How would you do an "easy mode" in raids?

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

Some of ya'll need to use the new ignore function instead of measuring peepees in multiple threads as if the Developers care how big you claim to be.

 

Sad but true some people need their echo chambers to feel safe.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Adding 3rd healer is already easy mode enough imo for most bosses. Enrage timers are very long already on most bosses. Even if timer hits the zero many fight has very soft enrage where boss just does a little bit more dmg. This enrage is basically meaningless with 3rd healer or if players in general are running with bit more self sustained builds.

[Forum Moderator.7963]

Hello Everyone,

 

Just a reminder to keep it civil and avoid attacking each other.

 

Regards.

[Firebeard.1746]

12 hours ago, sokeenoppa.5384 said:

Adding 3rd healer is already easy mode enough imo for most bosses. Enrage timers are very long already on most bosses. Even if timer hits the zero many fight has very soft enrage where boss just does a little bit more dmg. This enrage is basically meaningless with 3rd healer or if players in general are running with bit more self sustained builds.

This only works in some scenarios, further complicating this is this isn't taught in training runs. That's why I want training runs dead. They revolve a lot around teaching a meta that isn't necessarily about reliable kills, instructors that teach methods like that are rare in my limited experience. This is without going into how annoying the collections without raid locks are and why that requires a boss kill of every type.

Also the few times I've seen LFGs for Meme groups hasn't gone over well. Apparently you can just grab 10 necros of various specs and go ham on VG according to the youtubes. Maybe if there was an alternative to snow crows that was well respected for pugging and casual players that would work.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Linken.6345]

56 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

This only works in some scenarios, further complicating this is this isn't taught in training runs. That's why I want training runs dead. They revolve a lot around teaching a meta that isn't necessarily about reliable kills, instructors that teach methods like that are rare in my limited experience. This is without going into how annoying the collections without raid locks are and why that requires a boss kill of every type.

Also the few times I've seen LFGs for Meme groups hasn't gone over well. Apparently you can just grab 10 necros of various specs and go ham on VG according to the youtubes. Maybe if there was an alternative to snow crows that was well respected for pugging and casual players that would work.

Yea great players can do meme runs like that average player of gw2 not so much.

 

Why trainers dont teach 3 healer comp is because it put more pressure on the dps players.

[Firebeard.1746]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

Why trainers dont teach 3 healer comp is because it put more pressure on the dps players.

I was agreeing with this point as just an example, but for another, it's rare a trainer has ever tried to bring an HS into sloth for me. And I can't for the life of me figure out why. Doesn't boon thief also almost hard counter some mechanics as well? I'm sure there's way more than just this and 3 healers
 

[Linken.6345]

10 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

I was agreeing with this point as just an example, but for another, it's rare a trainer has ever tried to bring an HS into sloth for me. And I can't for the life of me figure out why. Doesn't boon thief also almost hard counter some mechanics as well? I'm sure there's way more than just this and 3 healers
 

 

Well I guess the trainer want you to learn the encounter not have a heal scourge hard carry you.

[Firebeard.1746]

3 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

Well I guess the trainer want you to learn the encounter not have a heal scourge hard carry you.

If it's in the game, my thoughts are that it's on purpose. It's not necessarily a hard carry -> it's more a backup if people screw up. This goes back to my main criticism of training runs: They're not about kills. I have never in WoW seen someone say "don't use a class, it makes it too easy!" usually, the reaction is the opposite, I'm curious if other MMOs have communities more like WoW's. And then we wonder why people don't want to play with randos and don't play content XD.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

If it's in the game, my thoughts are that it's on purpose. It's not necessarily a hard carry -> it's more a backup if people screw up. This goes back to my main criticism of training runs: They're not about kills. I have never in WoW seen someone say "don't use a class, it makes it too easy!" usually, the reaction is the opposite, I'm curious if other MMOs have communities more like WoW's. And then we wonder why people don't want to play with randos and don't play content XD.

Heal scourge was added later to the game than initial wings. Which makes it a hard carry for those wings since the developers put in far less instant death mechanics but rather high damage attacks in case of failure, which the hscrg negates.

 

The issue here is: the hscrg makes those mechanics meaningless, especially in W1-4. That's great for carrying a group through a fight and securing the kill, Mighty Teapot does this often enough, but it's not a great idea if the goal is to actually teach players mechanics.

 

The question thus becomes: what is the goal of a training run? Is it to get players as many kills as possible, or is it to actually teach players boss mechanics?

Edited May 8, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

If it's in the game, my thoughts are that it's on purpose.

You should not assume that. The clear example of something in the game allowing people to just flat out ignore mechanics is VG greens. The first groups did try to do that mechanic as intended. After a while, some clever people noticed, that a distortion share from chrono could take care of this, so doing that mechanic in a group with good chrono became completely unnecessary - but at least you did need a good chrono for it to work. After Anet removed disto share, eventually people noticed, that in the end this mechanic can be simply overhealed. And this time it no longer required a really good healer - merely a decent one. I sincerely doubt Anet intended for this mechanic to be bypassed in such easy way - its just they probably didn't think it worth their time to correct that.

Same with Sloth and ability to overheal mushroom poison (and skip doing slub transform)  - here again i am quite certain anet never intended that mechanic to be ignored.

 

22 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The question thus becomes: what is the goal of a training run? Is it to get players as many kills as possible, or is it to actually teach players boss mechanics?

I'm quite sure that for most players the goal of training runs is to let them get their first kills and obtain first KPs. Learning mechanics is usually secondary, i'm afraid. In fact, i have seen quite a number of veteran raiders, with hundreds of LIs/LDs, that were completely unaware of some key mechanics of the fight, because all they ever did was dps-ing, without being concerned with any other stuff.

[Firebeard.1746]

Okay, this all seems to contradict the assertion that raids are supposed to be easy with 3 healers, which is what I was responding to. I mean either the raids are so easy there's no use for an easy mode or they're so hard there is. I think we should go back to that. And the stance taken must apply to all bosses, imo. I also didn't intend heal scourge as full hard carry when I was thinking about it, I was just thinking the ability they have to pull people back, but that's good to know ; )

 

Quote

In fact, i have seen quite a number of veteran raiders, with hundreds of LIs/LDs, that were completely unaware of some key mechanics of the fight, because all they ever did was dps-ing, without being concerned with any other stuff.

Does this mean perhaps a large portion of the raiding community doesn't want to deal with the mechanics in their current state? Or that you can fall off the wagon really easily if you don't engage in the content enough? I mean this statement can be taken so many different ways, but it implies a lot about both the raid community and the content they're consuming.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Gudradain.3892]

My suggestions will be around making it easier to form groups. The goal would be to make it possible to try the boss even if you don't have a good group composition or even if you don't have a full party. Getting 10 players that all want to learn the raid mechanics at the same time is a big barrier of entry for many players.

Option 1: Boss health scale based on number of players

•  

10 players : 100% health

9 players: 90% health

8 players: 80% health
7 players: 70% health

Only the boss health would change and all other mechanics would stay the same. I would probably put a minimum health, here I put 70% but it could be something else.

The goal is to increase the flexibility. If you can only find 8 friends for your raid, then it's still viable to run with that number. It will probably be a bit harder to kill the boss with less players as you have less players to do the raid mechanics and each DPS must contribute a bit more but forming the group will be way easier and you won't have to suddenly stop if you lose 1 player.

Option 2: Permanent offensive boons

You gain the following permanent boons during the fight: Might x 25, Fury, Quickness, Alacrity.

The goal is again to increase flexibility and to reduce difficulty. You could run with any DPS, tank and healer without having to worry about your boon up time with this suggestion. I think it would reduce the barrier of entry for new raiders that don't have multiple class and build ready for raiding and can't easily adjust the group composition to have good boon up time. It would also be easier to refill your party with the LFG tool.
 

Edited May 9, 2021 by Gudradain.3892

[Sobx.1758]

12 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Okay, this all seems to contradict the assertion that raids are supposed to be easy with 3 healers, which is what I was responding to. I mean either the raids are so easy there's no use for an easy mode or they're so hard there is. I think we should go back to that. And the stance taken must apply to all bosses, imo. I also didn't intend heal scourge as full hard carry when I was thinking about it, I was just thinking the ability they have to pull people back, but that's good to know ; )

 

Does this mean perhaps a large portion of the raiding community doesn't want to deal with the mechanics in their current state? Or that you can fall off the wagon really easily if you don't engage in the content enough? I mean this statement can be taken so many different ways, but it implies a lot about both the raid community and the content they're consuming.

No, it means that your complaint about "training raids not carrying the groups with HS" is just nonsense because that's not the point of a decent/actual training group in the first place. If you want to carry squads with HS, then make HS, create """""training squad""""" and then try carrying people through encounters, have fun with that great approach.

 

 

...and still irrelevant to the thread.

 

Edited May 9, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Astralporing.1957]

13 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Does this mean perhaps a large portion of the raiding community doesn't want to deal with the mechanics in their current state?

Yes. I can't really say how big that part is, but it is big enough to be noticeable. Although i'm not so sure it is about mechanics in their current state, or just not wanting to bother with any mechanics at all if possible. There's a surprisingly big number of raiders that just want to coast along, without having to deal with any sort of individual responsibility (no matter how small) in the encounters if they can avoid it.

Notice, though, that it also affects the roles that actually are easy to perform (like doing lamp on W6 Quadim, or backwarg on escort), so ot's not directly tied to actual difficulty, but more to personal responsibility and having to learn specific things when you can avoid them.

 

 

[Fangoth.4503]

On 5/6/2021 at 7:09 PM, Gudradain.3892 said:

Describe how you would implement "easy mode" in raiding.

For the sake of this discussion, please refrain to comment if all you want to say is that you are against "easy mode" in general. I'm aware that many raiders are opposed to an "easy mode" in raiding, myself included depending how it's implemented, but it's a request that is often coming back and it would be interesting to discuss what would be the best way to do it.

Instead, if you don't like a particular suggestion, describe why you feel that this particular suggestion would be a bad idea.

Thank you

 

i don't think raider ate opposed to an easy mode, i believe they think that the easy mode is already in game but the hard mode aint here yet

[Firebeard.1746]

5 hours ago, Fangoth.4503 said:

 

i don't think raider ate opposed to an easy mode, i believe they think that the easy mode is already in game but the hard mode aint here yet

Are you speaking from your personal beliefs or observation?

In any case, anyone who believes the content isn't challenging enough needs to clearly communicate what sort of challenge they're looking for in a world of static gear progression to the devs. The Top WoW guilds are plenty skilled, but at the end of the day, they're winning their world first races using RNG because they know their ilvls haven't hit the right place yet to pass the content. Does challenging mean the guild has to pool together insane resources to build a legendary food that gives stats far greater than anything else in order to beat bosses that can't be beat in full exotic/ascended?  Does it mean reaction times so tight even a skilled player can't reliably pass the mechanic? Does it mean a boss difficulty slider and somehow it's really obvious you've done the boss at a much higher level than anyone else?

~50% of the population believes an easy mode is needed according to previous polling. I would hope that top-end players would realize that perhaps an easier mode is needed if that's the case, if only for their own good. Note most WoW players don't touch mythic, but they'll watch Mythic world first races, the only reason they care is because  they're still doing the same content, but at a lower level. That makes it interesting to observe and learn from more experienced players. GW2 players won't care about top-end streamers' content unless they're engaged in the same content as well, even if it's not at the same level.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

37 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

The Top WoW guilds are plenty skilled, but at the end of the day, they're winning their world first races using RNG because they know their ilvls haven't hit the right place yet to pass the content.

I’m sorry but this statement is so horribly wrong.

 

World First raiders aren’t just “relying on RNG” to get world first kills. They are phenomenal players that are able to min-max both their characters and raid comps to get the maximum output, in addition to playing their characters at a very high level to achieve these kills.

 

To reduce WoW World First raiding to “its RNG” is unbelievably shortsighted.

[Firebeard.1746]

49 minutes ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

I’m sorry but this statement is so horribly wrong.

 

World First raiders aren’t just “relying on RNG” to get world first kills. They are phenomenal players that are able to min-max both their characters and raid comps to get the maximum output, in addition to playing their characters at a very high level to achieve these kills.

 

To reduce WoW World First raiding to “its RNG” is unbelievably shortsighted.

The first part of my statement, "The Top WoW guilds are plenty skilled" is meant to acknowledge that, I'm not trying to say they aren't skilled. I'm saying their ilvls prevent them from actually being able to kill the boss. Content creators for WoW have pointed out the reliance on Proc based classes to overcome this, if you were involved in the community you'd know this. I don't disagree with you that they're incredibly skilled, but it's false to say they're not using RNG to overcome ilvl issues. An unskilled player wouldn't be able to do what they do, but their skill is only half the equation.

The content creator I was watching said they calculated their chance of success at 2% on any given run.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, Fangoth.4503 said:

 

i don't think raider ate opposed to an easy mode, i believe they think that the easy mode is already in game but the hard mode aint here yet

Yes, there are Raiders like that. If they had their way however, the Raids would end up too hard for even a majority of current Raid community, much less for new players.

 

That, again, is a consequence of the skill differences being massive even at the very top. A content that would be challenging for a top 1%, would end up being unpassable for players around the top 5-10% level.

 

So, sure, there are players that claim that even Dhuum CM is laughably easy, and that the raid baseline should be above even that. They are not a representative of a whole Raid community however. And, for a sake of Raids, should not really be treated seriously.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

6 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

 

43 minutes ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

I’m sorry but this statement is so horribly wrong.

 

World First raiders aren’t just “relying on RNG” to get world first kills. They are phenomenal players that are able to min-max both their characters and raid comps to get the maximum output, in addition to playing their characters at a very high level to achieve these kills.

 

To reduce WoW World First raiding to “its RNG” is unbelievably shortsighted.

Expand  

The first part of my statement, "The Top WoW guilds are plenty skilled" is meant to acknowledge that, I'm not trying to say they aren't skilled. I'm saying their ilvls prevent them from actually being able to kill the boss. Content creators for WoW have pointed out the reliance on Proc based classes to overcome this, if you were involved in the community you'd know this. I don't disagree with you that they're incredibly skilled, but it's false to say they're not using RNG to overcome ilvl issues. An unskilled player wouldn't be able to do what they do, but their skill is only half the equation.

 

This is just wrong, like, RNG being the reason they kill bosses? What the heck?

 

World First races typically only take ~1-2 weeks. The biggest component of “RNG” that’s involved in those kills are usually getting the gear you want to drop during the weeks leading up to the raid release or doing tecleara during the race week. The World First guilds aren’t going in for dozens to hundreds of wipes just to say “oh well players X and Y didn’t get a proc during this mechanic, so that’s a wipe”. If a raid boss is so unbelievably difficult that you need to get procs at very specific times to be able to kill it, then the boss would not get released in that state.

 

I serious believe you are downplaying the player skill of those guys. The power gained from min-maxing your raid comp, your playing ability, the class and spec you are, etc... is substantially higher than any RNG they are receiving during a pull. Yes, there are some pulls where RNG seems to be terrible for a specific person or set of mechanic(s), but being able to play at the level they play at is how they’re able to get the kills. World First raiders are able to squeeze out a phenomenal amount of performance from a minuscule amount of ilvl they possess at the time. If the ilvl makes bosses seemingly unable to be killed, why are multiple guilds able to clear a mythic raid in the within a week of the first clear? Do you truly believe they’re just fishing for RNG procs to line up correctly.

 

That idea is completely delusional. RNG is not the tool to overcome low ilvl, it’s player skill.

[Firebeard.1746]

3 hours ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

This is just wrong, like, RNG being the reason they kill bosses? What the heck?

 

World First races typically only take ~1-2 weeks. The biggest component of “RNG” that’s involved in those kills are usually getting the gear you want to drop during the weeks leading up to the raid release or doing tecleara during the race week. The World First guilds aren’t going in for dozens to hundreds of wipes just to say “oh well players X and Y didn’t get a proc during this mechanic, so that’s a wipe”. If a raid boss is so unbelievably difficult that you need to get procs at very specific times to be able to kill it, then the boss would not get released in that state.

 

I serious believe you are downplaying the player skill of those guys. The power gained from min-maxing your raid comp, your playing ability, the class and spec you are, etc... is substantially higher than any RNG they are receiving during a pull. Yes, there are some pulls where RNG seems to be terrible for a specific person or set of mechanic(s), but being able to play at the level they play at is how they’re able to get the kills. World First raiders are able to squeeze out a phenomenal amount of performance from a minuscule amount of ilvl they possess at the time. If the ilvl makes bosses seemingly unable to be killed, why are multiple guilds able to clear a mythic raid in the within a week of the first clear? Do you truly believe they’re just fishing for RNG procs to line up correctly.

 

That idea is completely delusional. RNG is not the tool to overcome low ilvl, it’s player skill.

you're welcome to believe whatever you want, but you can't say Method's comp for castle Nathria wasn't proc heavy. I'm not trying to downplay their skill at all. Heck, being honest enough to realize you're more likely to win on a lucky pull is part of being skilled.

My main point is that without a vertical progression illusion of difficulty (ilvls), high-end players need to be more clear on what they see as challenging, as the day any content is released, they'll have what they need to overcome it.

EDIT:I've seen your response and am saddened you decided to focus on WoW players mainly instead of elite players in this game, have decided to argue against my experience and what I've viewed/heard from streamers and decided to ignore the fact that I've stated I agree that they have incredible skill many times. You're trolling and I'm done. A rational person could recognize 2 facts can be true at the same time. I'm also saddened that you've refused to acknowledge the proccing nature of many of the DPS classes they took on their Sire Denathrius kill. O well. In fact you don't even list all of them. The procs won't matter if skilled players aren't taking advantage of them/using the classes correctly.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

9 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

you also can't say it's not insane to keep attacking the same boss over and over if your character didn't get any upgrades in between if I'm wrong.

 

So uh yea, you're wrong.

 

Have you never heard of progression raiding before? People aren't going into bosses expecting to kill them first try. They also aren't killing it on their 50th pull because of "RNG". The point of world first raiding, and progression raiding in general, is to go in and learn the boss fight, how to counter different mechanics, when you need to look out for something, when to use what cooldowns, etc ... As you get more pulls in, the intent is to get more familiar with the encounter and perform better each time. IE, progression / making progress. You are able to see more precisely where you can eek out just a bit more performance and execute the fight better. This is what the overwhelming majority of raiding is like in other MMOs. You may end up doing re-clears to get more / better gear, but the overwhelming way to kill a raid boss would be to do progression raiding.

 

**People aren't pulling a boss 100+ times and managing to kill it because they happened to get lucky procs, they killed it because they have 100+ pulls worth of past experience and failed attempts to figure how to properly do it and perform at the best of their ability.**

 

In a GW2 equivalent, this would be what training raids are. Specifically, people who haven't done the raid before are going in to see it, probably for the first time, and slowly understanding how the fight works and how to counter the different mechanics. The purpose of the training raids would to train on a certain fight and to learn how to do it. Static raids or PuGs typically would be like re-clears. You've already done the boss before, you know how it works and all the mechanics, so you're just doing it again.

 

This is one discrepancy between established raiders and the new people. Established raiders have already done the "progress". They know what they're doing and they just want to re-clear again without the hassle of wiping and struggling and what is now easy content for them. New players don't always seem to want to do training, they want to just go in and start getting boss kills. That's why there such a discrepancy between these two groups of people.

 

Furthermore, another difference between the two types of players is the the skill level is massively different between them. There was an interview with Anet (https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring) where they explained that "The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore". So while established raiders have already experience in the raids they completed, they will probably also be much better players than people who haven't raided before or have not done this type of content. I'd believe that this is one of the major dividing factors when discussing easy mode vs hard mode vs as it is. Quote below:

 

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

9 hours ago, Fangoth.4503 said:

i don't think raider ate opposed to an easy mode, i believe they think that the easy mode is already in game but the hard mode aint here yet

Yes, there are Raiders like that. If they had their way however, the Raids would end up too hard for even a majority of current Raid community, much less for new players.

 

The player skill level in GW2 is typically pretty low. Raids were introduced as a type of genuine hardcore content for people who wanted an actual PvE challenge in the game alongside Fractal CMs. Its been shown that as long as people at least try to put in some effort they can achieve a skill level to easily complete raid content, they just need to put in the effort to do so and as much as people want to try, you can force someone to do better. It requires the person themselves to want to do so. So I can definitely see and mostly agree with people who don't want raids to be dumbed down in a way that it would compromise why they were created in the first place.

 

Raids in GW2 aren't even as excruciatingly difficult as they could be. GW2 does not have a gear treadmill, so characters will only be as powerful as tuning allows. The difficulty of the raid ends up being solely determined by the complexity and difficulty of the mechanics in them. WoW Mythic raids for example are cleared in 1-2 weeks, Heroics can be cleared same day as release. GW2 W7 for example was cleared *hours* after it was released.

 

19 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

you're welcome to believe whatever you want, but you can't say Method's comp for castle Nathria wasn't proc heavy

 

This will probably derail this topic, but you seemingly have a lack of any WoW progress raiding insight that I want to explain the reason for the raid comp as well to show that world first raiders can clear these raids not because of the fact that they "got procs / RNG"

 

First I want to establish, even if a spec has a proc as part of its rotation, that doesn't necessarily mean it is "proc heavy" or its entire rotation depends around fishing for procs. Frost Mage is the pinnacle of proc-based damage, but no world first guilds had Frost Mages for example. Why? Because proc based rotations are like the last thing you would need to think of when determining what classes to bring.

 

So looking at the Method raid comp (will also look at the world first, Limit, because again they got world first this tier and Limit Max has videos on YouTube explaining why certain classes are brought), there was:

 

Tanks don't matter too much, but notable ones are

DH Tank - Need the Chaos Brand passive for raid (+5% magic damage) so that already makes a DH mandatory

Protection Warrior - Need Battle Shout for raid stamina (+ max health %) so that makes a Warrior mandatory

 

Healers:

Holy Paladin - Super OP right now, amazing DPS at same time as amazing healing

Disc Priest - Fortitude ( + max health % ) so a Priest is mandatory, Disc again gives good dps while also doing amazing healing, barriers are super strong, and brings a great raid damage reduction.

Resto Shaman - Absolute bonkers healing during Nathria. Brings Spirit Link totem (super powerful), great Mastery (increased healing on low health targets) is always valuable on progression.

 

DPS, probably what the focus is

Unholy DK - Already do strong damage, bring an execute (increased damage on low targets, the single most valuable type of damage during progress), brings a raid-wide damage reduction which since it's a DPS class you can bring multiple of them easily (ie, 4 for both Method and Limit. Way easier to stack than Disc Priest as listed above). Only has one proc and the class does not revolve around it to do bonker damage.

Arms Warrior - Fantastic execute. Two-target cleave is very powerful when it can be used. Battle Shout as listed above for Protection Warrior, Rallying Cry for another raid defensive cooldown. One baseline proc and the class does not revolve around it to do its job.

Balance Druid - Currently bonkers AoE, extremely tanky, brings Innervate (free mana), amazing target swapping potential, with Convoke can do the highest burst damage in the game, with Kindred Bonds can do just as well as Convoke since World First players are phenomenal at what they can do. No procs that actually matter.

Marksman Hunter - Great damage this tier, had the best AoE burst at the time, more execute damage.

Fire Mage - Great burst damage, extremely tanky with Ice Block, Alter Time, and Cauterize, execute damage, Arcane Intellect (raid wide intellect increase, mandatory in raid). Can reduce its major cooldown down to a 1 minute CD. Does have procs, but the overwhelming majority of its damage comes from during its major cooldown. I can concede this being considered proc based, but its based on your crit rather than straight up RNG so its half-half. Limit also ran only 1 and Method ran 2, so its not like people are scrambling to bring as many Mages because "muh procs / RNG"

Affliction Warlock - Every raid will always bring a warlock (healthstones, gateway) so one will always be mandatory. Affliction was taken this time simply because it did better damage than Destruction and Demonology. Neither Affliction nor Destruction are reliant on procs to make their damage work.

 

So what we can see from this are:

1. Some things are taken because they are mandatory to high level raiding (raid wide buffs, enemy debuffs, certain pieces of utility or defensive, whatever is tuned extremely well for that raid, whatever they can abuse, and as many of these things as they can within one character).

2. Only one class can be considered proc reliant, and none of the guilds during the race were scrambling to stack them.

 

So again, RNG / procs **are not** what are carrying people through these World First kills. You are seriously underestimating the effort people put in to do these kind of things and have fundamental misunderstandings about how progression raiding works and what kind of work it entails.

[Firebeard.1746]

17 hours ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

Have you never heard of progression raiding before? People aren't going into bosses expecting to kill them first try. They also aren't killing it on their 50th pull because of "RNG". The point of world first raiding, and progression raiding in general, is to go in and learn the boss fight, how to counter different mechanics, when you need to look out for something, when to use what cooldowns, etc ... As you get more pulls in, the intent is to get more familiar with the encounter and perform better each time. IE, progression / making progress. You are able to see more precisely where you can eek out just a bit more performance and execute the fight better. This is what the overwhelming majority of raiding is like in other MMOs. You may end up doing re-clears to get more / better gear, but the overwhelming way to kill a raid boss would be to do progression raiding.

Except there's a PTR and boss guides are published at the time of PTR (or shortly thereafter) not world first race. So all of this "learning experience" happens before world first. Nice try. Enrage timers + a static health pool means DPS must hit a certain point. There is a hard cap, regardless of skill for DPS output at a given ilvl, the best way around it is proc based classes if your DPS cap is below the enrage timer/boss health pool threshold (as they have more variability either way). This is why player skill is important. The more skilled you are, the more you can take advantage of favorable RNG. It's funny that a streamer, literally reported this in their stream as what they're doing and you turn around and make up all this BS just to disagree. I really wish I had the link to the stream (it's been a while) because then i could end this BS right here and now.

 

17 hours ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

Furthermore, another difference between the two types of players is the the skill level is massively different between them. There was an interview with Anet (https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring) where they explained that "The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore". So while established raiders have already experience in the raids they completed, they will probably also be much better players than people who haven't raided before or have not done this type of content. I'd believe that this is one of the major dividing factors when discussing easy mode vs hard mode vs as it is. Quote below:

And I think the sanest thing for them to do is do what they've done historically and provide various difficulty levels with various quantity of reward positively correlating with difficulty. 

The value for content, both the streamers who do it and the developers who make it, is directly correlated to the number of players involved, and this would be no different for GW2 raids.

Though I want to also point out that more than difficulty and reward needs to be discussed. They need to figure out what exactly the different groups like to experience in their content and make sure that's there as well. Otherwise, people do it for loot pinata reasons and move on.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Except there's a PTR and boss guides are published at the time of PTR (or shortly thereafter) not world first race. So all of this "learning experience" happens before world first. Nice try.

Yea, the PTR exists, but to think the learning experience stops after that is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, such a horrendously bad take.

[yann.1946]

3 hours ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

Yea, the PTR exists, but to think the learning experience stops after that is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, such a horrendously bad take.

Honestly , i feel like your the one making the bad take here. The only thing fire said was that to reach certain tresholds of dps you do need some rng to come your way. 

 

That doesn't mean that their is not a ridiculous amount of skill involved. Its not one or the other.