Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Thats a problem with the content not the gear. Its something that should be discussed in this CDI. Many trash mobs are too easy and the mob groups dont have synergising attacks. The only exception to this is Arah trash mobs.

Naetell.3815:

spoj.9672:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

NoTrigger.8396:

moiraine.2753:

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.

thats wrong. every optimal build brings as much support and cc as possible and sacrifices dps to achieve that.

But that’s not how it works at all… Currently all your dps comes from your gear, and all your support/cc comes from your utilities. They are completely separate. There is no support gear or CC gear. I can do 100% dps and 100% support if I am capable of dodging. Or I can do 50% dps and 100% support. The only difference is what gear I am wearing.

Thats what makes gw2 good. Theres no forced re-gearing. Support should be independant of gear. We dont have dedicated tanks or healers in this game so there is no need for gear to define a supportive role. If you change this you will cause more exclusivity which is what most people in this thread dont want.

Support should be independant of gear, control should be independant of gear. Those are fine sentiments to have, but then why insist on having DPS roles tied to gear?
Looking at it from an action game perspective, DPS is the problem role here atm, not support or control.

Im not sure i follow. You want to remove dps as a role? Are we going to CC and heal mobs to death?

I was a bit incorrect in saying optimized groups though. Although it certainly wouldnt be bad for fractals or casual runs.

It will be the new best set for pve (condi) solos.

Roybe.5896:

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

Actually, no I don’t. Seems a legit problem to overcome under pressure. All plans in life are like this. Perfect until engagement commences. This just seems to be requiring raids to be a logic puzzle than a fight.

Once you have engaged you cannot switch skills. If you do not have the tools available to defeat the boss then you are forced to disengage. This might be acceptible on your first few playthroughs. But after that its just silly and annoying.

Roybe.5896:

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

This is my definition of a static fight. The challenge is in figuring it out, one and done kind of content.

All AI results in this in the end. AI is predictable after all. They key is to make a fight fun and challenging even when you know exactly what to do. Many fractal bosses pull this off rather well despite being relatively simply. And there is always room for new innovative strategies.

Roybe.5896:

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

Again, your assumption. I do not hate speedruns. What I’m trying to do is get people to help come up with other ideas that are outside the general consideration of repetition for the sake of efficiency. To switch this up, why should speed running be considered the ‘gold standard’ since you apparently are unimpressed with ideas that might not be as controllable thus decreasing your efficiency?

I didnt say you hate speedruns. I was merely explaining my reasoning for disliking excessive randomness. There is a competative side to PvE. And that is speedrunning. If things are too random then it works against that community. As a speedrunner myself I would have loved to compete for fractal records. Unfortunately the RNG nature of how instances are selected makes that completely unrealistic to achieve any real competition.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

snip

I think you add an interesting dimension to the discussion here, but I dont see a contradiction with the toolkit discussion.

Both styles should be implemented/included to a degree. Yes, stay away from forcing people into highly specialized builds, but fights should be technically challenging (your egg example) while requiring us to dip into our toolkit and reactively choose the best ones to deal with the situation.

I see a productive conversation progressing down two lanes:

1. What tools (capabilities) should raids be expected to have when entering an encounter, and

2. What tools/mechanics can developers use to challenge us in the raids.

The two topics are synergistic and should both be considered when looking at fight design.

So, yes, your first example would not be as excited as your second, but your second is going to be more interesting and challenging if it encourages players to dip into a wider set of abilities in order to defeat the challenge.

In your worm example – what if, instead of being encased in eggs, the players spewed forth were now under enemy control with five stacks of defiance and could only be returned to player control through an interrupt. Instead of breaking the eggs open with dps, the goal would be to uses ccs to break defiance without damaging (and potentially killing) your teammate, while negating the damage they might do to the party – and geting out a final cc to bring them back to their senses (back to player control).

In other words, I think they can (should) design fights with both in mind, not one or the other.

So, lets do both – lets talk about the toolkits/soft roles players can fill, but – to your points – lets also talk about the toolkits/soft roles the enemies can fill as well.

This was kind of what i was trying to say. Only better worded and in more detail. We can have both and we should have both.

NoTrigger.8396:

there is one thing i dont understand when people make suggestions here.

ill give you guys an example.
imagine the amber head was instanced for 15 players.
lets say the amber head has boons now that you have to remove.
2 people in your party will use weapons or traits to remove the boons. does that make the fight more interesting?
or lets say the amber head spawns adds that can only be killed with condition damage.
does that make the fight more interesting?
are these cool “mechanics” ?

ok ok, now imagine…
8 people will be eaten, 8 people have to pick up the harpoon gun, and exactly 8 people have to use them to shoot the wurm head in order to prevent the wurm from using his one hit ability which will wipe the entire raid regardless of what you are doing or how tanky you are.
when the wurm spews the 8 players out, they will be transformed into wurm eggs and the other players have to free the 8 players by destroying the eggs in a set amount of time so the 8 players can use the harpoon gun and shoot the wurm before the wurm will use his one hit attack, while dodging aoes and using reflects/projectile absorbance.

this fits the gw2 combat system much more, is more challenging and more interesting than stuff from 2005.
and thats why i said

so instead of “how can we design bosses that eliminate meta” it would be a better way to start with “how can we design bosses that require knowledge, skill, teamwork and coordination”
this is what raid content is for. not to make your unpopular build king.

the encounters should be designed without special builds in mind.

in wow that was required, because in wow you cannot really challenge your players except with spreadsheet fights or making the fights so you have to grind gear before you are strong enough to beat the encounter.

in gw2 however, you can challenge your players in a different, and much more fun way, because the combat system is action based and encounters should be build around this.

I think the key is to combine both forms. You increase build variety by using more semi passive abilities which simply keep the players on their toes. While also making abilities which require high coordination as you just described.

guardian.6489:

Well we could establish a hard limit for what we would tolerate as a “hard” requirement, as in where do you draw the line for how much a certain profession has access to a tool? I think we’ve talked a lot about reflects and condition damage and most other tools absolutely everyone has access to (condi-removal, interupts, crowd control, etc.). Let’s focus on 2 edge cases, Boon Striping and Stealth.

Here’s the wiki page for everything that can remove boons: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon. Now as I listed earlier, Mesmers, Nercomancers, Engineers, thieves and Guardians (we got one trait that actually works well) all have access to boon removal. It should be noted that all professions technically can access boon removal with the Superior Sigil of Nullification which removes a boon on crit.

So with that in mind, could you develop an encounter which requires boon removal? Like a Boss is applying Stability to himself and you need to remove it and push him into a certain spot with Crowd control skills?

I think it’s fine since I doubt you’ll be in a situation where out of 15 people, nobody is a Mesmer, Nerco, Engineer, thief or Guardian or has a Sigil of Superior Nullification. You’d have to be a 15 man group of pure Warrior, Elementalist and rangers.

Stealth is a lot less widespread wiki page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth. Effectivelty only Thieves, Engineers and mesmer have access to it (rangers have it but it’s short and doesn’t last very long) and mesmer stealth only lasts 6 seconds at the most.

So with that in mind would a section where you have to quickly stealth by an enemy be unfair in it’s class spread? Now in theory you could get around this dilemna by offering a “smoke bomb” item nearby which creates a smoke field you can blast for stealth. But what are your guy’s opinions?

I think thats fine. As you said give environmental weapons to compensate for a possible groups shortcoming. But only in extremes such as stealth, portal or required active defence. For example necros dont have any damage avoidance other than dodge. So while a group could definately help them cope. Some more extreme encounters should maybe provide a few environmental weapons which give the player a block or invuln.

Roybe.5896:

Wouldn’t randomness increase the need for coordination and communication. I understand that ‘metas happen’, but, are they necessary? Can a meta be claimed when it’s aim is to ‘be prepared in general’ rather than ‘this is the most efficient way to run this’? More interestingly, are these activities acting as a reward? Can those rewards be attained in a different manner? Can metas be minimized in some way and make the game more interesting overall?

Why is chaos and randomness within an encounter ‘bad design’, but ok in mob placement? What is rewarding about ‘set piece’ fights being scripted?

I remember large content within GW1. Metas in that game eventually trivialized the content. Much of the content became soloable so that min max rewards were obtained to the detriment of the content. We currently have many dungeon paths, content made to be hard enough for 5 man teams, is now soloable to increase the rewards. The answer to these problems have lead many games, this one included, to make uninspiring content (i.e. damage sponges, one shot kills, etc.) for many that enjoy this type of content, or poorly designed content that with ‘proper’ metas, can be beaten with fewer people than originally designed, increasing rewards for those that can and excluding more people from the content because fewer are needed.

I have no problems with smaller groups running, good for them for finding a way…however it does hurt the overall game in the long run..either by concentrating wealth, excluding more people actually running the content, and injecting more goods into the economy devaluing the rewards to a degree ( if these smaller groups are more efficient than larger groups).

Can we avoid putting the blame on solo’ers for hurting the game please. Your last paragraph is completely unjustified and full of incorrect assumptions. The average solo’er makes a lot less gold per hour than your average open worlder. And almost all the gold the solo’er earns is taken from other players, its not generated from nothing.

Ill explain why randomness within an encounter is bad. Say your group gets to a boss which has 3 different skill sets. Its random which one it takes. Say one skill set requires as many interrupts as you can take. And another skillset requires huge amounts of condition cleanse. You have no way to tell which skills you need until you engage. Do you see the problem here?

On the other hand. Say you get to a room. You know theres a boss there. But it can be 1 of 3 bosses. Each boss requires a different strategy. You see the boss and then you know which skill set you need. But that doesnt mean its easy. The fight should be challenging regardless of preparation. You are not setting up groups to fail at every attempt with this method.

Anyway Im kind of against randomizing boss spawns because then a raid becomes a bit too much RNG based. Which reduces the competative side. You might not like speedruns. But they are a good method of adding replayability and promotion for content. Despite the many speedrun haters. There are also a lot who were inspired by the same content simply because they keep an open mind.

Roybe.5896:

Blaeys.3102:

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

Very well said.

This is why I think this thread needs to take the toolbox approach several of us advocated several pages back (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356).

Let’s put our energy into identifying the tools a raid should be expected to bring (interrupts), those they are likely to have (boon stripping), and those that are very niche (mesmer portal) – and then look at them as a laundry list of soft “roles” players can fill while in raids. That will provide a solid base on which initial raid design can be built.

This was the point of my idea of introducing randomness into the equation. If events cannot be completely planned for, you have, in my way of seeing it, a much more dynamic, difficult, and engaging event. It doesn’t become a LFG needs condi warrior or LFG needs bomb Engi. It becomes a dance of ‘CC that mob so I can get my sword out’ or ‘hang on while I switch out my bleed skill for an interrupt skill’. This type of gameplay works towards this games strengths, rather than knowing every event and bringing prebuilt meta’s.

This is breaking the molds of other games raids based on the above issues. It appears that many do not agree, or think there are other ways to accomplish this goal. Great. I can help find the edge of the box. This is one of them. How to do you get past the box to something new and different that allows for greater flexibility, while allowing raiders to become their own ‘special snowflakes’.

You are misunderstanding. Whether you introduce randomness or not there will be a meta composition. But the meta will involve switching skills out more. Thats something we are all for. But randomness for the sake of randomness will just irritate a large portion of the playerbase. And something you should keep in mind. No matter how random or adaptive you make AI it will always be predictable after a certain point. You cannot change that.

Its best to create challenge through range of abilities and coordination required. Not randomness. You can make mobs and bosses spawn in different locations. That kind of randomness is fine. But when you start making groups engage fights not knowing what abilities it will have especially when those abilities require coordination to be countered. Thats bad design.

Bosses should have a range abilities like players. Some of them should have enrage attacks for when a group fails to prevent it. They should have heals which you can interrupt. They should have boons (not permanently refreshing boons). They should have boon stealing abilities, debuffs and unique utilities. But the key thing to remember is every attack should be avoidable or counterable.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

NoTrigger.8396:

moiraine.2753:

Of the current roles that exist (support,control,damage) in instances only 1 is viable at this moment.And that is pure dmg.

thats wrong. every optimal build brings as much support and cc as possible and sacrifices dps to achieve that.

But that’s not how it works at all… Currently all your dps comes from your gear, and all your support/cc comes from your utilities. They are completely separate. There is no support gear or CC gear. I can do 100% dps and 100% support if I am capable of dodging. Or I can do 50% dps and 100% support. The only difference is what gear I am wearing.

Thats what makes gw2 good. Theres no forced re-gearing. Support should be independant of gear. We dont have dedicated tanks or healers in this game so there is no need for gear to define a supportive role. If you change this you will cause more exclusivity which is what most people in this thread dont want.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

and the wildstar raid content is full stop the best raiding content any MMO has ever released.

Noone is saying Wildstar failed because it’s raiding content was bad. It started having problems, because that raiding content turned out to be not as important to the players as devs expected. They decided to devote too much effort to those raids, and as a result the rest of the game suffered – and as it turned out, it was the rest of the game, not raids, that players really cared about.
That’s an important lesson for GW2 as well – while making raids don’t forget, that only a tiny minority of players cares about them, and that they should not pretend to be more important than they are (which is – not much). Because if you put too much emphasis on raids, gw2 as a whole will suffer for it.

We already have the rest of gw2. Ill repeat. Its not going anywhere. Also with regular living story updates i dont think you need to worry about less content for casual players. The fact is anet have been neglecting endgame instanced content for a long time. Its about time they change that. Which is why me and many other hardcore players are so passionate about this CDI. Unfortunately there still seems to be a lot of arguements and misinformation which is drowning out the good posts in this thread.

To get back on topic.

I have a question for the devs. How do you feel about dungeons and elite zones in gw1? Would you be willing to use those as a base for future content? They are a unique form of endgame content in MMO’s and were a big success. They are unique to GW and could quite easily be adapted and still retain a GW/GW2 feel. Im not sure raids would be the correct term for them but they are also perfectly suited to fill the role raids should fill.

One of the major successes of GW2 is the open world and event system. I know i find it rather boring now. But back when i was a new player it was the opposite. I definately think you should strive to incorporate this feel into raids. And by that I mean make the maps large explorable zones with plenty of freedom in routes and create multiple dynamic event chains to guide progression.

You could also include temporary achievements which reset after completion and dont give any permanent reward. The idea would be if you complete these within the raid you get some bonus loot of some sort. So one example would be Vanquisher from GW1. Which for those that dont know is just to clear all mobs and bosses in the zone. Its an optional extra.

None of those are op.

Its only visual afaik.

I also miss the liquid karma from dungeons and the karma booster working on them. It was a nice source of gold every month or so. But at the same time i realise why they changed it and nerfed it. Fractals is a decent place to get karma if you need some.

Anet dont need to assign roles for raids. They are already there. They just need to create content which encourages specialisation in different areas. For example. A boss that requires a lot of interrupts to avoid an op enrage attack. Or a boss that spawns adds which are weak to condition damage but resistant to direct damage. These things dont force anyone but they do force the raid group to change their strategy and maybe change parts of their builds to suit each encounter.

All classes can do all roles (more or less). So theres no need for defining roles. Just give us reasons to alter our specialisations a bit more or force us to change our utilities more. And just to make it clear. This has nothing to do with gear type. Gear is irrelevant in roles except from when switching to condition damage from direct damage.

Well we already know that there is not going to be higher tier gear than ascended (stats wise) so even if raids offer exclusive desirable rewards its not going to diminish the rest of the game. Theres so much focus on open world and living story its probably impossible to do so anyway. Meanwhile dungeons and fractals are festering.

You guys are only fueling Z. Im surprised you still havent noticed.

I think ill restrain myself and avoid posting what i was originally about to. You guys are only fueling Z. Im surprised you still havent noticed. His comments are completely honest and he does have justification for them. Although I can understand how many people dont have enough info to tell. So they just jump on the bandwagon without a second thought. It kind of reminds me of nemesis’s following.

guardian.6489:

Dalanor.5387:

guardian.6489:

hybrid.5027:

The problem is Necromancer isn’t even good at condition damage in pve compared to warrior or engineer. They need a significant buff in that department on the pve side at least.

Aren’t they the meta Condi-bomb in WvW?

It’s completely different to nuke down a player with 10-20k hp than to deal effective DPS on a boss with a few million hp.

True but I thought that killed Condi-damage in PvE in general not just for Nercomancers. Unless I missed something. the only time you use Condi-damage in PvE is at triple trouble and in that case Nercomancers are probably one of the best professions for the role.

Thats only because of epidemic.

If you start talking about large groups of players its not really a raid anymore. Its a zerg. And when you start talking about zergs it doesnt matter how challenging you make the content. It will be easy. Zergs trivialise everything.

So can we stick to discussing ideas around 10-20 player limits. Weve already got fully inclusive open world zerging. We dont really need more of that.

rT is currently not recruiting.

Blaeys.3102:

If we look at the roles players can fill (and Im stealing liberally from this post among others) -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/22#post4533104

- we can identify tiers of player mechanics based on how many professions can bring that capability.

In the following list, I tried to break the different roles apart by how prevalent that role is in the game. In other words, the more "X"s a role has next to it, the easier it is for parties to bring that capability.

Group Roles/Mechanics

xxxxx Melee Damage
xxxxx Range Damage
xxxxx Condition Damage
xxxxx Crowd Control
xxxxx Interrupts
xxxxx Runners

xxxx Group Condition Removal/Support Heals
xxxx Core Boon Sharing (might, regeneration, vigor, etc)
xxxx Damage Reducing Conditions (blind, weakness, Moa morph)
xxxx Reflects and Projectile Protection
xxxx Combo Fields and Blast Finishers

xxx Boon Stripping
xxx Group Stability
xxx Stealth/Invisibility

xx Group Quickness
xx Group Aegis
xx Group Stun Breaks
xx Instant Resurrection (from downed state)

x Mesmer Portal

And there are many I cant think of (steal from other posts ) this morning before my coffee. Of course, it is also possible for developers to artificially add any role into an encounter via transforms and environmental items (aggro through pheromones, for example). Personally, I love that kind of stuff, but I know some dont, so I would only do it sparingly.

Two Questions
The point of this is to set the stage for a few questions -

• How much effort should groups be expected to put into raid composition (which professions/builds they bring), as dictated by fight design?

• Where do we draw the line regarding mandatory roles? Given the above, can developers design a fight where reflects are mandatory? What about mesmer portals or stealth? Should anything outside of the core (4 and 5 "x"s) ever be mandatory in an encounter?

My Opinion
I wanted to separate this out so people could provide their own opinions regarding the questions above (and add in other roles and mechanics in a similar fashion, if they wish) – without having to pay attention to my biases.

In my opinion, the primary advantage of raids compared to other content comes from greater access to niche roles. Raids differ from other content primarily because of that access to diversity. Larger groups mean you can assume most roles will/can be filled by someone in the group.

With that said, this is the developers’ opportunity to design fights that do require pretty much every role any player can fill. With players able to switch traits on the fly, there are very few capabilities that most groups with more than 8 players will not have (as seen above).

The simple solution is to give environmental weapons to account for a groups lack of a certain utility. Much like in arah p1 there are crystals for reflecting before the jotun boss. And there is a bottle which burns the tar elemental to prevent it from petrifying people. You dont need to use these environmental weapons. Regular burns and reflects work. But some groups might not have them so the environmental weapons fill that gap.

This one is cuter. And hes shedding tears because people are so mean to each other. :<

mmmm salty

slowest class

Lol’d

Boss and puzzle mechanics was discussed intensively aswell. But the biggest problem with fractals is the rng instance selection and poor rewards. Many of the bosses and mechanics are pretty decent already. So i kind of expected it to focus on rewards.

Ropechef.6192:

spoj.9672:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

for the sake of further ideas, would someone be so kind and explain to me GW1s raids in a few words. I’ve watched Woodenpotatoes Underworld-vids and it looked quite boring to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I get what eveyone loved about these.

What I know about it:

• it’s instanced and a big map with possibilites to teleport (just like our GW2 maps)
• there are 10 quests you can finish (aren’t events superior to quests?)
• there are some hard enemies (quite similar to Cursed Shore)

What’s the difference? Those seem to me a bit like GW2s lv.80 maps, maybe a bit more difficult.

Just think of them as elite zones. With unique and good rewards. And no open world interference. Thats whats so appealing. It would be nice to have a very challenging explorable zone which is instanced with various quests/events and bosses. Which is the appeal.

Imagine if you will,

Cursed shore, All of the events all of the quest lines and all of the little things. ( all of which make GW2 really good)

Now make it so it is instanced. Only one wp, and there are only 15 of you.

Pretty much. Only difference is it would have a bit more structure and some clear end goals. So it would have various events and each event chain would lead to a different boss. And then after completing all those chains you unlock a final chain which leads to the big bad end boss. So from the start its very much a case of you choose what to do in what order and how to do it. Theres no predefined routes or clear instructions.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

for the sake of further ideas, would someone be so kind and explain to me GW1s raids in a few words. I’ve watched Woodenpotatoes Underworld-vids and it looked quite boring to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I get what eveyone loved about these.

What I know about it:

• it’s instanced and a big map with possibilites to teleport (just like our GW2 maps)
• there are 10 quests you can finish (aren’t events superior to quests?)
• there are some hard enemies (quite similar to Cursed Shore)

What’s the difference? Those seem to me a bit like GW2s lv.80 maps, maybe a bit more difficult.

Just think of them as elite zones. With unique and good rewards. And no open world interference. Thats whats so appealing. It would be nice to have a very challenging explorable zone which is instanced with various quests/events and bosses. Which is the appeal.

Well we will get some evidence of whether they can filter CDI’s effectively when they get round to acting on the fractal CDI. I wonder if that will happen during the end of season 2.

I think you are underestimating the other weapons. Without the utility and range on staff its terrible. Its sustained aoe is really overated especially considering we now have 2 target cleave on dagger.

With regards to scepter vs mark of blood. Grasping dead has 1 less second of bleed duration and 4 second longer cooldown. Only in extended fights does mark of blood become obviously more powerful. However While mark of blood is on cooldown you do not have anything else. Scepter at least allows you to setup a more potent epidemic. Mark of blood is a pre burst condi skill. But setting up marks pre fight is often not worth the hassle in PvE. Im fairly sure no decent pvp player takes staff purely for mark of blood. Im sure leman agrees with me on that.

Theres a reason I didnt use staff even when i used condi/rampager to wipe trash mobs in fractals. The reality is even if for periods of time where you can only do single target dps and then epidemic. Its still better than being locked onto staff.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Resets are a much easier topic to discuss because they are somewhat less time involved. So let’s talk about that, and here are some questions for you guys to answer:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

Personally i dont think raids should have any form of lockout. And i also think that there should be no daily or weekly reward. So a group can raid twice in a day and recieve the same rewards. It is challenging content and it will take time to complete so i dont think its an unreasonable suggestion. At the very least i dont think there should be restrictions on how often you can attempt and complete a raid. If things are over rewarding then i can accept diminishing drops or some boss chests to be locked behind daily reset. However I would be really unhappy if i have to wait a day or a week to enter a raid again. We dont need more timegates.

The rewards would be purely drop, chest and reward track related. So you dont have to worry about daily resets etc. Or if you are going to give a daily end reward like in dungeons. Then it should be minor and the majority of rewards should come from drops throughout the raid. This way groups can still get decent rewards even if they cant finish the raid. Obviously the rewards would be better for the final boss etc.

In terms of resetting instances. I definately like the idea of being able to save your progress. I think the best way would be to just make it automatic and saved to the raid leader or something. And if you want to reset then you can simply select a button at the raid entrance before you enter which will wipe the raids progress. It would appear underneath the usual “enter instance” button.

You get the same damage with axe + axe training. And you arent actually using the staff when you are lifeblasting. You are just taking advantage of its weapon power.

I have much better time tagging with d/w + d/f + wells + DS. Condi tagging with epidemic is pretty abysmal most of the time. You really dont have much aoe downtime if you rotate your aoe skills instead of blowing them all at once.

If you have a staff you can hit 4 single pulses of aoe and then you are stuck with a poor auto attack. Also if you still think condi epidemic tagging is better. Then you still wouldnt use a staff. Camping scepter/dagger with epidemic is far superior in terms of aoe and single target condi damage than using a staff.

Staff is only used in PvP and WvW for the range, the cleanse and the fear. If it didnt have those it wouldnt be used. Its certainly not used for its AOE potential. Thats just a misconception. Its used for AoE in WvW because it has 1200 range. If it was short range then your standard dps weapons would be superior for AoE.

dagger/wh + dagger/focus gets it done fastest. If you want a bit more aoe then swap focus for offhand dagger. But the bouncing focus 4 is also pretty good for aoe.

>.>

You missed my comments about infusions for rewards.

Staff isnt a must have in PvE. Its a bad weapon for everything except PvP and WvW.

Ok so im still very much set on encouraging the overall design of raids to be very much in theme of Underworld, FoW and DoA from GW1. With a large open explorable zone which gives groups the options to complete objectives in whatever order and gives them the freedom to split up if needed. My previous posts have already gone over rewards quite thoroughly. So i thought i would contribute some combat mechanics now.

In terms of fights we already have some very interesting boss mechanics currently in the game. Most of them are on the easy side but if you take the best parts of each of them and combine them then you can some up with some really interesting fights which incorporate the many aspects of GW2’s combat which make it so fun (dodging and positioning).

To start i will list a number of bosses which are regarded as challenging and/or fun/interesting to fight. And explain why they are popular bosses from a hardcore players perspective.

In the regular dungeons we have the famous Lupicus which has a large pool of skills and multiple phases which keep most groups paced. Despite this there is still the possibility to avoid all his attacks providing you are very experienced. And then in TA we have Leurent who is relatively simple yet highly punishing in solos & duos. He has a nice range of high damage skills and even uses a heal skill. The problem is that he is not a threat in a 5 man group. We also have Vevina (RIP) from TA Fw/Up path. She used stealth, area denial, teleports and conditions to make her hard to burst down and very dangerous if you didnt pay attention.

These 3 bosses stand out to me because they provide high amounts of threat while also preventing groups from trivialising the fight through area denile or repositioning. The only exception is Leurent in a full group. But as I said he is well balanced in solos/duos. They also do this without causing excessive irration from over the top pace control. Mai Trin is the opposite of this. She has very irritating timegated invuln phases.

Fractals has a much larger selection of good bosses. The Imbued shaman, Archdiviner and dredge final bosses all have interesting mechanics. Skills wise the bosses are quite dangerous with just their base attacks which provide area denile and high damage. But they also have mechanics which force players to use the environment and positioning to suceed. Shaman has the shield with elemental spawns. Archdiviner has the hammer seal phases and the dredge bosses have the lava buckets to make it vulnerable.

We also have the molten duo. This is one of my favourite fights conceptually. Unfortunately organised dps groups can trivialise it quite easily. The core mechanics of the bosses are good though. Two separate bosses complimenting each other well by having the firestorm create potent area denile fields and keeping a moderate distance. Whereas the berserker tries to stay in melee range of players by teleporting. At the same time they also have an enrage mechanic when they reach health thresholds. Making them even more dangerous and forcing players to move around even more to avoid the area denile skills.

We also have open world bosses such as Priest of Melandru and Statue of Dwayna. These are actually incredibly fun for small groups and solos. Because they are so dangerous and they have a good amount of different skills which force you to not just dodge but also move out of the danger zones.

Finally we have bosses and mobs that have recently been introduced in the latest season of the living story. The mordre dragon is interesting because it has phases of vulnerability and inbetween it forces you to move around and avoid the area denile attacks while also dealing with various mobs. And then there is the champion thrasher which is simple yet has a lot of condition attacks. Its very easy to outsustain and avoid direct damage attacks. But if theres also high condition threat at the same time then it will force players to take cleanses and maybe change their strategy.

Summary
What makes a good boss is a wide range of different attacks with clear tells. They should have area denile skills and maybe combat puzzles to change the pace of the fight. But they should avoid timegated phases. Phases should last until an objective is complete not until a time runs out. Bosses should also have high damage per skill but also incorporate conditions and boons to add complexity. They should allow you to avoid most if not all damage if you are experienced skilled but at the same time you should not just be able to simply dodge attacks. Positioning to avoid damage should also be important. The use of environmetal weapons and terrain to add to puzzles or to compensate for a classes shortcomings should also be considered.

Baltzenger.2467:

Please, let’s stay away from elitism in this thread.
More than a “sad truth”, that is trying to discredit other’s ideas just based on some assumption that “they are casuals, that don’t know what they want and won’t play the raids more than once”.
I can see where that comes from, but at the same time, this is not a democracy, this is just exposing ideas, it doesn’t necessarily means that if an idea gets “repeated” a lot, it has more weight or is better than one that was said just once.
Try to help by proposing and showing your perspective, not by complaining about others being part of the discussion.

Well i hope the bolded part is true. But we have seen evidence of the opposite when discussing balance very recently. Which is undestandable because you remember things more clearly if they are repeated, devs are only human they cant get everything right and sometimes they will listen too much to the wrong people. Which is why I think it is important to bring the issue to the devs attention. Please excuse the slightly aggressive tones. Its still something that shouldnt be ignored. So I would ask that you please dont descredit posts just because of slightly harsh wording.

I would definately like poison on dagger. But i dont think it needs it.

Dalanor.5387:

Crysto i’ll just quote someone else from the dungeon forums.

That CDI sums up to:

“Lets ask our casual playerbase to help give input on hardcore content. Players who have no idea of what they want and are locusts who will only do instanced ‘hard’ content once and never see it again.”

Yea that’ll turn out well.

I would just to add that these kind of players not only don’t understand basic mechanics but constantly bashing meta gameplay which obviously they didn’t understand as well so any suggestion given by them would be just a mess.
Of course honorable mention to the ones who are exceptions from the above.

I would die for some raid content in this game but given the direction this “discussion” is going i’m starting to going against the idea. :/

Quoted for the sad truth.

I hope the devs are well aware of this fault in CDI’s. I understand the purpose of the CDI is to allow those players to discuss ideas which might make them play raids. But the reality is players who wouldnt normally play them probably wont play them more than once even if you tailor it to them. So i hope anet sticks with the traditional style of extremely challenging content for hardcore players with good unique rewards. And just adds incentives to encourage new players to give raids a chance. Probably best way to do this is to add some kind of mentor system so experienced players get rewarded for teaching new players and taking them along with them.

And in terms of mechanics and general design you only need to look back at the elite zones in GW1 and base them off those. The reward systems and free roaming style of Underworld, FoW, DoA were really good. Then you also have Urgoz’s Warren and The Deep to use as source material aswell. Go back to your roots please!

Id like to see discussion on how to adapt those zones and missions into GW2. So how would you alter mechanics to complement GW2’s different combat, build and party system. Because frankly that is a really good starting place and it is a style which is pretty unique to the Guild Wars franchise.

That is why the suggestion of prestige items being obtained from a vendor at the end of the raid should be repeated. The raid loot would be unique mats which are only obtained in the raid but they can be traded. The unique cosmetic items purchased with those materials are account bound and can only be bought from the vendor which is available at the end of the raid.

It solves both sides of the arguement. Drops are always rewarding because you can trade the unique raid materials. But you have to do the content to get the prestige items because the vendor is only accessible inside the raid and once you have killed the final boss. If you dont need any of the prestige items then you can just sell the mats. So it will always be rewarding.

Yeah players can skip a few runs by buying all the mats before hand. But thats probably only going to be doable for insanely rich players. Its a similar system used for FoW armour in gw1. And that armour always remained prestigious right till the end of the game.

Necros are pretty good for safe trash clearing. So they are better in fractals than they are in dungeons. The problem is that the skills that are good for this are high cool down (Wells and CPC). And necros lack everything else which other classes dont. Weakness and especially blinds are highly used in high fractals against the big dangerous mob packs.

Other classes can often do these things better. However necro has them in the form of pulsing high radius skills. So in quick clears of very large groups they are actually better. Assuming you are not concerned about the cool down.

Arewn.2368:

Has it been established that the 5-person party system will still be used even within the raid group?
This is pretty important because of the AoE cap and how boons are dispersed. We’ll need to be able to organize ourselves so that we can properly distribute boons after all. This can come into play in some pretty major ways depending on the raid fight mechanics. For example: being able to have a spike team that stacks offensive buffs, and a defense team that stacks regen/prot/stability.

As far as im concerned. This should be a given. Simply because of AoE cap and boon sharing restrictions. It makes things simpler and will avoid confusion. We dont want to confuse players by making group buffs and aoe caps work differently in a raid versus all other parts of the game. Consistancy is important.

Also with boon sharing if you dont keep sub groups of 5 then you may get some odd overlap of boon sharing. If you keep things in groups of 5 then buffs will prioritise on party members and will allow the raid group to fully control buff sharing equally among all members of the raid group. Basically each sub party would be responsible for their own boons and group buffs. Which i dont see any problem with and seems like the best system to me. It encourages spreading out roles into different sub groups.

Id be surprised if the developers disagreed with me and you on this point.

I would assume its dagger. By now most people tend to follow the meta.

Arewn.2368:

I feel splitting up the raid is a fundamentally bad idea, here’s why:
The idea of the raid is to have a cooperative experience with a medium-size group. If the first thing you do is split that group into different paths, then you stop playing together and start playing beside each other.
The raid needs to find a method of engaging the 15 member group together in a meaningful way.
Remember Marionette? fun fight. But failing because lane 4 couldn’t beat the mini-boss, and there was nothing you could do to interact with the lane 4 players or influence the outcome? not so fun.

I want to actually play with the 14 other members of the raid, not have 10 of them separate from me doing their own thing in a different place that happens to be working to the same objective.
Sub-objectives within an encounter that divide the group are good, but all the members have to still be in the same encounter and able to interact with the other sub-groups.

15 people jumping on the same mob is going to be a meaningless cluster, that’s definitely the case and there needs to be a solution to that. But sending them their separate ways is not a solution I think we should be satisfied with.
15 people jumping on the same mob, but that mobs has different body parts that need to be engaged in different ways and that require interactivity between them. That can be meaningful combat.
15 people in the same room for one encounter, but there’s some heavy hitting high health mobs that need to be locked down by a CC/tanky team, while other members burn adds, and the main group kills the boss. That can be meaningful.

I kind of agree with this. I dont think raids should be designed to force the group to split into smaller groups to progress. But I think it should be something that is optional. Especially for more experienced players.

The way I want to see raids in gw2 is very much how UW and FoW were in gw1. The group enters a large open map and can go off and complete multiple quests/objectives. You can do them in any order. Each will have an end boss and separate rewards. And then there will be a final boss once all sub objectives are complete. And going back to unique rewards and hybrids original proposal. Once you beat the final end boss it unlocks a vendor which you can spend unique materials (obtained from drops in the raid) to buy prestigious unique cosmetic gear.

This means groups have the option to split up and tackle multiple sub objectives at the same type with however many players they feel is necessary. But only if they are experienced or feel comfortable doing so. It would simply open up new strategies for experienced players. It would add great replayability to the content. Especially once players have worked out how to complete all the events with a full group, it will give them something new to try. The general groups would probably all still go around and do each objective one at a time. But theres no reason why we cant have the option to tackle things in any order we like and at the same time with group splits.

Also id just like to mention that Arah and AC already have maps which are almost suitable for this type of layout. Some of the other dungeon maps are also not far off, they just lack size, looping and intertwining routes. If you opened up the blocked doors and tunnels in AC and combined all path objectives into one singular instance. And allowed them to be completed in any order while tieing the rewards to each objective. You get a really free roaming and fun instance with a lot of replayability. The same can be done with Arah.

Its generally just a dungeon with slightly larger groups and much harder content. Sometimes they are literally just a single boss although most of them are very similar to dungeons.

In many games they are gated by gear and they are the main source of obtaining the highest tier equipment. Some games have 40 man raids but those are just zerg fests. Most agree that around 10-20 is a decent size for a raid group.

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.

It seems that its only a significant concern for you. Most guilds should have no problem organising into smaller groups. Even if their numbers dont divide up perfectly. I think its time we move away from it. You’ve made your point on the issue. Thats all there is to it.