Guild Wars 2

Laar.5476:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

GrimmR.3541:

Don’t summon VDGM, i beg you.

Who is he? I am a newfag in General Dungeon Discussion Threads.

I apologize in advance for this

Good stuff in there, but unfortunately the Best Of… posts were modzapped long, long ago

Also, I can’t say “isn’t // it” or “Farnaz // is” without getting kittied, but yeah, sure, the filter is cool with newfag.

10/10

deSade.9437:

I’d give… well, not an arm or a finger, but I’d definitely go on no-dishwasher no-washing-machine no-ironing for 6 months to get the privilege of seeing what wasn’t working out in raid. You can’t just run around pointing fingers at people, but if you lack 50% of dps something is TERRIBLY wrong, and you gotta figure it out. “Can’t you do it without a dps meter, mimimi”, annoying blonde face
Yeah, you can, but it’d be such a nice qol thing… just numberphobics like me being provided with a tool to see the results would make it way less stressful and lower the anxiety of circular thinking “what went wrong, what went wrong, what went wrong”
Doesn’t it just suck when you can’t keep track of everything and have doubts about your performance, but aren’t sure of what the problem is and if it’s impacting the game heavily? Ghhhh.
Right, right, it happens only to me because I’m stupid and everyone else is a genius that never messes up <.< (he said looking defensive)

What, you can’t parse your combat log into DPS on-the-fly, in your head? It’s so easy!

Koviko.3248:

Back when I played WoW before playing GW2, raiding was my favorite thing to do. I was in a hardcore raiding guild that pushed for at least 20 hours a week (30 when new content was released) with 25-man, and further for 10-man if needed. I really enjoyed the experience and the closest I’ve come to that in GW2 is structured WvW fight-nights.

Now that raiding is coming to GW2, I’m really interested in finding a strong raiding guild. However, this seems like it’s going to be particularly difficult, especially compared to finding a strong WvW guild.

With the megaservers, I feel that I’ll never be able to find a strong raiding guild, as most guilds I’ve found via the megaservers are casual guilds with big ambition and little action. Does anyone have tips for finding raiding guilds? Are there any tools for connecting guilds with players?

Just a note, I did take a look at the “Looking for” forum. It looks like a mess. :/

Dang, and I was going to suggest the Looking for… forums

Great question, though. I don’t think there are any tools out there for that (not that I’m aware of, anyway). Making a post in Looking For or in here will probably get you a couple of leads. Once raids are out, there’s always good ol’ mapchat spam near the entrance….

It’d be a cool idea to have a raid-guild finder. A thread on this forum where recruiting guilds can list themselves would work, but it’d get full of outdated ads fairly quickly.

Maybe we’ll see a site feature pop up from Weth or one of the other GW2 HTML Heros where guilds/players can advertise for this? If the adverts had maybe a week’s expiration time (to prevent clutter) and could be grouped by casual-ness, needed classes, etc that’d be neat.

If that works, I’m going to kitten myself.

Arg, I’m out of steam. That DPS meter thread is getting tiresome, some people just refuse to take responsibility for their experience in this game and can’t grasp that it’s all about the people they choose to play with….

We need something new in here…

idea!

> Smears goat blood into a pentagram on the floor
> Turns off lights
> Lights candles at corners
>\kneel before makeshift alter

hushed tone videogamermikevideogamermikevideogamermikevideogamermikevideogamermike

> waits…

Hey Weth, has anyone told you that you’re awesome?

You’re awesome.

In particular, I liked being able to refer to the details of an attack while reading about it in the description. It was a nice convenience to read something in the description about an important attack and then have the sidebar open to see what the tells/damage/etc are at a glance.

But I missed earlier that the encounter descriptions seem to always be included in the overlay info, so it’s less of an issue than I originally thought. Maybe a little redundant compared to the main text + sidebar, but as long as the info is all there it’s good

+1 on the overlay tabs, too. It’s handy to be able to easily refer back through a history of detail pages.

PUG’d a Wildstar dungeon last night, had an experience worth sharing.

Final boss has an enrage mechanic — at 10% HP, he starts casting a party-wipe attack, and you must kill him before he finishes.

We didn’t make it in time and wiped. Glancing at the damage stat bar, we see:

DPS 1: 100
DPS 2: 60
DPS 3: 60
Tank: 20
Healer: ~2

(Numbers are made up, but accurate relative to each other. DPS 1 was higher level than the rest of us, hence the increased damage.)

What happens? Any rage? Any kicks? Any complaints? Any drama?

Nope.

Healer says “one sec, gonna swap in some more damage for enrage”.

We try again.

We win.

No whining, no arguing, no speculation, no “kick the necro/ranger” bs. Problem —> Solution —> Win.

I’d love this in GW2. Especially if Kihra gets involved

Hi Avery! I sent you an invite for [ARES].

Welcome to the team, and feel free to grab me anytime you want to run something

See you in game!

I hear ya. Just saying if there’s an easy way to make both the details and the encounters visible at once again, it may be worth looking into. I find most pop-ups disruptive, so it might just be my preference.

Only complaint I’ve got is that I honestly preferred the enemy details in the sidebar instead of the overlay, personally. It was helpful to refer to them while reading the description of the encounter.

That sucks. Sounds like it was originally a group of people that were playing for different reasons.

I’d definitely have found another group to play with if I wasn’t in the mood for that.

Problem: poof

Not to trivialize it, but players are different. If you put different types of players together, sometimes there will be conflict. If there are a lot of large egos in the mix, there will definitely be conflict. Odds are good that the players that ended up acting like kittens would have ended up acting like kittens anyway — the DPS meter was just the stat they chose to focus on.

Ask yourself — what’s the alternative? AP points? Linking gear stats? Class exclusion? That’s what we have today, and those measurements aren’t even indicators of skill level.

We already have the problems you’re afraid of, except they’re being enforced using meaningless skill indicators that discriminate a lot of good players too — without even getting a chance to prove themselves.

It seems like a lot of people don’t realize that there are some groups that they just won’t mix with, and that they’re not stuck with whatever group they end up in. If you take responsibility for your experience in this game and search for a group that you fit in with, you don’t have to worry about any of these problems.

Leodon.1564:

People, who shout out terrorist usually have no basis for an argument and thus pull out the “terrorist” card to incite people’s baser emotions.

If you really think I have no basis for an argument, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.

The ‘letting the terrorists win’ bit was meant as a piece of satirical rhetoric, not to be taken literally. Sorry for any confusion — it wasn’t intended to ‘incite’ or anything of the sort, but merely point out that you’re letting fear of abusive players govern the options available to reasonable players. The ‘terrorist’ jab was honestly not very well apt anyway — terrorists attacks can affect unwilling people, but DPS-meter drama only affects people who choose to play with tryhards (which is a much more accurate term than terrorist).

Let’s not turn this into a terrorist/gun control/any other strawman. I apologize for making a remark that was open to misinterpretation, and I hope I’ve cleared up my intent.

lol, deSade. Blunt, but true.

Cookiezz.5261:

While my previous post is against this line of argument, what if we compromised and just made the tool show our own personal performance (how you used your skills, your own damage, etc etc). The community could then post benchmarks online and you could use those to tune your play.

Of course raid leaders could request that you share that information, but then it is YOUR choice to share it. That gives you the player more control over how the data is used. Then it just comes back to finding a group of players that you get along with and would be comfortable sharing that information.

Hmm….and the API team recently added authenticated endpoints…

Perhaps your personal combat log could be accessible via API, and you could opt-in to send your raid leader an API key so they could view your performance?

As a first pass, it could be as simple as converting the combat log into serialized JSON and letting third party apps do the parsing/analysis. Storage might be an issue, but even a 24-hour expiration would be enough time to compile a team’s information.

If you are having this much toxicity in your group, please send me an in game mail and I’ll put you with some adults in a situation where you can have fun and grow with each other.

Ditto.

phys.7689:

Would not be a good idea to support dps meters

And you’re basing this solely on the argument that “Some people are jackkittens”.

Why let the terrorists win? You don’t have to play with those people. Remember that this content is intended for static raid groups, not pugs — just keep looking until you find group of adults.

Jerus.4350:

It’s like if a patch just suddenly took Melandru out of Arah unless you did use the bucket. Why would anyone stop and do the buckets if the door was already open? It’s like “ohh looks like a boss fight will be here… hmm, well we can just keep running… so umm, that was weird”.

That sounds….wonderful!

daydreams

It’s so strange to see civil discussion in the forum, lol. I guess all we needed was something new worth discussing in PvE ;-D

Absolutely, though, I hope we see a variety of enrage mechanics over the next few raid releases. The good news is that the devs seem to have a passion for what they’re doing and are having fun with it. That’s awesome; it means they’re more likely to be creative and clever in their designs and we’re more likely to see fresh, interesting encounters. Color me hopeful.

Wethospu.6437:

There is no functional difference between parents and enrage timers.

This made me lol so hard. 10/10.

Blaeys.3102:

Here is a theoretical – you and I are in the same raid with exactly the same damage output. A trash mob appears that will cause the boss to do double damage, so it must be killed. You switch to kill it but I don’t. You are IMMEDIATELY doing at least 25% less damage than I am because my target still has 25 stacks of vulnerability. If we are condi classes, it is even worse – you have to start stacking your conditions again, while I’m happily applying 30 bleed stacks every second. If you have to move away from the group – and any might stacking/fury – it is further compounded.

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

Personally, if I was just booted from the group in that hypothetical, I’d count it as a win for getting myself out of a group full of ridiculous tryhards.

If they weren’t a group of tryhards and decided to use the information constructively instead of flat out kicking me, I could explain what happened and we could discuss ways to address the issue as a team.

Maybe I’d swap to a weapon with a pull CC to pull the add into the boss so we could cleave it down and not lose DPS uptime on the boss. Or perhaps a support player might have nothing to do at that point and be free to run over and kill the add while I stay on the boss.

Whatever the solution, the DPS tool pinpointed the problem and allowed us to address it. It let us identify where things could be improved and come up with a solution that leads us closer to progression.

Of course, this all depends on your party consisting of competent, mature adults who are capable of working as a team. But frankly, that’s the only sort of raid team that I’d consider joining. Let the tryhards tear each others’ throats out over nothing. They’re going to anyway.

Hahaha, I did the same thing, my main is on NA, my alt on EU.

Wouldn’t really matter for me anyway. When I dc, so does any other GW2 client on my connection

pokes forum bug

Blaeys.3102:

Pandabro.8743:

So how do you see it going when a guild cannot get a boss down because of an enrage?

In my opinion the drama and hate will be no less, it’ll just be less informed. Wiping is frustrating enough as it is and blame will come down on someone, it way less likely that the person(s) causing the wipes will get blamed if we don’t have tools too gauge performance. It’ll come down on those who play a “sub optimal” build or those playing “inferior” classes, even though we’ll have no idea if those people are actually doing their job or not. It’ll be entirely speculation.

The lack of damage meters won’t cure toxicity in a highly competitive environment where you have multiple people working towards a goal. It WILL let good raid leaders make informed decisions about how to address issues though.

Toxicity issues aside, pure DPS meters wouldntt, in most cases, solve any issue – and, in fact, would probably create them.

DPS in this game is as much about group support as it is about individual contributions. Might/vuln stacking, blast finishers, fury uptime on the party – these are all crucial to success. When you stress the importance of dps meters, you encourage selfish builds that center around personal damage output, rather than group performance. You also encourage players to care less about strategically switching targets so they dont have to ramp up vuln or their condi stacks again.

To your hypothetical about what happens when you wipe, instead of looking at individuals and trying to pick out lower dps, your energy will be better spent looking at why you wiped and which group support functions will keep that from happening again.

DPS meters, more often than not, cause groups to focus on unimportant issues – and, as I’ve said before, cause drama where drama isn’t needed. They simply aren’t useful and act counterproductive to team play.

I think it’s safe to say that when anyone here talks about a “DPS meter”, we mean, ideally, a tool that would provide information on support, healing, etc., not just raw DPS.

But even so, let me take Mr. Pandabro’s example a bit further:

Your DPS team includes a necro and an engi. The necro is playing skillfully, putting out his fair share of damage, and all around performing to the best of his class’s ability. The engi, on the other hand, is using terrible rotations, missing damage modifiers, and spending too much time semi-afk, drinking bourbon, and eating spaghetti during the encounter. He stays near the boss, looks busy, but isn’t putting out nearly as much damage as he should.

Without the DPS meter, who is more likely to get blamed for the wipe?

Gaaroth.2567:

Minos.5168:

Brayzz.6524:

Well you can already see if someone is supporting you or not, you can see the buffs, ress etc but not the dmg done by a player. I sure want a complex DPS tool like in Wildstar too, but I think not gonna happen.

Right, but DPS only matters if you’re struggling. (If you’re winning, you probably don’t care as much.)

At which point, someone’s going to just see that Joe’s DPS was the lowest. They’re not going to care that Joe had to keep rezzing the Zerkers and stacked might on them.

pretty much

Find a group that isn’t full of incompetent tools that don’t understand how support works.

Problem solved.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

exactly. now what i dont understand is, why would people who WANT the challenging content and who WANT the difficulty not run what is effective or fairly optimal in terms of builds?

Because people want to run challenging content with our friends – and we want them to be able to play the professions and roles they enjoy playing.

Fair enough, but it might be a good idea to spend a week or two trying to progress with casual builds and see how it goes before asking for nerfs. This boss already doesn’t have a tight enrage timer that forces DPS. From what we saw last weekend, there’s plenty of wiggle room for less-than-optimal groups. And as I’ve mentioned, thinking about your build and being willing to change it up is an intended component of this raid content. If player refuse to at least retrait, take different weapons, and use unfamiliar utilities, this content is not for them, unless they find a team willing to carry them. They should stick with dungeons.

And to be honest, IMO your earlier suggestion of adding an enrage mechanic that would instantly and randomly put players in defeated state every 30 seconds sounds far more frustrating than a 500% damage buff. There’s no possibility of skillful counterplay. At least with the damage buff you could play defensively and whittle off the last couple HP after time’s up if you got close.

That’s why I stopped soloing. Some nights I’ll dc hourly, and it’s just too frustrating to keep losing progress

I guess I need to get on that mastery point grind then. Best news I’ve heard all day.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Been a while since someone insisted on stacking under the pillar.

lol, does that even still work? What a bunch of scrubs.

All the cool kids fight rumbly from the top of the stairs.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about that Ranael. That happens anyway, without the tool — people already make uninformed comparisons of balance all the time. Just look at Nemesis.

IMO, fear of unreasonable people being unreasonable isn’t a great reason to keep a useful tool off-limits.

SlyDevil.3952:

NoTrigger.8396:

and anet will nerf the +500% dmg enrage, so even if you hit the 8 min mark, you will still have a chance.

It was nerfed to 500%, supposedly it was higher and was reduced for the beta.

I hadn’t heard about them nerfing the enrage for the beta, but Crystal did say after the beta that they would be reducing it further:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Jerus.4350:

I’ll say I’ve always liked soft timers best. 500% is probably a bit much to call it a soft timer, but hey at least it’s not one of the “and you’re dead” type enrages.

I actually just reduced this to give you a little wiggle room to (as my raid says) kittenroach the boss down if he’s low enough.

So the enrage will be a little softer in the final product. Which honestly, sounds fine for the first raid boss.

And for the record, I’m not opposed to seeing a boss with these sorts of enrage mechanics instead of a timer. I’d like to see a variety of mechanics in the bosses — some with a hard timer, some with soft, slowly ramping enrages over the duration of the fight, and others with mechanic-based enrages such as those suggested here.

I have a feeling that is what we’re going to get. After all, there are many ways to build pressure as a fight progresses.

I just don’t want to see a gut reaction that “hard timers are bad always” just because this is the first time we’ve had any serious pressure in an encounter that’s forced us to actually think about what we’re running.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractal-Feedback-Thread-Suggestions/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/gw2dungeons-List-of-Dungeon-Bugs

Can probably add the majority of those to this list, too.

Iris Ng.9845:

dlonie.6547:

Did anyone test Headshot on a breakerbar? How bad was it?

I love my thief, but yeah, it sounds like they won’t really be bringing much to raids. Much sad.

I heard from [SC] that staff Daredevil is quite good. /summon Tobi and Nat.

ears perk up

Really? M-m-my thief? He’s not…dead?

Don’t toy with me like this.

Bri.8354:

To give you a realistic example, my raid group during the beta was unable to complete the fight simply because too many people ran inefficient builds. We had good roles set up, learned and got pretty good at the mechanics, but the fight was impossible for us because we didn’t have enough people running efficient enough builds.

That’s sort of the whole idea, though. They said several times during the hypefest that they wanted us to have to think about our builds, change them, and tune them to succeed. This is working as intended.

And what do you do in a situation like this? Keep trying and get better at the fight and its mechanics?

Yes, that’s what my guild will do.

No, instead you kick that third necromancer, shout at the other 2 to get good, kick the other 2 guys you don’t need, then spend 20 minutes looking for the appropriate builds to replace all the people you just got rid of.

Erm…you don’t have to…

If a group wants to only have members that are willing to change classes/builds to succeed, then players who don’t want to do that shouldn’t join that group. Stick with people who have similar playstyles, and all will be well. We saw during the beta that there is a large window of error. I wouldn’t assume the enrage timer was too short just because you couldn’t beat it during a beta weekend that was mostly downtime.

Also, this content isn’t meant to be pugged. You shouldn’t be “kicking and waiting 20 minutes” like is currently common in dungeons when you’re playing with a static guild group. And if you do, it’s your choice to be in such a serious group.

Give these less optimized groups a chance to prove themselves by mastering the mechanics.

Remember, working as intended. They want you to change up your build to get through. That’s the whole point.

Personally, spoj summed up my thoughts on the topic quite well:

spoj.9672:

However i would not be against these sort of ideas as progressive mechanics on top of a regular timer.

Done right, supporting this could be very little effort on ArenaNet’s part. They’ve already said they don’t want to whitelist individual add-ons, but as long as they don’t provide a gameplay advantage, they won’t ban you for them.

The only issue I have is that “gameplay advantage” isn’t very precise. If a GM was in a bad mood or wanted to get pedantic, that could mean just seeing an enemy’s exact HP, or more generally, displaying any bit of information that is not readily visible to everyone.

Perhaps with raids coming up, someone could spend a couple hours whitelisting, not individual addons, but a set of “approved” DPS-meter features. This way, as long as an addon only provides features from that set, you can know for sure that you won’t get banned for it.

It’s save them from having to implement one on their own, and provide piece-of-mind to those of us who would like to monitor and improve our performance in the new raids. This would take very little effort:

1) Start a thread asking for input on what sorts of features we’d like to have in a DPS meter.
2) They can stop following the thread — I’m sure our specialist wouldn’t mind compiling a list of the features that came up and submitting it with his report. If he doesn’t want to, I’d volunteer.
3) They have an internal meeting with 2-3 people (or hell, just one) and spend an hour going through the list marking them “Ok”, “Not ok”, or optionally “Ok, but under these conditions: […]”
4) Publish their conclusions in a sticky.

This would only take two forum posts and, if I make a crazy high estimate, 9 man hours (3 people for 3 hours is pretty overkill). That’s a pretty low cost for what would be a vast QoL improvement for many of their players.

Did anyone test Headshot on a breakerbar? How bad was it?

I love my thief, but yeah, it sounds like they won’t really be bringing much to raids. Much sad.

Minos.5168:

At which point, someone’s going to just see that Joe’s DPS was the lowest. They’re not going to care that Joe had to keep rezzing the Zerkers and stacked might on them.

If this is how my raid team acted, I’d find a new group.

Some people will be kittenhats no matter what tools they do or do not have access to. The solution is not to ban those tools, but to not play with those people.

DPS meters don’t kick people. People do.

phys.7689:

dlonie.6547:

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

tokens would lead to the same problem except youd have useless tokens. chances arem if they add salvaging, they will also make mats more needed. Legendary crafting will probably use a decent amount.

Just like with fractals, there can be other token-based rewards so that they’d still have value after completing your ascended set. And yes, the details of ascended salvaging could render my point moot, but it’s something that should be considered by the team.

Brayzz.6524:

GW2 is realy like driving a car without a Tachometer. Imagine, you need to calculate everytime how fast you drive from A to B, because your car has no Tachometer.

If Raids are going to be that hard, that only the experienced and coordinated players can kill it than give us please a DPS Tool, atleast the ability to see our own DPS. With “Enrage Timers” I rly want to know how much DPS I`m doing, without knowing your DPS, you cant improve your gameplay. Players will start to test new builds, new rotations etc. I know from other MMORPGs that you are never going to use the same build/rotation for every raid boss, it will be different. In a 10min fight you are going to mess up a lot with your rotation, but with a DPS tool, you will start to improve yourself each week.

Raids are for Guilds, if you are in a Guild than the people will accept you, they are not going to kick you out of a raid because of your DPS. They will accept you and even teach you to get better at the game.

BTW there is already a META or KICK without any DPS tools, so it will not change anything for the pugs. Im only asking for a personal DPS Tool, that only shows your own DPS.

Just wanted to voice my support for this.

100% agree with OP’s post, there are some very good arguments in there. I don’t think a DPS meter would have a big an effect as people are afraid it would — the people who would use it to exclude people are already excluding them, often by using tools that are in a grey zone where we don’t know if we’d get banned for them or not.

If exclusion is really a big concern internally, at least letting us see some personal stats would be great.

For comparison, here’s a random statistical log that you can get from Wildstar:

http://www.wildstarlogs.com/reports/H2Wtq8YNCmLvbJaF

Something like this would really help players improve themselves for raids. It’s hard to convince people sometimes that their sb/lb/traps ranger really isn’t helping, but if they could compare their DPS to a reference, even without me seeing it, it would help show them the way.

TIL.

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

Tree.3916:

I can’t believe we have like 3 pages useless text that gets us nowhere.

Don’t tell me you’re surprised!

#ForumLyfe

But yeah, fair point. I think the bottom-line feedback from this thread, which most of us would agree on, is that raids should provide ascended armor chests, like fractals. I’d also add that ascended amulets would be a nice reward, too, since they have the least availability of the trinkets. Maybe even weapon crates, too, while we’re at it.

This would discourage some of the exclusion, since players joining the raid team will naturally get ascended gear faster so it’d be less of a practical concern to accept someone new who’s still rockin’ full exotics.

I’d prefer these as token-based rewards rather than drops to avoid another FotM / Ascended Ring situation (“Oh boy! I got another uninfused ring with awful stats!”). Even with ascended salvaging, ascended drops would end up being disappointments once full geared and farming for legendary rewards.

Edit: Oh, I just remembered this: http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-designing-raids-in-heart-of-thorns/

Raid Loot:
- You will not 2 blues and a green. You will get stuff like Ascended Rewards.

So yeah, 3 pages of text that accomplish nothing xD

pinches self

Is this real life?

I’m loving the two-way feedback with this team. It’s good to have confirmation that you folks are listening.

Those changes sound great to me.

Ok, I found some more words. I’m never quiet for long

phys.7689:

A few high end relaxed people like yourself may exist, but even you cannot handle the large influx of sub geared people.

Bring it on :P The multitude of friendly PvE teaching guilds are absolutely starved for new players and new content at this point, lol.

And for the fears that casuals will be enforcing BiS, I’m sure that some will. New players shouldn’t join those groups. It’s quite an overreaction to assume that all groups will require it, though. There are still loads of PvE guilds around that don’t enforce zerk gear, and that’s indisputably better for the current game’s PvE. But some people don’t care, and they won’t suddenly start caring more about gear than just having fun with guildies because raids roll out.

And my solution would not be to retune the battle for exotics, that would only decrease the skill required, and ruin the content for everyone.

Glad to hear it. That’s why you’re receiving so much backlash here, because your posts have sounded like you want to nerf the content before we’ve really even had a chance to experience it.

Basically they need to improve ascended aquisition to be more skill based, or have a more skill based method of obtaining it in addition to the old options.

I’m all for more options to get ascended gear. Fractal RNG is a kitty, chest farming is painfully boring, and everything else is a very slow slog to full armor.

They need to reduce time gates, or get rid of them. Needing to log in even when you have nothing you want to do, shouldnt really be a gate for content.

Well, hopefully post-HoT people will want to log in again. And I thought this was a discussion about new/returning players? If they’re new or returning and don’t want to log in, they probably won’t be around long enough to raid if they don’t enjoy the game.

i know you guys figure joining a pre existing mission running guild just to get accessories is cool, but a lot of players dont see it that way, they feel like they are using the guild, or that they dont want to join this type of structure, this is lessened by them removing representation(i hear) but a lot of people wont be comfortable joining for this purpose, which basically takes them from one month to 3? months? Even leeching accessories from another guild, your still looking at 4 weeks, which is mostly waiting for a weekly reset.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment#Trinkets

Amulet: Available from logging in. Cheaper if you WvW.
Ring: Available from logging in, or running fractals. Cheaper if you WvW, certain stats available from LS2.
Accessories: Laurels + gold, guild commentations, LS.
Backpiece: Fractals or just gold in forge.

Other than logging in, players aren’t locked into a single way to get any of these. Yes, it takes time to get a lot of laurels, but it should take time to get skilled enough for high-end PvE, too. And still — none of it is required, unless a player is dead-set on playing with minmaxers or tryhards.

It’s also worth pointing out that ascended gear has been easier and easier to get since its introduction. That trend will only continue as we see GM Jeweler, raid drops, etc. I have a feeling you’ll see more, easier ways to get the BiS gear with HoT.

lastly, with more gear becoming viable, and even reccomended, they need to build a system that handles multiple gear sets and swaps much better

100% agree. It’s a long overdue feature.

We’re going to have to agree to disagree, phys.

We’ve shown with math and examples of real-life clears of the content that exotic-geared players are capable of progressing past this boss.

We’ve shown that the difference between ascended gear and exotic gear is small enough that it will not prevent an exotics-clad team from depleting the Vale Guardian’s health before the timer runs out.

We’ve provided sound, logical arguments that the odds of a 10-man team that is solely geared in exotics (which could still beat the content) will not be a common occurrence.

We’ve shown that it is trivial to obtain enough ascended pieces that, by the time a player is ready skill-wise to enter a raid, they should still have a nice boost over the required and sufficient exotic gear.

I’m not sure what else there is to say. Your sole complaint seems to be that the Challenging Group Content is challenging, and that better gear is better than worse gear.

It’s a rare occurrence, but I’m at a loss for words at this point.

VodCom.6924:

I’m not an expert on DPS ranking nor speed clear but are these numbers only for single target or for multiple targets ?

7k DPS is what I can sustain for 8 min with the necro pugging build in CoE (I can sustain around 12 vuln on avg and get 25 might on my own. No need for fury since I have deathly perception).

I sometimes look at record runs of arah and a warrior can get more than 30k cumulated damage with 100b on the lupicus. That’s more than 10k dps but it’s not on 8 min average but rather on less than 30 sec long fights.

I’m afraid that sustaining 14k dps on average on a single moving target for 8min is a lot to ask. Of course on 3 or 5 targets this is a piece of cake but that’s not gonna matter for the vale guardian.

Numbers like “14k DPS” are for ideal circumstances. Flawless rotations, full might/vuln uptime, stationary fights, no dodging, etc.

For an active, mobile fight like Vale Guardian, those circumstances are quite unrealistic. I pointed this out earlier, but I’d like to know whether that 20M HP includes the RGB guardians during the split/phase transition — that’s a lot of DPS downtime if that 20M HP only includes the Vale Guardian and will throw the numbers off significantly.

Burtnik.5218:

The funny part is that AN themself says “zerk meta is gone” yet to beat it..you will actually need zerk.

Yes, DPS gear is still important. Top-performing groups will always be in mostly zerker/sinister gear in this game because support/healing/cc isn’t tied to gear stats. They come from traits, weapon, and skill choices.

If you look at the fight, the meta has been significantly upset. Ranged DPS is important. Knockbacks are important. Dedicated condition dealers are important. A tank to manage aggro is necessary. Sustain is required. It’s quite inaccurate to suggest that the meta hasn’t changed.

There’s a lot more going on than than “what gear stats are they using?”

I don’t understand why people are so hell-bent on filling their inventories with alternate sets of gear because gimmicky encounters arbitrarily require them.

phys.7689:

Ascended is going to be, by the vast majority a, player enforced expectation for participating in raids.

First off, this isn’t true. There are more casuals than hardcore players in this game. I’m an officer in a casual PvE guild that will not be enforcing ascended gear, and there are plenty of others out there, too. If these people want to raid without being forced into ascended gear, they just need to find an appropriate group to play with.

And more to the point, what are you advocating? Seriously, I want to know what your solution to these alleged problems would be.

From what I gather, you want to retune the encounter so that players in exotics won’t be pushed as hard.

Well, ascended gear is still better. The minmaxers are still going to push for ascended gear. Casual players still won’t care. All that happens is that the encounter gets neutered, and now those new players won’t be challenged by the content when they do get ascended gear.

This game has tried balancing endgame content around new/low-level players. Just look at AC — It doesn’t improve anything. Top tier endgame should be balanced for endgame players. ArenaNet has been more than generous by already allowing exotics to suffice.

phys.7689:

Do you really think if you handed a fresh 80 all the gear he needs, and trained him 2 hours a day for a week he would be unable to progress? I highly doubt it.

Please reread my post. I went out of my way to mention that a full party of inexperienced, undergeared players should not be able to clear it easily (As in, during their first few sessions).

If they put the time in to practice it, yes, they’ll get it eventually. In a week? Sure, if they’re dedicated to practice and fast learners.

And the point here is that not having ascended gear won’t prevent them from progressing. It’s about whether they’re willing to put in the time to practice the encounters and learn their to play their classes at a high level of proficiency. A single DPS trait worth of damage loss won’t make or break the team’s success.

phys.7689:

do all of my friends, who the expansion is trying to get back into the game?
does everyone who comes to the game from this point forward?
does the guy who wont become interested in raids till he sees them in game?

Will these people still be able to progress in the raids in exotics?

Yes.

So what’s the problem? You’re still basing all of this on the falsehood that you can’t progress without ascended gear.

phys.7689:

28 days is a long time.

If a full team of players who just joined the game 28 days ago could clear it, even in ascended gear, I’d not be happy with the difficulty with the content.

This is supposed to be a challenge for the many, many players who, today, have been soloing/duoing/etc Arah/FotM/etc for years. I don’t see how the accessibility to a month-old player is relevant.

Do you really want a full team of players who just got to 80 and are just starting to have access to exotic gear to be able to beat the top tier PvE content?

And just to be clear, they can still participate in the content at that point, but should need to be part of a more experienced team while they learn the ropes.

Ayrilana.1396:

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Beautiful, just what I was looking for — thanks!

So in a nutshell, trinkets are a 4.8% increase, adding weapons is another 5.9%, and armor is a 1.8% increase, for a total of 12.5%. Neat how my underestimate (10%) and Astral’s overestimate (15%) pretty much split the difference.

Using the 70s remaining on the first kill as a baseline, the same team in full exotics would have had 10s remaining.

Considering that it’s highly unlikely for a full 10 man team to have 0 ascended pieces between them and that this fight was done without extensive practice/theorycrafting/etc, it sounds more than reasonable to say that it’s doable with exotics.

And again, in practice, you’re likely to have a mix of exotics and ascended gear in even a casual group, so the full 12.5% potential DPS loss isn’t likely to be realized.

Thanks again for the link, that’s really helpful.

Tree.3916:

checkmate? kappa

Heh, is that directed at me? If I did something stupid feel free to call me out on it

I’m not terribly familiar with how these numbers translate into DPS, so it’s entirely possible that I left something out. I’ve just heard a lot of different numbers thrown around and want to pin down an accurate representation of the relevant stat changes and the practical difference between the performance of the gear sets.