Guild Wars 2

If you can’t get Viper, then your next bet is Sinister. If you can’t get sinister then you are out of luck because Rabid is a no no. You will grab agro and kitten up the entire run for everybody. Rampagers and Carrion are just not good enough for raid.

bearshaman.3421:

Sand maybe I’m slow to the discussion,

You are indeed. Basically you have one camp that say,

- It’s an inbalance, it’s a pay to win element, not fair for non hot players, it a huge power creep, it hurt the game, it wasn’t what was advertise for the expansion when they talked about new ways to play your characters not more powerful ways, etc

and the other camp that said.

- In an expansion you are suppose to be more powerful, it way to sell the expansion, they are more interesting than the core spec anyway, they gonna balance them with the future elite spec they will introduce, etc.

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

I agree that nearly all fails are due to mechanics assuming that everyone is doing decent damage with viable builds but we are talking about pugs here. Anything can happen and people do stuff like personal survivability over team utility. So yeah, dps can be a problem if people don’t know rotations but manage to pull off the mechanics. I have seen this happen.

It’s a possibility, but I highly doudt it. I never saw someone talk about failing in enrage mode with 10 people except with the old Gorseval when he had bugged agro and moved all over the place. I just never heard of it and never saw it. I played with pugs and I brought a lot of new players into raid, I played with players in exotic, with non meta build and it just never happen. I’m not saying that it cannot be a problem, but unless people start to complain that they fail at enrage with 10 people still alive I will consider that a very niche problem.

And the thing is there was a lot and I really mean a LOT of post on this forum about the timer and the dps check and all of that and I never saw once someone talk about failing at the enrage with 10 people still alive. Never.

So for me, like I already said, it’s a solution without a problem. Or at least a solution that will fix a very little minority of problem and that almost everybody that asked for this solution when see their problem fixed at all. These people asking for the removal of the timer will see fail the raid as often as they do now with or without the timer. So rather than to waste devs times on a solution that fix nothing, either nothing should be done or let’s make a proper training/easy/entry level mode that they will actually be able to complete.

But then we get into the infinite debate about what would that be exactly and what would be the reward and then nobody agree and we end up with 12 pages of useless back and forth.

Valik Shin.9027:

If you are failing to enrage then the problem is not the mechanics of the fight

Not sure I understand what you mean. If you are failing to reach enrage then the problem is obviously the mechanics. Or do you mean if you are failing in enrage?

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

because I asked at an old 50 mai trin why the guardian didn’t bring WoR (wasn’t even insulting). There’s people who don’t take that kind of kitten well for whatever reasons.

Maybe because WoR is useless at Mai Trin? The spin can’t be reflect and the teleport shot will only teleport the guardain to mai trin if he reflect it. I’m not saying that’s a good reason to kick you, but I can understand if you start talking to them as if they don’t know what to bring to the fight while yourself asking for useless skill.

OnizukaBR.8537:

People fail because of enrage timers, i already been in a lot of pubs that failed.
Nobody wants to practice in a wipe party, and without a timer i can go with a meta build and pratice my rotation, mechanics without worrying if my party members are using the right build. There are a lot of people that still doesnt raid but would love just having a more relaxing and fun way to do it.

People don’t fail because of the timer. They fail because of mechanics and people that die.

VG : Most wipe are because the boss you lose too many people. Either because of green circle, because of teleport on the floor, because the boss don’t move fast enough and you have to move on the floor, or because of seekers. Without a timer you will still have to finish the fight with half the players. I never fail that boss because of the timer unless we had like 3+ people dead. This boss is so little of a dps check, you can succeed at it with several minutes left. You can beat him with almost any composition as long as people succeed at the mechanics.

Gorseval : Removing the timer wouldn’t change much tbh. The updraft will still limit you. If you slow cc at the 3rd and 4th spot you could probably do like 10% more damage while using the 4th Updraft but you can already do that. So all it would make is like a 1min with less incoming damage.

Sabetha : I’m not sure about that one. The enrage is pretty brutal for her with all 4 canons, but how much time can you keep the platform alive? This could make a difference, but I’m not sure how much. Most likely if you need the extra time, you already fail at some of the mechanics and the platform will collapse not long after.

Slothazor : I don’t even know what he does in enrage. I seriously never ever got to that point. The dps check is almost non existant, most people bring 2 healers here. It’s the mechanics and incoming damage that make this one fail.

Bandit Trio : It’s a joke raid boss. It’s like 5 times more easy than any of the other boss. Who care.

Matthias : Really easy dps check here. Most people bring 2 healers here too. It’s all about mechanics and survivability. Even the enrage is super easy. You can easily fight 1-2min in enrage with almost zero impact.

I see your point, but you fall into the obvious trap. The enrage timer is the easy scapegoat that people can blame for failing. Seriously be honest. What is your percentage of the tries you did that end up failing while still having 10 people at enrage time? My bet is that it’s a percentage near zero.

For all boss, either there is another mechanics that will stop the fight not long after the end of the timer, or the dps check is super easy or the enrage timer is really not a big deal. People fail because of mechanics or survivability, but it’s sure easier to blame the scary big timer than to look at what failed exactly and what you can change.

You will never get kicked out of dungeon for that really. Dungeon are so easy right now. For fractal, I never been asked to link my gear there. As long as you know what you are doing, don’t go in higher fractal than you suppose to, have enough AR and bring a decent build you won’t have problem even in high level fractal, unless you join a group that specific ask to link gear or ask for meta, which is rare.

Where you could have problem is in raid, but you plan to get exotic gear so I bet you are far from getting into raid yet.

The disadvantage of marauder is also his advantage. It give you a safety net which will make your fight easier, but the safety net don’t push you to get better. If you plan on eventually do fractal T4 and Raid then I would advice you to go zerker. Because at these content your Marauder won’t help you at all survive (or very little) and you will have less experience surviving in those high pression situation so it will be harder for you.

If you plan on doing dungeon, open world, WvW, and low level fractal then you will be just fine with Marauder. You will have an easier life so it will probably be more enjoyable as you get better at the game and explore.

My group is experience, with good build, foods and players that killed each boss at least 10 times each. We complete both wings (6 bosses) in less than 2 hours when everything go well. We have less experience with matthias, I bet we could complete all 6 in 90min eventually. But it also took us 12 hours to kill VG the first time. So ya, it all depend on the experience of your group.

Our less experienced group can complete the 1 wing in 2 hours.

To be honest of course this kind of stuff will happen. People will be people. The only thing that anet could and should do is to change how the party system work. You shouldn’t be able to get kicked out of the party if you are the one that created it. Of course, they should also make sure that you can’t AFK in the middle of the run as the party leader and make everybody carry you either.

Anyway, for you specific story you have two option. Either these people were just complete scrubs for kicking someone at level 13 or he did something wrong and didn’t realize it. I mean, I kicked people who couldn’t run the first skip on a dungeon or didn’t something so stupid that he could only be a complete noob. That said, it was always from party that I created, but people joining a group can’t know who is the party leader and rarely read the LFG description. They could just want to do an achivement, pick the first level 13 they see and don’t want to do the fractal with a player with little experience. That a bit stupid if you ask me, but that only prove that the LFG could use some work done (like in the last 3 years) and that human can be jerks.

Scoops.8614:

The problem is that you have four maps with nearly identical core design.

Get groups, do meta. If you want to do something other than the meta, that’s unfortunate. You have the solo story quests and then you’re done. That’s it, that’s all she wrote.

This leads to two problems: First, the content will inevitably need to be nerfed into oblivion at some point because people will get tired of it, and unlike with, say, the ruins of Orr, you can’t just negotiate around it. If you want those Maguuma masteries and hero points you don’t have many other choices- granted, you can complete the hero points through WvW, but that’s its own ball of yarn.

The second? If you don’t like chasing giant orgies of players around doing group content, there’s not much you can do. In the original game you had other choices, and multiplayer content of varying scale. Heart of Thorns doesn’t do this, and it goes out of it’s way to punish players who would prefer something a bit more casual. And I don’t even mean in that, “condescendingly easy” sense either.

Well first of all you don’t need to group up for HP. Just at VB out of 9 HP, 7 are soloable. You have more than enough soloable HP in the 4 HOT maps to full all your elite spec. On top of that you have all the HP from core game and from WvW/EotM. So the problem is only that people see a coupe of HP that need a group and they get upset. At launch they exagerrated a little with maybe 60% of the HP only being soloable, but you could still finish your elite with the 4 maps. Now you can complete in less maps.

As for the second it depend. In vb, most event are like for only 2-3 ppl. The map even encourage players to spread out. The only time when you really need to group up is for the 5 boss. For AB, people are pretty spread out until the end of the map, at TD same thing. The only map where this is a ’’problem’’ is DS. But even there you can play the side events where there is usualy only like 5 people doing.

Ascended armor is really not needed for raid. The difference in dps is very small and so is the added armor. That said, in pugs people don’t know you so not having ascended armor can be a red flag for some. Not that the small decrease in stats will worry them, but they will asked themselves, is it a character that he mastered if he doesn’t have an ascended armor? Do he do fractal and dungeon if he doesn’t have an ascended armor or do he just open world? Did he just start doing raid if he doesn’t have ascended armor? So if they have to choose between someone with or without ascended, they will usually choose the guy with ascended.

So my advice is to gear up the character that you would want to play the most and slowly gather what you need to gear your second character. If the raid you are in need a revenant, then use your exotic armor rev (as long as he have ascended weapons and trinkets), but just be aware that some group (not all) might kick or ask you to change to another character with ascended.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It should be plainly obvious that I’m talking about gear here.

Ya and that’s the problem. People just latch on the gear as if it was the biggest portion of a build, but in reality it’s one of the least important part. It’s like the tree blocking players from seeing the forest.

Dante.1508:

I have Exotic gears and some green jewelry and well i just die in 2 to 3 hits from those frog things..

You have the almost exact same defense in full ascended or full exotic since most experienced players used glass canons gear. The difference is litterally +60 armor. That’s like less than 2% less incoming damage when you have an ascended armor vs a exotic armor. That’s nothing. If you die in 2/3 hits from those frogs, then we all gonna get killed in 2/3 hits too and our gear won’t change anything about that.

And why the hell do you play HoT with green jewellery? I mean it take like 1 or 2 hours for a complete noob to get exotic or at least rare jewellery. Do you even try to play the game?

Raizen.7981:

I bet this is trollbait, but still, regarding the meta, I gotta tell you this.

You still don’t know how the gw2 raiding community works. There’s the 1% that can think for themselves, and the 99% that take a build from your vids and play it without asking themselves any questions. Period. Neither you nor Dekeyz advertise nomad as viable gear for druids in your vids. So obviously, the players that are unable to think for themselves(again, mostly everyone) will not accept his build. For the players in this game raids are the scariest thing ever right after making a toon in Dark Souls 1, so obviously they don’t want anything to do with somebody that is not playing the exact builds you or metabattle advertise.

Completely true. It was like that in dungeon, in fractal and it still like this in Raids. People need the see the build from a big name or on meta battle or it’s garbage for them.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Full glass gets the gold faster.

Not necessarily. Better sacrifice personnal dps for more offensive boons like a Druids, PS Warrior or Chronomancer. Better sacrifice some personnal dps for some CC to break bosses. For some fight better sacrifice some dps to bring some support like Reflect, block, etc. In high level fractal, brining a healer instead of a 5th glass canon is actually faster for a good portion of the population. Of course not if you are a very high skill group, but for the majority of the players a Healer in T4 will make your fight faster since less people will down. In pugs I often like to take Valor instead of Zeal and take 2 meditation skill at Mai Trin. Boost my survivability by a lot and that’s allow me to rez people when needed.

There is a lot of situation when you need to bring something else than dps. That said, this isn’t really true of gear. But that’s a design choice. Active Defense (Trait, Skill, weapons) are made more powerful than passive defense (Gear, stats) in this game on purpose. There is plenty of support, utility, buff coming from trait, skills and weapons. But all that people see is the gear that stay dps, so obviously, only dps count in this game.

bai long.2085:

-A mistake based punishment

Dude, I’m sorry, but that’s the exact reason why some people can be rude to you. You obviously don’t know much about raid, and still you want to have a discussion about how to fix something you have near knowledge about. In the current form of the raid, when you can’t kill a boss it’s like 99,9999% of the time because of the mechanics. It’s almost NEVER EVER because of a lack of dps. Like never. When you miss a green circle you almost wipe the entire team, how about a mistake based punishment?? I’m gonna tell you what I’m saying to new member of my raiding team, when we are training them. Raid are all about mechanics, If I need too, I’m gonna ask you to remove your weapons completely until you learn the mechanics perfectly. Only then start to care about the dps. Raid are currently doing exactly what you are asking there.

bai long.2085:

-Revivable players
Make players revivable from death.

Why? I mean, if you made enough mistake to die in raid, then you are out. This push people to work together to rez you when down.

bai long.2085:

-More difficult mechanics (at least requiring more people)
To keep people from selling off the raids the mechanics should require 100% of the participants to actively participate in the mechanics. It should take the entire group, minus nobody, to keep from wiping the group. I guess you could still sell a run, provided the person who was buying it knew exactly what to do at every portion of the fight. But at that point, why are they paying to be run through at all?

What are you complaining about exactly here? Do you complain because some people sell and some people buy run? Or do you legitimately think that having 10 mechanics roles in each fight would be beneficial to the experience? Because if that’s the first one then who cares, Anet already said it’s ok and it have nothing to do with you. Some people are comfortable buying and other selling. If that’s the second one, it’s a legitimate question. I don’t really agree with you because you need skills and knowledge to be able to low man a raid and most people can’t. Adding more mechanics so that you have no room for errors would be a bad idea if you ask me. How many times we had someone taking the role of another one because something bad happen, or that someone died and we kept going until we killed the boss. Start by killing all the boss and then let’s talk about the difficulty. I agree that more mechanics would be necessary at some boss like Bandit Trio, but for Slothazor, I think that enough people are occupied as it is. You asking to change something without having any experience in it, of course not much people will follow you there buddy.

bai long.2085:

7 Berserker’s druids at my personal skill level could beat the raid. 10 Nomad’s druids at my skill level could not. The timer would run out. This shouldn’t be the case. If 10 of one type can do it, 10 of any type should be able to do it.

Did you tried it? I doubt that 7 Druid could kill any boss to be honest. Maybe, but it’s not a 100% sure. You already lose at Gorseval and VG for not having a tank. I doudt you gonna have enough CC and reflect are Slothazor so lose there too. Bandit Trio is a joke to ya maybe, but the 10 Nomad could do it too. The point of raid is to bring different role, different profession and different build to the table to tackle the mechanics. 7 Zerker Druids is a bad composition, just like 10 Nomads is. Again you are talking without knowing.

bai long.2085:

Am I trying to change the way raids work? Yes. Am I challenging the status quo? Yes. However, I’m not suggesting any of what I’m suggesting at ANYONE’S EXPENSE. I don’t want ArenaNet to give me what I want and take away what you like about it. I don’t want them to cater to just me.

I wouldn’t mind that you would be asking for change in raid if you knew what you were talking about. Pls succeed at all 6 raid boss at least 1 or 2 times, then come back and tell us what wasn’t good, what wasn’t fun enough, what need to change. Then we gonna be able to have a discussion and maybe you gonna have good points that could improve raids.

bai long.2085:

I want them to consider the possibility that if they made some changes to the way the raids work they may keep more people playing in the long run and may even bring some people back who’d quit because they weren’t being challenged.

YOU DIDN’T EVEN BEAT THE RAIDS. Am I in a twilight zone, what the hell is going on.

bai long.2085:

I solo dungeon paths for fun (with the build I’d made)
I solo lupicus in Arah (with the build I’d made)
I roam around killing folks in WvW (with the build I’d made)

I wish I could say that I run the raids (with the build I’d made).

I SOLO dungeon
I SOLO lupicus
I roam SOLO around killing folks in WvW

Do you understand that raids are a team effort. The raid itself doesn’t stop you from playing your build. The raid doesn’t even stop you from doing your part in raid. The only thing stopping you from playing your build in raid is other player that don’t want to play with that build. They prefer someone that adapt their build to the content to help their team the best they can. You can change whatever you want in raid all day everyday. You could make Anet go through 1000 of different version of the raid. You will have the exact same problem 1000 times. The problem isn’t the content, it’s your interaction with other people. Because your liberty to play whatever you want, stop at the liberty of other human being to play with whoever they want too. And if it happen that most people don’t want to play with you, that should tell you something.

bai long.2085:

In my opinion, I should be able to show up to play hockey with whatever I want. Back in 2012, when the game was released, that’s how it was and that’s what I’d appreciated about it.

That’s the think dude, you can. Nothing is limiting you from playing whatever you want. But other people also have the liberty to play with whoever they want. It goes both ways. Why is your liberty to play the build you want, should trump my liberty to play with people that i want to play with? You want to change the game so YOUR way of playing would be appreciate and thousand of people before explain their method to achieve that in the forum and each time it was a terrible idea because it a lot of unintended consequences. More than nothing all those idea achieve what creating a new meta just as ’’limiting’’ just different. A meta that some people would like to play and other dislike. Nobody is against diversity, and if someone is able to explain a method to increase the gear diversity well enough that it could work, then people would be happy to listen, but it never happened.

This is back before there was a well established meta and it was a time when the most difficult challenge in the game was Arah Path 4, where groups were spending 4+ hours trying to beat Simin. He’s/She’s nerfed now because people complained that it was too difficult for them to beat. There wasn’t a timer on it either. It was good old fashioned difficulty. Pure mechanics and staying alive.[/quote]

Did you tried to kill Simin???? Because it’s obvious you either misremember or didn’t tried it at all. It was a pure dps check, the worst there was in the history of the game. You had to dps her fast enough to combat her regen. Of course you had to put the spark in place ASAP or your dps would never be enough, but if you didn’t had enough dps it was over before it even begin. It was 10 times more a dps check than raid could possibly be. They nerfed it because it was a broken design.

bai long.2085:

I loved the fact (and still love, in most content) that I could play ANY build I could think up and succeed with it. I’d solo run some dungeons naked, just to have some fun. But it’s not because I was wearing this or wearing that. It’s because I was good and I understood what I’d made even when other people didn’t.

And you can still do it. But again, people have the liberty to not play with you. On youtube we see videos of people killing VG with 10 Guardian, people doing the raid with 1 of each profession, 6man raid, etc. People can do raid with almost any composition as long as you bring the utility you need for the fight and each utility can be provided by several professions and builds. The difference between the rest of the game and raid is that it’s a lot more difficult than any other PvE content. Not all group could kill VG with 10 Guardian, not all group could 6man a raid boss. For a big portion of the population they just can’t do it. So they play it safe because they want the kill and they ask that everybody play good build. They don’t want to wast 3 hours failling at a boss because someone want to play an weird build because it’s fun. Find a group of player likminded that want to try different thing and don’t mind not killing a boss if things go bad. Don’t complain if not everybody want to do the same thing you want to do. I like playing bango in underwear outside during the winter, I won’t gonna complain that random people on the street don’t want to play with me.

bai long.2085:

For the longest time this is what made GW2 enjoyable to play. It’s still enjoyable to play, but I’m a completionist and not having the raid completed is bothersome to my pride, but not so much that I’m willing to trade in my homemade car for a pre-made one.

Just a small question. Why can’t you have both? I mean, I’m sure you can find a good raid build that you would like to play, why not craft another gear just for raid, and play your unique build everywhere else?

bai long.2085:

Then the raids. I have my little RC car all ready to go. However, the track I’m racing on is just a solid straight line. It’s just a drag-race and mine wasn’t built for that. I never wanted a dragster.

You are talking like the raid are just a dps race, which obviously mean that you don’t have much experience in them. Raid are all about the mechanics and survivability. I raid each boss, each week since their introduction and I maybe failed like 10 times because of dps over all those boss fight. And most of those were on Gorseval before the agro fix. Again, people can 6 man most of those boss, explain to me how is that possible if that’s such a dps race?

bai long.2085:

I could easily mystic forge all of my gear and find a group and have the raid beaten within a short time, but that would cheapen it for me. It would cheapen it for me because that’d mean admitting that the build I’d made and refined over the years just wasn’t up to snuff when it came to beating the raid.

But your build isn’t up to snuff and you should know it. I mean, I’m 100% sure you can beat the raid with your boss if you find a group that is happy to bring you with them. Hell I’m sure you could beat several raid boss in a group where all 10 bring a build similar to yours. But your build wasn’t created around the content, so of course it won’t be the best against that content.

bai long.2085:

It sounds like I’m coming here and complaining about how everything should conform to me because I just can’t seem to beat stuff. That’s not what I’m trying to do. All I’m trying to do is provide some creative criticism because more varied builds in raids has benefits for everyone.

Yes more varied builds in raids sound great. I want to balance more so that build like condi thief, condi warrior, healer guardian, dps mesmer, etc become competitive in raid. But asking for more build to be competitive isn’t the same thing as wanting to bring stuff that is useless to raid. You don’t want to balance the builds, you want to change the content. That’s very different. You don’t want more option to adapt to the content, you want the content to adapt to your build. The problem is that there millions of different unique build possible in gw2 and you can’t adapt the content to each of those. Do you see the difference? When I go against raid, I ask myself what should I bring to help my team, to make my life easier, to beat the boss more efficiently, to be able to succeed at the mechanics more. I want more diversity so I can find a build that work for the content and that I like to play. We need protection defense at Slothazor, I dislike reaper or mesmer, but I like Guardian and Tempest so I can use them instead. They work and I like playing them. Win Win. You on the other end don’t want to adapt to the content. You have your little build and who care about the content, or the rest of your team. You want to play that build and everybody else is toxic because they don’t accept me with that build. Even if that build bring zero to the team or bring zero utility to counter that content.

bai long.2085:

I don’t try the raids anymore because I don’t appreciate people thinking they’re carrying me through, which they probably (more or less) ARE, according to what is required in the fights. Honestly I think I fought Gorseval twice and got people that just couldn’t for the life of them get into the updrafts.

Well, you ain’t gonna find much people defending try hard here. Yup, some people are just bad at the game AND will try to tell everybody what to play. That doesn’t change the fact that for each raid boss you need some role. You need those role to complete the raid with a minimum of ease. Even if your build is one of the best in the whole game, if that doesn’t help filling any of those role needed for that fight, well someone help gonna need to fill those role. And sorry to tell you but nomad doesn’t fill any role. I mean, your build could probably do the tank at Gorseval and VG, but you can’t do any other role than that or you will kitten the agro. So ya, if you can’t fill any role, other people will have to make sure they fill those role. After that, what is your strenght? Staying alive? But I can do that in zerker or viper too. So try yourself to find what is it that you can bring to the team to help them with your build. What is special about your build that will help the team succeed. Don’t ask yourself what the team should do for you, but what you should do for the team. Like we all ask ourself in raid.

bai long.2085:

I take all the constructive criticism I can get to heart, provide people aren’t nasty about it. That’s all I’m trying to do here.

I’m sorry if some people are nasty. But you need to understand that we all try our best to adapt to the team and the content to succeed. It’s team effort so If my group need a healer I’m gonna play my druid. If my team need some reflect, I’m gonna bring my DH. If all role are filled and they need dps, I’m gonna bring my Tempest. And I’m gonna talk to my team. Maye one night I don’t want to play druid. I’m gonna ask if someone want to swap. Sometime nobody else have a druid and I’m gonna play druid for the sake of the team. Other time someone is happy to swap.

DS with booster is still one of the best way, but VB is also great. Similar level of xp, while it easier to get in and you can get out without loosing too much now that they give more reward for each individual event. VB was great at launch, but it was hard to find a zerg in the last couple of months. But since the last big patch, it’s easier to find a zerg in the LFG.

KickzNGigglez.4958:

Man those are disgustingly high rates for end game gear. Here people were worried loot got nerfed. Old daily chest pale in comparison. I am however annoyed by the lack of any actual gold value bar T7 mats and matrices.

Well, you get gold from the other reward. You get at least 4 gold in encryption + some rare, etc.

Jahroots.6791:

But that’s not how percentages work, is it? If you have a 10% chance of getting something from a chest, opening ten of that chest doesn’t mean you have a 100% chance.

There’s a reason [KING] presented their findings in a different format. Let’s say you’re grinding fractals hoping to gear up for raiding and you complete one T4 daily. You’ll receive four chests – The best one has a 3.4% chance for armour and 1.4% chance for weapon, and the worst will not drop anything at all. This is not the same as a 9.2% chance at getting an ascended box.

3 chest each having 3,33% chance of getting you a drop is indeed not the same as 1 chest having a 10% chance of getting you a drop. But on average it will give you the same amount of drop.

Openning 10 chest won’t give you 100% chance of getting 1 drop. But the chance of dropping 1 item in 1 of those chest is pretty high.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

So you would really trust pugs to keep 25 might across the whole squad constantly with one PS war without them having a rev and two mesmers (and two mesmers are pretty worthless in the first place imo)? Even more organized/better groups I’ve seen struggle badly with that.

I tried 1 PS war too and it felt so much worse, otherwise I wouldn’t suggest against it.

Read after me : ‘’It really depend on your squad’‘. Again ’’It really depend on your squad’’.

No i wouldn’t trust a pug with 1 PS Warrior, no rev and no mesmer. But I trust my squad with 1 PS Warrior, 1 Rev and 1 Mesmer for some fight. I usually want to keep 2 PS warrior for some fight, but Monday we went through all fight with only 1 PS Warrior by mistake. The guys that was suppose to swap to the 2nd Warrior at Gorseval didn’t and we didn’t saw it. But again.

‘’It really depend on your squad’’ All I’m saying, is that a lot of groups are overbuffing the might.

Ryou.2398:

Ok but ive played many mmorpgs, and every class using pure dps gear was far from meta, regardless of the enemies living longer, now maybe thats the case in this mmorpg but im stating just because something lives longer doesnt mean it decreases chances of survivability with the right support/classes.

But the drop thing makes sense I guess, im a little dissapointed since every class is using nearly the same kind of gear but I guess thats just the way it is, atleast for now hopefully it will change. But it doesnt seem likely since as you said drops are better the faster the enemies drop.

Well, in GW2 the duration of the fight can impact a lot of things. In this game, we have a good quantity of active defence, but most of them are on a cooldown. We also have 2 dodges, after that we need to wait for the recharge of endurance. That mean, that we have 2 choices. Either we spread out our active defense, so we keep them up for a long period of time with some down time evenly distributed along a long fight. Or we burst our active defence at the beginning of the fight, basically becoming invulnerable while we burst the boss down. So for short fight, the survivability isn’t a problem for pretty much anybody in this game that have a basic knowledge of the game.

For longer fight, it’s another story. You need to balance your active defense depending on your fight. You usually wan to bring enough of it to keep your party alive, but not more than that.

As for the gear thing. You are not the fight to complain about the gear situation. But the thing is, it’s awesome for a lot of us. The focus of a build is around your weapons, skills and trait. Thing that actually influence how you play your character and how it feel to play. I don’t play my Staff Tempest differently depending on if I have marauder, berserker or soldier. If anything, I don’t need to pay as much attention to what I do in soldier because I’m less likely to die. But if I swap to a Dagger/Warhorn Auramancer build, then it have suddenly a different role and play totally differently even if it have the same gear.

The other advantage is that you can play different thing with the same gear and don’t need to put 3 or 4 gear on your character. I can play staff Tempest dps against Gorseval, I can play D/W dps in fractal, I can play Auramancer when I lead a DS, I can play Dagger/Focus against Slothazor, I can play scepter/focus when the pug don’t have a PS Warrior and I never swapped gear set. I never had to pay 500 gold 3 times on 1 characters to play different build. With the same amount of gold I was able to gear up my tempest, my guardian and my druid, each with several build for different situation.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t have a Soldier gear set on my guardian for when I WvW, or when I feel lazy in Open World. It doens’t mean that I can’t have a Viper and a Magi set on my Druid depending on my raid group. But it mean that I don’t need different gear set to play different role.

1) The enrage timer isn’t an instant wipe. This only increase the damage input of the boss. If you want to form a group of 10 nomads you can probably kill several boss during the enrage time. You will be able to do matthias for sure, gorseval you sure won’t be able to, sabetha is probably a no either because of the platform. But for the remaining 3, i’m not sure, but I think you could.

2) People don’t want Nomad gear people because they don’t bring anything to the party. It’s selfish self survivability setup. People actually like full healer Druid, or protection guardian because they bring something to the group, not just to themselves.

3) I still don’t get why people are so attach to their gear? It’s just some boring passive buff. You should care about your trait, weapons and skill. Something that actually affect how you play your character. The only difference of wearing nomad gear is that you can get hit more often and do bad dps. I don’t see why people want to build part of the game around gear set, they are the most boring aspect of a build.

Ubi.4136:

No, you get better loot in the T4 chest, for doing the harder instance. You should not get all of the loot for every tier below it when you haven’t done it. It makes no sense to give people loot for a tier they did not do. I’m not arguing that the T4 loot couldn’t be better, I’m just saying it makes no sense to get loot for something that wasn’t done.

It does make sense since the daily is do a fractal of that level or higher. The only issue with this would be that it completely illuminate the daily replayability of fractal. Everybody will only do 3 fractal per day now and never do several daily per day like in the old days where we would do a 50, 40 and 30. That said, the amount of people doing several fractal per day is pretty limited. I used to do it, but only on rare occasion and I feel ok with not doing it anymore. To be honest, doing more than 3 fractal per day is a bit of a choir these days and I get all the reward in one run anyway, so it’s really not a big deal.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Only one PS war is pretty kitten imo, especially if he’s going to pug.

Not really. It really depend on your squad, but you would be surprise how much more dps your group can do by keeping only 1 PS Warrior.

bearshaman.3421:

Does aggro exist outside of raids?

Yes, but it’s unreliable. There is a lot of variable to give you agro and toughness is only 1 of those. You can have a big amount of toughness and still lose agro from time to time. That’s why true tank don’t really exist as a popular strategy outside of 2 raid bosses. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work, but it won’t work 100% of the time.

Warlock.7136:

is it because I have everything viable covered already?

Not at all. At least for PvE you only have 3 profession that can be view as meta. GS Warrior I assume PS? Staff DD, I assume in berserker gear? And staff Druid, I assume as a healer? You don’t have Sword/Sword Chronomancer, a Sword/X Herald, a Hammer DH, a Grenade condi Engie, a Viper Reaper?

HP : Take a look at Dulfy guide. She point out which one can be solo. You can also find from time to time HP zerg in the LFG. If you need help with one HP try to wait after the meta event and ask in the chat. At that point you have like 100 people doing nothing, some might be more happy to help you at that time. It will only take you 25 Hero Challenge in HoT to complete your elite spec. Won’t take much time.

Mastery : DS with xp buff is probably the best. But Verdant Brink is pretty amazing too and it’s easier to get into a VB than a DS.

As for the guild. If you really want to do WvW then ya you need a guild in the same server. That said, everything else don’t care about your server and WvW isn’t in great shape these day. HoT screwed it up royaly. They fixed what they broke recently, but a lot of people that left WvW (like me) don’t really want to regear and find another WvW guild. A lot are waiting for the incoming WvW big patch which should come in like 6 or 9months. You can still find a normal general guild that fit you not necessarily on your server and if you really want to WvW find a specialized guild just for WvW on your server. That’s how I used to work.

- Ele vs Thief at Gorseval? Ele is the best. In theory in raid the Staff tempest against Gorsveval will do around 6% more dps. This number might be lower in reality because the rotation of a thief is higher, and it’s slighly easier to stay up with a thief, but at best they are pretty much equal in dps at Gorvesal. That said, Tempest is godly against the orbs with lava front. So you usually want at least 1 or 2 tempest there. After that thief or tempest, it’s not important.

- Like other said you gonna pretty much always want 1 PS warrior, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer. The revenant depend. Most group want 1 to buff the Chronomancer quickness and his cc. But recently more and more chronomancer go full Commander stats. That way they can reach 100% boon duration without the Revenant and nobody care about the lost of dps because Chronomancer dps is like 35-45% of other professions so losing some dps on that so you can replace the Herald for another profession is a win win. Especially since Chrono make a super tank for VG and Gorseval anyway.

- Reapers, Tempests, DHs, 1 second Druid and 1 second PS will fill up the group depending on what you need on each fight.

- Condi Engie and Thief are the less wanted profession. Don’t get me wrong they get the job done. Condi Engie have great quality of life and good dps, but without his old cc capability and a very hard rotation to master, there is just better choice usually. Thief have one of the best dps, but bring zero utility to most fight.

- There is very few reason to bring a burnzerker. His dps is not really higher than PS Warrior, which isn’t that great. There is better option than burnzerker for dps, for condi and for buff. But having a burnzerker in your team won’t be the reason of a fail.

I main my Tempest in raid right now, but I would suggest you to have other profession also because Tempest is more of a dps filler. All fight have like a list of role you absolutely need to fill. And tempest is near indispensable only at Gorseval. Otherwise it only bring utility just in case, can be replace by another profession that can do a better job, or just bring DPS. At VG, sabetha and Bandit trio it’s pretty much just a dps, at Slothazor it can do the job, but i prefer DH and Reaper there, and at Matthias only feel the burn can be great utility for the first phase. What I mean, is that you can play Tempest in all fight, but for most fight it will need to fill out all the important role first, and tempest will be one of the preferred profession to fill the remaining spot.

Well I think you exaggerate the situation of thief. Thief dps is really close to a tempest and In the vast majority of combat, it will actually have a better dps than tempest since his rotation is brain dead.

I like your second idea. But not really your 1st because it push for 4 DD in one fight. That’s a lot of one profession needed for 1 boss fight. Drop that to 1 button and no debuff and I’m on board. Or even better, make the corridor easier, keep multiple button, but remove the debuff. One of the strategy could be to only have 1 DD use his mobility to do all 4 button one after the other, attacking the boss between each.

Warrior : Venom/OH Dagger
Guardian : Conjure(Tome)/OH Warhorn
Revenant : Corruption/Scepter
Thief : Gadget or Survival/Rifle
Elementalist : Mantra/Sword
Necro : Glyph/Torch
Mesmer : Shout/OH Warhorn

Raven.1524:

So, how does the op think Anet can survive with 60$ from 3 years ago? It’s not like everyone buys gems or there are tons of new players buying the core game every month.

Strawman much?? Nobody is staying they shouldn’t sell their expansion, nobody is saying that they shouldn’t put incentive in the expansion for people to buy it, nobody is saying they should give everything free to the core game, but there is smart and bad ways to do it and they made some bad decision about their elites spec.

Torolan.5816:

A content has to stand on his own feet or is relegated to its own fanbase. An unique reward is a crutch to make it more desireable when you in fact do not desire to make the content. It is a tactic I utterly despite although I have to use it on children very often for the sake of meeting the educational goals the country government sets up with them.

A content has to stand on his own feet AND give good reward, you can’t have just one of them for a PvE part of a MMO. It’s PvE, the encounters stay the same over time. You can take the best PvE content ever created by anyone, it will still become boring or repetitive at some point. The only type of content that can get away with bad reward is good PvP because playing against other human make all match feel different. But even PvP are usually view as more interesting when they give reward. Some of my friend didn’t start to play PvP in GW2 until they start to give better reward. Why? Because even if they like PvP, they also like working on their character and account. And try to create a Multiplayer game wihtout reward, LoL, Dota, CSGO, Overwatch, CoD, Battlefield, they all have reward system now because people want that.

STIHL.2489:

Then we disagree. I have seen never seen such a toxic attitude in any other part of this game, as I have seen with raids, and I enjoy me quite a bit of WvW.

It’s all about personal experience and your personal experience doesn’t represent all experience and there isn’t even really a way to know which personal experience represent the majority. If anything, I believe that the personal experience of the majority when it come to raid is people that just never tried it yet.

My personal experience was on playing with other people. My raid group is now almost 30 ppl strong and several of those person I just never played with them even if there were in my guild. Some of them I never heard of them before and now I play with them every week, we do fractal together and we talk over our VOIP on a regular basis. The few times I pugged was a good time. I had friendly people, there was one troll that we made fun of with the pugs, and the first 2 bosses when so nicely that we kept the pug that never did Sabetha and we explained it to him. I know and play with more different people now than I did before raid. But again, that’s my personal experience and I won’t gonna generalize to say that all the community is loving and nice, just like you shouldn’t say that they are the most toxic community you ever seen in GW2.

FrostSpectre.4198:

I have to say that in PvE, it’s the Vanilla PvE, where conditions are still useless, since mobs die too fast and do pretty much nothing, it’s still ruled by the full berserker DPS builds with only passive defense.

Not really. Most world boss take enough time to kill that condition is great, same with most mobs in HoT unless you zerg them. Again same with med to high fractal or of course Raid.

So the only place where what you are saying is true is in Vanilla Open world minus several of the world boss, in dungeon and in low fractal.

Walker.7204:

S
My remaining question is about the Mega-Booster. At first I thought it just put you at 80, but now I think I’ve read it also gives you a full set of really good gear. Does it also give you enough hero points to unlock but not fill your elite ?

In my inventory, I’ve got tons of level boosters and exp scrolls ( back in the day I was addicted to some of the events with good rewards) that I think would take a new character pretty close to 80 without the boost. If this is the case, should I do that with the Rev, and then hold on to the Mega boost til I decide which class I really want to jump into.

Thanks for making your way through the wall of text…. Soon I’ll be home and can put these plans into action.

It give you a full set of exotic gear, which is good enough to allow you to complete all the content except fractal and raid (well you can do low level fractal and raid, but you will have a hard time finding a group with only exotic). It doesn’t give you any HP directly, but by leveling to 80 you receive the normal HP that you would receive while leveling to 80. AKA enough HP to unlock all the core spec and skills. You will then only have to go to Verdant Brink to unlock your elite spec. At that point you will be able to select the elite spec and equip the new weapon, but you will have zero elite spec skill or trait. You gonna have to get more HP in the world to unlock those.

It depend. If you have some other character than your Rev that is level 2 (meaning a new character) then it’s an option. If all your other character are at higher level, then it’s on your Rev that the booster will give you the more return. You could keep those to farm black lion key once a week, but if you plan on doing pvp dailies (that are super quick) then you will drown in Tome of Knowledge anyway. (I got like 500 right now sitting in my bank with no use).

Just a small advice. Get yourself some xp boost. You have booster, food, utility, firework, etc. Take a look at the wiki page and bring as much as you can and go join a zerg in Verdant Brink (1st HoT map). Big XP and good reward. The only other place that come close is DS (4th HoT map), but it’s a big long 2 hours meta even and you kind need to get into it as it start and don’t leave until the end if you really want all the rewards. With VB you can join and leave when you want as long as you find a group in the LFG or end up in a good map randomly.

You can also go take a look at Dulfy. She have good HP guide if you want to do only solo HP and not bother with the HP that need a group. You can also look at the LFG, you will from time to time see some HP zerg, but better try to do these AFTER the meta. You will have more ppl to help you and you won’t kitten off ppl that try to organize/complete the meta.

reikken.4961:

DrEckers.2039:

First, there are only 2 possible bosses in the game where having a tankier player makes any bit of sense.

This isn’t true at all. For example, recently I was able to stack some heavy damage reduction on my elementalist and sit on top of scale 100 Mai Trin and generally prevent her from moving so the rest of the party could lay on the dps in peace. You can do similar for many other bosses.

True, but that’s only reliable in 2 raid boss. For all other boss toughness is only 1 of the factor that create agro. You can be full toughness and still lose agro. Not only that, in those raid boss you need to control the movement of the boss in a precise movement, which you don’t need in all other boss. For exemple at Mai Trin, you can just stack on her when the electric AoE is about to go down and CC her. You don’t have alternate way of moving VG or Gorseval in raid.

Well there is two different subject here. Build diversity and holy trinity. The holy trinity bit is just annoying. There is simply no tanks in GW2. They are just some temporary mechanics in 2 raid boss which is perfect. They are nice in small dose, but I will never want them to be a core principal of in the whole game. And tbh honest, the diversity for tank in those 2 fight is great. You have DH hammer tank, Necro with minions tank, chronotank, etc. It’s fine as it is.

As for healer, you kind of have a point. I mean, you really only need a healer in raid, but it’s a nice optional quality of life choice for high level fractal and in open world. And right Druid and Tempest have pretty much the absolute monopoly on it. There is just nothing on par with those two. I think they could do some balance to give more healer option. I would like to see some Ventari/Herald Healer or some Guardian Healer, etc that can hold their own versus, Druid.

Also, I don’t really buy into the ‘’zerker healer shouldn’t a thing’’ mentality. Why? Because not only gear exist. A zerker or viper Druid do between 16 and 20k dps full buffs compare to 28-36k for true dps build. These healer already sacrifice dps with trait, weapons and skill, why should they be force to also sacrifice gear? They have the choice right now. They can bring magi gear, zerker gear, viper gear, they can go full support in trait, they can camp staff or use sword or axe/torch for me dps and have less celestial avatar, etc. Why destroy that diversity?

Blude.6812:

You do not get slot and 4000 gems with every version. The extra slot is deluxe version and 4000 gems is from the ultimate version. Maybe I misunderstood due to the way you worded it. It isn’t clear what you are trying to say.
http://buy.guildwars2.com/store/gw2/en_US/html/pbPage.heartofthorns?cid=91:5::::Global:166:::#

You misenderstood. I was answering his question so if you don’t read it before reading my post, I can see how it can be misunderstood.

Walker.7204:

In the past i’ve sort of been bogged down by trying to play all 8 jobs, and I’ve never really gotten great at any particular one. With the new job and all of the new Elite specializations, I’d really like to pick one and really just master the heck out of it. So what are some good recommendations for a strong all around, fun new class?

And finally, how exactly do you start in HoT? Just go to the first area? or does it lead you once it’s loaded?

Thanks again for all of your help.

Well it really depend on what you plan on doing. In PvP which profession are good or bad change on a regular basis. For exemple, on the first season necro was view a good and mesmer as bad, in the 2nd season both were view as powerful, and it seem that in the next mesmer will stay powerful, but necro will drop by a good margin.

On the PvE side of things it,s a lot more stable. You can use really all profession in all content with good result. But not all build will have good result everywhere. In open world, dungeon and low level fractal pretty much anything work. In high level fractal it start to matter more as it can make the difference between a 60-90 run and a 30min run. And of course in raid it matter a lot. Don’t stress too much about it, you probably won’t raid in the next couple of days anyways.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You might want to take a step back on slinging that “lazy” term around. The vast majority of players no not use the forums. And players do ask questions, here and in game, and do you know what people tell them? Go wiki it. Go youtube it. Go research it. There is a reason people stop bothering after a while. Its the exact same kitten we saw in dungeons and in fractals.

True. That term is apply and generalize wrongly most of the time. I know you don’t really seem to use that term, but the same is true for toxic. People on both side are using lazy and toxic to demonize the other side. But in reality, you have guys that worked hard to get where they are in term of experience and success in raid and they want to play with like minded, experienced players so their run go smoothly. Some of them are happy to help others in practice run, others aren’t, which is ok too.

And on the other side you have player that have difficulty going into raid. It can be for a lot of reason. They can lack the gear to get accepted, they can know nobody doing raid, they can have less experience in dungeon/fractal, they can like to play a build or a profession not that popular, they could have miss the initial training train when raid appeared, they can have difficult work schedule, etc. They are not lazy, they just don’t know what to do to raid at this point and nothing seem to work.

Of course some are lazy and other are toxic, but I doudt they represent the majority in either side. But whatever happen in the game, this division will alway exist. There is a reason why, it was like that in dungeon, then in fractal and now in raid. People want to succeed and they will do whatever they need to do to achieve it. The reason why it doesn’t really happen anymore in dungeon and it never really happen in low level fractal is because they are so easy that a lot of people just don’t care about people not meeting standard. When I dungeon, I usually 3 or 4 man it, and when I pug I often get a 600 AP new players, not level 80 and I don’t care, we carry him all the way because it doesn’t even make a difference, which wasn’t really the case before. But I won’t gonna do that In high level fractal or in raid.

You can’t police the community attitude because most of what people complain are done with good reason. It just clash when both attitude meet.

Winthrood.2045:

I love the feeling of being rewarded in games, but in my opinion in gw reward comes only with grind and doing SW or Fractals 40 on daily baisis is not what i am looking for in games.

Ok well not to be rude or anything but the problem seem to be you.

Silverwaste is not as good as it used to be for gold. Personnally, I went 2 times in SW and it was for token to get some sinister trinkets. I did fractal 40 farming once even for like 1 hour. If you push yourself into that, well it’s kind of on you.

Personnally, here what I do each day. I have all my character at a Iron Rich Vein. So it take me like 5-10min and I get 3.5 gold. Then I go around the maps to buy my Pact Scout’s Mapping Materials which I will sell each week 2 at Frostgorge Sound. It take again between 5 and 10 min and it will give me about 300 gold each 2 months. I obviously go do my daily ascended crafting, which right now give you 6.5 gold in profit. Then there is the daily that I do in like 15min in daily pvp map which give me 2 gold. Then I go with my friend doing the daily fractal, which give you at least 3-4 gold. All of that take me what maybe 90 min at max and I got about 20-22 gold, while slowly accumulating ascended gear for my alts. That’s enough gold for me, so after that I do pretty much whatever I want. So ya, there is ways to accumulate gold without farming the same thing hours. And if you can’t stop farming, well it’s kind of on you. There is a lot of activities that give you good reward. Verdant Brink is pretty nice these days, then you can do some dungeon, maybe a DS, do a raid, etc. I hate repeating the same activity over and over again.

1) Yes you do, but just by being level 80 you will have enough HP to unlock all the skills and specialization. So all the HP that you unlock in the maps will be use for you elite spec.

2) You get the additional shared inventory space whatever the edition of HoT you buy. But you still get 4000 gems and a character slot. Together they are worst 60$ and you will pay 50$ for them. So if you planned on buying a character slot and some gem in the future then yes, it’s worth it. If buying gem isn’t your thing, then no.

battledrone.8315:

WRONG! mistfire wolf was part of DD edition for 15 bucks more
even more , i could buy a lot gems, and simply convert them to gold, and buy some very good gear for that
this game certainly has some P2W elements too

Ok where is the meta, good or even decent PvP, PvE or WvW build using specifically mistfire wolf? Which profession have no better elite option than mistfire wolf?

And what is pay to win in a system where you can buy the gear that is better than my ascended? I mean you know that P2W is when you use IRL money to either have an advantage in combat over your adversary or very higher chance at getting something powerful.

For exemple, if you could get a +20 stats account bound infusion, but only from black Lion chest. I mean, you can get black lion key, but they are in a really low quantity. You can get about 12 from PvP, 1 per week from farming and after that, it’s a petty slim chance. That would be pay to win because they is almost zero chance to get enough of those to gear up your full character unless you pay to get keys. Or if an item from the gem store would give you a buff that other profession can’t have. The booster could be seen as P2W, but I never pay gem for black lion keys and I still have like 100 of those booster, which don’t work in PvP, neither in Raid. Tbh, they shouldn’t work in WvW either, but well.

No it’s not really a good idea. Right now you can do a variety of good composition which is way better than forcing people into specific profession. If your goal is to ‘’encourage more people to play different professions’’ then profession balance is the options. Ideally, if they could separate the balance between PvP and PvE, that would help a lot.

If you want to ‘’get rid of some meta builds that make people go play this or gtfo?’’ Then that will never happen. There will also be meta build in any game. Overwatch in is beta and we already tier list of the best heros and a meta comp for competitive match, in CSGO one of the most balanced fps you see clearly best guns that people use in competitive.

It’s simple, as long as there will option in video game, there will always be some option better than the other and player will ask that you bring the best they know because they want to win. Will they be jerk and demand you to bring something specific or be kicked, will they ask you for the good of the team, or will they don’t care will depend only on the person and that no game developer can change that.

The only thing they can do is balance enough their stuff so that the difference between builds and profession are close enough that most people don’t care and give you at least different option. Right now in guild, I would say that in PvE at least they reach a kind of balance for the profession, meaning that most profession have a place. But there isn’t much build balance because you only have 1 or 2 builds per profession that are view as meta. In PvP, the situation is a bit less good looking. Balance is a never ending battle.

ButterPeanut.9746:

I’m indifferent on most of the topics at hand, but I have a question for those who are strongly in favor of “easy” mode raids.

What are the distinct differences that you see between an raids and fractals/dungeons?

At a very high level here is what I see the differences are:
- Raids have 5 more players
- Raids are more challenging
- Raids have exclusive rewards

In an easy mode raid, which of those are still true?

In my eyes it is just the 5 more players. The amount that you reduce the exclusivity of the rewards must be appropriate to the amount that you reduce the challenge. I competed as a team athlete at a very high level for over 20 years and that has rubbed off on my opinions outside of athletics.

Due to that, I believe that if you trivialize the challenge you must remove all of the exclusivity of the rewards. If “easy” mode raids are just as easy as low level fractals and dungeons, then the rewards should be of the same level as low fractals and dungeons. If “easy” mode raids are just as challenging as higher end fractals, then they should have the same level rewards as higher fractals.

Maybe there is a degree of difficulty that is in between current raids and high end fractals. In that case there could be an argument for reduced rewards, but I don’t think that is the difficulty scale that folks in this discussion are asking for.

Getting millions of participation awards should never equate to an Olympic gold medal in any circumstance.

So if you remove “Raids are more challenging” and “Raids have exclusive rewards” then all you have left is “Raids have 5 more players”. Is this really what the “easy mode raids” community is looking for? Dungeons with 5 more players? What is the gain? Why don’t they just work on fixing dungeons/fractals…oh wait they are doing that.

I think you simplify the situation a bit too much. I mean just take a look at fractal. Not everybody can do T4. Either because they lack the skills, experience or gear. But they can still experience the content in T1, 2 or 3. They can still have some sort of drop, but in less quantity. But they don’t have access to every type of reward. For exemple, fractal skin used to be a higher level drop, now it,s golden skin that are. I think that’s what most people would want. Because in the end, not everybody is at the same place. Some people are better than other, some don’t have a team, other don’t have the gold to gear up as much or on as many character. So the end result is that currently a big portion of the community don’t have any fun playing the current raid.

Does the content be created to be enjoyed by 100% of the community? No because everybody have their preference. Should to destroy the content to reach more people, absolutely not. But if we can find a way to make the raid more accessible to more people, without destroying part of the current raid, why shouldn’t we?

It’s a hard solution to find because everybody have their own opinion of what an easy mode should be and what reward should they give. But that’s not a reason to shut down the idea completely. It’s a legitimate demand, it’s just hard to reach a good balanced solution.

Huttunen.8309:

The only problem I’m having with the community is the amount of “kill exp required” groups with Matt. I got a really good hold of the boss in my training runs I did before, but I can’t find any squads who can help me to finish the job. Not asking to get carried, I could grind the boss for 4 hours more just to get the kill but those groups are nowhere to be found anymore

Obviously it’s understandable that people want super exp people for the runs to get it done quickly, but it’s really frustrating since I don’t find myself to be a noob for the boss either

Well tbh Matthias is the last boss most players start to practice one and if most organized guild or group already killed it, they are not pugging. It will take a bit more time before the pug population start to kill it on a regular basis.

TheArtOfMouts.7468:

Yeh
T4 Buffed, everything else nerfed.
For sub 76 scales players, loot has been nerfed.

T3 was nerfed, T2 was buffed. I think that T1 stayed the same. And overall T3 was buffed since you also receive T2 and T1 rewards at the same time.

The problem is the debate over the reward. We have two problems here.

1) You have one side that want the same reward in less quantity so they need to raid multiple times the easy mode to reach the same level of rewards the normal raid give you in 1 time. On you have on the player that think that an easy mode should give you less quantity, but also exclude the unique skin rewards, including or not the Legendary armor. Both have a point and both situation is in the game right now. You have the legendary back item which can be done just by reach Emerald or Ruby over several seasons. You don’t need to reach diamond or Legendary. You have all the legendary weapons that you can craft rapidly if you have a lot of gold or slowly craft as you accumulate gold over a year as a casual. You have ascended gear that drop at all level, just less in low level. But you also have exemple of the other side. You don’t get dungeon token for the skins in Story mode. You don’t get Golden Skin, Golden Relics or the Fractal Tonikittenil higher level.

Personnally, I think that the big problem is mostly because of the Legendary armor. If Anet could add another legendary armor somewhere else in the game that would fix a lot of problems on that side.

2) The second problems with reward is the fear by raider that the reward will of easy mode will limit your reward in normal raid or that it will be high enough that the raid community will shrink significantly, making hard to complete the normal raid. There is numerous ways, this can happen. Let’s keep in mind that Anet was never great at balancing the reward in the past and this kind of situation happened in other games. Thinks like shards is particularly dangerous because they have a cap and they represent maybe 2/3 of the current raid reward. You already reach the cap of 100 shards after 5-6 boss. If the easy raid give you shards and you can cap it in easy mode raid, which would you do normal raid?

NightStalkerT.1983:

so, if anyone has guides on crafting amour – it seems this is where im falling short – because materials like jute – where the heck do you get this> leather i get plenty but i think its more or less a grind – or i save up gold and buy which i think could get a buff.

Gold in the game is far too little – yet Arenanet wants us to trade, where as im seeing incinerator for 4000 gold- i would jump and buy this if i had the gold.

p.s. my friend says MOBA or MMORPG are pay to win – its very true.

I will look into the builds you posted for thief, im only 25 points away from maxing elite.

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/12/gw2-ascended-armor-crafting-guide/

It’s old and some minor stuff changed in the game, but it will still give you a good idea.

Also go take a look at the official wikia in the specific crafting at the grandmaster recipe page like this : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armorsmith/Grandmaster_recipes

You can also go there to learn what is the lest costly way to level up your crafting profession to 500.

http://gw2crafts.net/

If you want a basic tutoriel how to craft your first ascended armor.

1) Level up your crafting to 500
2) Try to do your daily craft. It’s Lump of Mithrillium, Glob of Elder Spirit Residue, Spool of Thick Elonian Cord and Spool of Silk Weaving Thread. You can only craft those once a day so start early on those that you need. You can refine those into the materials you need to craft your armor and those refined material can be bought on the TP, but they will cost you far less if you refine them yourself.
3) Buy your recipe. They are very cheap. You need a Inscription Recipe for the stat that you need and 1 recipe per piece of armor with the same stats. Those recipe if I remember cost 3-5 gold and 5 laurels.
4) Craft your armor.

Keep in mind that you really don’t need an armor at all. Unless you want to raid, do fractal T4 or just want to get the end game gear. You should also focus to have your 6 trinkets and weapons ascended before you go for your armor. The armor is the most expensive and the less important part.

Dude, you seem like a really new player and as a new player you just don’t know yet how to make gold. Making gold in this game is super easy. There is a reason so many skin are so high in price. It’s because most people can get that kind of gold over time. Just by doing your daily everyday you gonna end up with 730 gold by the end of the year. Do dungeon runs, fractal 40, gathering run (especially if you want to craft), etc. As you get more experienced in the game you gonna learn what to do and what to not do to get gold.

P.S. : Your friend is a generalizing idiot. MMO and Moba are not by definition pay to win. There is people that think that GW2 is pay to win, but that’s not true. We can argue that maybe the expansion could be pay to win because the elite spec are better than core spec, but even there it’s a stretch. No matter how many real money you put in the game, you won’t be able to have a better character than other player. The only advantage of putting real money into the game is to have customization, quality of life or skins.

And on this very subforum you seem to have miss this

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-teaching-runs-Proving-accessibility/page/2#post6135807