Feanor.2358

Oh, they do care about players skill and personal accomplishments, only they value the MP-related ones higher, because they're harder.

Fair enough. Same can be said for TBL, since it doesn't count for literally anything. So how exactly it is supposed to carry more prestige, which was your original claim? Prestige is recognition. Of the two titles, only one is recognized for anything, in any measurable way.

Mate, it is accepted in the EU, I'm in EU and I have been pugging like that for months. Please don't tell me it's just luck, that's rubbish. There probably are groups which won't accept VitV as credentials enough to give you a shot, but they are very, VERY small minority.

Do we have difficult SP content in the game? We do. Is it easier than the difficult MP content? It is. I rest my case.

No, there's an objective fact - showing VitV is enough for the vast majority of raid groups to accept you. Would you please try to gain entry by showing TBL and share the results here? Hmmm, that's not really true. On the contrary the majority of the groups ask to ping a bunch of kps and won't let you participate with only the title. VitV means nothing to them since it can be bought easily and for prices that are high but affordable for longterm or ambitious players. The only kps I ever ping are Dhuum's and now the ones from W6 since the wing is new (although I'm certain I can safely dispose of the b1/b2 ones already, Qadim's are the only ones that count). "voice/envoy" has been sufficient to get me in any group I joined for everything else. I think you're grossly overestimating the amount of people who bought VitV. The title carries enough weight so people are willing to accept you. Of course, if you fail badly they will revise their attitude very quickly. That's just another reason why it is accepted as a measure of skill despite being able to buy it. With these titles it is extremely obvious when it is earned and when it isn't.

No, there's an objective fact - showing VitV is enough for the vast majority of raid groups to accept you. Would you please try to gain entry by showing TBL and share the results here?

And yet they aren't. And yet nobody cares.

No, here I was comparing non-existing content with other non-existing. The statement was about theoretical maximums. The comparison of existing vs existing content I already did. And it shows exactly the same. Which is more than you can say about the solo titles. For them you only have your own subjective opinion. Statistics back me up and objective facts - which you admit here, however reluctantly - back me up. Regardless of conditions you want to impose the fact remains VitV is recognized somewhere and carries a weight. Can you say this for TBL?

but it still holds true that the most difficult solo fights in the game are far easier than most raid encounters. I can back this up statistically: Less individual skill? Not really. Let's be honest, no raid encounter requires more skill from individuals than Liadri did. Yes, the encounters' overall difficulty is greater, but in actuality in most cases it requires far less out of each individual player (and in no case requires more). The very fact that even VitV can be bought proves that. I do not agree. Being able to buy it is irrelevant. The only reason TBL and Kingslayer can't be bought is that you can't have another character carry you through them, not their difficulty. I can say for certain both Samarog and Dhuum CMs have been far harder for me than either Liadri or Turai. That's why I wear VitV, not one of the solo titles which I also have. Objectively speaking, the solo fights didn't offer that great of a challenge. They only had a single important mechanic to learn. For the normal fights I agree that raid cms (and even most nm) are harder than Liadri&Turai, but 8-orbs Liadri is the hardest challenge I ever had in gw2.I guess it depends on what build you're using. I just slapped a focus on my Mirage and pulled multiple adds into the lights. It didn't even feel more difficult than the normal mode, since I had already learned the mechanics and they didn't change at all. Depends on the perspective. It means exactly as much as you put into it. If you bought it, then all it means to you are the hours upon hours of mindless farm. If you did it on your own, then it has much greater meaning. And that's the common case by a wide margin, not the buying one. It doesn't, but read again what I said. No matter how hard solo content you want to make, you can always create harder group content. No they aren't. Not even close. Nobody cares if you have TBL or Kingslayer. VitV? That gives you a free pass almost everywhere. And for a good reason.

but it still holds true that the most difficult solo fights in the game are far easier than most raid encounters. I can back this up statistically: Less individual skill? Not really. Let's be honest, no raid encounter requires more skill from individuals than Liadri did. Yes, the encounters' overall difficulty is greater, but in actuality in most cases it requires far less out of each individual player (and in no case requires more). The very fact that even VitV can be bought proves that. I do not agree. Being able to buy it is irrelevant. The only reason TBL and Kingslayer can't be bought is that you can't have another character carry you through them, not their difficulty. I can say for certain both Samarog and Dhuum CMs have been far harder for me than either Liadri or Turai. That's why I wear VitV, not one of the solo titles which I also have. Objectively speaking, the solo fights didn't offer that great of a challenge. They only had a single important mechanic to learn.

Voice in the Void, obviously. At least it will be in just a few months when Champion of Zommoros overtakes it in unlocks.

Huh, I actually expected lower numbers on the raid bosses. They do feel harder than Liadri and Turai, at least the endbosses of the wings. I guess that's a bias caused by the average level of the groups I play in. But OK, they're still easier than the hard raid CMs. Demon's Demise is ~3% as well.

Yes, group content has the added difficulty of requiring coordination, but it balances it by making the individual difficulty much lower (sometimes low enough that some players might not even be there). As you said, in a solo fight you can never fail if you do your part flawlessly. In a group one you can. What you forgot to say is that in a solo fight if you don't do your part well, you will not succeed, but in a group one you still can. That you can't get carried for solo challenging content, but you very much can for group one. That's why the individual content is always going to be more prestigious, because it is the only content that really shows how skilled you are. There's nothing stopping you from making an encounter requiring the exact same flawlessness from every player, achieving the same individual challenge as the most challenging solo content possible and much, MUCH higher difficulty. In practice you leave some leeway in either case, but it still holds true that the most difficult solo fights in the game are far easier than most raid encounters. I can back this up statistically: Kingslayer title unlocks: 6.1%The Blazing Light title unlocks: 15.4%Voice in the Void title unlocks: 1.4% Note that while TBL has been around for a long time, Kingslayer was added much later than VitV and still is unlocked by about 4 times as many players. Obviously it requires less skill and owning it carries less prestige.

Well, no. First off, you can't buy something nobody is selling. Being able to buy the kills means there are groups of extremely skilled players who can provide this service for you. By farming Istan and giving them lots of gold in exchange for the kills you're doing exactly that - rewarding higher skill and higher effort with a larger reward. Second, the high-difficulty solo content will always be easier than the high difficulty group content. Because the latter can include everything the former has, plus it has the added difficulty of needing other players to their parts equally well. In a solo fight you can never fail if you do your part flawlessly. In a group one you can. Even the hardest solo fights we saw not that long ago don't really compare to some normal mode raid bosses. Let alone to the truly challenging CMs. They'll never be as prestigious as the raid ones.

With all honesty, PvE ele balance improved noticeably with the Air line changes. So yeah, they do care. That's all well and good but i wish anet would understand that PvP and WvW exist in this game too.. I'd like to play Ele in these game modes and feel like i'm doing somethingYeah well, I can get behind you on that. But it doesn't mean they don't care, simply that the problem is more complex in pvp environment.

With all honesty, PvE ele balance improved noticeably with the Air line changes. So yeah, they do care.

Learning the mechanics is not a problem. They are slow, usually have clear tells and for the few cases when they don't ANet has added a huge screen overlay to remind you something is going on. The problem, the thing that makes you need training, is playing your role under pressure. Removing the pressure from mechanics, damage output and damage taken is not going to prepare anyone for anything. And neither is it going to make them experience anything. The raid experience is very much defined by this pressure.

Learn to play mirage. It is definitely the more favorable DPS class for that fight (with the dodges, jaunt and the stunbreak) and really really fun to play it on that boss. Also until you get use to it endurance food can help. Mirage is outright broken on this boss honestly. Not only dodging doesn't kill your dps, it's part of your rotation. And not only that, you get a shit ton of it. Oh, and the highest attack rate of the bosses really favors confusion damage. The fight would be considerably harder if we didn't have mirages to abuse on it.

Most raiders wouldn't object on this, provided they receive some reassurance it won't slow down future releases. Borrowing resources from other departments for instance, like it was suggested. I dare even say very few would object. But I'm certain there will be those who are unhappy they don't get the raid-exclusive rewards on the easy mode.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me? Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements. The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted. Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage. Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here? See what I mean: We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills. It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well. No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. , BUT i could stand it if we actually gained something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be. That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance. More rewarding?! have you tried at 14k 15k hp ele build in wvw yet? The level of risk you must put your self into to land viable dmg on part with scorge and rev is out right silly when you realized both scorge and the rev are far more tankly and more able to self support there dmg. Mostly dying to retal alone in wvw fights. When a rev can hit you for 6k but you can only hit them for 3k back (1 skills) there is something very wrong. Ele needs counter dmg mitigation badly hitting harder vs lower hp targets is not working at any level for counter dmg mitigation nor is vulnerability working and burning is not dealing with healing. Ele needs real counter def tools unblockables counter boons counter healing and real dmg buffs vs high armor classes (not higher dmg but blunt conter to high armor).So basically what I just said - there need to be advantages to balance out the disadvantages of taking an ele. It is commonly referred as risk/reward balance, hence the use of "rewarding".

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me? Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements. The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted. Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage. Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here? See what I mean: We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills. It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well. No, its not, because ele was very well off for DPS in GW1 at any range, it was very well off for support at any range, and as i said, i would rather we could pick one or two elements per weapon and gain a weapon swap so i could have a melee weapon and a range weapon slotted without having to leave combat, the attunement system as a whole with how they implemented it, has failed in my opinion of what ele should be like. , BUT i could stand it if we actually gained something for our complex(overly so) rotations, at the moment that is not the case. Our rotations are the most complex out of all the classes and they require a ton of skill to pull off correctly to obtain that damage, one or two mistakes and you obliterate your DPS where as other professions have alot more lee way in what they can do and the mistakes they can make. I can do more damage with my ranger camping SB(Literally 2 skills) than i can with my ele if i mess up one attunement, and in my opinion that is not how it should be. That's a balance issue now, not a mechanical design one. I agree ele needs to be more rewarding in terms of performance.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail. That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences. No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either. Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism."What would you prefer" is a meaningless question, except if what you really are interested into is the personalities of the people answering. If this is the case, then please accept my apologies, I didn't mean to ruin your fun. I assumed people here are actually interested in the actual decisions made in the actual game, together with the reasons why. They, too, are free to do what they want with my criticism.

I never played Gw1. Can you elaborate how Ele was done there a bit for me? Well first off you could choose which of the elements you wanted to use, or multiple. Fire, and Air where the heavy damages if i recall properly, earth was control, and water was both healing and damage, and yes you had multiple weapons not that that mattered much because skills werent locked to weapons and honestly not gonna lie, i wish that in GW2 you could just..choose one or two elements per weapon and have a secondary set with the same or alternate elements. The "arcane" trait line increased the amount of energy you had available so more high damage skills if you wanted. Fire skills applied burning it was far more effective in GW1 than our burning is on ele currently. I forget what the other ones did(I think earth would apply bleeding, Air would do some kind of weakness where it reduced either the maximum HP you had or the maximum energy you had available.) because i barely ran builds that werent fire, and Fire skills where overall high damaging, AOE skills(at least the good used ones for PVE.) unlike ours fire skills..which are AOEs, on long cooldowns..but do very little damage.Are you sure it's not mostly nostalgia speaking here? See what I mean: We can currently choose which element to use - via the attunement mechanic.Fire and Air are usually the damage elements across the different weapons. Dagger, Sword, Scepter both offer their best damage in these two elements. Staff is the sole exception, relying almost exclusively on Fire for damage.Water is control/heal element across all weapons, with touch of damage here and there (e.g. Twin Strike, Ice Spike).Earth offers a mix of control (blinds, knockbacks, immobilizes), and condi damage. There's the occasional direct damage as well, but it's more of an exception rather than a rule.Unlike most condi builds, which apply a multitude of damaging conditions, Ele ones are heavily biased toward Burning. The only other build I can think of which is so burn-heavy is the Firebrand one.Arcane line achieves a similar effect - reducing attunement cooldown means easier/faster access to your high-damage skills.It seems to me your description is surprisingly accurate for the GW2 implementation of the profession as well.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail. That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

That wouldn't be a very good idea given how Balthazar was fought by the commander. In Raids they "fix" the commander problem because no NPC, ally or enemy is calling us Commander in there. Instead we are a group of 10 random adventurers. Balthazar is integrated to the story and was beaten by the Commander with the help of Aurene, not by a random adventuring group. Not to mention the obvious problems with not everyone liking Raids and so on, but Story is also an important limiting factor in making these final bosses Raids. And that was why the story was unepic. A godlike being, celebrated as the God of War and fire and empowered by draining 2 elder dragons back to sleep, was beaten by a mere mortal and a juvenile dragon. Seems totally unplausible and silly to me. This is left in the realm of opinion. I personally felt the epicness of the fight. If it gets too difficult where the majority of the player base doesn’t complete it, then no one would come back for the LS chapters etc. and thus harm the health of the game. The story has to be able to be completed by everyone. That being said, I’m surprised that they didn’t add a hard mode similar to Mordremoth, which would probably give you that epic feeling your craving.The problem with this approach is you play this once, at best, and often not even that. It's not really worth the effort of developing it. Besides, a solo fight it will never feel properly epic when you have bosses tuned for 5 or 10-man parties.