[Li / Killproof for Strikes are a Problem]

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:Is it so hard for all of you to have a faith on people you don't know ? Or is it too hard for commander to fix and tell newbie what to do in the strike ? (Other than just kick )

Ask LI / LD in the strike mission is the stupidest things I've ever seen , either you guys are too bored, or you don't trust anyone at all. In NA it's not often, I suppose it's the issue comes from EU.

I think that all of us had faith when we started. We just lost it as time went on.

A year ago, I joined a raid squad of a guild that just started raiding. They were taking anyone. Very open minded. I joined the guild after.1 or 2 months later they were asking for Li. Low ammount but some. Their point was to learn the content and with pugs that was imposible without some requirements.Now they always ask for KP and kick if someone is killing the group. They are still learning some harder bosses and relised that they cannot learn with anyone.

With strikes, it is way worse. Because in strikes, 9 out of 10 players are basicaly doing nothing. For me, li in strikes is almost as important as in raids. Strikes are easier but also there is much higher percentage of terible players.

Which brings us back to the root cause of why we have KP requirements in the first place. It's not because we want to actively exclude people as the primary motivator. It's just the average player is just so clueless and awful that we have no choice but to implement requirements. Fix the giant skill gap between raiders and casuals and I'll stop imposing LI requirements. All of the folks complaining in this thread would just as easily exclude level 70 characters from their strike groups without missing a beat and the gap between level 70 and open worlders is smaller than the gap between raiders and casuals.

[Li / Killproof for Strikes are a Problem]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

LOOL !! This questions the meaning of "top raiders". If a raider needs a "good group" to complete the WoJ or Boneskinner for example, then he is not a "good" raider. He is at the same level with every random player building a PU Group. So, why is he asking for KP?

Why I said this - I pugged all the strikes. Mostly after doing Shiverpeaks/Fraenir/Kodans, if the players considered the team to be good, then we continued. And most of the times we killed Bone and Completed WoJ from the first try. Again - why the need of KP? If ONE of the players is a very good one, he can decide every Strike.So, you can solo every strike, including WoJ and Boneskinner? Because that's what your claim is about - being able to carry other 9 players even if their input in the fight is minimal or zero. If so, i'd really like a video of it.

Sorry? Can you see a statement in my post that I can solo the two bosses? The topic is about KP needed to enter a

group

for strikes. And I said that even if ONE of the players is very good ... That means that a good player can help his mediocre team mates to win the fight. This if he is interested to win the fight that day.

If we take your words as true that means the formula:

ONE good player + 9 mediocre = ONE (aka solo)

. It is easy to see that you consider the other 9 players having a value of ZERO. It seems that your opinion about the "non elite" players without 250 LI is even worse than I thought.

@"Hyrai.8720" said:

your post shows that you have no idea about raiding or strikes whatsoever. (or the "elitist" community in that regard)being a "top raider" doesnt just mean killing a boss. its about consistency and time.so at this point its not even just about time anymore. its about getting more loot!

Indeed, it seems I have no idea - but not about raids or strikes. I have no idea of the "engine" pushing the raiders community. Thanks for clarifications. Let's see:

1. being a "top raider" doesnt just mean killing a boss. its about consistency and time
   - that means you want to clear the raid as fast as possible to have enough time to stay on LA complaining you have no content? I don't think this is 100% accurate, because we have the second line:
2. so at this point its not even just about time anymore. its about getting more loot!
   That is! The raiders community who asked for the raids for the sake of difficulty (if you read the archives you can find enough statements that they want the raid even if it has modest rewards) is very concerned by the LOOT!

Conclusion - the raiding community is concerned to grab the loot in the fastest way to have enough time to waste on complains that they have no content. No matter that in this way they discard a lot of any polite attitude towards the other players - going to the point they consider them to be ZERO -see my previous answer to our colleague.

HM - excellent! This is a way to spread the "good atmosphere" existing around the raids in the Open World too.

You can spit all of the hyperbole and tin foil hat theories you want but it does not change the fact that we do not want to play with casual open worlders in strikes. We are not hiding that fact. In fact we are explicitly stating stay the hell away from our groups if you dont have raid experience. There are many other groups that open worlders can join.

Zero value isnt quite right but pretty close. As stated by anet, the average player outputs 10x less damage than top players so a squad with 2 raiders will output more damage than a squad with 10 casual players. I certainly can carry a group of 9 other open worlders if I so choose to but do I want to? Absolutely not. They can still complete the content without raiders in the squad. No one is entitled to my time if I choose not to give it.

[New in flipping.]

Oh dear...flipping on the tp is not as simple as just listing buy orders and putting them up for sell orders. There are some very critical pieces of math you're missing in the process.

First of all theres a 5% listing fee each time you list so you cant just list unlist constantly to match the lowest price for free. Second the tp takes a 10% tax when your item is sold. In total assuming you only list once, you are only making 85% of the gold you actually list it for. So buying at 25.6 and selling for 34.5 only resulted in a 4 gold profit not 9. If you unlist an item, you will be paying ~1.7 gold to put it back on the tp.

Next, supply and demand is not something anyone has a clear answer to. If you want a good model for price fluctuations, you can look at some of the other skins and how their prices trend but honestly a number of things can influence how much a weapon skin goes for.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@Mad Queen Malafide.7512 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:Why wouldn't you respect it?They have in bright shining lights said "here is what this team is about" not just in terms of requirement, but in attitude and approach to the game. They have told you flat out that you would not enjoy yourself with the atmosphere they are playing under.

I respect what you're saying, and don't disagree in theory. Having clear communication regarding what sort of people you are looking for is fine...

...as long as it is reasonable. Asking for 250 KPI for Shiverpeak Pass is not reasonable, it is stupid. I don't respect stupidity.

Further more, Strike Missions are intended to help players get into raiding for crying out loud! They are there to get around the harsh requirements of raiding, and teach people basic raid boss mechanics. And then we have people asking for raid experience to do what is intended as a raid stepping stone. That does not deserve any respect.

You dont have to like my lfg requirements but you will follow them. If you try to join without raid kp thinking you're somehow the exception to my requirements you will promptly be kicked and have no grounds to complain. My group my rules. Dont like em? Join someone else's squad or start your own.

[Please stop asking LI for strike missions]

The game also does not do very much> @Astralporing.1957 said:

@yann.1946 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@yann.1946 said:Wasn't that the point of this discussion, how is an increase of mechanical skill possible within gw2 broader design principles and why should we bother with it?And that's my point - within current design principles we probably shouldn't bother, because the impact of what we could achieve without changing those principles would be at best minimal. And the price of achieving that minimal change might even end up being way too great for what we'd get.

You can't realistically achieve any significant success

without

attacking some core design principles.

Well then i'll have to disagree thing like dodging, positioning, breackbars, cc, etc. are perfectly possible to be improved in the present design.Sure, but that would

not

change the 10x dps disparity between top and average.

Heres a simple hypothetical example to illustrate this. Player a and player b are both dps on vale guardian. Blue teleport circles shows up underneath their feet.

Player A takes two steps backwards without breaking their rotation. After the circle pops, they step back into position perfectly to ensure they dont get hit by seekers.

Player b to ensure that they dont get teleported expends double dodges which puts them into range of incoming seekers. They then swap to shield to block incoming seeker damage and walk the full distance back to the group.

Both players here have succeeded in doing the mechanics perfectly yet one is clearly better than the other. If you are player b, there isnt much the game gives you to let you know you're "failing" and would even take a very keen eye from an experienced player to pick out this inefficiency from logs. These kinds of things are really hard to teach people who are not familiar with the core concepts of action combat.

[Please stop asking LI for strike missions]

@yann.1946 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Kulvar.1239 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"DutchRiders.2871" said:I wanna play with people that raid hence I ask for LI.

If strikes go non existent I dont care, they are not that interesting. If they get more easy, that means more easy loot.

"I only want to play with the cool kids" is why raids were abandoned by the developers.

Blaming the symptom and not the root cause. The reason this rift exists is because there's such a high jump in difficulty that the game does not prepare you for so effectively, when people get to the end of the story/open world, they might as well be braindead. There are plenty of resources provided by the community to help bridge this gap but still requires the player to take initiative outside of the game to practice and learn. If the 10x performance gap didn't exist, requirements would not be nearly as strict.

Conversely, casual strikers would likely not accept level 70 characters into their squad and the gap between level 70 open worlder to level 80 open worlder performance is far less than open worlder to raider performance.

Which is sad. I wish next expansion introduce some OW balance to make it more challenging (like add extra mechanics on world bosses that can't be ignored by zerging more).That probably won't happen. You see, @Shikaru.7618 is wrong in his assesment here. The rift is indeed caused by performance gap, but the gap itself is

not

a result of the game not preparing you for higher difficulty. Or rather, it is, but not in the way Shikaru thinks. The gap is caused by the combination of some of the core features of GW2 - specifically by

freeform build system

and

action combat

.

Basically, in other games, the build/combat system is created in such a way, that impact of even the greatest gaps in skill and knowledge on your effectiveness are minimized. Those games will not let you make a really bad build, and will try to flatten the skill differences by putting more emphasis on gear.

In gw2 the freeform build and action combat systems do exactly opposite. They make sure that you

can

easily create not only massively overpowered, but also completely useless builds, they also put so much emphasis on skill and reaction time that even small differences here can result in massive gaps between players. Which is a wonderful thing for those that can make the most out of those systems, but is very, very bad for everyone else.

So, unless that underlying issue is somehow fixed, introducing more difficulty into OW content is not going to close the gap between top and average players. It will only decrease number of people playing said content. Unfortunately, since the root of the problem is something lying at the very core of the game system, it's not something that we can expect to

ever

be addressed.

You are ignoring the fact that if content gets harder veery slowly, people will get mechanically better eventually without feeling forced to. People only leave if they feel that the gap is to big. It's always about relative difficulty.

People playing this game are not analytical. At no point will the player ask themselves hmm this fight is starting to get a little harder. What should I do differently? The game also doesnt do a good job of telling the player what they did wrong, only that they died. Without direction, people will simply get frustrated and quit because theres no natural path forward for them.

[Simple DPS Metre]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:That implies everyone did low DPS and noone carried anyone else.

That's not how averaging works. If the group as a whole did low DPS it might well mean 5 players did very little DPS and the other 5 did good/above average DPS. Or 8 players did no DPS at all and 2 players did amazing DPS and carried them. How do you conclude from the group as a whole doing low DPS, that everyone in the group did low DPS? And my point still stands in that situation, even if the group succeeded in THAT run, that doesn't mean the same player will succeed on all their future groups. It will depend if they were the ones that did the carrying or the ones that got carried.

Edit: the question then becomes: if next time my group consists of myself and 4 of my clones (party) or 9 of my clones (squad) would the content succeed? If the answer is yes then there is no issue whatsoever. If the answer is no, then depending on how bad it was, there might be a problem. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

This is the correct way to gauge if someone was carried. This also extends beyond dps and can applied to mechanics as well. If everyone got teleported by vg blues the same number of times I did, would I still clear the boss? Chances are if you were kicked the answer is no.

[Raid requirements]

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

• Find a training run.
• Find a guild which does raids and takes new players for practice runs.
• Join a raid training discord and join practice runs.

Sick joke, this games raids are not mechanically hard enough to require this and it's flat out insulting to peoples intelligence to keep not only suggesting, but doing it.

WoW does not have training runs, you show up and play the game. Gate keeping is why this games in a downward spiral and has been for years.

You dont seem to realize how bad the average guild wars 2 player is. Sure the raids might be more involved in wow but you have way more tools to hand hold you through mechanics and it is much less likely you have situations where you gear your class incorrectly. In guild wars 2 you will get people who claim they're dps wearing healing power and toughness gear because they think they're "being versatile" , " I still have power on all of my gear therefore still dealing damage", and this mantra of "dead dps equals no dps" somehow justifies toughness and vitality. You may think its insulting to their intelligence. In reality it's an accurate assessment of the average players intelligence.

[Are +5 Infusions really worth 4k DPS?]

This doesn't show up in the log, but you canceled your torch 4 with flaming flurry the first time you're in sword. You can see it happen at 0:06 in your video.

[Are +5 Infusions really worth 4k DPS?]

@Dahkeus.8243 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@Dahkeus.8243 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

1. Your opening torch 5 needs to be done out of combat so that you dont have a weapon swap cooldown when going into bow. Notice in the SC video when they're in bow the first time the weapon swap is not on cooldown.
2. On the third row aka the second time you're in sword, you have a full cast of sever artery in between shattering blow and flaming flurry.
3. All of the red squares in your rotation log are moments where you cancelled auto attacks and thus are losing time. If you mouse over the red squares you'll see that you're spending anywhere from 50-250ms on cancelled autos each time. That is time that can be shaved off which will end up adding up to whole seconds where you're behind simply because you're not hitting skills fast enough.

Doing some quick math, if you shaved off all of the cancelled skills, you would have dealt the same damage in 29.888 seconds instead of 33.019 which would have raised your dps from 25,819 to 28,523. It makes a pretty big difference.

To get ahead of potential questions you may have. Yes the timing is actually that tight if you want to be optimal. Do you need to achieve these tight timings in raid scenarios to be successful? absolutely not.Helpful feedback. Being able to tighten my rotation to 28.5k DPS sounds reasonable. By following that math, it still puts it at between 4.5k and 5.5k DPS loss from not having the infusions, meaning that I'm losing around 15% DPS without having them.

I'll practice more and see what my actual DPS comes out to with my rotation tightened to match what you're describing.

@"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:I mean that your timing may be off just slightly. It helps if you are pushing DPS to queue the next skill while the current one is activating.You should be able to see me doing that in the posted videos.

I only included cancelled autos. There are instances where you have completed autos in between skill usage that I didn't take out since it'd make the quick math too difficult but those will also contribute a lot to your dps as well. Typically auto chains will do more damage the further along in the chain you are so a hypothetical auto chain could look something like this:

Auto 1 - 1000 damageAuto 2 - 2000 damageAuto 3 - 5000 damage

Now lets say in a given weapon rotation you can fit 3 big skills and 3 autos before you must weapon swap. Here's what optimal looks like:Big skill - Big skill - Big skill - Auto 1 - Auto 2 - Auto 3 - weapon swapwhich means your auto chain did 8000 damage total.

Here's what bad looks like:Big skill - Big skill - Auto 1 - Big skill - Auto 1 - Auto 2 - weapon swapNotice in this example your autos only did 4000 damage total in the same time span.

You can actually see an example of this in your log where you fit auto 1 in between 2 big skills. If you instead tighten up the rotation, you can move the time spent on auto 1 to the end and get an auto 3 in there.

I'm making some progress on some of the stuff mentioned to get closer to matching the exact rotation in terms of included full auto attacks, but the DPS numbers aren't really changing much as I get closer to having this absolutely perfect. There's still a very big gap between the ~27k mark and the 33k mark, but I'll reply with an updated log/video when I get it perfected to see where exactly it lands (will probably be tomorrow since I won't have another chance tonight).

@Alex.9106 said:Infusions increase your dps by rougly ~1k, everything else is a rotation issueTake a page from Shikaru's book and put some actual substance behind your claims.

Combing over your rotation a bit more, I also noticed that you're missing one cast of long bow 2 each time you're in berserk longbow. You should be doing swap from sword, lb 2, f1, filler stuff, f1, lb2 before the swap comes of cd with some variation when you land on lb after opening burst. Try to fix that in your rotation.

[Are +5 Infusions really worth 4k DPS?]

@Dahkeus.8243 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

1. Your opening torch 5 needs to be done out of combat so that you dont have a weapon swap cooldown when going into bow. Notice in the SC video when they're in bow the first time the weapon swap is not on cooldown.
2. On the third row aka the second time you're in sword, you have a full cast of sever artery in between shattering blow and flaming flurry.
3. All of the red squares in your rotation log are moments where you cancelled auto attacks and thus are losing time. If you mouse over the red squares you'll see that you're spending anywhere from 50-250ms on cancelled autos each time. That is time that can be shaved off which will end up adding up to whole seconds where you're behind simply because you're not hitting skills fast enough.

Doing some quick math, if you shaved off all of the cancelled skills, you would have dealt the same damage in 29.888 seconds instead of 33.019 which would have raised your dps from 25,819 to 28,523. It makes a pretty big difference.

To get ahead of potential questions you may have. Yes the timing is actually that tight if you want to be optimal. Do you need to achieve these tight timings in raid scenarios to be successful? absolutely not.Helpful feedback. Being able to tighten my rotation to 28.5k DPS sounds reasonable. By following that math, it still puts it at between 4.5k and 5.5k DPS loss from not having the infusions, meaning that I'm losing around 15% DPS without having them.

I'll practice more and see what my actual DPS comes out to with my rotation tightened to match what you're describing.

@"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:I mean that your timing may be off just slightly. It helps if you are pushing DPS to queue the next skill while the current one is activating.You should be able to see me doing that in the posted videos.

I only included cancelled autos. There are instances where you have completed autos in between skill usage that I didn't take out since it'd make the quick math too difficult but those will also contribute a lot to your dps as well. Typically auto chains will do more damage the further along in the chain you are so a hypothetical auto chain could look something like this:

Auto 1 - 1000 damageAuto 2 - 2000 damageAuto 3 - 5000 damage

Now lets say in a given weapon rotation you can fit 3 big skills and 3 autos before you must weapon swap. Here's what optimal looks like:Big skill - Big skill - Big skill - Auto 1 - Auto 2 - Auto 3 - weapon swapwhich means your auto chain did 8000 damage total.

Here's what bad looks like:Big skill - Big skill - Auto 1 - Big skill - Auto 1 - Auto 2 - weapon swapNotice in this example your autos only did 4000 damage total in the same time span.

You can actually see an example of this in your log where you fit auto 1 in between 2 big skills. If you instead tighten up the rotation, you can move the time spent on auto 1 to the end and get an auto 3 in there.

[Are +5 Infusions really worth 4k DPS?]

1. Your opening torch 5 needs to be done out of combat so that you dont have a weapon swap cooldown when going into bow. Notice in the SC video when they're in bow the first time the weapon swap is not on cooldown.
2. On the third row aka the second time you're in sword, you have a full cast of sever artery in between shattering blow and flaming flurry.
3. All of the red squares in your rotation log are moments where you cancelled auto attacks and thus are losing time. If you mouse over the red squares you'll see that you're spending anywhere from 50-250ms on cancelled autos each time. That is time that can be shaved off which will end up adding up to whole seconds where you're behind simply because you're not hitting skills fast enough.

Doing some quick math, if you shaved off all of the cancelled skills, you would have dealt the same damage in 29.888 seconds instead of 33.019 which would have raised your dps from 25,819 to 28,523. It makes a pretty big difference.

To get ahead of potential questions you may have. Yes the timing is actually that tight if you want to be optimal. Do you need to achieve these tight timings in raid scenarios to be successful? absolutely not.

[Please stop asking LI for strike missions]

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"DutchRiders.2871" said:I wanna play with people that raid hence I ask for LI.

If strikes go non existent I dont care, they are not that interesting. If they get more easy, that means more easy loot.

"I only want to play with the cool kids" is why raids were abandoned by the developers.

Blaming the symptom and not the root cause. The reason this rift exists is because there's such a high jump in difficulty that the game does not prepare you for so effectively, when people get to the end of the story/open world, they might as well be braindead. There are plenty of resources provided by the community to help bridge this gap but still requires the player to take initiative outside of the game to practice and learn. If the 10x performance gap didn't exist, requirements would not be nearly as strict.

Conversely, casual strikers would likely not accept level 70 characters into their squad and the gap between level 70 open worlder to level 80 open worlder performance is far less than open worlder to raider performance.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Shikaru.7618" said:Alternatively anet could close the 10x skill gap so this content doesnt require such a high bar in lfg.And yet you tell the person running the half Soldiers/Half Apothecary Holosmith that their stats are not optimal and what happens?"I am playing

how I want

to"You might even get a lecture about being a "meta slave" and be called "elitist".So why remove that option from them? It's how they want to play the game.It is completely their prerogative. It's how they enjoy Guild Wars 2.The fact that people can gear their characters in the wrong stats or still finish story without ever reading their traits is why the pug raid requirements exist.Nope.This happens in every game, not just GW2. It happens in games like DCUO or SWTOR where it is mechanically impossible to hamstring your gear or join an instance you don't meet the gear score of.Some people want the maximum chance of success as fast as possible and they see LFG requirements as the way to achieve that. Others, such as myself feel that teams fill faster with an inclusive agenda and this gets things done every bit as quickly and without the pressure.Neither are really wrong.Fortunately people with both points of view are able to set the correct expectations for a team via an LFG requirement. Theirs can say "250LI, 30k opener or kick" and mine can say "All welcome, don't be a dooshwaffle".

You're not wrong. I dont have a problem with all welcome groups existing. The issue is always people complaining that my type of groups have too strict of requirements and they feel excluded from content when they can very well create all welcome groups and start the instance.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:I also believe that it is completely within Anet's right to stop pushing content that the community doesn't do in response to said standards.Are you trying to say that vast numbers of people aren't doing strikes?And that this is because of crazy LFG requirements?

No, I'm mostly jabbing at raids, where OP is likely putting ridiculous requirements, but am poking at how sometimes that toxicity bleeds through into other parts of the game.

Alternatively anet could close the 10x skill gap so this content doesnt require such a high bar in lfg. The fact that people can gear their characters in the wrong stats or still finish story without ever reading their traits is why the pug raid requirements exist.

[My Rambling Thoughts About Strike Missions.]

Talking about meta builds in the context of pug strikes is kinda silly. Raid meta assumes optimal conditions and skill level in order to achieve the best result. Best is measured by speed and rate of success.

In pug strikes you're rarely ever in optimal conditions with top skill level players. You need to assume that half the squad likely has no idea what the dodge button is. If we make this assumption to talk about what's best in slot, minstrel firebrand is more than adequate, as it provides you extra tankiness to cover the mistakes of both yourself and the squad while still fulfilling the healer role.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@Vilin.8056 said:

@CutesySylveon.8290 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@CutesySylveon.8290 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Krzysztof.5973 said:Dungeons, strikes, raids - you name it, you literally have no power over me putting whatever I want in the LFG as long as it within the ToS. Every now and then some sad frog joins my squad or whispers me whenever I put up high-req LFG. Getting mad over the fact that I put my own LFG and have people join it anyway, baffles ms. Nobody is forcing You to join it. You can literally make your own LFG with requirements You see fit. If I put 1k LI for raids and have people join it or 250 LI for all strikes run - It's none of your business. Make your own all welcome LFG have fun in the game the way you prefer. Thank you (:

State of the game in 2020: people actively whisper others to complain that they do not play the game in a specific way.

and they call raiders toxic...

@Teratus.2859 said:But at the end of the day, If you don't match what a LFG is looking for though just

make your own

.. it's not hard.

Exactly.

Nobody is someone else's performance slave. If a player/commander wants only pink asura with curly hair in his squad, that's his decision. If you don't have a pink asura with curly hair, make your own squad.

Raiders are toxic though, it's why no one wants to get into raids because of the well earned reputation it has.

Meanwhile, my more casual raid guild has 5 new people who joined 4-5 weeks ago and have been raiding ever since, currently working on wing 7 after getting every boss at least 1nce killed in Wing 1-4 (mostly to get the collections done at least). Don't assume.

Everyone can play how he or she wants. If you are more casual and start telling others how to play, you are no better or less toxic than some of those toxic raiders you are referring to.

I never said people can't play how they want, I've avoided many LFGs because I didn't fit the criteria people wanted and just make my own if need be. Raiders though are, in general, much more toxic than any other aspect of the community and that's saying something when you play PvP/WvW, there's a lot of toxic people there. Got a good raid group you formed? Great, I wish you the best both in completing them and not becoming what that aspect of the game is known for.Actually the toxicity is mutual in this case, when a certain type of players joined a raid squad with no intention of being cooperative, no preparation for the contents, and wouldn't be bothered for the training, and dragging the success rate down with under performance.

And also no evidence that this is even true. At best its anecdotal from you and the people you know.

I can make wild claims about open world toxicity in ab when south cant do basic mechanics. Theres way more people doing ab than raids. Therefore open world is the most toxic. I too can state something as fact with only anecdotal evidence.

[Is heart of thorns meant to feel this hard as a new player?]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

In DCUO I choose a power set. My power set defines my "role" in a team. All power sets have a Damage Role and one other (Tank, Healer or "Control" which is just a energy healer). This role is set via a drop down menu. If I want to play DPS, I set myself for Damage, if I want to Tank and my power set allows it, I choose Tank. The game then prevents me from even equipping items that I cannot set my role to. Other than that I have a loadout of powers on my bar that can be changed and a small single line trait system with a few small choices. But if I want to make changes to my traits I need to respec, and that involves a time and currency sink.And that's it... there is no adaptation, very little experimentation, very little flexibility.... and consequently, very little room for me to bork my toon.But, doesn't this go against ANet's design of characters not having a specific, trinity role?This goes against the very core of several design philosophies of GW2...not the least of which is the absence of a rigid trinity.Lack of gear treadmill, respecs that require time/currency sinks,...the list goes onThe fact that every class should be proficient in all three roles (to varying degrees, sure) is what leads to this perceived notion that HoT makes things dramatically harder.

It is not a perception issue.HoT is indeed harder than the content before it....and in most cases afterward.I don't believe that the issue is with HoT, but with the stubborn players. And that's saying a lot from me being a very casual player.There are lots of "issues" with the difficulty of HoT. Some of it is players being stubborn and choosing to kitten themselves in the name of "play style" or "theme". Some of it is a gear system that never explains a few basics. Some of it the way that the fundamentals of combat and boon play are taught in optional and skippable content.Saying the issue is stubborn players may be a little myopic.For me, I think that pre-nerf HoT was too difficult. It was way more than I could handle, even making build changes. I'm just not that good of a player. After nerf, I was able to get through the content but it was still quite difficult for me. I think that the HoT maps are wonderful in design and am glad for the level of difficulty that they bring for those players who enjoy it. I do not and hardly step foot in HoT maps, but that's ok because there are plenty of other places I can go.And that's a decent perspective.... seeing yourself as a player with options and not a customer who must be gratified.

try suggesting, that the hardcores make their own challenge by removing some gear. that would be the easiest option.see how they respond to that. and very few players want to pay for something, that they dont like. why should they?

Except that doesnt tick the challenging content box for raiders. We want to use all tools available to overcome the obstacle. What you described is in fact casual open worlders creating challenge for themselves because they limit the tools available artificially and refuse to acknowledge that.

[Is heart of thorns meant to feel this hard as a new player?]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Tails.9372" said:

change your buildBut this advice only goes so far as long as "changing your build" doesn't require the player to change their underlying playstyle. Asking the player to optimize their build for their given weapon set is one thing and should be something every player is expected to do if they want to tackle more difficult content but let's not act as if there aren't any issues with the weapon sets themselves. Some of them even punish the players for doing the break bars. If your already running a build optimized for your weapon set and it still fails to be good at the thing it's supposed to be good at then it's on A-Net to fix these issues because at this point they're the only ones who can. For these cases telling people to just "change their build" is nothing but ignorance because you ignore one of the main reasons why players play the the game to begin with.Changing your build, adapting to new play styles is quite simply "part of the game" It is as integral to your progression as successfully completing mechanics.This is why you are able and encouraged to make changes without cost any time you are out of combat.The developers encourage and facilitate this. The game is balanced around it. It's why the timer on Eater of Souls' breakbar is how it is. It's why there's a platform over the battle area in Hearts and Minds, it's why the game tells you if you have an unselected trait line, it's why we have build templates.

This clinging to things that don't work "because it's my playstyle" and blaming the developers if you have to make an (easily reversible) trait change to adapt situationally is a self imposed limit. All the rhetoric and insults you wish to throw about other people's "ignorance" does not change this.It's no different than someone who doesn't understand how a knight moves on a chess board and loudly proclaims that the problem is with the game and not their understanding.

1: the customer has the ultimate power, when there is no money left to fund it, it will automatically go away2: chess is fine example, it ALWAYS has the same rules. so, why shouldnt pressing the same button have the same function?because THEY CHANGED THE RULES

They didnt change the rules, you just didnt know what the rules were when you started. Leveling 1 to 80 taught you that pawns forward so that's what you think the game is holistically. If anything is to change here, it would be the core leveling experience from 1 to 80 needs to teach and demand way more from the player. Plenty of people completed the expansions with no trouble at all. You can either adapt to make the content easier or continue to struggle. If you want actual help you should post a screenshot of your equipment and traits.

[Your opinion of Whisper of Jormag strike mission?]

@TPMN.1483 said:We need the ability to post suggested builds in-game: Gear and traits - so people can see what to run. That way they can get closer to it and then hopefully get better.

Currently pinging traits is useless without also pinging suggested gear for people and what / how to play it eg the support, DPS, boon or whatever the role is.

Squad messages would have been perfect to have 10 codes for each person to run that each person could check their build against,

To add on to this issue, it is extremely easy for a player to build their character with the wrong stats and end up with a mess that only outputs- 10% of what the class is capable of. When players struggle and gravitate towards vitality and toughness, the game has failed to teach them how to use active defenses.

[Easy raid class (easiest rotations, etc.)]

Banner warrior is not a support. You are still expected to do as much damage as the dps roles unless assigned to do mechanics. Shortbow soulbeast can still hit 30k dps which is plenty for most bosses. The go to power dps for easy rotations is probably staff daredevil that only hits staff 2 and auto attacks on cd for 29k dps.

[Analytics should not drive the direction of the game...]

Data informed vs data driven should be the distinction anet should make. Analytics are part of the picture but shouldnt be the end all be all.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@Dante.1763 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:No thanks, I'll stick to the people that have LI. There are people like you who will make all welcome squads to teach them.

I still think using LI is not the best concept, its better than AP though, or the glory days of outright banning classes. I have over 30LI myself and when i see those requirements i just laugh. Im not the best player out there, i do slightly above average DPS(or so ive been told by the raid comms ive been with.) but the LI requirements tend to make me shy away from joining the group, even if its low.

That's perfectly ok. You recognize that my group doesnt fit your needs and opt out. The system is working as intended. It's no sweat off your back if I'm stuck in lfg for 5 minutes longer.

[Your entitlement to my LFG requirements]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:This is kind of a hilarious thread. Y'all realize that other MMOs get their raids reset regularly, right? So like if you're behind on say, EP and you come in late that tier, in WoW you can catch up as much as you can through other means and when the next tier hits, you're on the same level more or less as everyone else, so people can't ask for KP, etc before letting you in to groups at the beginning of the new tier. GW2 has this unique issue where there isn't really anything resetting anyone's progress and no content is ever outdated per se.

Not resetting progress means that there's no natural way that new players to jump into the content with experienced ones to allow for any kind of mixing. This is an issue with Strikes as well right now, they're starting to stratify just like raids (maybe not as bad, because plenty of people like me seem willing to PuG in a more casual manner and we still

GASP

actually succeed), but it's still a problem nonetheless that people are asking for KP in beginning group content. When I was learning boneskinner before EotN I actually didn't kick noob players I had in my group for this reason: I wanted them to have a good experience with the player base. That was probably my worst boneskinner clear ever and took longer, but I don't regret it at all for the impact it had on the new player who was fawning about how fun it was.

This "I just want my rewards and other people are a means of getting it" mentality is just becoming a symptom of the way progress works in high-end PVE content. I mean that's really what you're saying when you make LFGs like that, you're not willing to teach anyone else. Which is just as toxic as not being willing to try/learn new things. And makes the community seem unfriendly. Maybe that's why blow-out metas are the most popular content in the game. just sayin' some of you are the creators of your own problems...

EDIT: I want to make it clear that I like GW2's horizontal progression system, and I like that old content still has some value, it just brings its own challenges with it that neither the playerbase nor anet has done a good job of addressing.

There is a diference.If you see someone (you dont know) has a problem with math homework, you can decide to help him/her (in this example for free). This is you teaching strikes to new players. But at the same time you could go to a movie with friends.

When someone join strikes (with some lfg demands) without them, its like a kid that comes to you and give you his homework so you do it for him

And huge mistake you made is this: you asume that players ask for high requirements becausethey want loot fast. That is not always the case. I ask for high requirements (well, I only do strikEs with raid static but for same reason why I would ask for high requirements) because I dont care about the loot or kill.When I do strikes or raids, I want to have fun. And I have fun if players come together, they take responsibilities, they comunicate and they try to make every effort to not only kill the boss, but do so in as efective way as possible. We could just take anything, go there and kill it while talking about cats but then it would be ~10 minutes of a chore. Or we can wait 30 minutes doing something fun while waiting for one pug to join and ten have 5 minutes of fun.

Well in the long run if players aren't teaching new people, the number of people for your PuG will keep declining. The value of any mmo activity is in how much of the playet base it involves. If you take time to teach more people, you'll still get the fun you want, because you're communicating with them. Also, let's be real, there's usually less communication when people actually know what they're doing, and you're probably an outlier in the intent behind those high requirements.

But I wont get the fun that I want. The act of teaching is not inherently fun to me. Trying to teach an open worlder how to deal with basic mechanics is an exercise in futility. Most of the population is so awful at basic maneuvers that expecting them to be able to target the boss to auto attack it is sometimes too much to ask. No thanks, I'll stick to the people that have LI. There are people like you who will make all welcome squads to teach them.

[About A.E.D. in fractals?]

You may want to read what agony does. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony

70% reduced healing