Raids in Guild Wars 2

[Karizee]

Raids in Guild Wars 2

by Steven Waller on August 29, 2015

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/r...-guild-wars-2/





You asked for the ultimate challenging content in Guild Wars 2—challenges that would put your skills to the test and push you and your friends to the edge to achieve victory. Now the answer is here. Today at PAX Prime, we announced that the “challenging group content” that we said would arrive with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ is Raids! Built on top of our ground-breaking combat and dynamic event systems, the ultimate challenge is coming.

Players who purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will get access to our first raid, with the first of the three associated raid wings to be activated shortly after launch. During this window, we’ll be looking at balance with our new profession and elite specializations as well as giving players some time to train the Heart of Maguuma Masteries that will be used in the first raid wing. The remaining two raid wings will follow in sequence soon after.

ArenaNet has always challenged conventions and looked to innovate, and Raids in Guild Wars 2 will be no different. But for those of you that weren’t able to see our presentation at PAX, you might be asking yourselves…


What Are Raids in Guild Wars 2?

Raids are 10-player, instanced content that will introduce very challenging bosses, epic encounters, and more! And we’re building them on top of our amazing combat and dynamic event systems to create a variety of difficult challenges that will require your raiding team to bring a high level of skill, strategy, and coordination in order to succeed.

Expecting to be able to just watch the UI to beat a boss? Guess again! Raiding in Guild Wars 2 is an action-oriented, engaging experience. You’ll have to actively manage your position, dodge, coordinate on objectives, and much more. You’ll have moments of anticipation where your next action could spell victory or death. And with a diverse range of difficult challenges, being able to customize your build will really pay off. You’ll be dependent on keeping yourself alive and helping support your team while playing your profession. Everyone will be expected to pitch in and execute at a high level to ensure success.

Raids will also tie into our new, advanced Mastery system of progression. We’ll be introducing new Mastery tracks and abilities that will be closely tied to progressing though raids, which our designers will be talking about in an upcoming blog. We’ll also be introducing new rewards. Which rewards, you ask? We’ll talk about that in more detail a little later, but let’s just say they’re legendary…





A Fresh Take On Raiding

Raids in Guild Wars 2 are not about waiting to have fun. You don’t need to wait for your healer to get online. Our build-customization and weapon-swapping systems allow anyone to change their build to meet a particular challenge. And while a warrior might support a group differently than an elementalist would in terms of playstyle, our systems allow you to adjust your team’s composition and strategy to overcome any challenge.

Raids are not about an endless gear grind to get tiers of gear to go tackle the next raid. Raids won’t become easier because a new tier of gear or a level-cap raise made them irrelevant. We think beating a raid encounter should be a big deal—not just when you beat it, but for the life of the game. It takes away the meaning of your victory when suddenly new tiers of gear or more powerful experience levels are introduced that leave a wasteland of raids in their wake. If you beat a raid in Guild Wars 2, it means something and always will.





The First Raid

In the first Raid wing, players will face three awesome, diverse, and very challenging bosses as well as an epic event that will leave players literally running for their lives. Each encounter will introduce different mechanics that require unique strategies to overcome and will be a big accomplishment if defeated. For each encounter, our goal is that you’ll need to face it many times to learn how to defeat it, continuing to develop your strategies, refining your communication and honing your tactics through practice, in order to execute to a high degree with the hope of eventually conquering it and moving on to the next encounter in the wing.

Altogether, players can expect to face big challenges in all three wings that will stretch the abilities of even our most battle-hardened adventurers. Raids will also become a key part of our live strategy for Guild Wars 2 in the future, but we’ll discuss that more down the road.

As players embark on this new adventure, they’ll start their journey in search of a Pact recon squad that vanished while on assignment. Following their trail, you’ll fight your way deeper into forgotten territory, encounter dangerous new enemies, and witness mystifying events. So join up with your friends, family, guild, or just a group of heroes from our friendly MMO community.

Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to launch.

I’ll see you in game!

[Maarius]

reward for raids: Legendary Armor precursor parts, which can be forged into legedary armor.

Just as with legendary weapons, legendary armor won't be a new tier but has the same stats as ascended gear. You can switch stats with it. It'll gonna be awesome, no idea where to start: new legendary weapons, legendary backpiece from fractals or legendary armor.

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also on the new HoT website the first glimpse at the Deep Sea Elder Dragon??!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just as with legendary weapons, legendary armor won't be a new tier but has the same stats as ascended gear.

This needs to be bolded, before more people start screaming power creep in all caps.

[Fencers]

Seems neat. I long felt 10-12 was a perfect raid size for the modern MMO.

What concerns me though is how they will reconcile design aspects which seemingly are on opposite ends as expressed in the game currently; self sufficiency & team dependence.

So you are making an encounter where on the one hand the design tells players, 'win or lose, you decide by YOUR actions!'

But also have the encounter set up where if Timmy the Edgelord Raider fails in execution another player is no longer in charge of their win/lose state by their own actions?

I feel this announcement is slightly vague. Expected as this is marketing and not an actual discussion on game mechanisms. Still, an interesting idea.

[DrMcNinja]

I actually felt more excited for this announcement than for Legion. Didn't get too many details yet but I'm sure we'll get more of that.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Who's the Charr on the right? A Necro? I don't recognize those spell effects.

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Also, a 10 man limit? Come on Anet; the flexible raiding system was first introduced over two years ago, and started becoming standard a year ago. How can you limit raids to just 10 people?

[Maarius]

the raids-trailer

[Val the Moofia Boss]

the raids-trailer

Instant death mechanics... yuck

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On the upside; killing plant monsters sounds far more interesting than slaying more demons and orcs!

[Karizee]

More info on the new Heart of Thorns page, including info about legendary armor.

http://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/raids/

[Black Rider]

It's really interesting, I'd like to see their encounter desing & reward model, also how often they will release raids.

[Gray_Matter]

I still don't get why they don't instance the world bosses that they already have. Fixed size group with a few more tactics and you have 25 odd raids instantly available. They now have a reward system in place so they could use that. Still have them available as they are, just include a "raid" version as well.

[Nehezbegar]

I can already see posts "only 3 bosses" ?

I only hope, that raids will not be abandoned like fractals and regular dungeons.

[Maarius]

I still don't get why they don't instance the world bosses that they already have. Fixed size group with a few more tactics and you have 25 odd raids instantly available. They now have a reward system in place so they could use that. Still have them available as they are, just include a "raid" version as well.

there was an interview once, where they were asked why they won't update the old worldbosses. The answer was pretty straightforward: the time they spend revamping old content could be used to create new content, something players really want more of.

[Karizee]

PCGamer interview with Colin Johanson on raids:
http://www.pcgamer.com/raids-are-com...art-of-thorns/

[Zeek Daniels]

10 man raiding seems fine to me. What I want to know is how are they going to get players to keep coming to raids. Are bosses going to drop loot individually or do we have to complete the entire raid to get the legendary reward. What about lockouts and resets.

[zito]

Necros trait line which help revives allies is looking good here

[Arewn]

Was worried they were going to go for 15, happy to hear they settled on 10.
GW2's combat gets chaotic fast, too many people quickly devolves into a zerg.

[PACOX]

I can already see posts "only 3 bosses" ?

I only hope, that raids will not be abandoned like fractals and regular dungeons.

I wouldn't say that fractals were abandoned since we actually got new fractals a number of changes to the fractal system. We also know they are expanding fractals even more in HoT. One of the first "Old Tyria" masteries is related to fractals. I actually hope that they take some some of the design elements from fractals because at fractals have some bosses/encounters that require you to due things other than stack in a corner.

Dungeons were abandoned though.

[Valeron]

A big fat meh from me

[PACOX]

10 man raiding seems fine to me. What I want to know is how are they going to get players to keep coming to raids. Are bosses going to drop loot individually or do we have to complete the entire raid to get the legendary reward. What about lockouts and resets.

Probably the same personal look systems that we have now with a 1 - week (I hope not) lockout like the ones already in game. Theres a lot of fun encounters outside of dungeons that you can't stack and bash on (S1&2 story instances, fractals, Tri Wurms/Teq kinda, upcoming HoT personal story instances). With the addition of new AI that they've been talking about I think Anet can design some fun encounters...I think.