Are Raids still reliant on meta builds?

And if so, where do I look them up? Quantify?

Snow Crows is more up-to-date.

For pugging and new raids, most do rely on meta builds. You can find them at snowcrows.com

Are meta builds required or reliant? No, if you're a competent and good player. But most of the new raiders aren't. Most of the low-li raiders also aren't. Actually, most of the GW2 population is exceptionally bad at performing well. They stop learning and improving quickly when they're capable of clearing combat.

And most groups don't have any reason to trust you'll be different. Without credentials, finding a group for non-meta new players is difficult (for good reasons, like almost all of them performing godawful.) You can make your own group, but non-meta no requirement raid groups fail are VERY RNG. Chances of getting several players who simply don't know the encounter, their role or their class are pretty big. This is still fine if you have competent players capable of carrying, especially if you know the encounters and requirements yourself.

For new players, stick to meta. It'll be easier to learn. You can experiment when you know what you're doing. Going off-meta when learning new content is like playing a tutorial in hard-mode; and most other players you play with won't appreciate it. That said, if you want that look for a guild or appropriate LFGs. They exist, but since they tend to take FAR more time for clears they're often rare.

With capable players who actually know the bosses, the meta is pretty irrelevant.

OK thx. I have to admit, I can't play raids just right now, because Im still farming for some legendaries, I still need the backpiece. I also have some legendary weapons and the legendary trinket. I prefer legendaries, because I can swap the stats on fly. And the one thing holding me personally back from playing raids is the fact that you have to switch gear stats some times. I imagine its quite annoying to do that just for a single boss encounter.

That said, my goal is to go for legendary armor, I dont see any other reason to play raids, unless I find them fun.

Now my main is a ranger, fully equipped with ascended viper's. According to quantify a druid ranger with viper is pretty good on all bosses.My hope is that this won't change in the near future.

But as I said, before having the backpiece (im also crafting nevermore, however staff ranger isnt needed as much as I know) I'm not up for raids.

EDIT: Is there a raid / wing you recommend for first timers like me?

I'm just starting to get into raids (first one on Thursday!) and I found Meta-Battle better than Snowcrows, at least for Druid. The Snowcrows page for a druid healer had the bare bones of the info - which weapons and stats to use, but nothing on how to use it (when I looked it didn't even mention traits but I see that is there now). Meta-battle had the exact same build with a lot more information, including advice on how to use it, and alternate options if you have 2 druids.

Although ultimately it's up to your team, so I recommend speaking to them about what they need from you, what you can do, what everyone else is using and how it would all work together. There's no need to stick to a build you've found online if it doesn't actually work for your group. Particularly for group content a lot of meta-builds rely on working together, and that only applies if everyone else is using the corresponding builds. If they've made changes it might be that your build will no longer work in the way it's intended and something else will be better. Meta-builds are one way to get the content done, in theory the way a majority of people consider best, but they're definitely not the only option.

For example the raid I'm doing on Thursday is a training one for people who have never raided before. I signed up at short notice and won't be able to get the recommended gear in time (a full set of ascended Harrier's) so we agreed it's ok for me to use a mix of ascended and exotic and Harrier's and Magi's stats and we'll make adjustments on the night for the impact of that. Everyone else (except the teachers) is likely to be in a similar situation so we'll be making adjustments for them too. Based on conversations I've had with the group I already have some thoughts on changes to the meta-build which might suit them better, but I'm holding myself back from theory-crafting too much until I've actually played through it once, as the nearest I've come to raiding so far is solo-fighting the Vale Divisions, but I wasn't able to do enough CC to kill them.

There will always be a meta, it's part of the numbers game. But as dps numbers increase due to power creep, while boss HP and timers stay the same, you could say that raids nowadays, i.e. the already existing wings 1-4, are less reliant on playing the absolute top notch meta comp. However, the meta is something ppl organize their groups around. If you're playing with a static set of friends, you have more freedom to try out different comps and builds now than you had with the launch of HoT. If you're PuG'ing, I'd stick to the meta and anticipate other ppl to also play some sort of meta build. What I want to say: sure, you can play your power reaper build and have a FB healer in your static and things will go fine if ppl know what they're doing, but don't expect PuGs to care or reorganize their group to make your special snowflake build happen.Also, If you're only starting out, there's nothing wrong with going for an established build. Ppl who love the content, know a lot about the encounters and the classes have put in the time and done the math to find solid builds, that's nothing to scoff at.

check out youtube for dps rotations. it makes a huge difference. oh and arcdps helps too.

Sadly condi druid is not as good as it used to be but you can change to soulbeast and play dps with minor gear changes.For encounters easiest one to get started would be escort (first "boss" in wing 3). After that first 3 bosses of wing 4 and then first 2 bosses from wing 1. Try to stay away from wing 2 and 5 (especialy the first bosses there are much harder).

@Danikat.8537 said:I'm just starting to get into raids (first one on Thursday!) and I found Meta-Battle better than Snowcrows, at least for Druid. The Snowcrows page for a druid healer had the bare bones of the info - which weapons and stats to use, but nothing on how to use it (when I looked it didn't even mention traits but I see that is there now). Meta-battle had the exact same build with a lot more information, including advice on how to use it, and alternate options if you have 2 druids.

If you want to know how to use druid, i could write one page for each boss. As a druid you do mehanics on everything and you change weapons traits pets and skills accordingly.If you need druid guides, they have druid pov videos on YouTube. On Meta-Battle i see a lot of clueless people making guides that make 0 sense. Trust them, elitist guilds know what they are doing.

In short: no, meta builds are not needed.

What is needed: from occasionally varying boss specific roles, the usual raid team setup looks as follows:

• permanent up-time on boons of minimum might, ferocity, quickness and alacrity. Ideally protection, aegis and any remaining boon.
• permanent up-time on warrior banners
• sufficient sustain so the group survives the boss attacks
• sufficient cc bar damage to overcome cc phases on certain bosses
• sufficient damage per second to clear the encounter

As such, depending on each players performance, goals which need to get met are flexible. In general the amount of damage required is very lax, more damage means shorter fights thus resulting in less mistakes.

Meta builds are often created and maintained by very experienced players which share their findings with the community. You are not required to use them, but unless you rival the other players devotion and expertise, it is unlikely your build will outperform the meta build. The least amount of variation is to be found in the gear and stat variety. In general one specific stat combination will yield the best result thus changing builds mostly in only traits, utilities and weapons used (and since most classes only have 1-2 viable weapons per damage type, even those are often set in stone).

Final word: ascended gear is not required. Exotic gear is by far good enough, though getting ascended trinkets is beneficial (via Living World Season 3 for example). A bit of practice on the target golem to get a basic grasp of ones rotation is also always a good idea.

As a complementary advice, I'd say it's not always easy to perform as well as the top players do on the benchmarks. I find that inside a real encounter for example I'm much better as a condi mirage than with a condi renegade even though my cap is way lower. I can also outperform myself in Power Herald in relation to Weaver where I can't break 25k due to both missing cooldowns during the rotation and also having ping issues when I have to insta cast things, so I tend to let people know that and usually they allow me to take my most performing class, even if the class is sub-optimal. For Gorse no updraft for example if I recall our average per player DPS must be around 18k, which is actually low if you even roughly try any of the DPS rotations the top players have made. So there's a lot of freedom there in how you want to dish damage at least.

For boons and support the only issue is that the team must be around your composition. Want to take a Firebrand for quickness? Very well but now the second slot is also soft locked because alacrity must be either a renegade or a chrono, and if you're taking a chrono he might as well do your job too since he can also provide quickness. The way our support classes are built they are too unique to be traded, for example the BS war brings about 5k DPS to each player in a team just from dropping unique buffs that no other class can have. In theory you can support on many different classes but the difference in optimal to suboptimal is a bigger gap than it is for the case of DPS classes. This is not a fault in the class system, the class system is very good in creating characters that have enough versatility to do "everything" in open word PvE, it's just that raids were clumsily fit into said system and optimizing it actually led to a more restrictive optimal composition than if we had many cookie cutter trinity classes.

Are Raids still reliant on meta builds?Raids? No, there are all sorts of builds & comps that can work.

If we rephrase the question to

Are lots of people who raid still relying on meta builds?Then the answer is, "yes."

And we can further rephrase to

Are there groups (static or PUG) that insist you run a meta build?Sure, but plenty who don't.

@"Clyan.1593" said:EDIT: Is there a raid / wing you recommend for first timers like me?

I suggest joining a training discord. It the best way to start raiding especially if you do not have a lot of time. They already have a system to ease new raiders in and instructions on how to prepare yourself sufficiently. .

There are a few for each region:https://snowcrows.com/raids/training/

Also metabattle has many raids guides for new players like easy builds. They will not be meta and you will have to go for to more complex builds if you really get into it but it is a great start: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Raid

@"Danikat.8537" said:I'm just starting to get into raids (first one on Thursday!) and I found Meta-Battle better than Snowcrows, at least for Druid. The Snowcrows page for a druid healer had the bare bones of the info - which weapons and stats to use, but nothing on how to use it (when I looked it didn't even mention traits but I see that is there now). Meta-battle had the exact same build with a lot more information, including advice on how to use it, and alternate options if you have 2 druids.

They have a full guide equally detailed with the metabattle one but it is on a different page. In guides instead of builds.: https://snowcrows.com/raids/ranger/guide/

They were never reliant on meta builds. In the end, its about players knowing what to do and how to play their class, not what build they have.

@Clyan.1593 said:OK thx. I have to admit, I can't play raids just right now, because Im still farming for some legendaries, I still need the backpiece. I also have some legendary weapons and the legendary trinket. I prefer legendaries, because I can swap the stats on fly. And the one thing holding me personally back from playing raids is the fact that you have to switch gear stats some times. I imagine its quite annoying to do that just for a single boss encounter.

That said, my goal is to go for legendary armor, I dont see any other reason to play raids, unless I find them fun.

Now my main is a ranger, fully equipped with ascended viper's. According to quantify a druid ranger with viper is pretty good on all bosses.My hope is that this won't change in the near future.

But as I said, before having the backpiece (im also crafting nevermore, however staff ranger isnt needed as much as I know) I'm not up for raids.

EDIT: Is there a raid / wing you recommend for first timers like me?

Ok first off, if your starting to raid do NOT run condi druid, which is the build your describing. When you start raiding, you should have full healers, i.e. harrier druid. Preferably two of them. So either get a full healer druid, or you could run condi soul beast, to fill a dps role with your current gear.

Second, people rarely swap stats, unless they are doing a full clear with a static group. For pug groups, pretty much just the chronos needs to swap. Technically druids can too, but pug groups (correctly) usually run 2 full healers, i.e. no swapping to condi druid. Besides that, warriors will sometimes swap, but honestly its not a big deal, condi bs is competitive with power bs.

As for where to start. The first encounter of wing 3 (stronghold of the faithful), called escort, is incredibly easy. Its not a raid boss, its a raid event, but it gives the rewards of a boss. It is a good way to start building up LI which you will need to ping possibly as you work your way up through raids. After escort, ditch wing 3, go to wing 4 (bastion of the penitent), the first 3 bosses there are easy bosses.