[Thanks, I Hate It. (Caprine Warclaw)]

On 6/5/2024 at 2:41 AM, Luthan.5236 said:

Looks like a Kryptis-like face. Maybe we can get a Peitha Warclaw with her head (bigger version) as face? 😄

They can do like HoT and stick Faolain's head on it!

[Shed? What is this?]

Reddit helped me solve the mystery.  So, I think what happened is the particular champion I was fighting (Avatar of Balthazar) has two hounds with him that spread fire on the ground during the fight.  So, they "shed" fire as a projectile which forms a fire area effect that continues to deal damage if you stand in it.  If you manage to reflect one of these before it forms the puddle then it can form a puddle that if the boss stands in will continue to deal damage to him.

Here's the video and you can see the second dog run over and just before it dies during whirling defense (a reflect) a fire puddle forms under the boss.  You can also see my pet standing in the fire but apparently not taking damage.  Cool!  Never knew this was a thing and I've been fighting this champion for years!

 

[Shed? What is this?]

1 hour ago, Grey.3179 said:

Shed is a little known skill that is only available to feline pets.

Leap to target and shake vigorously, leaving piles of fur on and around the target. If not allergic, the target will start brushing off the fur causing immobilization.

If allergic, the target will sneeze violently 3 times and the target's eye will begin to water causing blind.

The mystery is solved!  Thanks! 🤣

[Silent Surf, final boss teleport phase]

53 minutes ago, Chyro.1462 said:

The 'looking away during numbers aoes' is only on CM at 33% and below. He doesn't do the eye mechanic during numbers aoes in normal mode.

Ah, thanks.  Disregard that part then.  I guess I haven't done the normal mode since the CM released.

[I am too slow for PvE map events]

2 hours ago, banJelacic.4201 said:

I am playing this game since start with some years of pauses but have always been PvP, WvW, dungeon and fractals guy - never enjoyed story mode or pve map events because they are boring to me...
And mostly because every time I try to join some events, some farming spots because I need gold for something (since PvP and WvW give basically zero rewards) - even now Dragon Bash Stampede I end up being too frustrated by the game because I end up being too slow... 

Everyone on the map is probably doing it for xyz time in a row, probably the only thing they are doing it, they know exact spots by heart where someone will spawn, they have griffons, skyscales, roller beetle or whatever to get to the spot so fast and just demolish mobs in few seconds while I am trying to get there on my raptor since still havent unlocked skyscale or griffin...
Same story goes for all map farming spots with a lot of events where I end up barely tagging mobs and then again - getting basically zero reward. 

Grind in the same is crazy and I dont understand how are people enjoying it that way or even more how was Anet developed PvE in that way... 

I know that this post will most likely get a lot of hate and I will get blamed for not being good enough since any change about this would ruin your gold per hour ratio but I think that Anet should either scale mobs health better compared to number of players on map/area. 
Or put invincible on mobs for 5 sec when event is triggered 
(Or buff the rewards in PvP and WvW so I dont need to consider going to PvE maps to get some gold)

But since this is Players Helping Players category - let me ask you about a help to my problem here.

I thought about getting Skyscale/Griffin to be faster is a solution but yet again - getting one of those two required a lot of gold or grind which I am bad at it or dont have to get a gold...

 

You realize for the dragon bash event the loot doesn't come from you personally hitting as many of those hologram spawn points as you can, but from completing the event on that map and obtaining the reward?  There's no need to rush.  Whether you manage to hit 2 hologram events or 20, you'll get the same reward when the event completes.

The same holds true for most open world events.  Most of the loot is obtained from the reward for completing the event and all you need to do is participate.  There are some scenarios like the champion farm events in Dragonfall and Drizzlewood south that there's a rush, but the vast majority of open world events aren't like that.

[Shed? What is this?]

I noticed something odd tonight.  There was a skill I've never seen before called "Shed" showing on arcdps and in my combat log.  It showed no mouseover tooltip in the combat log and I couldn't find anything about it on the wiki.  I was playing power untamed with jungle stalker and tiger pet.  Any ideas what this is?

[Silent Surf, final boss teleport phase]

4 hours ago, Merica Madman.4695 said:

I've noticed during the final boss at his teleport phases (I think at 66% & 33%) there's no way to dodge or mitigate his damage (protection doesn't work). I watch people in T4 drop instantly from it and at T3 he does half health to people. Is this intended?

Much appreciated

If you mean the phase where he puts numbers over every party member and then teleports to them in order, it's based on a percentage of max health (50% I believe).  So to avoid going down you need to ideally avoid damage in the preceding phase so your healer can keep you topped off going into the split.

After 33% you additionally have to avoid looking at the boss or you get feared potentially off the platform.  I believe this is only instant death in CM.  Just look away during the split and move laterally to avoid looking at the boss when he teleports to you.

[Which Alt to choose]

I don't think you can go wrong with any of those classes.  They all have great support and DPS options for group play.  However, I personally like to play builds that feel really great in open world and I think for that reaper and untamed are hard to beat.

Here's a clip of untamed with build link:

 

[What would you do if you woke up in Tyria as your main?]

If I woke up as a Charr I'd spend half the morning chasing my own tail.  Then I'd cough up a hairball.

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

32 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sounds like the description of gear progression trinity design games. Where the encounter, instead of being a skill challenge, is primarily a puzzle to be solved, and a gearcheck to be passed. And most of the "challenge" gets resolved before actual encounter by reading a guide and gearing up properly.

Clearly, you've played some "trinity" games that left a negative impression and now you blame it for every perceived ill in video games.  I don't think I should have to point out that trinity has nothing to do with the method of gear progression a game uses.

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

12 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No, trinity is not having those abilities. Trinity is when you can specialize in them to the exclusion of everything else.

Have you looked at Baldur's Gate 3 maybe? Warriors are the iconic tank class, right?... except their ability to manage aggro is extremely limited, and they are as much (if not more) the damage dealers than damage blockers. Clerics are iconic healers, right? Except they are primarily damage and support, and most of the healing takes place outside of battles. Sorcerers and wizards are the quintessential dps... except usually their support and crowd control abilities are even more impactful than the damage they deal. And most of actual builds used are even more hybrid in nature. There's no real trinity in there at all. And yet the combat is in no way more restricted than in pure tinity setups. Quite the opposite - it has to be more fluid and dynamic, because you don't have the cheat of being able to predict with near 99% probability what enemies will do next.

Holy Trinity is just the easy mode of combat design. That's why it's so liked by many players.

I love Baldur's Gate 3.  But the only reason it works as you describe is that, for the most part, the combat is very easy.  Classes are overpowered and itemization is completely bonkers.  It's fine for that game because it's turn based, so most of the skill involved is in strategy and the game is remarkable for reasons other than its combat. 

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

23 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. Trinity is a byproduct of players originally taking advantage of mob AI being very, very dumb. Which was later turned from exploiting flaws of the system into a feature, because it was both easier on players, and on developers.

It's the other way around. It's the Trinity system that is restricting the choices of both players and developers. And both sides prefer it that way, because it makes their life easier (less variables means less effort required).

If we have no trinity, then players have no ability to support each other or prevent an enemy from engaging its intended target.  We're strictly limited to ally-to-AI interactions.  Please explain:

1) How is that not restricting the choices of both players and developers?

2) How do you design group content without those elements?  What does it look like in your world when 10 players team up to fight a 500 lb. smart gorilla?

 

 

 

[Personal Housing, A New Raid, A New Weapon, and More: Janthir Wilds launches August 20! [Merged]]

You had me at raids.  Thanks for making this content a priority again.  Pre-purchased the ultimate package.

 

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

4 hours ago, Bladestrom.6425 said:

Thats objectively wrong, and the poster was right, there is a relationship between toxicity and Player A forcing restrictions on Player B, and trinity magnifies this issue.  Anet avoided this like the plague for good reason. 

They didn't avoid anything.  We still have dedicated roles that fall into the categories of ally-to-ally (support) and ally-to-AI (DPS) and removing the AI-to-ally (tank) role didn't alleviate toxicity.  All it did was hamstring encounter design to prevent player control over enemy positioning, resulting in glaring issues that players complain about to this day:  Namely stack-in-a-pile encounter design and lack of UI/skill support for ranged healing/buffing. 

 

[State of weaver (feedback)]

24 minutes ago, Tuco.2419 said:

I checked into these forums just now to see if you were still posting and what you had to say about the weaver's balance. You always seemed to be a proponent that the weaver, when played well, was extremely effective, so to see you say the weaver is in a bad state is depressing!

I last played when EoD came out and because of the state of the weaver I rolled a Mechanist and disliked everything about it and quit as soon as I finished the last quest without bothering to do any end-game stuff.

 

If ArenaNet ever balances the Weaver to be a solid specialization again, I'd be happy to return to GW2 and gladly pay $$$ for all the new content and whatever other toys. I'm sure I'm not alone!

It just can't keep up with other classes like untamed and reaper that have free boons and sustain while dealing better damage than weaver can.  It's a somewhat better situation in groups where these advantages don't matter so much, but let's face it.  There's a reason all elementalist specs are near the bottom in representation.  

As I said the issue is the design hasn't changed since 2017 while most other specs have.  At that time they wanted specs to have tradeoffs and it was okay for a class to have no viable support options.  That's all changed since then,  but weaver hasn't. 

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

50 minutes ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

By compelling you mean toxic.   You pidgin hole classes to singular meta builds, and then gate keep people who son’t fit that.  Raids are hands down THE worst kind of group content because it largely eliminates adaptive player skills in favor of rout memorization and programmable behavior.   Raid culture is over-optimized the group can be 30% over the DPS requirement and still blame someone for being too low for their class benchmark. 

5 man dungeons and fractals are built the same way, but the margins leave less room for others to carry.  If anything, thats where the system shines. Every player has to pull their weight.  And really efficient teams don’t even need healers.   

Trinity is a crutch from older RPG designs. Ones where the action economy is a thing, snd singular attacks can swing a battle.  In the modern DPS race, trinity is frame work DESIGNED  to fail as a way to make fights longer and more attrition based. And when they realized some players could solo it, they started adding hard checks to stop smart or skilled players beating it on the one vector they all rely on…. raw damage. 

Pretty much any looter shooter shows how basic the core premise is. A gun healer being a requirement in a game where evading damage is the optimal option.   Its also why Chrono was such a big deal in early raids. A pvp focused class able to tank a boss, because the overall trinity design is flawed on such a fundamental level. 

Complete nonsense.  Everything you blame on the trinity applies to GW2's design in equal measure and nothing you assign as a virtue is precluded by the trinity.  As I said, the trinity is simply a reflection of the 3 ways players can interact with the game.  Severely restricting those interactions doesn't introduce anything new.  It simply limits the tools developers have available for encounter design.

[next expansion should remove all self-sustain aside from a generic heal, add monks, and resurrection signet.]

19 hours ago, Eddie.9143 said:

there's a reason most mmos follow the tank/healer/dps big three. it works. 

It does work, but they do it because those roles represent the 3 ways players can interact with the game in PvE: ally to ally (support), ally to AI (damage), AI to ally (tanking).

GW2 didn't innovate with their system.  They just severely limited the ability of players to control enemy positioning.  The idea was that players would fend for themselves by using their dodge ability and self-sustain skills.  But they quickly realized that could never produce compelling group PvE content and the dedicated support role became a thing.   

As it was before the support role, all not having a tank role did was limit the developer's options in encounter design.  The result is that lovely stack in a pile gameplay and everything they've tried to do to break out of it.  Simply having tanks and UI support for the healer role like other games would have solved these problems.

[State of weaver (feedback)]

2 hours ago, DivineDreaming.7206 said:

good ol unhinged pve vs pvp divide, where people always call the mode they hate "Dead" lol if you want to go on pure statistics, there is more people doing Spvp, than those that are involved in raiding. Raiding/strikes prob the smallest participation out of everything in gw2....

I agree that they should not ignore PvP, but if there's a dead mode in this game PvP is it.  I've been playing since HoT released and even then top 250 consisted of upper plat 1 through legendary rank and I was within 1 win of making the cut in my first season playing.  That was 8 years ago we didn't even have a healthy population, but it's far worse now with the top 250 starting at upper gold 2!  And of course we all know that a significant portion of that leaderboard is clogged with alts of the same players.  We can't know how many players participate in raiding, but I think it's a stretch to assume there are less than participate in PvP at this point.

[New Fractal 100 Lonely Tower - NM Easy? - CM Too Hard? - Fat Discussion & Guide For Completing The CM]

54 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i'm sorry but if a group who normally runs cm96-98 (old cm's) daily has trouble clearing it on normal mode, maybe its a bit overtuned? yes, you can do it by class swapping, i think that a bit much since currently class swapping is optional even for 98 and 99, and just makes it faster.

 

having a fractal where you're required to play certain classes and builds to clear it doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

we finally found a strategy that works, which means basically not doing the mechanics at all. we bring healscourge and then all the ranged dps just stack in one spot while the healer collects all the orbs, and the damage-dealing players just push some buttons in a loop from maximum range. 😞

I don't disagree with your assessment.  But the fractal just came out.  People said the same things about Silent Surf and for most CM groups now there's no issue with that fractal other than it being kinda boring and repetitive.  Maybe with some practice and familiarity, developing better strategies, etc. this one will go the same way? 

Or maybe it's just terrible and encourages stacking ranged builds.  This game really has a tough time coming up with ideas that don't involve making everything more annoying on a melee build.

[Weaver feels worse than Core Ele? (new player experience)]

3 hours ago, Papaj.9035 said:

I only recently came back after like 10+ years and have been slowly catching up on content having skipped half of LW S1 and only playing HoT to do the story with a few friends who still played. In fact, you can't even see my old post history from the Betas and 1st year of launch it's been that long since I visited this game or the forums. That aside, this clip perfectly sums up what my last 3-4 months of frustration doing story stuff and the occasional WvW dailies as a Celestial Staff Tempest has been like. Seems literally the best defense is to just go full offense. That champion took like 10 minutes for me to kill and you ripped it a new one in 30 seconds. I never felt threatened like I was going to die at any point soloing content (until WvW and I found roamer Harbingers, Reapers, Holosmiths, Mechanists, Deadeyes, and Renegades running their perma every buff specs that spam 3x conditions every cast) but I noticed tagging random rifts with other people grinding marks that it clearly was not me killing mobs in 3 seconds and it was very disparaging. On the plus side, I could pull whole camps of Forged in the Elonian deserts and not worry about dying, even to sharpshooters cause I played mag aura smartly, but things with time limits just did not jive anymore (like certain achievements in story modes).

I suppose I should expect a lot of change coming back after 10+ years, but it seems like there is no more capability to whittle away at anything. It's either full send hope your target dies before you do, or you need to be full defense condition cleanse specs and then you can't even whittle someone away through attrition because of game pace (and you still die anyway cause the pressure applied is just too great in some cases). I remember my days as a Water/Earth/Arcane Soldier stats Staff in WvW tanking 3-5 people endlessly back when Evasive Arcana was god tier. I couldn't kill anything in groups due to ressing, but 1v1 I could at least slowly kill someone over the course of a couple minutes simply due to the way the game was designed - aka condition removal wasn't as prevalent on all classes, there were fewer and better telegraphed hard hitting abilities, the amount of stat combinations was far less.

Maybe Ele power level sucks more than back in the day, maybe my play style and the game direction over the past decade don't jive right, maybe I suck more than I thought I did - it's probably a combination of all 3 to a degree. Either way, this is enlightening and I now know what I was doing wrong these last 3-4 months, I was playing a 2012 version of the game when I should've been playing the 202X version.

The build I used in that clip is full offense except for one notable exception.  I'm using Trailblazer stats (toughness/condi/vitality/expertise).  This gives me the full offensive power of Viper stats for conditions, but replaces the power and precision with toughness and vitality. 

One thing about weaver for solo play is that it has very poor boon access.  This really hurts your power damage output in particular.  A typical damage breakdown in Viper stats in solo play is still only around 20% power damage, while in Trailblazer it's 10%.  Trailblazer having toughness as a primary stat also has great synergy with the Strength of Stone trait, which converts 10% toughness to condition damage.  This gives me 2152 condition damage stat vs. 2021 in Viper stats.  This helps to make up for the lost power stats, making the difference pretty negligible.  For comparison, here is a clip of the same boss using the same full offense build but with Viper stats.  It's actually a little bit slower probably because I used my healing signet when my health dipped below 5k, which turned out to be unnecessary (panic!).

In either case, the strategy is the same, however: As much offense as possible.  As you may have noticed, that's often the best play and this champion is a perfect example.  He hits very hard and also gains enrage stacks when you kill his dogs.  But you may also notice killing his dogs puts him into an animation lock for 5 seconds where he laughs and threatens you (this is when he gains the enrage).  Then he has another 5 second animation lock when his health crosses the 50% threshold, where he raises his sword and prepares to burn the entire room.  But you can then CC him for a 5 second stun to prevent the attack.  If you look closely at the Trailblazer video, there's actually a period of about 17 seconds between his last attack before the first animation locks and his next attack (from 88% down to 6% health)!

Consider what that means for the slow, tanky strategy.  If you took "10 minutes" to kill this guy, the animation lock time is negligible and instead of having no chance to attack during the enrage, he's going to spend a considerable amount of time in that phase.  This likely means you'll be forced to play very defensively in order to survive, further reducing your damage and prolonging the fight.  Not ideal.

Also, unfortunately, staff is not ideal.  For the reasons mentioned above, the ranged kiting strategy isn't the best.  Even if staff were the strongest weapon (it's the weakest, unfortunately), you'd want to spend a lot of time at melee range rather than kiting at range in order to maximize damage.  It doesn't mean you can't play it that way, just that it isn't going to produce the best results.

The good news is your celestial stats can still be useful!  You just need to make sure your build focuses on condition damage.  Fire/earth like the builds in these clips is probably the best way to go, although fire/arcane works, too.  Here's a clip of fire/arcane celestial for comparison (Sorry! No staff clips!).  Somewhat slower than Viper or Trailblazer fire/earth builds, but still pretty quick.

[Weaver feels worse than Core Ele? (new player experience)]

14 hours ago, Suobig.3689 said:

Hello fellow Elementalist enjoyers! I feel kinda stuck with Weaver and would appreciate some guidance. It's a bit of a rant and I'm sorry in advance for the long post and poor english.

About a month ago I've decided to give Guild Wars 2 another try and I'm having a blast so far! Elementalist profession was a major part of my passion for the game - I really like rythmical gameplay with a lot of buttons to press. I leveled using Scepter + Dagger and it felt really good. Skills felt meaningful and impactful, rotation felt fluent. Trying to maximise my Might stacks by using 4 different blast finishers felt like a cool minigame. And I really liked 100% Swiftness uptime off-combat with Air5 on Dagger and Air4 on Staff skills while playing of free account.

So, after reaching lvl80 I bought full version and unlocked Elite Specializations. I was particularly excited about Weaver because it looked even more complex and fluent than Core Ele. I've been playin it for about a week and yet to gain enough HP to fully unlock all traits and skills. But right now I'm not even sure I'm going to. I'm running Sword + Focus with Dire set and playing exlusively Open World and story. I'm doing fine in terms of survivability and damage, dying only to Champion mobs. But gameplay just feels off. This 4s cooldown on all Attunements each time i switch is killing me. My rotation is also meh. F/F->E/F->F/E->F/F. There isn't much reason for me to go Air of Water unless I need CC or healing. Dual Attack skills that are supposed to be Weaver's cool feature don't seem to do anything particularly interesting.

I've swiched back to Sc/D Core Ele and checked my DPS on golem. I was doing 9.2k without extra boons as Core Ele. I was doing 9.5k as Weaver. Withing error margin. Primordial Stance and Weave Self would probably boost it significantly when I unlock them, but I'm not sure how big of an impact it would have. I know full glass cannon condi Weaver with full boon support can output 40k+ DPS but that's not how I'm planning to run it in Open World.

So, am I just cooking Weaver wrong? Are there weapon combinations that are more enjoyable to play than Sw/F? I thought about trying Sc/D but Weaver mechanics kinda break my Fire2 -> Fire4 -> Fire3 -> Earth4 -> Earth5 blast combo and Scepter Dual Attacks don't seem that exciting to me. I would try Pistol & Warhorn but I'm waiting for Steam sale to grab EOD and SotO expansions. 

 

Don't avoid air attunement on sword weaver the way you would with condi core or condi scepter builds.  The fire/air dual skill pyrovortex is your most powerful skill, rapidly applying 8 stacks of burning.  Landing this and rotating to fire/fire to pulse 2x burn from primordial stance will ramp up your damage quicker than anything else you can do.

Here's a sample clip of sword/focus weaver using trailblazer stats (similar to dire, but with expertise as a fourth stat) demonstrating this.  You can see I land pyrovortex, pop primordial stance, and rotate into fire/fire while also burning my signets which apply 2 stacks of burning and 4 stacks of bleeding plus 3 more stacks of bleeding from the Strength of Stone trait activating off of the immobilize on earth signet and another 2 stacks of burning plus 3 stacks of torment from relic of the fractal chaining off the bleed stack.  So, within the opening 2 seconds of engagement I already have 14x burn, 12x bleed, and 3x torment applied.  Then I pop weave self which applies buffs based on attunement for the next 20 seconds.  I'm also stacking might, reaching 15 stacks by the 4 second mark, which further increases my damage.  By the 5 second mark I'm nearly to 25k condition damage per second with a peak of about 35k.

So, despite having really weak boon access, no quickness, limited might and vulnerability and using tanky gear with no power stats, the damage potential is still pretty decent.

 

[New Fractal 100 Lonely Tower - NM Easy? - CM Too Hard? - Fat Discussion & Guide For Completing The CM]

On 5/28/2024 at 1:41 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

OK, update for everyone on how to most easily cheese this fractal for both CM players and normal T4 players:

1. If CM players -> aheal scourge - qdps chrono - 3x cdps virt - have every mesmer bring blink - and we have nothing but ranged pressure - easy & fast
2. If T4 players -> aheal scourge - heal druid "have the druid switch ancestral grace to lingering light for the encounter" - any qdps + 2x hard dps - make sure the qdps and dps bring personal mobility skills like blinks or weapon kits with mobility like engi jump shot or ranger gs swoop - easy carry

Here is a video from earlier today when I explained to a new group in 2 minutes how to do this and they completed Lonely Tower on the first attempt. This was was also nearly full-worst case scenario. We had afflicted & outflanked. The only way it could be worse was if it also had hamstrung or toxic trail.

Btw I don't do this stuff to try and be a famous youtuber or streamer. Don't really care.

I enjoy participating in the community of the game's I like. In this particular case with GW2 fractal 100 Lonely Tower, I'm trying to get you guys to realize how easy this is so we don't have half or more of the community unnecessarily avoiding this fractal. It's actually funkin up LFG formations lately, and it bugs me.

Here you go:

 

I don't know if this video is giving the impression you expect it to.  You're an experienced CM player using a very high sustain comp and you still went down a ton of times.  And this is you showing us how "easy" it is.

[State of weaver (feedback)]

It was supposed to be fine.  Why not have a selfish DPS?  It was only later that they decided it wasn't good to take that into account in the power budget.  No boons even for yourself?  No problem!  Until they decided every class should be able to play support and almost every single spec except weaver now has quickness or alacrity along with other boons.  It just doesn't make sense anymore.

[Who is open world content made for?]

8 minutes ago, Trejgon.9367 said:

The concept of people legitimatelly trying to farm the big meta events, while in stat mismatched greens on lvl 80 characters still kinda blows my mind. Like, the game spams you with rares when you run those things, and if you don't use those rares from thos drops to turn them into materials and gold... what are you doing with this gold to not get anyhow better gear?

I'm sure the number of people who actually play this way at max level is exceedingly small.  It's more of a derogatory way of describing the much larger number of people whose build and/or style of play underperform dramatically.  "<5k DPS? How is that even possible?"

[Who is open world content made for?]

50 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes. That's how metas like Soo-Won get their higher succes ratio. Most players just gave up on that event. Which brings us back to the original question of this thread: who the open world metas are for? All players, or just the hardcore minority? As i see, you seem to favour the second option. I think, that if game starts demanding higher performance in open world (and not just in content aimed at hardcores, like raids), it should first tell players how to improve that performance. And GW2 is notoriously bad about that (and it being bad at that is not an accident, but is actually part of its core design, so it's pretty much impossible to change).

You could just use arcdps and see that you're wrong and successful Soo Won squads still have plenty of players contributing not much while a handful of players carry a majority of the damage.  Just like it is in every open world meta.  But you probably gave up on Soo Won within the first couple of months and never went back.  If anything caused players to give up on that meta it's having to spend an hour slogging through boring events to get to it.