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Top 3 reasons why raids only attracted a small audience


Swagger.1459

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

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@mindcircus.1506 said:

@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @"Astralporing.1957" pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions.Recently Nike issued the "Viability Challenge" A raid comp that consisted of:1x Heal Warrior tank in nomads gear5x carrion longbow soulbeast1x full support renegade in captains stats1x base ranger heal build in rampager gear1x base mesmer boon sharing with staff an valkyrie's gear1x lb dragon hunter grieving statAnd Teapot and his crew cleared multiple raids with this comp.Composition isn't something Arenanet designs for. Specific comps are not required for a kill. Composition is something the community decides is the best tactic available and rolls with it.It's not the only one that works.This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

So, which one of them is going to be a hand kiter for deimos?

@maddoctor.2738 said:How is "easily slot" 2-3 sigils of nullification not a "specific composition"?

I would say that classes are a composition, not sigils. Those are part of a build.When you're talking about a "casual player party finder", you will get exactly what's on the menu. You can probably count on trait adjustments, but do not count on them being able to make any
gear
changes on the fly. The players that are prepared like that are the ones that likely
won't
be queuing for that system.
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@"Astralporing.1957" said:So, which one of them is going to be a hand kiter for deimos?

One of the Soulbeasts. Normal Mode doesnt need a lot of healing and if your group is good enough you can stay in the bubble during mindcrush, preventing it from taking extra damage.

When you're talking about a "casual player party finder", you will get exactly what's on the menu. You can probably count on trait adjustments, but do not count on them being able to make any gear changes on the fly. The players that are prepared like that are the ones that likely won't be queuing for that system.

Oh, i agree with you. It was mainly addressed towards the "Anet designs for specific comps" statement.I also know that my Deimos Handkite solution just wont work in these groups.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Furthermore, what ever happened to just playing a game for FUN, pure fun and not the rewards? Do you play Single-player games for the rewards? (I hope not) So why can't people play an MMO(which does not mean you HAVE to group up with others or even be social, it only means there are a bunch of other people inhabiting the same world as you are at the same time, don't use old definitions from 10 - 20 years ago, this is now 2020, times change).

Why do you think mobile gaming has become so popular(last estimate is 3 Billion people worldwide play mobile games) and lucrative, because you don't have to think hard, you can come and go as you please, and it doesn't take a huge time commitment. You tap into that market with a PC game and you would be golden, I'm not going to say ArenaNet is trying to do that or tried to, but it would be an interesting exercise.

Third, the purse strings are no longer in ArenaNets control, if you want my opinion, they aren't being allowed to do anything with approval from NCSoft West. I also don't think Raids are dead, just not being focused on like before, you might see one Fractal and one Raid release per year(which won't make either of those communities happy, but they're smaller portions of the over all community anyways), besides, didn't Crystal Reid leave ArenaNet and she was in the lead Raid designer.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:How is "easily slot" 2-3 sigils of nullification not a "specific composition"?

I would say that classes are a composition, not sigils. Those are part of a build.

And this is where you are wrong. My comment of "bad design" was within the context of an automatic group finder. So how would that automatic group finder know which player has such a sigil in their inventory to group them properly with others? For that matter, how is the group finder going to understand that the team -should- have someone with boon strip in the first place. Same goes for healers, projectile reflections/destruction and so on.

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that.

They don't. Warrior cannot reflect without a shield, please don't tell me that you expect a Berserker with Shattering Blow to reflect Matthias attack back. There is also spellbreaker, but needs a dagger offhand.

Engineer also needs to use a shield, and I'm not sure that reflect lasts long enough. The other abilities, scrapper reflecting with hammer and the turret reflects are rather situational/low duration.

Ranger reflects projectiles with Axe 5, not the worst of the bunch, still requires a specific weapon and is not the most comfortable reflect skill to use.

Thief has daggerstorm, but that has an insane cooldown, not really applicable.

Elementalist can reflect with a variety of options, but still... the best reflects that require zero investment in traits, build and gear are Mesmer and Guardian. There is no comparison between them. Sure other professions have -access- to reflect, but having access doesn't mean it's good to use in a demanding fight.

Same with the sigils, it's impossible for an auto group finder to guess the roles. In other games you select tank, dps, healer, and the classes that are assigned to those roles are mostly interchangeable. In Guild Wars 2 that's not the case at all. Notice how I don't mind that, in fact I prefer the more varied choices/builds in this game over the standardization of other games. However, as I pointed out, I do think it's a bad idea to use the different builds in such a way within the same Raid wing. Make a wing that requires reflects, boon strip, condition+power damage, healing, condition cleanse, teleport skills, and apply all of them on all the fights in some way, that way a group with the same composition will be good to go on all fights and won't have to swap mid-way.

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@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Just another example of a raid characteristic that doesn't appeal to the original adopters of the game. Not sure why it's such an afront to people to accept that, other than not willing to face the reality that raids were never going to be sustainably successful content in the game to begin with.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Just another example of a raid characteristic that doesn't appeal to the original adopters of the game. Not sure why it's such an afront to people to accept that, other than not willing to face the reality that raids were never going to be sustainably successful content in the game to begin with.

Because the argument is based on a faulty premise (just my two cents here :) )

For example the dungeon community is also part of the original adopters and part of those enjoyed switching builds. The game is made in such a way swapping builds is expected

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@maddoctor.2738 said:Thief has daggerstorm, but that has an insane cooldown, not really applicable.

Daredevil Auto attack reflects. The third one at least. You could probably break his bubble after two of his shard attacks. Which tbh. isnt that much worse than pugs. They often need a backup reflect for that, so this might work.

Elementalist can reflect with a variety of options, but still... the best reflects that require zero investment in traits, build and gear are Mesmer and Guardian. There is no comparison between them. Sure other professions have -access- to reflect, but having access doesn't mean it's good to use in a demanding fight.

Sure, this is mostly for heal Ele, but you can spam Magnetic Aura. Cooldown on your skills is low enough and you can give it to 10 people.In all honesty, i know that all of these options are bad. However, it does show that you dont need a specific composition. You can technically kill Matthias with Warrior Reflect. The people that are good enough to do this though wouldnt run Berserker for reflect though. Auto finder groups wouldnt really stand a chance.

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@yann.1946 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Just another example of a raid characteristic that doesn't appeal to the original adopters of the game. Not sure why it's such an afront to people to accept that, other than not willing to face the reality that raids were never going to be sustainably successful content in the game to begin with.

Because the argument is based on a faulty premise (just my two cents here :) )

For example the dungeon community is also part of the original adopters and part of those enjoyed switching builds. The game is made in such a way swapping builds is expected

You may have not noticed that I said my point was only valid if we could agree on the fact that the majority is over 50% of players, based on that assumption it leaves a lot of room for other types of play styles, including those that like to swap builds(which by the way was not the expected behavior, hence no build templates at launch). Also, your example of the dungeon community isn't really a strong one as those could easily be beaten with a single build and were easily cheesed so that you didn't have to bother with the trash mobs(a failure on ArenaNets part, imo).

I also disagree with premise that Raids once introduced to GW2 were never going to be a sustainable content, all content is sustainable, if intent is properly communicated to the community that plays that content. Unfortunately that community got spoiled with the early release schedule based on the fast the first 3 Wings were practically ready to go at the launch of HoT, had they bothered to tell the community from the get go that in the future they could expect one to two releases per year, POSSIBLY, then expectations wouldn't have been unrealistic.

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@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:In all honesty, i know that all of these options are bad. However, it does show that you dont need a specific composition. You can technically kill Matthias with Warrior Reflect. The people that are good enough to do this though wouldnt run Berserker for reflect though. Auto finder groups wouldnt really stand a chance.

Yep that's what I was saying. So it's not my perception that is the problem as @"mindcircus.1506" said above. There are options, but most options are either bad, or only usable by actually good players. This does limit the options for average (and below average) players. And those choices are created by the developers when they design their content, it's not something the community decides, Mesmer and Guardian are the safest options for Matthias reflects because they can be cast from a range, all others require you to be in perfect position, which can fail if you have to deal with any mechanics. In other words, Arenanet designed that fight to require a Mesmer or Guardian to be in the group to succeed (especially for average and below average groups), while the previous fights in Wing 2 do not have such a strict requirement. Making an auto-finder pointless. Unless of course in the auto-finder "version" Matthias doesn't perform that attack anymore, same with every other raid boss, eliminating mechanics that have specific requirements is the only way for a public/auto-finder version to work.

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@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Just another example of a raid characteristic that doesn't appeal to the original adopters of the game. Not sure why it's such an afront to people to accept that, other than not willing to face the reality that raids were never going to be sustainably successful content in the game to begin with.

Because the argument is based on a faulty premise (just my two cents here :) )

For example the dungeon community is also part of the original adopters and part of those enjoyed switching builds. The game is made in such a way swapping builds is expected

You may have not noticed that I said my point was only valid if we could agree on the fact that the majority is over 50% of players, based on that assumption it leaves a lot of room for other types of play styles, including those that like to swap builds(which by the way was not the expected behavior, hence no build templates at launch). Also, your example of the dungeon community isn't really a strong one as those could easily be beaten with a single build and were easily cheesed so that you didn't have to bother with the trash mobs(a failure on ArenaNets part, imo).

I also disagree with premise that Raids once introduced to GW2 were never going to be a sustainable content, all content is sustainable, if intent is properly communicated to the community that plays that content. Unfortunately that community got spoiled with the early release schedule based on the fast the first 3 Wings were practically ready to go at the launch of HoT, had they bothered to tell the community from the get go that in the future they could expect one to two releases per year, POSSIBLY, then expectations wouldn't have been unrealistic.

Tbh i was only responding to Obtena not you, sorry if that was not clear. I merely disagreed that the original adopters of the game somehow didn't want to swap builds. The game is specifically designed so changing builds is easy.

Now i agree that my example was not the best one but their are still quite a few examples within dungeons where buildswapping gets used and is motivated. Reflect on Luppi, stealth in CM and in general etc.

Obtena has been pointing out that raids are something the original adopter wouldn't have wanted, but the original adopters of the game are so varied that that statement is either completely empty or extremely arrogant.

And as a personal annoyance with their statement is that its of the same type as, i perceive myself as being in the biggest group so my opinion on how the game should go is somehow better.

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@yann.1946 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

Reflection is a bad example. There are 3 classes that can't reflect at all or have too high cooldowns. That is Thief, Revenant and Necromancer. Unless you run a raid with only those 3 classes you have the ability to adapt your build for Matthias. Yes not all of those are optimal but they work.

Boon remove is an even worse example as you can slot in 2-3 Sigils of Nullification and you are good to go.

Deimos would have been a better example as beginner need a different gear setup to do the hand kiting.

@maddoctor.2738 said:For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

You actually dont need to consider specific classes for VG. If you want you can take a Superior Sigil of Nullification.Its really not that bad of a choice if you need a boonstrip. Slap it on a DPS on you miss out on 3% damage.

As for reflect, 7 out of 9 classes have access to that. If you ever run a raid that only consist of renegades and necros you run into a problem, but otherwise you are covered for that. Its still stupid and not effective depending on the class but still, It does work with proper builds.

And tbh. i think those are the only raids where you have to bring something specific.

Now you've finally reached the real reason that the vast majority of the player base won't do Raids in GW2. Can we all agree that the majority(by majority I mean over 50%) of the player base is that which does open world through auto-attack with sub-optimal gear and skill? If we can agree on that, then not being able to bring their PvE build and walk through a Raid is the biggest reason they'll never try them, even with adding Strikes to try and draw them in.

Just another example of a raid characteristic that doesn't appeal to the original adopters of the game. Not sure why it's such an afront to people to accept that, other than not willing to face the reality that raids were never going to be sustainably successful content in the game to begin with.

Because the argument is based on a faulty premise (just my two cents here :) )

For example the dungeon community is also part of the original adopters and part of those enjoyed switching builds. The game is made in such a way swapping builds is expected

Again, as I already said, this is just ONE example why raids don't appeal to original adopters. The ACTUAL premise is that there are MANY raid characteristics that make them unappealing to original adopters.

I'm even of the belief that if swapping builds was the ONLY factor here, original adopters would have embraced raids and they would still be successful today because swapping builds isn't that big a hassle considering the content that opens up when you do (just like you illustrate that some people did swap builds for dungeons.)

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@"yann.1946" said:Now i agree that my example was not the best one but their are still quite a few examples within dungeons where buildswapping gets used and is motivated. Reflect on Luppi, stealth in CM and in general etc.Sure, you can swap builds in dungeons, but you don't really have to. And while switching can make dungeon content easier, it only works like that for players above certain level of skill. The weaker players are actually better off not doing that, and just playing as they always do.Compare that with raids, where "anything goes" is a strategy only the best players can safely pull off.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"yann.1946" said:Now i agree that my example was not the best one but their are still quite a few examples within dungeons where buildswapping gets used and is motivated. Reflect on Luppi, stealth in CM and in general etc.Sure, you can swap builds in dungeons, but you don't really have to. And while switching can make dungeon content easier, it only works like that for players above certain level of skill. The weaker players are actually better off
not
doing that, and just playing as they always do.Compare that with raids, where "anything goes" is a strategy only the best players can safely pull off.

Yeah and that was one of the biggest controversies during the early days. That you can clear any content with any build. That 'Build Wars' is completely forgotten.And now that you need it, it's the worst thing ever because you can't expect 'casuals' to play the game as it was intended. With swapping skills on the fly.It killed WoW raid variabilty. No more multi tank encounters or other classes than the dedicated ones with tank tree.

Steamlining raids for lazy people who don't care about utility and composition kills a lot of creativity for raids. It is not healthy for group content in the long run and should never be used.

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My list:1.) Time Commitment2.) Organized Groups (Not easiest thing to pug)3.) Lack of Scaling Difficulty (LFR)

If you could que with/without a group, get ported in once the group is finished, and there was scaling difficulty. More people would do it. Honestly they should scratch the Strike Hub and do the same. Might as well do it for fractals and dungeons.

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"yann.1946" said:Now i agree that my example was not the best one but their are still quite a few examples within dungeons where buildswapping gets used and is motivated. Reflect on Luppi, stealth in CM and in general etc.Sure, you can swap builds in dungeons, but you don't really have to. And while switching can make dungeon content easier, it only works like that for players above certain level of skill. The weaker players are actually better off
not
doing that, and just playing as they always do.Compare that with raids, where "anything goes" is a strategy only the best players can safely pull off.

Yeah and that was one of the biggest controversies during the early days. That you can clear any content with any build. That 'Build Wars' is completely forgotten.And now that you need it, it's the worst thing ever because you can't expect 'casuals' to play the game as it was intended. With swapping skills on the fly.It killed WoW raid variabilty. No more multi tank encounters or other classes than the dedicated ones with tank tree.

Steamlining raids for lazy people who don't care about utility and composition kills a lot of creativity for raids. It is not healthy for group content in the long run and should never be used.The truth however is that people that can play the "build wars" minigame are already in minority. And while there's some overlap, it's not the exact same minority as people that like challenging instanced group content like raids (there are many raiders that don't like build wars aspect of it, and there are many build wars players that do not like raiding). Thus, you limit even further an already small target group for that content.At the same time, the greater and more important build wars metagame is, the greater the gap between top, bottom and average players, and the harder it gets to balance the game for anyone.

And that is also not healthy (and to an extreme degree) in the long run.

Build wars was an interesting concept, but one that worked only when the games had relatively small populations consisting of mainly heavily dedicated hardcore players. The moment those types of games decided to go mainstream, the concept became an anchor weighting those games down, because it was no longer workable for the changed, more casual population.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:There isn't any ignoring and to be fair, this thread IS a speculative exercise so ...

It's COMPLETELY REASONABLE to believe that raids aren't successful in this game because of reasons rooted in how the content was offered and ultimately leading to financials. Don't be like others and blame Anet through some complicated web of their actions for attempting to commit corporate suicide ... that's nonsense.

I think it's much simpler than that; people didn't adopt GW2 for raids in the way Anet offered them. It just doesn't have the right player profile to support the raid content. If it did, we would have seen Anet maintain the raid release schedule.

Sure, but that still does not in any way explain why raids were very successful in the beginning.

You said it yourself, unless you have access to the correct data to backup your OPINION, you are runnikg on fumes.

  • They were new.
  • They offered unique items.
  • Progress was blocked in obtaining max mastery level regardless of if you used them or not.

We are talking about over 2 years of successful implementation of content. Raids were not that new by then. Max level mastery was not required once fixed. Even then, there was/is a ton of very easy fights which allow players to get 1 kill. That does not reflect an overall interest in raids.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:For example, I was progress blocked for years. I only go my first raid kill last year and I only got the game just before HOT came out.I have over 5,899 hours in the game and I have been playing for 4 and a half years. Which means for 3-4 years I did not have a boss kill which meant I kept going back until I got lucky enough to have some guy get cocky enough to prove you can take anything into a raid and anyone can pass and it isn't intimidating and that I should do them.

Be honest:How much effort did you put in for actually getting into raids or playing the content? This sounds to me more as though you were not interested in the content and join a run by accident. That is perfectly fine, but please don't use this as an argument for difficult access. Unless you spent 4 years trying to get into raids, at which point I would try to understand what the limiting factors were in order to recommend how to approach this.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:That same guy proved he was biased toward me because he made my boyfriend redo his entire dare devil build and make him hit 30k consistently on the training golem before taking him to get his done.

I can't speak as to the "guy" and I certainly did not put such harsh restrictions on new players (though I always recommend players practice, and recommend easy classes), hitting 30k on a Daredevil on the golem is not really difficult or an amazing feat requirement. Half of that is pure auto attack, and the other half is using 2-3 skills every few seconds without even requiring weapon swapping. So while I disagree that such a requirement needs to be put up for training runs, I can't comment on why or how this transpired.

I would recommend though not to judge thousands of players based on a singular event.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:After all this, I haven't really been back into a raid since. I got my masteries and now I don't have a group to do it with because you can't just join anyone. I have made the builds to hit reasonable DPS, etc. but I still fear the community and nothing in there is worth dealing with the community that is there. I don't even like to join fractals full of jargon and BS that excludes people. I just want to get them done, I don't need a kitten speed run.

Again, honest question:How much have you actually tried finding a guild or getting into one? Once again, perfectly fine to not want to join or find other people to play with, but please be critical enough of what the actual reasons are. If 1 bad experience is all it takes for you to never want to raid, I'd question your actual desire to play this content, which directly means you are not the target audience, which is fine.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:Basically:The raiding community is shrinking.And people don't want to join it to keep it alive because the are shamed/feared out of it and the only way to become part of it is through training groups that force you to become as cookie cutter as everyone else.

Find better training groups.

An update to my previous response to you.Around this time last week, our group of people we are taking through for fun finally got our kill on Cairn and we proceeded to get through Mursaat Overseer and we had like a handful of our DPS that were doing very little because they are new. After monitoring them in raids, I have already taken one person aside and helped them improve on what they already had. They were a viper's scrapper, but they had taken a power trait line someone else had told them too, etc. But they told me they enjoyed condi but the Snowcrows build not only seemed complex, but really boring just changing between kits over and over and over. So I tried my best to make them a build they were more comfortable and I managed to raise their DPS by from 5-8k to 15-18k and they said they actually enjoyed the build I had given them.

Most places are spending all this time trying optimize you to the communities standards of builds.

My guild is making silly power point presentations of the raids to teach people what everything is as simply as we can and want to grow our guild mates to hit the bare minimum we need to get past raids, without forcing them into builds that aren't fun for them or they aren't comfortable with. Playing with my group has been the most fun I have had in GW2 raids, we are still garbage at them and learning but the screams and the hype because for the most part all of us are inexperienced was a highlight of our guild gathering on the weekend.

Seeing all these players who were not confident making it this far and just genuinely loving the experience, made me so happy they didn't go through what I went through in the early days, getting kicked out of groups that you had made, that they didn't end up feeling like they were carried, that they learned something new and that they were growing as players.

I stand by the fact the raid community needs to just chill out on all their build elitism, because honestly, you don't need all that much to do them. Knowing the mechanics really is pretty important, getting people to understand agony and to not get teleported, it was hilarious. But they all learned something and I am so happy for them.

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@hellsqueen.3045 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:There isn't any ignoring and to be fair, this thread IS a speculative exercise so ...

It's COMPLETELY REASONABLE to believe that raids aren't successful in this game because of reasons rooted in how the content was offered and ultimately leading to financials. Don't be like others and blame Anet through some complicated web of their actions for attempting to commit corporate suicide ... that's nonsense.

I think it's much simpler than that; people didn't adopt GW2 for raids in the way Anet offered them. It just doesn't have the right player profile to support the raid content. If it did, we would have seen Anet maintain the raid release schedule.

Sure, but that still does not in any way explain why raids were very successful in the beginning.

You said it yourself, unless you have access to the correct data to backup your OPINION, you are runnikg on fumes.

  • They were new.
  • They offered unique items.
  • Progress was blocked in obtaining max mastery level regardless of if you used them or not.

We are talking about over 2 years of successful implementation of content. Raids were not that new by then. Max level mastery was not required once fixed. Even then, there was/is a ton of very easy fights which allow players to get 1 kill. That does not reflect an overall interest in raids.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:For example, I was progress blocked for years. I only go my first raid kill last year and I only got the game just before HOT came out.I have over 5,899 hours in the game and I have been playing for 4 and a half years. Which means for 3-4 years I did not have a boss kill which meant I kept going back until I got lucky enough to have some guy get cocky enough to prove you can take anything into a raid and anyone can pass and it isn't intimidating and that I should do them.

Be honest:How much effort did you put in for actually getting into raids or playing the content? This sounds to me more as though you were not interested in the content and join a run by accident. That is perfectly fine, but please don't use this as an argument for difficult access. Unless you spent 4 years trying to get into raids, at which point I would try to understand what the limiting factors were in order to recommend how to approach this.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:That same guy proved he was biased toward me because he made my boyfriend redo his entire dare devil build and make him hit 30k consistently on the training golem before taking him to get his done.

I can't speak as to the "guy" and I certainly did not put such harsh restrictions on new players (though I always recommend players practice, and recommend easy classes), hitting 30k on a Daredevil on the golem is not really difficult or an amazing feat requirement. Half of that is pure auto attack, and the other half is using 2-3 skills every few seconds without even requiring weapon swapping. So while I disagree that such a requirement needs to be put up for training runs, I can't comment on why or how this transpired.

I would recommend though not to judge thousands of players based on a singular event.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:After all this, I haven't really been back into a raid since. I got my masteries and now I don't have a group to do it with because you can't just join anyone. I have made the builds to hit reasonable DPS, etc. but I still fear the community and nothing in there is worth dealing with the community that is there. I don't even like to join fractals full of jargon and BS that excludes people. I just want to get them done, I don't need a kitten speed run.

Again, honest question:How much have you actually tried finding a guild or getting into one? Once again, perfectly fine to not want to join or find other people to play with, but please be critical enough of what the actual reasons are. If 1 bad experience is all it takes for you to never want to raid, I'd question your actual desire to play this content, which directly means you are not the target audience, which is fine.

@hellsqueen.3045 said:Basically:The raiding community is shrinking.And people don't want to join it to keep it alive because the are shamed/feared out of it and the only way to become part of it is through training groups that force you to become as cookie cutter as everyone else.

Find better training groups.

An update to my previous response to you.Around this time last week, our group of people we are taking through for fun finally got our kill on Cairn and we proceeded to get through Mursaat Overseer and we had like a handful of our DPS that were doing very little because they are new. After monitoring them in raids, I have already taken one person aside and helped them improve on what they already had. They were a viper's scrapper, but they had taken a power trait line someone else had told them too, etc. But they told me they enjoyed condi but the Snowcrows build not only seemed complex, but really boring just changing between kits over and over and over. So I tried my best to make them a build they were more comfortable and I managed to raise their DPS by from 5-8k to 15-18k and they said they actually enjoyed the build I had given them.

Most places are spending all this time trying optimize you to the communities standards of builds.

My guild is making silly power point presentations of the raids to teach people what everything is as simply as we can and want to grow our guild mates to hit the bare minimum we need to get past raids, without forcing them into builds that aren't fun for them or they aren't comfortable with. Playing with my group has been the most fun I have had in GW2 raids, we are still garbage at them and learning but the screams and the hype because for the most part all of us are inexperienced was a highlight of our guild gathering on the weekend.

Seeing all these players who were not confident making it this far and just genuinely loving the experience, made me so happy they didn't go through what I went through in the early days, getting kicked out of groups that you had made, that they didn't end up feeling like they were carried, that they learned something new and that they were growing as players.

First off: that is great news and congratulations on the continued success and more important: the enjoyment from engaging in this group content.

Just so much: what you described is what pretty much what EVERY passionate raider has gone through in some way or another (except those who literally ONLY used PUG groups to teach themselves everything and stick it out). No one starts at the top and "excludes" other players. I have 2 semi casual groups of guildies who are slightly ahead of where you are with your raid group (aka the core and more experienced players have most bosses down, the difficult ones only a few times, the new players are as new as first kill this week). Both their process was exactly as you described, mine was similar years back.

Getting into raids is a learning process on multiple levels:

  • learning how to cooperate with other players (this is a huge one actually, both in terms of socializing as well as coordinating builds)
  • learning the basics of this games combat system as well as compositions
  • learning boss designs and boss mechanics (this one actually comes at the very very end of the entire "becoming a raider" path)
  • learning how to find mistakes, learn from them and improve

That's why the common suggestion has always been: please find a guild.

That's why it is so disheartening to keep reading from players who clearly have not

@hellsqueen.3045 said:I stand by the fact the raid community needs to just chill out on all their build elitism, because honestly, you don't need all that much to do them. Knowing the mechanics really is pretty important, getting people to understand agony and to not get teleported, it was hilarious. But they all learned something and I am so happy for them.

The main issues that arise are almost always directly linked to different player skill and expectations (and yes, in some rare cases huge ego on someones part). The huge majority of raiders (if we assume normalized distribution between weaker, intermediate and elite raiders) are in the mid segment, in their own raid guilds, with their own raid progress, etc.

In a way, your raid guild/group is far more similar to the majority of raider, even if still in the process of mastering fights, than high end LI/KP speedclear groups (which there is only a small fraction of compared to the total raid pool of players).

That's what I and others have always tried to impart, raids are not that hard, there are groups of different skill levels, please start with the appropriate level of experience and go from there (aka training groups and such for very new players). Something else one will soon notice is that many guilds that raid, have more experienced players help the new comers (similar to how your group is doing), just as the groups in my casual raid guilds do.

Unfortunately the first thing new players see is a LFG with massive amounts of requirements, because most players who go through the LFG are far beyond where a new player should start (and I personally think going through the PUG experience as new comer is only for people who are gluttons for pain).

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@DutchRiders.2871 said:Are we not forgetting something really important ? Raids were fine at the start of HOT, when ya know they got updated etc. But 10 months for 2-4 easy bosses is not okey.It was an illusion created by two factors - first was the fact it was a fresh, completely new content, and so many people wanted to try it out. Second was, obviously, legendary armor, that got many people interested, who otherwise would have stayed away from the content. Those both factors had a shortterm impact only, however. Most of the former players gave up very fast, either when newness wore out, or after they've seen this content is not what they're really interested in. The latter raided a bit more, but once they've got what they wanted, they left as well, as they never really cared about
raids
in the first place. Those things were never going to last, and they only obscured the real raid popularity.

Idk we can compaire se4 and 5 and see similar results to post hot and post se3 raiding. Se4 lw was slow and while each update had content for that audience it was plagued by delays and issues which cause alot of ppl to simply lose interest in the game at the time, it also didnt help that pm every other part of the game is also suffering. Now compaire that to se5 that not only has a pretty consistent and delays free lw schedule so far hit its also quite regular and you will quickly realise that ppl are much more active and engaged with the game.

Or we can compaire se5 to post hot lw which was non existent.

A very similar picture is clearly visible with raids, they went from a period of strong cadense to one of bad cadense which also suffered by bad releases (much like se4).

While i wont disregard the crowd that didnt get what they wanted out of raiding and therefor quit pretty fast, you are clearly downplaying the detrimental effect of the unsustainable cadence that raids have had for years. Raids in gw2 as well as most of the other content dont have an expiration date, unlike wow or ff14 were content is current and then stops being current when the new shit is out that doesnt happen with gw2, not nearly to the same extend at least.

The content in gw2 is required to be replayable both in regards to inherent fun factor but also rewards. In the end all content grows stale and ppl burn out on it which is why devs put out new content and game who do that see success while others see failure where the devs fail to provide.

One notion i was seeing with ppl during the early parts of the raid and fractal slow down was that while this content is fun ppl cant see themselves spamming the same thing for up to a year or more.

A notion that has plagued every part of this game at some point in its lifespan and the only fix for it is new content at a healthy cadense.

We should stop caring about the type of player that spends alot of time at this game but has a very low skill lvl and yet still feel entitled. The real casuals dont give a kitten about balance and content, they wont post on any forums.And yet those very players you want the devs to not care about are those whose (un) happiness can decide the success of GW2. The real hardcores simply
can't
keep this game afloat. There were never enough of them in the first place.

Having a plethora of diff content that supports diff play and life styles is healthy for gw2 because these groups of ppl bring something diff than the rest. The way i see true casuals bring bulk of numbers both in players and income while the dedicated pring discussions and advertisement for them which in turn attracts new audiences.

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It's kinda weird how people are insisting "open raids for casuals" when they are already open. Anyone is free to LFG for training runs or "all welcome" runs. However, the thing that people seem to fail to understand, is that raids in GW2 are most of all a test of co-operation and performing mechs properly TOGETHER and the failure usually punishes the group. Meanwhile, the casual players (which makes most of GW2 playerbase) hardly ever do any content together in an organized manner as most raid bosses are most of all about doing things right as squad. For ex. even Tequatl is mostly peoples moving as big blobs between 4 objectives, DS meta as well and in those kinds of content, the player doesn't really need to co-operate at all (as shown by those 5 extra guys at every DS tower boss) despite doing it in group. And since pretty much no open-world content teaches co-operation (Triple Trouble and Shatterer as rare exceptions), going straight to raids without visiting fractals first can be a rough wake-up as a casual player who's never played in a group in organized manner easily ends up wiping the group.To make matters worse, like already mentioned 50 times in this thread alone, open-world doesn't give ANY indication what kind of damage, boons or heals you're doing and thus it's quite usual to see new peoples of any of those roles doing less than 25% of what average person in that content do if they come in blind without any knowledge about how builds work and due to damage auras, healer sleeping on num 1 easily wipes the squad. Due to enrages, group of totally improperly built dpsers also are very unlikely to succeed even though proper dps build could spam 1 all day and out-dps random mismatch build by 2-4x.Raids are the difficult PVE content, as well as T4 fractals. Below those, for people looking for challenge but not ready for raids, are lower-tier fractals, Strike missions and, surprise, bounties. If people were that interested in challenging content, why even those aren't more popular than the deadzone they currently are? Is it because rewards aren't worth it? Or are they too scary for casual players, too? If it's the first one, people are actually asking for easier rewards when they're asking for easier raids. If it's the latter, people could start running those first before getting into raids and if those are too scary, the player isn't up for the (co-operative) challenge known as raids.

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@"LadyKitty.6120" said:It's kinda weird how people are insisting "open raids for casuals" when they are already open. Anyone is free to LFG for training runs or "all welcome" runs. However, the thing that people seem to fail to understand, is that raids in GW2 are most of all a test of co-operation and performing mechs properly TOGETHER and the failure usually punishes the group. Meanwhile, the casual players (which makes most of GW2 playerbase) hardly ever do any content together in an organized manner as most raid bosses are most of all about doing things right as squad. For ex. even Tequatl is mostly peoples moving as big blobs between 4 objectives, DS meta as well and in those kinds of content, the player doesn't really need to co-operate at all (as shown by those 5 extra guys at every DS tower boss) despite doing it in group. And since pretty much no open-world content teaches co-operation (Triple Trouble and Shatterer as rare exceptions), going straight to raids without visiting fractals first can be a rough wake-up as a casual player who's never played in a group in organized manner easily ends up wiping the group.To make matters worse, like already mentioned 50 times in this thread alone, open-world doesn't give ANY indication what kind of damage, boons or heals you're doing and thus it's quite usual to see new peoples of any of those roles doing less than 25% of what average person in that content do if they come in blind without any knowledge about how builds work and due to damage auras, healer sleeping on num 1 easily wipes the squad. Due to enrages, group of totally improperly built dpsers also are very unlikely to succeed even though proper dps build could spam 1 all day and out-dps random mismatch build by 2-4x.Raids are the difficult PVE content, as well as T4 fractals. Below those, for people looking for challenge but not ready for raids, are lower-tier fractals, Strike missions and, surprise, bounties. If people were that interested in challenging content, why even those aren't more popular than the deadzone they currently are? Is it because rewards aren't worth it? Or are they too scary for casual players, too? If it's the first one, people are actually asking for easier rewards when they're asking for easier raids. If it's the latter, people could start running those first before getting into raids and if those are too scary, the player isn't up for the (co-operative) challenge known as raids.

Casual. Players are not interested in raids that are relatively highly tuned and never will be because they are not interested in the pattern Learning required, and being forced into builds they are not interested in playing. Never mind the elitist players that ruins the experience for fellow raiders and new players. A behaviour driven through perceived nessassity, wipes cost time.

Every other aaa mmorpg learned this a decade ago. They recognised casuals do love group content, this is why theu all dev eloped a lower tuned version of the existing raids to provide raid content to the majority of the player base.

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