Guild Wars 2

Avarice.2791:

Elitists are not calling for keeping raids “hard.” Raids in this game are “normal.” There are no “hard” raids. This is something you defined where as the current raid content is merely “normal” due to the fact that there are no other difficulty modes.

But that’s only a matter of opinion. My guild have about 500 players in it. 50% of those would tell you that raid are super hard in GW2 and only 5% would tell you that raid are normal.

What is the truth? Neither response are good because easy or hard are subjective term, not objective. You will always have people better than you that will find these raid to be too easy, while other people will find too hard to even try.

Personnally, I would love to have a harder version of our current raid. But out of the 20 people in my raiding group, I believe that only 5-6 of them would be with me on that. Most of them find the raid just fine or hard, but manageable. It’s not because the difficulty of current raid is fine with you that it’s fine with everybody.

Sor far it seem that the raiding community in GW2 represent between 5 to 15% of the total community and about 5-10% of the devs are working on them, so that’s fine. But as a hardcore raider, if easy mode could bring 30 or 50% of the community into raid and increase the amount of devs working on raid I would be happy with that. And from the point of view of people who can’t raid right now (because of time, organization or skill) would be very happy to experience that content too.

Herald is mainly there for Facet of Nature (mostly for quickness), fury and CC.

But CC and Fury can be done by other profession, so the really main reason to bring a Herald is for the boon duration for the quickness. Not saying that it’s useless outside of it, but outside of Facet of Nature, the remaining of his strength can be done by other professions.

Absurdo.8309:

Your point is well-taken. However, I would caution assigning equal weight to the hyperbole. I notice you aren’t quoting anyone in your “no easy mode raids” strawman, for example.

So my point isn’t valid because I didn’t went through 50 pages of text to find quote on the other side? Would you have done it?

Keep in mind that i quoted only one guys. The only guy on both side that say thing as extreme. It’s not because because 1 side have a really really extreme guys that both side doesn’t have equal weighs. Anyway, we are not here to count the amount of crazy talk on both side. I just don’t want that these crazy talk just shutdown any discussion.

It may not seem as crazy as that guy said, but when the anti-easy-mode side just keep pointing at WoW and doesn’t address the fact that it’s the reward system in the WoW LFR that screw it up, no the LFR itself.

You can take a look at gw2metabattle.

Dungeon are pretty much dead, gonna be hard to find a group (sadly). For fractal, you can bring pretty much anything.

Dragon Hunter is the Elite Spec of Guardian, Daredevil is the elite spec of thief.

For raid, it depend on the fight. Each of them are different. For exemple, DH is pretty popular at Slothazor and Sabetha. Thief do ok at all fight with a very high dps, but don’t bring much in term of role in any fight so it usually fill the last 1-2 spot of a team.

Druid (elite spec of a ranger) is mostly use as a buffer/healer in raids (most group have 1 or 2). You can use it in fractal too, but it’s not as popular (no need for a healer in fractal, so it’s mostly a buffer there).

Avarice.2791:

I feel like the points I make are sound, then he turns it around into something that is completely irrelevant every time. After awhile it gets to be too much then in comes then temp ban! I’ve literally gotten 3-4 infraction points off this guy. I simply can not continue in this toxic conversation where none of my points are even being addressed otherwise I will face a perma-ban. I’ve had people whispering me in-game thanking me for saying what I am saying.

You don’t need to respond to the guy that make stupid argument. It sad, because he make all the people that ask for an easy mode look bad.

Blaeys.3102:

I think both sides have cognizant arguments that should be heard.

Yes, the conversation has become a little circular because of the same small group of people (on both sides) pushing their agenda.

However, between the hyperbole/namecalling/belittling comments (again, from both sides), there is still a debate/conversation worth having. Please don’t let it devolve into a grudge match between egos. So, stop directing comments at individual players and making blanket hypothetical statements. Focus instead on making your argument in as clear and calm a method as possible.

This is an important topic for many of us.

Yes exactly. There is good argument on both sides. Let’s not take extreme on both side as a general represent of the other sides.

Most people that want an easy mode don’t say thing like ‘’I have zero interest in “applying myself” to raids in their current form’’ or ‘’If we can’t have a easy-mode raid, I rather that the game don’t have the normal raid either’’.

Just like not everybody that are against easy mode just want to jealously keep their content out of filthy casual enjoyment just becasue that would lessen their own sense of achievement and pride.

Sarrs.4831:

However, if an easy-mode raid were introduced to GW2 without sufficient limiters to the Ascended drop rate, this could cause catastrophic long-term damage to the game, as Ascended crafting materials prop up large portions of the game’s economy. If you can get ascended armor and weapons from the raids, why ever both crafting… Goodbye market.

What? Of course there would a be limit to the ascended drop rate. What do you expect, that just because they add an easy mode they will make 2 pieces of ascended drop at each boss?? There is ascended drop in raids, fractal, PvP, WvW, etc. Did we say goodby market? No, then why would we for an easy mode. Again, that’s not an argument against easy-mode. That’s an argument against bad reward management. You can make the same argument about fractal if they ever decided to remove the daily requirement and give 100% chance of ascended at level 10. But nobody talked about fractal saying Oh what out this could happen and destroy the market. No because Anet didn’t show any sign of doing that nowhere in the game, why would they start that in easy mode? Most probably you would only have RNG chance one a week at an ascended pieces per boss. Similar or lower than the current raid, which is pretty low.

Sarrs.4831:

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

Well, not everybody have the same idea of what an easy mode would be. I just hate when people dismiss the idea of easy mode because of the version of easy-mode they imagine, that’s not the only one. It’s like when we talk about personnal dps meter and people rage against the idea because they don’t want other people to so their dps. It’s not because there is the words dps meter in it that it ALL the idea are the exact thing. Easy-mode can mean A LOT of thing and I’m sure we can come up with a lot of version of easy-mode that would be acceptable to the majority of the player base. Let’s not just dismiss it because the version of easy mode that Blizzard created was bad.

Sarrs.4831:

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

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

I just don’t see the difficulty there at least not in GW2. Yes in a gear based game like WoW of course I see the problem. In WoW like game it’s binary. Either it give the next level of gear you need or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then it’s over you won’t be doing it, there is no reason. If it give you the level of gear you want, then it’s about your preference. What is the best content to do to get that gear I want. Do I want to do the hard raid which higher chance of gear, or the easy mode with less chance. There will be only one good answer. It will be different for everybody, but there will be a general direction for the population.

In GW2, reward don’t work like that. People will always want gold, materials, ascended gear for alts, etc. It’s easy to balance reward in that case. An easy mode wouldn’t be much shorter in time than doing the normal raid with a good team. Right now, doing the wing 1 with a good team take you between 60-90min. An easy would probably take 30-60min with most group. You can’t really go faster than that (unless we talk about speed running, but that’s a small minority). The main difference is the number of people able to complete them in that time. As long as the reward for the normal raid is more than twice the reward you get from the easy mode. That reward will be balanced.

Just take the exemple of fractal. Fractal Pre-hot had a well balanced reward system. The best reward was in fractal 50 and most people were doing that level en priority. If you have more time to do several fractal you would then do level 20, 30 or 40. If you had no enough time for a level 50 you would do a level 20 or 30. If you were with friend not as good, then you could do level 20 or 30. If you didn’t have gear you would do level 20, 30, etc. Everybody had a level to do depending on their gear, experience, time and skill. And the reward was balanced enough between level (with the fact that you add daily) so that none of them were irrevelant.

Post HoT. The reward is badly balanced. Everybody is doing level 51-80. Nobody is doing level 80+ because there is no reason to do so. Nobody is doing level 50- because the reward is crap (unless you do it the first time, or for an achievement).

The exact same thing work with easy mode. You receive the majority of the reward once per week for each raid in normal and once per week for each raid in easy mode. And that you get a better reward in normal raid, while still having a decent reward in easy mode, then everybody will be able to choose what ever you want. Got time? Do the normal raid and then do an easy mode. You are with friends that are not really good? Do some easy mode. Just have 1 hours and no friends online? Do an easy mode. Want the best reward? Do an normal raid.

Again. It’s not because some people ask for ridiculous thing in an easy mode that easy mode should be dismissed. We can talk as a community and figure out what is best instead of this easy mode will break everything don’t touch my raid vs current raid is evil only 1% of the population play it what about casual give me everything for no effort.

Sarrs.4831:

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

I went through the video. I didn’t play WoW that much, I hated it. So tell me if I’m wrong.

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

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

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

Dungeon : Aetherpath (not really that hard, but harder than most)

Fractal : Archdiviner or Mosman at the highest fractal level. (It’s not necessarily hard, but it’s long and it’s easy to make mistake in that time)

Raid : Sabetha or the lastest boss you are now at. For exemple, right now my group mostly have a hard time with Sloth and I heard that matthias is something. But they are new and I remember feeling the same at VG, at Gorsveal and at Sabetha. They are hard because you are learning them. That said, so far (and keep in that i didn’t completed the 2nd wing yet) Sabetha is the hardest one, mostly because when someone make a mistake there, they usually die and this make the fight a lot harder for everybody. I’ll will probably have a better option in 1-2 months when I practice enough all the 2nd wing.

Actually surviving is not the hard part of tanking in raid at all. I mean almost zero. The tank itself doesn’t really have a big impact in term of dps. He will usually have an impact on movement, cadence, mechanics and buff. But it’s personnal dps is usually very very low.

If you don’t feel comfortable or are worry that surviving will be an issue take some extra trinkets just in case. For example, bring some Cleric or Knight trinket and keep them in your inventory or equip them and swap between them depending on how your first experience go.

The main thing you should be focusing on is the mechanics and I’m talking here from experience. At VG for exemple, you want to train to move VG at the right time so he doesn’t spawn a green circle in the wrong tier of the arena, you don’t want to get teleported, etc. At Gorseval, don’t want to hesitate and want to bring him as closer as you can to the wall, and you want to keep him immobile to make him easier to dps by your group.

I don’t have that much experience with tanking VG, but I’m the main tank for my group at Gorseval. I use Scrapper condi build and even with only 5 trinkets swap to rabid I rarely even use my healing skill. Maybe 2-3 times per fight only. Surviving with an healer and some toughness is really not hard. Keep in mind that the Healer always know where you are, so it’s easy for him to keep you alive.

Coulter.2315:

1) Wasted development time and resources.
2) Seen what it did in WoW (splitting community, causing burnout and did not increase numbers doing actual raids).
3) Nothing left to aspire to, people no longer need to try hard and succeed at exciting content the devs have worked really hard on (people who could be convinced to try raids will just run through easymode and never think to do it again on proper difficulty – this is exactly what happened in WoW)..

I disagree with those points.

1) What is the metric on which you say that? Why would it be wasted? My logic is the following. We know that Anet use about 5-10% of their work force to create raids and we can assume that between 5 and 15% of the players are regular raider (the second is hard to estimate). Easy mode can be a lot easier to create than the raid themselves (remove the timer, need 2 people instead of 4 in the circle, etc). They just need to minor change to the current mechanics (no new models, no new maps, no new animations, etc). So they can work on easy mode with less than 5% of their work force (or a similar number). So the only reason it would be wasted resources is if

a) Less than 5% of the players are using easy-mode
b) easy mode make migrated all the normal raiders to easy-mode, meaning that the resources of easy-mode are not wasted, but the overall resources of raid are wasted.

I don’t believe that a) is likely to happen. I believe that a well done easy mode will attrack a big portion of the old dungeon community. And the only reason for b) would be if they do a terrible job, for exemple if they make easy mode give the same reward or a similar reward to normal raid, with a fractal of the effort. If they balance the reward right and gaining the reward in easy-mode don’t chip away at you reward from normal raid (for exemple if shards gain in easy-mode are on the weekly cap as normal raid), I don’t think you can consider that a waste of ressources just because you don’t want to play it. Just like you can’t consider raid themselves a waste of ressources just because Ohoni don’t want to play it.

2) a) Splitting Community : I can do Fractal and I can do raid. The presence of Fractal don’t split the community. Even when there will be 6 wings in the game. That will still be only between 6 and 12 hours of content. For most hardcore players that still less than the total gaming time. They will have time to do easy-mode, or fractal or dungeon after their raids. As long as raid is the most profitable (since it’s the hardest) or have unique rewards people that can play raid will proritize it and will do easy mode on the side because they take very little time. While people not good enough or without the organization will simply do the easy-mode (they don’t do raid right now anyway). You can make easy mode to incentive people to play both with a good reward balance. It’s not easy mode that was a problem in WoW, it was the way it was implemented (mostly how the reward was implemented).

b) Causing burnout : What?? How can you burnout about a content? Because people wanted to do everything in the same week and with both easy and normal mode, there were just too much stuff, which half of it a repetition but more easy? I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but that is weak. I could do all dungeon path each day, it didn’t burned me out. My friends and I were doing the dungoen we wanted, when we wanted. One day during the weekend we do them all, the next day we did none, the next only 3 patch. If you burn yourself on content, either the game don’t release enough content or you did it to yourself.

c) Don’t increase number of raid : Of course it doesn’t. But it increase the number of raid a good portion of the population will be able to do. For example, It won’t increase the number of raid for you and me because we’ll continue to raid normally. But for about 30% of my guildmate, it will indeed increase the number of raid they can actually do or will enjoy to do. Adding a Season in PvP didn’t increase the mode or maps, but it doesn’t mean that it was a bad idea.

3) Nothing to push people : Again WoW screw up the reward. There was no reason to do the normal raid because they can simly run easy mode and get a similar reward with a fractal of the effort. If normal raid is where you get the cool unique stuff like the skins, ghostly infusion, etc. And that in easy mode you just get a bit of gold, then people will still want to play the normal raid if they can.

Look at fractal for exemple. Right now the level 100 have exactly the problem you talk about. They are longer, take more effort, need better composition, but they give the same reward as level 60-70. There is no reason to run level 100 so nobody does other than just once for achivement, to experience it or just for the challenge.

But pre-hot, the level 50 was the hardest and what was the most popular fracta level? Level 50. Why? Because, it was mayder than the level 20 or 30, but it gave you the best loot. Someone who was able to run level 50 would prefer to run that level. If they had limited time then they would only run level 50. If they had plenty of time, then they would run level 50, than level 40, 30 and maybe 20. If they were not good enough or not geared enough yet they would run level 20 and 30 and try to eventually be able to run 50.

Here you see, it’s the exact same situation. You have different level of difficulty, but with different reward approach. The first one (currently) push people to ignore the high difficulty option and everybody is doing the low difficulty option. The second one have a better reward balance and most people want to do the high level of difficulty, while still having people doing the low difficulty scale for diverse reason.

Easy mode can impact the game in a lot of different ways. It depend how anet implement it.

If you want a good argument against easy-mode here one. Anet have proven to us that they are horrible at balancing reward between difficutly and Fractal 100 is the best exemple and a recent one at that. You can say that you don’t trust Anet one second to implement easy-mode with a good reward balance and you fear that just everybody will migrate to easy-mode because of their mistake, ruining the current raid. You could add, let’s wait until Anet fix the current issues with raid (LFG, trinket lock behind raid, etc) and that they add new content outside of raid (WvW, new legendary, Fractal, etc) and lets see then what is the situation and if as many people will complain about raid. Maybe that easy-mode won’t be necessarily at that point.

Vayne.8563:

The gaming population is aging. The age of the average gamer is now over 30. People have more commitments and less time. I’m not alone in a shoe box. I’m part of an ever growing group of casual gamers who can’t necessarily commit.

You kitten those people off at your own risk because there are a lot of us. You think it’s like three guys in a basement in Iowa? lol

Wow this discussion is going nowhere dude. What the kitten are you talking. I never talked about those things and now I’m kitten those people off at my own risk?? Why are you quoting me and responding to me and then not responding to my point. Instead responding to point that I never made?

Just to be clear. I’m a 28 year old with commitment that advocate for an easy mode for dungeons. Man I don’t know how to respond to you, seriously. Your respond is just so freaking weird.

Vayne.8563:

Sorry to disagree, but my experience is that the meta events are far easier for someone to get into than raids.

You read my post right? I said ‘’Definitively the raid by a big margin’’ when you ask what need a bigger commitment. So I don’t know why you say sorry to disagree, since we agree on that.

But sorry to be blunt, but who care about your specific situation? Anet can’t design a content base on every single situation that their player could be in their life.

I agree with Blood Red there. Dungeon were fine, but they were left in the dust and as the game progressed, the problems just pile up on them.

- Designed for low level, while players were downscaled is good when you launch the game, not so good years after the launch.

- Huge Power Creep. We can now do 3 times the dps than we used to do at release, not counting how better we got.

- Nerf, especially early in the game. CoF path 1 went from one of the hardest boss to the easiest.

Vayne.8563:

Exactly! And raiding takes less or more time and commitment than waiting for a meta?

Definitively the raid by a big margin. But the commitment and expectation of commitment is different here.

Commitment
In the new HoT it’s structural. Whatever you do, the commitment is there. The maps are 90-120min long, the big reward is at the end, they completely through out of the window the principle of entry and exit point, you rely massively on the LFG which is a pain to use (this was also present on Silverwaste and Dry Top, but those were the minority of maps, while it’s the majority for HoT maps).

Raid on the other end, the commitment is about forming a squad and the level of difficulty. If you have a squad with good player the commitment is pretty much zero. If you don’t have a squad and have average players the commitment is too big for a lot of people.

Expectation of Commitment
Open World is suppose to be casual, there were designed that way and that’s the natural environment for casual. All open world map were pretty much for a more casual crowd. And I’m not just talking about casual player. I’m an hardcore players, but I want to play casually when I go into open world.

Raid were suppose to be hardcore content from day one.

- Fractal reworking : We do the same few levels each daily with badly designed instability, HP sponge at higher level and only 1 daily with reward worth it, etc.

- WvW reworking : WvW had issue and HoT made it worst with those new horrible maps.

- BALANCE, balance, balance. Ideally, separated between PvE and PvP. We need more option in term of good build, we need to get profession closer in term of efficiency, they need to work on all those useless crap each profession have (like Spirit Weapon on guardian, etc), and we absolutely need to balance between vanilla and elite spec.

- Quality of life update for the LFG and Build Template. The LFG should have more different tab, and be able to work with squad for both raid and open world.

- I would rather put dungeon hard more here, but it ain’t gonna happen so I’ll put HoT map reworking instead. A reworking of their structure mostly, not the content itself. For exemple, I rather that the maps were players driven like Silverwaste or at least a shorter time cycle like Dry Top than the 2 hours we see now.

Vayne.8563:

The problem isn’t raids. It’s the perception of elements in the casual community which, rightly or wrongly, believes this game is no longer a game for them. The more stuff you have that people can’t get the more disenfranchised they’re going to feel.

I warned Anet on these forums about this before raids were ever introduced. You simply can’t lock an entire tier of gear behind one game type and expect people not to complain about it. If it were just crafted there’d be a riot.

No you’re trying to take something complex and make it simple. It’s not simple. Raids aren’t the problem…they’re part of the problem.

There are a host of dissatisfied people. There are multiple threads on reddit, and this forum posted by disenfranchised casuals You may think that’s not a problem but I assure you Anet does and they’d be wise, in my opinion, to listen, because they’ve built the game on casual content and suddenly changed it. They went off in a different direction that threatens at least part of the core base of players they’ve built up.

Raids alone aren’t the issue. The shift in focus is the issue, of which raids are a part. Sometimes, you have to look at the forest, not just the trees.

Well yes, but it’s not for the same reason.

Most people are against the structure of the HoT and the fact that HP were designed around group event rather than just normal event that you can do alone. Very few really complain about the difficulty of these new mobs. Yes some people do complain about that, but as much as people complain about the difficulty of mobs in silverwaste and who complain about that anymore. People get used to the difficulty of mobs.

But people can’t get used to the difficulty of getting your HP when you play solo or having to wait 1 hours to have a 15min window to get into a DS map for 90min before you get your reward. And, it’s not about casual vs hardcore there. I consider myself an hardcore players and my friends are hardcore player too, but these obstacle are still there for us and that doesn’t make those activities appealing.

gavyne.6847:

They mentioned 5 devs, but it takes more than 5 designers to create the raids you see. They were smart in not mentioning the involvement of art, graphics, animation, lore, programming, QA, etc.. resources. But if you watched their most recent Guild chat, you see the guy mentioning “the collaboration” of teams and hard work multiple times throughout the live stream. So you know it’s more than just 5 people that created the raids in GW2. This isn’t to mention the amount of resources they’re pouring into creating Legendary armor, which would be exclusive to raiders only.

Raids generally suck a lot of resources for the little amount of actual content they provide…content in which will be played by a small % of the playerbase. This is the case with all other MMORPG’s, no reason it would be any different here. I normally don’t mind seeing raids given adequate resources & smart resource allocation. But I see the dire situation WvW is in, and now PvE players demanding more content because they’re tired of grinding the same 4 maps since HoT was a short expansion in the first place.

Well they said that there were 5 devs currently working on raids, 120 working on the current game (probably that these 5 are part of the 120), 70 on the second expansions and a core team of 30 working with everybody.

That 30 men core team is probably what you talked about : art, graphics, animation, lore, programming, QA, etc. Let’s say that for the argument that all 30 work exclusively on raid. That mean 35 people out of 220 people would be working on raid, which is about 15% of the dev working force. And we know that not all 30 of the core team work full time on raid. So the maximum % of resources Anet is putting on raid is lower than 15%, proably something like 5-10%.

How is that too much resource because from what i see, we have about 5-10% of the population actively raiding. At least in my guild it’s around 10-15%. I could get on board with you if like 30% of the devs were working on raid, but that’s not the case. Unless you are saying that Anet is totally full of kitten and that the number they provided us with are lies.

You mostly have 3 choices as far as group go.

1) Find a raiding guild would be the best option
2) Create your raiding group. Mostly talk with pugs you play with and slowly grow your group, filling the empty spot with the LFG.
3) Use the LFG for pugs

If you use the LFG either for 2) or 3) try to do that early during the week. More people are doing raid Monday than Sunday because of the reset.

Put as many advantage on your side. Pug don’t know you or your skill level so they will choose their raiding allies base on what they can see or ask to link. Full ascended gear will give you an advantage for sure. But also have popular profession or several popular profession will also give you an advantage as you will be able to fill several spots in different group.

PS Warrior, Druid Healer, Chronomancer and Tempest usually always have a place in a group. For the remaining profession, it depend a lot. DH will be popular at Sabetha and Slothazor, while an Herald will be popular for buffing the Chronomancer, etc

I would suggest you to focus on wing 2. Everybody is still practising this wing, since it’s new. Take the train while you still can, in 2-months new people with no experience will have a lot harder time to find a group for the 2nd wings as most group will search for experienced players.

For the 1st wing. VG is easy in pug. Your group can make mistake and you will still be able to finish it without much problem. Gorseval is a bit harder in pug because everybody must be doing his job. That said, the DPS gate for this boss dropped a lot recently since they fixed his aggro. Sabetha is the hardest boss to do in pug because most mistake will be fatal to the fight so your group is often as weak as the weakest player there.

Coulter.2315:

You left out those currently trying to clear the Raid who would just drop to easy mode, this is a reduction in people doing the real Raid. (I’m assuming you forgot that by accident and not deliberately)

And how is that a problem. If those people prefer to do an easy mode, then it’s their choice, not your. You can imagine all sort of group that would do a lot of different thing. Yes there is people that are working on raid right now and either have a difficulty time or a just lazy and would do easy mode only if it exist. There is other people that can’t get into raid because they have a hard time getting into pugs to practice and so an easy mode would allow them to partice enough to get into the real raid. Maybe some people don’t try raid because it seem like this big hard content ,but if they could experiment easy mode, they would want try the normal raid.

I can make up all sort of group that hypothetically have different reaction to the introduction of raid. Neither those assumption, nor your assumption are base on facts or evident, just our personal opinions. We also have no idea what’s the percentage of people that could be in those different groups.

TexZero.7910:

RyanCid.9270:

You are comparing 100 levels of fractals to normal mode and easy mode

Problem still exist. The more variance you add, the lesser the pools become for both modes.

You’ll get people who don’t feel the easy mode is easy enough (wont raid), You’ll start dividing raiding guilds into Normal/Easy Hardcore/Casual. You’ll get those who want a whole new Hard Mode, after all what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Opening the door to modular changes only increases divisiveness. You do end up hurting both community due to that.

By that logic, adding Fractal and Raid diminish the pool of players for these modes. So anet should have never added Fractal and Raid.

TexZero.7910:

Thaddeus.4891:

But I don’t believe it will be enough.

Fair enough.

However, i don’t think placating and creating multiple raid modes is the right solution, if anything it’s a step backwards.

And it’s ok. You believe that it’s a bad idea, I believe it’s a good idea and I don’t think we can change each other mind. But I was always a fan of incremental change so you can see what work or not. So in 1 or 2 patch they will improve the LFG for raid and I’m sure that will help a lot. Time will also help a lot as more people become better at raid. Gorseval also became a lot more easier with last patch when they fixed the aggro boss that made him move all over the place. So maybe in 4 months the currents problem will be a lot present. We’ll see then if further step will be needed.

TexZero.7910:

The only lacking thing to get raids to a wider audience is the proper group formation tools which is in dev atm.

So again, why do raids need an easy mode when all an easy mode serves to do here is divide the community further, when the proper tools for bringing people in would decrease the divisive nature ?

I’m not sure about that. I mean, I have no problem with saying. Hey let’s fix the proper group formation tools first and then look at the situation again and see if that’s enough.

But I don’t believe it will be enough.

Coulter.2315:

If the mechanic doesn’t kill anyone there will be no motivation to learn it in easy mode, I have further doubts anyone having done easy mode will then try the real Raid.

True and I don’t think it would be a good idea for an easy mode. I would prefer to make it easier to do the mechanics, but it would still be as punishing if you don’t succeed. For exemple at VG. If you remove the timer and limit the number of people needed in the green circle to 2 players and remove the 4th Seeker in the last phase. The mechanics are still as punishing and people need to learn how to do it. They are just easier to handle. People will still have to learn to move the boss, to do the circle, to no let seekers reach you, etc.

maddoctor.2738:

I fear if they open that can of worms (different difficulty settings for Raids) the complaints and the nerf requests won’t stop and the Raid will enter a permanent nerf spiral getting nerf after nerf until everyone can beat that content. One more difficulty setting with slightly easier mechanics is not a bad thing, entering a loop of contant nerfs is. And that’s what I fear might happen with this community

I can understand that. I would really not want that either. But if you are using that argument, am I right in assuming that 1 easy mode is ok with your, but that you fear that if they do that, that might lead to constant nerfs?

But I don’t understand why you talk about nerf. We are talking about a easy mode, not nerfing the existing raid. So if you are using a slippery slope argument, that would mean that you fear that if they add a easy mode of the raid, people might ask for an even easier mode and that we could end up with 3 Difficulty settings 1 super easy, 1 easy and the normal raid. That would be no nerf. Nerf would be a complete other change, a change that I believe most people would be against if they were different level of difficulty. At least, I don’t seem to recall anyone in this post to ask for a nerf of the current raid.

maddoctor.2738:

The problem with this easy mode is “How much easier is easy enough?”

The main issue is that players are asking for an easy Raid, not an easier Raid. There is a huge difference between the two. Making a version with more forgiving mechanics will sure allow more players to play the Raid, but you will still leave a lot of the playerbase away of the Raid. So what do you do then? Continue releasing more and more easy versions so everyone can do the Raid? How many Raid difficulties would you need for that?

We are talking about players who can’t do a single fractal above 20, or can’t avoid Kholer’s spin attack, yet they want to Raid for the rewards and/or the story. Let’s say that there needs to be an easier version, the next question is how much easier it should be.

You think in absolute in black and white. Difficulty is a spectrum, from the best players in the game to the worst. From squad that can 6man no updraft gorseval, to the team that can’t avoid kholer’s spin attack like you said. At which difficulty level exactly an easy would be best, I don’t know. But this easy vs easier is just sementic. Easy is not an absolute, it’s not a specific level of difficulty since it change depending to who you talk. I agree that it would be stupid to make an easy mode easy enough for people that can’t even play dungeon or fractal.

Miellyn.6847:

no, he is completly right

just look at the ‘prime’ example WoW with multiple difficulties

LFR added close to zero new players to the raid pool for normal guilds, it just removed people from normal raiding to LFR because it’s zero effort to do it and they got the same rewards with smaller numbers.
many guilds struggled to maintain their rooster (thats why flexible raids were developed).

after the rewards got nerfed many of the reward only players returned to normal raiding (which got also easier with flexible raid size) and now LFR is struggling with abnormal high queue times for DDs.

an easy mode won’t have an noticible effect on the total raiding players, it will just take a chunk of players from normal to easy raiding and destroy raiding guilds

the amount of people who want to raid to experience the story is very small and you get most of it outside of the encounters anyway in GW2, most people just want the legendary armor
so either you remove the rewards from the easy mode and the playerbase is too small to justify it or you give them the same rewards even with smaller dropchances and you will destroy normal raiding

From what you are telling me it’s the reward balance that was a problem not the easy mode itself. People didn’t bother with the normal raid because they could get the same reward in a fraction of the time and effort. Nobody is asking that. The reward should be way higher on the normal raid, than an easy mode. And flexible raid size seem like a bad idea too. Now on your point about easy mode will just move the population between easy and normal mode and don’t add any population. I disagree. I can’t speak for everybody in the game, but in my guild of 450 people, we are about 45 regular raider, and I’m sure that at lest 50-60 other players would raid in easy mode. Like I said, I can only talk about the people in my guild, but I don’t see why if done correctly players that can do normal raid would want to do easy mode.

TexZero.7910:

You must not be reading the same thread i am then, where in people are indeed asking for them to gut the raids by adding an easy mode.

ADDING an easy mode. You still have the normal mode, which is as hard as the current raid. The raid would still be 100% the same. There is just another mode that is easier with less reward.

TexZero.7910:

GW2 already has variable levels of difficulty built in. Dungeons -> Fractals -> Raids.

Why are we trying to gut Raids when the solution for those that want more casual content is pretty clearly already there for them ?

no one is trying to gut raids. Raids should be stay as they are. We are talking about an additionnel difficulty. Tbh i would also love an hard mode, not just an easy mode.

TexZero.7910:

Again, as a reminder Raids are by their nature aimed at a different audience and are designed to be hard content. So creating an easy mode is contrary to their very design.

Ok wouldn’t say that Dark Souls is an hardcore game aimed for hardcore players?

I myself believe so. But still, there is design in the game for variable difficulty and adapt the game for the different skills of the players. What you find challenging, someone else can find it trivial and someone else find too hard. And you can see it with GW2 raid. Someone people were hoping that the 2nd wing would be harder than the 1st, while other still can’t complete it.

So why is it valid in Dark Souls and pretty much the majority of all game to have a variable degree of difficulty so that as many people as possible could enjoy the game at the level of difficulty they prefer, but that’s not valid for raids?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids are already very accessible, there’s just this public stigma that it’s somehow impossibly difficult or takes insane amounts of time and so only elite players can experience the content. They’re even going to make the raids more accessible once they revamp the LFG tool to have sections for them.

For context, my extremely casual guild group spends less than 3 hours a week playing raids, and we’ve gotten through the entirety of wing 1 so far. All it takes is the willingness to adapt; half of us don’t even have appropriate ascended gear.

True, but like me you have a team with your. A lot of people don’t have that and need to rely on pugs. By relying on pug, they can’t improve 3 hours a weeks for several weeks. For those players, each week they try the raid, they don’t know if they gonna have a decent team that will allow them to progress or not. Maybe they will be lucky this time and get into a team that are on the same level as you, or you gonna have a team with not enough experience to complete the first boss. From time to time, most player might be happy to help other new players, but maybe they will end up on those type of team week after week. That’s why people are picky about their pugs and ask full ascended, even if they can complete it without full ascended, or that they ask for insight.

And of course then you have new players in raid that then need to create learning group to improve. But once they improve themselves and they are ready to take on VG how will they do that? They can’t go into veteran group because they don’t have insight. But if they do a learning group then they might have a bunch of new players won’t kill VG.

Another option to create a group from scratch and it’s actually the best solution for most of these people. But that can take time. I’m the one organizing our raid group and most of them are my personal friends. I have their phone numbers, I have them on facebook and we know each other in real life. And It can still be hard to make everything work. One week that guy is outside of town, the other night someone is sick and we have to find someone else quick, the other week our Druid is not here and we now need someone new to the role that need to craft another gear, etc. If I ran into all these problem with my friend, they will be worst with a bunch of 10 strangers.

That’s a lot of barrier and it’s not honest to toss them aside as they do not exist and do not push a lot of people out of raid. As a raider I want more people to raid because that might mean that instead of 5-6 devs, they could put 10-15 of them. Look the amazing raid 5-6 devs were able to create and now imagine if they could double or triple that numbers.

About easy mode raid.

1) The facts is not everybody can complete the raid. Some are not skilled enough, some doesn’t have the time and some doesn’t have the organization. Allowing more people to be able to take part into your content is a good things on itself. Yes, improving the LFG would help a lot by making it more easy to pug, but it won’t fix everything. I’m not saying that easy mode is the only or best solution, but so far I didn’t saw any other solution that would make as much impact on the number of people able to complete the content as an easy mode.

2) The difficulty of doing an easy mode is not that high. The design of the raid themselves make that relatively easy. For exemple, an easy mode for VG could be that instead of 4 people in the green circle, it would be only 2 and to remove the timer. For Gorseval it could simply to remove the timer and change the amount of time before he does each of his World erode around you attack. For sabetha, they could simply remove the timer and change the timer on canon from 30sec to 1min. I’m not saying that it would take only 1 min to create an easy mode. But it would take a fraction of the time needed to create a new raid.

I believe that the change a skill in a gaming community vary by a large margin between each individual and that a range of difficulty is what best serve the community. Every game have different set of difficulty so that more people have a better enjoyment of the game. Hell even Dark Souls, a game praised for its difficulty have that (but they include those different difficulty into the mechanics that you choose to use rather than a menu).

Anet don’t seem to have plan about that and they problably won’t work on it (if they ever work on it) for at least another 4 months (until the realease of the next wing). After that? Maybe, but I have my doudt. I would really really like that. And not at all for me tbh. I’m ok with the difficulty of the current raid. But it would help a lot of people and it would be the best place to introduce new players of my guild into raid. A lot of them want to do raid, but it can be hard for me and other raid veteran to take time to help them every week. A easy mode would be well easier to pug. We could just bring them once in the easy mode raid, show them the mechanics, then let them practice with pugs before bringing them in the real thing.

weskay.9217:

Except you cannot run anything but the meta for the entirety of the first raid. Gorseval is on a mandatory timer (unlike the Vale Guardian). You have to beat it in the specified time or you will not make it through. Thus, making any builds that are even moderately more on the defensive or support spectrum obsolete based on a game that initially boasted its “play how you want” notion. So I’m wondering if this new raid, unlike the first, follows this original idea or if it is just a repeat of the previous raid wing.

Ok that’s weird because in the reality you have all of those videos. If you are right, they must be fake.

8-man : Warrior, DH, 3x Tempest, 1 Chrono, 2 x Druids

2x Warrior, 2 x Condi Druid, Thief, 2x Tempest, Chrono, Herald

6-man : Warrior, DH, Druid, 2 Tempest, Chrono

10 Tempest

7-man : PS Warrior, Condi Warrior, 3x DH, 1 Druid, 1 Tempest

2 Warrior, DH, Herald, Thief, Druid, Engie, Tempest, Chrono, Reaper

What were you saying? Oh ya : Except you cannot run ’’*anything*’’ but the meta for the entirety of the first raid.

Look, there is a lot of different thing that work in raid. Sure enough pug can be stupid and only accept what they think is good, without really knowing what they talking about. For exemple, all pug were kicking DH like crazy, 1 week later everybody wanted DH even if got no buff whatsoever. Or look at Condi Warrior. One group used one in a 7-man No updraft Gorseval, so he obviously have enough dps for the task. Will people accept it in pug? Nope. But that’s because most pug want the absolute best they think they can have, it’s just human nature.

More balance is always good. I would want that all profession could have a good direct damage and condi damage build for raid. I would want to be able to bring something else than a Druid and an Elementalist as a healer. There is still work to do about that.

I would also love to see a personnal dps meter in-game so more people can prove that their build are good. Right now, there is no information about what is the actual dps of a condi warrior for example. It’s less than before, some people say it’s gargabe, some people say it’s decent. With a reliable personnal dps, I would be able to look by myself what is true.

But to say, that there is just one meta and it’s ’’IMPOSSIBLE’’ to complete the raid with something else is just stupid. Especially at VG. You can bring just about anything there.

Klipso.8653:

do you really want to get your raid flooded with every green wearing character that happens to decide he wants a carry?

bad idea

You are aware that people already use the LFG to raid yah? The only difference is that we want quality of life to make that process easier. AKA not make a mess out of the open world tab and not having to make a party to invite people from the LFG.

So either you are wrong, or raid are already flooded with every green wearing character because the LFG is already use for raid.

Bebunw.8137:

That guy on reddit sum up pretty well the situation for raids concerning a lot of people

For me it’s because:
I don’t really have a group to raid with.
It takes a lot of time to practice, time which I don’t really have.
I come home from work pretty tired so I’m not really up for any hardcore content, especially when other people depend on me.
Pretty sure other people are in the same situation.

So he doesn’t raid because he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to do hardcore content and prefer casual content, which is fine. Raid are still accessible.

Healix.5819:

The problem is the focus they’re currently putting on it. It doesn’t matter how little resources they’re spending on raiding, it’s the fact that raiding is all we’re hearing about. It’s making GW2 look like every other generic MMO devoted to raiding, and for everyone that wanted something different, what GW2 used to be, it’s currently looking bad. Even HoT itself was advertised with an emphasis on raids and guilds. Now knowing that the regular releases aren’t coming for nearly a year after HoT’s release, that’s going to be one long stretch of nothing. They could at least bring back the reoccurring monthly events to overshadow it, which will probably happen in April.

So the problem from your point of view is not that there is raid, or that they are little ressouces in raid, but that Anet talk about their raid? That’s a problem?

First of all, how can you demonstrate that? Let’s take the official news on the website I guess. I got back up to the realease of spirit vale in the new. In the last 80 news on this website, 9 were about raid. 4 This week about Salvation and 4 other when Spirit Vale came online, with 1 random news about raid in the middle. During those same 80 last news, 13 were about Gem store and 22 were about PvP. 36 other news were about everything from Guild Chat, to community showcase, to balance, to shatterer, to anything else.

So about 11% of the news were about raids and this is when I only look at news between Spirit Vale and Salvation.

Anet talk about raid about 10% of the time, put about 5% of their ressouces on them. BUT OMG, raid are such a big problem that kitten everything in the game.

As for HOT. Raid was one part of what they advertised. On their website, they pointed to 8 main points. Mastery, Magguma, Elite Spec, Revenant, Guild Hall, PvP, WvW (really Anet lol), and Raid, Dungeon and Fractals.

Raid and Guild doesn’t seem to be the big majority of emphasis for HoT. It’s just some element as part of the expansion.

kurfu.5623:

Amaranthe.3578:

I hope anet realises that lfr ruined raiding in wow and therefore has no place here

Not this tired argument again…

No. It did not “ruin” raiding in WoW. In fact it allowed people that would otherwise never have raided to experience an easier version of raiding, and they then often were inspired to seek out formal raid teams to do the regular version.

What ruined raiding in WoW wast the power creep of build and nerf of raid. Not the LFR. As long as anet don’t fall into these trap (again?) it will be alright. Anyway, LFR or LFG with a raid section, don’t ruin raid.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

+1 not a bad idea actually. I am going to see if that works. Thanks.

Added note. If you are building your own team. You may want to focus on VG and Slothasor first before you go on Gorseval. The difficulty (mostly because of the dps check) is a lot harder on Gorseval and a lot of team that are able to fill VG each week are burning themselves on VG. Both VG and Slothazor have a lot more room when it come to the composition and the level of skill needed to keep up the dps.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I do like the idea of raids and I really would like to play it more but it is nearly impossible for me. I am trying to get the people in my guild to play but since raid was opened in the game my guild has raided once.

I have been begging and planning for raids but never been able to get enough players. Now I have almost given up.
I don’t care for loot, I play for fun and for the story and I wish there where something for us who can’t raid.

Since HoT release I can only remember shatterer remake and copy-paste festivals with no story. I know the dev team is working hard with LS but I have been playing PvP and other games because GW2 offers me nothing I can do. A small teaser release of the LS together with the raid would have been nice atleast.

Yes, true enough this can be hard to organized a raid. Anet didn’t gave us all the tools we needed and it’s a shame. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.[/quote]

You saw a lot of post in the LFG and in the forum about people like you. Just create another guild just for raid with no representation or just a group of players that you add to your friend list. Just start with a small amount of players from your guild and try to expand with pugs. Each time you pugs try to talk to those that seem good see if they want to join your group and expand like that until you have a decent sized group.

Alternatively, I know NOOB is doing some raid. Last time I checked, they add created 3 squad.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Dungeon-Mentors-Noob#post5947882

I’m sure other guild are doing it too.

@ Aidan Savage. You forgot the Jewel for exotic trinkets, which you don’t have in ascended. The power you get from full exotic isn’t 2138 but 2288.

The wiki isn’t wrong.

But the point is still good. We all know that full ascended is better than full exotic. But ascended armor is a really really small increase in stats that is usually not really worth the investment.

Bebunw.8137:

Thaddeus.4891:

And? What is the percentage of people that are playing fractal? Dungeon? WvW? PvP? Shatterer? Adventure? What is the threshold for all those content? Should we cut everything in the game that not 50% of people play?

All the content you mentionned are accesible to every players, raids are unlikely not. That’s the real problem. And it becomes a bigger problem if they focus on it for the game direction. They changed the nature of the game, what it make his succes for 3 years. The games has always been fine without raids.

How so? Raids are accessible to everybody with HoT. People might not like it, or dislike the organization needed, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s accessible.

And yes. I agree that if indeed they make raid the focus for the game direction it would be a problem. But there is 5-6 dev out of 200+ working on raid. How is raid is the focus of the game direction if only 3-4% of the staff is working on them?

They added another type of content, the nature of the game didn’t changed. At least it didn’t change because of raid. They kind of screw up dungeon and fractal, which is my opinion a big change to the nature of the game, but raid is a small portion of the game. It’s not the main focus and it didn’t changed the remaining game.

Bebunw.8137:

I don’t know the numbers i throw something, but you say 10% of your guild do raids, that mean 90% of players don’t and considere also that just 10% when the only pve content delivered is raid.

and yet until may/june , for 9 + months it’s the only pve contents we get, we don’t get more much in others aspect of the game pvp (1 back for 1 year of leagues) and wvw.

1) And? What is the percentage of people that are playing fractal? Dungeon? WvW? PvP? Shatterer? Adventure? What is the threshold for all those content? Should we cut everything in the game that not 50% of people play? Does a 1% of the playerbase that are regular players that put 20+ hours per week in the game be more important than another 1% that are just casual that play 1-2 hours per weeks? Should they look at how much gem those population buy?

Even if we are just 10%, we only have 4% of the devs. Why is that so bad? We only have 5-6 devs working on our content, why is that too much for you with your 120 devs? For the most part, raid are the only thing left for us in the game, why do people want to badly to remove it with that few devs working on it.

2) If I had to answer, I would have to guess, but I think that a pretty good guess. That’s how anet decided to do thing. They don’t seem to want to work on small content released bi weekly or monthly, but on 4 months period. And it seem that most of what they work on LS3, WvW revamp, and Fractal revamp take time. It also seem that Anet doesn’t want to put much new content into the game until the next expansion. They will most fix that they broke with HoT and fix that HoT should have fix or improve. If you don’t like what they decided and made pretty clear, then challenge them on that. Not because they decided to put 5-6 people on raid. That such a small portion of their dev team.

@ Serious. If you craft everything. It will cost you 533 gold to craft an heavy ascended armor. That’s between 55 and 27 hours of farming. Not really bad if you ask me. Just take your time and slowly craft it one piece by piece. Even a casual can craft one piece each week or so.

That would need as much work Firebird if not more because you would have to code it from scratch.

To be honest, I well aware that having a proper LFG that work with the squad will take time and work. What i can’t understand is why they don’t had some LFG tab for raid. It won’t make it work with the squad, but it’s a change they can do in less than an hour and will fix the biggest problem (everything is a mess in the same tab right now).

We can have our proper LFG that work with squad later.

DGraves. When people usually say that ‘’it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade’’, they are usually only talking about ascended armor, not full ascended vs full exotic.

Mostly because, trinket are easy to get and weapons are important and not that hard to get (lot of source and don’t cost that much crafting). The problem is when you talk about ascended vs exotic armor, because you only get 52 points of stats total in difference for a price tag of 550 gold.

I rarely see people complain about ascended weapons and trinkets. People complain about armor because they are like several times costlier than the rest and give near no upgrade in stats.

Bebunw.8137:

Sure the participation will be higher than other Mmo because there is no gear treadmill but let’s say 2% of all the playerbase playing an mmo with raid, in gw2 it will be 3%, that’s not much maybe if they deliver some numbers like the % of players doing regulary raids .

Do you have a source for your 3% or do you just pull that out of your kitten?

I won’t pretend that I know what percentage of the player base do raid, because I don’t. But here the number that I do know about my guild.

We are about 450 players in my guild. We have 30 players that play raid on a regular basis like several time per week. I know of about 15 others that play raid from time to time. And another 10 that tried raid at least 2-3 times. That’s more than 10% of my guild. And to be honest, this number is growing because we include more and more people in our group. And I’m sure that this number is actually higher because I know that some people are pugging, but i don’t know who and how many.

Yep, maybe that my guild, which is pretty average and have a lot of different people in it. It’s far from an hardcore guild of something like that, have a higher percentage of people doing raid that the total playerbase.

The fact is we don’t know how much people are doing raid. If it’s true that only 3% of the active playerbase are playing raid, then you guys are right that maybe raid ain’t a good idea. To be honest, i wanted group challenging content, but i would have been happier with 5 man content like hard more dungeon and fractal. Simply because it’s easy to get 5 good players together, 10 is a lot harder. But I seriously doudt that only 3% play raid. My guess is more about 10-15%.

My guess is also that this number could go higher if anet fixed several things around the raid.
- Make proper section for raid in LFG
- Make a lobby for raid, easy to access with basic commodity
- Make the Squad work with the LFG
- Make ascended gear more available (not easier to get, just more ways to get it)
- Better balance between profession so you have more than 1-2 options per professions that are good for raid.
- An easy mode of raid with less reward for people that want to raid, but can’t. Either because of lack of skill, difficulty to pug it (will be a lot easier to pug an easy mode), not able to create a proper group, not able to get ascended yet, etc. To serve as an introduction to raid, will help both the current raider and people that can’t raid, but want to. Ideally, I would also want an hard more, but it’s less important for now or as long as they keep putting new wing.

That said guys. The amount of people working on raid is pretty low. There were only 5-5 devs working on raid, while there is 120 devs working on the current game and 70 for the next expansion. So yah, if those 5 people would be working on something else, yes that something else would be ready faster. But only like 4% faster (not really but you see my point). Raid doesn’t take much ressources.

Source : http://dulfy.net/2016/03/05/gw2-reddit-developer-ama-summary/#Raids

Farzo.8410:

Ascended equipment is starting to become more and more a requirement for a lot of things, and it’s really not helping the game at all.

I would argue that not really. There is only 2 contents that need ascended.
1) Fractal level 84. And frankly, those level you only do 1 times because they are boring, don’t give more reward and are super long. You can do the max daily everyday without a ascended gear. If you want to do level 85 to 100 then you are ready to put enough time into the game that you are an hardcore player now.

2) Raid. It doesn’t need ascended gear, plenty of people have shown that it’s possible to do it in full exotic. That said, I hate when people say just that. Even if that’s true, it was highly skilled, experienced crew that did that. VG and Slothazor in exotic for the average squad or pug squad? Ya no problem. For Gorseval or Sabetha not so much. The amount of squad that are able to do that is very small and most of them were able to practice in ascended before.

So you only have 2 contents that need ascended. Raid and Fractal 84+ which are both hardcore content. No problem with that.

That said, there is some problem with ascended gear. Mostly that you only have very few source and that they are harder to get for the average player than before. With HoT the price of ascended material sky-rocketed and now it take about 550 gold to craft a full armor. While in fractal the level 51+ daily is about the same rate of ascended as the old level 50, there is only 1 daily as before you could have decent chance of getting ascended in level 20, 30 and 40. Meaning, that players slowly climbing the fractal would receive some ascended gear by the time they reach level 50, which isn’t the case anymore. The amount of ascended you receive in WvW is pathetic and there is no ascended source in HoT or in Open world (except some one time achievement), which is probably where most of the player base are.

Maybe, those are not buys, so If someone have an explanation go ahead. Otherwise, if you seen some other bugs, please list them.

- When you have a commander tag, you can see the Green Skull over your head, but not the purple icon when you are fixated. I couldn’t see it, and my teamate couldn’t see it over my head, but it was fine with everybody else and the Green Skull was fine.

- From time to time, the fixation swap super rapidly for a short period of time. I’m talking like 4-5 people in 10 seconds.

- When you are in grub form (not the word, but you know what I’m saying), sometime you see the life of one of your teamate in the squad UI just disappear for a couple of second then reappear. I suppose it because you are not in the same team anymore. Maybe it have to do with the WvW code that doesn’t let you see people from other server that are in your squad or party?

No it’s not tanking. It’s just aggro and like everywhere else in the game, it can be anyone. I like the way it work, because it’s different and everybody need to look at the encounter and swap role constantly.

That said, I don’t know if it’s a bug (I sure hope so) or it’s suppose to work that way, but from time to time, the Fixation swap to like 5 people in 10sec. That’s stupid because the boss just start to stay in place and rotation all over the time. By the time the guy with agro reach the front of the boss, it’s another guy that have the agro. Swaping agro is good, but not each 2seconds.

So when someone have the green skull over their head, they run as far as possible from the group. When you remove the small shroom, you want to make a circle around the room anyway. So when you have the skull you go behind, while the group for forward away from these aoe. By the time you make a whole circle around the room, the aoe disappear.