Strikes to raids, or na?

[Greymantle.9168]

Since Strike Missions feel like they are meant to bridge the gap between normal pve and raids, has anyone doing SMs daily made the crossover? I have the itch, and have been gearing my characters to do the basic stuff (alacren/q-hb/druid/dps), and they've been turning out pretty well. The problem I see is that groups I'm in get through tougher fighters, even though sometimes it's messy and we get through, you always have people crying that the dps is too low, or we sucked because we didn't get a gold time. Kind of inspired and discouraged at the same time.

[Cyninja.2954]

If you are having fun, look for a casual (or w/e you fancy) raid guild to start raiding. There are quite a few which are very relaxed and do regular trainings or join a training discord and tag along. I would not recommend PUG training groups, but there is that way too for players who absolutely can't or do not want to join guilds/discord. The last approach is probably the least fun and most brutal.

I wouldn't worry about dps when starting raids. Neither are huge amounts of damage needed for success, nor are many raids vastly harder than some of the strikes (with wing bosses usually being among the harder encounters often because more mechanic heavy). If you've been clearing Whisper of Jormag or Boneskinner, you are pretty much raid ready as far as expected difficulty.

You also have the effect that many simply don't care about gold times in strikes, since the additional rewards are barely noticeable.

[Perihen the Thawk.9527]

I'm enjoying the Strike Missions quite a bit, but I think I'm gonna need more practice on Boneskinner and Whisper of Jormag before I'm ready for raids. Still feels like I'm being carried a bit.

Currently planning to wait til the saga is over and get good at all the strikes before I try a raid, but I am interested.

[Orthonen.9470]

Don't let negative mental attitude nor negative minded people tell you you can't do it. The climb is bittersweet until you finally punch da boss in da face.

[Josiah.2967]

@Perihen the Thawk.9527 said:I'm enjoying the Strike Missions quite a bit, but I think I'm gonna need more practice on Boneskinner and Whisper of Jormag before I'm ready for raids. Still feels like I'm being carried a bit.

Currently planning to wait til the saga is over and get good at all the strikes before I try a raid, but I am interested.

Do you. If you do not feel comfortable, wait. The game is about having fun first. The best way to enjoy the experience is to go at your own pace.

From personal experience, as long as you are performing decent in your role, you should be ready for some of the easier raids encounters.There is no wrong way to raid, it is about finding a good group and having a good time. There is nothing wrong with min/maxers, speed clears, or casual groups. It is about finding a good fit for you. Each raid group is going to be different. I recommend trying more than one group when you are ready.

[Oogabooga.3812]

I’m enjoying strike missions. I’m a fractal regular, so I have some of the standard raid builds,

But i will not be returning to raids anytime soon, because despite having meta builds and knowing the mechanics, your group can still wipe too easily if the wrong mistake is made. Strike missions and fractals are more forgiving and much more my style.

[Blueberry.8095]

@Oogabooga.3812 said:I’m enjoying strike missions. I’m a fractal regular, so I have some of the standard raid builds,

But i will not be returning to raids anytime soon, because despite having meta builds and knowing the mechanics, your group can still wipe too easily if the wrong mistake is made. Strike missions and fractals are more forgiving and much more my style.I'm actually on the same boat. The reason why I don't raid anymore is that they can take upto 4 hours straight due to group often wants to clear a few wings at once (not to mention that idling time when forming a group/when someone left -> find replacement/etc...), if not, the nature of the un-forgiving mechanics make it very depressing with some new people mixed in and we can wipe over & over & over again for an entire hr if someone made a mistakes, it's way way wayyyyy more stressful and brain hurts to fail a raid boss than a strike. At the end of the strike I would feel like I can pick up another achivement or 2 to work on; but after the raid, I'd immediately want to turn off my computer for the rest of the day.

Strike however, is just on my sweet spot. Due to my real life I can't commit to few hours of non-stop gaming (sometimes I have to semi-afk or pause every now & then for various real life reasons), everything that is short and not draggy would be right up my alley (like fractal & strike). There's nothing wrong with raids, I'm glad they exists for the real hardcore community, it's just that I don't have the luxury to commit.

[Midael Soul Saver.9027]

Every time i have tried to join a strike i get kicked, been playing since Gw1 but if you don't know all the abbreviations and have the specific Runes, Sigils, Skills, Weapons, Armour and the Devils left kidney you don't stand a chance. To the toxic Elonian camel butts , I'm sorry if i don't stand up to your Elite standards but i play for fun and have a family so don't have time to grind an Ascended Asuran Alturistic sword of Yak Slapping.

Any Guilds out there that play for fun PVE and some WvW mine is a bit dead. I'm on Gunners , 47, family and would love to see an Ascended Asuran Alturistic sword of Yak Slapping. Maybe you have to do 100 Jp, eat omnom berries till you puke then dance with Drakka by the pale moon light?

[Linken.6345]

@Midael Soul Saver.9027 said:Every time i have tried to join a strike i get kicked, been playing since Gw1 but if you don't know all the abbreviations and have the specific Runes, Sigils, Skills, Weapons, Armour and the Devils left kidney you don't stand a chance. To the toxic Elonian camel butts , I'm sorry if i don't stand up to your Elite standards but i play for fun and have a family so don't have time to grind an Ascended Asuran Alturistic sword of Yak Slapping.

Any Guilds out there that play for fun PVE and some WvW mine is a bit dead. I'm on Gunners , 47, family and would love to see an Ascended Asuran Alturistic sword of Yak Slapping. Maybe you have to do 100 Jp, eat omnom berries till you puke then dance with Drakka by the pale moon light?

You could always whisper the commander what the abbreviations mean mate.When I search for a qb=quickness firebrand and 10 times in a row, warrior, ranger, necro, elementalist joins anything but what I ask for.The kick get faster and faster since I get irritated.

[Dino.3680]

@"Greymantle.9168" said:Since Strike Missions feel like they are meant to bridge the gap between normal pve and raids, has anyone doing SMs daily made the crossover? I have the itch, and have been gearing my characters to do the basic stuff (alacren/q-hb/druid/dps), and they've been turning out pretty well. The problem I see is that groups I'm in get through tougher fighters, even though sometimes it's messy and we get through, you always have people crying that the dps is too low, or we sucked because we didn't get a gold time. Kind of inspired and discouraged at the same time.Strikes are meant as a gap between open world PvE and Raids, yes.The problem here comes for a couple of reasons.

1. There is already built into alot of the community that "only 30k dps is good enough". Which offcourse is false. This stems from meta elitism and a refusal to understand that the perfect meta is not the only thing that works.
2. There is a scaled reward that get better the faster you are. That sort of thing is good for a Challenge Mote, but not for a game-mode designed to weave new inexperienced players into endgame raids.That being said, not everyone is of a mentality that only the meta executed perfectly is good enough, they are actially in the minority, but those that do employ that mentality are usually very vocal and ends up drowning out the nicer players that do speak up and many nicer players also tend to not speak up and just stop doing the content due to this outrage (Often referred to as toxicity)

@"Oogabooga.3812" said:But i will not be returning to raids anytime soon, because despite having meta builds and knowing the mechanics, your group can still wipe too easily if the wrong mistake is made. Strike missions and fractals are more forgiving and much more my style.Part of the problem there is actually meta builds. They are VERY good when things go right, but one teeny mistake can make them very bad compared to many other builds. And due to the higher skill level needed to perform optimally in them many players are unable to focus on the fight at hand and the mechanics.If more people chose a build with a little more forgiving rotation and more survivability then they could all focus more on mechanics and still do more than enough DPS and the fights would be easier.Off-course build sites are a part of why so many players use a build they aren't really capable of playing because they only show the few best builds, not all viable builds.A meta build benched to 33K dps done perfectly. not being able to play it correctly can easy make you drop to 18K dps. while a build that is more forgiving top benched at only 24k dps might only drop to 21k dps when mistakes are done. making it less optimal for the perfect play, hence not showing on many such sites, but actually more optimal to play for most players doing raids since mistakes are made. I myself has gotten to one of these "less optimal" builds and are having a higher actual dps in matches since the mistakes i make is not as crucial.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Greymantle.9168" said:The problem I see is that groups I'm in get through tougher fighters, even though sometimes it's messy and we get through, you always have people crying that the dps is too low, or we sucked because we didn't get a gold time. Kind of inspired and discouraged at the same time.Start your own teams and install Arc.One thing you will find without exception is that the people in these groups who call out the "low dps" are not the ones actually doing the damage in a team.

I've run a lot of strikes over the past couple of weeks.,... I mean a lot. I took two ascended armor boxes off Smoxxi last week.The number of times I have seen people complain or babyrage over the team's damage or not getting gold?.... about 4.None of those players that called the team out was ever doing more than 7kdps. Having Arc running is an eye opener and giving the complainers this information when they get toxic stops them in their tracks.And if that fails? Kick them if they aren't the kind of people you wish to game with.Your squad, your rules.Just as those focused on speed and efficiency don't wish to carry "dead weight", you are fully within your rights to set the tone of your own squad which includes enforcing standards such as "don't be a doosh" if you so choose.

I make it clear in my LFG listings what kind of team I am running. I Say "ALL WELCOME" and add a bit that off-meta or scuffed builds are just fine. If I am feeling frisky I will say something like "Benchmark your Carrion Deadeye here" or "LF Apothecary Shoutheal Warrior". This sends a message to the ego-tripping power gamers that the squad is probably not for them.Then I use the tools at my disposal to remove irritants.My All Welcome off-meta derpfests never take long to fill. Often I have ten people before I ever load into the strike. As long as I bring a solid hard carry build like Scourge or healing Tempest, they never fail.

TLDR: While the "problem" may or may not be real, you have the tools in your disposal to mitigate these issues and should leverage them to increase your enjoyment.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Dino.3680" said:

2. There is a scaled reward that get better the faster you are. That sort of thing is good for a Challenge Mote, but not for a game-mode designed to weave new inexperienced players into endgame raids.Strikes are designed to be repeatable. They are not just for inexperienced players. The scaled rewards are an incentive to improve on your next run should you not get "gold". But I guess ignoring this and saying "it shouldn't be this way" is meta Armchair MMO dev'ing and dank forum memes.

[Dino.3680]

@"mindcircus.1506" said:Strikes are designed to be repeatable. They are not just for inexperienced players. The scaled rewards are an incentive to improve on your next run should you not get "gold". But I guess ignoring this and saying "it shouldn't be this way" is meta Armchair MMO dev'ing and dank forum memes.Yes, they are designed to be repeatable. Having 3 chests you could get as reward 1 per run would also accomplish repeatability within the same day. I also know that the intention of adding a 3stage loot for time it takes to clear is to incentivise getting better, and it does, BUT it has the downside of attracting bullying on players that are not at the level of completing it at the highest reward stage, and given the MAIN purpose of strikes (said by anet themselves) was to be a bridge between open world and raids, said improvement incentive then does have a negative impact despite the intended result of the mechanic.

[mindcircus.1506]

@Dino.3680 said:

@"mindcircus.1506" said:Strikes are designed to be repeatable. They are not just for inexperienced players. The scaled rewards are an incentive to improve on your next run should you not get "gold". But I guess ignoring this and saying "it shouldn't be this way" is meta Armchair MMO dev'ing and dank forum memes.Yes, they are designed to be repeatable. Having 3 chests you could get as reward 1 per run would also accomplish repeatability within the same day. I also know that the

intention

of adding a 3stage loot for time it takes to clear is to incentivise getting better, and it does, BUT it has the downside of attracting bullying on players that are not at the level of completing it at the highest reward stage,"Attracting Bullying?"Really?I'm not sure you actually understand what Bullying is. One player out of a group of ten whinging in chat about low damage is not bullying. Players being kicked out of squads for whatever reason is not bullying.I would think any reasonable person would know this. Why try and paint it this way?and given the MAIN purpose of strikes (said by anet themselves) was to be a bridge between open world and raids, said improvement incentive then does have a negative impact despite the intended result of the mechanic.The developers never said they are a bridge between

open world

and raids.Feel free to link a quote that says exactly that.

[Rhiannon.1726]

@"Dino.3680" said:... BUT it has the downside of attracting bullying on players that are not at the level of completing it at the highest reward stage, and given the MAIN purpose of strikes (said by anet themselves) was to be a bridge between open world and raids, said improvement incentive then does have a negative impact despite the intended result of the mechanic.

I've never met anyone who cared about how fast a strike mission is completed. We are 3-5 guildies doing strike missions quite often. Normaly we just write "Kodan" in lfg. Only for Whisper of Jormag we write "WoJ, 1 heal, x dps".We also sometimes have unexperienced guildies with us, who don't do much dps and there were never any complaints about it. Sometimes when there is a wipe at Whisper, someone leaves the squad, but that's the worst that ever happened.Sometimes we don't have much might or quickness and alacrity is extremly rare, as we don't care about group composition, but we still get gold most of the times.

I've never seen any negative impact because of the scaled rewards.

[Cuks.8241]

Ive been regurarly doing strikes in lfg pugs since implementation always as dps.Finished woj regurarly and sometimes also boneskinner. I dont do raids so I dont join groups that require LI. In all that time there was exactly one toxic person that commented our hfb performance. We just commented that first he should try to not get downed at every aoe and that was that. We killed woj after that.

I dont join groups that have requirements I cant meet. Off course I should get kicked if Im dps and they require heals or alacrity.

Overall I think the enviroment in strikes is really frindly and helpful.