Guild Wars 2

I think some of the telling things in there are:

Negatives:

Too much involvement (read; stranglehold) from upper management on things that they don’t need to care about – the CEO of a company with nearly 300 people does NOT need to be involved in the minutiae of the goings-on and should rely on their management team to be hands on/report to them if there is an issue.

Disconnect between core group and game/players. This is blatantly obvious with some of the Anet people we see on the forums and in game. While there are some people like Gaile (who I’ve run into in game several times and she’s always on top of everything), I once saw an Anet employee ask if it was possible to change the sigils in an exotic armor drop. Yes, they may have been new and still getting ahold of the game, but that is by no means the only example of a lack of understanding of basic game functions.

Communication. This is clear in the forums by itself. I’m going to bring up Gaile again as a near-model of communication with forum-goers because she is the Anet employee I see most frequently engaging with the community (I know she’s not the only one but hear me out). We all understand and, I think, could be much more forgiving of the fact that Anet employees are busy, and I think we need to work to be more appreciative of when they do come on the forums to show them that this is a welcome place and we LIKE hearing from them even if its bad news. At the same time, it’s clear from the reviews of actual employees that communication is not incentivized between members of the company let alone employees → players. This is an endemic problem that requires effort and willingness on the part of the decision makers (because a lack of communication in the corporation is solely a management issue). A company sinks or swims by its ability to get things done, and a company like Anet that’s product is an MMO quite literally requires communication with the customers to implement changes and upgrades that people want and that’s very hard to do without talking and engaging with us and each other. And I don’t mean like the tongue-in-cheek (borderline rude and callous) comments like Colin posts that are basically telling players that negative feedback is desiring GW2 to fail (don’t give us that kitten, none of us want GW2 to fail).

Positives:

While I do think it’s very important to have an old crew that know and believe in the roots of the game, it is very important to not become stagnant. These new people Anet have coming in have great ideas and want to contribute. Let them! This circles back to communication and the involvement issue I mentioned earlier. Let the individual teams discuss ideas and then let them do something with them. This kind of thing is where the Super Adventure Box came in, and the lack of it has been what has prevented SAB from coming back and the stubborn insistence of No Dungeons (seriously, we don’t really care about the monetary rewards, in fact I trust Anet when they say that it was bad for the in-game economy. But for the love of Rytlock, players love dungeons and a moratorium on all dungeon content is a TERRIBLE decision that shows exactly how much whoever made that decision understands what the players enjoy).

Diversity. It is always heartening to see a diverse crowd. Diverse backgrounds, mentalities, these lead to diverse ideas and a hotbed of creativity and dialogue. BUT YOU HAVE TO LET IT HAPPEN. It is pointless to have all this creative talent and not utilize it! GW2 was always willing to try new stuff and nearly all of it was something that we loved! The SAB, Fractals, WvW, Living Story, Activities, Elite Specializations, Adventures, etc. These all were experiments that Anet decided to give a chance and the majority of players love these things! We don’t want a cookie cutter MMO, we want the quirky, creative, and unique game that GW2 has been and can continue to be. Raids are great, and I love that they’ve been added in, but don’t focus on them to the exclusion of other potential content!

Closing notes: We want GW2 to succeed, Anet wants GW2 to succeed. We may differ on how we think success comes, but don’t for one second think that any of us want to see Anet or GW2 fail. It’s quite frankly insulting when an Anet employee #cough cough Colin cough cough# accuses us of something like that.

Agreed. The game has lots of stuff going on all the time and I really appreciate how I can always find something to do, but the lack of communication from Anet is astounding. We all want to see some specificity or at least a note saying “We are aware of this issue and are working on it” instead of the multitude of problems that go completely unaddressed, in some cases for years.

I understand that the devs have limited time. I understand that they are working hard and they appreciate it.

But for the love of Rytlock, don’t treat us like we don’t exist. Don’t ignore the people who care enough about the game to try to have discussions about ways we would like to see improvements. Be involved with us as a community!

I’ll take your stuff if you are leaving! Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of it, it’ll have a good home

Addition: PvP is unnecessary to upgrade your character. You will not miss out on anything except PvP specific rewards (of which there are few) if you never do PvP

In regards to the account bound nature of the ascended crafting: Anet didn’t want that to be a mechanism for gold selling, and they didn’t want people to buy the top-tier gear like you can for most legendaries.

The way around this is you can send mats to your friend who can craft the most expensive parts of an ascended weapon but then you’d have to craft the final version of it. Or you can craft the parts and give them to a friend.

FYI, come sometime in December, Anet is increasing the drop chance of ascended armor boxes in Fractals so you can get them without paying for them.

For the dungeons, it sounds like you just ran into a veteran who was unpleasant. Do more dungeons and simply ask what to do. I guarantee most people will explain stuff. What you should NOT do is attack bosses that you don’t know what to do on. All of us would rather spend a minute or two explaining what to do rather than assuming you know whats going on and then causing a wipe because of it.

No one is forcing you to do anything, so I’m not sure where you got that from.

For your side note, a good rule of thumb is that the meanest people also tend to be the loudest. In the same way that you should ignore the trolls you should ignore them. I’ve played most MMOs under the sun and GW2 has by far one of the most friendly communities I’ve ever encountered.

For that point about consume all? It exists. Right click your stack of luck and click consume all at the bottom.

Healing Priority list and boon priority list are the same:

1. Yourself
2. Players in your party/subsquad
3. Players in your squad but not in your subsquad
4. Players not in your party
5. Pets
6. Minions
7. Phantasms
8. NPCs

This is compounded by range, so if you use a shout on a guardian with yourself and 2 others in your party, one player not in your party, and one pet within range, it’ll go to them while being unable to reach the rest of your party who are out of range.

To my knowledge, % HP is not an affector of healing priority.

An in-game example of proper usage: In a raid, if you have one dedicated healer, they should be in a subsquad by themselves. This makes it so other squads do not receive healing/boon priority and the heals are more evenly distributed to those in range.

Does this answer your questions?

Edit: Oh look, a dev beat me to it lol

Raziel.4216:

UnbentMars.9126:

Does anyone have an official link regarding GW2 playership? I see a lot of people saying that the number of players is dropping precipitously but I’ve never seen that to be the case.

All we know is that the game had 3m accounts as B2P and 7m total accounts after the f2p conversion according to the arenanet infographic released right before the expansion.
According to the e-sports broadcasting website there’re around 3m active HoT accounts, but I’m not sure about how reliable those guys are. I doubt they’d lie considering Arenanet is making’em money and that’d be bad for business.
However there’re no solid numbers that indicate the playerbase is plummeting, the game’s no longer sustainable, doom is falling on all of us because of Anet’s massive failure in X aspect of the game, etc. etc.
Same thing happened when ascended came out, doomsayers claimed that was it for the game, then LS1 came, now it was foreal the game was over, then LS2 was the final nail on the coffin, now HoT, get used to it. Whatever is released tomorrow will be the next “last” nail on the coffin.
This doesn’t refute the point that there’re lots of aspects of the game that need improvement, but the people who somehow know how big/small the playerbase has become since the HoT release are simply lying, unless they have some inside info noone else knows of.

Thank you for the response, I have always looked at people claiming people are dropping like flies as simply an issue with availability heuristic and exaggeration but it is nice to see some numbers. I am curious how many of those are active accounts and how many simply exist (as in logging in at least once a month), but I doubt Anet will release those numbers.

At the very least, I’ve never had an issue finding a well-populated map and now that HoT is out and the base game is F2P I can go into literally any map and find plenty of people. Honestly, my experience in GW2 has only improved since it first came out (I’ve been playing since the first day) and I’m always excited to see new stuff come out. The fact that Anet is willing to try new stuff is a good thing. Sure I have some complaints but nothing is perfect.

We all want to see GW2 succeed, but some people just freak out about everything. I think we all need to remember that our opinions are 1. not universal and 2. not necessarily factual.

Does anyone have an official link regarding GW2 playership? I see a lot of people saying that the number of players is dropping precipitously but I’ve never seen that to be the case.

There was a forum post earlier about the Crystal growing with your guild level, but I haven’t seen screenshots that are separated by more than 1 level so I’m not really sure.

It’s not a bug if it is happening

I want 4 things:

-Dailies for dungeons similar to fractal dailies
-A 5 man version of the raid with severely reduced loot so people can learn the fights in a more supported environment
-Anet to start supporting and working on new dungeons (for the love of Braham, I don’t even care if the monetary rewards are kitten, I want some more dungeons and dungeon armors)
-Some new armors added in-game instead of to the gemstore

I had full zerker ascended on my warrior and was struggling to kill veterans in AB (because toughness is rough), but switching to condi has let me kill stuff 5 to 10 times faster with only minimal increases to squishyness. Seriously, Berserker Warrior with Vipers is awesome, and I have yet to even craft my amulet/accessories with Viper stats!

Rotation is a little more difficult, I have only made it to 20 burning stacks and 30 bleed by myself, my brother can do 30 burning and 40 bleed alone

Right?

Actually though, I think that adding some dailies in the Fractals style to dungeons would be amazing. It would give some extra rewards that would help make the dungeoneers happier, incentivize experienced players to run them so that newer players can get some dungeons in, and go miles towards helping people acquire dungeon skins and armor (because these daily chests should drop the dungeon tokens associated with the dungeon they came from). Seriously, this is such a huge Quality of Life addition so I don’t know why Anet didn’t do it.

Unfortunately no. You would have to make a different character that utilizes light armor to be able to use light skins

Palador.2170:

Sephas.8793:

Misguided.5139:

The only thing that bothered me about it is that the death seemed pointless.

I have a feeling that she’ll be back.

The Commander and his team, following Garm, burst into the asuran lab. They are greeted by the sight of Braham, standing over a table upon which lies the body of Eir. In his hands, connected by wires to several strange machines, is a crystal glowing a strange green.

Braham: No! Not now! I’m so close!

The Commander steps forward, weapon at the ready.

Commander: Braham! Put the crystal down! You don’t know what you’re doing!

Braham throws his arms wide and laughs, still holding onto the crystal.

Braham: I don’t know? Of course I know! Taimi figured it all out for me. She didn’t want to at first, but without Scruffy to protect her…

Braham’s attention snaps back to those standing before him.

Braham: I’ve gathered enough of the energy released by the Elder Dragons as they died. Zhaitan’s power to bring her back, and Mordremoth’s to make her live again. Don’t you see? I can get her back!

Garm suddenly launches himself at Braham, jaws snapping at his face. Braham lashes out, the crystal catching the wolf in the throat, and with a spray of blood splattering over the area, the beast falls.

Jory: NO!

Rox: Forgive me…

Rox fires several times, quickly, as the others rush in to join the battle or tend to Garm. Her arrows find their mark in Braham’s chest and he staggers for a moment, only to lunge forward and plunge the crystal into Eir’s chest. There is a blast of energy that knocks everyone down, and as light fills the room, Eir’s scream can be heard. And then… Eir’s voice, laughing…

Coming soon to a raid near you!

+1 for story, I wish I could give you another for your signature

What ability are you using there?

Ongar.8170:

Once upon a time
player A said “raids are too hard”. Player B replied: “No, they are already too easy, you just need to play better.”

To get rid of this neverending discussion you need more than one difficulty.
Lets take a look at some models:

One difficulty: Progress
Two difficulties: Casual, Progress
Three difficulties: Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge
Four difficulties: Tourist, Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge

Tourist mode: Mechanics do nothing
Casual: Mechanics have to be executed, assignments have to be made
Progress: More mechanics, up the numbers
Cutting Edge: Even more mechanics, even higher numbers, almost no room for error

Personally Im not a fan of tourist mode as it can lead to bad play.
The other three modes (Casual, Progress, Cutting Edge) are viable and can also be compressed into two difficulties.

Agree. I don’t think a tourist mode is a good idea at all because what’s the point if there are no mechanics.

I don’t understand why people have such a difficult time accepting tiered difficulty, your achievement at a harder difficulty is not invalidated by someone else doing it on an easier level, especially if the gear drops are different (i.e. no ascended drops or very limited ascended drops in easier tiers). Actively trying to keep content at one difficulty level that locks players out because of skill or time investment is simply selfish. After all, this is a game, why does your fun have to be dependent on someone else failing?

Rising Dusk.2408:

UnbentMars.9126:

Anet itself is an issue here. They appear to be trying to push the game to be less and less casual friendly (because let’s be real, gw2 is an extremely casual friendly game).

They’re not trying to do this in the slightest, they just designed HoT specifically to give end-game players something to do and something to work towards. The theme of this expansion from the get-go was improving the end-game experience across the board.

I would appreciate a response to the rest of that paragraph rather than just cherry-picking a quote.

I think all your points are valid concerns, especially as they deal with existing gw2 mentality and how signs point to that changing.

I am all for challenging content, but it should be accessible to players of all skill levels (perhaps evekittengnificant penalty) in keeping with the friendly attitude of the gw2 games. Should a group in full Nomad’s be able to sit there and whittle the boss down? I don’t think it should be achievable that way, but nor do I think that the highest level of skill and gear should be mandated. I like where the raid currently is, but I am also looking forward to when more players can experience it successfully and I think the best way to do that is tiered difficulty content with matched tiered rewards, and/or activateable challenge motes (since challenge motes already exist in the game) to increase rewards and difficulty further for those groups who have already mastered the easier versions. And no, it does not invalidate my kill of Vale Guardian as it currently stands to have a more accessible mode that others can win in.

Your last point about players simply conceding is one that has been on my mind a lot since the raid came out. The first day or two VB was full of people of all skill and gear levels looking for a group, but now there’s no one outside them and many players have stopped actively trying to find a group. I am not fond of the idea of content designed for less than 15% of the population (like this raid as announced by the devs) and I think that this problem has a two-fold cause.

1. There’s no real learning curve for mechanics to bridge the gap between the raids and the rest of the game. I think a dungeon or two with difficulty very close to the difficulty of the raids would be fantastic to help people who have never been truly challenged in this game to learn better how to pay attention, what to pay attention to, and how to optimize their class in a much easier-to-learn environment (especially since the lfg would work for dungeons).

2. Anet itself is an issue here. They appear to be trying to push the game to be less and less casual friendly (because let’s be real, gw2 is an extremely casual friendly game). I’m not opposed to that in the slightest. I am, however, opposed to suddenly abandoning anyone who is not at a high skill level like this raid content has done. I say abandoning because, like my point above, there’s simply no real opportunity to improve in the game because there are no real challenges of the caliber or close to the level of raids. Either you go into raids at your current skill level and fail repeatedly (which is demoralizing to many people) or you go out into the overworld and keep succeeding. For many players, raids are simply not accessible, and they will (or already have) become too demoralized to even try the content believing they either aren’t good enough, or no one will have them in their group because of their gear/profession/etc.

Congrats Att and EG! Remember Tron, and Fight for the Users!

I would appreciate feedback/criticism of my build so far. I have set it to only have the ascended items that are easiest to obtain (rings, amulet, and accessories) to show a build with gear that is accessible to most. Of course, for best results ascended is the preference, but realistically that is difficult to obtain for most players.

The goal of this build is to provide high dps but be oriented towards increasing the DPS of the party/raid you are in. The primary method that this is achieved is through Overload Air’s aftereffect.

Overload Air drops a lightning field that causes enemies to take an additional lightning strike (I’m seeing 2-3k crits with no might, 3-4.5k with full stacks) every time they are attacked, hence when the raid piles onto a boss you are having 10 players trigger lightning strikes as fast as they can attack since the field can provide a lightning strike charge to each player in it every 1/4 of a second with a 4 second duration. This extra damage can be massive as long as the boss is kept within the field.

The goal of your rotation is to minimize the cooldown of your Overload Air. This is achieved through the Fresh Air trait that refreshes the cooldown of your Air Attunement when you make a critical hit. As such, the general rotation is:

Start attuned to Air, drop Overload Air at the start on top of the boss. Switch to Fire and hit until you deal a crit (#3 dagger tends to do the most damage), switch back to Air and hit 1 until Air Overload comes off it’s 5 second cooldown, then rinse and repeat.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFUQJAodn0XC9XiNYCmNAcYiFBAzN1ObvtBBgCQRU4SeBqhA-TxRDwAJUC+U53L1fWt/AIdAAMBd4BAQKA90VB-e

You will be extremely squishy in this build, and your damage support is based on adding extra damage to party attacks rather than boon support.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Rising Dusk.2408:

AESOkami.1072:

TL;DR: HoT’s story content + very difficult content = bad.

There is literally no story content in the raid. Read this:

The one to Rule.2593:

all it is is a group of pact soldiers gets captured by bandits and you set out to save them only to find out that it’s too late.

Because some other poster on the forum is a great source…Anet has even stated that there is story in the raid if you look for it and that raids will tell a portion of the story moving forward, and other posts on the forums have been talking about stuff they’ve found that offer some story.

How are you GLORIOUSLY INCANDESCENT??

These guys aren’t trolls, I had a similar experience.

I solo’d the Vale Guardian on my tempest (the only difficulty I had was dropping enough condis on the Red Guardian during the split). It took me a long time to get all the mechanics down, but I finally figured it out and got some sweet phat lewt.

Also, it turns out that if you solo the boss you get a hidden achievement and the boss drops a chest. The chest contains an egg that hatches and grows into a bright pink Moa and you can ride it.

TL;DR, I got the first mount in the game, the fight was easy, git gud scrubs

EDIT: I don’t have a video of it because my camera broke unexpectedly and conveniently wiped all footage of my game that I had saved, otherwise I’d totally link to it.

@Diovid

Thanks for providing that! I haven’t seen any of those, and they hint to some very interesting possibilities (especially if Anet uses GW1 lore here well). I suppose we will have to wait for the next raid wings, but it could shape up nicely with the confluence from the White Mantle bandits and the egg

To be fair, if you are expecting to do more damage than everyone else with a tempest, in its current iteration that’s not really going to happen though you will do 10k+ with fire dagger 3 in zerker.

Your best move for pure damage is Air overload. The Nimbus Cloud you drop at the end makes it so the lightning will strike anything in the area any time you or an ally hit something, so you are adding 3-4k damage to everyones hits which is HUGELY effective on the raid boss. Add the trait that resets Air attunement each time you crit, and switching back and forth from fire makes it so you can get a ton of air overloads very frequently.

I doubt theyll nerf raid content unless no one is clearing them at all. Honestly I don’t really think I want Anet to seriously nerf anything as it’s about time some truly challenging content was released so all I’d ever think is appropriate is adding 1 minute to the enrage timers for a little more wiggle room.

Honestly, what I’d like to see are some new dungeons with difficulty similar to the raids so that players could learn mechanics in a friendlier and better supported environment

For reference, the damage that is wiping you is likely because you need 4 people to stand in the green circle when it shows up or else it’ll do a ton of damage to the entire group.

I agree with the complaint about the story being locked behind a wall of difficulty that many players will never climb (either due to themselves or because it is difficult to get a group for it)

You aren’t being rude by linking to other resources I did see that but no one is really speculating as it has turned into a discussion about the mechanics of the raid (I’ve seen enough of those forum posts to not be interested anymore).

I know a few groups have, but they aren’t really sharing their info at the moment

You gonna link to a video proving that or are you just trolling?

Anet announced that the raids would be a medium through which they wanted to tell at least some of the story moving forward. From what we know about Spirit Vale (not much) and the Forsaken Thicket, where do you think these raid stories will take us in terms of lore and location?

A lot of people have been discussing their desire for a tiered raid experience, but I’d like propose an alternate:

Challenge dungeons that are on a similar level of difficulty to raids to provide a learning curve to those who have not been raiding previously (especially since the rest of the game is very friendly to the majority of players).

This would give us an opportunity to learn more difficult mechanics and to have a new dungeon. I for one would love to see Anet make something like this happen

do you have a link to a video of this?

I was always at home in nature and had been a regular volunteer at the hospital in Shaemoor. When the Pact called us to raise arms against Zhaitan, my pet and I went with it to help those who were on the front lines.

The failure of the Pact in Verdant Brink and the tragedies I witnessed at the hands of the Mordrem Guard as well as the entire units that were ripped apart by local fauna was a stark reminder that as a Commander and a leader I needed to be a beacon of support. I needed to provide not only morale and a battlefield presence, but a hand on the shoulder that says “You are not alone, we have your back.”

I discovered some ruins early into my exploration of Verdant Brink that outlined ancient methods of utilizing nature and the Lunar forces to affect the world around me. Following the trails to other crumbling buildings, I found ways to act as a font for the rejuvenating energy of a heavenly body, a Celestial Avatar if you will, to channel that power in assistance of my fellow fighters. In this instant I realized what needed to be done.

I cast aside the longbow that had served me so well for so long. Fashioning a staff from a petrified tree in the ruins, I meditated through the days and nights and practiced the forms and magics that I had seen on the walls.

When I returned, I went first to an enclave of soldiers struggling to survive the brutal assaults while establishing a safe zone for the evacuation of the wounded. They saw me, relieved that their Commander was still alive, but were not prepared for my next statement.

“There will be no more evacuations. We stand our ground here.”

These hardened veterans were battle-tested and disciplined, but seeing their brethren’s wounded bodies was taking its toll and they began to dissent. My response?

“Bring the wounded to me. We have suffered greatly here, and that ends today. I will be the rock upon which we build our fortress here, and you will be the spears that strike out against our foe. We stop surviving this very moment. Right now, we begin thriving.”

With that, I ordered the unit leaders to organize the engineers to build walls and defenses and stepped into the makeshift infirmary to use the magics I felt coursing through me. The Moon was full, and I was tired of seeing these soldiers fall. The night may be dark, but there are many sources of light.

If you know where to look.

Congratulations!

Because they totally aren’t difficult enough…this isn’t Dark souls lol, you can’t invade someone else’s instance.

That said, a new PvP/PvE mode that’s sort of like WvW but you are competing with other teams to capture land/get kills from local PvE monsters would be fun

Eponet.4829:

UnbentMars.9126:

archmagus.7249:

Is this tanky enough for you?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJAWinnNWNSyJrJRNl/ksoygS4U5QJIscrkFalg9duXN4YZtaLE-TRiRABNpEc0DBQhHBADV/Bg9HoU5njXAgcfAgOAc0EEA4A493T+5Ds8yLv8yL3yLv8yLvcpAYSrF-e

Sure it’s tanky, but you’ll do 500 damage to the boss if you are lucky. The raid isn’t about minmaxing a tank, it’s about tanking and surviving while still doing enough damage to burn through 22 million health in 8 minutes

What about this?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQDxSugJ112aft4qYXcMCFAaArAA-TxRBABeqiDaKB7S5He6GA4iA8wTAgS1DIFQEDtA-e

You’ll definitely do more damage, even without any skills equipped

I made a few edits to increase tankyness but the gear seems fine (I improved the heals you’ll get and your shroud uptime)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQD7kZTobTs0Gw2GgeTssLYSZtrW9K+JeF3iQRtEQAA-TxRBABeqiDaKB7S5He6GA4iA8wTAgS1DIFQEDtA-e

Let me know your thoughts

I agree with you, but unfortunately it’s not going to change. Every game with PvP and PvE makes changes based on PvP across the board

Sephas.8793:

Wall of text to read,
Only four periods were used there,
Too long did not read.

But not long enough to combe through for the number of periods?

Man, raids are fails after less than a week? Wow what a terrible fate for the content Anet has been working hard to create for a long time, especially since they took the trouble to be so honest and tell everyone that they would be hard…

Sarcasm aside, if people spent as much time practicing the fights as they did complaining about them on the forums (I suspect a large number of people complaining about them have not even set foot inside one), then you might have gotten practiced enough to beat it by now

Okay, not to second guess you but I wanted to make sure I haven’t been having this bug at all, but I’ll check on it later today

Are you sure it’s a bug and not you having too many active so you run out of energy to sustain them?

Thaddeus.4891:

CadeRG.4508:

posthumecaver.6473:

It is sad that Guardian, which my opinion only class that is originally designed by ANet to be closest to be classic Tank from other MMOs does not getting a consideration for tanking in raids says a lot about the problems we have at GW2 and state of Guardian specially.

DH or kick, men I love this game, 1000s of build combinations from gear and traits, only one viable build, I guess that must be balancing.

Guardian is much more of a healer in heavy armor than a tank.

If it was meant to be tanky, it wouldn’t have one of the lowest health pools in the game.

So far DNT seem to go with a Celestial Warrior as a tank. Not the only option, but it seem to be the one that give the most DPS out of the tank. I see several advantage to that build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQN9RvCjeoI

- Toughness + Perma protection give him enough surviability for the fight, while keeping agro.
- Healing Power + Regen + Shelter give him enough sustain healing to be independant (Again mostly because perma protection). If needed AH will help.
- Access to a good amount of CC. Signet of Bane and Banish for the boss, Shield of Absorption and Rings of Warding for the Seekers.
- This tank can still give a good amount of DPS.

Like i said. It’s not by far the only option. Herald, Warrior and Scrapper are pretty great too. I don’t know much about druid yet, but probably.

Druids do effectively 0 damage since they have very few attacks that hit a mob, so you don’t lose anything by having them in pure nomad’s gear. High toughness and high vitality make it a good choice for a tank, and healing power combined with frequent and high level personal/AoE direct heals mean that a druid could make a good damage sponge while still providing high levels of heals to the group.

Back them up with an ele/engineer or a herald to provide regen and protection, and they can potentially be the best tanks in the game if played right (best meaning unkillable, not necessarily highest toughness or damage reduction)

archmagus.7249:

Is this tanky enough for you?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJAWinnNWNSyJrJRNl/ksoygS4U5QJIscrkFalg9duXN4YZtaLE-TRiRABNpEc0DBQhHBADV/Bg9HoU5njXAgcfAgOAc0EEA4A493T+5Ds8yLv8yL3yLv8yLvcpAYSrF-e

Sure it’s tanky, but you’ll do 500 damage to the boss if you are lucky. The raid isn’t about minmaxing a tank, it’s about tanking and surviving while still doing enough damage to burn through 22 million health in 8 minutes

Dahkeus.8243:

UnbentMars.9126:

No one appears to be considering a Druid tank, since they cant do any damage anyway.

Just stack Nomad’s gear and face tank the boss. You can heal through anything, and that opens up a slot to bring in another herald or PS warrior for might stacking and DPS

Yea, a druid is a viable option, but your back line will have a lot of trouble getting heals if they do. You’ll probably have to make up for the healing somewhere. You may just be able to do it with enough healing from stuff like healing turrets and water fields, but it sounds rough.

My guild went in to practice the boss with whoever was on so we didn’t have a healer or a dedicated tank. I went in on my mostly zerker Herald and we got the boss to 60% with just me pulsing regeneration and whatever personal heals people had.

I don’t mean to invalidate any struggles anyone had, but I think that the only true healing issue is the constant damage pulses that can be dramatically mitigated by constant regen, and the rest of the damage is a dodging and avoidance issue.

Personally, I think the best way to do that would be to have a Druid tank and just drop tons of heals on top of the boss to keep melee up with 2 heralds pulsing regen to the group. Let’s be real, if you are dying to the boss you are dying because people aren’t getting to the Green circles in time, not because of the constant damage the boss does to the raid.

No one appears to be considering a Druid tank, since they cant do any damage anyway.

Just stack Nomad’s gear and face tank the boss. You can heal through anything, and that opens up a slot to bring in another herald or PS warrior for might stacking and DPS

I think this is correct, but my issue with it is that it basically requires certain classes.

In the spirit of “play as you want” these raids should be complete-able by any class combination (though some specs may be necessary). We shouldn’t require any particular one.

I’ll take any new fractals, but I’d love to see Abaddon, and I’d also like to see some more of the LS1 content come back (like the Lion’s Arch invasion for example, it seems a prime candidate)

Ah okay, I should have specified that I’m going for raid tanking rather than roaming…sorry!

Miserymachine.7512:

Is there a lot of anti-HoT sentiment? I’m honestly surprised because the expansion is amazing. The downside is that it is aimed squarely at the max level character so for a new player I’d just wait until you hit cap before buying it…and then buy it because it’s a blast imo.

A fair number of people have been all over the forums, but it’s largely the same people making multiple threads and complaining about the same things over and over. Sure, there are improvements that can be made, but not everyone is going to be happy anyway and if, for example, if they spent the time doing events for EXP they’d have all the masteries that they’ve been complaining about. Most of us just go and play the game and enjoy it lol