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Why SnowCrows is destroying Raiding


Blumpf.2518

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This thread goes right back into why I believe sites like snowcrows need to list two different kinds of metas:
  1. The normal speed clear meta designed for players of peak experience who don't make mistakes. You could call this "the elite meta."
  2. And then a "safe meta" where the meta is designed for players who do make mistakes, that would gladly DPS a bit slower to be able to clear a raid. It is often that a normal speed clear meta build operating at 100% damage output, can sacrifice about 10% to 15% of that dps value, to literally "double or triple" it's own sustain value, simply by bringing 1 defensive utility + some trait swap to a defensive trait. And then of course the kinds of things can be done which the OP mentioned.

^ If this where to be done, LFGs could list as: "Elite" or "Safe" and players could have different standards within squads, but two different methods to be able to agree upon. It would make the communication of expectations a lot easier. People have said they wanted an easy mode for raids, well this would be the easiest way to achieve it, a community accepted alternative "Safe" meta that players can organize around, who want to play at that pace.

How about you provide the builds for what you deem to be the “safe meta”.

Well, therein lies the entire problem in sort of a reverse perspective, in what the OP is talking about.

If I am not a pinnacle of identified widely talked about commercial reference, few will ever notice, so why take the time?

It would be easier if the pinnacle of reference snowcrows were to use someone like me simply as a suggestion man, and do it themselves. If I were to try and do it, it would be a long term campaign project within a community to convince people that the "safe meta" was ok to partake in, with absolutely no guarantee that the community would ever accept and adhere to such an idea. But if snowcrows themselves were to post it, literally over night entire guilds and a massive portion of the community's demographic would see it, read it, and accept that it was happening. By morning, players would be configuring builds to adhere and partake in the safe meta.

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@"Ayrilana.1396"

Tweaking for a safe meta is not something that would be difficult to do. As a Ranger main, I'll give you an example of what I mean:

  1. Take Heal Druid first https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/druid/heal/ With this build you can swap both Transference sigils into Energy sigils. You can take out 1 offensive spirit utility and put in a stun break, preferably Lightning Reflexes. And then you can substitute the +5 heal infusions for +5 vitality for a +90 vita = 900 more health. A Ranger gets base 15922 health so that goes to 16822 <- When you're talking prot buffs along with other sources of damage mitigation such as barriers ect ect, all of these little boosts in health & damage mitigation add up to greatly reduce the risk of ever getting downed to begin with. The idea here is that a Druid who is alive is always better than a Druid who is dead. By sacrificing only roughly 10% of its top heal output, which Druids over-heal anyway, and by sacrificing an incredibly small margin of its DPS party buffing by removing either sun spirit or frost spirit, it gains an extra dodge roll on each weapon swap, self vigor buff from LR and self stun break & reposition + the evade, and a bit more padding to stack vs. heavy DPS situations. That's A LOT of extra self non party reliant sustain for only roughly a 10% sacrifice in top heal value. For players who know they may mistakes, this is the build variant they should be running for Heal Druid.
  2. Power Soulbeast https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/soulbeast/power/ This build you can sacrifice about 5% top damage output for an enormous addition to personal sustain by replacing Frost Trap with Dolyak Stance. When you aren't playing with perfect groups in Raids or Fractals, groups who aren't exactly tossing much stability, the Dolyak Stance replacement very often results in being able to deal MORE DAMAGE than if you had brought Frost Trap. This is because the Dolyak Stance grants the stability to ensure that the Soulbeast's full burst is not ever interrupted, and the -33% damage stacking with Prot as well as other forms of damage mitigation, ensures that the Soulbeast can tank long enough to be able to deal that damage without needing to move. And if a player wants to get safer yet, they can bring a 1hand Axe over the Dagger or Sword, which has its perks. But the main perk is that by sacrificing a very very small amount of Axe Offhand side DPS, the player gains the ability to kite while still dealing damage, rather than needing to stand in something's face to maintain DPS output. This allows players breathing room to regroup while still dealing damage, rather than placing them in a situation where they are "not DPSing while they run around avoiding damage". Also, it is surprising that the Axe in certain Raids/Fractals actually will yield larger total damage dealt by the end of the run, than a Dagger/Sword. Probably the strongest example of this right now, is the new 100 Sunqua. The Soulbeast can maintain surprisingly high auto pressure without burning any important CDs for the big burst, while he is forced to kite and play the defensive phases while the boss is teleporting around the arena. <- The autos can still hit that boss no matter where it goes and even when the Soulbeast is standing behind the boulders. If you haven't tried Axe over Dagger/Sword on a Power Soulbeast, go do it and you'll see what I mean. Oh and also, running We Heal as One is kind of meh on this build. Bear Stance is much much better when you aren't playing with elite crews.
  3. Condi Soulbeast https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/soulbeast/condition/ This current installment of Condi Soulbeast, I couldn't disagree with more. Anyone who mains Ranger who has played modern Condi setups vs. modern Power setups knows that Condi Soulbeast is rarely a useful option to use over Power for several reasons, unless you're bringing it in for immob spam vs. certain mechanics or to be able to maintain high ranged DPS pressure such as in Sunqua, while aiding the party's maximum burst potential with stance shares for short interval burst opportunity. This current listed Condi Soulbeast is just way too tuned for elite no mistake gameplay and it avoids the purpose of what the Condi Soulbeast is actually good for, which is maintaining high condi pressure at ranged, while being able to land most of its burst from ranged actually, without even messing up its full burst cycle and potential DPS when it has a chance to get close. So here I'd suggest that players remove the Axe/Dagger on swap 2 and go back to Shortbow play. Furthermore, Viper's Nest is too much attempted tilt towards trying to make the Soulbeast deal similar damage in a flat footed burst like other classes, which it can't ever do to begin with so why try? If a player wants maximum flat footed melee range burst potential with condi, they should be playing things like Condi Ren, Condi FB, Condi Mirage, Burnserk. Replacing Viper's Nest with Dolyak Stance, will again, allow the Condi Soulbeast a personal source of stab, a stun break, and -33% damage mitigation that stacks with other effects rather than overlapping. For some rough 10% decrease in top damage output, the Condi Soulbeast at least doubles its personal sustain factor, while ensuring that it won't be interrupt during bursts and that it won't be insta nuked by stun locks when its party support fails to deliver stab. It also gets to capitalize on the one thing that it can do better than any other build, and that's maintain very high ranged DPS pressure, which although niche, is the superior option for top damage output due to mechanics, in certain situations. Sunqua CM right now is again, a good example of this. Also, Bear Stance, use it over We Heal As One when you are NOT playing with elite no mistake crews.

So you see, these are not large deviations from listed snowcrow meta. But with the way the community views these kinds of things nowadays, if they notice your build is sliiiightly different like this, maybe they feel you have 1 too many changes in your deviation, they don't want you around. Without understanding that a player has very good reasons for running the deviations and might actually be STRONG enough to carry them through an entire boss phase to avoid a wipe at the cost of only 10% of their top DPS value, they assume the player who has deviations must be bad or not really familiar with what's going, because his build doesn't have a snowcrows label stamped across the side of it.

Now I'm sure whoever is reading this is probably thinking right now: "Man I'm tired of hearing Boyer talk. What is this guy talking about?" And in true testimony to my previous response before this post, ask yourself this: "If Snowcrows had posted these safe Ranger build variants, would you have even questioned it?"

I feel like this is the very essence of what @Blumpf.2518 was getting at in his OP post. Hey! I could be wrong.

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This thread goes right back into why I believe sites like snowcrows need to list two different kinds of metas:

Why should Snow Crows' members go out of their way and experiment with and provide information about builds that don't align with their desires and way of playing things?If people want an informational website about a "safe" meta, they should just make it themselves.

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@"aaron.7850" said:Damage meters are the problem, not snowcrow

are you trying to blame the best tool available to improve?they are not an issue and they sould be added in game so player can see how little/good they perform and maybe more player would reach acceptable DPS/Boon instead of hiding behind a "yes my dps is as low as druid but i bring other thing"

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@"Ayrilana.1396"

Tweaking for a safe meta is not something that would be difficult to do. As a Ranger main, I'll give you an example of what I mean:

  1. Take Heal Druid first https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/druid/heal/ With this build you can swap both Transference sigils into Energy sigils. You can take out 1 offensive spirit utility and put in a stun break, preferably Lightning Reflexes. And then you can substitute the +5 heal infusions for +5 vitality for a +90 vita = 900 more health. A Ranger gets base 15922 health so that goes to 16822 <- When you're talking prot buffs along with other sources of damage mitigation such as barriers ect ect, all of these little boosts in health & damage mitigation add up to greatly reduce the risk of ever getting downed to begin with. The idea here is that a Druid who is alive is always better than a Druid who is dead. By sacrificing only roughly 10% of its top heal output, which Druids over-heal anyway, and by sacrificing an incredibly small margin of its DPS party buffing by removing either sun spirit or frost spirit, it gains an extra dodge roll on each weapon swap, self vigor buff from LR and self stun break & reposition + the evade, and a bit more padding to stack vs. heavy DPS situations. That's A LOT of extra self non party reliant sustain for only roughly a 10% sacrifice in top heal value. For players who know they may mistakes, this is the build variant they should be running for Heal Druid.

so you remove 10% heal, meaning your group is good enough to not need this extra 10% and you go to energy sigil which give no good output force would have been wiser... Oh you mean on defensive side, got you, can you tell me how giving more energy to a druid that die because he isn't doging things will help him in any shape or form, wouldn't he be better off receiving more healing (if he cannot still cannot dodge but i would advise him to dodge its much safer)?15922 hp that's kinda low no? maybe you should avise your druid to lookup again the build because he has some wrong pieces as he should be at 16772 without giving up on infusions. i guess he made the beginer mistake to go full harrier and overcap BD when all other druid run a magi ring which not only increase the health to 16772 but also increase the druid healing power by 41 yes its 50 less hp but not gonna lie if you're in need of these 50 hp there is another problem somewhere else.making you own build is one thing but when its to do the same as other but worse you'd be better of choosing the one that is safer (in that case SC) on top of that your buddies will die less because you heal them 10% more (as long they learn to dodge right stuff obviously)i guess the druid part (didn't check SLB bit so not talking about it) is just highlighting why people recommand to use premade build instead of having people think that sacrifying 131 healing power is worth the 50 health you gain :s

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@Fueki.4753 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:This thread goes right back into why I believe sites like snowcrows need to list two different kinds of metas:

Why should Snow Crows' members go out of their way and experiment with and provide information about builds that don't align with their desires and way of playing things?

Good question. They really don't have any obligation to do so. That's not really the point however. The point made is that other people can't once something like Snowcrows takes a dominant position as a reference.

If people want an informational website about a "safe" meta, they should just make it themselves.

Oh you mean people like this? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbchsoelUt3bu7JcO6M_dRA Maybe you mean like the weebly based pvp site I used to run for a guild back in 2012-2015. Perhaps you mean something like this https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/38081/the-10-commandments-of-conquest which is a complete tutorial with entirely accurate information, better than anything you'll find anywhere else on the net.

But you see these sources of information don't go anywhere because they aren't commercial based through any Arenanet partnered streamer or cross promoted website with ad play. This is unfortunately true when it comes to gaming and most things really, in 2020.

There are 100s of guild based discords, websites, non partnered streamers, who have attempted such projects, but they go no where man. It all goes no where with no commercial support.

@Fangoth.4503 said:

@"aaron.7850" said:Damage meters are the problem, not snowcrow

are you trying to blame the best tool available to improve?they are not an issue and they sould be added in game so player can see how little/good they perform and maybe more player would reach acceptable DPS/Boon instead of hiding behind a "yes my dps is as low as druid but i bring other thing"

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@"Ayrilana.1396"

Tweaking for a safe meta is not something that would be difficult to do. As a Ranger main, I'll give you an example of what I mean:
  1. Take
    Heal Druid
    first
    With this build you can swap both Transference sigils into Energy sigils. You can take out 1 offensive spirit utility and put in a stun break, preferably Lightning Reflexes. And then you can substitute the +5 heal infusions for +5 vitality for a +90 vita = 900 more health. A Ranger gets base 15922 health so that goes to 16822 <- When you're talking prot buffs along with other sources of damage mitigation such as barriers ect ect, all of these little boosts in health & damage mitigation add up to greatly reduce the risk of ever getting downed to begin with. The idea here is that a Druid who is alive is always better than a Druid who is dead. By sacrificing only roughly 10% of its top heal output, which Druids over-heal anyway, and by sacrificing an incredibly small margin of its DPS party buffing by removing either sun spirit or frost spirit, it gains an extra dodge roll on each weapon swap, self vigor buff from LR and self stun break & reposition + the evade, and a bit more padding to stack vs. heavy DPS situations. That's A LOT of extra self non party reliant sustain for only roughly a 10% sacrifice in top heal value. For players who know they may mistakes, this is the build variant they should be running for Heal Druid.

so you remove 10% heal, meaning your group is good enough to not need this extra 10% and you go to energy sigil which give no good output force would have been wiser... Oh you mean on defensive side, got you, can you tell me how giving more energy to a druid that die because he isn't doging things will help him in any shape or form, wouldn't he be better off receiving more healing (if he cannot still cannot dodge but i would advise him to dodge its much safer)?15922 hp that's kinda low no? maybe you should avise your druid to lookup again the build because he has some wrong pieces as he should be at 16772 without giving up on infusions. i guess he made the beginer mistake to go full harrier and overcap BD when all other druid run a magi ring which not only increase the health to 16772 but also increase the druid healing power by 41 yes its 50 less hp but not gonna lie if you're in need of these 50 hp there is another problem somewhere else.making you own build is one thing but when its to do the same as other but worse you'd be better of choosing the one that is safer (in that case SC) on top of that your buddies will die less because you heal them 10% more (as long they learn to dodge right stuff obviously)i guess the druid part (didn't check SLB bit so not talking about it) is just highlighting why people recommand to use premade build instead of having people think that sacrifying 131 healing power is worth the 50 health you gain :s

^ There is no better example of a response to reinforce my point as to why it would be too difficult for someone like me to attempt going through sociological red tape like that.

Again:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:If I were to try and do it, it would be a long term campaign project within a community to convince people that the "safe meta" was ok to partake in, with absolutely no guarantee that the community would ever accept and adhere to such an idea. But if snowcrows themselves were to post it, literally over night entire guilds and a massive portion of the community's demographic would see it, read it, and accept that it was happening. By morning, players would be configuring builds to adhere and partake in the safe meta.

And that is why it would be great if snowcrows or some other funded resource were to take the initiative to help organize the middle tiered players so we could get some momentum for participation thrown at these game modes.

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@Laila Lightness.8742 said:you can litterly do it with a group of bearbows or minion master necros . just stop using meta and play with what ever you feel like anything can work if you are good enough . meta builds are good for they are builds already proven to work at that point but as balance patches nerfs meta build classes as they should do to change meta (still waiting for druid nerf no class should have 10 might stacking or overpowered passive buffs wich blocks others from joining in like spirits.

You're a couple years late to the nerfs, druid has already been nerfed to the point that it only holds 1 spot in a raid or strike. Which isn't even necessary, as it's primary group buffs that it's wanted for are frost/sun spirit and spotter.

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@Strider.7849 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:you can litterly do it with a group of bearbows or minion master necros . just stop using meta and play with what ever you feel like anything can work if you are good enough . meta builds are good for they are builds already proven to work at that point but as balance patches nerfs meta build classes as they should do to change meta (still waiting for druid nerf no class should have 10 might stacking or overpowered passive buffs wich blocks others from joining in like spirits.

You're a couple years late to the nerfs, druid has already been nerfed to the point that it only holds 1 spot in a raid or strike. Which isn't even necessary, as it's primary group buffs that it's wanted for are frost/sun spirit and spotter.

Its the might i got issue no other class has a 10 target might gen so why should druid have it

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@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:you can litterly do it with a group of bearbows or minion master necros . just stop using meta and play with what ever you feel like anything can work if you are good enough . meta builds are good for they are builds already proven to work at that point but as balance patches nerfs meta build classes as they should do to change meta (still waiting for druid nerf no class should have 10 might stacking or overpowered passive buffs wich blocks others from joining in like spirits.

You're a couple years late to the nerfs, druid has already been nerfed to the point that it only holds 1 spot in a raid or strike. Which isn't even necessary, as it's primary group buffs that it's wanted for are frost/sun spirit and spotter.

Its the might i got issue no other class has a 10 target might gen so why should druid have it

Alacrity renegade and healbrand both can output 25 stacks of might on their own. Renegade is 10man

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SC does not destroy raids. In fact, SC provides useful information to learn raiding and advanced tooltips.

You can absolutely play with a different strategy as long as you make sure you provide all boons and that your dps players know their rotation. However, when it comes to DPS, the rotation and build provided by SC is probably far more optimized than the custom build that a player can build on his own.

Test DPS players on golem rotation, if they can't reach 85% of the dps benchmark on golem, they are doing wrong. If they do more than 100% of the benchmark, then record the video and submit it as a new dps benchmark.

Same for your support players, if they can't provide the 100% boon uptime for their specific role (quickness, alacrity, 25 might stack...) then they're doing wrong or players don't stack enough. Why Druid? Because spotter + spirits and good might uptime - same comes from warrior and banners which are unique buffs. This is the reason why you need 1 druid (useful on all boss), 1 bs + 1 alacren (or double crene RR or double chrono but less efficient for good alac uptime).

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@"Laila Lightness.8742" said:Its the might i got issue no other class has a 10 target might gen so why should druid have it

Excuse me, have you heard of tempest? Boon herald maybe? Boon thief? If not, I recommend playing the game a bit more, before you come here with "no other class can do this or that", because those 3 I mentioned provide 10man might (tempest and boonthief being able to generate and sustain 25 stacks on full squad)

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This thread goes right back into why I believe sites like snowcrows need to list two different kinds of metas:

  1. The normal speed clear meta designed for players of peak experience who don't make mistakes. You could call this "the elite meta."
  2. And then a "safe meta" where the meta is designed for players who do make mistakes, that would gladly DPS a bit slower to be able to clear a raid. It is often that a normal speed clear meta build operating at 100% damage output, can sacrifice about 10% to 15% of that dps value, to literally "double or triple" it's own sustain value, simply by bringing 1 defensive utility + some trait swap to a defensive trait. And then of course the kinds of things can be done which the OP mentioned.

It already exists, if you read the website carefully and go to Guides section for every class, you would notice that extensive notes are provided for both "elitist" comps (as you call them) and "safe" comps, including 2 healers and less offensive strategies. They even have a healscourge guide, which btw no "elitist" or speed running group will allow in squad, but which is seen very often in pugs.

Reading through all comments from people "demanding" more safe comps from SC or complaining about their "elitist" metas, I see 2 main problems:

  1. People are not reading. Everything you want is already available on their website in extensive guide sections.
  2. People are blindly copying SC builds without reading those guides, not knowing what their skills/traits do, how to CC, etc.Both problems are easily solved by reading. Both problems will always exist because for some people there is too much text to read through so they won't do it, some don't know english well so they won't understand it and will just copy build. Both of those problems are not SC fault. Without SC you would be running Kittygear or outdated metabattle builds (which btw are copied from SC). You have no rights to demand anything from them (you call it a "suggestion" but sounds like demand). They are providing tons of indepth knowledge which you won't find anywhere else so easily, they have a public discord where they will answer any question you have, they have dedicated channels for each class where you will be advised if you want to run safer build and all you need to do is ask. And guess what, they are not getting paid for it, they do it all in their free time. They are kind enough to share their knowledge (which they have after hours of grinds and tests) with the entire community, and yet people have the audaticy to complain and demand more. This is very sad.
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@paulelle.6813 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This thread goes right back into why I believe sites like snowcrows need to list two different kinds of metas:
  1. The normal speed clear meta designed for players of peak experience who don't make mistakes. You could call this "the elite meta."
  2. And then a "safe meta" where the meta is designed for players who do make mistakes, that would gladly DPS a bit slower to be able to clear a raid. It is often that a normal speed clear meta build operating at 100% damage output, can sacrifice about 10% to 15% of that dps value, to literally "double or triple" it's own sustain value, simply by bringing 1 defensive utility + some trait swap to a defensive trait. And then of course the kinds of things can be done which the OP mentioned.

It already exists, if you read the website carefully and go to Guides section for every class, you would notice that extensive notes are provided for both "elitist" comps (as you call them) and "safe" comps, including 2 healers and less offensive strategies. They even have a healscourge guide, which btw no "elitist" or speed running group will allow in squad, but which is seen very often in pugs.

If an elite snowcrow squad is safer by suggesting an extra healer with their elite styled builds, then the "safe meta" would pretty much be unkillable with an extra healer if the squad at least roughly understands mechanics.

You guys have to got understand that there are people out there who are incapable of playing at the skill level required to run snowcrow styled meta builds. Maybe it's because it is a 65 year old person who is trying a video game for a first time, or maybe it's because someone is playing who has a crippling disability that prevents them from using a keyboard & game mouse in the same way others could. And before you say "Well raid/CM content isn't for them" I'll tell you that it could be, with a safer meta. That's really the ultimate point here.

You can defend these elite styled comps all you want, which you really don't need to, as I never spoke out against them saying there was anything wrong with an elite meta. All I said, is that it would be nice if there was a reference point for a safe meta, so players with limitations could participate. And bringing more participation into raids/fractals is always a good thing that the game needs.

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This thread is an incredible dumpster fire of people not knowing how to read, how to navigate past the homepage of a website, and people so delusional about what people that work on something in their free time should do that it's almost illegal. To even write something as stupid as Snowcrows is destroying raiding because they don't put snowflake builds on their website is so incredibly entitled. They already have off-meta support builds on their websites and a whole load of guides on how to play them, furthermore they provide a ton of information what to do with 1 and with 2 healer squad setups. If you wrote this thread you should be deeply ashamed

Also the sc meta makes people not think about their classes. They copy the build/traits but dont know what the traits do. And then they are surprised like "oh my skill does now immobilize/reflect/something else as well? Where did that come from?"But the result of this is, that people dont know their classes like they should for raids.

This was funny not gonna lie, I know I called you delusional before but this tops it all. If you think that people actually know what their skills/traits do when they don't look at a guide, you haven't played this game enough, simple as that. Furthermore it explains for everyone to see what your skills are for, again their are guides to why a build is the way it is. in case you can't find it I will upload an imagehttps://imgur.com/a/15vR9RSHave a look at it, it might help you in the future

As average raid, the sc speedkill meta is nerfing your own raid, because with it, most of the time, boon uptimes are short and heal and cc is not enough.The builds are made so it will have 100% boon uptime on what they have to provide, it is not related to phase timings, so dps has nothing to do with the boon duration. If you want to make a bit more mistakes, sure go for a bit higher boon duration, 100% is completely delusional on everything but alacrity renegade. Heal is maximized on all healing builds except heal scourge lol what? Did you even check the builds before you made this post? How do you propose to make a druid provide the neccessary buffs but also heal more? You can't change the harrier gear, all traits are already made for healing, what else are you even taking?

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:You guys have to got understand that there are people out there who are incapable of playing at the skill level required to run snowcrow styled meta builds. Maybe it's because it is a 65 year old person who is trying a video game for a first time, or maybe it's because someone is playing who has a crippling disability that prevents them from using a keyboard & game mouse in the same way others could. And before you say "Well raid/CM content isn't for them" I'll tell you that it could be, with a safer meta. That's really the ultimate point here.

I am a part of a raid training server where we have >60y old people as well as a person without hand, people with vision and hearing impairments and somehow they all manage to play and successfully clear raids with SC builds, as those are builds we require for trainings.You have to understand that endgame content is maybe not for everyone, not for people who press autoattack only, down to every mechanic and expect 9support squad to carry them through the raid just because they feel entitled to kill the boss. Raids are easy enough to learn, all you need to do is open your eyes and train a bit to get to know mechanics and avoid them by dodging, positioning, blocking. All of that can be learned in training raids and doesn't require any crippled builds designed to carry the squad.

Btw no "safe" build and no amount of healing will help you if your squad doesn't know how to use those "safe" builds, which is the case for already existing builds.Vitality stats won't help you either, as bosses deal damage to you as a percentage of your health while your healers heal you with flat numbers, so the more vitality you have, the harder it is to heal you. So if you want to play minstrel chrono on VG (as the author of the first post suggested) because it's "safe" because you don't know how to block attacks, you will die even faster because noone will able to heal you that much, you will take 2 autos from the boss and die.

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I knew stuff like this this would happen in this thread, since snowcrows is kind of a religion to a lot of people where only snowcrows is good and the rest is "crippled" "useless" "snowflake builds" "noob stuff" etc. This thread and the reactions to it shows perfectly what mindset the raiders of gw2 are trapped in. "Snowcrows is good and everything else is bad and heresy! Now burn the witch who dareth to speak against the meta!"

Also people are quite delusional about their own skills. I know im good, but i also know, i'm not as good as others and therefore i have to compensate that to make raid life easier for me and others. But there are a lot of people out there who think that because they are exactly copying the SC playstyle they are automatically as good as SC. Bad news for you: youre not and will never be. And once you realize that you can adjust your build, rotation, playstyle to play safe. And by safe i mean, you sacrifice about 5-10% DPS for more group support and survivability. And im not talking about unrealistic Golem-Benchmark DPS now, but of real raid DPS vs actual raid bosses.

Lets take Holo for example, most of them are running AED as healskill. Why? You can skip insta death mechanics with it at deimos and sabir and its F Skill does damage, so it will increase your DPS a bit. BUT you could also be running the healing turret which is a group heal, a group condiremove, a water field and grants regeneration. In most scenarios this would be better for the group. And the insta death mechanics can be avoided without using AED by playing the boss mechanics as intended.And there was the example of soulbeast running bear stance earlier in this thread. If youre playing soulbeast and are using one wolf pack and the leader of the pack trait, take bear stance. It will heal the whole group and remove condis. And this can make a diffrence in high pressure situations were the group drops low.Or lets take warrior as example. You can play SC Berserker warrior. What will happen most of the time is: CC bar appears, headbutt is on cooldown cause people used it to have more time in berserker mode or to fill adrenalin bar and berserker mode just ended, so you cant use your Mace F1 and end up with very low CC, Mace3 and Mace5 on a class that normally is a CC monster. But you could also play Core warrior and have your Mace F1 ready all the time with an effect 3x as strong as the berserkers F1. And since youre playing core you can also equip Battle Standard as Elite as an "oh shit" skill that instarezzes a lot of people if needed. You could also be running the tactics traitline and use the empower allies trait, which as berserker would mean a lot of DPS loss, while as core warrior it wont reduce your DPS. Reason for this is that Berserker is running Strenght/Discipline/Berserker and trading Strength or Discipline for Tactics is always a DPS loss, while Core is running Strength/Tactics/Discipline and therefore wont lose DPS. Core Warrior also has a free utility skill where they can choose any physical skill. Most of the time i use "Throw Bolas", but if you need even more CC you can use "Kick" too.Or lets say a CondiNecro at Gorseval or Amalgamate in Wing6. Most people will just say "WTF, this are Power-DPS bosses, play Dragonhunter!" but this bosses also have a lot of adds/orbs which can make life difficult. But if you play a power setup with one condiscourge who uses Epi there wont be any adds/orbs and people can DPS the shit out of the boss. Necro and Epi is not "needed", but its a quality of life feature that makes the boss so much easier for everyone else.

And these were only some examples, but it works for every class and if everyone is running the group supporting skills and traits instead of the egoistic max dps stuff it adds up and makes life a lot easier for the whole raid. And the DPS loss is marginal. Maybe your raid loses 5-10% DPS compared to whats max possible, but your raids survivability will be a lot higher. Always remember that a dead hig-risk-high-reward player does 0 DPS while a player with a safer build and an easier rotation can still do 90-95% of the max possible DPS.

But since the SC meta is like a religion nowadays, most people wont even consider this is as an alternative.

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@"Blumpf.2518" said:But there are a lot of people out there who think that because they are exactly copying the SC playstyle they are automatically as good as SC. Bad news for you: youre not and will never be.

Raids outside of bad pugs exist, there are multiple guilds/statics at SC level. The fact that you are unable to folllow optimized rotations apply their guides and tips to your everyday raiding, doesn't mean everyone else is unable to do it unless they are SC.

You proved once again inability to read. If anyone is treating SC as a religion, it's you, because it's you who just glances at the website and says "everyone must play as sc says and copy everything". You are deaf to arguments saying that builds which you are mentioning ALREADY EXIST ON SC WEBSITE, like epi scourgeIt even has a guide for gorseval saying to bring epi for gorse https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/necromancer/scourge/condition/ , which as you said is great to carry right? It literally says "Epidemic is effective for dealing with the Spirits that Gorseval summons after he uses Spectral Impact, the Charged Souls during the split phase (to spread around extra damage and additional Chilled and Immobilize) and the Spectral Orbs that spawn around the fight area."

Engineer example - They say on the website "Utility Skill Variations - Healing Turret - is a moderate AoE heal that cleanses two conditions from up to five allies. It also provides a water field that can be blasted with Detonate Healing Turret" - this doesnt look like "use AED only and no other skill", this looks like "hey you have other options than aed and this option will help your squad". https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/engineer/holosmith/power/

Soulbeast example on their website "Bear Stance can be taken instead of "We Heal As One!" if you require the additional condition cleanses. This will be extremely useful on high pressure fights with constant condition application." They even advise to run bear stance on Slothasor. https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/ranger/soulbeast/power/

Have you read anything on the website at all? Because again it looks like you haven't.

Noone says "power comp only for gorse", as condi firebrands and condi renes permofm amazingly on it. SC says "this is OUR RECORD COMP", they don't say "this is the one and only best comp you should be using". They give you all those guides so you can choose from any class you want and they provide notes for every class snd give you tips how to play this class on a particular boss.

Oh well, nothing to do here, if you are unable to read once again.

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:So you see, these are not large deviations from listed snowcrow meta. But with the way the community views these kinds of things nowadays, if they notice your build is sliiiightly different like this, maybe they feel you have 1 too many changes in your deviation, they don't want you around.In all my time i have actually raided, there was only one case of me hearing anything bad about my double shortbow condi soulbeast build. That case was largos duo CM, where switching to mirage ended up as a heavy increase in survivability for me. And it wasn't really a comment about the build itself, but a (completely justified) comment about my ability to not get downed while playing it.In addition, SB3 was the build that was most often suggested to weaker players whenever someone noticed they weren't doing all that well on whatever they were running at the moment.

So, yeah, the community is soo picky about playing strict meta builds, that running stuff like this build (one that is not present on SC site), will definitely make other raiders not want you around....oh wait.

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@"Blumpf.2518" said:I knew stuff like this this would happen in this thread, since snowcrows is kind of a religion to a lot of people where only snowcrows is good and the rest is "crippled" "useless" "snowflake builds" "noob stuff" etc. This thread and the reactions to it shows perfectly what mindset the raiders of gw2 are trapped in. "Snowcrows is good and everything else is bad and heresy! Now burn the witch who dareth to speak against the meta!"I dont get this combination of victim and superiority complex there's so many completely reasonable replies to your rambling that you're completely ignoring.

Lets take Holo for example, most of them are running AED as healskill. Why? You can skip insta death mechanics with it at deimos and sabir and its F Skill does damage, so it will increase your DPS a bit. BUT you could also be running the healing turret which is a group heal, a group condiremove, a water field and grants regeneration. In most scenarios this would be better for the group. And the insta death mechanics can be avoided without using AED by playing the boss mechanics as intended.But as a dps holo your job is dps, and the healing is the healers job. The whole point of raids is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The more you try to spread out and try to do everything (dps and healing) the less effective you are at both. You are giving up a sizeable dps increase for close to nothing because the "advantage" of healing turret is redundant.And there was the example of soulbeast running bear stance earlier in this thread. If youre playing soulbeast and are using one wolf pack and the leader of the pack trait, take bear stance. It will heal the whole group and remove condis. And this can make a diffrence in high pressure situations were the group drops low.People already do this.Or lets take warrior as example. You can play SC Berserker warrior. What will happen most of the time is: CC bar appears, headbutt is on cooldown cause people used it to have more time in berserker mode or to fill adrenalin bar and berserker mode just ended, so you cant use your Mace F1 and end up with very low CCYou never use headbutt on berserker outside the initial strike to fill 3 adrenaline bars because its a self stun. If you can start the fight with 3 adrenaline bars (like qtp or dhuum) headbutt is pretty much pointless and people tend to take res banner anyway.But you could also play Core warrior and have your Mace F1 ready all the time with an effect 3x as strong as the berserkers F1. And since youre playing core you can also equip Battle Standard as Elite as an "oh kitten" skill that instarezzes a lot of people if needed. You could also be running the tactics traitline and use the empower allies trait, which as berserker would mean a lot of DPS loss, while as core warrior it wont reduce your DPS.You lose a lot more dps by just not taking berserker and empower allies ironically is not worth it outside of incredibly high dps groups. The right play here is to ask 9 other people in the squad with you to use their cc skills. Again the more you try to cover by yourself, the less effective you are at everything.Or lets say a CondiNecro at Gorseval or Amalgamate in Wing6. Most people will just say "kitten, this are Power-DPS bosses, play Dragonhunter!" but this bosses also have a lot of adds/orbs which can make life difficult. But if you play a power setup with one condiscourge who uses Epi there wont be any adds/orbs and people can DPS the kitten out of the boss. Necro and Epi is not "needed", but its a quality of life feature that makes the boss so much easier for everyone else.First of all condi dps has been good at gorse for a long long time. As other people have pointed out necro, and almost every other condi class have their own guides on the snowcrows page for gorseval in particular.condi scourge on conjured amalgamate is actively griefing your group. You pull the group dps down by a lot, your hand phase dps is almost non existent leading to more slams leading ,ironically, to more adds ( the very problem you claim to solve). I haven't seen a training group that actually struggle with cleaving shields with swords.This is genuinely such a bad idea it's not even funny.

But since the SC meta is like a religion nowadays, most people wont even consider this is as an alternative.

Few final notes here, a lot of ideas you posted on both this and your original post are genuinely bad. (knights is better than minstrel for tanking by so far its hilarious, bringing 2 entire banner for measly amounts of healing power and toughness is a terrible idea no matter how you put it.)As other people have noted its impossible to find a pug group that insists on following sc comps to the T, even if you try your hardest. A LOT of criticism similar to this seem to be made by people who rarely raid and also haven't spent more than 4 seconds looking at the snowcrows website. Meta builds are meta for a reason. A lot of these builds come along with thousands of hours of experience and experimentation. The more you understand why they are better and the other builds aren't nearly as good, the better you are as a raider.Also almost all boon builds on snowcrows are there with the intent of keeping 100% uptime no matter what. I'm really very very confused as to what you're referring to with that.

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@Seera.5916 said:The type of player that will blindly follow a build on a site will blindly follow a build a guildmate or fellow raid member gives them.

They aren't going to bother to deal with the whys to figure out how to adjust when things don't go to plan.

Snowcrows isn't destroying raiding or any other content. They're offering information on the meta build and rotation. What players do with that information is not up to Snowcrows.

Except it's totally not. Because the game doesn't tell you how to play. So when the only definitive source is a speedkill guild, you get speedkill noob messes.

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@Blumpf.2518 said:In theory yes, but in reality people are stupid and snowcrows should consider this and maybe offer LFG builds and LFG raid setups for the average players.Since they are the meta they have some responsibility and should not, even unintentionally, destroy raiding for average players.

This is my gripe with snow scrows x1000

They would do the commmunity so much more good teaching people builds for fault-tolerant kills than setting us up for endless training runs full of people not able to play at their level.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Seera.5916 said:The type of player that will blindly follow a build on a site will blindly follow a build a guildmate or fellow raid member gives them.

They aren't going to bother to deal with the whys to figure out how to adjust when things don't go to plan.

Snowcrows isn't destroying raiding or any other content. They're offering information on the meta build and rotation. What players do with that information is not up to Snowcrows.

Except it's totally not. Because the game doesn't tell you how to play. So when the only definitive source is a speedkill guild, you get speedkill noob messes.

How is any of that Snowcrows fault?

Snowcrows isn't destroying raiding.

The primary thing destroying it, if it's even being destroyed, is players' lack of willingness to put for the time and effort to learn about the build they are getting and why the choices made were done. This is regardless of whether the build is a speed build or a super safe PUG build.

The second thing you touched on: the game not doing as good of a job as it could in teaching mechanics, especially CC.

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@"Blumpf.2518" said:Everyone who is raiding has heard of them. Snowcrows and their website with raidbuilds and recommendations what and how to play in raids.Unfortunately that leads to some problems.

Almost everyone in the LFG tool is thinking that this is the "meta" and the only way to play, so the builds are just copied and the raidsetups too.What people dont understand is, that snowcrows is a speedkill-guild and not the average random LFG raid. They know how to play their classes, what the bosses do and why and when they use certain traits or skill. Also their DPS is significantly higher that the DPS of the normal GW2 raider, allowing them to skip boss phases or mechanics.

With shorter phases you need lesser boon duration, less heal or even 1 less healer. You can sacrifice boon uptime and heal for more DPS to make the bosskill even faster.

BUT the average raid doesnt exist of 10 SC members, instead you will most of the time have people whose DPS is lower, who dont know their classes well, or you have a suboptimal raid composition or people dont know everything about the boss or people just make mistakes.And then you have a problem, because boss phases are longer. Boons will disappear because boon duration is bad, group takes more damage because protection is suddenly gone, area damage is ticking all the time and longer as the phase should be or heal is not enough.It also happens that CC phases take really long cause people dont use their CC skill or are just spamming all skills instead of saving CC skills. And then people go down and need to be rezzed and all of that makes the fights even longer.

All of that will happen in an average or random raid, but the snowcrows meta doesnt consider this. Snowcrows meta is made for a high-dps group that doesnt makes mistakes who is able to skip phases with dps.

As average raid, the sc speedkill meta is nerfing your own raid, because with it, most of the time, boon uptimes are short and heal and cc is not enough. And then people wipe with a normal raid, try again, wipe again and so on. But wiping 10 times with a speedkill setup is still slower, than killing the boss safe first or second try with a non speedkill setup were maybe the bossfight is 1-2 minutes longer.

Therefore i highly recommend for everyone who is not interested in speedkills, but just wants to raid to think about this. Bring higher Boondurations into the fight, especially for quickness and Alacrity you want to have 100% boon duration. Use Full Tanks (Minstreal Gear) for bosses who deal a lot of damage to the tank. Have one Healer for each Group with full healing gear. If the group still takes too much damage, bring a 2nd Banner Warrior and use all 4 Banners. If there are a lot of projectiles, use classes that have projectile reflect/block. If damage to group still is too high, use a 3rd Healer or get hybrid healers into the raid, for example condition necros who take the one big shadow trait. Even with full dps equip they can buff shield to 10 people then.And always be prepared to compensate mistakes, because in a normal raid, mistakes will happen. With a speedkill setup a mistake is most of the time a wipe. But if you can compensate it with more heal, higher boonduration, aegis, stability, reflects or whatever there is, you will survive mistakes.

Of course Snowcrows dont destroy random raids on intention, but out there are a lot of people for who the snowcrows raid meta is like a religion they have to follow, even if they dont know why. And there are a lot of people out there who dont even accept anything that is not meta, but which would actually help their raid kill a boss. With such people most of the time you will just get flamed or kicked out of the raid if you suggest bringing another healer or a 2nd warrior or a necro for addclear etc. People only know "thats not meta" and thats it.Also the sc meta makes people not think about their classes. They copy the build/traits but dont know what the traits do. And then they are surprised like "oh my skill does now immobilize/reflect/something else as well? Where did that come from?"But the result of this is, that people dont know their classes like they should for raids.

So raiders out there, dont just copy everything from Snowcrows. You and your raid is not like them and will never be, so instead of copying their speedkill meta find out what works for your raid and adjust your raid according to your playstyle.

you make a fair point however i think RAID SELLERS kill raids much more then snowcrows builds (i dont think they do to be clear), you are also asuming people dont want to improve and will only ever be average bellow average at best.

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This will never change, the vast majority of gamers in the community within guild wars 2 are pretty lazy. The refusal to learn the content, mechanics, classes and what have you is what leads us to the issues we have both in PvE and competitive. The only way it will change is if A-net forces the community to change, and they tried with HoT and failed miserably because they backed up. The cater to a specific niche, that niche is the targeted demographic and anyone who plays the game at a higher tier or even to a point where they are optimal for their preferred content have a leg up on the others and are NOT the targeted demographic.

A-net seems pretty clear in their approach, milk the casuals who will NEVER do the content that is outside of open-world. Which is why it gets the most cadence. Thats where the money is because thats where gaming is headed, no challenge and just brainless chew through hordes of enemies like this is diablo 3. New world is doing the same thing, and it looks like all MMO's are headed in that direction. Pretty soon we wont even have to fight! Everything will die as soon as we enter a map due to our sheer awesome and we get all the loot. (Pretty sure there are people out there who would LOVE for an auto-play mode in this game, much like a browser/mobile game.)

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