Firebeard.1746

> @"Asum.4960" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > You can actually get really close to the 20 builds for 2 characters and it doesn't cost 200 euros. 6 builds per character plus 24 account wide. That puts you at 36ish for 2 chars. You may have to do some cleverness on your swapping and use one slot as temporary storage on the account wide one. The account wide slots are cheaper. Way cheaper. In usd to max out account wide, it's 3500 gems which is about 40 dollars (a little more, but if you got the free extra 3 slots it's less, i believe the first 3 are free). Then the character ones are 900 gems. Times 2. 1800. The total comes to about 5300 gems or about 65 dollars.

> >

> > And are you really using 80 different builds? Can you list them?

>

> What about the other 7 professions? Also the account wide slots don't cover gear, which is equally if not more annoying to swap around than Traits and Utilities.

> Paying 40€/$ to save one half of what makes up a build, for just 2 characters, and still having to "be clever" aka having to fiddle around with temporary/empty slots to swap stuff out doesn't exactly sound like a good value proposition.

>

> Yes, I could list 80 builds for 9 professions across PvP, WvW (Zerg, Roaming), Raids, Fractals, general Open World and fun/solo challenges.

And you use all 80, every day? And they're so dissimilar a few adjustments aren't enough? And so frequently that build storage is necessary? The point i made earlier is if you need specific storage for them you must be playing a hell of a lot and that's a good value proposition.

> @"Hyrai.8720" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an kitten asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

>

> no, THIS is the problem: if the leechers keep leeching, the experienced players will get tired and either stop doing the content or join a static or put up ridiculous kp walls. (that's what we saw in the past with raids)

>

> and where does that leave the leechers?

> will they stop playing the content? then its them who are killing the content, and everyone else is happy to play "dead" content without any leechers.

> or will they suddenly start joining or creating training groups because there is noone to leech of? then why didnt they do so in the first place? - i'll tell you why: because they are not really interested in doing the content. they just want easy loot.

>

> those who _are_ interested will always find a way to do it. be it by learning it themselves or by joining a group of experienced players who are openly willing to teach them. (usually marked with something like "training" in the lfg description...)

> if you are one of those willing to teach: nice, i respect that. you are an enrichment to the community.

> but the same way you will have to respect that i am not willing to spend my limited playtime teaching or carrying others.

What if these "leechers" are all different people that haven't learned it yet? A strike should be teachable and winnable by the average player if taught, with maybe one wipe (at 2-3 your group keeps falling apart and no one is learning anything, unless it's super new content). Separating the community into leechers and non leechers is the wrong mentality for intro raid content: we're supposed to be getting people comfortable with trying an learning mechanics.

> @"Asum.4960" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.

> >

> > All this makes me believe is that letting people have something for free and then monetizing it later is a bad idea. Even build templates at 4 dollars a pop i would say is not that exorbitant, and then it's even better when you realize they gave everyone 6 for free with account wide ones. Usually when a company does something dirty they just add the item and expect you to buy it. Anet did a lot to soften the blow and even gave everyone more storage space to boot. And even allowed you to repurpose previous, invisible templates.

>

> Unless you worked on things like Legendary Armor's/Backpacks or even Trinkets for exactly that reason, to already have saved those inventory slots.

> With close to 20 builds on both my Guardian and Necro back in Arc DPS, how much inventory space did that take? One (invisible) bag slot, aka 5€ for 20 builds each.

>

> All I needed was 3 sets of Trinkets (Power, Condi, Support), the rest of adjustments for all builds was easily made by saving different Armor Stat and rune combinations.

>

> Now in Anet's system, not only can you not actually save and load builds, those 20 builds per character also would now cost 200€ per character, if it even was possible to save for than 6 Builds for 60€ per character (and those previously bought Bag slots for spare Gear for all my characters are now useless).

>

> That's both a massive price jump together with a drastic functionality and QoL drop, which surprisingly upset players who relied upon Templates to enjoy the game.

> Which is also why Anet allowed Arc Templates and why it wasn't a bad idea to do so for all these years. Arc provided a valuable service to GW2 and Anet which they couldn't provide, keeping people who needed that service engaged with the game and as spending customers for years, until Anet got greedy and wanted all the money, grossly misstepping with their feature and causing a hardcore player exodus and massive revenue drop.

>

> People probably would have been fine with unlocking unlimited native Templates for even the price of a whole expansion like PoF, paying 30€ for it. But asking for nearly 60€ per character for a measly 6 character Loadouts which you can't even safe and load was and is a kick in the teeth for people who relied on such a system.

> Arc previously existing or not. Many of those players tired of swapping their gear more in for example Raids than actually playing the game just would have quit already earlier if it wasn't for Arc.

>

>

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > Well I only do 1-2 builds on my alts. I've dipped in a little bit to set up different raid builds for my main. But literally just plan on having an open world build + niche raid filler build for all of my alt characters (which means I don't need to do anything for them, 3 templates and 2 gear sets is plenty). I've spent 20 bucks on templates. Probably won't again for a long time. If ever. Most people, probably won't need to buy templates, and tbh, any altoholic now basically gets a free open world equipment set + a free PVE setm with up to 3 different builds. That's plenty.

> >

> > Lemme get this straight, using your numbers: you and your friends have 8.7ish builds per character (using account + individual)? 78? Really? That's a kitten ton. And you use them so much that you need to spend money instead of jostling a few traits around every now and then? Most classes orbit around the same specializations variants. You're right, it's a ton of money,. If you're getting 9 classes worth of content, with 6 builds for each, plus another, what 24 account builds? That means you're playing the game a heck of alot & in a heck of a lot different ways. if you don't think 144 dollars is worth that sheer quantity of content you're playing every day for that to be worth it, I don't know what a good sell is. Guess you should just go play BDO where you can literally pay for power gain you still have to grind for (I think start-up cost if you're serious is 200ish + 15 a month for sub benes). Or wow, where you can buy 200 dollars worth of tokens for the 2 million gold you need for that guaranteed Jaina mount from that paid for with gold raid from that high end community (or SPEND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of gold farming). If you don't want to take the 4% drop chance risk every week until shadowlands patch hits (only one drops in a raid of 25 people, and it's still hard to find groups that can do it regularly), at which point the drop goes down to 1% (for everyone, and the raid won't be soloable until another 2 years). Or even worse, the AH mount that's going to go "extinct" that costs 500-1000 dollars in Gold. GW2 players get half its functionality for free in this game, being able to sell from anywhere (and free up inventory space). This is on top of sub fees. FFXIV would be your amount in a year, easy with the sub fees. And has an MTX shop to boot.

> >

> > Also can you and your friends list all 78 builds you're using and for what? I'm really curious. I want to know how much of a scrub I am.

> >

> > Seriously, that's why I buy gems every now and then. Anet is so nice to its players. I don't want them going out of business. I don't even have an intended use. I'm just sick of abuse and Anet is worth it.

>

> There is a reason why I picked GW2 to play over those games. Whataboutism doesn't really help there. Are there games with similar or worse monetization schemes? Ofc. But I'm not playing those games for that very reason, and GW2 used to provide a more sensible and player friendly approach rather than just trying to provide a platform to milk people on.

>

> I gladly pay for new content, but not having gotten much or in many cases any new content which I enjoy most (Fractal CM's, Raids etc.) and then being charged hundreds of euros to keep playing the same old content with at least the same variety in builds to keep it somewhat interesting feels pretty terrible.

>

> Having invested into Legendary Armors for multiple characters heavily disincentivizes same profession alts for those. The very purpose of that investment was that I can adjust the character on the fly (without using up much inventory space) no matter what Raid Boss I'm on, if I want to play easy open world, solo some harder group content, jump into WvW, etc.

> Now having to buy a character slot, make, boost and gear a new character to the exact same setup I could previously just swap to on a character with Legendary gear with Arc because I'm out of Build Slots to buy, or the build and content isn't worthwhile paying 10€ for Loadout slots for just makes me not want to play that content anymore instead.

>

> And yes, it's easy to say it's just a few Traits swapped around, runes clicked into every piece of legendary gear, a change of Stats, swapping some Utility skills, etc. No big deal, right? Well it is if you have to do that almost every Raid boss, every time you go into Fractals, every time you want to hop into WvW for just a few minutes, run around in OW for a bit etc., let alone remembering and double checking all those hundreds of combinations.

> A template system is supposed to fix exactly that issue, not make it worse and charge you for it.

>

> If you play all 9 professions, or even just a few of them, in all 3 Game Modes (and their sub modes), ~80 builds are incredibly quickly reached for hardcore players.

> All the setups for different PvP comps, WvW Zerg play and roaming, Open World Builds, Solo/fun builds and especially different setups for a variety of Raid bosses and roles on them as well as different Fractal setups on 4-9 professions don't exactly make that outlandish.

>

> Now it's great that the system caters to you with 1-2 builds, being someone who probably didn't care much for such a feature. But one would think a "Template" system should cater to people who wanted/needed a Template system.

> This does not. At all. The ridiculous monetization (for which the system clearly was primarily designed, over or rather instead of functionality) is just the insult to injury.

You can actually get really close to the 20 builds for 2 characters and it doesn't cost 200 euros. 6 builds per character plus 24 account wide. That puts you at 36ish for 2 chars. You may have to do some cleverness on your swapping and use one slot as temporary storage on the account wide one. The account wide slots are cheaper. Way cheaper. In usd to max out account wide, it's 3500 gems which is about 40 dollars (a little more, but if you got the free extra 3 slots it's less, i believe the first 3 are free). Then the character ones are 900 gems. Times 2. 1800. The total comes to about 5300 gems or about 65 dollars.

And are you really using 80 different builds? Can you list them?

> @"LadyKitty.6120" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > I don't know if it's all the returning players or what, but i'm starting to hate this strike. Stacking feels nigh impossible for boon sharing towards the end with so many mechanics. It also doesn't feel like rezzing is worth it either. Literally finish a rez and the next one pops and kills someone else. I feel like before, the end was always a poop show, but there was enough dps to get us through it, even without stacking (and no one was really going for specific comps).

> >

> > Is there any proper guide on this? Someone has have to have figured out some cheese.

>

> If people feel like they can't really cheese a boss, that's a good sign in Kitty's books as then the boss is more than just a glorified dps golem that many actual raid bosses have become (which is why Kitty personally likes it).

> But even then, good dps helps a lot and a good heal scourge even more so (and Kitty's not talking about mere ressbot but also barrierbot/boonbot while at it but only those who have watched Kitty's exploits on Youtube know how powerful it can be).

> Boons-wise, a good scepter+warhorn tempest (aka Auramancer) helps a ton due to Heat Sync's and shouts' massive ranges.

> So Kitty would personally do stuff like auramancer+healscourge+healbrand (mace+shield) or 2 staff/axe+shield healbrands+staff tempest/heal scrapper (heal scrapper has the strongest heals in the whole game and 2nd strongest resses(Function Gyro+Toss Elixir R) if played properly).

> Some people (especially raiders) look for druids but to be honest, druid is really weak for a boss like that. It already has weak heals if mightbotting (just slightly above other boonbotting meme healers like heal deadeye and heal chrono) and its main heals are burst-type centered on itself so especially if you're running dual-healer comp with druid as main healer, the heals mightn't be enough (pun intended) unless the squad does mechs well and druid actually knows how to heal properly (which has already been an issue in raids, to be honest, as lots of people just make a druid to have a healer-option available if really needed but don't bother with actually learning it).

These are good strategies, but when the bosses mechanics don't even jive well with raid meta comps, the question is what role does the boss play? Especially when it's raid intro content. I'll try running in my auramancer and seeing if i can get someone to block orbs.

Boneskinner only has one true mechanic and that's dodging the party aoe, but that keeps it from being a glorified damage golem. I still feel like it's puggable right now as long as you have healers. This many mechanics doesn't.

> @"Hyrai.8720" said:

> I think the overall fight is pretty good. Not too hard but some nice mechanics that teach the players to not just 111111 on the boss but also do some other stuff. Good introduction on what raids are about. (better than boneskinner where its just "ignore mechanics and outheal". while that does work on some raid bosses, it shouldnt be teached like that in a strike mission that's supposed to be a stepping stone into raids)

>

> BUT it needs some fine tuning.

> 1. the cc phase is too punishing for unexperienced squads. Once the cc phase has started, there is basically no way of rezzing downed players because of the DoT. You either get downed trying to rezz or you do the cc while the downed player dies to DoT. A little less DoT or a window of ~2seconds before it starts would be better imo.

> 2. the knockup attack. Imo there should be a better indicator for when WoJ does this attack, AND IT SHOULD BE DODGEABLE! I managed to somehow dodge it once with a perfectly timed guard gs3 leap, but i'm pretty sure it's not intended to work that way.

> 3. the AoE ice attack (the one where every player get a red circle around him, no idea what its called) is kinda weird to dodge. The moment when the circle fills and the moment the actual animation follows are too delayed. It feels kinda weird dodging out of the circle, getting the "evaded" notifcation, and then getting hit with a huge pile of ice without anything happening.

> 4. the bug where WoJ just disappears for a couple seconds. Pretty sure it happens when it goes into cc phase while also hitting 25%. after killing all clones it takes several seconds for WoJ to reappear.

>

> regarding LI/kp/titles:

> yesterday i was in a 300LI squad when a necro joined without pinging anything. when the comm asked, he said "what do you mean, there are no LI for strikes" :smiley:

> we decided to keep him because we didnt want to wait any longer for the squad to fill. though it didnt surprise anyone when the necro immediatly died because he obviously had no idea about the fight.

> so yea, any kind of "killproof" (be it LI or a specific title or whatever) are fine for an experienced squad that just wants a quick kill without any leechers. sure its frustrating for newbies to see the lfg filled with 300LI squads. but its also frustrating for experienced players to have someone in their squad that doesnt even carry his own weight! Youre not entitled to be carried, nor are you entitled to strangers taking their time to explain everything to you. Its the same with any kind of group content: the best way to get into it and learn it is either with friends/guild/etc. or an open training squad.

This is the problem though: if the leechers never succeed the popularity sinks and it kills the strike. Strikes are supposed to be puggable on some level. And explaining the mechanics doesn't take too long. The same stratification that killed raiding will kill this strike. And is about to, actually. I don't want to be an a-hole asking for kp on a strike. Once that becomes a thing, that means that it's not really a strike and is the same broken thing as raids. I know the mechanics, i did a ton of attempts today, but having it blow up in my face so many times makes me not want to do it any more, and as soon as i'm asking for kp, i'm not building any community and don't feel like it's a healthy mmo activity.

Hate it. Too mechanic heavy, can't really boon share or heal towards the end and enthusiasm for it is dying. Like it's no good if i rez someone and someone else instantly dies.

I don't know if it's all the returning players or what, but i'm starting to hate this strike. Stacking feels nigh impossible for boon sharing towards the end with so many mechanics. It also doesn't feel like rezzing is worth it either. Literally finish a rez and the next one pops and kills someone else. I feel like before, the end was always a poop show, but there was enough dps to get us through it, even without stacking (and no one was really going for specific comps).

Is there any proper guide on this? Someone has have to have figured out some cheese.

Boo. I intentionally cheesed an outdoor JP to help people as a mesmer. I literally had to start from a long way off in the map with skyscale. I think it's fine. You have to be somewhat clever and understand the zone to pull it off. You can definitely fail trying to cheese it, as I have.

> @"Eramonster.2718" said:

> Need details. Did the player mentioned why he left? Was it before the run start or after a wipe etc. Was there a healer? most T2 PuG runs without healer.

>

> Anguised Tear of Alba only gives +10AR (+5 with mastery). Its possible to clear T2 with lower AR(yellow range, not recommended doing the reds) and to be low manned. Maybe just need some reassurance.

Yes, they specifically mentioned my AR level. Before even starting.

> @"ArchonWing.9480" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"ArchonWing.9480" said:

> > > You lose the 5 AR if you lose your mistlock.

> > >

> > > It is entirely possible that someone is skilled enough to dodge all mechanics and be a seasoned fractal player that can't afford agony resist for some reason. But then again, that would require people to give that person the benefit of the doubt when there are literally tons of random people that could be bothered to get something close to agony resist. How one presents themselves matters; they can be the best player in the world, but not everyone has the patience to take said risk.

> >

> > You can always renew right? It only goes away on death. Also i was just 10 ar short and had a pot and almost instantly someone lolnub rage quit the party, i'm not saying give people ridiculous benefit of the doubt. I'm saying note that you can easily get 20 ar easy and don't auto throw a hissy fit.

>

> If it's a boss fight, you'd only be able to renew it if you wipe. If you're 10 below without the pot, people shouldn't care.

>

> But like, I've never really seen anyone with less than 130'ish resist for a very long time and most show up when the fractal scales are lower when they do. But are we talking about t4 here?

Nope, t2. Also who dies between boss fights? There's usually a new one right after or before any boss. Point is, complete wipes are normal when you actually need to renew.

> @"Armen.1483" said:

> If you don't have enough ar, you are making your healer's job a lot harder. It is not cool. You could just do tier 3 fractals, why force yourself to places you don't belong yet and blame others ?

I'm talking about a tier 2. And that's my point: if you can get the ar, you're not making anyone 's life harder

> @"Toressea.4503" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"Toressea.4503" said:

> > > I am new to the game and I have been playing some arenas in PvP and I have realized that no matter what is done in the game if it is lost they do not give any experience, but if you win the experience bar is filled almost all . There should be a little more experience in my opinion, since if you are in a bad game streak you will not level up. What do you think?

> >

> > Almost every reward track gives tomes of knowledge -> each one is worth 1 level. YOu can level with PVP if you want.

>

> I understand that the tomes of knowledge can only be used in PvE.

See edit.

> @"Toressea.4503" said:

> I am new to the game and I have been playing some arenas in PvP and I have realized that no matter what is done in the game if it is lost they do not give any experience, but if you win the experience bar is filled almost all . There should be a little more experience in my opinion, since if you are in a bad game streak you will not level up. What do you think?

Almost every reward track gives tomes of knowledge -> each one is worth 1 level. YOu can level with PVP if you want.

EDIT: if you're talking rank, then this still makes sense. Even if you hit level 20 to "compete" you still may have a ways to go in order to compete with the players who have been playing this game for years. Unranked is nothing compared to ranked and count this as your "tutoring" in the game mode.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > See this is why I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates for free -> any price point would seem like too much when you had it for free before. You don't have to unlock them all. It's also not like you can't just edit your current build anyway, they're sheerly for convenience. You could even make some "template builds" for a set of core traits and then edit 2-3 traits on the fly. Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish. That's not crazy.

> >

> > Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish.

> Per character. Assume at least 1 character per class.

>

> > EDIT: And account wide templates are even cheaper 500 gems for 3 slots =~ 2 bucks per template (a little less actually). In fact, that's the best bang for your buck.

> So what? Even if i bought them all (which would be 3000 gems total at the price of 3 slots per 500 gems), that would be barely enough for a single class. There are 9 classes.

>

> So, basically, we're already talking about a minimal investment of (by your numbers) 144 USD. And that's not for an AAA-tier collection edition title, or even for a big dlc, but for a niche QoL feature that is very basic and primitive, as well as being very far from fully covering the needs of players that might be seriously interested in it.

Well I only do 1-2 builds on my alts. I've dipped in a little bit to set up different raid builds for my main. But literally just plan on having an open world build + niche raid filler build for all of my alt characters (which means I don't need to do anything for them, 3 templates and 2 gear sets is plenty). I've spent 20 bucks on templates. Probably won't again for a long time. If ever. Most people, probably won't need to buy templates, and tbh, any altoholic now basically gets a free open world equipment set + a free PVE setm with up to 3 different builds. That's plenty.

Lemme get this straight, using your numbers: you and your friends have 8.7ish builds per character (using account + individual)? 78? Really? That's a crap ton. And you use them so much that you need to spend money instead of jostling a few traits around every now and then? Most classes orbit around the same specializations variants. You're right, it's a ton of money,. If you're getting 9 classes worth of content, with 6 builds for each, plus another, what 24 account builds? That means you're playing the game a heck of alot & in a heck of a lot different ways. if you don't think 144 dollars is worth that sheer quantity of content you're playing every day for that to be worth it, I don't know what a good sell is. Guess you should just go play BDO where you can literally pay for power gain you still have to grind for (I think start-up cost if you're serious is 200ish + 15 a month for sub benes). Or wow, where you can buy 200 dollars worth of tokens for the 2 million gold you need for that guaranteed Jaina mount from that paid for with gold raid from that high end community (or SPEND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of gold farming). If you don't want to take the 4% drop chance risk every week until shadowlands patch hits (only one drops in a raid of 25 people, and it's still hard to find groups that can do it regularly), at which point the drop goes down to 1% (for everyone, and the raid won't be soloable until another 2 years). Or even worse, the AH mount that's going to go "extinct" that costs 500-1000 dollars in Gold. GW2 players get half its functionality for free in this game, being able to sell from anywhere (and free up inventory space). This is on top of sub fees. FFXIV would be your amount in a year, easy with the sub fees. And has an MTX shop to boot.

Also can you and your friends list all 78 builds you're using and for what? I'm really curious. I want to know how much of a scrub I am.

Seriously, that's why I buy gems every now and then. Anet is so nice to its players. I don't want them going out of business. I don't even have an intended use. I'm just sick of abuse and Anet is worth it.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > > > I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates to begin with, that's what made it feel bad.

> > > Nah, it's just a bad template system, and massively overpriced. It would have been so even if Arc Templates never existed.

> > > It's just designed wrong - it's very easy to see that the main design goal was not making a good template system, but making a system you could monetize as kitten.

> > >

> > >

> >

> > Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.

> The gear storage if you look at it separately might be priced well. I wasn't talking about gear storage though - i was talking about _template_ system.

>

> By the way, don't count the free things. Count the cost of the full character unlock. And then realize, that for anyone that is seriously in need of working buld templates, that full unlock is not even close to be enough (not even with the 4 additional datamined build and gear tabs).

See this is why I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates for free -> any price point would seem like too much when you had it for free before. You don't have to unlock them all. It's also not like you can't just edit your current build anyway, they're sheerly for convenience. You could even make some "template builds" for a set of core traits and then edit 2-3 traits on the fly. Fully unlocking a new, single characters' extra 3 templates is 12 bucks ish. That's not crazy.

EDIT: And account wide templates are even cheaper 500 gems for 3 slots =~ 2 bucks per template (a little less actually). In fact, that's the best bang for your buck.

Someone was poking at my performance (though I'd have to say theirs was awful too), and they told me this. LIke I hadn't been playing the class I'd been playing a ton lately and like unranked prepares you for ranked (it doesn't, you usually stomp people in unranked unless they're a premade if you've played ranked). Toxic harassment like this cuts down on the player base and doesn't help all the matchmaker kitten (tons of guildies, etc have said toxicity is why they stopped playing PVP). If there's enough bronze players to even out the one on your team, then you're going to do okay (if you don't suck yourself). But if there's only 1 because you scared away everyone at their level, and they're on your team, well you brought this on yourself (I'm not bronze btw). There's only one person you can change for certain, and that's yourself. If you want to be helpful, then tell someone precise pionters about how to play and how they could have done better in a given situation, maybe learn the class and you'll learn even its seemingly powerful abilities have limits.

That being said, it felt like we were up against a completely coordinated 5 man. I literally saw on the team health bar everyone get a ridiculous amount of condis at once and all go to down state in 2-3 secs. It felt like a wombo-combo. Nerfing sustain on most classes has made untouched burst harder to deal with. (And I'm wondering if there's combo field burst that hasn't been touched that should have been.)

> @"Einar.1482" said:

> Look its time Anet removed downstate in competitive game modes. IE: wvw/spvp.

> There is no reason why a player or players should have to continue using cooldowns on players who have been beaten. If they want to implement a rez mechanic implement hard rez utility skills such as Sig of undeath and Sig of Mercy.

> These skills are fantastic and certainly serve a place in the game as a rez mechanic but we have got to get away from players in downstate continuing to cause issues for players who are not downed.

> Furthermore, this eliminates some of the BM that can occur with downed bodies such as siege, jumping. bleeding out etc.

> There will be some that argue bleeding out is an important mechanic in gw2 Spvp. While this may have some merit I still find it to be largely unhealthy for a player vs player mode or anything even resembling a competitive game mode. Im sure there are some examples that are eluding me at the moment but the majority of semi competitive games to the higher tier competitive games do NOT have a downstate mechanic * and certainly not one where the downed player can still interact with the players who are not downed in a way that is meaningful*

>

> Perhaps this would lead to more bursty gameplay or perhaps more sustaining gameplay but it would allow players who are skilled to win outnumbered fights while furthermore incentivize team play and cooperation because death is a much more realistic and looming threat.

>

Downstate would be fine in the absence of rally. For most classes, except ranger and/or necro which are exceptional at recovering. Rally should be deleted first.

> @"ollbirtan.2915" said:

> And your point is....?

Don't be toxic. Ask questions. And understand the number can go up.

> @"ArchonWing.9480" said:

> You lose the 5 AR if you lose your mistlock.

>

> It is entirely possible that someone is skilled enough to dodge all mechanics and be a seasoned fractal player that can't afford agony resist for some reason. But then again, that would require people to give that person the benefit of the doubt when there are literally tons of random people that could be bothered to get something close to agony resist. How one presents themselves matters; they can be the best player in the world, but not everyone has the patience to take said risk.

You can always renew right? It only goes away on death. Also i was just 10 ar short and had a pot and almost instantly someone lolnub rage quit the party, i'm not saying give people ridiculous benefit of the doubt. I'm saying note that you can easily get 20 ar easy and don't auto throw a hissy fit.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> > I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates to begin with, that's what made it feel bad.

> Nah, it's just a bad template system, and massively overpriced. It would have been so even if Arc Templates never existed.

> It's just designed wrong - it's very easy to see that the main design goal was not making a good template system, but making a system you could monetize as kitten.

>

>

Depends. I don't think 6 dollars for 16ish slots worth of gear slots, and 4ish for the corresponding build template is that bad. If you're really cheap you can abuse extra character slots for far cheaper (2 equipment builds and 3 templates for 10 dollars), so they increased the value of additional characters, out of the box. This is why i struggle understanding other players. They gave you free storage space (and free account wide templates to boot). The monetary value of additional storage (if you do a gems to gold conversion) for larger bags is far more expensive i believe. Also, gems are cheap now if you're good at gold farming.

All this makes me believe is that letting people have something for free and then monetizing it later is a bad idea. Even build templates at 4 dollars a pop i would say is not that exorbitant, and then it's even better when you realize they gave everyone 6 for free with account wide ones. Usually when a company does something dirty they just add the item and expect you to buy it. Anet did a lot to soften the blow and even gave everyone more storage space to boot. And even allowed you to repurpose previous, invisible templates.

> @"Asum.4960" said:

> I haven't tried it with an organized group with 10 competent players yet (since most of those I know have quit playing due to lack of content and the template fiasco, incl. me for the most part) so it's a bit hard to judge with PuG's, but it has actual mechanics you have to keep track of, so that is a huge improvement.

>

> I can see it becoming very easy with everybody doing 20-30k DPS depending on how much mechanic skipping you can do with that, but with low DPS it actually feels pretty comparable in difficulty to easy W4 bosses like Cairn.

> So I would say just right for a semi-raid boss intending to prepare people for Raids by requiring the forming a decent composition, learning and keeping track of mechanics, communicating and having decent builds/DPS.

I think it was a mistake for them to allow arcdps to do templates to begin with, that's what made it feel bad. In reality, they gave everyone a free storage space for a new gear set, 6 account wide templates and kept the number of per character templates the same (with the option of buying more, and even allowed you to repurpose templates if you don't WvW/PvP). I didn't notice the 3 character templates at first, but after that i was happy.

@ Op: it's actually really good, i hate the enrage mechanic at the end. It basically forces everyone to go to ranged. Tbh though it's better than boneskinner. Boneskinner mechanics are super twitchy (not a lot of time to react to aoe), and boneskinner requires more group coordination that's difficult to achieve in a PuG.

> @"Lexi.1398" said:

> If you're pugging strikes you'll always be missing something generally because not that many people who do strikes care about compositions.

>

> Anyway, double chrono is bad both statistically and it can get really rough boon uptimes if the chrono is doing alacrity since they need to either have very high boon duration (a lot more than SC uses) or be highly skilled- good luck finding someone who has an appopriate boon duration for their skill level & trait/utility set up.

I feel like I need to correct something: SOI and shield buffs are raid-wide, so double chrono comp needs less BD than single chrono. I run high BD on my chrono because I don't always trust the other chrono (and I'm not sure I'm quite as tight on my rotation as I should be) but just letting you know the SC optimizations are around double chrono. I've also seen chrono + alac ren and qb as a boon setup. Because SOI doesn't scale off of BD and benefits everyone, it reduces the amount of BD required on those setups (though condi QB doesn't require any I believe).

Both: you have two free gear sets on a given character, I would say do both, but I would also recommend that you look at snow crows. I've complained about some of their optimizations, but it's still useful to understand their builds and how they function. They also tend to be a little bit more fine-tuned than meta battle.

There are fights like Largos twins where you don't use banner warr. They're rare, but just letting you know that part of raiding is having alts or gear sets for additional roles. I actually recently built out some DPS gear for my mesmer so I could fill that role if need be (there has always seemed to be enough BS chronos to go around).

Also, if you don't have a static, I recommend NA raid academy. It's a friendly place to learn new content, and you can start your own run if need be by pinging for interest and then pinging for an instructor once you have 6-7 people in forming lobby. When I first tried them I didn't know this was an option and throught I was just waiting around for people to ping me and thought it sucked. It's actually really good if you're willing to ping and form groups.

Don't have a hernia and rage party quit if someone is 20 AR below the recommended value, as you can easily reach it. With the mastery, the pot is 15 AR. Plus you get access to the gizmos that give 5 AR. So you're really just being a jerk and wasting everyone's time if you /lolnub and quit. You're wasting the person's time who joined and your own. ALSO they're RECOMMENDED values. Not that I do them below that, but just saying defensive potions can even make a below AR rating player still be able to function just fine. Fractals are very jukable with pots. No need for elitism unless you're doing CMs. Thank you!

> @"Ovark.2514" said:

> > @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> > Pips are bad for Ranked in general, they should be moved to unranked and/or given solely as a reward for winning in Ranked instead of just showing up. Giving people more rewards from the moment they start a season; even for doing absolutely nothing, encourages toxic and even forbidden behavior like botting, pip-farming, and afking.

>

> This. Competitive play should be completely divorced from achievement/rewards/casual play. Half measures don't cut it here. Slowly but surly acquiring pips should be doable in unranked or HJ; while in ranked, pips should be awarded at the end of a season and be based on ranking.

I like the idea of being able to do achievements outside of ranked. My only issue with no pips for losses is people who are trying constantly getting put in bad matchups, which is the case now, and part of the reason we're having trouble keeping people. Perhaps, basing it off of damage/healing/capping or some formula of the 3 would make more sense. That way, you're still rewarded for actively participating and trying to win, but you're not completely punished by this bogus matchmaker either.

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> I don't think using bots as filler for the bad matchmaking is necessarily a good idea either. There's no sort of ai capable of completing objectives, and if there were, they'd probably end up being worse than actual bad players. Since bad players already massively inflate good player's rating; if they were just replaced by bots, then the result would be even worse rating inflation and less competition at the higher levels.

I don't believe the part about AI is true at all. This is actually what blizzard is doing to help their overpopulated Horde faction actually be able to PVP. Also, starcraft and dota AIS can beat humans, as long as the bots & human players are evenly matched, it's still human vs human. the bots should cancel each other out.