Firebeard.1746

I tried PVP'ing my normal time, late night NA, and my match was clearly full of bots and trolls. They've done such a terrible job of policing cheating and match manipulation, there are literally times you can play where I'm sure only other players have already rigged which way the match will go and you'll iterally spend the whole match getting chased by 4 other players. It also took me over 10 minutes, maybe 15 just to find a match and experience that. Do you really think, that with such low participation, that the game would be fun if they suddenly expected everyone to? most people still playing GW2 are only playing for the PVE or WvW, so it would be REALLY dumb for them to release an expansion based on gameplay no one is doing. At this point, I'd say play valorant or Overwatch if you really want a game dedicated to PVP, it ain't happening here. The other issue with PVP is that if it is balanced appropriately and matches are fair, you're guaranteed to lose about 50% of the time, and if you experience a losing streak at the wrong time, it can really mess up your will to play a game. This is part of why I quit MOBAs: I wanted control over when i would potentially lose and I also wanted what I worked for to mean something. That's how I went to MMOs from MOBAs.

Just don't kill the ability for people to solo content or turn OW into a cesspool of optmizing 50-man raid groups. I had to solo bosses for gen2 legendary collections and am scared I wouldn't be able to today. Even though I don't do a lot of solo play, please let hybrid builds still be a thing & allow them to be effective in solo OW where required.

Unfortunately @OP, the whole point is mostly the skin for everything except armor I would say (WvW and PVP players are done dirty for crafting non-mistforged variants). So you wouldn't save much. The stat selection is nice, but crafting legendaries takes so many resources it makes far more sense to start equipping roles you want to fill in exotics and maybe even the ones you use alot in ascended before you really commit to legendary (if you care about having a coherent build on your journey to legendary). COsmetics like that are the noly real long-term goals anet gives us.

I'm not sure if anet has nerfed them at all but both teapot and Muk have made great LI builds with high theoretical output. Anet should support low intensity builds and encourage communities to publish them moving forward. Some of the LI builds perform way better than the average player trying to do an SC build.

My experience is that PuGs care more about experience and KP than playing a "meta" class. The DPS requirements for most encounters are really low compared to theoretical maximums. TL being one of the few exceptions. Also, you don't want to play with people that dumb, trust me. I was in a W1 clear with people who thought HAM was a good flak kite, but they failed to realize the terrible range on consistent HAM healing and we were wiping on Sabetha. It's hilarious this group mocked druid on disc when I've cleared it flak kiting on Druid and even healed better. The professions have a wide variety of capabilities that can potentially hard or soft counter many mechanics, particularly on HoT raids, so people who look at an SC build and say "play this" are literally the worst players to play with. You actually got away clean. I recommend trying to find communities to do stuff with. It's way better than pugs. I've had good pugs, but that's where the garbage in our community plays.

I agree with most of what you're saying and i'd like them to somewhat reduce the time on Sunqua and the newer fractals. It feels like they made long boss fights and long fractals. It should be one or the other. I feel like they drag out the new ones artificially so it feels like they gave us a lot of content, but it just feels more disappointing.

They had better not be done with fractals: they're still the best source for certain legendary crafting materials and they feel stale. Fractals should be their own tier between ow and 10 man content.

I really want to make one of my characters look like him. Does anyone have any wardrobe combinations that come close? I'm guessing the WvW legendary chests are probably the closest to the angel wing animations in diablo.

Most people that have coalescence have both. I personally have both and don't think it's that bad but i found a good group to run with when i was working on it. Your group makes or breaks wvw and the best ones are the guilds that try to do well but don't take themselves too seriously. I do understand some pve players are allergic to wvw and don't blame them. At the very least both pve and pvp/competitive players should have access to 2 visual upgrades and 2 rings imo.

It was rare enough that my wvw friends said there was none, good to know. Still think WvW players are being done dirty earning another legendary with a visual upgrade that rarely shows.

Visually there's no difference.

You're kind of done dirty for getting your second via wvw as having 2 doesn't give you 2 of the glowing ball.

To answer the op: it's only a mistake if they balance around it, which they shouldn't for 2 reasons: 1) they tied it to an lw episode, so not everyone is guaranteed to have it 2) it takes a resource from said content. It's not a big deal imo if it makes ow content slightly easier: we earned the mastery after all and it's been a good teaching tool for people who don't know what cc is and stick it on their bars. If anet is seriously opposed to its usage outside ib saga, they should nerf it outside ib saga or just not let it activate outside ib saga, not make it so people who don't have it need to bring every cc and its grandma on their action bar. That turns the CC bar from a mysterious mechanic to an obscenely annoying one.

My experience contradicts this statement. I used an EMP to free someone else and then it was on CD when Soo Won had a BB. And I thought reacted as soon as it came up, I don't remember waiting.

I'm glad you have a solution to those problems, however you did not bring them up. Had you, i would not have said anything. If you're still expecting players to bring CC though, i question the value of it and emp. They might as well restrict emp so IB maps only and then it requires less dev effort.

2 EMPs is a lot of CC. Emps are some of the strongest cc in the game, so without emp i'd say it's massively overtuned. Also, on one of my soo won attempts she spawned a cc bar right after whirlpools, which is gross given emp has a cd as well.

Every OW encounter should not be balanced around it. Not everyone will have IB saga, especially if they manage to grab more players into the game. It also requires resources to purchase so unless you have an HI that you farm regularly, you won't always be able to buy it. Would rather not have another mandatory grind added to the game just to play OW.

And every bar seems to have its own mechanics: some refill over time, some have ridiculously short windows for coordination, some can be broken by 5 people in a 50 man squad and others feel like they don't go off even of everyone does(or it requires close to everyone to CC).

It's like any good GW2 encounter: you're supposed to WTFBBQpwn it so fast there's no mechanics. Get that 40k bench workin'! In case it's not obvious, I'm being sarcastic. Even if there's a grain of truth to what I'm saying.

I'd like for the reward for being more organized to come from the fact you did organize over straight failing in the OW if you don't. Kindof how EU fast farming numbers come from optimal play, maybe the best g/h would come from organizing, but without all the failing if you don't, I feel DE would have been better accepted if this was the case and it would preserve the OW as a learning playground, but if you're serious the guides would show you it's best to organize. I felt DE got toxic at times as it is. In instanced content I've made peace with the meta even if I feel it can be more burdensome than a traditional trinity, and totally agree. You say it's obvious, but it's less obvious to most players, which is why there's entire guides and videos on it and content creators talk about how the game does'nt do a good job of teaching it. Most players, if they're watching boons, are normally watching their own builds and using it for their own power. I respect your opinion, ultimately the devs will do their thing.

The other boons usually come from just having these two. There is no "might/fury" button on my raid disc. It almost sounded like you agreed with me in the "two criteria " portion of this quoted portion of the post but feels like a backtrack. And if you're going to stick to your guns full boons + some healers isn't frc, i want you to tell me which other roles are global to all raids. You guys aren't the only ones to say frc isn't required, but given my experience experimenting with different levels or organization, in my personal experience is it is. I tried no less than 10 attempts most after the nerfs and still failed with varying levels of organization. I respect your opinions and experience, but people who have experienced what I have will agree with me and play in that manner. In fact i've talked to content creators who basically say they run in their own groups doing what i advocate: having full boons. And i don't have to respond to every post of people that disagree with me, but i'm sure the many people who have failed the meta and never looked back might come here and agree with me if they took the effort to try with a full raid comp. I'm glad your less organized groups seem to succeed often enough you don't feel scared of wasting over an hour of play time when doing the DE meta. That's not my personal experience. And given how it feels like mechanics stack up over time, based on my failures, skipping through the best possible dps sounds like the best strat and it's what i'll stick to and advocate for anyone who doesn't have an hour and a half to throw away.

No I've done a few recently. At least 3 in that last month I believe. So that includes changes. One of those was semi-organized. But sure, assume whatever you want.

I did most of them when it first release, but I think I've done over half since the nerfs. I tried at least once after each nerf. I was actually trying to avoid being in a fully organized squad like the plague because imo, OW should be about random player interaction, so when you have to fully organize a group of 50 players to open their own instance and pass it reliably, it's not really OW content in my book. I was shocked when i saw how much easier it is with higher DPS and how hard you're punished for not having high DPS, it's a bullet hell snowball. And most clears from this thread seem to be comfortable ones, there are some that are close, but it looks like DPS is king for the most part.

Nice deflection. Because you know no other roles are universal across all raids. Maybe eu players are good enough without that level of organization, but given i literally stepped into no less than 10 failed groups with various level of organization, i wouldn't take that chance in NA. If you don't feel it's required based on your experience, i believe you. But i believe otherwise based on mine.

Okay given my de runs have healers too, just like a raid would, can you clarify which other roles are so universal in raids that aren't in DE?