ve barely been able to attempt raids (2-2 hour sessions at best). How am I supposed to get better…?

Well do you went through all the dungeon with relatively ease?

Did you reach level 60 in fractal? This can be done with exotic armor and weapons.

Do you have all your ascended trinkets, exotic armor and weapons?

Did you do all that with a good build, gear, runes, etc?

If you did all that, then you are ready for raids, if not then you have some preparation to do.

Havokak.3450:

I understand what you’re saying and I agree to an extent. The problem, however, is the community. Far to many people whom participate in raids have this expectation of, “Know what you’re doing, or be kicked” for those of us that are casual players, it isn’t fair.
Casual players can, and are willing to do raids. I cannot stress that enough. The problem, as previously stated, is the unwillingness of people who are willing to teach those new-content players on what to do and when to do it.

How is that not fair? We spent hours and hours in the raid trying to figure out tactics and learning the encounter. Of course people don’t want to do that again each and everytime they do a raid with new players that never tried it before.

That’s simple.

1) You are determined to make it work and find a group of people in a similar situation. A LOT of players never or almost never tried raid. Get together a group of 10 pugs, friend or whatever and wipe for 2 to 12 hours like everybody else as you learn the fight. As you are doing that you be able to take 1-2 pieces of ascended gear and then you will be able to go into pretty much any pug group because you worked hard to know the fight. At this point, you too won’t want to take any people. You will want people that know a minimum what they are doing.

2) You wait. More and more people are getting better at raid. A lot of group are starting to find VG easy and won’t mind taking 1 raid noob everytime. In 2-3 months it will be far easier for new players to get into raid.

3) You find a group of players that know the fight and are willing to teach you. Right now it can be harder but a lot of guild are already taking 1 raid noobs each week to teach them. We killed the VG with more than 20 different players of our guild and this number will continue to grow. As time pass, this will be more and more easy as more group will be good enough at the first boss.

Keep in mind that it’s new content even for a lot of hardcore players. My group still struggle at Gorseval and we didn’t even tried Sabetha yet. You can’t expect people to teach and accept new players when they don’t master the content themselves yet.

Draknar.5748:

d) Fractals have improved across the board with HoT. They take less time commitment, give better rewards

Wait what???? I’m just gonna leave that here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

Ya ok we get more gold reward from fractal, but ascended chest are WAY better as a reward than a couple of gold per day.

I love fractal. I’m a fan from day 1. And even if they improve some stuff in it, they screw up a lot of stuff.

- Mobs are doing a LOT less damage, making it very easy mode. Even at level 100, they do less or near the damage of level 50 used to have.

- The toughness scale at level 60+ is completely broken. Condition Damage build have a huge advantage and even with a full condi team you get a longer fight with no added difficulty. Take the smaller damage and the higher resistance for all mobs and you get some horribly boring fight. I started auto-attack at Mossman 77 and go bio. Got back and kept playing. Before HoT at level 50 I would have been dead in second.

- Unintended consequence. The champion at molten duo at 99 and 90 is completely stupid. Direct Damage is doing very small damage, while he,s immune to fire. This champion is longer to kill than the 2 Molten Bosses together.

- The rewards is bad. Ya ok you can in theory get more gold than we used to, but it’s bury behind a RNG box that you need to pay to open. It doesn’t matter that we got more gold reward now. It make the majority of people feel screwed over. It’s a bad system for that reason. And lets not talk about the unique rewards. Fractal was one of the few place when you could reliably get some ascended gear and they screw that over real good. The unique reward from level 50 to 100 is less good than the reward in 20-50.

- The fractal collection that was introduced 2 YEARS ago still have the exact same bug than 2 YEARS ago. Back then, they gave up and simply removed the collection from the game, and it’s still bugged.

Hopefully, all of this will be fixed in 1 week and fractal will be great again. But still, this seem like a butched work to me.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

They shifted it to ‘viper at least’, wich is troublesome imo.

The community will always shift for the best they know. When HoT launched, nobody wanted to see a Condi Warrior. People tested it out and figure out that it was one if not the best dps in the game. People tested Viper and figure out that it was the best. So of course people will always try to get the best. We had the same thing back when dungeon was a thing. It have nothing to do with raid.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

The general rule is: either be ultra over the top dps (sinister engie, revenant sword), or overcompensate your weakness with giving allies at least a 10% dps boost (alacrity, druid trait, that on heals allies get damage boost buff, phalanx, revenant facet, etc).

This is not leaving a good place for a lot of builds. Wich is sad.

True enough. But that’s because of the balance. Herald, Tempest, Condi Warrior and Engineer, etc. They just all so much DPS while bringing something else to the table. Some build just bring way too much compare to other. But against, that have nothing to do with raid themselves. TBH, the situation isn’t so bad. A lot of new powerful build were tested since HoT. People will hear more and more about them, and people will learn more and more about raid. Over time we gonna see more and more diversity in pugs raids.

A diversity that already exist with good squad honestly. You talk about Thief, Necro and Guardian. Guess what. My group have 1-2 of each and we did just fine at killing Vale Guardian. Gorseval is a bit tricker for us. Too much people get interrupted so dps isn’t pefect and we had to rely more on big dps profession for now.

Arccai.4870:

Dosent that depends on the group?
If there already are support roles that perma stack might, whats the point with glint?
Id focus more on damage then which would be mallyx for 10%

Yes it does.

- Glint/Shiro : If you are the first Revenant in a party with no perma quickness

- Glint/Mallyx : If you are the first Revenant in a party with perma quickness

- Shiro/Mallyx : If you are the second Revenant with a PS Warrior but no perma quickness

- Glint/Mallyx : If you are the second Revenant with a PS Warrior and perma quickness (Give perma protection instead of Might/Fury).

Axiarus.2376:

Norjena.5172:

vespers.1759:

1. equip zerk gear and sword
3. equip shiro
4. press 1
5. ????
6. top DPS charts

It’s disgraceful that a class like this exists and also poops out boons like it consumed a bottle of laxatives at the same time.

99,9% of all revs are just horribel bad and don´t even understand the basics of this class.
And non-rev haters are even worse.

Are you saying he is wrong? That is literally how to top charts with Rev.

Yes he’s wrong. We are talking about raid here and most revenant here don’t use Shiro, they use Mallyx. Shiro is a better option only if you have no Chronomancer or your Chronomancer can’t give you perma quickness.

In raid, you use 6 utilities skills, swap between the 2 legend and auto-attack. True, that doesn’t make it hard of a profession, but we are far from Shiro, Press 1 rotation.

Lalocat.6793:

How did you get those casuals to switch class? The consensus in my guild is that if the raid isn’t doable with no guide, no gear, 3 necro, and 2 thief, well, then raiding just isn’t for them. What classes did you have?

Casual don’t mean one type of exactly similar person. Casual only mean that he spend less time in the game. You got casual that are willing to adapt to tackle a challenge and I would agree that it’s most people.

That said, I think your friend are absolutely right. Raid don’t seem to be for them and it’s not a bad thing. No guide (or a lot of testing by wipe) and no gear isn’t raid at all. It’s dungeon. I killed the first boss with 2 thief and 1 necro and I’m pretty sure we could kill him with 3 Necro and 2 thief. 1 Necro tank, 1 healer, 2 Herald, 2 Viper Reapers, 2 Thiefs, 1 PS Warrior and 1 Condi Engineer. I think it could work for the first boss.

Raid core idea is to push players farther. To test their skill, organisation and tactics. It’s all about wiping the floor like idiot smashing their head into a wall until you can find what is going wrong and finding a solution. That’s what is fun about raid and without that, it’s just not raiding. Without that, there isn’t any difference between dungeons and raids.

ChrizZcE.5981:

The most skilled players that do the hardest content in the game are always broke while the people that run from chest to chest and hit “F” for hours everyday have the best in slot gear and the coolest looking chars.

It´s nuts.

Do you consider yourself one of the most skilled players? I certainly don’t. But all the skilled players that I know are richer than me.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying. Beating easy mode raids won’t devalue beating a higher difficulty raid; that doesn’t even make sense. I’m saying that the lower difficulty raid won’t require nearly the same level as iteration as the higher difficulty one, and thus the people beating the easier one will experience the elation of overcoming a difficult activity because they’ll just breeze through it. That is against the design paradigm of raids; the whole point was to create difficult content that feels personally rewarding to beat.

Regardless of that, though, I think balancing everything against two different difficulty modes for raids will add far too much time cost to the developers. It would limit their ability to create new raid wings to support it, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Ok i understand more now, but I still don’t agree with your point.

It depend on what easy mode mean. To me it would be only to remove the timers and add 2-4 updraft at Gorseval and that’s it.

The raid itself wouldn’t be too much easier since the mechanic are all intact. The only thing that change is that a full group of casual exotic guy will be able to do the raid with their main. They won’t have to change their profession because they don’t have a PS Warrior. They won’t have to spend 1 gold on nourishment and food. If they need to change their gear, they will be able to do so at a fraction of the price. They will still wipe like crazy because someone didn’t make the circle. They will still wipe if the tank screw up. But the gear barrier will be removed.

They wouldn,t have access to special rewards like the infusion, minis and legendary armor. But if they do their raid on a regular basis they will be able to gear 1 character in full ascended and with their knowledge takle the real raid.

And that way, the pressure on the devs is very very small. Removing a timer and adding 2-4 updraft is very small compare to creating another wing of the raid. Of course it’s not just that (the mode itself and reward rework), but you get my point.

Of course if we talk about an easy mode with half the HP, no timer and half the damage, then this isn’t a raid anymore. The goal here is only to remove the gear barrier for people that can’t afford it, or can’t afford a second set of ascended because their main build isn’t really good for raid.

Wahaha.7938:

I don’t like the idea of an easier difficulty because it would annihilate the enjoyment you currently get from beating the boss on the normal difficulty. I think this is hard for many people to understand so I expect disagreement, but this will indeed be the case for the majority of players. “don’t play easier difficulty” is not a good counter-argument.

But how? I enjoyed beating the first boss. How an easy mode would diminish that? I enjoyed when I was able to reach level 50 back when fractal was first released. Someone doing fractal 1 didn’t limit my enjoyment. Does the fact that some people are playing in Emerald Division annihilate the enjoyment of someone reaching Diamond Division in pvp?

softblackcarbon.1537:

3. While this may be hard to understand for non-raiders, the existence of a “story mode” would devalue the prestige of completing the existing challenging content, for many raiding players.

I’m a raider and I can’t see how this would devalued my work. If the easy mode have a big reward yes I can see it. If they just nerf raid, I can see it. But if they add a new easy mode? No i can’t.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I think it really depends on the person. I hate to be that guy, but I don’t think everything in the game should be designed for everyone. I know a ton of people who avoid unranked and ranked PvP like the plague because the expectations are so high and the stress runs high. They’ll never experience those close games of team versus team in the intended conquest format, and that’s okay. They can still experience PvP in hotjoin however they like should they choose.

I agree with 99% of what you are saying Dusk. But not on that. You said it yourself. Someone can play ranked, unranked or even hotjoin depending on what they choose. But they all can experience conquest PvP on their level. Nobody is telling them go in EoTM for easy mode PvP.

Same should be true for raids. Nobody should tell them go in dungeon or fractal if you want easy mode because they are not the same type of content. Like Ranked, Unranked and Hot join, there should be different level of difficulty for raids too. Just like there is several difficulty level in fractal.

It was my opinion back when we didn’t even know what was this challenging group content. You can’t make a content that will have the right difficulty for everybody. So the ideal solution is to make different level of difficulty.

And I disagree that would diminish the value of the effort we make. Lets just give you an exemple. Back when fractal was lauch, people were putting video of them doing level 80 and it was impressive and those people had pride of doing it. The fact that some people were doing fractal 10 didn’t devalued that.

Same with league. When I’m gonna see someone in diamond or legendary division I’m gonna be impress and their achivement won’t be devaluated because I also can play in PvP League, just 2 or 3 division under them.

If I’m able to kill the raid in normal mode, I’m gonna be proud of myself. This won’t be devaluated by someone killing the raid in easy mode.

savacli.8172:

Edit: The reason I plea for a Easy mode or tier’d Raids is because it will serve as a crutch. Again, pointing back to fractals even though there was an “easy” mode the general player base opted for the higher levels because of the increased availability of rewards (ascended boxes notably). Now, I’m not gonna throw someone straight to the sharks if they want a chance at a box, but it’s a whole lot easier to crutch them into the hardcore content if I had an easy mode rather than have said person eaten alive.

P.S. I realize that Easy mode or whatever will never happen; I’m just voicing my 2 copper that Raids are not casual friendly.

Like I said several time. I agree with the easy mode with nerfed reward parallel with the current raid.

ChrizZcE.5981:

That´s nice, but what I´m saying is even if you are the most skilled GW2 player in the world you won´t even be able to access the raid if you don´t have ascended gear and play the right class/build.

I dare you to find skilled PUG raid group that accepts a thief with no ascended gear. First thing people ask you when you join is to ping your gear. If you don´t have ascended gear you get kicked.

Look at the numbers of people in all those thread who are saying the same as you. Talk to them and form a raid squad. Of course if I have ascended armor, I’m gonna ask for people with ascended gear because why not?

Now you don,t have ascended, go find people in the same situation. You keep telling us that raid are for only 5-10% of people. Then with 90-95% of the community on your side you should have a much more easier time to find a group and us no?

MadRabbit.3179:

Your argument is based on a faulty assumption that it HAS to be one or the other; either casual or hardcore.

About 300 other video games I could name if I really wanted to, but aren’t going prove that the same content can be released with varying levels of difficulty and still effectively sell to both markets.

On that I agree. I would be for an easier mode with less rewards.

savacli.8172:

The moment you decided to find time to practice is when you went beyond the call on an average player. To me, I see the casual player as someone who came across GW2 and picked up the game because it was a cheap buy and found it interesting. Though the moment a Steam sale goes live I expect that same player to chase after the next shiny object. Should he come back to GW2 I don’t think he’d have much luck finding a group because he probably doesn’t have the right gear let alone the experience necessary to bypass that check.

So we should make sure the game is for the most casual players all the time? What about the guy that play 20min per year. Did you think about him? How hardcore elitist the game is if that guy can’t experience all the content?

I’m exagerrating, but you get my point. It’s not like they changed everything in the game into raid and there is nothing in the game except raid. Jesus 2 months ago the game was fine, they added 1 raids and suddenly that,s all there is. I can’t play raid, so this game isn’t for casual anymore. That’s why we can’t have nice things because each time there is people screaming that not everybody can play it. From the casual mom with 2 kids and 2 hours on sathurday to the hardcore gamer that love GW2 and play 30-40 hours per weeks. Why can’t they both have content that they love? Or it need to be always about the casual 100% of the time?

savacli.8172:

Normally, I wouldn’t bring up such silly examples, but hasn’t one of this game’s biggest selling point continuously been that it caters to casual players? I’m not saying that Raids have to be scrapped entirely, but Raids don’t really work well with folks that have scheduling conflicts. I understand that Raids can eventually be completed by everyone with practice, but that can take hours upon hours. As exaggerated as this sounds, not everyone is going to be able to put in the time commitment to overcome to skill challenge.

99% of the game is for casual. Fractal are a mess, but they are way more casual now with only 1 islands instead of 4. The only content that is a bit harder and need a bit more playtime is raid. As time pass, this too will get easier and easier. Strategy will get more and more known to the general public. Build will be available online. Pugs will know the content more and more, making it available for more and more people.

FogLeg.9354:

Hardcore players should really stop posting about what is or is not suitable content for casual players. The fact that you can finish something under a minute, naked, with one hand only and wearing blindfold, does not mean it is doable for average casual player.

The average casual player never reads forums btw, so arguing with them in forum is fairly useless. If they don’t like the content, they simply stop playing.

So everybody able to do what you can’t is an Elite player and anyone under you is a casual? I’ll need to give the good news to my friend with whom I kill the Vale Guardian with that after all he’s an elite hardcore players. His wife and 3 kids will be astonished since he only play 10 hours per week.

I learn everyday on these forums.

YaYa.5879:

2/ Lol raids aren’t for me? It’s one of the new content of this 45€ expension and it’s not for me? It’s not smart to put something that 100% of player paid for, but only 5-10% can succeed in…
The casual players must feel left out

1/ no… You can still win a lot of gold doing the meta events, and they are going to add liquid gold to fractals. Which means that instead of cossing to gain gold in dungeons, we are forced to go to fractals to gain gold in party content.

Conclusion: stop thinking that the game is made for the elite 5% of the commuity. I don’t have 6 hours a day (1 of them just waiting for a party to be organized) to spend on a portion of a video game. I have a life, studies, homework. And i am not the only one who feels that, so it is possible that angry casual users just leave GW2, go to another game, and as a result gw2 would suffer the same fate as 90% of MMO’s = death
Because, no users => No money => no game.
For my part i’ve seen a lot of friends leaving the game since the expension and almost left it many times.

Raid seem to not be for you because you don’t find fun to wipe, learn rinse and repeat. Whatever your level of skill you gonna wipe, learn rince and repeat. My group took 12 hours in 4 sessions to kill the first boss the first time with people swapping each time. What do you think that everybody doing the raid is getting it done at the first try? The majority if not everybody need to wipe for at least 2 hours to learn the mechanics. And that’s the fun part. If you don’t have fun doing that, then raid ain’t meant for you. Not because you can’t succeed, but because the core idea behind raid seem to be no fun for you. I dislike open world, I don’t cry because part of the game is about open World. The game can’t be 100% for everybody. 5-10% of player can succeed? I don’t know. But in my casual guild of 500 person, 60-70 guildmate succeeded at the first boss yet and the number if growing each week. Either with one of the 3 raid group in the guild or with pugs.

+1 Great post.

I have nothing to add to that

1) Dungeon. They nerfed them for a reason. Either they don’t put any gold reward for raid and don’t buff gold reward from fractal, they add gold sink or they nerfed the gold reward from dungeon. They had no other option if they want to keep inflation in check and as a player you don’t want inflation to go crazy, that would be the worst possible outcome for us. That said, they could gave reward back in other form like material, token, rares, etc. In the end, people are kitten for now and occupied by the expansion. I tried dungeon again the other day and with a decent party you go WAY faster through them than we used to. The reward is still very good. People will calm down, finish their expansion and then people will want to get back into dungeon for the reward.

2) Raid are not for you that’s ok. Other people love it. I had so much fun wiping and learning the encounter.

3) The patch for fractal is either gonna be tomorrow or on december 15th. I never though that it could be on december 1st.

Conclusions : Dungeon are still there and they still have good reward. Anet didn’t do a great job on how they implemented the nerf. Fractal is a mess and they kittened it up for sure. But they acknowledged their mistake so let’s wait 1-2 weeks to see the patch and judge then. Raid are perfect for the target audience they are meant for. Some polishing for squad and LFG and the rest is only time as people get better at it. Leave it 1-2 months and we’ll see then what’s the situation with raids.

Average joe don’t grind for 7 different character dude. Average joe will probably have 1-2 character with near map completion and only need 1-2 hero challenge as they explore the new maps to unlock their elite.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Thaddeus.4891:

1) That’s like people saying. What legalizing gay marriage, this will lead to legalizing marriage between family members or between a human and animals. Are you pro bestiality? Then don’t legalize gay marriage. Same kitten here. Don’t make an easy mode, because then people will ask for something else, and then ask for another thing and if anet do all those things, then TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCE.

Whoa, that illustration was intense. One that I have even thought about myself, but at least I didn’t say it in public. That’s a touche subject, ready made with explosive barrels of hate.

True. But the comparison was just too perfect.

Lanaeris.3845:

The casual label for this game is what gave me that fan girl crave when I started. Since Hot, it’s been nothing but disappointment (except for the artistic side of the game). I am mad that everyone suggests to ‘get better’ to have more fun. “look up the best dps builds” “watch youtube videos of good players” “Learn your traits and builds”. Frankly, that’s not how some of us have fun. Some of us find enjoyment in the little things, like a leaf that looks awesome in the corner or a waterfall waterslide iceskating thing. We call our friends over and enjoy our time together. This game is pushing people away from each other when it sends them to look up the best dps builds to keep up with everyone; people get competitive and elitist. I miss guild wars for what it was, I truly do. Every MMO goes this route eventually.

?? You talking only about Raid I suppose. Because that doesn’t matter in 100% of the other content. Dungeon and Fractal up to 50 are super easy, open world is maybe a tiny bit more difficult in the new 4 maps, but people said the same thing about silverwaste and nobody complaining about that anymore. Same will go with the new maps, as people will know them better. Hell you gonna have an easier time with hybrid PHIW tanky build if that’s what you like. In PvP, a LOT of build work very well in unranked as it put you in matches against equally skilled players. Yes from time to time you team don’t work well toghther, but a 50/50 win rate is what most players should have, or near it. For ranked, give it 1-2 weeks for better players to climb the division.

So really, there is only raid that put you in the situation that you describe and raid were suppose to be the most challenging thing in the game. The only part of the game hardcore.

Draknar.5748:

This is what would happen:

Make easy mode raids. Everyone does easy mode except a small % who are actually good and going after legendary armor. The small % get legendary armor. The casuals who frequent easy mode see said legendary armor. We now have 100 posts on forums about how legendary armor should be available from the easy raids, just maybe it takes longer. More and more people complain saying it isn’t fair to lock items behind something that is too hard for the majority of players, they want to play their way, they also keep chanting “man-i-fest-ooooooo”.

Anet makes legendary armor available from easy mode. No one ever does hard mode again. 100s of posts show up on the forum saying GW2 is too easy, that there’s no challenging group content. Then they add a new wing of raid that’s actually difficult. We repeat this whole thing over again.

1) That’s like people saying. What legalizing gay marriage, this will lead to legalizing marriage between family members or between a human and animals. Are you pro bestiality? Then don’t legalize gay marriage. Same kitten here. Don’t make an easy mode, because then people will ask for something else, and then ask for another thing and if anet do all those things, then TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCE.

2) IF an easy mode is created. And tbh I would only remove the timer and add maybe 2 updaft at Gorseval and that’s it. So the mechanics are as hard, just more flexible on the dps composition. And IF they allow legendary armor to be feasible in easy mode, just longer. Why people would stop doing the hard mode? That make no sense. I know I won’t be. Raid are once a week so I want the best reward. I’ll enjoy more the hard mode that’s for sure and I’m not alone in that situation.

Look at it this way. PvP league are on now. There is 6 divisions and the higher you climb the harder the matches get. Still, as far as I know anybody can complete the legendary. It will be longer, but that’s all. OH kitten . Nobody want to play in higher league anymore. Everybody want to stay in emerald and sapphire and not try to get higher at all. Right? That’s the situation we are in at the moment right?

As long as the reward is nerf at a good rate from normal raid, easy mode is a good thing imo.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

How do you propose people learn to play when Raid groups are stringent with who they accept?

What is your profession, build, gear? Maybe we can give you advice to where to go at low cost. Maybe you are not that far off of what is consider good. If you just never tried raid yet, you can probably find a pug group to learn it. You won’t be able to kill him anyway the first time you go in. Unless you are super lucky. Most group had to practice it for 2 to 12 hours before the first kill.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

very specific class/role requirements and a high entry point.

Not really no. So far I saw or killed the first boss with tank that were Necro, Mesmer, Guardian, Engineer and Warrior. So far only once did we killed the Vale Guardian with a specific tank build for him. All of the other time we killed him with a guardian using part of his WvW gear with a build created at the last minute. Yes there is specific build needed like condition build and buffing build like Warrior and Herald. But once you got 2 herald, 1 PS warrior, 1 tank, 2-3 condi and 1 healer, then it’s pretty much free for all. Any profession can fill the 2-3 last spots.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

A lack of accessibility will make it hard for people to learn raid encounters because few will be given the opportunity to do so. Players who are already experienced will be less inclined to allow less experienced players to enter their group.

Asking for more accessibility is logical and will give players an entry point from which they can progress and improve.

Totally right. LFG section for raid, making LFG and Squad work together, raid lobby. That would help forming pug. After that you have the ’’easy’’ mode. It’s debatable. Personnally, I think it can be a good thing. They can nerf the reward in that mode and remove the timer for exemple.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Keep in mind that I can be a godly player and it won’t matter if my group is less than optimal. My personal skill becomes meaningless in those situations. By implementing a proper difficulty curve, you allow more players to access content and learn it and become more skilled, which improves the pool of players doing higher level content which makes it easier for you or I to find a good group to play with. It benefits high level players as much as lower level players.

Now you just talking though your hat with no experience in the content you are talking about. You personnal skill is meaningless when the party is less than optimal? AHAHAHAH good joke dude. We killed the first boss with 2 condi, 1 tank in WvW gear and 2 thiefs. Do you think it’s optimal?? In an optimal group, you will him with 2-3min left on the timer.

It’s the little mistake there and there that make the difference. Someone without a good position is too far from the circle, someone don’t dodge the blue teleport attack, the tank don’t move the guardian at the right moment, etc. That’s what will make you fail. Unless of course you don’t have full buff. If you don’t have 25 might and perma fury, then there is nothing you can do. You won’t have the dps needed. Well for most people.

Keep in mind that the first season of league is pretty new. So everybody is crank up in the first 2 divisions, with very few people yet in saphire and ruby. This that you have a greater chance to get against player with better skills for now. As those level up in league you gonna be able to face people more of your caliber.

As far as I know you have

Warrior and Engineer on top by a good margin.

Then you have Ele, Ranger, Guardian and Reaper that come after. They are good, but not the best condi. Ranger and Guardian are about equal condi or zerker. I’m not sure about zerker reaper. Ele is better in zerker.

That said, reaper is actually pretty good at Gorseval because of Epidimic. I wouldn’t bring a Reaper condi over a Warrior or Engineer in another fight than Gorseval for now.

If you want to raid. Warrior or Engineer is your best choice. Reaper only for Gorseval. The remaining are decent, but if you can choose don’t take them.

eldrin.6471:

are you going to claim legendary is not the best in slot.

Well legendary are best in slot, but so are ascended. What’s your point?