Guild Wars 2

Rash.6514:

It seems like I am minority here, but I don’t agree. GuildWars 2 could very well be a different kind of hardcore, that requires more hand-eye coordination than perfect timing of execution.

Other MMOs had very detailed fight logs because you needed to know EXACTLY how long a debuff was applied on your ally before the healers removed it. GuildWars 2 raids could be fun and hardcore in a different way. Not because they are implementing raids now that they need to follow the other MMOs mantras.

We don’t have a traditional tank (just a class that can withstand more damage, but no aggro control). So, I am against any sort of meter and/or detailed timing reports from raids.

Well it’s the dungeon forum. The culture here is very different than the culture outside. People in here are very focused on a very particular kind of experience, and the reinforcement elements are generally in one direction. It’s fairly safe that if you asked the same question in General Gameplay discussion or HOT you’d get a very different net answer.

Yes, it’s all a conspiracy because players just know so much more about balance than the designers do.

It does accidentally make a good point though – a meter would limit the design space something fierce because you’d kind of have to design in such a way as all classes were in the same range in the meters. Just another way that dps meters feed misery.

Maybe I"m just a pessimist, or thinking of some specific experiences.

In one case specifically, meter-focus essentially tore apart a fairly competitive guild (the meter-centered faction went on to form one of the many incarnations of DnT – this was years ago), so I’ve seem the dark side of it from very competitive players personally.

In that case at least, it was not ‘how can this person be improved’, but instead ‘replace this person’. (Normal ego-note, I was not one of the people in trouble over this) DPS meters were utilized and referenced extensively in the arguments.

It’s possible I had just fallen in with some bad folks, but it’s behaviour and comment patterns I see all the time. I think ti’s hopelessly optimistic to think anything would be different, especially if the raids are actually difficult.

Jerus.4350:

I got ya dlonie, I meant it the same way. Just a nod to the idea of letting the negative ruin the positive. I also meant nothing more in referencing it.

I’ve been around the block Windsagio as well, and my experience is that people that take DPS meters to mean more than they do are the kind of people not worth playing with. In fact I’d love them just to weed out more unwanted players. I’d like to point out that DPS meters would likely have a whole bunch of elitist players shoving their foots in their mouths. “omg you’re not zerk, you suck” as they continue to run a terrible rotation and end up doing 75% of the damage that the knights geared guy put out. Or being able to point out how much healing that guy took in, if that supportive player wasn’t there he’d be dead. Anyways though, I don’t want them for anything but raids, well, I do, but I think for raids all the negatives should be ignores, raids aren’t for those people. If they want to join them they need to shut up, listen and play as a team.

It becomes a net effect question. Is the positive of people weeding out underperforming players (presuming that’s taken as a positive) worth the negative of misuse and even stronger build regimentation?

In general I think there’s an unavoidable problem that adding meters leads to people playing to the meters instead of playing to the game. In worst case scenarios it can even lead to ‘meter-greed’ getting people killed (This being ‘worst case outside behavioral problems and blaming’).

Looking at it as a designer, rather than a player with a need, it ends up looking like a pretty big loss in general.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

I admire your optimism :p Been around the block enough times to know how meters are used when released into the wild.

More importantly, PHIW rhetoric aside, Arenanet doesn’t want us playing that way. They don’t want us absolutely optimizing, and they certainly don’t want us excluding players based on a spreadsheet.

And again, I want to stress, most people will misuse a meter, even a detailed one like you’re requesting — and people in harder contexts will be the worst.

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

Coulter.2315:

Except the restriction comes from the difficulty not gear.. Full Ascended Armour grants +20 Primary Stat and +16 Secondary Stats – it will not be a barrier, people are jumping on this topic to try and frame the debate as exclusive and unfair without appreciating the FACTS.

Do not let people convince you that raids are out of reach of participation due to gear – they are lying to you for selfish gains (Ohoni just wants access to raid armour skins and weapon skins, he is not interested in a challenging and rewarding game mode existing).

But plenty of people would enjoy that restriction, and in fact actively want it.

I agree it’s not a valid restriction in the case of GW2, but again look at the people drooling at the chance to have the content be more restricted based on a non-skill element.

I think this whole discussion comes down to closed thinking.

People associate progression gear with ‘hard’ and raids, so they think progression gear == actual difficult content.

Ohoni.6057:

You gain +20 Primary Stat and +16 Secondary Stats from Ascended Armour – just skip it… It is EXTREMELY unlikely to be the difference between win and loss.

You will not need Ascended Armour.

So you would have no problems going into a raid with a group of mostly Exotic-wearing players? You would not have any sort of “gear check” before entering?

The question is not whether or not Ascended will actually be required by the content’s design, it’s about whether or not human nature will demand it of the players.

Given that people demand ‘meta’, I expect it to be an issue. A cultural issue.

Idiot dev’s shooting off their mouths on sensitive subjects (whether or not the end up retracting, as they did in this case) do not help the situation one bit.

I’m gonna call it, they’re seeding ‘as understood’ lore.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Nike.2631:

symke.3105:

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

What if you will need two, or even three different sets for the entire raid?

…I’ll cheer that they came up with something so inventive and demanding it not only requires some roles-distinction but it requires swapping those roles between bosses?

The question is what does ascended add to that? Just a bit more exclusivity?

Lets be honest, Ascended Armour gives you +20 Primary Stat and +16 to Secondary Stats – this is EXTREMELY unlikely to be the difference between a win and loss. You can very easily use exotic armour with the rune set you desire paired with Ascended Trinkets etc to change build.

People thinking “oh you need Ascended thats such a gear barrier” are not actually looking at what they gain from it… Or being deliberately misleading…

Well, I agree with you. My point is that although not as many, there’s a group of people that’s just as excited about this supposed gear barrier as are against it. With that in mind, I’m trying to find out why that would be the case. What does the gear barrier help (especially, as you noted, while we’re within this 2-5% range)?

Nike.2631:

symke.3105:

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

What if you will need two, or even three different sets for the entire raid?

…I’ll cheer that they came up with something so inventive and demanding it not only requires some roles-distinction but it requires swapping those roles between bosses?

The question is what does ascended add to that? Just a bit more exclusivity?

More fuel for the ‘We don’t know the encounter yet’ argument, from the dungeon/raid forum:

Takoyakii.2146:

Seem like nobody can’t use it because mastery point is bugged and can’t be obtain more than2 points .

Speed mushroom will increase attackspeed too.Should help with dps a bit

So there’s apparently a mastery linked buff mechanic that’s not even being used in those clears ><

Yes, because ‘recommended’ is so wishy-washy.

I recommend that you give me $3.75 to take the BART home.

~~~

They had one day to get the encounter down. Do you really think they were even close to max play efficiency?

It’s a question of tuning. If they tune to the degree needed for ascended to actually matter, they’re excluding far too much of their customer base.

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

Do you know what the gear set combos were for the groups that completed it?

Yes. To quote one of the posts:

“Group comp, 4 Condi Engi (1 tankier hybrid, which was me), 3 Revenants, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Warrior.
Everyone was in Berserker, except the Condi Engis of course. I don’t think the Berserker meta is quite over with yet.”

Which implies they flubbed their encounter design, as that’s against their stated goals.

Relying on a tight enrage timer for ‘difficulty’ is a bastion of incompetence. It really doesn’t let the game engine shine and it only reinforces all the previous complaints about group content.

@Astralporing: You could be right that they’ve tuned for specific group makeup + specific expected builds + expected player skill level + encounter knowledge + a 2-5% gear benefit, but if they have they’ve overtuned and they’re ending up with raid content almost nobody will do.

As a more likely alternative, the players couldn’t learn the encounter nearly as well as they thought they could in 1 day’s worth of play.

I don’t care what rules the players set, it’s on them to do what they wish. Thinking the raids are going to need the gear, or that it’s going to be a very significant factor in raid success isn’t really thinking it through.

~~~

I should add, that it’s likely the first dozen or 3 raids to beat this stuff will be in ascended — mostly because they already have it. The people likely to be able to beat this content quickly are likely the players who already play alot and who already have that ascended gear + plenty of mats.

And in exchange, I"m saying that it’s exceptionally difficult to tune an encounter for ascended gear Unless they’ve already tuned the encounter for a specific raid makeup and player ability level.

For ascended gear to be meaningful it has to be so absurdly hard that many dungeon guilds can’t do that. Some people would love that, but I doubt Arenanet would be so exclusive with it.

PS: I get that people think it’s important, people think “meta” is important too. It’s a player construct not required for the content. And “meta” is many times more important to encounter efficiency than ascended vs exotic gear will ever be!

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

you are wrong. The dungeon groups that require exotics are not the crappiest ones. High tier players generally dont reduce their chances of success unless they like a specific person, or decide to try to do something just for kicks.

the reality is weather its literally required or not, the content is difficult enough no one is going to willingly kitten their group with full exotic guys.

to be clear this is NOT the old game, this is a dps check that is tricky for coordinated dungeon runners. They arent going to be taking exotic people on average.
and pick up groups, or small groups working together, definately wont.

If you really think they will, you have not played MMOs very much. I have never seen groups demand the minimum requirements for the best players for any difficult content. Heck they rarely allow it for average difficulty content

i have been in multiple fractal groups where they kick the guy who barely has enough AR to survive, its never about whats possible best case, but about whats probable.

You converted ‘ascended’ to ‘exotic’ in there, not quite sure how.

The rest of it, ‘what and what’?

~~~

Let me try again, got lost in the salad there;

1) It’s exceptionally unlikely that ascended vs exotic gear will be a significant determinator in speed as compared to group makeup and player skill.
2) A player that doesn’t understand the numbers or game system enough to understand that fact isn’t worth listening to.

~~~

AR is a special case, but otherwise Ascended gear is one of the very last things you should be worrying about in building a team. Thus, I feel comfortable saying ‘if someone were to demand that it would be safe to dismiss their opinions’ – while still abiding by their stupid LFG criteria if applicable. (you’re probably better off not grouping with them though)

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

Sykper.6583:

Nike.2631:

Nike.2631:

((looks at dungeons))

((looks at open-world farming festivals- er, I mean “events”))

The Devs for this game don’t have the slightest idea what “top tier” players are capable of. Let them tune it for “all ascended” gear… If the first raid boss hasn’t been reduced to a roflstomp within 3 months that people are doing in all yellows just because they’re bored I will be STUNNED.

Hmm. Players killed it a man short in 5 hours.

Yeah. Not finding GW2 “challenging” group content all that intimidating.

Going to be a bit optimistic and assume the difficulty will continue rising quite heavily from the first boss onwards.

The first encounter might need to be tuned a bit better though towards the tougher end unless they intend on making the 2nd boss a brick wall.

It’s more a problem of people assuming that ‘difficult’ would mean ‘difficult for the top 1/10th of 1%’ as compared to ‘difficult for the top 15%’.

They’re very different things. Of course, that distinction is why the ascended thing makes no sense. For ascended to matter it would have to be the former.

Those druid glyphs are juicy as hell.

SkiTz.4590:

Windsagio.1340:

TL;DR

They invest in modes because they expect people to play them. Just the play generates revenue. They won’t make, or will abandon a mode that too few players play.

Right, but you think too few players will play raids because of ascended/difficulty?

what about the fractals 51-100 that anet is also spending time and working on??
That for SURE requires ascended … you think few ppl will be playing it too? just because of “ascended requirements”??

They aren’t going to abandon raids, just like they didn’t abandon high lvl fractals….

Its going to be a “wait and see” approach with this stuff… once anet gets good data/info on how many players are doing it and how well its received, then we will know if anet is making the right choice…until than, its a bit premature to say “welp, no one is going to do raids, stop working on it anet! focus on other stuff!”

Fractals are a tiny investment compared to raids, so there’s very little downside to adding them.

In the case of raids, they’re a large investment to make and maintain, so population matters more.

More to the point, I don’t think you really get how tight the tuning would be to make this ‘recommendation’ meaningful. So many things have larger impact (group makeup being a big one) that tuning into the 2-5% range they’re talking about (going from some ascended “Suggested” to all ascended “Suggested”) would require also tuning to some pretty intense group makeup and player build requirements.

It’s such a minor thing that so many other things they’re not likely to want to do are prerequisites for it to matter.

~~~

Also, my intent isn’t to say “Don’t work on Raids, Arenanet!” but rather “This seems amiss because if it’s true as describe, they’re sabotaging their own content”.

I think it’s not true – either a Mistake in the tweet that they’re trying to put a good face on or a PR maneuver to make raids seem more intense

Soval.3206:

Wetpaw.3487:

Full ascended+stat infusions is more than 5% damage increase, plus take in consideration the overall damage/support increase with a full ascended raid group of 10 players.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159ml1oahEyM6zWQ-oD4XQcHsk1mI5G6tVnjk_FOeinA/edit?pli=1#gid=348011649

thanks to https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

A 5% increase to individual player effectiveness, across 5 players, is a 5% increase to group effectiveness… not, say, 25%.

Math.

Also, it’s down to <2% if you ignore the trivially acquired weapons and trinkets.

SkiTz.4590:

Windsagio.1340:

SkiTz.4590:

La Goanna.8142:

PopeUrban.2578:

Couple days in SW and pretty much anybody has a full set of ascended, and there’s no telling what other acquisiton methods they may or may not have added to HoT.

I’d love to know what you’re doing out in the silverwastes because I still have zero ascended armor as far as I’m concerned. Trinkets, sure, but those only come in the sinister variety at the vendor. Crafting for armor and the occasional weapon is still required and it’s still huge grind and money sink. While it may be fine for people like us who’ve been playing the game consistently or on-and-off for over a year, it’s going to scare away the influx of new and returning players

So I’m going to agree with the other user here who claims that raids are going to be completely dead in 5 months or less because of this – even moreso if the rewards themselves are underwhelming and grindy via currencies like fractal relics and so on. They need to scale like fractals so that full exotics can experience it and beat via lower levels, at the very least. Difficulty of the actual boss and gameplay mechanics should be relatively the same, but don’t gate it behind a grindy gear-wall of power creep stats.

Why does anet have to dumb everything down to accomodate players who feel entitled to everything?

For once , can anet get away with saying
“we aren’t going to lower our standards for this particular content (raids), instead, we ask you to step your game up if you want to beat it”…..

Outside of high lvl fractals, EVERYTHING in PvE has been casual (in terms of requirements to beat)…..anet wants to give raids a shot, as the endgame, so let them…

We will see in 6 months if it worked or not… if it doesn’t, don’t worry, all you ppl in exotics, who don’t even want to ATTEMPT to get ascended will have your wish…

Your rhetorical question is very easily reversed, but I’m going to go another way, and answer:

“Because they’re running a business”.

If it doesn’t add to their bottom line, they shouldn’t spend money on it.

Specifically this means, if raids are so hard that people don’t do them, they won’t (and shouldn’t) continue to support the feature.

If that were the case ,

Why on earth are they spending time and resources with a new PvP game mode that most serious PvPers don’t care about? or the new changes with leagues and what not?

Why are they spending time and resources with WvW – it generates no revenue at all and takes a lot of effort to create a whole new map like that…..

All that guild hall stuff…thats not adding to the bottom line unless theres some stuff tied into the gemstore that we haven’t seen……

Point is, anet DOES make spend money across ALL game modes….PvP / WvW isn’t adding kitten to their bottom line, but they will continue to spend money on it…..

Their bottom line used to be LS + constant Gemstore stuff….see how well that did for them? it made them say “we’ll, we are not doing good enough, we need to make an xpac”….

Because you don’t have any idea of their retention and conversion numbers?

Something doesn’t have to DIRECTLY convert to gems to generate revenue.

A popular gamemode drives retention, which drives a certain % of sales.

So: Point to point: They don’t need to drive retention to serious SPvP’ers. They want ot make the game mode more attractive and give more things to do.

You have no idea how WvW drives income, people seem to play it a lot, which seems to imply a retention effect.

Guild halls give guild activities and goals, which drives retention and play in other modes.

~~~

These all have a common theme with Raids – modes that they want to see more people use, and that they think are able to drive retention (and sell downloads).

Similar to those, If you make a mode that the vast majority of players hate, you’re going to have a hard time getting any retention or conversion benefit out of it.

~~~~~

TL;DR

They invest in modes because they expect people to play them. Just the play generates revenue. They won’t make, or will abandon a mode that too few players play.

SkiTz.4590:

La Goanna.8142:

PopeUrban.2578:

Couple days in SW and pretty much anybody has a full set of ascended, and there’s no telling what other acquisiton methods they may or may not have added to HoT.

I’d love to know what you’re doing out in the silverwastes because I still have zero ascended armor as far as I’m concerned. Trinkets, sure, but those only come in the sinister variety at the vendor. Crafting for armor and the occasional weapon is still required and it’s still huge grind and money sink. While it may be fine for people like us who’ve been playing the game consistently or on-and-off for over a year, it’s going to scare away the influx of new and returning players

So I’m going to agree with the other user here who claims that raids are going to be completely dead in 5 months or less because of this – even moreso if the rewards themselves are underwhelming and grindy via currencies like fractal relics and so on. They need to scale like fractals so that full exotics can experience it and beat via lower levels, at the very least. Difficulty of the actual boss and gameplay mechanics should be relatively the same, but don’t gate it behind a grindy gear-wall of power creep stats.

Why does anet have to dumb everything down to accomodate players who feel entitled to everything?

For once , can anet get away with saying
“we aren’t going to lower our standards for this particular content (raids), instead, we ask you to step your game up if you want to beat it”…..

Outside of high lvl fractals, EVERYTHING in PvE has been casual (in terms of requirements to beat)…..anet wants to give raids a shot, as the endgame, so let them…

We will see in 6 months if it worked or not… if it doesn’t, don’t worry, all you ppl in exotics, who don’t even want to ATTEMPT to get ascended will have your wish…

Your rhetorical question is very easily reversed, but I’m going to go another way, and answer:

“Because they’re running a business”.

If it doesn’t add to their bottom line, they shouldn’t spend money on it.

Specifically this means, if raids are so hard that people don’t do them, they won’t (and shouldn’t) continue to support the feature.

Skywing.4836:

Of course they can scale the content up so hard that the top will fail consistently but then they themselves and the rest of 99.9999% of the player base wouldn’t be able to do it either.

Here’s a real life story: we had a discussion in a math class (graduate level) and one of the student stood up and told the professor: “I dare you to fail me, fairly”, the teacher couldn’t do it. Why? Because he would have to fail everyone in the class. In fact, in order to do he’d need to give exam problem so hard that each question would be an unsolved problem which he himself wouldn’t be able to do it in order to fail us.

(as promised)

So I guess we agree, they’re not gonna do that for the reasons you’re implying ><

Amaya.1483:

Everyone who complains about difficult Raids , just a wow from me. I do think that the recommendation of Ascendet Gear says just something about , how hard the Raid will be and that is AMAZING. I really dont get it, how people can cry for EASY PVE CONTENT! How the kitten is das possible??? A Game lives from its challenges and competetive play in PvP or Pve… getting everything stucked into my kitten is the worst thing ever ever ever ever ever. Great Job Anet on having balls!!!! TANK YOU

You don’t understand the content of the complaint (well presuming it’s not a troll). Even pro-difficulty people were complaining about the need to potentially gear up multiple characters into full ascended, it’s a daunting task.

Beyond that I think we’ve pretty conclusively proven that that kind of tuning isn’t realistically possible anyways.

Skywing.4836:

Windsagio.1340:

Well I wouldn’t go that far, one dev shot their mouth off.

Players always think they know more than the devs, and it’s almost never actually true.

Remember on the panels they said the raids are hard? Delivery: solo-able content raid. Sure they have insider information and data, but the actual execution of techniques? No way.

Do you remember my posts (won’t be upset if you dont) back then where I kept talking about how Raids weren’t actually going to be hard?

The content was never ever going to be designed for those ‘competitive’ guilds, it would be product suicide.

Those folks extrapolated what they wanted from the statements and Anet let them. Kitten like this ‘ascended required’ thing only fed the illusion (which may have been the intent, I still think it was a mistake though), but it’s always been an illusion, and a transparent one for that.

The raids are going to be extremely hard for day-to-day guilds, but completable. They don’t care to design for ‘top’ guilds because it excludes most of the players..

to bring it back to the thread topic, that’s why that tweet was so obviously transparently false. There’s simply no way they’d sabotage their product by designing it that tightly.

Edit: Saw your edit, but I’ve gotta leave, bug ya later! :p

Well I wouldn’t go that far, one dev shot their mouth off.

Players always think they know more than the devs, and it’s almost never actually true.

To put it another way, if they’re tuning to ‘full ascended’ they’[re also tuning to fixed teams that vary for each encounter (based on the gimmick) and to probably something like a .0001% completion rate for the content on top of that.

I’d imagine that kind of thing would please some people, but can you imagine them actually doing it?

There’s been a lot of math on the gains of ascended gear vs the gains of class/play.

If they actually tune it so tightly that that 1.98% extra you get from ascended armor (as vs weapons and trinkets) is necessary for top players, it’s going to be utterly inaccessible to everyone else, and then the mode will fail.

I don’t want it to fail, I don’t think they want it to fail, They can’t tune the cnounter that tightly — if it’s possible to do so at all, given the ‘active combat’ element in GW2

Astralporing.1957:

Obtena.7952:

Lachanche.6859:

Draknar.5748:

Wow some serious knee-jerk here. At no point did anyone say it was required.

the dev litterally just said thaton twitter. before retconning it on reddit.

No, I read the twitter :

@blacklionchest Earlier wing bosses can prob be killed by top tier players in mix of asc/ex. Last boss should be full asc.

Doesn’t say it’s needed.

Yep, but it does say that the dev in question thinks that not having full ascended on earlier bosses makes the fights uncertain for top tier players (hint, most of the raiders will not be top tier, even if they consider themselves skilled). It also strongly suggests, that the dev thinks that not having full ascended on the last boss will likely end up in failure. Even if you are top tier.

There have been plenty of posts showing how this opinion doesn’t make sense currently.

We’re really left with a small number of options.
1) Infusions (doesn’t seem to be true)
2) Blatant PR-speak not reflecting the game
3) Dev was just talking out their kitten and was wrong (could link to #2, the retraction implies this is true)
4) Some kind of a large revision to ascended gear is coming.

3 seems by far the most likely case at this point, even with how unlikely it should be that a designer is so wrong about the design.

Novamatrix.2569:

If they put broken things into their beta its due to one of two things: Either the broken stuff is the best they have to show us, or they are just slacking off with the initial testing of the most recently developed content and decided they’d let us do their testing for them. I think its the second one. Which is a total kitten move.

Someone has absolutely no idea what “Beta” actually means.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Well I’m out, Colin straight up lied to us regarding benchmarks having to be met in order to raid, ascended gear was supposed to be optional, only providing us with an expensive slowly gated way to acquire ascended gear, and still leaving enough of a disparity between respective classes DPS that there will be a Meta group that excludes others.

I will give ANet one week to reconsider before I out in a request for a refund, money talks every one remember that.

Or again, the designer in the tweet said something stupid and inaccurate and they’re still trying to manage the blowback without throwing them under the bus :p

Tungsten Monarch.6058:

Guardian is over rated with healing, other classes heal much better, however a Guardian in groups with other Guardians with Battle Presence and your Elite Signet, you have your spike healing. Thus I’m looking forward to Blue-Way Guardian only Groups.

Well support that. You say they’re overrated, and others can do better ,but how and why?

Shoe.5821:

In Pve there’s no meta because nothing is required – the metagame, in it’s purest sense, is insignificant.

imo, its more like:

we don’t expect to need anything other than zerkers in pve encounters, zerkers are fastest, so everyone should be zerker.

the fundamental problem is not the players, it’s the encounters…

Depends on the POV. In some ways the insistence on efficiency and the assumption that the efficiency builds are required are also problematic.

Sykper.6583:

Windsagio.1340:

Apparently my role on this forum is to be the broken record.

The Dev post that started this brouhaha makes no sense from start to finish. It can’t be true without a sizable change to how ascended gear works or without using infusions in some way.

Remember when the Devs though Triple Trouble would take months to take down?

This is not really all that different. Yes, it will be harder, but there’s no way they can really get down the playerbase skill level and make a statement saying ‘YOU GONNA NEED FULL ASCENDED FOR THE LAST BOSS!’ without it actually being demonstrated.

This is also their First Raid, it’s kind of like that guy who really wants to show you something but you are only mildly interested so you don’t really want to see it now but later, but he keeps insisting you should come see it now.

Or they’re just making stuff up of course.

The tuning it would require to make ascended required is insane compared to the stat difference. The game isn’t engineered in such a way as to make small stat changes matter that much.

Of course your’e kind of saying that yourself ><

Apparently my role on this forum is to be the broken record.

The Dev post that started this brouhaha makes no sense from start to finish. It can’t be true without a sizable change to how ascended gear works or without using infusions in some way.

Lachanche.6859:

“Guardian has amazing heals per second, but is missing any good way to burst heal.”

you have receive the light pbaoe/medium cooldown and signet of courage large aoe/long cooldown.

It’s one of those weird things people keep saying.

Guardians have several on demand/burst heals of various powers and cooldowns:
Dodge roll (usually 1k+, very short coold down)
F2 (if traited right)
Receive the light (pretty big heal)
Signet of Courage (I almost don’t count this, 4s casting time is BRUTAL, the heal is gigantic though)

Also they have some weird almost cases;
Staff 4 (I’ve seen it used as an emergency heal, nobody runs staff anymore though)

Nokaru.7831:

Test.8734:

Isn’t it interesting that it’s (one more) ArenaNet’s communication mess, and they don’t even bother to fix it on their own official forum, rather somewhere else?

I mean, they could have told people here all about it. But noooooo, looks like Twitter and Reddit are more important.

Sorry, I didn’t realize that this mess started on the forums. Oh wait… It didn’t! It’s started because somebody overreacted on the forums about something they read on Twitter!

Are some people just in perpetual states of indignation and they need to rage about everything people do, or don’t do, or how they do it, or why they do it, or when they do it?

A gaffe is a gaffe ><

I wouldn’t be so mad, scribethemad, the designer basically retracted the comment.

kolompi.1287:

Windsagio.1340:

Now I’m gonna have to derail again some.

This isn’t a legitimate “meta”. It’s one of the worst misusages of a term in MMO discussion.

It’s not competitive
It’s not required to be successful

It’s a preferred style for optimization.

These things are very different!

(Yes I will man the walls of linguistic purity until the last brick is torn away)

The word “meta” does not imply that it has to be competitive or required to be successful. Thanks for manning the walls.

Well no. “Meta” in this context comes from PvP meta, and comparative metas in other games (fighting games, card games etc).

The ‘meta’ in the sense that’s used here are the elements beyond your own playstyle that you need to be aware of to be successful.

in Pvp, the meta is about what classes you expect to fight and whether you can mitigate/beat them.

If you’re playing Netrunner, the meta includes things like “How am I going to deal with a Tag ’n Bag deck?”

In Pve there’s no meta because nothing is required – the metagame, in it’s purest sense, is insignificant.

We have player preferences – and we have players who don’t fully understand the concept applying it inappropriately.

(If I wanna get all tin-hat about this, I suspect it’s a validation issue)

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Healing is most effective when you are able to counter most of the DPS by using

• perma regen (ranger, warrior (traited banner of tactics is very nice for perma regen),
• perma weakness (Necro?) and
• reflects whenever possible (mesmer/guardian)
• projectile blocks when reflects are not possible (ranger, thief, necro, ele?)
  And preferably have some mitigation through armor/or potions (-10% dmg will be very nice)

Also some passives:

• soothing mist
• virtue of resolve
• Inspiring banners
• And -any- other sources of regen or healing over time
• Vampiric aura is underestimated 35 for each hit will fo a long way when fighting a big health boss..

as a group will make up some decent healing.

Well again, you’re leaving out the most important one; protection

Regen is nice but hard to get really high without serious damage sacrifices
Weakness is nice but unreliable (If you’re willing to give up your utility buff, you can easily get perma weakness with any class tho).

Going to hit it again, Protection is the most important healing buff in the game, hands down.

The other thing to consider is that in general current content healing is only possible at all with protection generation, which we have a single 100% uptime source of

lordkrall.7241:

symke.3105:

Thank you. I found my post, but I fail to see where dev answered a question to what degree “recommended” is?

He basically says that when people learn the fights it should become easier to do it, even with lower tier gear and even (probably jokingly) with some people going as quaggan.

That makes it sound rather clear that it will not be hardgated in the slightest to Ascended gear for everyone.

Yeah, sounds like the desigenr did a dump tweet and then had to pull it back with ‘what I really meant was that’s not true at all!’

scerevisiae.1972:

celestial mantra can maintain continuous 1500HP/sec group heals while dealing damage through phantasms and mantra AOE dmg spam, just saying…

I’d like to see the build that can do that :p

The whole thing is just so clueless. Why would you post that given the state of the game?

It’ll make some people happy (in a bad way) it’ll make some people mad (in a bad way) and doesn’t fit the current game engine at all.

Bandit.8279:

Windsagio.1340:

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Who said this was ever a requirement as well? The word used was “should”. Big difference. And that is for the later wings. The first couple was suggested a mix would be fine. Meaning we have plenty of time to gear up and find out what will be needed.

The issue for me is that unless they significantly change the stats on ascended, or require the infusion slots, there’s no way for a requirement to be meaningful.

Ascended gear is not like raid progression gear in other games. The progression is nominal at best.