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What Makes a Guild Wars 2 PvE Build Strong?


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I'm just glad to see a big name out there promoting Necro's potential as a safety net.
I've banged on that wall for years and mostly been dismissed or mocked for it.

Necros are not as useless as a lot of people claim they are, and i'm glad Teapot is proving this to his massive fanbase.

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On 6/5/2021 at 7:05 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

I like that video because it goes right to my points:

 

The only requirement for success is that players know what to do (mechanics threshold) in the encounter with the builds they are good at using.

The threshold for success in this game (the encounter threshold) is low enough to allow people to play how they want. 


Yeah I loved that video too.

Teapot basically justified every point i've made in the past for why an easy mode raids would be beneficial for those who want to raid but can't get into it.

The Meta's which many fiercely protect are not mandatory to beat the content, this has been proven over and over again.
It's just a lie some people intentionally spread to gatekeep the content because they don't want to deal with people who want to play less optimally because that's how they enjoy the game.

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1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I'm just glad to see a big name out there promoting Necro's potential as a safety net.
I've banged on that wall for years and mostly been dismissed or mocked for it.

Necros are not as useless as a lot of people claim they are, and i'm glad Teapot is proving this to his massive fanbase.

 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:


Yeah I loved that video too.

Teapot basically justified every point i've made in the past for why an easy mode raids would be beneficial for those who want to raid but can't get into it.

The Meta's which many fiercely protect are not mandatory to beat the content, this has been proven over and over again.
It's just a lie some people intentionally spread to gatekeep the content because they don't want to deal with people who want to play less optimally because that's how they enjoy the game.

Class composition based on situational awareness has nothing to do with the Meta, in Teapot's video every class roles are still presumably based on Snowcrow's builds.

 

As for Necros, or presumably DPS Scourge, I've been playing this role in both pug Raid and Strikes as a fun alt for the last two years and has never seen the community has a problem with it. The problem is that Scourge rotation isn't beginner friendly like Dragonhunters and 9 out 10 scourge players who I encountered ends up outputting low performance and no utility support.

 

Nobody's gatekeeping content, it's simply that in these contents the both players who play the meta and non meta builds wants to be part of a meta group for the smooth experience, yet even non meta players don't like to team up with other non meta players because they know such combination are prone to failures, therefore their participation diminishes over their own preference.

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1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

 

Class composition based on situational awareness has nothing to do with the Meta, in Teapot's video every class roles are still presumably based on Snowcrow's builds.

 

As for Necros, or presumably DPS Scourge, I've been playing this role in both pug Raid and Strikes as a fun alt for the last two years and has never seen the community has a problem with it. The problem is that Scourge rotation isn't beginner friendly like Dragonhunters and 9 out 10 scourge players who I encountered ends up outputting low performance and no utility support.

 

Nobody's gatekeeping content, it's simply that in these contents the both players who play the meta and non meta builds wants to be part of a meta group for the smooth experience, yet even non meta players don't like to team up with other non meta players because they know such combination are prone to failures, therefore their participation diminishes over their own preference.

Two comments weren't exactly related but no worries.

Raids are gatekept by the simple existence of a fiercely enforced meta.. play this or get lost is the attitude countless people have experienced trying to get into raiding. 
This is exactly why raids have a reputation for being toxic and elitist in the first place.

But it's utterly irrelevant because there are plenty of non meta, non optimised builds out there that can play and beat raid content.
People have beaten raids in literal masterwork gear, so the attitude that optimised meta builds are the "only" way to play raids is nothing but a giant pile of BS spread around by people who are actively gatekeeping raid content because they don't want casual players playing non optimised builds flooding into the LFG's as they did with fractals and dungeons long ago.. ergo making it harder for them to find full teams of optimised players running the meta builds they like and want to play with.

With raids they succeeded in doing what they failed to do with dungeons and fractals, they turned people off even trying.
I was around back then and I remember all the same elitist nonsense in dungeons and fractals.. people telling others to play a different class or use the go to meta builds because it was the "right way to play" and kicking them if they couldn't figure the new class or build out in 3 seconds.
It was elitist BS then and it is still elitist BS now.

But it doesn't matter in the end because if raids have proven anything it's that these people are a small minority.. and they're too small to sustain an entire game mode by themselves so whenever they succeed in gatekeeping a particular form of content.. they're effectively giving it a death sentence.

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1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Two comments weren't exactly related but no worries.

Raids are gatekept by the simple existence of a fiercely enforced meta.. play this or get lost is the attitude countless people have experienced trying to get into raiding. 
This is exactly why raids have a reputation for being toxic and elitist in the first place.

But it's utterly irrelevant because there are plenty of non meta, non optimised builds out there that can play and beat raid content.
People have beaten raids in literal masterwork gear, so the attitude that optimised meta builds are the "only" way to play raids is nothing but a giant pile of BS spread around by people who are actively gatekeeping raid content because they don't want casual players playing non optimised builds flooding into the LFG's as they did with fractals and dungeons long ago.. ergo making it harder for them to find full teams of optimised players running the meta builds they like and want to play with.

With raids they succeeded in doing what they failed to do with dungeons and fractals, they turned people off even trying.
I was around back then and I remember all the same elitist nonsense in dungeons and fractals.. people telling others to play a different class or use the go to meta builds because it was the "right way to play" and kicking them if they couldn't figure the new class or build out in 3 seconds.
It was elitist BS then and it is still elitist BS now.

But it doesn't matter in the end because if raids have proven anything it's that these people are a small minority.. and they're too small to sustain an entire game mode by themselves so whenever they succeed in gatekeeping a particular form of content.. they're effectively giving it a death sentence.

The LFG system itself does not enforce meta.

 

What you described only occurs by the groups of people who prefers to construct a group of meta build squad, that's their freedom of preference.

 

The question you should ask is why do non-meta players wants to join these kind of groups instead of make their own with similarly minded people, or why they could not sustain in the last 5 years by doing so. Because people who don't follow the meta chose to opt out non-optimized groups and instead chose join meta focused groups for an easier experience, yet ironically in a grudge that the meta group chose to opt them out.

 

And the actual deciding factor is always the actual performance of each player roles, the choice between meta and non-meta build is simply how much human skill required to reach a certain performance output (generally DPS), the further you stir away from a meta build the higher extra human effort will be needed to output the same performance. Those players who cleared a raid with master gears are very experienced raiders who honed their skills sufficiently enough to cover inadequate gears with very good rotations, and yet even in master gear they still follow meta combination of stat type and skill sets.

 

You're right it doesn't matter in the end, either these people are a minority or not, they still have the privilege over content, success and loots for over the last 6 years and will continue to be so, while the nay sayers, do not.

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15 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

But it's utterly irrelevant because there are plenty of non meta, non optimised builds out there that can play and beat raid content.

Yes, there are. Meta builds are not needed for succeeding at raids. In fact there are very safe off meta builds which work just as well and are often even safer if simple kills are desired.

 

This too has been mentioned over the years countless times by experienced players, and the main problem here is that to find these builds and know which to run one has to have a basic understanding of the content first.

 

That is also why most build sites rate the difficulty of the builds (at least SC and LN do) and even metabattle has been offering a section dedicated to simplified builds for a long time (https://metabattle.com/wiki/Guide:Simple_Raid_Builds).

 

 

Quote

People have beaten raids in literal masterwork gear, so the attitude that optimised meta builds are the "only" way to play raids is nothing but a giant pile of BS spread around by people who are actively gatekeeping raid content because they don't want casual players playing non optimised builds flooding into the LFG's as they did with fractals and dungeons long ago.. ergo making it harder for them to find full teams of optimised players running the meta builds they like and want to play with.

Even better, Teapot has recently run a raid group through Wing 1 at level 78 which meant: no elite specializations and no level 80 gear. What you are leaving out though is, these are experienced raiders (as were the ones which cleared the content in masterwork gear). It is as most experienced players have been saying for years: raids are not that hard.

 

Thus here is the flaw in your argument (which you are either oblivious to or intentionally leaving out): you are assuming that random players playing their own builds will come any where near this performance or ability. You are hilariously wrong (we even have the infamous quote of the developers which gave a numeric disparity here, aka the top  players do 10 times the damage of the average player. Anyone knowing what "average" mathematically means knows how huge this gap is).

 

The main problem is and always has been: random/average players are really really REALLY!!! bad at this game.

 

Given it is impossible to know how good another player is besides getting to know him (which costs time), there are a few ways to reduce this issue:

- enforce things which one can enforce (for example demand known builds both showing the player has actually at least tried to prepare)

- run arcdps or demand benchmark trials (more common for statics) from players to gauge their ability

- ask for proof of experience, aka kill proof, in hopes that more means more experience with the content

 

At no point in any of this, neither the video shown nor in in any argument made at any point in time, has ANY of this applied to random players on random builds.

 

It is very disturbing to me that people watch Teapots video and get that message from it, because it quite certainly is NOT what he said and it shows a clear lack of understanding of even simplified concepts.

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16 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Raids are gatekept by the simple existence of a fiercely enforced meta.. play this or get lost is the attitude countless people have experienced trying to get into raiding. 
This is exactly why raids have a reputation for being toxic and elitist in the first place.

 

That's only relevant when those "countless people" want to get carried instead of being part of a team. And in the process become the toxic ones themselves.

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14 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

The LFG system itself does not enforce meta.

 

It's the players who enforce the meta, but the LFG shows it.

It's easy enough to see this for yourself, just make a LFG saying casual run, anyone welcome and prepare to sit there for hours waiting for almost nobody to join.

It's because so many people have been driven away, it's why it's so difficult for these kinds of players to just "make our own groups" as experienced raiders will often tell us to do.
 

Quote

What you described only occurs by the groups of people who prefers to construct a group of meta build squad, that's their freedom of preference.

The question you should ask is why do non-meta players wants to join these kind of groups instead of make their own with similarly minded people, or why they could not sustain in the last 5 years by doing so. Because people who don't follow the meta chose to opt out non-optimized groups and instead chose join meta focused groups for an easier experience, yet ironically in a grudge that the meta group chose to opt them out.


There's nothing wrong with that, I've said many times in the past that the feeling is mutual about not wanting to play with the kind of people who make those kinds of demands.

But it's those players that drove away all the players that I would prefer to play with, those players who created the culture and pushed the lie that their way is the only way raids can be played and beaten etc.

Often when this subject comes up it's usually players like that getting defensive and making claims like we "just want the experienced players to carry us through content."

But that ain't true at all, all people like me want is a more casual play for fun focused pug community to exist in raids, like we created for fractals and dungeons long ago despite similar efforts to push a Meta or GTFO attitude there as well.
There are some raiders out there who don't want this to occur though, because it may inconvenience them down the road, hence the gatekeeping.
 

Quote

And the actual deciding factor is always the actual performance of each player roles, the choice between meta and non-meta build is simply how much human skill required to reach a certain performance output (generally DPS), the further you stir away from a meta build the higher extra human effort will be needed to output the same performance.


See I don't disagree with that at all, although I would say DPS is a secondary element.
The most important aspect of raids is knowing the mechanics, and this is one of the biggest issues for the more casual player.
They don't know the mechanics because they've never had the chance to learn them and even if they have they probably got kicked before they could figure out what they did wrong.
This is one reason why I argue for an easy mode raids, so it can help people learn the mechanics.

That alone will boost their performance significantly in actual raids, even if they are running non optimal builds for the content.
Most people really don't care if a raid takes them 8 minutes to beat or 14.. that's something experienced raiders care about which is partly why they don't want people in their groups not running top performance meta builds.

It's quite amusing though, raiders like to promote their own skill because they can beat raids and yet some of them really don't like having to use that skill for extended periods of time.
Kinda like boasting your the best runner alive and yet whining every time someone enters you in a marathon instead of a sprint lol
Just a funny way I look at 🙂 
But this too was also a thing in dungeons if you remember, man people used to get so angry when the dungeon run took like 2-3 minutes longer than what they wanted it to take.
I always found that really petty tbh.


 

Quote

Those players who cleared a raid with master gears are very experienced raiders who honed their skills sufficiently enough to cover inadequate gears with very good rotations, and yet even in master gear they still follow meta combination of stat type and skill sets.


Yep that is true but the point was simply that it was non optimal, overall a pretty big stat loss as well as armour etc.
It still proves that non optimal setups can beat raid content and that the biggest bar to overcome is the mechanics, not the DPS benchmarks which are so heavily demand.

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1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Even better, Teapot has recently run a raid group through Wing 1 at level 78 which meant: no elite specializations and no level 80 gear. What you are leaving out though is, these are experienced raiders (as were the ones which cleared the content in masterwork gear). It is as most experienced players have been saying for years: raids are not that hard.

 

Thus here is the flaw in your argument (which you are either oblivious to or intentionally leaving out): you are assuming that random players playing their own builds will come any where near this performance or ability. You are hilariously wrong (we even have the infamous quote of the developers which gave a numeric disparity here, aka the top  players do 10 times the damage of the average player. Anyone knowing what "average" mathematically means knows how huge this gap is).


Raids are not that hard is something we tend to agree on for the record.
Mechanics are the biggest bar to overcome even experienced raiders like Teapot state this over and over again.
But it's the meta culture that deny most people the option to learn those mechanics.. thus they can't get into raiding.
That is why there is so much demand for an easier environment so that these people can learn those mechanics without being bullied into using some meta build they don't like nor know how to use effectively.

Just giving someone a meta build capable of 40K DPS doesn't mean anything, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of players running around with 40K dps builds who are barely hitting over half of that potential.
 

Quote

The main problem is and always has been: random/average players are really really REALLY!!! bad at this game.


This is very subjective.. just because someone isn't maxing out a DPS rotation doesn't make them a bad player.
I'll bet most of those top players can't solo T4 fractals or tank a massively upscaled Lab Horror while keeping 50+ people alive.

Feats like that are far, far more impressive to me than "I can hit big numbers"..
DPS isn't everything in this game and plenty of raiders even admit to that as well.
Hell some even admit that most people running those 40K DPS builds are not even doing 30K most of the time, others even less than that and yet it is still more than enough to beat raids.

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32 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:


Raids are not that hard is something we tend to agree on for the record.
Mechanics are the biggest bar to overcome even experienced raiders like Teapot state this over and over again.
But it's the meta culture that deny most people the option to learn those mechanics.. thus they can't get into raiding.
That is why there is so much demand for an easier environment so that these people can learn those mechanics without being bullied into using some meta build they don't like nor know how to use effectively.

Just giving someone a meta build capable of 40K DPS doesn't mean anything, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of players running around with 40K dps builds who are barely hitting over half of that potential.
 

 

No one is denying any one anything. Becoming adept at your class has little to do with others. There is a damage golem available for everyone who wants to start practicing.

 

This notion that one has to start raiding to become adept is strait up incorrect.

 

There is no need to run a meta build. Every player can make up their own build, go to the golem and see where his build stands and compares to top end builds. Players can then decide if that is sufficient and which areas of their build they want or need to adapt. Let's take a moment and think about how many players ACTUALLY do that.

 

I have no issue being top dps in public raids on nearly any class I chose, and I am a mediocre dps in my static at best (hence why I enjoy running on a support slot, also my definition of mediocre is very subjective given I compare myself to players who reach SC/LN level benchmarks). That's how low the bar for performance is in pug raid groups. Yet even that is miles above what unprepared players will bring to the table without preparation.

 

Quote


This is very subjective.. just because someone isn't maxing out a DPS rotation doesn't make them a bad player.
I'll bet most of those top players can't solo T4 fractals or tank a massively upscaled Lab Horror while keeping 50+ people alive.

No, it isn't. The fact that players do not prepare and/or care about their performance in a way that is meaningful makes them bad players. That's not subjective, that's a fact.

 

Some players go out of their way to prepare, practice and be ready to then engage in raids, others do not. That alone already sets apart a vast majority of players form each other and that is not subjective.

 

Quote

 

Feats like that are far, far more impressive to me than "I can hit big numbers"..
DPS isn't everything in this game and plenty of raiders even admit to that as well.
Hell some even admit that most people running those 40K DPS builds are not even doing 30K most of the time, others even less than that and yet it is still more than enough to beat raids.

 

No, dps is helpful but not needed. What you seem to not have seen or understand is that the players you are talk about are already beyond the step of entering raids. Most of them have already transitioned beyond their custom inefficient builds and have either learned to hone their skill on meta builds, or have adapted their custom builds close enough in performance that those work.

 

To even assume a run of the mill player coming out of the open world into challenging content WITHOUT having actually gone through the steps of optimizing their performance/build/approach is lunacy and is visible to every player who monitors performance for even half a day, ... forbid for years.

 

EDIT:

Here let me make a simple list off the top of my head which any player interested in raiding can check off:

1. Have you ever read a guide (or watched) on the any raid boss in question and actually tried to understand what was said?

2. Have you ever gone to the damage golem in Lion Arch and set it and yourself up properly for a benchmark test (this includes actually looking up how benchmarks are performed)?

3. Have you ever taken your custom build to the damage golem and checked your performance to see where it ranks compared to the top end buids?

4. Have you every asked another player for help in regards to improving your game play or for advice on how to improve or overcome an obstacle?

5. Have you ever looked for a raid training guild, discord, community (not joined, simply looked around for)?

 

If to any of those questions any of the answers is "no" (with some leeway on question 4), you have not prepared yourself for raids and none of these steps (excluding 4) require any direct interaction with any part of the "raiding" community so far. Yet nearly no one does them when they start raiding, and those who do have a far easier time.

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4 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

It's the players who enforce the meta, but the LFG shows it.

It's easy enough to see this for yourself, just make a LFG saying casual run, anyone welcome and prepare to sit there for hours waiting for almost nobody to join.

It's because so many people have been driven away, it's why it's so difficult for these kinds of players to just "make our own groups" as experienced raiders will often tell us to do.

Yes nobody to join, because even casual players prefer to join meta groups that guarantee success instead of unorganized groups that guarantees failure. If meta players are so minor of a population to be of a concern, the issue is clearly inside the casual population because there is no demand of of a "Anyone Welcome"  even among casual players.

 

To bear witness, I have joined several "Anyone welcome" groups back in the early years, and made many more while I was practice VG tanking without a static group. In almost every attempt, half the squad left the game after 2 wipes, because casual players don't like the outcome based on the performance of a casual group.

 

4 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

There's nothing wrong with that, I've said many times in the past that the feeling is mutual about not wanting to play with the kind of people who make those kinds of demands.

But it's those players that drove away all the players that I would prefer to play with, those players who created the culture and pushed the lie that their way is the only way raids can be played and beaten etc.

Often when this subject comes up it's usually players like that getting defensive and making claims like we "just want the experienced players to carry us through content."

But that ain't true at all, all people like me want is a more casual play for fun focused pug community to exist in raids, like we created for fractals and dungeons long ago despite similar efforts to push a Meta or GTFO attitude there as well.
There are some raiders out there who don't want this to occur though, because it may inconvenience them down the road, hence the gatekeeping.

All raid squad had their requirement labeled, therefore casual players would never be driven away if they don't sneak in a group knowing that they don't fit the requirement.

And if the majority of players likes to play in a "Everyone welcome" group, then such groups wouldn't be in such low demand even among casual players.

 

The issue lies in the fact that the casual community couldn't construct a working solution to make their strategy work, and for many, in their ego, chose to cast blame on other communities instead of working on why their methods won't work.

 

5 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

See I don't disagree with that at all, although I would say DPS is a secondary element.
The most important aspect of raids is knowing the mechanics, and this is one of the biggest issues for the more casual player.
They don't know the mechanics because they've never had the chance to learn them and even if they have they probably got kicked before they could figure out what they did wrong.
This is one reason why I argue for an easy mode raids, so it can help people learn the mechanics.

The biggest issue is that a majority of players who chose not to follow the Snowcrow meta build,  also dislike learning mechanics. Because it takes the same discipline in following group instructions and be responsible for mechanics just like following the meta.

 

5 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Yep that is true but the point was simply that it was non optimal, overall a pretty big stat loss as well as armour etc.
It still proves that non optimal setups can beat raid content and that the biggest bar to overcome is the mechanics, not the DPS benchmarks which are so heavily demand.

Again you misunderstood, the demonstration proves gear level was never an issue in raid, it's your choice build combination.

An exp raider in green berserker gears with meta skill/traits and good rotations can easily output twice the dps than a casual player running full ascended in his own build. It further proves why meta mattered.

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18 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Yes nobody to join, because even casual players prefer to join meta groups that guarantee success instead of unorganized groups that guarantees failure. If meta players are so minor of a population to be of a concern, the issue is clearly inside the casual population because there is no demand of of a "Anyone Welcome"  even among casual players.

 

To bear witness, I have joined several "Anyone welcome" groups back in the early years, and made many more while I was practice VG tanking without a static group. In almost every attempt, half the squad left the game after 2 wipes, because casual players don't like the outcome based on the performance of a casual group.

 


These days it's more to do with people having given up.
As you said in the early days there were plenty of people using the LFG to find groups, but these days it's not inexperienced raiders not wanting to join all welcome groups it's inexperienced players not even bothering to try in the first place.
This is largely because they have been driven away by negative experiences with other players in raid content.

This is what makes it so difficult to get a more casual raiding community going, why some of us want an easy mode to revitalise that interest in people and get them to give it another go in a better environment designed to help them learn and not berate them for screwing up.
It's not the "difficulty of raids" or the "refusal to learn" which puts people off raiding , it's the raid community.
 

18 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

All raid squad had their requirement labeled, therefore casual players would never be driven away if they don't sneak in a group knowing that they don't fit the requirement.

And if the majority of players likes to play in a "Everyone welcome" group, then such groups wouldn't be in such low demand even among casual players.


Like i've said countless times in the past as well mostly to be ignored, I don't condone that either.
I've said many times that I am not interested in playing with most experienced raiders because I don't like their attitudes or their demands.
I do not join their groups in any content not even dungeons and I won't allow them in my groups either if their start spouting off about another players DPS or mistakes.
But all of that gets utterly ignored 99% of the time and I still get accused of "wanting to be carried" or some nonsense like that.

All I want is to be able to play raids with likeminded players, just like other raiders want to do.
The difference is that the existing raid community has bullied a lot of the players that I would want to play with into giving up on the content, so they don't have to deal with tons of "bad players" in their words, clogging up the LFG.
Then they gatekeep with a culture designed around meta builds and DPS benchmarks and tell people that if you want to play this content you must!! play it their way.
To which most players replied  "screw that" and walked away.

 

18 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

The biggest issue is that a majority of players who chose not to follow the Snowcrow meta build,  also dislike learning mechanics. Because it takes the same discipline in following group instructions and be responsible for mechanics just like following the meta.


This I don't agree with at all, it's basically just saying casual players are lazy which just isn't true.. least not for all of them.
It's also pretty funny considering how these so called "hardcore" players will almost always exploit and cheese mechanics if the option is available.
Take the Boneskinner Strike Mission as a prime example of that.

I haven't done that strike in a very very long time because I REFUSE!! to cheese it, I consider that cheating and I want to fight it as it was intended to be fought.
Good luck finding groups that actually want to do that though, everyone cheeses it because they can't be bothered to actually learn it's mechanics or play them out.
Raiders can be equally as "lazy" as casual players when the option to cheese something exists.
 

18 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Again you misunderstood, the demonstration proves gear level was never an issue in raid, it's your choice build combination.

An exp raider in green berserker gears with meta skill/traits and good rotations can easily output twice the dps than a casual player running full ascended in his own build. It further proves why meta mattered.


No I got that, I wasn't saying that any random in masterwork gear could come along and beat raids effortlessly.
I was simply making a point that the content can be beaten with "non optimal" builds and setups.
You don't need to run meta builds or be capable of hitting the highest DPS benchmarks to beat raid content.
That was the point I was making.
 

23 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

No one is denying any one anything. Becoming adept at your class has little to do with others. There is a damage golem available for everyone who wants to start practicing.

 

This notion that one has to start raiding to become adept is strait up incorrect.


Knowing the mechanics is by far the most important element of raids and that's the biggest difference between a raider and a casual, the causal doesn't have that experience and in many cases they have been denied the chance to gain it.
Reading websites and watching videos is not the same as learning through doing, at best it can give you an idea of what to expect but that doesn't mean you'll be able to expertly handle everything thrown at you.. that you can only learn from experience.

Being adept with you class has nothing to do with learning raid mechanics, even good players still screw them up at first.
Hell even experienced raiders still screw them up often enough.

 

 

23 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Here let me make a simple list off the top of my head which any player interested in raiding can check off:

1. Have you ever read a guide (or watched) on the any raid boss in question and actually tried to understand what was said?

2. Have you ever gone to the damage golem in Lion Arch and set it and yourself up properly for a benchmark test (this includes actually looking up how benchmarks are performed)?

3. Have you ever taken your custom build to the damage golem and checked your performance to see where it ranks compared to the top end buids?

4. Have you every asked another player for help in regards to improving your game play or for advice on how to improve or overcome an obstacle?

5. Have you ever looked for a raid training guild, discord, community (not joined, simply looked around for)?


1. Yes.
But like I said reading/watching about something and doing something yourself is not the same thing.
Hands on experience is always a better teacher than a Wikipedia page or a Youtube video.

2. Yes and No.
Been to the golem with my own builds, but not to compare them to benchmark's, just wanted to see my own DPS output out of curiosity.

3. Same as above.
The golem is only a tool anyway, almost nobody will get the same constant DPS output in actual combat with things that fight back and throw mechanics at you to overcome.

4. In regards to raiding no, goes against how I want to enjoy the content.
I don't want to be "trained" to be like and play like you raiders, I don't even want to play with you guys at all.
I want to play with other players like myself who want to raid exclusively for fun.

5. Yes in the past, they're were all the same though, must run meta builds, must hit DPS benchmarks etc etc.
Again, same point as above, I don't want to play with people like that.
I want to raid for fun and I want to play with others who want to raid for fun.
I want to learn through my own experience with my own builds, exactly as all raiders had to when raids were first introduced.. before sites like Snowcrows and Metabattle screwed all that up and helped create the culture that pushed people like me away because we wanted to play our own way.

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44 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:


These days it's more to do with people having given up.
As you said in the early days there were plenty of people using the LFG to find groups, but these days it's not inexperienced raiders not wanting to join all welcome groups it's inexperienced players not even bothering to try in the first place.
This is largely because they have been driven away by negative experiences with other players in raid content.

 

Why have they given up you have to wonder. If the group is big enough then why would they need to give up?

44 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:


This is what makes it so difficult to get a more casual raiding community going, why some of us want an easy mode to revitalise that interest in people and get them to give it another go in a better environment designed to help them learn and not berate them for screwing up.
It's not the "difficulty of raids" or the "refusal to learn" which puts people off raiding , it's the raid community.
 

It's the impression of the raiding community, not the raiding community itself. 

44 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:


4. In regards to raiding no, goes against how I want to enjoy the content.
I don't want to be "trained" to be like and play like you raiders, I don't even want to play with you guys at all.
I want to play with other players like myself who want to raid exclusively for fun.

 

Raiders also play for fun 🙂

44 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I want to raid for fun and I want to play with others who want to raid for fun.
I want to learn through my own experience with my own builds, exactly as all raiders had to when raids were first introduced.. before sites like Snowcrows and Metabattle screwed all that up and helped create the culture that pushed people like me away because we wanted to play our own way.

I completely understand that desire, progression raiding is also the most fun part to me, but i feel like you have misdiagnosed the problem. It is not that meta gets enforced by the community, its that even people like you will tend to the meta after some time, the group of players you desire just don't really exist in large enough group in the game (pr any game for that matter)

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2 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Why have they given up you have to wonder. If the group is big enough then why would they need to give up?

It's the impression of the raiding community, not the raiding community itself. 

Raiders also play for fun 🙂

I completely understand that desire, progression raiding is also the most fun part to me, but i feel like you have misdiagnosed the problem. It is not that meta gets enforced by the community, its that even people like you will tend to the meta after some time, the group of players you desire just don't really exist in large enough group in the game (pr any game for that matter)

Very well put.

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3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

Why have they given up you have to wonder. If the group is big enough then why would they need to give up?


Like I've said, a lot of it is due to negative experiences with other players, same thing that turned a lot of people away from dungeons years ago as well.
There are still people who want to get into it but just feel it's not worth the trouble to try these days.

Often it comes to a choice between not bothering or submitting to the demands and rules of a community they don't like very much and have had negative experiences with.. most choose the former in that case.
I believe that is something an easy mode for raids will remedy since it would only really appeal to those kinds of players and not the experienced raiders that they want to avoid.
But I don't see that happening in all honesty.
 

Quote

It's the impression of the raiding community, not the raiding community itself. 


I have said that is it a minority overall that are toxic and elitist, goes without saying really it isn't all raiders.
There's plenty of raiders out there who will play with anyone, hell some even enjoy carrying people.. makes them feel good, I enjoy that myself in other content like Dungeons and Fractals.

But it doesn't matter, a few bad experiences with a few genuinely toxic players is enough to put many people off certain things.. specially when they hear relatable stories from others who have had similarly negative experiences.
 

Quote

Raiders also play for fun 🙂


Indeed.
Just saying that we have quite different opinions on what we find "fun" about Gw2. 🙂 

Personally I enjoy the struggle and the endurance challenge over the "kill it as fast as possible with the biggest numbers" challenge.
That's mainly why I enjoy soloing stuff too.

 

Quote

I completely understand that desire, progression raiding is also the most fun part to me, but i feel like you have misdiagnosed the problem. It is not that meta gets enforced by the community, its that even people like you will tend to the meta after some time, the group of players you desire just don't really exist in large enough group in the game (pr any game for that matter)


Nah, the meta is for groups that want to play as optimally as possible, that want to get kills as fast as possible.
My point against the meta has always been that it isn't "necessary" to use those builds to beat raids.
But the meta's do get enforced by the community, join any raid training group and you'll see them giving out popular meta builds to players and telling them to learn how to use them for raiding.

The option to play how you want to in raids is restricted because of that culture, needlessly in my opinion and to the detriment of other peoples fun.
That's partly why you have people running challenges like beating raids in masterwork Gear or being underleveled with no E-specs etc.. they're making their own fun by creating a new level of challenge.
That can easily be obtained too by simply using non optimal builds or even gimmick builds.

In fact i'd bet that if an experienced group of raiders intentionally give themselves bad builds they'd still be able to beat a lot of raids with them.. which would prove my biggest point about meta's not being mandatory for raiding.

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22 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Nah, the meta is for groups that want to play as optimally as possible, that want to get kills as fast as possible.

That is simply not true. Again, meta builds are often NOT played at the top of their level by regular players. Far from it. Otherwise it would not be possible for better players to outperform meta builds on custom builds.

 

You are lumping things together which do not belong together. The fact some players gravitate towards meta builds has NOTHING to do with speed clearing or getting kills as fast as possible.

Quote

My point against the meta has always been that it isn't "necessary" to use those builds to beat raids.
But the meta's do get enforced by the community, join any raid training group and you'll see them giving out popular meta builds to players and telling them to learn how to use them for raiding.

 

The reason they do that is because it is far easier to give an inexperienced player a build which one knows works.

 

Again, meta builds are not necessary, but when most custom builds are at around 2-5k dps with boons, the huge gap between custom bad builds and custom good builds is so huge that talking about meta builds is not even necessary. The problem starts below one even gets into meta build territory.

 

Quote

The option to play how you want to in raids is restricted because of that culture, needlessly in my opinion and to the detriment of other peoples fun.
That's partly why you have people running challenges like beating raids in masterwork Gear or being underleveled with no E-specs etc.. they're making their own fun by creating a new level of challenge.
That can easily be obtained too by simply using non optimal builds or even gimmick builds.

In fact i'd bet that if an experienced group of raiders intentionally give themselves bad builds they'd still be able to beat a lot of raids with them.. which would prove my biggest point about meta's not being mandatory for raiding.

You seem to not understand what yann.1946 was trying to say.

 

Players who start raiding, how ever they might do that, all start as inexperienced, untrained on not optimized builds. Some prepare or try to prepare beforehand, but all of these players start at 0.

 

As time progresses and experience grows, so do player demands and expectations. What now happens is essentially 1 of 2 things:

1. players quit the content

2. players stay with the content and adapt better builds, better compositions, safer compositions, etc.

 

The type of player you want to play with, the ever chill, ever inefficient, essentially persistently in a training scenario stuck type of player simply seizes to exit constantly because every player undergoes this process. That is why there is no large group of such players. They literally either become adept at the content and raise their expectations, or leave because they do not enjoy it. No player will remain perpetually in a state of 2 hours for 1 wing clear or worse.

 

Now some players will run trainings, teach others, run discords, run more relaxed compositions. Yet ALL of them will eventually adapt at least to some extent SENSIBLE basics which make raiding easier. Proper group compositions to provide boons, proper dps setups depending on boss, proper expectations towards dps performance. All those will vary depending on the groups experience, but they will ALL be present. Why? Because it makes no sense to put aside everything one has learned about the content and remain at 0 the entire time.

 

Towards onlookers this might seem as though the entire raid community has certain expectations or demands when in reality it is thousands upon thousands of individual players going through the exact same development as player coming to the same result at the end.

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1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:


Like I've said, a lot of it is due to negative experiences with other players, same thing that turned a lot of people away from dungeons years ago as well.
There are still people who want to get into it but just feel it's not worth the trouble to try these days.

Often it comes to a choice between not bothering or submitting to the demands and rules of a community they don't like very much and have had negative experiences with.. most choose the former in that case.
I believe that is something an easy mode for raids will remedy since it would only really appeal to those kinds of players and not the experienced raiders that they want to avoid.
But I don't see that happening in all honesty.
 

 

That doesn't really answer the question, because you shouldn't have to submit if their was a big enough group as you desire.

 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:


I have said that is it a minority overall that are toxic and elitist, goes without saying really it isn't all raiders.
There's plenty of raiders out there who will play with anyone, hell some even enjoy carrying people.. makes them feel good, I enjoy that myself in other content like Dungeons and Fractals.

But it doesn't matter, a few bad experiences with a few genuinely toxic players is enough to put many people off certain things.. specially when they hear relatable stories from others who have had similarly negative experiences.

 

 

True, but that is true for all gamemodes.

 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

 

Indeed.
Just saying that we have quite different opinions on what we find "fun" about Gw2. 🙂 

Personally I enjoy the struggle and the endurance challenge over the "kill it as fast as possible with the biggest numbers" challenge.
That's mainly why I enjoy soloing stuff too.

 

You might be surprised. 🙂 im personally also not really the biggest dps guy. and their are more part to raiding then just dps.

 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

 


In fact i'd bet that if an experienced group of raiders intentionally give themselves bad builds they'd still be able to beat a lot of raids with them.. which would prove my biggest point about meta's not being mandatory for raiding.

This i true, but every semidecent raider knows this. Nobody with any knowhow is claiming that meta is mandatory though.

 

Cyn already responded to the rest so thats why ive cut those parts out.

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1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

That is simply not true. Again, meta builds are often NOT played at the top of their level by regular players. Far from it. Otherwise it would not be possible for better players to outperform meta builds on custom builds.


I made that point myself, hence why I keep saying the meta's are not necessary to beat raid content.
 

Quote

You are lumping things together which do not belong together. The fact some players gravitate towards meta builds has NOTHING to do with speed clearing or getting kills as fast as possible.

The reason they do that is because it is far easier to give an inexperienced player a build which one knows works.


Not entirely, plenty of raiders admit that the faster the kill the better because it limits the time for mistakes etc, The longer the raid goes on for the higher risk for it to fail.
Meta's are just the optimal way to achieve those kills, nobody is disputing that.

A big part of giving inexperienced players those meta builds aside from what you said is because they are also in demand.
They're not just preparing you for raids, they're helping you integrate into the desires and demands of the established raid community.

This in part is what contributes to the gatekeeping I was talking about, there are no real options for those who want to raid but don't want to be part of that specific and dominant community.

Every time one of us speaks up and requests something like easy mode raids so that we can have something to help us form our own separate community and attract players back to raids.
They get bombarded by raiders who just don't want us to have that option.. don't want to see it exist.
Play our way or leave.. That is gatekeeping.
 

Quote

Again, meta builds are not necessary, but when most custom builds are at around 2-5k dps with boons, the huge gap between custom bad builds and custom good builds is so huge that talking about meta builds is not even necessary. The problem starts below one even gets into meta build territory.


2-5K?.. I would have to intentionally play bad to hit that low lol
Most people mindlessly skill spamming off CD would get better DPS than that, even without boons.

I won't deny that there are players out there who don't know their class very well though, but the meta culture also contributes to that as well.
How many times have you seen someone ask for help with their build and then someone just gives them some meta build and tells them to use it?
I see that all the time and in all honesty I think it does far more harm than good.

If people don't make their own builds they'll probably never learn how the system works, i've seen a good few players get stuck in content like HoT because of exactly that reason, they pulled a build of the internet and then they get stuck and they don't know how to modify their builds to deal with it.

I do not blame meta builds for this though, not entirely.. mostly I blame the core game for doing a bad job at teaching people how to play the game and how their class works.
This is why I support enhancing/upgrading a ton of core world content.
 

Quote

Players who start raiding, how ever they might do that, all start as inexperienced, untrained on not optimized builds. Some prepare or try to prepare beforehand, but all of these players start at 0.


I agree except for the not optimised build part.. every training group i've seen has demanded the use of popular meta builds right from the off, no choice to play with your own builds at all.
 

Quote

As time progresses and experience grows, so do player demands and expectations. What now happens is essentially 1 of 2 things:

1. players quit the content

2. players stay with the content and adapt better builds, better compositions, safer compositions, etc.


And a massive part of that experience, and the most important element is just learning the mechanics of the raid itself.
Adapting better builds etc doesn't have to mean adopting the in demand meta's.
 

Quote

The type of player you want to play with, the ever chill, ever inefficient, essentially persistently in a training scenario stuck type of player simply seizes to exit constantly because every player undergoes this process. That is why there is no large group of such players. They literally either become adept at the content and raise their expectations, or leave because they do not enjoy it. No player will remain perpetually in a state of 2 hours for 1 wing clear or worse.


Or they get bullied into quitting as i've said before.
There are plenty of people out there who have given their stories on those kinds of experiences with raiders.

You say nobody will remain in a state of 2 hours for 1 wing and yet the entire casual community is often criticized for playing the same bad builds poorly for years and never learning anything.
A constant claim of raiders against easy modes is quite literally that it would cause a flood of bad players who don't want to learn..

So either players will stick with what they're comfortable with and raid with that or they will adopt meta's and become part of the main community.
Funny thing is that that is exactly what I want raids to be.. 2 communities with different tastes on how they enjoy raiding.. a hardcore community and a casual one.
 

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41 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

That doesn't really answer the question, because you shouldn't have to submit if their was a big enough group as you desire.


Time played a big factor in it, Trying to get people to come back to raids this late in makes it harder lol
Lot of people have moved on now, just don't care anymore which is why I really wish there was something like an easy mode introduced to entice them back.
 

Quote

True, but that is true for all gamemodes.


Haha very true ^^
 

Quote

You might be surprised. 🙂 im personally also not really the biggest dps guy. and their are more part to raiding then just dps.


Yeah I know, there's still the meta's for those roles too though.
 

Quote

This i true, but every semidecent raider knows this. Nobody with any knowhow is claiming that meta is mandatory though.

 

Cyn already responded to the rest so thats why ive cut those parts out.


I wish more thought as you do, unfortunately I see more experiences saying the opposite.
Meta's are in high demand in this content, and that is for good reason I do get that.

I just wish we had with raids what we have with dungeons and fractals.. more freedom for everyone to play how they want to.
If we had a casual raid community I believe that would be possible 🙂 

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10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:


These days it's more to do with people having given up.
As you said in the early days there were plenty of people using the LFG to find groups, but these days it's not inexperienced raiders not wanting to join all welcome groups it's inexperienced players not even bothering to try in the first place.
This is largely because they have been driven away by negative experiences with other players in raid content.

I was there the whole 5 years observing why these players had giving up. The causes wasn't as simple as you think it is:

1. Most of these players have difficulties with adaptation, they respond negatively when dealing with gameplay changes.

2. Free for all groups has never developed a working strategy.

3. Because of above, they chose to sneak up on existing meta groups and collide with existing raiders.

Point 1 and 2 are the main cause, 3 is merely the symptom.

 

10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

This is what makes it so difficult to get a more casual raiding community going, why some of us want an easy mode to revitalise that interest in people and get them to give it another go in a better environment designed to help them learn and not berate them for screwing up.

It's not the "difficulty of raids" or the "refusal to learn" which puts people off raiding , it's the raid community.

You'll find the casual communities are far less interested in easy mode than you think.

The biggest issue to all low difficulty and low reward instanced contents till this day is that they fails to compete with open map events in reward efficiency and ease of entry (you don't need to personally assemble a party/squad in open map). Once developers tone down the higher rewards of a normal raid into something easier and less rewarding, the casual community instantly loses motivation just like strike missions, DRM, low fractal and nerfed Dungeons today.

 

10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Like i've said countless times in the past as well mostly to be ignored, I don't condone that either.
I've said many times that I am not interested in playing with most experienced raiders because I don't like their attitudes or their demands.
I do not join their groups in any content not even dungeons and I won't allow them in my groups either if their start spouting off about another players DPS or mistakes.
But all of that gets utterly ignored 99% of the time and I still get accused of "wanting to be carried" or some nonsense like that.

All I want is to be able to play raids with likeminded players, just like other raiders want to do.
The difference is that the existing raid community has bullied a lot of the players that I would want to play with into giving up on the content, so they don't have to deal with tons of "bad players" in their words, clogging up the LFG.
Then they gatekeep with a culture designed around meta builds and DPS benchmarks and tell people that if you want to play this content you must!! play it their way.
To which most players replied  "screw that" and walked away.

If you never joined such group, then you'll never have the chance to get accused.

 

Yet it is still a common issue to this day that casual players sneak in meta groups disregarding the LFG message, these players treated the group's negative response as toxicity without realizing what they do is equally an offense to the community. "Wanting to get carried" is commonly the motivation of such behavior. If a majority of casual players got driven away due to this, then the fault lies in the sneaking, not the toxicity.

 

There is no such culture with Gatekeeping or LFG clogging inside raiders, nobody even bothered with the effort, commonly accepted DPS requirement inside a raid squad usually hovers around 13-17k mark comparing to Snowcrows 35-42k, that's less than merely half of an ideal performance.

If a player couldn't even output merely that amount of performance and continue refusing to learn how, he's gatekeeping himself.

 

 

10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

This I don't agree with at all, it's basically just saying casual players are lazy which just isn't true.. least not for all of them.
It's also pretty funny considering how these so called "hardcore" players will almost always exploit and cheese mechanics if the option is available.
Take the Boneskinner Strike Mission as a prime example of that.

I haven't done that strike in a very very long time because I REFUSE!! to cheese it, I consider that cheating and I want to fight it as it was intended to be fought.
Good luck finding groups that actually want to do that though, everyone cheeses it because they can't be bothered to actually learn it's mechanics or play them out.
Raiders can be equally as "lazy" as casual players when the option to cheese something exists.

Which speaks for the fate of an easy mode raid.

The majority of casual players don't even want to learn basic mechanics in a cheesed fight, let alone facing the full ones.

 

Raiders even developed easy builds that let you deal 20k dps just by spamming skill 1 to help new comers, even that don't attract casual players to learn raid.

 

10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Knowing the mechanics is by far the most important element of raids and that's the biggest difference between a raider and a casual, the causal doesn't have that experience and in many cases they have been denied the chance to gain it.
Reading websites and watching videos is not the same as learning through doing, at best it can give you an idea of what to expect but that doesn't mean you'll be able to expertly handle everything thrown at you.. that you can only learn from experience.

Being adept with you class has nothing to do with learning raid mechanics, even good players still screw them up at first.
Hell even experienced raiders still screw them up often enough.

Wrong, in most scenarios you cannot learn mechanics if you do not have these elements:

1. A good healer to sustain the team long enough to make practice viable.

2. Sufficient DPS to phase the boss to reach these mechanics.

3. Knowing your class enough so your handling/rotation does not distract you from focusing & observing onto upcoming mechanics.

 

Edited by Vilin.8056
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1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

This in part is what contributes to the gatekeeping I was talking about, there are no real options for those who want to raid but don't want to be part of that specific and dominant community.


Every time one of us speaks up and requests something like easy mode raids so that we can have something to help us form our own separate community and attract players back to raids.
They get bombarded by raiders who just don't want us to have that option.. don't want to see it exist.
Play our way or leave.. That is gatekeeping.
 

[...]

 

So either players will stick with what they're comfortable with and raid with that or they will adopt meta's and become part of the main community.
Funny thing is that that is exactly what I want raids to be.. 2 communities with different tastes on how they enjoy raiding.. a hardcore community and a casual one.

And all that requires is for the developers to invent an entirely new subsection of PvE content, raids which are designed to be easy. Such an endeavor would not even "attract players back to raids" as you put it, since the people who would end up forming the "casual raiding community" will grow around the easy mode raid content. They are not going to interact with raids or the "hardcore community" since you have already explained that access to that is being gatekept.

On that note, are you in favor of gatekeeping as a practice or against it? Because your "goal" for gw2 raiding sounds like the 2 communities would not mingle, essentially gatekeeping themselves from each other. On the other hand, your posts read as if your opinion on gatekeeping is not all that positive.

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9 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:


Time played a big factor in it, Trying to get people to come back to raids this late in makes it harder lol
Lot of people have moved on now, just don't care anymore which is why I really wish there was something like an easy mode introduced to entice them back.
 

your moving the timeframe but that doesn't matter, why didn't they do this for dungeons for example. THen that community would still be their ones raids came along.

9 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:


Haha very true ^^
 


Yeah I know, there's still the meta's for those roles too though.
 

An people play non metabuilds all the time. But i have to wonder do you have a problem with not being able to play the style you want or with playing metabuilds

9 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:


I wish more thought as you do, unfortunately I see more experiences saying the opposite.
Meta's are in high demand in this content, and that is for good reason I do get that.

Meta build are in high demand true, but not because they are mandatory to complete the raid. Most people who organize training raids know that metabuildss are not necessary. It would probably do you good to think why people still suggest these builds for newcomers.

9 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:


I just wish we had with raids what we have with dungeons and fractals.. more freedom for everyone to play how they want to.
If we had a casual raid community I believe that would be possible 🙂 

You can already do this, the only caveat is that you'd have to find 9 other people to play with.

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We definitely have to be careful about how we regard Meta here. As many say, it's not a barrier to instanced content. We DO have the freedom to play how we want to ... if you aren't, then you are your own problem. I don't like meta being pushed but ... in the spirit of playing how you want, we have to ACCEPT it's existence and those that want to use it. 

Edited by Obtena.7952
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Here's my thing, because I experience both sides of this argument. I run Strike Missions with zero requirements at all what so ever...and at the same time I never raid in this game because it's impossible to find a group...even leading one to get pugs because the raid community has gaped it so hard that they aren't even there anymore.

 

So here's my observation in strike missions. When I form a group it's with absolutely no requirements...no roles, no gears, no builds... And from what I can tell, Players, even bad ones just need to play the content in order to beat it...it's the only way to actually learn anything, and this content can be beaten with a lot of builds...not every build...but a lot of them. It requires good leader like myself, who are capable of carrying through group through encounters to give them the time to learn it...and to provide an atmosphere where players don't just leave after the first wipe, but encourage everyone to keep trying until they get it.

 

It's actually this time that is spent wiping and gaining success sometimes, that helps build longer lasting fellowships.

 

2nd observation, is that the problem with the current community, is that people require builds that you might not know how to play at all...and playing a new build, is like trying to drive a new vehicle...it takes time and you are going to suck on it... The players who are interested in getting into raids have to sink so much time and gear to just playing a build that they will just suck at playing anyway in a real encounter and you'll wipe. So what I've seen is that when i join Exp-pug strike groups it actually takes more time, and wipes more times on average at Bone-skinner, then my own pug groups where I guide them through the encounter with the builds they feel comfortable playing...so that they can focus on the MECHANICS of the fight, which is the most critical factor in actually beating it, and learning it so they can go on into the future with any build. 

 

So ya...gate keeping is just like the real world...like employers catch 22-ing jobs. A 4 year degree to sell T-shirts at Macy's is ridiculous... If you want people to eventually be able to be successful in their life, you need to give them a chance...if you don't give them the chance then you are contributing to a systemic degradation of society as a whole, by increasing the gap between the wealthy and the non-wealthy.

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3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It's actually this time that is spent wiping and gaining success sometimes, that helps build longer lasting fellowships.

There was a time when this was true in MMOs.

This game's current audience, however. won't stand more than two wipes before saying "not worth it",  going to farm Drizzlewood and putting up a post on the forums that equates challenge with bad  design justified with the misuse of the word "casual". 

You can see this attitude in this very thread.

The issue is not, as you maintain, creating some kind of safe space. The issue is about making a spoiled and entitled playerbase happy, when they argue 40g an hour for spamming autoattacks and laying full dead at meta events is "how the game was meant to be".

3 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

So ya...gate keeping is just like the real world...like employers catch 22-ing jobs. A 4 year degree to sell T-shirts at Macy's is ridiculous... If you want people to eventually be able to be successful in their life, you need to give them a chance...if you don't give them the chance then you are contributing to a systemic degradation of society as a whole, by increasing the gap between the wealthy and the non-wealthy

But the problem here isn't the people who sell T-shirts exaggerating the qualifications to sell one.

It's people who have no interest in selling Tshirts at all, people who only sell cozy sweaters inflating the expectations of Tshirt selling qualifications because they don't think anyone should want to wear a T-shirt and it interferes with their agenda of selling sweaters.

Edited by mindcircus.1506
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