Are you 100% forced to play meta to enjoy raids?

[reikken.4961]

> @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> In 99% of the LFG groups you are expected to play meta because the builds are min maxed, increasing the chances to win the fight. Obviously those groups do not want any people in the groups who intentionally do not use meta builds. Who would want someone in the group that intentionally lowers success chances

 

Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

 

There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

 

Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

[Vinceman.4572]

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

>

> There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

>

> Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

 

Or you just swap one dps class to a third healer like some pugs are doing on Matthias for example. You are still faster than having 6-10 more or less suboptimal builds that are not better in surviving but very much capped in their dps. In a pug I would never play with 2 druids and 6 players with bad dps than with 3 healer and 5 players with good dps. The first group is most likely to fail even bosses like Cairn, Mursaat Overseer and Samarog which are one of the easiest boss encounters in the game because they have to handle many more mechanics than the other group. Even Escort is a pain in the ... if your group isn't able to clean the bottom with decent dps. Trust me, I've seen such teams, it was a nightmare.

Raid bosses have either one hit mechanics or you can easily take 2-3 hits in zerker/viper gear before going into downstate. It is **not easier** with defensive gear in raids, that's a missbelief.

[Pyroatheist.9031]

Since the advent of dps meters, you're rarely going to see pugs asking a bunch of piercing questions about the exact setup you have. They need a dps, you show up on weaver and say 'hi I'm dps', off you go. However, if you get into the fight and you're getting outdpsed by the off-chrono, you're probably going to be kicked without a second chance. If you're pulling 18k+ dps, nobody is going to ask any questions.

 

In many ways dps meters have encouraged off-meta build use because people are able to judge your performance by your actual performance instead of what the build is theoretically capable of. If you're running some weird build but topping the group dps, nobody will care.

[yann.1946]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

> >

> > There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

> >

> > Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

>

> Or you just swap one dps class to a third healer like some pugs are doing on Matthias for example. You are still faster than having 6-10 more or less suboptimal builds that are not better in surviving but very much capped in their dps. In a pug I would never play with 2 druids and 6 players with bad dps than with 3 healer and 5 players with good dps. The first group is most likely to fail even bosses like Cairn, Mursaat Overseer and Samarog which are one of the easiest boss encounters in the game because they have to handle many more mechanics than the other group. Even Escort is a pain in the ... if your group isn't able to clean the bottom with decent dps. Trust me, I've seen such teams, it was a nightmare.

> Raid bosses have either one hit mechanics or you can easily take 2-3 hits in zerker/viper gear before going into downstate. It is **not easier** with defensive gear in raids, that's a missbelief.

 

Their is a point to be made do to for take scourges in bad groups because they can trivialize quite a few mechanics. This would make a few fights easier while prolonging the clear time.

The same argument could be made of minstrel chrono which was considered of meta for quite awhile.

 

You're statement in general is true but their are builds which increase you're chance of succes while doing lower damage. ;)

[LadyKitty.6120]

Some commanders kick non-meta on sight, but if you find a relaxed casual commander, you can play non-meta if you do the mechanics correctly and do competent enough damage to be least 2nd or 3rd best DPS (assuming that the comm has DPS-meter). It's also not unheard of that the commander first allows non-meta to join, but kicks after first failed pull 'cause it's all non-metaplayer's fault. But whatever you do, don't try to speedrun on non-metabuilds.

 

One important note is that if you play a build with lower DPS potential, you need to pull out higher % of its max. potential. With some easier non-metabuilds, it's easy to pull out the same or a bit better damage than average metaplayer despite the lower damage potential 'cause they're so easy to play and pull 95% of damage potential on.

For ex. power d/d deadeye: Kitty tested it to do 26,5k DPS just by auto-attacking, Marking and using Shadow Flare (and ofc Heartseeker below 25%). In other words, by pressing 3 buttons, doesn't even require strict timing. Power sw/sw renegade is another build with equal potential, just put on the dwarf/assassin upkeep skill and 1-4-5 (and F3 in dwarf). Eezypeezy decent damage if you move decently.

 

Kitty's best recommendation is joining a raid training discord that allows non-metabuilds. On NA, she can recommend Raiders in Training.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

> @"RSLongK.8961" said:

> Create your own group. manege 9 other people you dont know what skil level they are, what they are bringing to the group and let us know how it went. how long it took for the first vale guardian kill.

> Meta is not a imposition, its a conclusion after many trials and errors and people not wating to spend more time for thing they already did many times over. /hugs

 

Did this vale guardian went down in second try. The failure was due to no one having boon strip.

 

Really, I am sick of being shoe horned into the meta myself. We know the DPS requirements are low. But everyone in pugs insist that anything out of meta is doomed for failure.

[Shirlias.8104]

> Are you 100% forced to play meta to enjoy raids?

 

No.

 

You can manage to clear every single content with a good team.

If you want to be efficient you will probably decide to join/create a meta team, to lower difficulty and reduce the time needed to complete the specific task.

 

And since GW2 raids are currently on farming, they are not difficult at all ( not that raids in other mmos are difficult. They simply have a feature called gear block, which requires you to have better equip in order to reach a good dps/healing/tanking ).

[sigur.9453]

> @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > @"RSLongK.8961" said:

> > Create your own group. manege 9 other people you dont know what skil level they are, what they are bringing to the group and let us know how it went. how long it took for the first vale guardian kill.

> > Meta is not a imposition, its a conclusion after many trials and errors and people not wating to spend more time for thing they already did many times over. /hugs

>

> Did this vale guardian went down in second try. The failure was due to no one having boon strip.

>

> Really, I am sick of being shoe horned into the meta myself. We know the DPS requirements are low. But everyone in pugs insist that anything out of meta is doomed for failure.

 

To be fair, not having boonstrip is not happening in Meta Squads.

People forget that Meta isn´t JUST about dps and dps classes.

[reikken.4961]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

> >

> > There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

> >

> > Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

>

> Or you just swap one dps class to a third healer like some pugs are doing on Matthias for example. You are still faster than having 6-10 more or less suboptimal builds that are not better in surviving but very much capped in their dps. In a pug I would never play with 2 druids and 6 players with bad dps than with 3 healer and 5 players with good dps. The first group is most likely to fail even bosses like Cairn, Mursaat Overseer and Samarog which are one of the easiest boss encounters in the game because they have to handle many more mechanics than the other group. Even Escort is a pain in the ... if your group isn't able to clean the bottom with decent dps. Trust me, I've seen such teams, it was a nightmare.

> Raid bosses have either one hit mechanics or you can easily take 2-3 hits in zerker/viper gear before going into downstate. It is **not easier** with defensive gear in raids, that's a missbelief.

 

You're making too many assumptions about what constitutes more defensive. We're not talking about swapping your weavers to soldier gear and calling it a day. Running a third healer is indeed an example of non meta and more defensive. As is running a tempest healer in any capacity. And some examples for dps builds is carrion firebrand (gain 8k health for like 3%? dps loss), running invigorating precision on thief, or (lol) any kind of necromancer (the class is extremely tanky for a dps because of barrier/shroud). Or like that one time I not only played scourge, but also swapped out soul reaping for blood magic to help a little with healing but mostly help with reviving downs since transfusion+ritual of life is OP. And like magic, our formerly struggling group suddenly cleared the boss.

[Brother.1504]

Join a guild. Guilds generally don’t mind carrying suboptimal builds. Not really fair to expect that kind of treatment from pug strangers. Wiping with a guild can be fun. Wiping with a pug group imo is almost never fun.

[Vinceman.4572]

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> You're making too many assumptions about what constitutes more defensive. We're not talking about swapping your weavers to soldier gear and calling it a day. Running a third healer is indeed an example of non meta and more defensive. As is running a tempest healer in any capacity. And some examples for dps builds is carrion firebrand (gain 8k health for like 3%? dps loss), running invigorating precision on thief, or (lol) any kind of necromancer (the class is extremely tanky for a dps because of barrier/shroud). Or like that one time I not only played scourge, but also swapped out soul reaping for blood magic to help a little with healing but mostly help with reviving downs since transfusion+ritual of life is OP. And like magic, our formerly struggling group suddenly cleared the boss.

 

No, swapping weaver to soldier gear is the exact example of being non-meta. Every zerker weaver gear + staff is meta, no matter if you swap utilities. Same with druid, if you change one spirit to "Search & Rescue" that is still within the range of meta.

Using invigorating precision is quite useless and won't help you at all when raiding. Even that I wouldn't call off-meta because it's only one trait and the two others aren't that superior. The gear, the utilities and all the other traits are the same, so you should still be able to pull out high dps numbers.

The problem with necros is that there are too many horrible necros out there. Nobody would complain if the majority would do decent dps but they are not able to. It makes no sense to group up with those if there's a lot of better performers out there.

Blood magic should never be an option when running with two druids (which is standard in pugs). Two healers already is a brutal overkill on healing and if the group isn't able to get things done it's better to refocus on mechanics rather than playing more defensive which results in a higher chance to wipe because of more mechanics to play.

[NotOverlyCheesy.9427]

Short answer: no

 

Long answer: You can raid with whatever as long as your group is okay with it. Usually as long as you do your role correctly nobody is gonna bother you but if you pull 50% less dps than other dpsers for example you should take appropriate measures to not be dead weight. Raids are 10 man content after all so there’s not a lot of room to be selfish when the time of 9 other people is at stake.

[Zlater.6789]

Ofc you can, as long as the other 9 people with you are ok with you wasting their time for a few hours a week.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> > @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > > Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

> > >

> > > There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

> > >

> > > Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

> >

> > Or you just swap one dps class to a third healer like some pugs are doing on Matthias for example. You are still faster than having 6-10 more or less suboptimal builds that are not better in surviving but very much capped in their dps. In a pug I would never play with 2 druids and 6 players with bad dps than with 3 healer and 5 players with good dps. The first group is most likely to fail even bosses like Cairn, Mursaat Overseer and Samarog which are one of the easiest boss encounters in the game because they have to handle many more mechanics than the other group. Even Escort is a pain in the ... if your group isn't able to clean the bottom with decent dps. Trust me, I've seen such teams, it was a nightmare.

> > Raid bosses have either one hit mechanics or you can easily take 2-3 hits in zerker/viper gear before going into downstate. It is **not easier** with defensive gear in raids, that's a missbelief.

>

> You're making too many assumptions about what constitutes more defensive. We're not talking about swapping your weavers to soldier gear and calling it a day. Running a third healer is indeed an example of non meta and more defensive. As is running a tempest healer in any capacity. And some examples for dps builds is carrion firebrand (gain 8k health for like 3%? dps loss), running invigorating precision on thief, or (lol) any kind of necromancer (the class is extremely tanky for a dps because of barrier/shroud). Or like that one time I not only played scourge, but also swapped out soul reaping for blood magic to help a little with healing but mostly help with reviving downs since transfusion+ritual of life is OP. And like magic, our formerly struggling group suddenly cleared the boss.

 

Taking marauder's on thief which is a... 6% dps loss for nearly 18,000 hp which is enough to keep the thief alive when the healer's aren't on point. Or when the thief eats a shit load of damage in a mere nanosecond.

 

 

[Rhatha.2376]

It really depends on how far off you're talking. If you're saying you want to run marauders of zerker's on your Tempest, maybe without runes other than Scholar, you'll probably be ok in most groups. Honestly, practicing your dps rotation until you can do things a bit quicker will more than make up for the loss there for most people. If you're saying you want to take a power reaper into a raid, well, it's certainly doable, but it's a bigger tradeoff.. I remember trying staff DD played reasonably well on KC, and comparing it to myself playing Weaver what I felt was more poorly, but still the Weaver blew the dps out of the water in comparison.

 

If you're talking about running a tank warrior because that's just what you like to play, that's far enough off that you're not likely to find anyone that wants to run it for more than a one-off silly night. It just doesn't bring much to the table in raids. Almost invariably, your raids are going to have 2 chronos, a warrior, and 1-2 druids with meta builds for buffs (there are some variations, e.g. firebrand + rev can work fine, but the buffs need to be covered somehow), 1-3 total healers, depending on the group's experience and the fight, and the rest various forms of dps. The dps are the most flexible role. In magical theoryland, sure, 4 weavers might be optimal, but not many groups care about going that far. The only main concerns of dps classes are fight specific, e.g. having no condi classes makes KC easier, and having a necro for epi makes many fights with adds easier.

 

Can you give an example of what you're thinking of specifically? Then people can explain better how practical it is, and why.

[Hex.2579]

yes. casuals can still enjoy raids. you're not forced to join the meta train to do/enjoy raids. but you need to have exp, a lot of it to start going off meta.

i never run meta and heck do i care about meta builds. my wvw friends and i learned raids together. through trials and fails, we just kinda figure our own builds and keep up with our own dps through practice. it's fun but it had those moments that you spent more golds to sort things out than you thought.

every time someone asks me to ping armor, i'm just silent. don't want to lie or do shady things. although i have kp and stuff. i don't raid these days anymore but if my friends need help, i'm in. and i'd fulfill a specific role. i'm sure behind the scenes, they are whispering the comm about me cuz i never link anything. lol. sometimes i got kicked and invited back by the same comm. lol. i'd put on the right title sometimes, but most of the time i really don't care.

i mean if you're exp, the questions you ask others what they run, or how to handle specific mechanics according to our team comp will show your knowledge.

 

i used to hate the meta a lot. but honestly efficiency is not the only thing the meta is all about. the meta creates this entry tickets to new players to barge in raids. it's more like pick a role, learn your role, and try some training runs. once you're exp enough, you can run off meta and no one would care.

but as a starter, if you make your own group, you never know how exp your pugs are, what roles are they playing and how to sort out team composition? so whatever stats won't work here. it's more likely just as much frustrating as joining a meta pug squad when you have 0 exp. versus a squad with a bunch of whatever stats, hybrid builds and weird roles. but have a build as close to a role you're playing as possible. like dps supposes to deal damage, whatever you wanna build your dps, it's up to you, etc.

since most of the bosses' mechanics are one shot or two shot, based on your health percentage. it's a false security to have 5k more hp on an ele for instance. 11k ele dies to one attack, 16k ele still dies to that same attack. but you trade off a lot of power damage to get some survivability. there are roles in raids so let healer(s) play theirs.

 

i'd say join a casual raid guild. there gotta be some out there. ours don't intend to raid in the near future. our off meta runs previously ended cuz not enough bodies to join due to different time zones. so we'd take a break for awhile. gl =]

[yLoon.5289]

It is more fun doing things out of your comfort zone.

[Clear.8512]

100% forced? No. If you can get a respectable DPS or preform whatever other support is needed there will be no issues.

Will you beat speed runners? nope. Will you be able to bypass some mechanics? Possible, but not needed.

The challenge is just finding like minded individuals that will prob be your biggest challenge of getting 10 people together that commit to a time slot during the week.

Don't overlook the training guilds, they are pretty accepting of players as long as the DPS is respectable.

[Jinn Galen.2468]

Is it true that if the group has very high DPS then it is possible to skip a lot of the mechanics? If it's true then wouldn't it be possible to eliminate elitism by just negating that, i.e. no skipping of mechanics even if you have godlike level of dps. I mean that's what it all boils down to right? People want max dps so they can skip and make things easier but if you can't skip then why bother min-maxing? As long as you get the minimum dps required and knowledge of mechanics, you're golden.

[Nephalem.8921]

> @"Jinn Galen.2468" said:

> Is it true that if the group has very high DPS then it is possible to skip a lot of the mechanics? If it's true then wouldn't it be possible to eliminate elitism by just negating that, i.e. no skipping of mechanics even if you have godlike level of dps. I mean that's what it all boils down to right? People want max dps so they can skip and make things easier but if you can't skip then why bother min-maxing? As long as you get the minimum dps required and knowledge of mechanics, you're golden.

 

Thats an awful suggestion. Most mechanics can't be skipped but they don't occur as often just because the boss dies faster. Only way to make mechanics independant of dps is by using boss health instead of time as trigger points.

That way you are actually punishing high dps comps with more mechanics in a shorter time. Like that annyoing statue in w5. I mean in a casual setting all dps would be viable if the players would actually spend like 20min of their time testing dps rotations on a golem. But most of them just blame elitists with high dps. People should just stop using the casual excuse for being bad. Only hard rotations are maybe weaver and condi engi. Condi engi is bad anyways and everything else just needs a few minutes practice on golems.

But some players just don't care. Pressing random skills and ending with chrono level dps on something easy and forgiving like a soulbeast.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

> @"Jinn Galen.2468" said:

> Is it true that if the group has very high DPS then it is possible to skip a lot of the mechanics? If it's true then wouldn't it be possible to eliminate elitism by just negating that, i.e. no skipping of mechanics even if you have godlike level of dps. I mean that's what it all boils down to right? People want max dps so they can skip and make things easier but if you can't skip then why bother min-maxing? As long as you get the minimum dps required and knowledge of mechanics, you're golden.

 

Yes, this should be a thing. Things like "no updraft Gorseval" should never be allowed from the start. Allowing this type of mechanic skips is opposite to raiding purpose. The side effect is very toxic community believing that skipping content is right way of playing content.

[TexZero.7910]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> > @"Jinn Galen.2468" said:

> > Is it true that if the group has very high DPS then it is possible to skip a lot of the mechanics? If it's true then wouldn't it be possible to eliminate elitism by just negating that, i.e. no skipping of mechanics even if you have godlike level of dps. I mean that's what it all boils down to right? People want max dps so they can skip and make things easier but if you can't skip then why bother min-maxing? As long as you get the minimum dps required and knowledge of mechanics, you're golden.

>

> Yes, this should be a thing. Things like "no updraft Gorseval" should never be allowed from the start. Allowing this type of mechanic skips is opposite to raiding purpose. The side effect is very toxic community believing that skipping content is right way of playing content.

 

No one is skipping the content. Also, the devs themselves have already said they like player creativity and never even thought about no updraft gorse in testing but are glad it exist to showcase player ability.

 

 

[Hungry Dima.8506]

I've actually had such a blast with some niche raid groups who have experimented with things like full scourge SAB and full hammer Guardian's on Samarog xD Really great fun times. I'm really against forcing meta on people specially in fractals I use to get annoyed when people would tell me to go _this build_ or take _these skills_ etc. but for raids, specially pug life~ meta builds are great, you can actually learn so many things about your class and try new things in traits, pick up different weapons you wouldn't usually use.

 

The point and answer to your question, no, you're not 100% forced into meta to enjoy raids, but you'll enjoy raids when you try a meta build and either learn some interesting things or come across a group at 5am doing 10 hammer guardian Samarog x3

[GrubySzymek.1362]

> @"TexZero.7910" said:

> > @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> > > @"Jinn Galen.2468" said:

> > > Is it true that if the group has very high DPS then it is possible to skip a lot of the mechanics? If it's true then wouldn't it be possible to eliminate elitism by just negating that, i.e. no skipping of mechanics even if you have godlike level of dps. I mean that's what it all boils down to right? People want max dps so they can skip and make things easier but if you can't skip then why bother min-maxing? As long as you get the minimum dps required and knowledge of mechanics, you're golden.

> >

> > Yes, this should be a thing. Things like "no updraft Gorseval" should never be allowed from the start. Allowing this type of mechanic skips is opposite to raiding purpose. The side effect is very toxic community believing that skipping content is right way of playing content.

>

> No one is skipping the content. Also, the devs themselves have already said they like player creativity and never even thought about no updraft gorse in testing but are glad it exist to showcase player ability.

>

>

 

Mechanics (and difficulty) are raid content. People who like the idea of skipping raid mechanics are basically raid farmers with 0 interestes in raiding for the sake of the challenge. They gonna deny it of course :)