Raids in Guild Wars 2

[Deleted]

I got to pug it the last hour or so with some cool people on TS. The 'trash' bosses went well but the final boss was too much for us even though we got quite far. You require A LOT of damage and furthermore there is a lightning field that zigzags through the battlefield and everytime it pops up at least 4 people need to stand in it or you're pretty much wiped. (this was the main thing we struggled in. Also this makes it seem like going in without voice chat would be really difficult as you have to announce the location of the lightning immediately).

I started as a full cleric healer but I generated way too much aggro so I changed to a condi build instead. But all in all it was really fun (heals are actually helpful, even though not necessary depending on the skill of your group). You needed to balance your party out with Condi dealers, Full dps and Boon strippers in order to be able to defeat the last boss, which is cool because that means they are actually fighting against the zerker meta. Although the dps timer counters this a bit.

I probably won't do the raids until I've completed the full HoT story and gained some more ascended stuff/masteries (masteries are actually helpful aswell).

In short: LIGHTNING LIGHTNING LIGHTNING

[zito]

Did you beat it yet?

I have no guild so I pugged so no. The group lacked coordination but beside that I know it's not that hard

[zed zebes]

There's a lot I could respond to in this thread.

I did the raid a few times on a Chronomancer, mostly with pugs. I did one organized run of like 7 people and one organized run of 4 people. The 4 player team could get through the first three trash mobs, but could only dent like 5% off the boss. 7 man group could get to 50% but the teleport kept screwing us up.

Most success I had was with a pug group that had been hitting it hard for hours. Got to about 45% on the boss.

Condy DPS is a big deal. Watching those engies just puke out tick damage that fast and hard really burned down the red guardian and boosted non-active DPS of the group. Figuring out which player has the highest toughness helps, too. The 7 man group went without a Druid healer and it held us back.

Biggest issue was the clarity on the teleport circles or how often they did not teleport. I ran over those suckers many times without anything happening. Normally, I'd Blurred Frenzy when they pop. If the teleport thing popped up underneath a Lightning Circle, it was nigh impossible to see if through the spell effects. This caused many of our downs/deaths.

Overall, it did feel like a dance step raid design, which is a bit of a letdown for me. That's an old sort of design that I want MMOs to move away from. People in here talking about bad GW2 players simply do not get challenge. There is more of a skill check at high level GW2 play due to combat design than what you can compare it to in the rest of MMOs. Wildstar is the best comparison, but Wildstar is full of passive defenses as well.

The best part of the raid was the split, where the group had to hit three targets at once. That, combined with some of the group play systems like boons and combo fields, would make for better use of what GW2 combat can do rather than the dance step design. Because dance step design becomes trivial in difficulty once you learn the steps.

It is the first Raid boss, so I don't expect anything too fierce in difficulty. The pugs were doing surprisingly well considering the limited access and time they had to learn the fight and improve.

edit: To add to what LurkingPenaut said, a guildie did a pug group with me as a cleric druid and his toughness made him the aggro target as well. Making highest toughness the aggro may not be the best idea, but GW2 gives players enough tools that it shouldn't be a problem. I think the issue is just not expecting to be the mob focus as healer. I didn't play it as Druid so my view is basically just a guess.

I would say, with the way staff works on its Attack heal, having your allies behind the target would be a problem. However, GW2 design doesn't need a constant aggro. Cannot put too much analysis into one boss fight as well.

EDIT #2:

Mesmer specific stuff: Alacrity, boon strip and some CC is your role. I took two wells, shield and the alacrity on well end traits. I was able to keep a good rate of alacrity on the group. There is a trade-off in that your shield Phantasms do poor damage while increasing your groups recharge rate. I ended up taking the stun trait and the boon strip on shatter traits. While CCs matter less during fights, breakbar mechanics require CC bursting, for which the stun on daze trait matters.

It appears that each CC skill has a weighted amount of how much breakbar it takes off. Right now, that seems poorly balanced and Revenant's Glint elite and their Staff knockback do a ton more damage to the breakbar than even CC heavy classes like Mesmer. The soft CCs barely dent the breakbar, so Necro struggles at this despite all their chill.

[Fencers]

It's interesting how toughness interacts to hold aggro, making other surv stats like vit more interesting so you don't get focused.

Indeed. I think this is wonderful design. The way the "stats" or rather the character attributes of GW2 were designed are among the most clever and logical I have seen in practice. Though often I have lamented the attributes not having a more relevant function to the gameplay beyond +1.

However, creating a push/pull between attributes naturally leads to interesting choices in Guild Wars 2. If the new raid content brings this to the fore, I think that is smart design. Which can not be said (IMO) of other games with more limited character relevant attributes.

Usually more Str is just more damage in other games, more Con is just hit points, etc. There is usually a false choice being made- I probably will never forgo more Int on my mage in Evercraft Online, there is no choice at all really. I like the idea of making interesting attribute decisions that have a rational outcome. Toughness for "tanking" rather than an arbitrary theme of "hate"/"aggro" or an abstraction in the Health Pool. etc. Interesting.

I would like to see more done with geometry in the game as well. GW2 renders a lot of geometry but collisions are pretty simple.

[zito]

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

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...uired-Ascended

Ascended is recommended not required. Player skill and builds will play a bigger factor.

Also they just reduced the 500% damage buff of the enrage timer. I still think to either give it a soft enrage or put it to 9 or 10 minutes.

[PACOX]

If you haven't noticed already, the boss and its mini-bosses are very similar to the Scarlet holograms. Of course its been scaled and the mechanics fleshed out but its very similar. Having to have color attunements was replaced with the circle of death (the one that 4 people have to stand in), nothing is stationary, you have to deal with all the holo abilities at once. Pretty cool since people did want to see the Scarlet fight again as a fractal tuned to 5 people, we get it as a raid encounter tuned to 10 people. The room also had speed mushroom nodes, which would potentially make it a lot easier to get to the circles of death in time.

From a lore prospective, the Vale Guardian is the same type of entity that was born from the Thaumanova Reactor experiments/explosion where they were messing with dragon magic. The anomalies (what it was called inThaumanova) mimic Scarlet's holograms. Related maybe?

So far I don't see the need for an enrage timer. Maybe we they should have allowed us to test it without an enrage time to see if would could cheesy it through running nothing but bunker builds. I feel like worthy groups will succeed with or without the timer. People who need the bunker crutch would probably fall to the mechanics of the fight anyway. Ascended gear defin wasn't required for the first fight since 90% of the fight was dealing with the mechanics (getting to the death circles, dodging orbs, defeating break bars, not getting hit by orbs, sustain - pretty much in that order).

[Rukh]

http://jasongreynolds.com/resume

Thanks. Man it was like his name had been purged from the internet.

[Deleted]

Not making a separate topic for it because it will just get full of arguments but are there any e.g. top 100ish WoW guilds making gw2 raid teams?