Biggest Raid Problem

this video show how does some players feel when they want to do raid

To all the new raiders, sorry for the crappy groups you'll meet. They're looking a benchmark to apply to not waste their time, and get their raids done quickly.

That said, all people should really expect from you is to have watched a video on the fight/know what you're doing to some extent, and to have full exotic with maybe ascended weapons, accessories, rings, and an amulet. If you know what you're doing you probably need less then that, but it's better to go for what you can. Then I would aim for the weekend and be on the lookout for training runs, or just any raid. The problem is really just the players not wanting to teach the new players currently. So you can consider just giving a legendary insight chat code, but you'd most likely not want to be in the groups asking for they anyway.

So maybe anet should do something to help this mentality that veteran players have currently, but I'm not sure what to suggest for a change. Hope you meet a good raiding guild. Some are very professional with their time slots.

This is just a repeat of the old Dungeon speed clear meta from back in the day..... which moved to fractals, then later moved to Raids (as expected). The only real solution is to make Raids easier..... but Raiders won't stand for it, because that prestige of being exclusively good at something (despite most of them being terrible in practice) seems to go hand in hand with their desire for exclusive loot.
I've gotten into repeated arguments with regular raiders over the fact that they believe Legendary armor is a reward for being good at raids, when the reward structure, and the purpose of Stat swapping as QOL, is accomplishing the exact opposite result when it comes to the raid community and its perceived toxicity. This has happened multiple times in the past- with PvP Asc armor being the most straight forward in recent memory as to why PUG hate flairs up. Most PUGs aren't there to "get good" at a game mode..... they're there, because theres some kind of shiny reward that they want that is either exclusive to, or most efficiently gained through that one mode.

Anet is specifically using those rewards as a lure to get PvEers into more self-sustaining game modes..... but their approach to "one off investment" costs is pretty the reason why it attracts people who take no issue to dragging down a game mode, so long as they can get that reward in a reliable manner. I say "Drag down", because they will often put in only a minimal effort to pace themselves, as its the only way to make tolerable the insanely long lengths of time required to achieve that goal. Making matters worse, the functional benefit of legendary armor (and by extension the trinkets) has only tertiary benefits to Open world PvE, but its a huge benefit to people who dabble in multiple modes, yet can't or don't devote all their resources into the initial investment hurdle other game modes outright demand of players. For fractals, its the Agony infusions. For Raids, its optimal gear comp. For WvW, its investing in otherwise unused stats. All of these benefit from the best in slot stats afforded by Asc gear, but the overlap of stats is too inconsistent to not end up having a full gear set devoted to each mode.

The ultimate irony here is that originally Legendary armor's QOL was only thought to be beneficial to full time raiders, allowing them to adjust builds for the various encounters. But the reality is only 2 classes do this regularly (Chorno tank to adjust toughness, and Ranger to swap between their 3 meta builds). All the other classes very heavily locked into their roles, and only have incentive to change when theres a major meta shift. Raid rewards are also the only place to get Asc gear WITHOUT Grandmaster marks (and thus max crafting). Presumably this was to account for multiple build sets, "before" Legendary armor was added to mix.

Compare that to WvW, where the Meta comps will change between balance patches, as new strategies are developed. Its also the only game mode that drastically changes the strategy with scale..... where a Zerg comp is massively different then a Roaming comp, but the demand for it can change depending on time zone and server. WvW also has the most build diversity of any other game mode, largely due to "sum of the parts" functionality being viable with only one or two roles needed by each individual player.

So here is the REAL problem...... Legendary armor has way too much QOL for cross-mode players (which is a minor step above casual), but the reward system demands major devotion to a single game mode to make any reasonable progress toward obtaining it. They wanted it as a Cost Sink, which it acts well as.... but its also a major dead end once enough people have sets to cover their mains. The EXACT same problem that occurred with Ascended armor and Fractals, leading to them adding yet another tier of gold sinks that will again dead end after a certain amount of time. This mistake has effectively created a gear treadmill the majority of people will consider given enough time and interest in more then one game mode that isn't PvP. Most people haven't caught on to this yet.... but like legendary weapons, there is an inevitably that the Devs are trying to entice the players toward. The more diverse your interests in the game, the deeper the Rabbit hole goes, and the more directions you are pulled, and the more time thats demanded of you to get anywhere in any particular mode.
What the game used to do, and was a major draw for many, was the idea that everything you do contributes toward something you want. And if you needed to, you can shift focus to shore up resources your lacking to finish your project. Whats missing in the reward structure for legendary armor is a more unified, cross-mode resource system for promotion. Right now you can only obtain and promote legendary armor from the game mode its exclusive to..... yet theres no functional reason why the disparate resources can't be used to create a common "gift" that applies to all armor types for the promotion step. This would emphatically rid themselves of this problem with their desynced content schedule, and simultaneously address part of their Time Gating problem.... a thing they instituted to stretch out menial tasks in the first place. So instead of actively punishing players for participating in multiple game modes, the reward system actually benefits them periodically hopping into other game modes, without forcing binge playing against a time gate (which is why players are getting frustrated and toxic when they aren't doing well).

Speaking of which, Anet has painted themselves into a corner with POF and the Gen 2 legendaries; and the outcome of which is going to set a precedent moving forward. Do the remaining Legendary weapons use Gift of Magumma (thus requiring HOT), or can a "Gift of Elona" be used as an alternative? They've already said that you don't "need" PoF to crafting the remainder of Gen2.... but they haven't indicated what that actually means. Also, what does this mean for Gen 3? Will it incorporate PoF, or switch to an even more universal format to decouple it from the expansions? These are important questions, because all of this will shape how players expect the new Raid wing collections to work.

@"starlinvf.1358":Basically, what GW2 could use is something like the hard-mode rewards WoW had back at around Ulduar or so. Where the final boss could be done with anything from all 4 to 0 Watchers helping you out, and if you did it with 0 ("Alone in the Darkness", the other ones where "Three~One Light in the Darkness"), then there was a special flying mount you got. And, should you be the first group on your server to do so, you also got a special achievement and title. No "do it 150 times to be able to pay for X". You just got it. Congratulations, you were better than everyone else.

I mean, at least that works. Guaranteed reward.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Speaking of which, Anet has painted themselves into a corner with POF and the Gen 2 legendaries; and the outcome of which is going to set a precedent moving forward. Do the remaining Legendary weapons use Gift of Magumma (thus requiring HOT), or can a "Gift of Elona" be used as an alternative? They've already said that you don't "need" PoF to crafting the remainder of Gen2.... but they haven't indicated what that actually means. Also, what does this mean for Gen 3? Will it incorporate PoF, or switch to an even more universal format to decouple it from the expansions? These are important questions, because all of this will shape how players expect the new Raid wing collections to work.

Not really. Not requiring PoF is quite clear, it means you won't require Gift of Elona for the weapons. There are multiple legendary items that are not weapons on the way most notably trinkets (for which arenanet has stated they have all 6 slots maped out). Chances are very high that PoF will be required for those items thus making the generation 2 legendary weapons a HoT thing and the legendary trinkets a PoF thing.

As far as generation 3 weapons, yeah I don't see those comming any time soon so why worry? Maybe with the expansion after PoF but that will be 2 years off at best.

Legendary Insight-meta is literally cancer. I only started raiding a while ago (returning player when HoT was on sale) and I've managed to gather 21 LI at the moment - but I have successfully downed every single boss at least once and trained a lot of the harder, mechanics-heavy encounters to the point where I know them by hand. Just need a few more time-gated Gorse kills and I'll have the pre-precursor to legendary armour and everything.

Yet I'm constantly being, often rudely, turned down (Mini and KP in hand) because I don't have enough LI. It is just ridiclous to see stuff like 100-200 LI requirements when you consider that each boss only drops one puny LI per week.

Thankfully every so often you do run into a kind group where as long as I explain that I have the experience for these fights, I don't have the LI and they let me come along anyway. But as nice as those people are, they are just as rare...