Rhatha.2376

So far, I've only had a chance to do a few of them, but I think the EoD strikes are well positioned to go over better than raids. Some people are just not going to like that type of content, and that's fine.. but I think there are a lot of people who actually would like the content if they got in and got to play it without so much stress. There were a few problems with raids. 1. The name. Sounds kind of silly, right? But there's a LOT of baggage with the term "raid" from people who have played similar games. GW2's raids are a lot more approachable than what I've played in similar games. The amount of effort needed to get a starter set of gear and to maintain your food/utility and the like is much lower, the mechanics are for the most part consistent with the rest of the game (orange circles bad, green circles good) and now that they're all released there are plenty of "easy" fights to start with. You don't even have to come remotely close to all those benchmark numbers to do the content. But just the fact that they're called Raids leads to people having misconceptions about what they are. 2. The bad side of the community. The vocal minority that belittles people trying to learn who aren't at whatever level they expect yet makes that worse (and this has been a thing from the days of Citadel of Flame speedruns, early fractals, etc. all the way to today). And while it is a minority, and there are a ton of people who are extremely helpful and do training runs to this day, it's like trying to watch the news.. maybe you smile at the story about someone helping a friend through hard times, then it immediately goes back to whatever the current world drama is because we as humans are predisposed to remember negativity. One person lashing out can undo the goodwill built up by dozens of helpful players. 3. Onboarding. So, while I love all of the good effort put out there for raid training - in fact, I did the entirety of the legendary armor collection without a consistent group through a training discord and can't say enough good things about all the people who helped with it - there's just such a huge difference in what you need to understand about the game to finish the story and run some fun meta events vs. what you need to understand to succeed at its instanced content. And I think we've all seen what happens when there's too much of a jump in difficulty in the open world. This has been rehashed to death, but within instanced content there's not an easy way to jump in. Dungeons and fractals are played in a fundamentally different way than raids most of the time and there was no other 10 man instanced content to prepare you for them. And even learning how groups are set up for that content is a big step up.. with raids it was far harder. And if you're not the type of person who's ok looking up a guidee to help you figure out what's going on, you'd better have a good friend to explain it all. 4. Difficulty of raid bosses and their release order. Would raids have been seen as more approachable if bosses like Cairn, MO, and Samarog came out before VG? I distinctly remember early VG attempts as being pretty frustrating when everyone was learning. The raids are laid out in terms of story relevance for the side story being told, but the boss difficulty is all over the place. Wing 1 starts with some moderate difficulty bosses.. Wing 2 has a trickier one out the gate. Wing 4 starts with three of the easier bosses, followed by one of the hardest ones. Maybe if doing them in order started you with easier fights and led into harder ones in later wings it would have gone over better. People who are very into raids can figure this out, but someone who just wants to try the game mode, starts on a harder boss, and gets too frustrated without knowing any better might write it off as not for them. 5. The Meta and player tools. When raids came out, most people didn't consider boon uptimes for an entire group outside of might and fury. Healers were near unheard of. Quickness was much more limited and alacrity was just added. And people tried to figure out how good they were doing by methods much more crude than just looking at arcdps or feeding a chat log into a website for analysis. Once these things started to emerge, people began to really determine what is effective and what is not. There's some downside here, as it does mean that there's an even bigger gap between someone who just figures out the very basics (greatsword is my power weapon so I'll use berserker) and maybe plays around with a few traits to make things easier for themself, and the type of refined builds that can be looked up in seconds today, that have data backing them up. Once the frontrunners found what worked, it trickled down to the rest of the playerbase.. but not everyone who looks at a guide understands why the moving parts work as they do, and others don't run the type of content where they have the support those builds need attached to their hip. This was a massive change in how the game is played by some. Honestly, I think a lot of people just don't realize how much more effective they could be with a few small changes to their build, their gear, even just hitting one button before another or more frequently. This is a difficult problem to solve, though, as anything you do to try to help has a big potential for pushback. The last thing you want to do is alienate people who would enjoy the content, yet that happens all too often. And there's also a vocal minority who are dead set against any form of instanced content.. which again is fine, but there's a difference between saying "not for me" and "this shouldn't exist" the same as there is on the other side. In terms of strikes: Now, we have IBS strikes, some of which are comparable to a world boss, just with 10 people, and some of which add a couple mechanics you need to respect, and Boneskinner at the top which, while not a raid level, makes it very clear that there will be some things you just flat out need to dodge. The EoD strikes are a step up from that, but not a huge step - the gradual difficulty increase is such that if you can do IBS strikes, then learning one or two extra mechanics that will down you is enough to start to learn the new ones, plus you've already seen them in the story, it's just doing the same thing with 10 people and slightly higher numbers. It doesn't solve the initial jump of learning about what is effective for your profession, how 10 man groups work, how to manage boons, having healers, and so on, but from the entry point that exists it's a good next step.

I've been getting back into GW2 after a long break, and am looking to find consistent groups to make the daily fractals smoother and maybe get back into raids. I'm more or less comfortably doing T4+Recs, on scourge (most comfortable) and cele HB (newer). I haven't tried CMs but would like to learn, nightmare doesn't look too bad though the other two may take some work. Raiding wise I've finished one set of leg. armor entirely via a training discord some time ago. For the HoT raids, I have killed but am not super comfortable with the end bosses, and am pretty confident in the rest. PoF raids I haven't touched and would need to learn. For raids, I would prefer a dps or dps/boon support while learning, likely scourge/reaper but I have most profs set up so could potentially look into banners, cfb, or other things. Schedule wise, I'm usually busy Tues evening, Sat evening, and Sun afternoon. I'd prefer a single day for raids but can consider other schedules if the group sounds like a good fit. For fractals, right around reset is a good time. Generally can fit in M, Wed, Th, Fri, and Sun 5-10 CT, Sat morning until 4 CT. If you know a guild or other group for either or both of these, please get in touch, Rhatha.2376 in game. Thanks!