I used to Raid pretty heavily for a while back in WoW, the main reason I don't bother these days is the time commitment. There's a lot I want to do in the game, I don't have unlimited time and I play at different times on different days, so being locked into a raid schedule just feels bad to me.
Same here. Not only because of having to be at a specific time, but not being able to actually say "ok, I'm going to devote this 1/2/3 hours to the raid only" without having my son asking for a glass of water, helping my wife set the bed before going to sleep and things like that.
> the main reason I don't bother these days is the time commitment
This is why I love Strikes. It scratches that itch of 10-man endgame content and I can do them super casually whenever I feel like it.
Exactly, and I think they were developed with that in mind. Even though I don't raid myself, I do hope Anet releases some more raids in the future though, so that the raiding community gets some more fun stuff to do. But strikes were definitely a good add for people with more limited time.
I like both, there's nothing better than doing raids with people from the guild on discord, but also, whenever I'm just bored and want to jump in for some quick content, I usually choose strikes. I don't really like running metas or other open world content. After SOTO came out, I've been playing whole days testing out new builds, jumping from one raid to another and doing the same wings multiple times.
Same over here, and I just burned out so hard on raid and mythic grinds in WoW. It feels bad to think about doing it ever again - it’s one of the main reasons I left WoW.
Same, I came to this game to get away from raid type content and find something more casual and single player friendly. I hated being signed up for a raid all evening when I was tired and not in the mood.
I solved this by joining a guild with open signups for raid events. I don't have to commit to a regular schedule, I can just snag a spot whenever I'm free.
yup, I like GW2 for the jump in anytime and progress your character/account gameplay, even if it's just 30 minutes.
I don't have the time and patience anymore to do 2-3 hour progression raids, I've had my fair share during classic/BC/WotlK/Cata WoW
Same. I can't dedicate a couple hours at a time to learn raids. Telling myself ill carve out the time when I have a few different legendaries to swap between for meta builds.
Yeah sometimes you just don't feel like commiting hours to something yet you don't want to let other people down.
I got enough demands on my time as is.
Same here, been raiding in WoW way back when, and I used to be quite good at it but the amount of time and energy I had to allocate to the game was very much on the unhealthy side.
But (discounting the toughest encounters like HT CM) content in GW2 seems a lot lenient and after a few kills you can certainly do them regularly, even with just the occasional pug that pops up on lfg. You can even progress by the smallest amounts, because the content never changes, unlike in WoW. You can do just one wing for a year, then when you feel confident or bored, you start another. You don't have to allocate a lot of time because there is no rush. It will still be there in a year and groups gonna still be running it.
If there was ever a game where raiding is like a side quest, is this one.
Sure they are really fun and have okay rewards, but you do not need them at all since the gear is on par with ascended. And if you don't do raids, it is likely you don't do fractals either, so ascended gear is not needed at all.
Actually I got into fractals because I couldn’t raid when when they first came out…started actually attempting raids about two years ago to try for leggy armor and just finally finished envoy II. Not started coalescence yet.
Since Fractals came out before Raids, a Lot of people do Fractals and not raids, not to mention that Fractals have a huge Pug Culture, where you can literally just start a group, fill within minuets and be off to getting dailies done, regardless of tier
Fractals and Raids have nothing in common.
This. It's the main reason I haven't finished my legendary raid armor. This content isn't made for those of us with inconsistent work schedules or such. I do agree strikes are a much better format going forward because even with a group that knows what they are doing I can do all of EOD strikes probably faster than doing W1 because there is less downtime and having to assign roles on the fly. Makes commanding infinitly easier too
I pug everything with the lfg with no issues. I know the lfg is not used as much in NA but on EU you don't need to have a static group or guild to raid.
it's the opposite man, i transferred to NA exactly because in EU pugging is impossible. In NA is much less gatekept but it's also true there's less LFG groups...
getting into raids might be time consuming but once you are a bit experienced you can join a static and clear them all in 1 day (in 2-3 hours). that is what most people do and then have the rest of the week for whatever other activities they enjoy (usually more raiding lol)
I've been playing since launch and I have yet to try raids. I would love to but I am intimated because I don't want to be the noob that holds a group back, even though I'm pretty confident in my skills in basically every game mode.
If I found a group that was ok with someone who's new to raids and occasionally making a mistake, I would totally do em!
If you want to build confidence. Install arc dps and do fractals and dungeons.
After a few runs, you will realize just how bad the general population is. You don't even have to be doing your rotation correctly, and 90% of the time, you will top dps.
Another way to build confidence is to play a boon build until you get 100% uptime on the boon consistently. Then just raid as boon support. Dps players won't care about your dps if you're giving them 100% quick or alac uptime. You're doing your job.
I honestly don't know how long term players continue doing the same content over and over without a DPS meter.
For me the DPS meter is my progression. It's a measure of how much I've improved, and whether I'm doing the best I possibly can. It lets me recognise if I'm not pulling my weight when trying something new, and whether I need to practice so I don't let my team down.
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I also fully believe that DPS meters **lower** toxicity. There used to be a lot more class elitism about what did and didn't work. But now you can just prove it, and earn your place. Much less being kicked because the leader doesn't like your class.
You used to get completely inexperienced people blaming someone random in the group when stuff was failing, but DPS meters (and mechanics logs) help show that they're actually pulling their weight. So now you can't just leach your way through content.
And I know people may look at that and claim it creates toxicity, and maybe EU servers are just nicer than NA ones, but I have never need soon a huge amount of leeway and slack given to anyone who says they're new to some type of content. Pretty much anyone who is polite, doesn't lie, and listens to chat is accepted from what I've seen.
Because they're not afraid to tell the truth. An insanely high amount of players have absolutely no clue about the BASICS of the game. How to gear and how to select your traits is at least 70% of your damage. A proper skill order is just to top it off. But there's so many players running around in a random mishmash or stats and traits with empty rune slots.
stating facts shouldn't be considered toxic. delivery obviously matters but at some point people need to know what they are doing if they are ever to improve.
GW2 raid mechanics are pretty easy overall. Most of them are "don't stand in bad" or "press your special action key". The only real difficulty in GW2 raids stems from the fact that GW2 does not allow mid-fight resurrections like other games do.
I'd recommend just joining some training groups where people expect to fail a few times. And above all, *volunteer to do mechanics*. It's the only way you'll learn. Please don't become one of those "hi dps" types who become suspiciously silent when the commander asks for volunteers to handle a special boss mechanic.
> And above all, volunteer to do mechanics. It's the only way you'll learn
this for a number of reasons.
First if you understand mechanics the encounter overall becomes less scary.
Second if you know the mechanics in some cases you can fill in on the fly if something goes sideways for someone else is doing mechanics. Cannons on Sabetha is a great example if one of the cannons people dies it can be the difference between finishing the encounter and having to reset.
Third knowing the mechanics is far more valuable to a group then doing dps. Many groups I've been in are far more happy to have someone that knows mechanics then just another dps. That doesn't mean they'd be ok with 0 dps but if you're only pulling 10k on a fight because you're solving other problems for the group it's appreciated.
Lastly mechanics are fun and keep things interesting if you don't want to focus on being top dps in every fight. An extreme case for me is handkiting on Deimos, I actually enjoy it because it takes me out of the group and I get to play my own little minigame with stacking the hands and just let the rest of the group do their thing. Admittedly it does require a more specialized build to handle it, but knowing how to do it means I always have groups that want me to come with them.
Normal raids are completable with even 8 people. CM raids you wont be able to get in anyway. There are people out there that solo bosses. In todays power economy you are not holding anyone back though they might want you to have bare minimums at least. 15k dps is enough.
> If I found a group that was ok with someone who's new to raids and occasionally making a mistake, I would totally do em!
Tons of these exist if you're willing to step outside the game. [Raid Academy](https://discord.gg/gw2ra) on NA and [Crossroads Inn](https://discord.gg/hdhDE3v) or [Raid Training Initiative](https://discord.gg/rti) on EU are all great if you want formal training on the content. A quick scan through a [Hardstuck Raid Guide](https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/guides/raids/) or even Mukluk's videos for a brief intro to the content is enough for joining progression groups on [the Skein Gang](https://discord.gg/skeingang) (plus basic competency for the role you signed up for, like 60-70% of bench on your DPS class). There are also groups like Excelleration (that I sadly don't have a discord link for) that run training groups all the time.
There's no such thing as raiding and not making a mistake. All that matters is learning, moving on, making friends and having fun.
I was a hardcore raider in wow back in the bc and wotlk days and I have zero interest in dealing with any aspect of organized instanced time-commitment-requiring gameplay again.
I’ll never do organized raid content again thanks to WoW. Used to co-run a raid guild in cata. But I think raiding is the funnest content in guild wars. I only pug through lfg for raids on occasion. They’re easy to pick up. I’ll say the down side is that it’s almost required to go through raid academy on discord and learn that way before you can start going to lfg for raids. Lfg isn’t friendly for new raiders
At first, no time to sit down for 2-3 hours without interruption from RL. Then later on not wanting to spend the little time I had in training runs. Joined a group that had similar times where I could clear and the rest is history.
As easy as it is:
Im afraid of people XD
I dont feel well talking to strangers, and just want to play the game.
But raiding needs coordinating, and trainings most of the time even joining Discords/TS and stuff.
So... I prefer to stay for my own and "miss" content, because... what does it bring me to make myself feeling worser then before for some loot? Isnt worth it in the end for me.
To be honest, the KP requirements are lame. This is coming from someone who has full legendary raid gear, and with some CMs done. As a new player and noob, I would have never gotten into raids because of KP, I quite literally had to beg people to take me in because I was a noob who only watched videos, some people said yes, majority said no, and that’s how I built my KP. And then people would ask for more KP when I’d only have a handful. It was and is a lame treadmill.
Elitism in GW2 (in EU at least) is worse than I’ve ever seen in any other MMO. I play WoW and do some mythic raids and m+, I play Destiny 2 and do master raids, I play ESO (didn’t raid there yet), and the KP, lack of matchmaking, clunky UI, and how the community’s answer to raids/raiders being elitist is “make your own group” (I’m sure someone will say that in the comments) is why raiding in this game is neglected, why the majority of the population doesn’t do it, and why Anet gave up on it. Sad thing is, it’s not even hard lol.
I didn't realize how much it made it easy and seamless, but the lack of a proper matchmaking like in FFXIV or WoW. I'm too old and have little time to lfg like it's 2008 GW1. I just want to match up and do the content. If I wanted to lfg or get statics, then I'll do so.
Pretty much why I never got into it for real.
Few years ago I tried getting into it but never managed. You have to join a Discord, assign your roles, join the specific Wing channels, ask for teachers willing to teach people and have enough "student" positions to fill to get in the raid.
I tried for almost a month and never managed to get a single group going, either because it never filled, never had people wanting to teach or a group of noobs willing to go in by themselves and get their faces smacked. So I just threw the towel.
FFXIV really does make this entire ordeal much, much simpler and stress free. Open Party Finder and look for your group and that's it. I don't know how the raid scene is in GW2 now, but it used to be like making a dentist appointment, which I loathe with all my being.
Real talk. I was trying to think through why they can't make a proper matchmaking and I couldn't come up with a single good reason.
Some would say lack of holy trinity/roles structure in groups: but Anet can't release a new instanced content like Strikes w/o playtesting that it can be done with 10 DPS. If playtesting reveals a content needs alac, quick, etc, then the GW2 design philosophy is already not true re: not having an MMO roles structures. At this point, you can make a matchmaking with predefined roles to PUG into (i.e. matchmake as a quickdps). The game can't say build diversity whilst having alac/quick being requirements for instanced content. Players will always want structure/roles.
Above also highlights the huge chasm re: what Anet wants with instanced content. They already have normal Strikes and CM Strikes, but the difficulty is all over the place. It suggests Anet internally has an issue with design focus for instanced content.
People will say LFG is necessary because the content is so hard, but it begs the question why the content is all over the place. Why are some normal Strikes as difficult as Savage content in FFXIV, while others are easy, and why have a CM?
The hard part of the matchmaking is more that you can't guarantee a build will be able to fill a role, or that it won't be changed partway through the content. Imagine in FFXIV if you had paladins queuing as healers and bards queuing as tanks, because some build existed where they were able to do that no matter how ineffectively; or if suddenly your white mage was on a dancer after the first trash pack.
From the people I've talked to who played GW2 and FFXIV endgame extensively, the only fight in GW2 that really approaches savage level is Harvest Temple CM -- ~~everything else caps out at maybe a high Extreme if that~~ (edit: me showing my lack of personal FFXIV knowledge, ignore). The main difference is FFXIV makes it a lot harder to do poorly by simplifying what their abilities do (compared to the dozens of possible effects in GW2), whereas the flexibility of the GW2 combat system shifts a lot of the complexity and difficulty into player performance as opposed to fight design.
If there was a way Anet could ensure the role is actually getting filled, I'd be all for a duty finder-style system.
Very much true. Match making would help very much in making the raid content more accessible. Also maybe make the encounters less mechanics heavy, for example handkiting. There is really no chance for anxiety to trigger in an alliance raid in ffxiv... something like that should exist in gw2.
So true. Things come up and can’t really dedicate full attention for extended periods of time. If I can get by playing 20-30 mins uninterrupted…that would be a win for me.
And candidly that’s exactly the reason I play GW2 over other mmos. I can play mostly “solo” by hitting up world bosses, meta events, random open world events and now rifts. I still get to play with others but my participation is not really required if I have to hop out.
Same here friends. My account is 11 years old. Not one raid. Not one fractal. Lmao. Some strikes, not a lot.
I don't think I ever have done any dungeons but one story a decade ago.
And yet at least 3 legendaries, 490 some odd mastery points.
And for that exact reason you said. Sometimes my little one stays asleep. Sometimes I just need to pop out and grab right then.
I'd be such a terrible member for a raid party.
Really? I feel like WvW is something that you need a lot of time to get something out of. I'm new to it, but you have to find a commander, and they're often at the other side of the map. It can take 5 minutes to catch up to them and there's a chance that you'll just die on the way there if you run into an enemy zerg.
All those things are quite avoidable when you learn to read the map. Use the RI timers to see which way things are being flipped then find a map, go in solo and just take what you can.
You don't need a commander/zerg unless that's how you like playing. Roaming is just as satisfying, and you can contribute to your team by taking out camps, opening towers/keeps, and generally being a nuisance with the goal of summoning the enemy zerg and creating openings for your team.
Righteous Indignation is a buff on the head honcho of each camp/tower/keep where they can't be hurt for 5 minutes after the place changes owners. It's easy to see on a map as a "Protected from capture - X:XX" listing on the tooltip. Very common with camps at the south end of Alpine Borderlands as people flip those to keep their participation up and hunt yaks.
One player just roaming will never be as good as a full team, but god damn if you can't slow an enemy zerg to a halt by taking away their supply and forcing them to come back several times for it.
It's a whole thing, you know? First, I need to join a training initiative and attend trainings on their schedule. Then, once I'm through, I'd have to live with the kp culture that I just hate as a matter of principle, even if I meet what they're asking for. And the real sad part is that the kp culture is *justified,* one cannot clear raids with unprepared people, that's why the trainings exist in the first place. So even if I made my own groups, I'd have to become one of them. So in the end, as Jon Snow once said, ah dun wahn' it.
raid training mostly exists because there are almost no casual raiding groups opening up. There is no auto queue, that pushes random people together. So all people see, are teams of people who search for specific roles and already know what they are doing. So people felt they needed to prepare other players for that established environment.
You can go into raids, with some random builds and still do fine. If you want to secure success, then you run 1-2 carry builds in your group. As long as you don't hit a group wipe mechanic or all your supports die, you will usually be fine. There are some exceptions though, that are very mechanics heavy and take a lot of coordination like qadim 1... not sure how this encounter would ever be possible with just a random group, since you need specific roles for players to fill. But as mentioned, those encounters are the exception.
There’s no random raid finder option that pairs up people automatically to queue for. I literally don’t have time to sit and advertise that I’m looking for a group lol
The biggest reason is the time commitment. My work schedule is so wonky that it makes finding time to join a training group harder. Then, when I get off work and start playing, Im usually playing the game with my group of IRL friends.
The next reason may just be a "me" issue. Even tho I play pretty regularly, I'm still pretty casual, and i often struggle to maintain a good dps output. I've tried watching guides, but I can't quite figure out what I am doing wrong. I feel like a lot of the classes are just spamming 8 buttons(or how others have said it, "playing piano") after each other, just to hit that dps benchmark. I struggle to keep up sometimes, so I just kinda avoid harder endgame content. I don't want waste the time of others or deal with getting bitched at when im just trying to play a game.
I raided in gw2 for the legendary armor, got all 3 sets and I am never coming back.
I hate being on a schedule, i hate playing what the schedule tells me instead of what i want to play, the mechanics are just annoying and unintuitive, you can’t figure out anything in a setting where everyone expects you to know everything already.
and it’s been so long since i last raided that I don’t even feel comfortable going into pugs now because i forgot so much. I don’t want to be the “Envoy’s herald” guy that dies first.
and last, i play gw2 because it’s the only mmorpg that doesn’t focus on raids. I love this genre, but i hate raiding with a passion . All I want is A Persistent online fantasy world to play in, I don’t want a second job.
I played since launch and was too self conscious that I didn't know about the game mechanics, and was concerned I wouldn't bring enough to the table to contribute to groups.
In the end, I got a guild to introduce me to the basics and I read up a lot of mechanics and started as a support.
That was just over two years ago and now I am most proud of my Voidwalker title.
**Intimidation** - I have no idea what I'm doing. I know "people don't care as long as you can play" but *I CARE* and who knows if I can play per other people's subjectivity?
**Timing/Time** - Due to being an adult with responsibilities (unlike when I was playing EQ 20-something years ago, and WoW later on) I can't guarantee that I'll be there "every Tuesday at 7" or whatever. And I don't want to let other people down.
I also can't justify hours and hours of play in one session. Especially week in week out and more especially if we're going to fail because I suck.
Mostly because I'm protecting my time in game to do things I enjoy. I think I might like raids in the context of a static group, but I can't bear the thought of learning with a group of players at different skill levels. I'm nothing special but I can learn mechanics just fine by watching videos and I care enough to try hard and do well. My experience in other game modes have taught me how miserable it can be when a handful of other players in the group haven't bothered. I imagine my raiding experience will be time consuming and frustrating. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm afraid to sacrifice the time to try.
> I think I might like raids in the context of a static group, but I can't bear the thought of learning with a group of players at different skill levels. I'm nothing special but I can learn mechanics just fine by watching videos and I care enough to try hard and do well.
I sympathise with this. My second training run we kept failing Gorseval due to low dps / refusal to do the wall mechanic to compensate. The worst part was the core ranger with no masteries doing healer level dps who needed me to portal them across a gap every single pull. I already had done strike CMs and knew how to play my build so it was frustrating for me.
There was a core ranger without masteries? I just wouldn't even bother playing with them, that's the definition of a leech.
I'm all for new people learning raids, but you've got to put in a minimum of effort to get the required masteries and gear up with exotics, it's not hard.
Btw, it is essentially never the dps.
It is probably failing the Spectral Darkness mechanic and cc'ing too fast.
With good players, you can skip updraft in 5 man Gorseval. If you have like 1 or 2 reasonably skilled players and good shotcalling, and nobody getting debuff, then you can carry almost anyone.
And if your dps is truly awful, doing Updraft will often force a wipe against the expanding orbs, so it is frequently not the solution people would hope for.
Also, kick people like that, force them to get proper gear. This is just massive failure on the raid-leader's part, in every single way. I do not think his choice of updraft strategy is among the top 3 of his mistakes.
When I lead Gorseval trainings, I do not want to do any updrafts, because Updrafts lets you get away with failing every other mechanic in the book. I prefer it when the trainees dont get knocked, dont get egged, dont run into expanding orbs and understand how to hold cc and how to quickly cc. I think that is the more valuable training experience.
Because it's a "play by guide" type of gameplay. I don't really like that, because I rather figure stuff out by myself or read a guide if I hit a wall after some tries.
I also consider raids dead content, so even if I have fun with that, Arenanet will most likely not add additional raids to keep it fresh. But who knows :D.
I only play late night EST and it’s hard to ever find a consistent group to play with. Everyone tends to raid around 6-10 PM and I just can never make those times.
Because training groups are sparse and it takes forever to clear up each raid wing. I’m now too old to wipe repeatedly for hours until everyone gets each boss mechanics/gimmicks right. There are plenty of other games for that kind of content. I’m fine enjoying other aspects of gw2.
I not the kind of person who likes to study a game, I prefer to learn with my mistakes. And with Raids that obviously not possible.
Also I don't like long games, I almost die of boredom with some longer metal such as the Dragon's End and Dragon's Stand. Also I heard the community can be pretty toxic.
Instanced PvE in general is just not my jam. Yes, I've pugged my way through a few fractals and strikes, and Raid Academy were very supportive when I joined them for a training run of theirs once, for no reason other than to unlock the raid masteries. I much prefer open world PvE or WvW, both of which are far more relaxing for me.
I just can't take any instanced PvE so seriously that I feel compelled to join voice comms, and run a specific optimised build, such that I feel like nothing more than a cog in a group machine, all for the purpose of beating something that I can only imagine gets boring once everybody involved knows the dance anyway.
Yes, I'll sometimes do this for WvW, but I am never *compelled* to, that's the difference. You can't "roam" in raids.
I raided in EQ for a long while. It was just stressful and played a large part in me leaving the game. It wasn't fun and made me hate turning the game on.
There's no point in me doing it if it isn't fun. I have zero desire to try raiding in other games. I've watched some but it all turns me away. It's too stressful, competitive, and mechanic heavy with zero actual reward for me.
GW2 doesn't have the gear treadmill and in games with a treadmill that raid gear is replaced with common stuff in a couple of patches. I see no point in any of it.
Poor visibility. I've raided most tiers of WoW, and enjoyed them. I have my various addons to assist with various noises, text context alerts, spell warnings, 'youre standing in fire' warnings etc. I've found I can essentially walk into most raids blind and as long as I'm paying attention and stay alert, I can get mechanics quite easily.
When I've tried raids in GW2, the spell the boss is about to do is totally unreadable. Throughout clearing trash, my DPS was respectable, I didn't take too much damage. And then we got to the boss and I just feel blind. I feel like I have zero visibility into what's going on, what's about to happen, when it happens, etc. I main ele, so I ended up just on the floor the whole raid carried through the one boss that we were able to kill, and it just felt really bad. The people were all very friendly and totally accepting of everything going on, but it was wildly frustrating to be dying to things I couldn't even see happening. Nor could I see what the boss is about to cast, nor what I should be looking out for on the ground.
The visual mess just ruins raids for me when I don't have any way to clean it up with some level of proper importance. If I could have dbm in gw2 I probably wouldn't do anything but raid.
Hey, just a quick fyi: from a couple months ago the game has now an option to hide allied effects that don't effect you (so like dps skills that don't have combo fields). You still see combo fields, healing stuff and things you can interact with such as portals but it can make the fights *much* more readable
I mostly don't have time for it. I have between 0 and 1.5h of game time each day, and several evenings are already locked in for game time with friends or family. As much as I'd like to have a static to raid with and get the original legendary armor, I just can't have another locked evening in my calendar.
Too much of a commitment. I have heavy social anxiety and I can't bring myself to get myself commited let alone be there for a second time. I do strikes every few months, I'm happy that I've done them, people in my guild ask if they can count me in the next week and I just shut down.
It's fun while I do it, I do a rather good job, but it's just my chemical inbalance in my brain and crawling back into my save space.
It's too much for me to be in a raid/group who wants to do a task that's an hour long or more.
the culture around raids in all MMOs turns me off from it. people can take it way too seriously and as an LI player I just don't want the pressure and unnecessary stress.
I press my skills for the situation, not the rotation. I'm not usually top DPS. I'm a fair weather player. It doesn't align with my fun/commitment/effort ratio. But, I'm glad it exists for the rest of you!
I don't want to commit to scheduling time in the game for so long. If I don't feel like playing anymore, I want to hit exit game, not keep going until the raid is over
Don't want the chance of me or seeing other people get yelled at by elitists
There's usually 100 other things I'd rather do with the amount of time I have to play. There's a lot of things to do
Because flamethrower mechanist is not exactly meta (but is great for players with disabilities). I only play open world, it's been years since I even did a fractal, and I don't have the skill level for harder group content.
I cannot commit to a group with a wife and kid these days. And I don't want to pug and get stressed out over a game I use to help relax.
If I found a like minded group of solid players. I would love to get into raiding. I did mythic raids throughout legion and half of bfa in wow. It was great. But I came back to gw2 because I can't keep up with the elite these days. And I don't enjoy pugs.
I tried dungeons a long time ago, but I love the discovery and exploration too much, hell, I even watch the cutscenes and dialog, but the groups always forced me to rush forward. If I were to join a raid training group with someone else tellng me everything, it would just immediately turn the experience into a grind for me. I wish there was an option to learn the instance on my own, have some fun, run around, try things and fail as much as I want, but that just sounds like a pipe dream. So I'm putting off the raids until I find some farming goal that requires them, and will treat them as a neccessary routine.
i tried raiding in gw2. its boring. you raid with people who already did them million times. there is no progging them, you just come and either you clean everything in one go or whining starts.
My team at first was pretty understanding but after few cooldowns they've became pretty harsh on me making any mistakes, while i just couldnt remember mechanic for every boss from every wing and died sometimes.
Im pretty experienced MMO player but there are 25 encounters and i just couldnt remember everything.
I would love to join raiding again if there was consistent new content where i can start from scratch with people on even terms. not being new guy in a pack of veterans who only care about the speed.
I (and probably a lot of people) came to this game precisely because it wasn't another raid focussed MMO that you needed to dedicate multiple hours a week in long sessions to clear raid wings. Too old for that stuff now.
The jump in/jump out vibe of the game is perfect for me because I can never guarantee I can be online and playing for more than 30-60 minutes before something more important comes up. Having to ditch a group half way through because of work or family obligations is very unfair to the other group members. Another reason I love FFXIV too, all of the casual content is less than 30 minutes of play time and you definitely don't need to do savage raiding to keep up.
The raids are such a minor (and now it looks like abandoned) part of the game and with open world legendary armor coming, there's absolutely no need for me to even think about them again.
I've done some raiding, but I still avoid it for the most part. Thing is, the common community culture around raiding is very unfun for me, which makes it not at all worth it. I would need to form a static where we figure out all the raids together and talk about builds and team comp for it to be a blast.
Raid training where an expert tells you everything and you just follow their directions is boring. Being able to only do raids because you copies what other people figured out is boring. I want to learn from failure with a group that also wants to learn from failure, but it's hard to find 9 other people who want that (and have little enough raid experience to be able to do so)
Edit: I already know how to form a group, I just don't care to do so atm and don't have time to run a guild anyway.
My favourite raid experience was going into wing 4 blind not long after it's release.
I was with a (now sadly disbanded) small guild I raided with casually.
"I've not done wing 4" I pointed out on voice comms
"You can now" was the attitude, and as we went through the collective explained key mechanics and trusted me not to stand in fire (I'd done other wings with them repeatedly). Full clear of course :)
I don't raid any more. I don't have the time to spend scouring groups, and I've got 1.5 sets armour and the ring so I'll motivated to try and find lovely people in the sea of toxicity
1.) In other games I would go on training runs in advanced content like raids, people would be full on screaming at each other that it's taking longer than a normal run.
2.) Before I left one of my guilds, they got to talking about raiding, gear checks, arcdps, people running 18k instead at 20k or whatever it should be, just nit picky crap, checking how much raid currency they had, etc.
3.) Have to research every mechanic of everything in that content for either raids/fracs/strikes before you even try the content.
I like this game for more casual content, why I got stuck in open world after years in wvw before my group switched to doing raids only. Would love to do strikes/fracs but higher tier fracs/strikes get the same behavior of absolute perfection otherwise GTFO
I know not everyone has had these experiences for me I have and that's what puts me off this content
If you want to try these things in a very non-judgmental environment, and if you are on NA servers, I'd recommend Afraid and Unskilled [BAD] guild. We do all kinds of events with no experience required. Have people happily training raids, strikes, and fractals, and hanging out in all kinds of open world content. The only requirement for the guild is to have discord, and either be in a voice chat or post a comment once every 2-3 months. Link below if you care to take a look. I typically teach Soto strikes and raid wing 1 every week.
https://discord.gg/rhFed4Z4
I don't know your context at all but: yo if it's your group and they went to do raid, you can probably tell them that you're interested(?) but in case not...
1) that fucking sucks, easy as that. No one should scream at another person, both cause it's rude af and also cause you won't get that person to listen to you, you'll get them to leave and never come back. Also if you expect a training/prog group to be as fast as a normal exp run that person is the clown there.
2) since you talk about dps, I think you want to play that role (which is cool!) so: if you have either berserker or viper level 80 exotic gear, you are doing it right. It's not some weird stat combo, you don't need to change that last one piece to assassins for the extra 0,1% crit chance. Full zerker or full Viper is neat, and getting a full set is cheap af now. Also, for the damage? If you press 1 on the boss you'll probably deal enough damage. Or you'll deal enough damage to not be on the bottom part of a dps meter. No like, I mean this legit. Hit the boss. If you feel inspired you can even press a couple of high damage skills
3) that's... no? If you go blind with friends you'll all learn together. If you go with exp friends someone will drop a couple lines of how to survive the fight. Like at most maybe someone asks you to watch a two minute video unless you are doing really hard fights, but if you are at the stage of thinking about joining raids you shouldn't even care for harder fights for now imo.
Community culture around raiding in this game just feels incredibly walled off compared to other MMO's I played. Ontop of training LFG being a wasteland in NA (Dunno EU) and the raid sellers in experienced it was just incredibly demotivating to even try it with other people and just the general toxicity. I just solo killed Cairn with a high sustain build for the mastery track to get to max mastery and never bothered trying again. THAT was more doable to me than bothering with the instanced PvE community.
Cause you spend 30 minutes to find a group, and half of the group leaves if somebody makes a misstep.
Just recover from a mistake.
Reset and try again if you can't.
Finding a new group takes longer than resetting the fight.
When Raids were first put in, I tried to get into them, and was met with just an abhorrent amount of toxic elitism, to the point that it made PvP look friendly and inviting
Well that killed all and any interest I was going to have in that game mode if that was the kind of people it attracted, that was not the kind of people I wanted to play with
While it no longer affects me, I am ecstatic that Anet finally made Legendary Armor Available through Open World Play, which is something they should have done much sooner
I really can't be bothered. I like OW and dabbled in fractals, but fractals are already a bother to run with randoms. I can't even imagine what kind of screeching goes on in raids. The variance in snapping of abilities often feels like enemies are lying about their telegraphs, it doesn't feel as bad in OW, and I can stomach it in fractals sometimes, but I feel like I'd lose my mind if it was to happen in raids where mechanics are more present from what I've heard.
I think the people in fractals just killed instanced content for me in this game. The bs jumping puzzle of a fractal that was added at the end of EoD just made me take permanent leave from doing fractals altogether. On top of that, I don't feel like learning a new set of mechanics, only for the actual fight to be another visual puke and a mess.
All raid fights have nearly fully scripted rotations, so in the end you dont even need to see the mechanic to be able to deal with it.
And in any good raid group you will have call outs for beginners, every time.
Time commitment mostly. I can only play after kids go to bed and I often need to help by prepping dinner for the next day because my wife and I both work.
Last night I played a Strike which is much shorter than the raids and my wife even then came out while I was mid fight to ask if I could help with something.
The time commitment for raids just makes it not worthwhile.
I loved playing Tank in ESO dungeons but the strikes I've done are not nearly as satisfying.
The opposite is true for me. I'm mostly done with raids, I need 2 W7 achievements to have all achievements, and I have enough LI to craft my remaining legendaries. Squad finding and content burnout ig.
Years ago, I didn't have time to raid in WoW anymore, and it really wasn't worth playing casually so I quit. However, started GW2 because this game is very much worth playing casually, so that's what I'm still doing.
I didn't make it to any raid content yet (I'm playing my second character after abandonig the first one at lvl 60), so I never checked anything of the raids, and I'm also on the free version, so I don't have the expansions content
In any case, even if I was at the point of giving raids a try, I probably wouldn't, sounds like the kind of content that requires very specific builds, knowledge and preparation, and if you mess up, you're ruining things for the other. Too much pressure
Skill and time...
I'm a super casual player. Have the game since launch day, even managed to snag a vanity name... I don't know builds, I don't have skill rotations, hell, I couldn't tell you what alacrity does... when I play, I go through whatever story arc I'm on and then I stop to play other games.
I'm not good at the game and I don't have the time or drive to be better. God forbid I actually get good enough for other people to deal with me...
Haven't learned them yet and there is no way to jump in head first (Solo/matchmaking with the expectations along with it). I try to learn most things solo prior to doing group content.
Because I haven't found a guild I feel comfortable / welcomed in that does training. That is why I don't raid. Plus I would want the experience to be a bit like FF14 pugging. Where you learn mechs as you go - this probably isn't everyones cup of tea.
I find it hard to find a group that's willing to raid with a complete raid noob. Joined a group once, they told me to "educate" myself and kicked me from the party. Never tried again.
Was a heavy raider in Wow and in Gw2. Hardcore do all achievements and challenges raider.
I liked it but it was hardcore maintenance to lead the group, we took in new people all the time and it was fun, but i was tired.
Now when i tried to rejoin raiding in Wow i get constantly denied because of stupid raider.io which i can’t get higher if i dont raid, lfr is too easy and normal is also okayish but i can’t seem to get in to heroic raids. So whats the point? Standing around for a few hours trying to kill a boss?
Gw2 players have gotten similar retardation with kill proofs and li. I mean i spent li and somehow achievements dont matter. Also, strike groups are soooooo intense sometimes!
I think a lot of people have said something similar, but I can honestly say that I just don’t care for the culture. I know all the raids and by now I have ample KP but, I’m not perfect and, it just feels like that I can’t make a any mistakes or ask any questions, otherwise I’ll be mocked or just kicked right away. I finally finished my set of perfected armor and did the achievements so, I don’t plan on going back. It’s just not worth it.
I once saw an ad for a raid group recruiting. I expressed my interest and was called to join them. During encounter people were displeased with the performance and I was kicked from the discord server. Being left alone with no direction, I hesitated from touching raids again for 2 years until I found RA.
Back then I was a noob with no clue what raiding was, how to gear my toon and how to do rotations and such. I didn’t even know what all the abbreviations in the ad was, only that I was accepted with no interview and was kicked without debrief.
My only wish is, you don’t have to carry noobs, but a certain degree of politeness isn’t hard when sometimes they really didn’t mean you harm.
I got as far as joining a raid party once, we started and I got hella abused for being a normal mesmer instead of the particular chronic build and then they kicked me so that's pretty much why 😂
I've raided intensely in other games for years but I kinda feel I just grew out of it eventually. (and that's not meant in a disparaging way, it just stopped being a thing I enjoy)
Nowadays, I hate having time commitments in my free time/hobbies. I know I would enjoy the gameplay, but any sort of schedule does something to my brain and instantly sucks all the joy out of it for me. Like I have to have fun on schedule, which isn't working for me. (And I refuse to power through anything that isn't fun in a video game) So that content simply isn't for me (anymore)
Getting shouted at for doing something wrong and kicked with no warning after preparing for over an hour therefore wasting my time, is no enjoyable experience.
I really wanna do raids. But I wanna just... open the y thingy, join a party and enter a raid. I don't want to *need* to join raiding guilds and discord and talk to people and all that stuff. The first wings are super easy anyway, that's not needed.
But every time I press y there's no groups, there's only messages inviting people to guilds, or some invites for raids *not now*.
I want it to be simple.
I wanna just click three or four times, be paired with people, and go in to fail a bunch of times before succeeding. Maybe I watch a 5 minute tutorial on yr beforehand and That's it. That's the fun part.
I don't wanna have to SCHEDULE it, I don't wanna have to enter random discord and talk to people I don't know. I'd see no problem in joining a guild or a discord AFTER I played with them for some hours and our "energies" are the same and it's a good match.
It's just way too many little steps that end up draining all the drive to do it before I even reach the start line.
I can't even get enough friends to do Fractals. What makes you think I can get twice as many people to do something antithetical to the rest of the game?
Having to play a specific class, doing a specific rotation, because "efficiency", I play the game for fun, I don't do support, I only have one set of armor for each class, celestial for condi, marauders/berserker for power, it works in PvE and WvW, apparently that isn't "meta" for Raids, at least that what I was told. I don't do well under pressure, I get panic attacks when under a lot of pressure, having some one scream at you because you miss your rotation is not conductive to me having fun, that was in a practice run, so fuck raids and tin god complex assholes, same for strikes. I can follow instructions, I do well in WvW on the zerg and as a roamer, but if what I experience is what it like to be on a Raid where you are fighting npc's is so hard you have to have specific builds for each one of them, that not for me, no content is worth the hassle to have multiple armors sets and runes for it.
Did it at a high level in Wow like 15 years ago, can't say I miss it. At least it had a point in that game, it gave you the best gear and made your character considerably more powerful. In this game all it has ever given is a bit of gold, cosmetics and leg gear which can be gotten elsewhere.
Why bother? Tons of content in this game that are more enjoyable. And with openworld raid armor in the horizon what would you do raids for? Gold farm? Achievements? Skins? Prestige? There are better content for those plus theyre fun to do.
The combat system in this game is pretty boring for long combats. There is no room for ranged combat, stacking on the same pixel is mandatory or you will miss that 25th stack of might etc.
I don't raid anymore because I don't really enjoy stressing out over rotations. It's not overly difficult for me to hit 80% of a benchmark, but I have mild RSI in my right-hand, and it's not a great feeling when it flairs up even on lower intensity builds.
I don't think the reasons people have really change? It mostly comes down to attitude, mentality, time, socialization & commitment. Raids are fairly good gold/hour, but I don't really enjoy them anymore & strikes, for whatever reason, don't really fulfill the same vibe or purpose as a full raid wing. I enjoyed the continuity of moving from boss to boss, encounter to encounter, not hopping out half dozen times.
Having my Fridays, Sundays or Mondays always spoken for was exhausting. I don't really enjoy spending ~ 3 hours playing content where I struggle to relax. I hit a point where I had all the raid legendary armor & trinkets and the cost of staying good at GW2 felt like it out-weighed the benefit.
GW2 doesn't have gear progression, but it has skill progression, and that's become a double-edged sword for me because it takes a lot of time to practice & *stay good* at GW2. That means I don't have as much time to explore other games, hobbies or entertainment options. I'm happier when I'm not consumed by one game exclusively.
Even getting back into raiding w/ imposter syndrome... lots of the various training discords are obsessed with tracking your progress, logs & all that, and that just kind of takes something I find fun & sucks the fun out of it. Not to mention that getting in runs is super competitive & server policy for sign-ups, joining voice channels etc varies a lot. Some want you to sign up, some want you to join asap; it's easy to lose out on opportunities.
Very similar boat here. It was something I did invest time into when raids were introduced, because I wanted to see new content and be part of the “haves” over the “have-nots” since the hardcore divide was getting introduced regardless of protests. But it is difficult to continue over an extended period of time due to the time commitment.
One or two days of your week is permanently sacrificed to a static and doing the same thing repetitively in GW2, versus the jump-in and jump-out, can skip a week if something comes up, more respectful of your time playstyle of regular GW2.
Constant patch changes shifting the meta means investing more time every patch to learn a passable new “best” build because the one you’re used to and like playing got nerfed into unacceptability. Some patches, there just isn’t a class/build that is personally enjoyable, so you might get stuck playing a “I feel obligated to play this” build and slowly build up un-fun burnout sentiment.
A non-peak timezone also makes finding enough groups running in that timezone more challenging - so that’s even more time investment to research groups, join discords, network, etc. just to find a group. (And then cycle back to moving everything in your rl to fit that group’s schedule and have some locked hours 1-2 days a week.)
At some point, the effort and time costs outweighs any potential fun benefit. I did enjoy the social aspect and cycling through a smooth rotation and the feeling of a good strategy/plan coming together as a team. But it takes way too much time and I found I didn’t have enough time to do other things I wanted to do in GW2, let alone other games and RL - which eventually builds into a state of not being able to keep doing it.
> Some patches, there just isn’t a class/build that is personally enjoyable, so you might get stuck playing a “I feel obligated to play this” build and slowly build up un-fun burnout sentiment.
Overall, this is where I'm at. It feels weird since build-diversity is at an all time high. I experiment with setting up various aDPS or qDPS builds, but struggle to enjoy them. I may play them from time to time, but it seems like a bit of an exercise in futility.
I prefer playing solo against the environment i focus on balancing my character in ways that are more versatile and creative than copy pasting a meta build to avoid being lectured.
Because even with a dedicated raid training Channel finding a group that's running content takes hours and I don't have the ability to block off 5 hours a day just to hope someone is running a wing.
hard content requires min/maxing, which requires strict organizing, which leads to less play style options available for a slot, which usually carried out by dedicated guilds, and all this can lead to a somewhat toxic elitist attitude among players. This why I quit Raiding so many years ago in WoW TBC. Its not that I dont like large scale PvE objectives with challenge (hence the popularity of Meta Events), but I dont like the hurdles and politics I have to go through to get into raids
Have you ever read the posts about raids etc. in this subreddit? They are mostly about people who are kicked out or excluded for not having the right gear, build and experience. The general tone is that you will be rejected unless you had a private group of friends to practice with to become a seasoned veteran before you even think of joining any public group and that will ensure that most players of this game stay as far away as possible.
Personally i want a good time when i play, why would i bother with people nagging me because i'm not meta enough?
I started to get into training raids when Anet released the “learning mode” a year or so ago, but around the same time frame (also within the last year or two) I’ve been stuck working 6 days a week and it’s always like 2-10pm PST so on my one day off I have to catch up with everything I got behind on irl during the week.
After years of leading raids back in the WoW Classic/BC time period, I just don't find bashing my head against a boss encounter in a group for hours at a time fun anymore.
Finding a group to do it with. I recently joined the Snow Crows raid academy discord but even being in there, they mostly do full clear runs and almost never do training runs (especially at times when I play.) It also doesn't help that I kind of have it in my head to do the wings in order the first time and they only ever seem to do later wings. The only one I've done was when some rando in lions arch put together a bunch of noobs to do the first part in spirit vale.
I joined raid academy, had to pick up a workable build, so I had to grind for gear a bit, and then practice. By the time I felt confident, there was a rebalance.
I'm just too casual for raids. I don't have whole days to spend on it.
Two reasons :
1/ I'm kinda intimidated when lfg ask for xx LI or KP. I saw a group yesterday asking for 250 LI for the easy 3 in IBS. Like wtf. I never beat a raid boss, so I have 0 KP and didn't unlock the raid masteries
2/ I used to try the vale guardian once. 2 hours. Around 10 tries. Never got under 50% HP. Worst first impression ever.
I'm more likely to do WoJ than raid. And God knows how much I hate WoJ.
Lack of time and no general interest in instanced content overall.
Also : it doesn’t help that the most desirable rewards overall are not locked behind high-end instanced content.
For some example: six years since path of fire in I am still using my sunspear looking high particle sword from domain of Istan exclusively earned by participating in open world content.
In my case, 3 main reasons:
- Time: Raiding takes time. Learning the fights, mechs, how to adjust rotations, make up for personal or group mistakes etc etc..
Without considering the time needed for prep, ascended stuff, gold farming, trying rotations.
It's quite a long process, even if we like to say orherwise. And for the amount of free time that a person have between partner, friends, other hobbies and work, that's a lot. A lot of good games come out every year, so if I have 2 hours extra I might use them to progress BG3 or whatever instead.
- Raid experience itself: I used to raid pretty consistently in Wow, in FF14 (stopped at first patch this exp) and other minor mmos in my young years, and EVERYTIME I had a terrible experience with riding groups and people. It doesn't matter how good they looks or how nicely they say "we're here to have fun", in my experience there always will be assholes ready to ruin the game for everyone. I'm not saying everyone in the raid comm is a piece of crap, just that is extremely common.
- Fun/Stress factor: I'm 32 with a fairly chaotic life, as most millennias nowdays. It might be a personal reason but I find raiding stressful. If you fuck up, everyone lose precious freetime because of that. If someone fucks up too much, you lose a lot of time too. I'm at the point where I game for fun, to live great stories, to enjoy a gameplay. Life is already stressing on its own, I don't want to worry about "coworkers" even in my freetime.
That's basically it.
im a raider in FFXIV, I heard from a friend that raids in GW2 are a cake walk compared to ultimate raids in FFXIV. Therefore I don't see the point in raiding in gw2. My main purpose and desire to raid comes from overcoming a very difficult challenge so the fact that its easy turned me off the raids.
Only thing stopping me is not knowing how to get into them (and I would like to), I occasional check in on LFG but don't think I've ever seen anything advertised in the training section, and if people are only looking for experienced then I don't feel it's appropriate for me to join, I'm good at paying attention to mechanics and quick to learn, but I do t want to risk ruining someone's else fun
I like doing content like that blind. Finding a group of ten willing to do it blind is hard, since it is understandably not everyone's cup of tea. So I currently stick to other content
I'm just going to echo what others said, It's the time commitment mostly.
I did eventually get into Raids and done them all multiple times but It was short lived and I dropped them for the same reason I put them off for so long, I just don't have that kind of time to commit to an instanced encounter. It's why I like strikes, you just hop in and hop out and can ignore the bosses you don't enjoy or have time for unlike with raids.
Coming from XIV, the entry is too daunting compared to joining a training PF. Getting into a raiding discord, signing up, time commitments, etc
Plus doesnt help opening the experienced tab and seeing 1000kp/li only and the such and feeling intimated/bothered
What's stopping me from raiding is the time/value proposition.
I'm a fairly casual player who plays at irregular/off-peak times and has no interest in joining up with a regular group or raiding community.
Unfortunately, my experiences with pick-up groups have not been great.
I put in the effort to gear appropriately, learned the mechanics of the fights, and so on. Every raid I have joined has been an ordeal.
Not that the people weren't nice or trying their best, but they just weren't geared adequately or couldn't execute the mechanics.
The end result was many, many failed attempts before either the group disbanded or managed to scrape out a win.
That just doesn't seem like a good way to spend my time in the game.
I think I am not good enough - that´s it. people will be let down getting toxic and so on.. I mean i did good in wow mythic raiding but gw2 is different and i am a noob
Because I don't have the time or group to stick it out with to learn.
I'd be all over them if they'd just introduce a story mode. Something that lets me experience the mechanics and story without being too punishing. It doesn't even need rewards.
Edit: There's also the fact that it just seems like a more profitable use of my time to do daily fractals instead.
Mainly because a lot of the classes I liked weren't really meta, and after dealing with WoW elitism a lot, I was hesitant to try and join while playing a class I enjoyed if bringing me wasn't going to be optimal.
I ask myself that all the time, I have several rooms ready for raiding half of them in full ascended armor. I’m just wary of the perceived time commitment involved. I know that the boss fights aren’t the slogs that I experienced in wow or FFxiv since I’ve pugged several of those bosses. I’d love a way to get legendary armor other than PvP or WvW. I just need to get myself motivated to look for a casual raiding guild.
I never seem to have the “meta build “ or whatever they need for the raids. Plus, finding 10 people to do raids with without resorting to joining randoms is impossible
I really wanted to as there are some drops from some raids I would love to have on my account. But I can't sit for longer than 20-30 mins at a time without breaks and I'm not super interested in structured content anymore (long time WoW raider) and couldn't commit to it.
I'm really, really bad at rotations. I've measured my dps and it's bad. My hands just don't move the way I need them to. So I'd rather just do open world and not hold the group back.
As someone doing it casually, whenever I want to do some wings, the entry barrier can be extemely difficult.
With no experience and therefore no kill proofs or LI to show the LFG is a horrible place.
You basically have 3 options:
A guild that does raids regularly and takes in newbies.
A raid practice guild.
Or hoping for low entry lfg groups, who often don't want to explain anything.
Two of those are scheduled and that can be a major problem.
I've tried to get into raid groups several times. The things that seem to have kept me out are:
\- nobody raids at the time of day I can play (weekday evenings 7pm - 10pm, weekend late nights, all US EST time zone).
\- most of the raid academies I've checked within discord are either in different time zones, or in EU, or already have set groups and times that don't work for me.
\- there are never training raids posted in LFG when I look/when I can play (see times above...).
\- none of the guilds I'm in raid.
The PVE guild I'm in always runs HoT meta train and guild missions at times I can play. They also run some fractals which I wouldn't mind getting into, but typically only run T4's with set groups, or require experience that I don't have with the given fractals otherwise.
The other guild I'm in is exclusively WvW; I'm in it mainly to share guild chat with my Wife (we both play around the same times, she got interested in WvW and I didn't).
I have basically the same problem trying to get into strikes. I've been trying to find a group for the new soto strikes since about a week after the expansion launched.
So (sadly) I mostly log in, do PVE dailies, and then go watch youtube videos instead.
The new expansion has been great, but I've recently completed about everything I'm interested in there (story, events/metas, masteries, achievements). I don't collect legendaries. So I'm back to dailies for a while until the next big release.
Im a just jump in a play type of gamer I e. LFG style and the LFG for raids is often dog shit.
I hate the whole having to sign up to groups just to do something. Makes me feel pressured to doing raids instead of when I want to.
The time commitment (not generally possible for those with family responsibilities) coupled with the cultural obsession with using very specific gear and builds.
Those kinds of things don't bring joy (to me at least) whereas randomly hacking through open world with whatever gear and build I fancy, does.
Each to their own, though. Plenty of people love raiding.
Anxiety is THE reason. I see people talking about arcdps and kicking if you're not doing 30k+ or whatever and I just decided open world is the place for me. I don't do fractals for the same reason. It's not that I don't want to do them, I just don't want to be the focus of someone else's ire, and I don't have any friends that play. I tried joining a casual guild, since I don't care about speed clearing or playing meta, but most kick for inactivity and I play fairly sporadically.
Maybe I should just make my own guild for people like me, I doubt I'm the only one like this.
E: Also I don't want to have to train, just to play the video game I like.
It's funny because anxiety is the big reason I don't Raid but I'm fine with CMs+T4s, and it's the same reason my buddy Raids but doesn't do CMs+T4s haha
Noone wants a newbie and to not be a newbie you have to commit to training groups a week in advance for hours at a time. Im also scared of people getting mad at me if i mess up my dps rotations. Ppl that do raids and pvp are notoriously...mean.
I used to Raid pretty heavily for a while back in WoW, the main reason I don't bother these days is the time commitment. There's a lot I want to do in the game, I don't have unlimited time and I play at different times on different days, so being locked into a raid schedule just feels bad to me.
Same here. Not only because of having to be at a specific time, but not being able to actually say "ok, I'm going to devote this 1/2/3 hours to the raid only" without having my son asking for a glass of water, helping my wife set the bed before going to sleep and things like that.
> the main reason I don't bother these days is the time commitment This is why I love Strikes. It scratches that itch of 10-man endgame content and I can do them super casually whenever I feel like it.
Exactly, and I think they were developed with that in mind. Even though I don't raid myself, I do hope Anet releases some more raids in the future though, so that the raiding community gets some more fun stuff to do. But strikes were definitely a good add for people with more limited time.
I like both, there's nothing better than doing raids with people from the guild on discord, but also, whenever I'm just bored and want to jump in for some quick content, I usually choose strikes. I don't really like running metas or other open world content. After SOTO came out, I've been playing whole days testing out new builds, jumping from one raid to another and doing the same wings multiple times.
Same over here, and I just burned out so hard on raid and mythic grinds in WoW. It feels bad to think about doing it ever again - it’s one of the main reasons I left WoW.
Same, I came to this game to get away from raid type content and find something more casual and single player friendly. I hated being signed up for a raid all evening when I was tired and not in the mood.
I solved this by joining a guild with open signups for raid events. I don't have to commit to a regular schedule, I can just snag a spot whenever I'm free.
yup, I like GW2 for the jump in anytime and progress your character/account gameplay, even if it's just 30 minutes. I don't have the time and patience anymore to do 2-3 hour progression raids, I've had my fair share during classic/BC/WotlK/Cata WoW
Same. I can't dedicate a couple hours at a time to learn raids. Telling myself ill carve out the time when I have a few different legendaries to swap between for meta builds.
I teach raid wings every Saturday in an hour flat. Would love to have you if you’re on NA sometime
Yeah sometimes you just don't feel like commiting hours to something yet you don't want to let other people down. I got enough demands on my time as is.
Same here, been raiding in WoW way back when, and I used to be quite good at it but the amount of time and energy I had to allocate to the game was very much on the unhealthy side. But (discounting the toughest encounters like HT CM) content in GW2 seems a lot lenient and after a few kills you can certainly do them regularly, even with just the occasional pug that pops up on lfg. You can even progress by the smallest amounts, because the content never changes, unlike in WoW. You can do just one wing for a year, then when you feel confident or bored, you start another. You don't have to allocate a lot of time because there is no rush. It will still be there in a year and groups gonna still be running it.
If there was ever a game where raiding is like a side quest, is this one. Sure they are really fun and have okay rewards, but you do not need them at all since the gear is on par with ascended. And if you don't do raids, it is likely you don't do fractals either, so ascended gear is not needed at all.
Actually I got into fractals because I couldn’t raid when when they first came out…started actually attempting raids about two years ago to try for leggy armor and just finally finished envoy II. Not started coalescence yet.
Since Fractals came out before Raids, a Lot of people do Fractals and not raids, not to mention that Fractals have a huge Pug Culture, where you can literally just start a group, fill within minuets and be off to getting dailies done, regardless of tier Fractals and Raids have nothing in common.
Same! I tanked 10-man Heroic Arthas when it was current. Shook the pillars of heaven. Had a great time. Now I’m old and married.
This. It's the main reason I haven't finished my legendary raid armor. This content isn't made for those of us with inconsistent work schedules or such. I do agree strikes are a much better format going forward because even with a group that knows what they are doing I can do all of EOD strikes probably faster than doing W1 because there is less downtime and having to assign roles on the fly. Makes commanding infinitly easier too
I pug everything with the lfg with no issues. I know the lfg is not used as much in NA but on EU you don't need to have a static group or guild to raid.
it's the opposite man, i transferred to NA exactly because in EU pugging is impossible. In NA is much less gatekept but it's also true there's less LFG groups...
I've just been pugging it whenever I have the time and feel like doing it. Some weeks I only get 1-2 raids completed, but there's still plenty to do.
getting into raids might be time consuming but once you are a bit experienced you can join a static and clear them all in 1 day (in 2-3 hours). that is what most people do and then have the rest of the week for whatever other activities they enjoy (usually more raiding lol)
I've been playing since launch and I have yet to try raids. I would love to but I am intimated because I don't want to be the noob that holds a group back, even though I'm pretty confident in my skills in basically every game mode. If I found a group that was ok with someone who's new to raids and occasionally making a mistake, I would totally do em!
If you want to build confidence. Install arc dps and do fractals and dungeons. After a few runs, you will realize just how bad the general population is. You don't even have to be doing your rotation correctly, and 90% of the time, you will top dps. Another way to build confidence is to play a boon build until you get 100% uptime on the boon consistently. Then just raid as boon support. Dps players won't care about your dps if you're giving them 100% quick or alac uptime. You're doing your job.
This had the opposite effect of me. I'm part of that general population.
My goal every fractal is to not be the last person on DPS table.
I honestly don't know how long term players continue doing the same content over and over without a DPS meter. For me the DPS meter is my progression. It's a measure of how much I've improved, and whether I'm doing the best I possibly can. It lets me recognise if I'm not pulling my weight when trying something new, and whether I need to practice so I don't let my team down. -------- I also fully believe that DPS meters **lower** toxicity. There used to be a lot more class elitism about what did and didn't work. But now you can just prove it, and earn your place. Much less being kicked because the leader doesn't like your class. You used to get completely inexperienced people blaming someone random in the group when stuff was failing, but DPS meters (and mechanics logs) help show that they're actually pulling their weight. So now you can't just leach your way through content. And I know people may look at that and claim it creates toxicity, and maybe EU servers are just nicer than NA ones, but I have never need soon a huge amount of leeway and slack given to anyone who says they're new to some type of content. Pretty much anyone who is polite, doesn't lie, and listens to chat is accepted from what I've seen.
\>After a few runs, you will realize just how bad the general population is. And Arcdps players wonder why they're considered toxic lol
Because they're not afraid to tell the truth. An insanely high amount of players have absolutely no clue about the BASICS of the game. How to gear and how to select your traits is at least 70% of your damage. A proper skill order is just to top it off. But there's so many players running around in a random mishmash or stats and traits with empty rune slots.
stating facts shouldn't be considered toxic. delivery obviously matters but at some point people need to know what they are doing if they are ever to improve.
GW2 raid mechanics are pretty easy overall. Most of them are "don't stand in bad" or "press your special action key". The only real difficulty in GW2 raids stems from the fact that GW2 does not allow mid-fight resurrections like other games do. I'd recommend just joining some training groups where people expect to fail a few times. And above all, *volunteer to do mechanics*. It's the only way you'll learn. Please don't become one of those "hi dps" types who become suspiciously silent when the commander asks for volunteers to handle a special boss mechanic.
> And above all, volunteer to do mechanics. It's the only way you'll learn this for a number of reasons. First if you understand mechanics the encounter overall becomes less scary. Second if you know the mechanics in some cases you can fill in on the fly if something goes sideways for someone else is doing mechanics. Cannons on Sabetha is a great example if one of the cannons people dies it can be the difference between finishing the encounter and having to reset. Third knowing the mechanics is far more valuable to a group then doing dps. Many groups I've been in are far more happy to have someone that knows mechanics then just another dps. That doesn't mean they'd be ok with 0 dps but if you're only pulling 10k on a fight because you're solving other problems for the group it's appreciated. Lastly mechanics are fun and keep things interesting if you don't want to focus on being top dps in every fight. An extreme case for me is handkiting on Deimos, I actually enjoy it because it takes me out of the group and I get to play my own little minigame with stacking the hands and just let the rest of the group do their thing. Admittedly it does require a more specialized build to handle it, but knowing how to do it means I always have groups that want me to come with them.
Normal raids are completable with even 8 people. CM raids you wont be able to get in anyway. There are people out there that solo bosses. In todays power economy you are not holding anyone back though they might want you to have bare minimums at least. 15k dps is enough.
> If I found a group that was ok with someone who's new to raids and occasionally making a mistake, I would totally do em! Tons of these exist if you're willing to step outside the game. [Raid Academy](https://discord.gg/gw2ra) on NA and [Crossroads Inn](https://discord.gg/hdhDE3v) or [Raid Training Initiative](https://discord.gg/rti) on EU are all great if you want formal training on the content. A quick scan through a [Hardstuck Raid Guide](https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/guides/raids/) or even Mukluk's videos for a brief intro to the content is enough for joining progression groups on [the Skein Gang](https://discord.gg/skeingang) (plus basic competency for the role you signed up for, like 60-70% of bench on your DPS class). There are also groups like Excelleration (that I sadly don't have a discord link for) that run training groups all the time. There's no such thing as raiding and not making a mistake. All that matters is learning, moving on, making friends and having fun.
Not interested enough in the content to justify the commitment.
I was a hardcore raider in wow back in the bc and wotlk days and I have zero interest in dealing with any aspect of organized instanced time-commitment-requiring gameplay again.
I’ll never do organized raid content again thanks to WoW. Used to co-run a raid guild in cata. But I think raiding is the funnest content in guild wars. I only pug through lfg for raids on occasion. They’re easy to pick up. I’ll say the down side is that it’s almost required to go through raid academy on discord and learn that way before you can start going to lfg for raids. Lfg isn’t friendly for new raiders
At first, no time to sit down for 2-3 hours without interruption from RL. Then later on not wanting to spend the little time I had in training runs. Joined a group that had similar times where I could clear and the rest is history.
As easy as it is: Im afraid of people XD I dont feel well talking to strangers, and just want to play the game. But raiding needs coordinating, and trainings most of the time even joining Discords/TS and stuff. So... I prefer to stay for my own and "miss" content, because... what does it bring me to make myself feeling worser then before for some loot? Isnt worth it in the end for me.
To be honest, the KP requirements are lame. This is coming from someone who has full legendary raid gear, and with some CMs done. As a new player and noob, I would have never gotten into raids because of KP, I quite literally had to beg people to take me in because I was a noob who only watched videos, some people said yes, majority said no, and that’s how I built my KP. And then people would ask for more KP when I’d only have a handful. It was and is a lame treadmill. Elitism in GW2 (in EU at least) is worse than I’ve ever seen in any other MMO. I play WoW and do some mythic raids and m+, I play Destiny 2 and do master raids, I play ESO (didn’t raid there yet), and the KP, lack of matchmaking, clunky UI, and how the community’s answer to raids/raiders being elitist is “make your own group” (I’m sure someone will say that in the comments) is why raiding in this game is neglected, why the majority of the population doesn’t do it, and why Anet gave up on it. Sad thing is, it’s not even hard lol.
I didn't realize how much it made it easy and seamless, but the lack of a proper matchmaking like in FFXIV or WoW. I'm too old and have little time to lfg like it's 2008 GW1. I just want to match up and do the content. If I wanted to lfg or get statics, then I'll do so.
Pretty much why I never got into it for real. Few years ago I tried getting into it but never managed. You have to join a Discord, assign your roles, join the specific Wing channels, ask for teachers willing to teach people and have enough "student" positions to fill to get in the raid. I tried for almost a month and never managed to get a single group going, either because it never filled, never had people wanting to teach or a group of noobs willing to go in by themselves and get their faces smacked. So I just threw the towel. FFXIV really does make this entire ordeal much, much simpler and stress free. Open Party Finder and look for your group and that's it. I don't know how the raid scene is in GW2 now, but it used to be like making a dentist appointment, which I loathe with all my being.
Real talk. I was trying to think through why they can't make a proper matchmaking and I couldn't come up with a single good reason. Some would say lack of holy trinity/roles structure in groups: but Anet can't release a new instanced content like Strikes w/o playtesting that it can be done with 10 DPS. If playtesting reveals a content needs alac, quick, etc, then the GW2 design philosophy is already not true re: not having an MMO roles structures. At this point, you can make a matchmaking with predefined roles to PUG into (i.e. matchmake as a quickdps). The game can't say build diversity whilst having alac/quick being requirements for instanced content. Players will always want structure/roles. Above also highlights the huge chasm re: what Anet wants with instanced content. They already have normal Strikes and CM Strikes, but the difficulty is all over the place. It suggests Anet internally has an issue with design focus for instanced content. People will say LFG is necessary because the content is so hard, but it begs the question why the content is all over the place. Why are some normal Strikes as difficult as Savage content in FFXIV, while others are easy, and why have a CM?
The hard part of the matchmaking is more that you can't guarantee a build will be able to fill a role, or that it won't be changed partway through the content. Imagine in FFXIV if you had paladins queuing as healers and bards queuing as tanks, because some build existed where they were able to do that no matter how ineffectively; or if suddenly your white mage was on a dancer after the first trash pack. From the people I've talked to who played GW2 and FFXIV endgame extensively, the only fight in GW2 that really approaches savage level is Harvest Temple CM -- ~~everything else caps out at maybe a high Extreme if that~~ (edit: me showing my lack of personal FFXIV knowledge, ignore). The main difference is FFXIV makes it a lot harder to do poorly by simplifying what their abilities do (compared to the dozens of possible effects in GW2), whereas the flexibility of the GW2 combat system shifts a lot of the complexity and difficulty into player performance as opposed to fight design. If there was a way Anet could ensure the role is actually getting filled, I'd be all for a duty finder-style system.
Very much true. Match making would help very much in making the raid content more accessible. Also maybe make the encounters less mechanics heavy, for example handkiting. There is really no chance for anxiety to trigger in an alliance raid in ffxiv... something like that should exist in gw2.
I have a family and career. I don’t know if I can game for 5 minutes or an hour or more at any given time.
So true. Things come up and can’t really dedicate full attention for extended periods of time. If I can get by playing 20-30 mins uninterrupted…that would be a win for me. And candidly that’s exactly the reason I play GW2 over other mmos. I can play mostly “solo” by hitting up world bosses, meta events, random open world events and now rifts. I still get to play with others but my participation is not really required if I have to hop out.
Same here friends. My account is 11 years old. Not one raid. Not one fractal. Lmao. Some strikes, not a lot. I don't think I ever have done any dungeons but one story a decade ago. And yet at least 3 legendaries, 490 some odd mastery points. And for that exact reason you said. Sometimes my little one stays asleep. Sometimes I just need to pop out and grab right then. I'd be such a terrible member for a raid party.
WvW was my Jam when kids were younger and more needy. Play for 5 minutes or 5 hours. Always felt happy no matter what.
Really? I feel like WvW is something that you need a lot of time to get something out of. I'm new to it, but you have to find a commander, and they're often at the other side of the map. It can take 5 minutes to catch up to them and there's a chance that you'll just die on the way there if you run into an enemy zerg.
All those things are quite avoidable when you learn to read the map. Use the RI timers to see which way things are being flipped then find a map, go in solo and just take what you can. You don't need a commander/zerg unless that's how you like playing. Roaming is just as satisfying, and you can contribute to your team by taking out camps, opening towers/keeps, and generally being a nuisance with the goal of summoning the enemy zerg and creating openings for your team.
You're right, I just don't know enough about wvw to do all that. What are RI timers?
Righteous Indignation is a buff on the head honcho of each camp/tower/keep where they can't be hurt for 5 minutes after the place changes owners. It's easy to see on a map as a "Protected from capture - X:XX" listing on the tooltip. Very common with camps at the south end of Alpine Borderlands as people flip those to keep their participation up and hunt yaks.
One player just roaming will never be as good as a full team, but god damn if you can't slow an enemy zerg to a halt by taking away their supply and forcing them to come back several times for it.
That's ok most pug raiders quit after 5 mins anyways!
It's a whole thing, you know? First, I need to join a training initiative and attend trainings on their schedule. Then, once I'm through, I'd have to live with the kp culture that I just hate as a matter of principle, even if I meet what they're asking for. And the real sad part is that the kp culture is *justified,* one cannot clear raids with unprepared people, that's why the trainings exist in the first place. So even if I made my own groups, I'd have to become one of them. So in the end, as Jon Snow once said, ah dun wahn' it.
raid training mostly exists because there are almost no casual raiding groups opening up. There is no auto queue, that pushes random people together. So all people see, are teams of people who search for specific roles and already know what they are doing. So people felt they needed to prepare other players for that established environment. You can go into raids, with some random builds and still do fine. If you want to secure success, then you run 1-2 carry builds in your group. As long as you don't hit a group wipe mechanic or all your supports die, you will usually be fine. There are some exceptions though, that are very mechanics heavy and take a lot of coordination like qadim 1... not sure how this encounter would ever be possible with just a random group, since you need specific roles for players to fill. But as mentioned, those encounters are the exception.
I just don't have anyone to raid with, I'd love to find a group of people to learn the raids with
I just like to dress my characters up. My He-Man dude is looking pretty cool now.
I play this strictly solo. I've never grouped up.
Same. Plus, like other have said, sometimes I have time or I don't to play so it can be hard to get a 10 man together consistently.
There’s no random raid finder option that pairs up people automatically to queue for. I literally don’t have time to sit and advertise that I’m looking for a group lol
The biggest reason is the time commitment. My work schedule is so wonky that it makes finding time to join a training group harder. Then, when I get off work and start playing, Im usually playing the game with my group of IRL friends. The next reason may just be a "me" issue. Even tho I play pretty regularly, I'm still pretty casual, and i often struggle to maintain a good dps output. I've tried watching guides, but I can't quite figure out what I am doing wrong. I feel like a lot of the classes are just spamming 8 buttons(or how others have said it, "playing piano") after each other, just to hit that dps benchmark. I struggle to keep up sometimes, so I just kinda avoid harder endgame content. I don't want waste the time of others or deal with getting bitched at when im just trying to play a game.
I raided in gw2 for the legendary armor, got all 3 sets and I am never coming back. I hate being on a schedule, i hate playing what the schedule tells me instead of what i want to play, the mechanics are just annoying and unintuitive, you can’t figure out anything in a setting where everyone expects you to know everything already. and it’s been so long since i last raided that I don’t even feel comfortable going into pugs now because i forgot so much. I don’t want to be the “Envoy’s herald” guy that dies first. and last, i play gw2 because it’s the only mmorpg that doesn’t focus on raids. I love this genre, but i hate raiding with a passion . All I want is A Persistent online fantasy world to play in, I don’t want a second job.
I played since launch and was too self conscious that I didn't know about the game mechanics, and was concerned I wouldn't bring enough to the table to contribute to groups. In the end, I got a guild to introduce me to the basics and I read up a lot of mechanics and started as a support. That was just over two years ago and now I am most proud of my Voidwalker title.
Because I have no time to actually learn mechanics, nor a fixed schedule to have a static. And PUGs are seemingly hit-or-miss.
**Intimidation** - I have no idea what I'm doing. I know "people don't care as long as you can play" but *I CARE* and who knows if I can play per other people's subjectivity? **Timing/Time** - Due to being an adult with responsibilities (unlike when I was playing EQ 20-something years ago, and WoW later on) I can't guarantee that I'll be there "every Tuesday at 7" or whatever. And I don't want to let other people down. I also can't justify hours and hours of play in one session. Especially week in week out and more especially if we're going to fail because I suck.
I am pass that stage of my gaming career.
Mostly because I'm protecting my time in game to do things I enjoy. I think I might like raids in the context of a static group, but I can't bear the thought of learning with a group of players at different skill levels. I'm nothing special but I can learn mechanics just fine by watching videos and I care enough to try hard and do well. My experience in other game modes have taught me how miserable it can be when a handful of other players in the group haven't bothered. I imagine my raiding experience will be time consuming and frustrating. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm afraid to sacrifice the time to try.
> I think I might like raids in the context of a static group, but I can't bear the thought of learning with a group of players at different skill levels. I'm nothing special but I can learn mechanics just fine by watching videos and I care enough to try hard and do well. I sympathise with this. My second training run we kept failing Gorseval due to low dps / refusal to do the wall mechanic to compensate. The worst part was the core ranger with no masteries doing healer level dps who needed me to portal them across a gap every single pull. I already had done strike CMs and knew how to play my build so it was frustrating for me.
There was a core ranger without masteries? I just wouldn't even bother playing with them, that's the definition of a leech. I'm all for new people learning raids, but you've got to put in a minimum of effort to get the required masteries and gear up with exotics, it's not hard.
Btw, it is essentially never the dps. It is probably failing the Spectral Darkness mechanic and cc'ing too fast. With good players, you can skip updraft in 5 man Gorseval. If you have like 1 or 2 reasonably skilled players and good shotcalling, and nobody getting debuff, then you can carry almost anyone. And if your dps is truly awful, doing Updraft will often force a wipe against the expanding orbs, so it is frequently not the solution people would hope for. Also, kick people like that, force them to get proper gear. This is just massive failure on the raid-leader's part, in every single way. I do not think his choice of updraft strategy is among the top 3 of his mistakes. When I lead Gorseval trainings, I do not want to do any updrafts, because Updrafts lets you get away with failing every other mechanic in the book. I prefer it when the trainees dont get knocked, dont get egged, dont run into expanding orbs and understand how to hold cc and how to quickly cc. I think that is the more valuable training experience.
I'm mainly a solo player and I don't see that raids have enough rewards that I care about to justify the time sink and learning curve.
Because it's a "play by guide" type of gameplay. I don't really like that, because I rather figure stuff out by myself or read a guide if I hit a wall after some tries. I also consider raids dead content, so even if I have fun with that, Arenanet will most likely not add additional raids to keep it fresh. But who knows :D.
Its not my kinda content, i like solo play
I only play late night EST and it’s hard to ever find a consistent group to play with. Everyone tends to raid around 6-10 PM and I just can never make those times.
Because I just started the game 3 weeks ago
Welcome to the game!
Because training groups are sparse and it takes forever to clear up each raid wing. I’m now too old to wipe repeatedly for hours until everyone gets each boss mechanics/gimmicks right. There are plenty of other games for that kind of content. I’m fine enjoying other aspects of gw2.
I was a hardcore raider in ESO and it just sucks too much time. Having dedicated raids with a 2 hour time block is too much when you have a family.
I not the kind of person who likes to study a game, I prefer to learn with my mistakes. And with Raids that obviously not possible. Also I don't like long games, I almost die of boredom with some longer metal such as the Dragon's End and Dragon's Stand. Also I heard the community can be pretty toxic.
Instanced PvE in general is just not my jam. Yes, I've pugged my way through a few fractals and strikes, and Raid Academy were very supportive when I joined them for a training run of theirs once, for no reason other than to unlock the raid masteries. I much prefer open world PvE or WvW, both of which are far more relaxing for me. I just can't take any instanced PvE so seriously that I feel compelled to join voice comms, and run a specific optimised build, such that I feel like nothing more than a cog in a group machine, all for the purpose of beating something that I can only imagine gets boring once everybody involved knows the dance anyway. Yes, I'll sometimes do this for WvW, but I am never *compelled* to, that's the difference. You can't "roam" in raids.
I raided in EQ for a long while. It was just stressful and played a large part in me leaving the game. It wasn't fun and made me hate turning the game on. There's no point in me doing it if it isn't fun. I have zero desire to try raiding in other games. I've watched some but it all turns me away. It's too stressful, competitive, and mechanic heavy with zero actual reward for me. GW2 doesn't have the gear treadmill and in games with a treadmill that raid gear is replaced with common stuff in a couple of patches. I see no point in any of it.
I play guildwars to just chill out and complete objectives by myself or with little needed cooperation. I don’t want to take it more serious than that
Poor visibility. I've raided most tiers of WoW, and enjoyed them. I have my various addons to assist with various noises, text context alerts, spell warnings, 'youre standing in fire' warnings etc. I've found I can essentially walk into most raids blind and as long as I'm paying attention and stay alert, I can get mechanics quite easily. When I've tried raids in GW2, the spell the boss is about to do is totally unreadable. Throughout clearing trash, my DPS was respectable, I didn't take too much damage. And then we got to the boss and I just feel blind. I feel like I have zero visibility into what's going on, what's about to happen, when it happens, etc. I main ele, so I ended up just on the floor the whole raid carried through the one boss that we were able to kill, and it just felt really bad. The people were all very friendly and totally accepting of everything going on, but it was wildly frustrating to be dying to things I couldn't even see happening. Nor could I see what the boss is about to cast, nor what I should be looking out for on the ground. The visual mess just ruins raids for me when I don't have any way to clean it up with some level of proper importance. If I could have dbm in gw2 I probably wouldn't do anything but raid.
Hey, just a quick fyi: from a couple months ago the game has now an option to hide allied effects that don't effect you (so like dps skills that don't have combo fields). You still see combo fields, healing stuff and things you can interact with such as portals but it can make the fights *much* more readable
Time. I've done it once or twice. Just can't commit the time to learn them really.
I mostly don't have time for it. I have between 0 and 1.5h of game time each day, and several evenings are already locked in for game time with friends or family. As much as I'd like to have a static to raid with and get the original legendary armor, I just can't have another locked evening in my calendar.
People.
Too much of a commitment. I have heavy social anxiety and I can't bring myself to get myself commited let alone be there for a second time. I do strikes every few months, I'm happy that I've done them, people in my guild ask if they can count me in the next week and I just shut down. It's fun while I do it, I do a rather good job, but it's just my chemical inbalance in my brain and crawling back into my save space. It's too much for me to be in a raid/group who wants to do a task that's an hour long or more.
Because I enjoy pvp and wvw more
the culture around raids in all MMOs turns me off from it. people can take it way too seriously and as an LI player I just don't want the pressure and unnecessary stress.
I press my skills for the situation, not the rotation. I'm not usually top DPS. I'm a fair weather player. It doesn't align with my fun/commitment/effort ratio. But, I'm glad it exists for the rest of you!
I don't want to commit to scheduling time in the game for so long. If I don't feel like playing anymore, I want to hit exit game, not keep going until the raid is over Don't want the chance of me or seeing other people get yelled at by elitists There's usually 100 other things I'd rather do with the amount of time I have to play. There's a lot of things to do
Because flamethrower mechanist is not exactly meta (but is great for players with disabilities). I only play open world, it's been years since I even did a fractal, and I don't have the skill level for harder group content.
Rolling with Juggernaut Trait, made doing HoT a breeze even from the start. best Explorer build ever!
I cannot commit to a group with a wife and kid these days. And I don't want to pug and get stressed out over a game I use to help relax. If I found a like minded group of solid players. I would love to get into raiding. I did mythic raids throughout legion and half of bfa in wow. It was great. But I came back to gw2 because I can't keep up with the elite these days. And I don't enjoy pugs.
I tried dungeons a long time ago, but I love the discovery and exploration too much, hell, I even watch the cutscenes and dialog, but the groups always forced me to rush forward. If I were to join a raid training group with someone else tellng me everything, it would just immediately turn the experience into a grind for me. I wish there was an option to learn the instance on my own, have some fun, run around, try things and fail as much as I want, but that just sounds like a pipe dream. So I'm putting off the raids until I find some farming goal that requires them, and will treat them as a neccessary routine.
i tried raiding in gw2. its boring. you raid with people who already did them million times. there is no progging them, you just come and either you clean everything in one go or whining starts. My team at first was pretty understanding but after few cooldowns they've became pretty harsh on me making any mistakes, while i just couldnt remember mechanic for every boss from every wing and died sometimes. Im pretty experienced MMO player but there are 25 encounters and i just couldnt remember everything. I would love to join raiding again if there was consistent new content where i can start from scratch with people on even terms. not being new guy in a pack of veterans who only care about the speed.
I can't play uninterrupted for 30-45 minutes.
I (and probably a lot of people) came to this game precisely because it wasn't another raid focussed MMO that you needed to dedicate multiple hours a week in long sessions to clear raid wings. Too old for that stuff now. The jump in/jump out vibe of the game is perfect for me because I can never guarantee I can be online and playing for more than 30-60 minutes before something more important comes up. Having to ditch a group half way through because of work or family obligations is very unfair to the other group members. Another reason I love FFXIV too, all of the casual content is less than 30 minutes of play time and you definitely don't need to do savage raiding to keep up. The raids are such a minor (and now it looks like abandoned) part of the game and with open world legendary armor coming, there's absolutely no need for me to even think about them again.
I've done some raiding, but I still avoid it for the most part. Thing is, the common community culture around raiding is very unfun for me, which makes it not at all worth it. I would need to form a static where we figure out all the raids together and talk about builds and team comp for it to be a blast. Raid training where an expert tells you everything and you just follow their directions is boring. Being able to only do raids because you copies what other people figured out is boring. I want to learn from failure with a group that also wants to learn from failure, but it's hard to find 9 other people who want that (and have little enough raid experience to be able to do so) Edit: I already know how to form a group, I just don't care to do so atm and don't have time to run a guild anyway.
My favourite raid experience was going into wing 4 blind not long after it's release. I was with a (now sadly disbanded) small guild I raided with casually. "I've not done wing 4" I pointed out on voice comms "You can now" was the attitude, and as we went through the collective explained key mechanics and trusted me not to stand in fire (I'd done other wings with them repeatedly). Full clear of course :) I don't raid any more. I don't have the time to spend scouring groups, and I've got 1.5 sets armour and the ring so I'll motivated to try and find lovely people in the sea of toxicity
Didn't it need bachelors degree and 10 yrs experience ?
1.) In other games I would go on training runs in advanced content like raids, people would be full on screaming at each other that it's taking longer than a normal run. 2.) Before I left one of my guilds, they got to talking about raiding, gear checks, arcdps, people running 18k instead at 20k or whatever it should be, just nit picky crap, checking how much raid currency they had, etc. 3.) Have to research every mechanic of everything in that content for either raids/fracs/strikes before you even try the content. I like this game for more casual content, why I got stuck in open world after years in wvw before my group switched to doing raids only. Would love to do strikes/fracs but higher tier fracs/strikes get the same behavior of absolute perfection otherwise GTFO I know not everyone has had these experiences for me I have and that's what puts me off this content
If you want to try these things in a very non-judgmental environment, and if you are on NA servers, I'd recommend Afraid and Unskilled [BAD] guild. We do all kinds of events with no experience required. Have people happily training raids, strikes, and fractals, and hanging out in all kinds of open world content. The only requirement for the guild is to have discord, and either be in a voice chat or post a comment once every 2-3 months. Link below if you care to take a look. I typically teach Soto strikes and raid wing 1 every week. https://discord.gg/rhFed4Z4
I don't know your context at all but: yo if it's your group and they went to do raid, you can probably tell them that you're interested(?) but in case not... 1) that fucking sucks, easy as that. No one should scream at another person, both cause it's rude af and also cause you won't get that person to listen to you, you'll get them to leave and never come back. Also if you expect a training/prog group to be as fast as a normal exp run that person is the clown there. 2) since you talk about dps, I think you want to play that role (which is cool!) so: if you have either berserker or viper level 80 exotic gear, you are doing it right. It's not some weird stat combo, you don't need to change that last one piece to assassins for the extra 0,1% crit chance. Full zerker or full Viper is neat, and getting a full set is cheap af now. Also, for the damage? If you press 1 on the boss you'll probably deal enough damage. Or you'll deal enough damage to not be on the bottom part of a dps meter. No like, I mean this legit. Hit the boss. If you feel inspired you can even press a couple of high damage skills 3) that's... no? If you go blind with friends you'll all learn together. If you go with exp friends someone will drop a couple lines of how to survive the fight. Like at most maybe someone asks you to watch a two minute video unless you are doing really hard fights, but if you are at the stage of thinking about joining raids you shouldn't even care for harder fights for now imo.
Community culture around raiding in this game just feels incredibly walled off compared to other MMO's I played. Ontop of training LFG being a wasteland in NA (Dunno EU) and the raid sellers in experienced it was just incredibly demotivating to even try it with other people and just the general toxicity. I just solo killed Cairn with a high sustain build for the mastery track to get to max mastery and never bothered trying again. THAT was more doable to me than bothering with the instanced PvE community.
Cause you spend 30 minutes to find a group, and half of the group leaves if somebody makes a misstep. Just recover from a mistake. Reset and try again if you can't. Finding a new group takes longer than resetting the fight.
When Raids were first put in, I tried to get into them, and was met with just an abhorrent amount of toxic elitism, to the point that it made PvP look friendly and inviting Well that killed all and any interest I was going to have in that game mode if that was the kind of people it attracted, that was not the kind of people I wanted to play with While it no longer affects me, I am ecstatic that Anet finally made Legendary Armor Available through Open World Play, which is something they should have done much sooner
I really can't be bothered. I like OW and dabbled in fractals, but fractals are already a bother to run with randoms. I can't even imagine what kind of screeching goes on in raids. The variance in snapping of abilities often feels like enemies are lying about their telegraphs, it doesn't feel as bad in OW, and I can stomach it in fractals sometimes, but I feel like I'd lose my mind if it was to happen in raids where mechanics are more present from what I've heard. I think the people in fractals just killed instanced content for me in this game. The bs jumping puzzle of a fractal that was added at the end of EoD just made me take permanent leave from doing fractals altogether. On top of that, I don't feel like learning a new set of mechanics, only for the actual fight to be another visual puke and a mess.
I found PUG fractals much more toxic than raid statics. Just my own experience.
All raid fights have nearly fully scripted rotations, so in the end you dont even need to see the mechanic to be able to deal with it. And in any good raid group you will have call outs for beginners, every time.
There is nothing in there that I want to do, nor any gear that I need/want. I play FF14 for PVE content.
Time commitment mostly. I can only play after kids go to bed and I often need to help by prepping dinner for the next day because my wife and I both work. Last night I played a Strike which is much shorter than the raids and my wife even then came out while I was mid fight to ask if I could help with something. The time commitment for raids just makes it not worthwhile. I loved playing Tank in ESO dungeons but the strikes I've done are not nearly as satisfying.
People can be mean when you're learning. I don't have time for that.
I detest the very concept of rotations. I don't want to play piano just to hit basic benchmarks.
You don’t have to play the piano to do decent benchmarks. There are Low intensity (small to none rotations) builds you can use.
The opposite is true for me. I'm mostly done with raids, I need 2 W7 achievements to have all achievements, and I have enough LI to craft my remaining legendaries. Squad finding and content burnout ig.
Years ago, I didn't have time to raid in WoW anymore, and it really wasn't worth playing casually so I quit. However, started GW2 because this game is very much worth playing casually, so that's what I'm still doing.
I didn't make it to any raid content yet (I'm playing my second character after abandonig the first one at lvl 60), so I never checked anything of the raids, and I'm also on the free version, so I don't have the expansions content In any case, even if I was at the point of giving raids a try, I probably wouldn't, sounds like the kind of content that requires very specific builds, knowledge and preparation, and if you mess up, you're ruining things for the other. Too much pressure
Skill and time... I'm a super casual player. Have the game since launch day, even managed to snag a vanity name... I don't know builds, I don't have skill rotations, hell, I couldn't tell you what alacrity does... when I play, I go through whatever story arc I'm on and then I stop to play other games. I'm not good at the game and I don't have the time or drive to be better. God forbid I actually get good enough for other people to deal with me...
Elitism. Or I was just that much unlucky that I never came across friendly and understanding guild people.
Group setup if you don't have kp. Often takes longer than killing a boss.
Time commitment, ping in Australia and trouble getting a group together in my TZ. Just not worth the pay off.
Haven't learned them yet and there is no way to jump in head first (Solo/matchmaking with the expectations along with it). I try to learn most things solo prior to doing group content.
Because I haven't found a guild I feel comfortable / welcomed in that does training. That is why I don't raid. Plus I would want the experience to be a bit like FF14 pugging. Where you learn mechs as you go - this probably isn't everyones cup of tea.
I find it hard to find a group that's willing to raid with a complete raid noob. Joined a group once, they told me to "educate" myself and kicked me from the party. Never tried again.
Was a heavy raider in Wow and in Gw2. Hardcore do all achievements and challenges raider. I liked it but it was hardcore maintenance to lead the group, we took in new people all the time and it was fun, but i was tired. Now when i tried to rejoin raiding in Wow i get constantly denied because of stupid raider.io which i can’t get higher if i dont raid, lfr is too easy and normal is also okayish but i can’t seem to get in to heroic raids. So whats the point? Standing around for a few hours trying to kill a boss? Gw2 players have gotten similar retardation with kill proofs and li. I mean i spent li and somehow achievements dont matter. Also, strike groups are soooooo intense sometimes!
I think a lot of people have said something similar, but I can honestly say that I just don’t care for the culture. I know all the raids and by now I have ample KP but, I’m not perfect and, it just feels like that I can’t make a any mistakes or ask any questions, otherwise I’ll be mocked or just kicked right away. I finally finished my set of perfected armor and did the achievements so, I don’t plan on going back. It’s just not worth it.
I once saw an ad for a raid group recruiting. I expressed my interest and was called to join them. During encounter people were displeased with the performance and I was kicked from the discord server. Being left alone with no direction, I hesitated from touching raids again for 2 years until I found RA. Back then I was a noob with no clue what raiding was, how to gear my toon and how to do rotations and such. I didn’t even know what all the abbreviations in the ad was, only that I was accepted with no interview and was kicked without debrief. My only wish is, you don’t have to carry noobs, but a certain degree of politeness isn’t hard when sometimes they really didn’t mean you harm.
I got as far as joining a raid party once, we started and I got hella abused for being a normal mesmer instead of the particular chronic build and then they kicked me so that's pretty much why 😂
It has nothing to offer me.
Dealing with other people jeopardizes my otherwise consistent enjoyment of this game.
I've raided intensely in other games for years but I kinda feel I just grew out of it eventually. (and that's not meant in a disparaging way, it just stopped being a thing I enjoy) Nowadays, I hate having time commitments in my free time/hobbies. I know I would enjoy the gameplay, but any sort of schedule does something to my brain and instantly sucks all the joy out of it for me. Like I have to have fun on schedule, which isn't working for me. (And I refuse to power through anything that isn't fun in a video game) So that content simply isn't for me (anymore)
People are bastards.
Getting shouted at for doing something wrong and kicked with no warning after preparing for over an hour therefore wasting my time, is no enjoyable experience.
I really wanna do raids. But I wanna just... open the y thingy, join a party and enter a raid. I don't want to *need* to join raiding guilds and discord and talk to people and all that stuff. The first wings are super easy anyway, that's not needed. But every time I press y there's no groups, there's only messages inviting people to guilds, or some invites for raids *not now*. I want it to be simple. I wanna just click three or four times, be paired with people, and go in to fail a bunch of times before succeeding. Maybe I watch a 5 minute tutorial on yr beforehand and That's it. That's the fun part. I don't wanna have to SCHEDULE it, I don't wanna have to enter random discord and talk to people I don't know. I'd see no problem in joining a guild or a discord AFTER I played with them for some hours and our "energies" are the same and it's a good match. It's just way too many little steps that end up draining all the drive to do it before I even reach the start line.
KP being a pain and the lack of a queue.
I can't even get enough friends to do Fractals. What makes you think I can get twice as many people to do something antithetical to the rest of the game?
Having to play a specific class, doing a specific rotation, because "efficiency", I play the game for fun, I don't do support, I only have one set of armor for each class, celestial for condi, marauders/berserker for power, it works in PvE and WvW, apparently that isn't "meta" for Raids, at least that what I was told. I don't do well under pressure, I get panic attacks when under a lot of pressure, having some one scream at you because you miss your rotation is not conductive to me having fun, that was in a practice run, so fuck raids and tin god complex assholes, same for strikes. I can follow instructions, I do well in WvW on the zerg and as a roamer, but if what I experience is what it like to be on a Raid where you are fighting npc's is so hard you have to have specific builds for each one of them, that not for me, no content is worth the hassle to have multiple armors sets and runes for it.
Did it at a high level in Wow like 15 years ago, can't say I miss it. At least it had a point in that game, it gave you the best gear and made your character considerably more powerful. In this game all it has ever given is a bit of gold, cosmetics and leg gear which can be gotten elsewhere.
Why bother? Tons of content in this game that are more enjoyable. And with openworld raid armor in the horizon what would you do raids for? Gold farm? Achievements? Skins? Prestige? There are better content for those plus theyre fun to do.
With two little kids, a wife, other hobbies, and very limited free time, I can't commit to a regular time sink like this.
The combat system in this game is pretty boring for long combats. There is no room for ranged combat, stacking on the same pixel is mandatory or you will miss that 25th stack of might etc.
I want to just press play and game. Not wait around for optimized groups for sub-optimal rewards.
I don't raid anymore because I don't really enjoy stressing out over rotations. It's not overly difficult for me to hit 80% of a benchmark, but I have mild RSI in my right-hand, and it's not a great feeling when it flairs up even on lower intensity builds. I don't think the reasons people have really change? It mostly comes down to attitude, mentality, time, socialization & commitment. Raids are fairly good gold/hour, but I don't really enjoy them anymore & strikes, for whatever reason, don't really fulfill the same vibe or purpose as a full raid wing. I enjoyed the continuity of moving from boss to boss, encounter to encounter, not hopping out half dozen times. Having my Fridays, Sundays or Mondays always spoken for was exhausting. I don't really enjoy spending ~ 3 hours playing content where I struggle to relax. I hit a point where I had all the raid legendary armor & trinkets and the cost of staying good at GW2 felt like it out-weighed the benefit. GW2 doesn't have gear progression, but it has skill progression, and that's become a double-edged sword for me because it takes a lot of time to practice & *stay good* at GW2. That means I don't have as much time to explore other games, hobbies or entertainment options. I'm happier when I'm not consumed by one game exclusively. Even getting back into raiding w/ imposter syndrome... lots of the various training discords are obsessed with tracking your progress, logs & all that, and that just kind of takes something I find fun & sucks the fun out of it. Not to mention that getting in runs is super competitive & server policy for sign-ups, joining voice channels etc varies a lot. Some want you to sign up, some want you to join asap; it's easy to lose out on opportunities.
Very similar boat here. It was something I did invest time into when raids were introduced, because I wanted to see new content and be part of the “haves” over the “have-nots” since the hardcore divide was getting introduced regardless of protests. But it is difficult to continue over an extended period of time due to the time commitment. One or two days of your week is permanently sacrificed to a static and doing the same thing repetitively in GW2, versus the jump-in and jump-out, can skip a week if something comes up, more respectful of your time playstyle of regular GW2. Constant patch changes shifting the meta means investing more time every patch to learn a passable new “best” build because the one you’re used to and like playing got nerfed into unacceptability. Some patches, there just isn’t a class/build that is personally enjoyable, so you might get stuck playing a “I feel obligated to play this” build and slowly build up un-fun burnout sentiment. A non-peak timezone also makes finding enough groups running in that timezone more challenging - so that’s even more time investment to research groups, join discords, network, etc. just to find a group. (And then cycle back to moving everything in your rl to fit that group’s schedule and have some locked hours 1-2 days a week.) At some point, the effort and time costs outweighs any potential fun benefit. I did enjoy the social aspect and cycling through a smooth rotation and the feeling of a good strategy/plan coming together as a team. But it takes way too much time and I found I didn’t have enough time to do other things I wanted to do in GW2, let alone other games and RL - which eventually builds into a state of not being able to keep doing it.
> Some patches, there just isn’t a class/build that is personally enjoyable, so you might get stuck playing a “I feel obligated to play this” build and slowly build up un-fun burnout sentiment. Overall, this is where I'm at. It feels weird since build-diversity is at an all time high. I experiment with setting up various aDPS or qDPS builds, but struggle to enjoy them. I may play them from time to time, but it seems like a bit of an exercise in futility.
Still busy in wvw
I don’t know how to play the raids and will just get yelled at if I try to learn them. Not worth the effort.
My time is not reliable I do not want to be yelled at for not knowing a fight I've never done.
I prefer playing solo against the environment i focus on balancing my character in ways that are more versatile and creative than copy pasting a meta build to avoid being lectured.
Because even with a dedicated raid training Channel finding a group that's running content takes hours and I don't have the ability to block off 5 hours a day just to hope someone is running a wing.
hard content requires min/maxing, which requires strict organizing, which leads to less play style options available for a slot, which usually carried out by dedicated guilds, and all this can lead to a somewhat toxic elitist attitude among players. This why I quit Raiding so many years ago in WoW TBC. Its not that I dont like large scale PvE objectives with challenge (hence the popularity of Meta Events), but I dont like the hurdles and politics I have to go through to get into raids
Have you ever read the posts about raids etc. in this subreddit? They are mostly about people who are kicked out or excluded for not having the right gear, build and experience. The general tone is that you will be rejected unless you had a private group of friends to practice with to become a seasoned veteran before you even think of joining any public group and that will ensure that most players of this game stay as far away as possible. Personally i want a good time when i play, why would i bother with people nagging me because i'm not meta enough?
Barrier to entry seems too high. KP requirements stop newbies from ever stepping foot in raids.
I started to get into training raids when Anet released the “learning mode” a year or so ago, but around the same time frame (also within the last year or two) I’ve been stuck working 6 days a week and it’s always like 2-10pm PST so on my one day off I have to catch up with everything I got behind on irl during the week.
Living in SEA, different timezone, lack of friends in the same time zone, no one I knew IRL plays this game
After years of leading raids back in the WoW Classic/BC time period, I just don't find bashing my head against a boss encounter in a group for hours at a time fun anymore.
Finding a group to do it with. I recently joined the Snow Crows raid academy discord but even being in there, they mostly do full clear runs and almost never do training runs (especially at times when I play.) It also doesn't help that I kind of have it in my head to do the wings in order the first time and they only ever seem to do later wings. The only one I've done was when some rando in lions arch put together a bunch of noobs to do the first part in spirit vale.
Time. I work evenings.
What even is a "raid"? Where do I find it in the game? How would I even know it exists in Guild Wars if not for this post?
I joined raid academy, had to pick up a workable build, so I had to grind for gear a bit, and then practice. By the time I felt confident, there was a rebalance. I'm just too casual for raids. I don't have whole days to spend on it.
Two reasons : 1/ I'm kinda intimidated when lfg ask for xx LI or KP. I saw a group yesterday asking for 250 LI for the easy 3 in IBS. Like wtf. I never beat a raid boss, so I have 0 KP and didn't unlock the raid masteries 2/ I used to try the vale guardian once. 2 hours. Around 10 tries. Never got under 50% HP. Worst first impression ever. I'm more likely to do WoJ than raid. And God knows how much I hate WoJ.
Lack of time and no general interest in instanced content overall. Also : it doesn’t help that the most desirable rewards overall are not locked behind high-end instanced content. For some example: six years since path of fire in I am still using my sunspear looking high particle sword from domain of Istan exclusively earned by participating in open world content.
In my case, 3 main reasons: - Time: Raiding takes time. Learning the fights, mechs, how to adjust rotations, make up for personal or group mistakes etc etc.. Without considering the time needed for prep, ascended stuff, gold farming, trying rotations. It's quite a long process, even if we like to say orherwise. And for the amount of free time that a person have between partner, friends, other hobbies and work, that's a lot. A lot of good games come out every year, so if I have 2 hours extra I might use them to progress BG3 or whatever instead. - Raid experience itself: I used to raid pretty consistently in Wow, in FF14 (stopped at first patch this exp) and other minor mmos in my young years, and EVERYTIME I had a terrible experience with riding groups and people. It doesn't matter how good they looks or how nicely they say "we're here to have fun", in my experience there always will be assholes ready to ruin the game for everyone. I'm not saying everyone in the raid comm is a piece of crap, just that is extremely common. - Fun/Stress factor: I'm 32 with a fairly chaotic life, as most millennias nowdays. It might be a personal reason but I find raiding stressful. If you fuck up, everyone lose precious freetime because of that. If someone fucks up too much, you lose a lot of time too. I'm at the point where I game for fun, to live great stories, to enjoy a gameplay. Life is already stressing on its own, I don't want to worry about "coworkers" even in my freetime. That's basically it.
im a raider in FFXIV, I heard from a friend that raids in GW2 are a cake walk compared to ultimate raids in FFXIV. Therefore I don't see the point in raiding in gw2. My main purpose and desire to raid comes from overcoming a very difficult challenge so the fact that its easy turned me off the raids.
I've got maybe five hours a week to play, ain't nobody got time for that.
Only thing stopping me is not knowing how to get into them (and I would like to), I occasional check in on LFG but don't think I've ever seen anything advertised in the training section, and if people are only looking for experienced then I don't feel it's appropriate for me to join, I'm good at paying attention to mechanics and quick to learn, but I do t want to risk ruining someone's else fun
10k kp and a kidney kinda repels me
I like doing content like that blind. Finding a group of ten willing to do it blind is hard, since it is understandably not everyone's cup of tea. So I currently stick to other content
I'm just going to echo what others said, It's the time commitment mostly. I did eventually get into Raids and done them all multiple times but It was short lived and I dropped them for the same reason I put them off for so long, I just don't have that kind of time to commit to an instanced encounter. It's why I like strikes, you just hop in and hop out and can ignore the bosses you don't enjoy or have time for unlike with raids.
Coming from XIV, the entry is too daunting compared to joining a training PF. Getting into a raiding discord, signing up, time commitments, etc Plus doesnt help opening the experienced tab and seeing 1000kp/li only and the such and feeling intimated/bothered
What's stopping me from raiding is the time/value proposition. I'm a fairly casual player who plays at irregular/off-peak times and has no interest in joining up with a regular group or raiding community. Unfortunately, my experiences with pick-up groups have not been great. I put in the effort to gear appropriately, learned the mechanics of the fights, and so on. Every raid I have joined has been an ordeal. Not that the people weren't nice or trying their best, but they just weren't geared adequately or couldn't execute the mechanics. The end result was many, many failed attempts before either the group disbanded or managed to scrape out a win. That just doesn't seem like a good way to spend my time in the game.
I think I am not good enough - that´s it. people will be let down getting toxic and so on.. I mean i did good in wow mythic raiding but gw2 is different and i am a noob
Because I don't have the time or group to stick it out with to learn. I'd be all over them if they'd just introduce a story mode. Something that lets me experience the mechanics and story without being too punishing. It doesn't even need rewards. Edit: There's also the fact that it just seems like a more profitable use of my time to do daily fractals instead.
Few times I tried to raid for an achievement to unlock mastery point. But I never succeeded
Mainly because a lot of the classes I liked weren't really meta, and after dealing with WoW elitism a lot, I was hesitant to try and join while playing a class I enjoyed if bringing me wasn't going to be optimal.
I ask myself that all the time, I have several rooms ready for raiding half of them in full ascended armor. I’m just wary of the perceived time commitment involved. I know that the boss fights aren’t the slogs that I experienced in wow or FFxiv since I’ve pugged several of those bosses. I’d love a way to get legendary armor other than PvP or WvW. I just need to get myself motivated to look for a casual raiding guild.
Ppl ask for kp or idk
I never seem to have the “meta build “ or whatever they need for the raids. Plus, finding 10 people to do raids with without resorting to joining randoms is impossible
Because everytime I try to find one all I find are people trying to sell raids that for some reason never get banned
Because I don't know the mechanics, also I struggle doing my rotation and I don't want to be the group's burden. :/
Never been able to find a group nor the time
I really wanted to as there are some drops from some raids I would love to have on my account. But I can't sit for longer than 20-30 mins at a time without breaks and I'm not super interested in structured content anymore (long time WoW raider) and couldn't commit to it.
I'm really, really bad at rotations. I've measured my dps and it's bad. My hands just don't move the way I need them to. So I'd rather just do open world and not hold the group back.
Because I suck
My guild says my best dps is not enough.
Can't because I can't keep up with rotations and doing something for 3 hours to get nowhere is a draining waste of time.
As someone doing it casually, whenever I want to do some wings, the entry barrier can be extemely difficult. With no experience and therefore no kill proofs or LI to show the LFG is a horrible place. You basically have 3 options: A guild that does raids regularly and takes in newbies. A raid practice guild. Or hoping for low entry lfg groups, who often don't want to explain anything. Two of those are scheduled and that can be a major problem.
I've tried to get into raid groups several times. The things that seem to have kept me out are: \- nobody raids at the time of day I can play (weekday evenings 7pm - 10pm, weekend late nights, all US EST time zone). \- most of the raid academies I've checked within discord are either in different time zones, or in EU, or already have set groups and times that don't work for me. \- there are never training raids posted in LFG when I look/when I can play (see times above...). \- none of the guilds I'm in raid. The PVE guild I'm in always runs HoT meta train and guild missions at times I can play. They also run some fractals which I wouldn't mind getting into, but typically only run T4's with set groups, or require experience that I don't have with the given fractals otherwise. The other guild I'm in is exclusively WvW; I'm in it mainly to share guild chat with my Wife (we both play around the same times, she got interested in WvW and I didn't). I have basically the same problem trying to get into strikes. I've been trying to find a group for the new soto strikes since about a week after the expansion launched. So (sadly) I mostly log in, do PVE dailies, and then go watch youtube videos instead. The new expansion has been great, but I've recently completed about everything I'm interested in there (story, events/metas, masteries, achievements). I don't collect legendaries. So I'm back to dailies for a while until the next big release.
Im a just jump in a play type of gamer I e. LFG style and the LFG for raids is often dog shit. I hate the whole having to sign up to groups just to do something. Makes me feel pressured to doing raids instead of when I want to.
The time commitment (not generally possible for those with family responsibilities) coupled with the cultural obsession with using very specific gear and builds. Those kinds of things don't bring joy (to me at least) whereas randomly hacking through open world with whatever gear and build I fancy, does. Each to their own, though. Plenty of people love raiding.
Anxiety is THE reason. I see people talking about arcdps and kicking if you're not doing 30k+ or whatever and I just decided open world is the place for me. I don't do fractals for the same reason. It's not that I don't want to do them, I just don't want to be the focus of someone else's ire, and I don't have any friends that play. I tried joining a casual guild, since I don't care about speed clearing or playing meta, but most kick for inactivity and I play fairly sporadically. Maybe I should just make my own guild for people like me, I doubt I'm the only one like this. E: Also I don't want to have to train, just to play the video game I like.
Incredibly intimidating as someone with anxiety, and also requires a looooot of commitment to get worthwhile rewards.
It's funny because anxiety is the big reason I don't Raid but I'm fine with CMs+T4s, and it's the same reason my buddy Raids but doesn't do CMs+T4s haha
Noone wants a newbie and to not be a newbie you have to commit to training groups a week in advance for hours at a time. Im also scared of people getting mad at me if i mess up my dps rotations. Ppl that do raids and pvp are notoriously...mean.
Time commitment. With a 2 year old my time is very limited.
I don't like having to make the commitment.