Guild Wars 2

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Yes, that requires two reapers though, since you want to jiggle the conditions around (spread from boss to trash back to boss)

It work with only one, there is no magical number where this is bad or good. That said, if you only have one, you should have like 1-2 other condition build like Engie or Warrior to keep burn and bleed at 25 to maximize the Epidemic.

Cyninja.2954:

Thaddeus.4891:

No he mean that usually good players tend to have good gear. Because good player know that game, play more often and want to get the best gear.

Going after ascended don’t make you a better players. But good players usually have ascended gear.

Can’t agree to this too. I do believe players who have full ascended might have spent more time on the game or valued different goals over someone who doesn’t have full ascended. I wouldn’t say they are better necessary.

No no, you understood it in reserve. Nobody is saying that making or having ascended gear make you a better player. I’m saying it the other way around.

We talking about raid here. If you are a good players, the chance is that you spend a lot of time in Fractal and Dungeon, which will give you the amount of gold and ascended chest to have a full ascended chest.

It doesn’t mean that it make you a good players, just that the vast majority of good players spend enough time in the game in the right place to get ascended armors.

Forum bug

15 char

eldrin.6471:

They made promises not the long ago,we were told just before hot that they wouldn’t increase lvl cap and invalidate all our hard worked for gear. Well guess what you just invalidated all our Expensive ascended armor buy adding a new legendary tier armor.

What??? Legendary armor is the same stats as ascended.

Urkara.9035:

So you’re saying working on Ascended Gear rather than playing game is making you a better player ? Yeah sure

No he mean that usually good players tend to have good gear. Because good player know that game, play more often and want to get the best gear.

Going after ascended don’t make you a better players. But good players usually have ascended gear.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Fair enough. You’re right, we can’t really say what’s optimal yet. On the other hand you probably shouldn’t say hammer is better in these fights either.

Well, your question was what encounter where you should use something else than GS + Lbow. We can talk about semantic, should I have specified that some place you CAN use hammer and not SHOULD. In the end I never said that Hammer is better than GS + Lbow, just that there is place where Hammer is a good choice, not a suboptimal choice. TBH it’s not like Hammer was also SO Far behind the meta. It was always around 10% behind the best dps build.

Personnally, there is a point where two build are close enough in term of DPS that I really don’t a kitten about which one is the best in which situation. If several build are around 5-10% of each other, I pretty much put then on the same level. I feel that the community put build into two categeries. The most optimal dps build and everything else. I don’t mind a Meta, but there is always 3-4 very very good build next to it that seem to be view as garbage by the community. They are suboptimal so they are not worth anything. I find it sad.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Hammer makes stuff easier, it’s not more optimal. I killed both of those bosses without any hammer guards.

Don’t know about that condi thing. Can you provide actual numbers? Last time I checked condi had to sacrafice all its utility for dps to come close to zerker and was thus considered inferior.

Well first it depend on how you describe optimal. Do you know what is most optimal in any of the three boss of the raid? If so tell me because so far I saw a lot of different composition do a really great job. How do we define the optimal setup? The group that go the faster? Does the raid are old enough to be sure we won’t see faster setup in the future? No so long ago, Snow Crow killed Gorseval in a bit more than 3-4min.

I don’t like using this exemple since it feel like I’m saying that DNT is who decide what is most optimal, but they killed the Vale with a hammer DH with 2:39sec left and since then they changed the build of their DH to be more offensive and I don’t know their new time. Does someone was able to do better than without a Hammer DH? Maybe, even probably. But what then, If someone kill the Vale Guardian without a Hammer DH with 1 more second left on the timer it won’t be consider optimal anymore, and if 1 week later someone else kill the guardian even faster by 1-2 second but with a Hammer DH, then it will be optimal again? I think it’s pretty narrow minded don’t you think?

DNT also killed Sabetha with 2 DH Hammer and 1:36 left on the timer. Again does a ground killed Sabetha with less time and no DH Hammer? Maybe. Does that mean that DH is not and optimal choice in those fight? I’m not sure.

For the condition, it was my opinion before HoT, but DH changed a little that. I don’t play condi guardian and I don’t plan on using it, but according to Obal, the difference in dps is pretty slim. A condi DH with 3 dps utility is about the same as a zerker DH with 2 dps utility. But a DH zerker with 1 dps utility is equal to a condi DH with 1 dps utility. For me, Zerker DH is more fun, more reliable and you always have 1 slot of a support utility so I prefer it. But in view of the difference in dps, both build seem pretty equal to me.

Solid Gold.9310:

Funny that because I’ve been running around on my toon for 2,300 hours, and I only have one (1) ascended weapon, no ascended armour, no ascended trinkets or anything else ascended.

That’s since the head start a couple of days before August 28, 2012

Well now you are just bad then. You don’t have 20 laurel for an Amulets?

Vayne.8563:

PyrateSilly.4710:

Dresdoe.7503:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been answered so many times as it is now ridiculous to even think about bringing up something that was just a “this is what we would like” and as things change and grow things get cut and added.
As for the grinding …… I have been playing since head-start/beta and I have yet to grind. Not once have I grinded and I have played just about every day. I am not only doing the old Bolt but also every other new legendary weapon in the game at the moment. I am collecting as I go and not worrying about how fast I get them done. For me it is not a contest to see how fast I get them done. I am just letting the pieces come when they come. Having too much fun just playing to think about “oh crap I don’t have this legendary yet”

I call bs, you can’t play this game without grinding for something, anyone who claims otherwise has a faulty definition of a grind.

You can call BS all you want but you are not me, you are not with me when I play. You have no clue how often I play or when I play or what I do when I play. I will just tell you again that I do NOT grind. I find it dumb to do that as the end result is something that I do not need right now as it’s just a game. A game that I play to relax and to try to forget the pain that I am in.
I have played games online since the old BBS days, I have never grinded in any game I have played.

Many people have said they don’t grind. Are they all liars? I agree with PyrateSIlly it’s entirely possible to play this game without grinding.

Well I think that it usually not mean the same thing for everybody. For exemple, I have 8 of my 9 character next to rich vein of iron and platinum and I gather them about 10min per day. Is it grind? It does a it feel like it, but it’s such a small grind that I don’t mind and I’m happy to have all Iron, Steel and Darksteel I need when crafting Deldrimor. Doing dungoen for gold is it grind? For some people yes, I usually have fun doing them so for me it’s not. You can play the game without grinding stuff, but that doesn’t mean because you think that you don’t grind that other people won’t think that what you do isn’t grind.

That said, if everything for them is a grind I don’t get why they are still playing tbh.

phor.7952:

I didn’t say there was only one way to play.
You can certainly build your tank to try to max your personal DPS while keeping barely enough toughness to hold aggro. It CAN work that way… I just don’t personally think it’s very effective.

But you specifically said “DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank.”
That doesn’t have anything to do with being one of many solutions to group composition… it’s just misinformation. So I called you out on it. : /

Fair enough. But as very effective or not, I totally disagree. At vale guardian a more tank/support tank or 2 healers will make the fight easier, but you might end up close on the timer.

For Gorseval on the other hand, now you definitely not gonna have enough dps. Well not definitively. A good composition/players can kill Gorseval with 3+min left on the timer, so I guess that you can do it. But I doubt that much people can do what Snow Crow did. I know that we have 1 offensive tank, 1 healers and 8 dps and we have just enough dps to kill Gorseval.

Keksmuffin.1450:

No, go ahead. Tell me specific PvE encounters where you would use something else than GS+Lbow.

Vale Guardian and Sabetha. Probably fractal 75+ if they Anet had not nerf their dmg, but instead increase it over the level. Hammer for protection is kind of powerful in fight that put too much pressure on you for your active defense.

A condi Scepter/Torch + GS DH have pretty much the exact dps of a GS + Lbow DH.

Solid Gold.9310:

2,300 hours, 1 character, 1 ascended weapon. (And I got that about 200 hours ago).

Nope definitely not a grind.

And that’s playing since GW2 early access.

LOL the problem is that ascended come from too few different source, not that it’s a grind. Jesus.

You simply don’t play the content that offer ascended and even if you can’t expect ALL content to give ascended gear, it’s true that ascended should be offer at a similar rate for each major type of content.

Fractal used to be a bit too much when it come to ascended.

Raid are very good source.

WvW and PvP are ok, but not that great.

Open World are simply horrible in that case and that’s a content that a lot of people do.

Elomite.2396:

My point is this food is overly expensive and the recipes are unsustainable I don’t care how much you farm open world your bloodstone dust stacks will start to diminish if you are constantly crafting this food.

Anet should make this food more accessible otherwise what’s the point of even having it in the game if it’s not applicable anywhere because it is hurting your profit margins.

That i agree completly and this also work for sigil and runes. A lot of recipes from some of the end game stuff were dropped 2-3 years ago in events in a time when a lot of that stuff was useless. Now that they are actually good in the current content we have to spend 90 gold for some recipe for absolutely no reason other than Anet decided to put that food recipe available only during one even 2 years ago.

HtFde.3856:

Just out of interest … how did you get your sets then – apart from buying the materials from the TP which somehow requires RL money or a lot of ingame gold (and requires people to actually farm the items for you to buy)?

Well I had 8 characters before HoT and now 9 with the revenants. I had all of them next to a Iron or Platinum rich vein and everyday I took 5-10min to gather all 8/9 of them. So for me Deldrimar Ingot where pretty much free with Mithril being so abundant.

With HoT I had 2 characters slot, but only 1 character left to make so I use the 2nd one to create a low level character that open Green Bags of gear so I get Tier 3-4 of Leather and Cloth.

CM is pretty great for low level leather and cloth. Yes right now less people are doing fractal and it’s harder to get a party. But it’s so much faster now with the power creep from HoT that the reward is pretty great. Maybe a bit less than before, but still great.

I did a bit of WvW zerg bursting with a guild for sometimes and got 2-3 Chest of ascended from that.

I also like to do PvP and also got maybe 5-6 ascended chest from just playing pvp.

Now fractal is useless for that, but I got about 12 ascended chest from fractals.

Oh and I’m an achievement kitten and I think 2-3 achievement give you ascended chest.

I got some ascended boots from raid and I have almost enough shards for 2 small pieces of ascended.

I crafted I think 2 ascended armors and about 10 ascended weapons. With my rich iron and platinum vein gathered 8 times each day, weapons where pretty easy to make actually. The remaining was from ascended drop in WvW, PvP and Fractals.

It,s been more than 2 years so I slowly accumulated ascended chests.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Isn’t that the case with every game ever?

So grind is a useless term?

Well not really. There is two content that push people into ascended gear. High Level Fractal and Raids. Like I said, Raid (just like fractal) should have a way for people without ascended to enjoy the content, while keeping the challenging side for people who do have ascended gear.

Anyway, 98% of the content of the game doesn’t push anybody at all toward ascended. Additionnaly, Ascended gear is in the game for the last 2 years, 3 years for some pieces. They should improve the diversity from where you can get them, but overall, it,s been a long time and most people should be able to have full trinkets and weapons, which is enough for raid.

Ascended was the max gear 2 years ago and is still the best gear in the game now. The problem isn’t that you need to grind to get your best gear, the problem is when a game push a gear grind when each expansion you need to get a new better gear. Because that invalidate all the work we did the year before. And that, GW2 is excepted of.

NayNay.7680:

Kal Spiro.9745:

The game is not a grind, unless you choose to grind. The game does not force you to do it, you force yourself.

yeah… No. Other players are imposing the grind upon us due to raid dps requirements. In order for any player to enjoy the endgame content that has been decided upon for our future, they will have to grind.

It’s still a choice. I killed the Vale Guardian with DPS Dragonhunter, 2 Thiefs, people in exotic armors, etc, etc

Now I agree that Raid should be more accessible (LFG, Raid Lobby, Squad) and should have several difficulty settings for everybody to enjoy. But the very definition of challenging content mean that you will need to make yourself a good build and gear. You can’t have both. A challenging content that doesn’t really need any build or gear to be completed because then you end up with current dungeons.

The concept of condition elementalist is a good one. It wasn’t a bit underpower before, but the Tempest Overload give him just enough boost to be good.

Now whether or not you should get Viper or Sinister is another story. Like other people said Viper is good for build with 2 conditions, but you mostly only give burning. It’s not that viper would not be good, but that it’s expansive for not much return on investment. You are better off with Rune of Balthazar, Silgil of Smoldering, etc. Just make sure you reach 100% condition duration on burning and after that try to get the max condition damage you can.

I would change your sigil for Force and Air. Geomancy is useless in a power build and Accuracy isn’t the best choice.

Maurauder and Celestial are pretty much the same for me in your case. You want Beserker, if you can’t play with it then add the minimum amount of marauder or celestial you need to stay alive and enjoy the game.

HtFde.3856:

So doing Centaurs over and over again to get cotton which you need for ascended crafting is not and in no way “repeating the same stuff over and over again for the reward”, huh?

And going to karma traders then mystic forge then back to karma trader for hours to get linen and wool is also absolutely ok and not the sign of a failed design, huh?

Not repetitive …oh no …

I never did centaurs and I don’t even know what this karma trader thing is and I have 5 ascended armors. You choose to do it that ways.

Ya there should be more ways to get ascended armor because now it’s pretty craft, raid or be lucky. But the way you decide to get the stuff to craft it is pretty much your choice. Don’t hate on anet because you decided to farm centaur and hate it.

1) Fix Fractals : Toughness, bugged collection, mobs hitting like noodle at level 100, only 1 daily from 50 to 100, reward behind RNG needing us to pay, broken ascended drop, etc

2) Small rework of dungeons. The power creep was real since lauch and all mobs in dungeons should have a increase in HP. Between 150 and 200% of their current HP. In return they should get the rewards back into dungeon, but not in gold since that would increase inflation. They can add more rare, exo, crafting material and tokens instead. They also need to give a better ratio or time vs reward. Some easier path give more reward than some harder path. It’s just to get dungeon back how they were 2 years ago.

3) A big feature pack with a improved LFG with different tab and to make it function with Squad, a build template, raid lobby, tonic working like minis, etc.

4) The cycle of all 4 news map should be of around 1 hour not 2 hours. Now it’s too huge of a commitment if you want to do all the Open World content. Open World is about casual and should stay that way.

5) Variable difficulty in raid. An easy mode and an Infernal mode would be nice and make raid accessible to more people.

6) More diverse way to acquire ascended gear. Not easier ways, just diverse. Right now you can get ascended from raids and crafting only. You can get it from other source but with RNG only. The RNG from fractal was good enough that it wasn’t a problem, but try to get a full ascended armor/weapon if you only do WvW, Open World or PvP. Same with trinkets which are only easy to get one way. Rings are super easy to get from fractal, but from other source? The price is way bigger. Better have a guild doing mission if you want accessories, etc.

7) More stats configuration and make all current stats configuration available for every type of gear. I want those Zealot trinkets, those Viper rings, Magi Amulet, etc. And less variance in the price of those stats. Zealot and Celestial shouldn’t be 10 times more expansive than other stats.

8) All outfit should be in the form of outfit AND armor.

9) Get rid of WvW and PvP guild missions and transform them into Guild PvP and WvW achivement. A list of stuff that everybody in the guild can fill over the week and the more of those you complete the more reward the guild have. At the same time we should get access to every PvE guild missions each week and you can choose which difficulty you gonna do this week (easy, medium, hard).

10) I would get Influence back like it was and as the main currency for guild upgrade. Influence was a way better system to push guild to work together. I would transfer all the gold/material cost from crafting consumable for the guild into influence cost. I’m ok with paying gold to unlock new type of consumable, but not to pay each time I use one, that should be paid by influence.

Dahkeus.8243:

Shovel Face.4512:

Since many people are ignorant and hate on Thieves for whatever reason, why not have a Raid boss that requires stealth as one of its mechanics? Just a thought.

Sadly, because an engineer would do it better, lol.

Not that much. I killed the vale guardian with 2 thiefs no problem. DD is a good DPS profession and you have 2 spot in the team for dps only. I can understand someone that refuse a team when he still need some of the role in the group, but once the 8 roles are filled, the last 2 can be a thief or pretty much anything and it will run great.

Phor there is no one solution for the composition. I saw tank ranging from full Soldier to Cleric to Bezerker. I explained my way and you explained your way.

rainisword.7860:

Your last criticism isnt very good because theres no proof that the current “growing” playerbase can’t sustain itself. Ever since this game was released people have been very vocal about wanting more difficult content. Anet gave us this and they specifically said that its meant to be very very challenging. It is.

Raids in their current state can be completed by anyone who is committed enough. I used to think VG was hard and now I think of it as trash basically. Its still easy to wipe but the level of mechanics and dps necessary to kill it is far less than something demanding like sabetha or gorseval.

The raiding community has just started as well. Give it time to grow. You’re saying it can’t sustain and raids were just released a week ago. Maybe it can’t sustain, maybe it can. Give it a few months, even wait until the next wing it released.

Pugging VG isn’t even an uncommon practice now. The community has continually gotten more skilled as this game has been developed and released successively more difficult content.

The point is, you are basically asking for an “LFR” difficulty for raids after only a week and thats a very premature criticism to make.

Just to be clear. I don’t want to do easier difficulty raid myself. If anything I would want a harder difficulty for raids.

My point, and it’s the same point since they announced challenging group content, even before raid were announced. It need to have different level of difficulty because there is such a wide variance in the level of skill of the player base. For some people the current raid have the right amount of difficulty, for other it’s too hard and for other it’s too easy.

Now, you are right I don’t know if raid will be able to sustain themselves. I have no idea and nobody does. But the goal would be to make the content accessible to the most people possible to make sure that the content can sustain itself.

PvP League range from Amber league for noobs to Legendary league for hardcore PvP players. As long as you like playing PvP you gonna have a place in that content and you will be able to enjoy it. Casual like Hardcore, unskilled killed skilled, Noobs like Veteran, they will have find a place in those league with a content that fit their needs.

Raid on the other end are for a portion of the community that love instanced PvE. I don’t know what the size of it. Maybe it will be huge and there will be no problem. But if raid are easy enough that a good portion of the community can participate, the most hardcore players won’t find it enough challenging.

Raid are 2 weeks old, not 1. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because like I said it was revelant before they even announced raid.

There is 145 different skin for back item. There is 13 wings back item, 18 if you count all those later bladed Back Item which isn’t really wings, but look a bit like it.

There is still 127 back items that doesn’t look like wings at all.

BaconofPigs.1683:

You know you can still get 150 AR (max) even when you have all the 5 stat/5 ar ones right?

You’ll need 14 slots of +5 that’s 70 AR
Then Anet has carefully made sure you have 5 other slots (2 on each rings) and 1 on the back piece. So for the last 80 AR, you’ll need 80/5 = 16 AR on each of those slot.

Yup. 14 of the +5 stats, then 5 +16 AR infusions.

You are technically right but the price OMG. The normal way to get 150 will cost you 96 gold to get 3 x +10 and 2 x +11.

Getting 5 x +16? It will cost you 2 450 gold in Reagent only. You will also need 163 840 +1 Infusion that if you buy on the TP will cost you 1 982 gold.

Ya the option exist, but it will cost you 4432 gold, which is insane.

Raizen.7981:

You still need more fractals for the legendary backpiece. Also, you gotta complete each fractal from 1-100 for the achiev. So other fractals still count for something, I suppose

True but that’s temporary. Some people already have their Legendary Backpiece precursor and don’t bother with recommended daily anymore. And even more people already have done at least once from level 1 to 100. As more and more people get into that category there is no more reason to run something else than the 3 easiest fractal for each daily and more than often it’s swamp.

Pugs are stupid and limit themselves. DH is fine, but in the current pug mentality it’s view a useless.

DH as a tank is perfect, as a dps role it depend. Pug are right that DPS DH don’t bring anything specific to that fight. DH is a decent condi, but not as good as engie or warrior, he’s don’t buff much the group like Herald, PS Warrior, Chronomancer.

But still, you have 2 places in a Squad that their only role is to DPS or do the Circle and DH is good for both. But that’s too subtle for pugs. They work in black and white. It’s not one of the best profession they heard of so it’s useless. And usually, what they heard isn’t particularly right. For exemple, it took some time before they stopped kicking Condi Warrior even if it’s one of the strongest condi build right now. Just because they never heard of it yet.

Kormeg.2469:

So I’ve been doing a lot of tanking on my guard, still haven’t cleared VG though (mostly PuG). And I’m wondering what anyone else thinks about having dragon hunter as a traitline while maybe making use of half the traits in there.

Is going DH as a tank a waste?

DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank. But as we get better, more and more people are looking for a more and more offensive tank with just enough to keep agro and survive. In that sense DH is very good.

We use a Celestial Tank with Zeal/Honor/DH. It’s surviability come from the Hammer Protection and celestial gear, while doing a decent dps. He also bring Bane Signet and the blade trap for more dps. You can even go farther and replace the celestial gear with knight armor with scholar rune and zerker trinket for an even more offensive tank.

If the celestial tank work well in pug, the Knight variance is a bit too dependent on the healer for some pugs.

Viper is better than Zerk for engineer. It doesn’t mean that zerker engineer is bad, it’s good. Just not as good as Viper Engineer. That said, pug are stupid and might not accept you in raid with a zerker engineer for no good reason.

That said, for a condi engineer the explosive and firearms are pretty much the build. The last spec ’’Tool’’ is pretty much quality of life so you could replace it with scrapper if you like it and it won’t affect much your dps.

SkylightMoon.1980:

He’s just another casual gw2 pve’er making the typical “its too hard for me so it should be easier for everyone else” childish argument we’ve heard a hundred times.

I’m not sure if you are the SkylightMoon I know, but if you are, you disappoint me. Can’t you seperate the actual difficulty of the raid, which is fine by the OP and the accessibility of that said raid?

The OP never said it’s too hard for me to do the content. He’s complaining that Anet dropped the ball when it come to the accessibility of the raid. I don’t agree 100% with the OP, but overall he is right.

To be clear. I have 5 characters in full ascended, I have my own Squad for raids and we are doing pretty ok for ourself in raid. For me raid are ok, but I can see that it missing key feature for a lot of people.

I said that a lot of times but, a Raid section in LFG, you should be able to use the LFG with a Squad instead leaving the Squad to find people and then invite them in the Squad. You should also be able so join or invite someone in a squad via the chat or the guild panel just like you can with a party. That’s pretty basic stuff that should be in the game since day one of the raids.

The other big point is that raid difficulty can’t be good for everybody. I find the difficulty perfect for my group, but it’s already in farm mode for some guild like DNT and it will be for a lot of other guild pretty soon. At the same time, a lot of players just can’t experience the raid and we should all stop saying that if you can’t experience the raid you are automatically a bad casual player because that’s not the case. Some of them are in a family/friend guild since day 1 with only 4-5 people. That doesn’t make them bad players. Some of them play thief with success since day one and now can’t get a place in pug raid, that doesn’t mean they are bad players. Some of them have ascended trinkets and weapons, but exotic armors (which is MORE than fine for the 1st Raid boss). He have a hard time getting a place in pugs raid, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad players.

The point is a content can’t sustain itself if it’s only for a small portion of it’s community. It’s just not economically viable and I want raid to last. I want to get new raid on a regular basis and it’s not in putting our head in the sand and screaming CASUAL each time someone said something that we gonna get more and more raids. And easy mode with less rewards would be a good thing for everybody. It would give players that can’t complete the raid a way to at least experience the content, it would allow some of those players to learn the fight and become better at it so they will be able to pull their weight in normal raids. These same players would gain a new way to slowly acquire the ascended gear they need. It would give a bigger pool of players for pugs to form Raid Squad, which will be easier to form. More people able to experience and enjoy the content will mean more financial reason for Anet to keep that content alive. Win-Win for everybody. The difficulty of the raids stay intact, but it’s accessibility increase.

Arya.9021:

You can beat Vale Guardian with exotic, but you’ll have no room for a mess up. The others… Not so much.

People kill the Vale Guardian with 2-4min left on the timer. So you have a lot of room for exotic armor over ascended armor. For the other two, we’ll see what people are able to do.

Agemnon.4608:

Since HoT mobs are stronger some power creep is justified.

Power creep is never a good design. Never. That invalidate older content because of a cheap way to introduce more stuff in a expansion.

That said, Ascended are in the game almost since day one. 2 years since ascended armor and weapons are in the game. That’s not a power creep anymore, it was 2-3 years ago.

Specialization Update and Elite specialization on the other end are recent power creep.

icy.9250:

Everyone else is cool with the cheap-looking +7s on your shiny ascended?

The vast vast majority of players are ok because they used to have +5 on their shiny ascended. Very few people spend the hundreds of gold to get the +5AR + 5 stats.

That doesn’t invalidate your point. We should be able to replace +5AR + 5Stats infusion into +7AR + 5 stats infusion at the vendor. It’s just that this situation don’t apply to the vast majority of players so not much people are really upset about it.

1) Not really a problem. Failing a meta event (not counting Chak Gerent) is very very rare if you full the map. And that problem will slowly grown smaller and smaller as most people will have their map completion. A raid lobby on the other end would help a bit.

2) I’m not sure I follow. The problem is how player perceive the content, not the content itself? Nothing can be done about it except to educate players. But more accessility like a Raid Lobby, a LFG section for raid and a better interaction between the LFG and Squad is needed.

3) Ya I don’t like most of the masteries. I would love masteries as alternate way to play the game. I like the murshoom and glinding, but most of them are just there for the sake of gating.

4) I disagree partially. I like that you need to work to fill a map and do a big map wide event. That said, anet should give us better tools. You should be able to taxi ppl with the LFG with a Squad. That way, you don’t have to restart LFG each minutes as your party get full. This would also help for commander, since it’s often them that work to full the map, but they can’t taxi ppl from the LFG with their tag on. Also, the maps progression shouldn’t be on hard timers but on players progression like Silverwaste. When the DS map is 45min old, there is pretty much nothing you can do about the map and you better hope for a place in another map or wait 1 hour for the next map.

5) I don’t see the problem. We want to fill out map or at least get as much ppl as possible. What is wrong with that? Now, like I talked about on the other points, Anet should give us better tools to make that taxing more easy. The other thing that they should do is to create more categories in the LFG to make it easier to find an event. A Raid, Tyria Open World and Magguma Open World section is the bare minimum that should exist.

6) Never had this issue so I won’t comment.

7) I don’t see the gap between new and veteran in PvP. New players have access to everything like veteran in PvP. Now if you talked about WvW I agree and if you talk about new players without HoT, I also agree. But you don’t really look at the core problem. Elite Spec were suppose to be alternative way to play a character. Of course there will be Elite Spec in some content that would be a better choice and that include PvP. But the fact is that the VAST VAST majority of meta build at least in PvP and PvE are Elite Spec. I could understand if we saw a 20/80 or even a 50/50 ratio, but we are far from that. Too much Elite Spec are too good in too many type of content. They are in almost all case the better choice to make.

8) True in my guild we more than often had to explain how masteries worked. Not a big issue IMO, but true enough, better information in-game about mastery would be nice for new players.

9 ) I disagree. All guild small or big can eventually make everything, just like before when the game started small guild had to accumulate influence for longer than bigger guild. It wasn’t an issue before, it’s not an issue now. That said, the fact that a lot of thing that guild used to have are now behind HoT is so bad. Also, influence was a way better system than Favor + Gold Sink. Influence was gather from playing everywhere in the game and was parallel to what players were working on. Now, it’s only about gold and materials. It doesn’t matter if a guild player together or if everybody play alone and give gold to the guild. They should have kept Influence like it was and add gold sink only to unlock new feature. Consumable are also a huge gold sink since you need to pay everytime you want to craft one and should be paid by influence.

10) I talked about that before. Can’t do kitten about the sigma. It will change over time, but people will be people. But things like LFG section for raid, a better link between Squad and LFG and a Raid Lobby would help a lot. I would also want different difficulty mode for raids. I want the more difficulty possible, but I can’t bury my head in the sand. If I want more challenging content on a regular basis it need to be economically viable and it won’t be if the majority of the playerbase don’t play it. An easier mode without timer and will less dps check would be a good thing for both Casual and Hardcore players.

11) Plenty of my friend don’t play 5-8 hours a day and can still do most of those things. Yes ok some gating is stupid and we should more ways to get ascended (not easier, just different). But over time a lot of what you talk about will disappear. More and more people will gain masteries as time pass, ascended gear will be easier to get from fractal and materials for ascended gear will drop in price. Like when they were introduced there is a lot of players that want those materials now and the price is high, but will drops as the demand decrease.

That said, some maps are a bit too long. Chak Gerent spawn each 2 hours. DS pre-events take around 1 and 1,5 hour, of mostly escort, which is unnecessary. The day/night cycle is 2 hours, etc. The map should be at max on a 1 hour rotation IMO.

Yes marauders is a good choice. I wouldn’t bring that to Raids or high level fractal, but for casual fractal and open world, that’s pretty nice.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Rising Dusk.2408:

As for the OP, I seriously expect that raids will be nothing but positive for the game. It’s just new content, so people who really aren’t suited for raids are trying them and worrying about them when they shouldn’t.

Rising I am sorry but this is a TERRIBLE statement.

Content should be available for everyone. That’s what games are about paying for the right to play everything in the game.

The content IS available for everyone, is it not?

Yes it’s available to everyone (with HoT). But to be fair, it’s not easy access for everyone. No Lobby, squad and LFG lacking, etc.

An easier mode for more casual would also be nice (and an infernal mode for hardcore ). For now, people need to have specific build and full ascended armors to have a place. You don’t necessarily need them, but pugs are stupid (not knowing that certain build are great even if they are not yet on meta battle) and want to have the best chance possible so they won’t bother with someone with exotic armor even it’s more than enough.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Must have ascended gear to even join? Errr that’s just outrageous elitist meta garbage! Besides, last I checked, it’s skill that makes a difference, not so much the gear quality, as long as it’s the right gear for the situation.

We did the 1st boss with several exotic armors with no problem. I’ll reserve my final judgment for the 2nd boss, but so far I can’t see why a group of 10 players without ascended armors couldn’t do it if they have a good composition with ascended weapons/trinkets, good build and good foods.

Loli Ruri.8307:

I found it funny how there were a few people talking about how the game shouldn’t be reliant on a group of people, but individual skill, and yet the game is called “Guild Wars 2”. Funny that.

Ya, I find it funny too. It’s a MMO, not a single players game. Want some challenging content when only your skill count, there is Darksouls and others for that. GW2 is a MMO, it’s made to play with several players. That mean you must live with the good (socialize and teamwork) and the bad (rely on other people).

Condi Rangers are good. But pugs are pretty stupid and will probably don’t want a condi ranger if they can have a engineer condi.

If you dislike and complexity of the condi engineer, but still want to make you have a place into raids you could try Warrior Condi. Condi Reaper is also good, but it might have the same problem as ranger at least for now. Pug are stupid and won’t want either of them until the build is on meta battle because they can’t think for themselves.

circuitnerd.5863:

Well, that’s the thing. I’d prefer to play with a guild. Cause then I know that they can beat it. Just not the one I’m currently in. But I’m worried no one would invite me since I’ve never beat VG.

It really depend on the guild to be honest. My squad is betting Vale Guardian pretty easily now and we start to fill 1-2 spots with guildies that never killed him yet. My hope is to get more and more people good at the first boss so we have a bigger pool of people to replace if needed or to even create new squad together. But I guess that not all guild are like that.

I disagree with most of the complain from the OP, but I agree with most of his solution.

“1: The creation of ‘Challenging Content’ should not be taken to unreasonable extremes.”
Yes it should. The goal is to satisfy good players and so far these raid are just ok on the difficulty part. But we already start to farm some bosses. The Vale Guardian is now pretty easy for more regular squad. Extreme for you, is borderline decent for others.

“2: Functionality for forming and maintaining Raid groups is incredibly lackluster”
Totally agree here. The squad and the LFG don’t work at all together. We can’t invite someone from the guild panel into a squad or from the chat. The LFG should have the a section for raids and raid should have a lobby.

“3: Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase”
Partially disagree. There should be exclusive skin reward behind challenging content. People want the prestige from exclusive skin. If you see someone with the legendary armor you know that he completed the whole raid. That said, I disagree with gating legendary armor as a whole beind raids. There should be exclusive legendary armor for PvP, WvW and Open World.

Solutions

- There should be variable difficulty in raids. You need that hardcore difficulty for a portion of the playerbase, but it’s not economically viable to spend money on a content for only a small portion of your playerbase either. I was thinking that before raid was in the game and I still think that, even if I probably never play the easy mode. Love the current raid

- I’m not super into the 5 and 10 man possibility, but it’s not impossible. Again this would open the raid to more people. They could simply drop the bosses HP by like 60-70% less than now (because it’s harder to maintain all the role in a group of 5 and have enough dps). They could modify stuff like only need 1 person to go into the circle at Vale Guardian. They don’t need to change everything in the raid to accommodate that.

Devildoc.6721:

Timers are a really boring mechanic because it says “my way or the highway” I mean you can learn the strategy, and execute the mechanics flawlessly but still fail just due to a gear check. When the only difference between success and failure is gear? That’s a boring mechanic.

I’m SLIGHTLY less critical about forcing a really narrow spectrum of gear stats in an instanced raid but it doesn’t belong in open world events at all. Open world events are a large PUG where you really have no control over what people on the map are wearing. I say as long as you can organize people to execute the strategy you should be able to complete open world events, rather than requiring a gear check for an open world PUG.

The only way to try to enforce what people are wearing in an open world event is to be a part of a massive guild like TTS where they can spam maps until they find one that is completely empty, and then fill it with nothing but their guild, but 99% of the guilds in game cannot effectively do that. In fact, TTS can’t even really do that entirely in guild, there are always PuGs joining and they just give them the teamspeak info. Luckily the triple worms, while requiring a good amount of coordination and each having a strategy that needed to be executed, had a timer generous enough that it didn’t have any real gear requirements (though a condi geared team did help), it actually sort of helped that for most of the boss you could not crit, so you didn’t need zerker, and the fight was balanced around dps not being able to crit.

You can crit Chak Garent, and therefore, everyone being in optimal dps gear (zerker/sinister/viper) is paramount, because the fight is tuned assuming that everyone in the lane is in optimal dps gear, and the timer is fairly tight. Organization and strategy isn’t enough, having enough people in optimal DPS gear is necessary., but a gear check on an open world map that anyone could join? Not cool.

Ok well again it’s your opinion not mine. You see, for me the timer put dps pressure on the group. The group need to have a good dps and for that he need a good composition. You need to think about what class you bring to make sure you bring all the buff you need and the best gear possible. With 8 people in glass canon gear, you now have a lot of pressure on these guys. There don’t have room for error because those error will kill you. I can’t ignore these little bright ball at red guardian because they gonna kill me. I need to pay extreme attention to seekers because they gonna kill me. That pressure is what will likely kill you. To me, no dps check = boring because I can just facetank a good portion of the mechnics. No dps check = more room for errors and I don’t like that in raid.

That said, I think that anet made an error about timers. When they first announced raid were coming in the game I had 3 points that I wanted .
1) Difficult : they pretty much got it.
2) Push players to use as much gameplay mechnics as possible : They kind of got it right, but not that much. They added CC, healing and a bit of boon rip, but that pretty much it. No real need for stab or condition removal, the boon rip need is small, etc.
3) Variable difficulty. They didn’t got this one at all.

The raid can’t be for everybody with 1 difficulty setting. Anet can’t put too much money into a content that only a small portion of the community can play. But you don’t want an easy raid because that kill the point. The worst part is that an easy mode would be very easy to make. They could have been lazy and simply make an easy mode by removing the timer on all bosses, adding 2-4 updraft at Gorseval, etc. Modulate the reward in consequence and voila. You got a content that everybody can enjoy.

As for the Chak Gerent Event. I don’t consider this event to be a dps check. It’s more than often the phase that lure the boss out of the ground that fail or take too long. And be fair, it’s not like the majority of world event are like that. It’s the only one like that. I would leave it like that for like 1 or 2 months and see if the community were able to improve themselves over the holidays. If the rate success of this event is still as bad after that time, maybe Anet should look at it a bit closely and change some stuff to make it a bit more accessible. It’s nice to have a world event that is hard, but so far it’s a bit too much. But like I said. I would prefer to see if the community can figure a way to kill him more regularly with tactics and strategy and for that more people need to know how the fight work. Too much people go in with very little idea how the fight work.

Tigaseye.2047:

Well, from what I understand, it’s gear diversity to a very limited extent.

As in, the tank might get to gear slightly tanky and the healer slightly healerish; but, mostly, people are still in very specific DPS gear.

I just wish they would end the pretence.

Reduce the gear to a far more manageable pool of gear.

Officially state which gear is for what.

Leave people less confused and less inclined to blame other players.

They know what they balanced raids around.

So, just tell people, get rid of any totally useless gear (as in, the least optimal for any gamemode) and be done with it.

Good DPS Gear : Assassins, Zerker, Sinister, Viper and Rabid (Not Rabid for raids because of toughness, but otherwise it’s like only 5-10% less dps than Sinister in full ascended). Even some piece of valkyrie is good for some profession. Herald full zerker or with 1 valkyrie pieces is the exact same dps with a ranger in the group.

Good tank gear : Soldier, Knight, Celestial, Rabid, Trailblazer, etc (probably more)

Good healer gear : cleric, magi, zealot

There could be more diversity for the healer tbh. I would like to see condi, healing power, precision or healing power, power, precision or healing power, power, precision, ferocity, etc

Tigaseye.2047:

Eh, I think asking people for humility is a lot easier when you’re not also asking them for money.

Not you personally, obviously, but Anet.

People bought the xpac and now find that almost nothing is designed for them.

At the very least, IMO, they could have thrown in an LFR-style version, with occasional ascended drops.

Fortunately, I’m more interested in WvW, in this game.

Although, that has also largely taken a nosedive, since HoT, as well.

At least EotM is still relatively fun, most of the time.

Ok on that I agree with you. But that’s a totally different topic then. Raid is a big success because it was made like it was suppose to. It was suppose to be the hardest thing in the game, Check. It was suppose to improve the diversity in build/gear, check.

Now if we talk about the fact that the expansion wasn’t worth 50$. Or that a lot of poor choice were made (nerf to dungeon reward, fractal redesign, etc) Then I’m with you. But like I said, that not a problem with raid. It’s a problem with HoT.

Devildoc.6721:

No, they’re inherently bad because they limit build choices. You can’t successfuly beat enrage timers with anything but a heavy amount of glass cannon dps.

And that’s your opinion, but not mine.

TBH honest, i’m not a fan of straight overall timer for the boss, but I’m a very big fan of dps checks like gorseval fight where you need to dps him enough before he does it’s big attack twice in a phase.

Have the humility to understand that other people like other kind of stuff than you. Some people wanted that kind of stuff for raids and I’m aware that it’s not something that everybody like.

I don’t like everything in the game, but I’m able to understand that other people might love it that way and it’s cool with me.

Land of Cheese.2584:

You will see differing opinions, of course, but the fact is that nothing’s really changed from a PvE perspective. The only place you will see condi being required is a gimmick fight in the new raid (the red guardian split from Vale Guardian requires condi dps in order kill). In looking at the mechanics of the Goreseval fight (second raid boss) I can see condi damage being pretty much required only because you spend so much time during the event not actually killing Gorseval that you’d want strong condition damage ticking away during those periods.

The upshot of all this is that condi still isn’t much of “a thing” in PvE and the only damage condition that matters (where conditions matter) is Burning, which also isn’t a mesmer thing. So stick with your power gear.

A lot of wrong here.

1) 2 or the 3 best dps build of the game right now (So far, because we test out more build everyday and some may pop out later) are condition. Viper Engie and Viper Warrior. The 3rd being Staff Elementalist. True enough, the situation isn’t perfect yet with condition as not all profession have a decent condition build option. But to say that the situation didn’t change or that outside of gimmick situation condition have no place is stupidly wrong.

2) Ok Burn is better than bleed and there is balance work to be done by anet there. But to say that only burning matter is shot sighted. Condi Engineer which is one of the best dps of the game almost half it’s dps coming from bleed. Burn can have big burst of damage, but bleed deal a constant dps. The new Viper Reaper, which only start to become more popular at Gorseval have it’s dps coming mostly from Bleed and Chill. I’m not saying that Burn is balanced compare to all condition, and I’m not saying that everything is ok. But to say that only burn matter is a bit stretching the reality.

Daddicus.6128:

It’s kind of amusing that you can’t see the irony in this. ANet built GW2 on the philosophy of “play how you want to play”. But, your statement screams “you can’t play your way, because you must play my way.”

What irony? People are free to play how and with who they want. If someone want to play with people with the best gear and build possible, he can ask it. And if someone don’t want to play with those people, he can group up with other people. Everybody is free to play with who they want.

The problem is that even if there is a LOT of those kind of post (like one a day sometime). Still people have a hard time finding themselves a group with like minded people to play with. Well apparently since they still post this kind of topic. I guess that if they had an easy time getting a group, they wouldn’t post that.

But that’s an never ending QQing imo. People QQ because people all want zerker. Condition become good. People still QQ about it beserker. Now tanky gear, healing, zerker and condition are all good in raid, People still QQ about zerker.

Devildoc.6721:

No, fault is definitely the word to use here. Enrage timers/dps checks really aren’t all that fun and I don’t find myself asking for more of them.

And other people are ok with enrage timers/dps checks and find them fun and find themselves asking for more. It’s a design choice. It’s not bad or good, it’s just one choice available to Anet and they choose this one. Of course some people won’t like and other will like. It’s not objectively a bad design, but subjectively people will find it good or bad.

Arutha.9874:

Yes longbow cannot be used from range for an optimal rotation so it is not doing optimal dps from range with “less risk” it doesn’t have better dps than melee options.

True, but Longbow still have 3 advantages.

1) 50% of the time I can be outside the range of any melee mobs, without sacrificing any dps, I’ll take less damage.

2) If things go bad or if the boss have a big damage AoE under him (Fractal Shaman three lava front for exemple). You have 50% chance to be in longbow and be able range him, which is better dps, than a melee only character that just need to get out of there for some second.

3) If you end up under too much pressure, you can go in range and stay there while you recuperate, which is a better solution than to stay in melee and die or get outside the boss range and do zero dps.

The point is, Longbow give you a bit more moving room for some situation that melee weapon just don’t give you. GS + Longow shouldn’t be completly nerf, just maybe 5% less dps than a GS + Mace/Torch build. But we are talking about micro balancing tbh. It’s not a big problem in reality, sword is much more of an issue.

I agree with Pregnantman on that. Longbow is a quality of life. Yes you want to keep yourself without a 600-300 range to keep the party buffs, but it’s still more room to move than with mace. It also give you more freedom in hard pressure situation. With Longbow I can back off a bit when I’m very low hp and still do some decent dps, while with Mace, If I need to back into a more secure zone, my dps drop. That’s risk vs reward balance.

If I’m using Longbow + GS I have more room for error because I can get into range if I need to and I can move outside of most boss melee attack about half the time. With those advantage, we should do less dps or at least equal dps to mace because Mace have some defensive abilities that Longbow doesn’t (I’m talking about the heal). But, true enough Longbow can give vigor to your party, so maybe longbow should really have a bit less dps than Mace.

Sword was just screwed over with the specialization patch. The Symbol of Avengers addition + removal of the sword dps trait really made the difference. With Longbow and Mace already in competition, I don’t think that trying to put Sword back into a direct damage dps role is a good idea. I would prefer to make it more similar to warrior sword as a Condi + Mobility package. Whatever they choose to do with sword, they need to find it a role and improve in that direction because right now it’s meh.

Well first of all

GS + Mace/Torch DPS vary between 0 and 5% less dps than a GS + Longbow guardian so I think it’s pretty great. Did you just look at what the meta is and think that anything that isn’t the meta in dungeon/fractal is garbage dps?

Scepter/Torch + GS condi DPS go higher and lower than GS + Longbow over time, but overall it’s pretty much the same.

Focus is very similar to torch in dps as an offhand while offering more defense, making it also a good weapon.

Hammer is around 5-10% less dps than GS + Longbow, while bringing a huge defensive boost to your team. It’s probably the best weapon in raid.

So really, GS, Longbow, Mace, Torch, Scepter, Hammer and Focus are all very good weapons, able to be used in build that are all very near in dps compare to the meta GS + Longbow. Even Shield also have niche used in a lot of situation, and more than often is part of the standard loadout of a guardian tank in raid.

Sure, a lot of those weapons could have some work on them. Torch 5 being the most obvious. But in reality only Sword is really in bad shape. Looks at the actual effectiveness of each weapons, because if you only think about the meta, there will always be on best setup a bit higher than everything else. The goal isn’t to make sure that doesn’t happen. The goal is too keep all other weapons set close enough to it that they are worth using, and to try to give all of them a little flavor that put them ahead in certain situation. And for the guardian, they pretty much got it right for the most part.