My FIRST Raid In Guild Wars 2 Was A Revelation

[@Preachgaming]

Having completed Heart of Thorns and Living World Season 3, he was able to FINALLY fulfil the goal of project MMO and step into Guild Wars 2's first raid, and boy was it interesting. Have you tried raiding in Guild Wars 2, what did you think? Drop a comment, we'd love to know.

[@SpanishProgressive]

By the way, you don’t have to kill the add in the “Garbo” add fight, you can just CC him and leave, that’s how most people would do it! Feel like it’s not too big of a spoiler on an annoying fight. Also, you could try the raids in the challenge mode, instead of easy mode, since it seems like a lot of the “inexperienced” people are already playing meta builds.

[@shperax]

It's got a huge problem with dead content. Here's what I mean and a good example. Mount quest. In order to do a certain mount quest, you need to kill a specific Champion that requires at least 3-6 players. You can shout for help, you can queue up in LFG and you can, at times, sit there for hours and hours while no one cares to come help or also happens to be on that quest. With other parts of the game, like once you hit Heart of Thorns, you are completely reliant on finding a pack of other players to rotate through map events. Without that pack of players, the grind is unbearable for most players. I get the point of it's a MMO and meant to be played with others, but at the times when there is no one to play with, the game becomes impossible. If someone were to try and get through Heart of Thorns and everyone is playing End of Dragons, good luck on trying to get through that content. In most Heart of Thorns areas, you are lucky to see 1 or 2 other players just passing through to mop up challenges or mastery points. The entire problem is just getting worse as more expansions release and the majority of players move onto the new content. It leaves the old content barren wastelands, with newer players struggling to progress through old content. This is probably one of the bigger reasons the game bleeds player base so badly once the big crowd has finished new content. The game can't gain and retain new players.

[@Fiercesoulking]

I played all types of content in Gw2 but raids only the first boss and escort xD The reason why raids aren't popular in Gw2 is most of the players are causal but in addition to this class lock and dps check made it worse. Especially class lock is so bad in GW2 they never open up the supporters so all can do the needed boons instead they kept nerving unique boons into obliven. They had a phase after the start of PoE where at least for dps everyone found their spot . The last 18 months before EoD were nightmarish suddenly super grindy content, fractals and raids got cancelled and balance was so I couldn't play my Elementist in fractals cms anymore like so many other classes. Yes I quit (but still have to play EoD at some point)

[@Nr4747]

You should definitely check out the raid cinematics for wing 4, especially the end cinematic after defeating Deimos. It ties very well into Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 lore and is also very relevant to the Living World Season 3 and onwards.

[@dariocarrasco1728]

ok you changed the title screen why tho

[@ablair24]

Here's some additional context about raids. When raids were first introduced with HoT, they were HARD. The base game did not have raids, so there was no pre-established community for this content. There were some hard-core groups out there, but the majority of the player base didn't know what made groups strong. Squads were a new feature too, the idea of subgroups didn't exist, the knowledge of how strong boons were was starting to become mainstream, and the skill level to go from casual to raider was a big barrier for many. You can get through the entire base game without ever reading tooltips or understanding how boons work. Now all of a sudden these skills are mandatory, plus you need to know your character well enough to perform your role, plus you need to learn how to track multiple mechanics at once. For the majority of players, it was too much, so they didn't bother. Maybe they cleared 1-2 bosses, but the effort it took to train wasn't appealing to a lot of players. This killed the raiding community. Anet wanted to put out more raids because, well, that's what MMOs do and part of the playerbase wants them. The problem is it took so much development time and effort, that they couldn't work on other things simultaniously. This is why raid wings took so long to come out. Then when a raid does debut, no one plays it because the community is so small. It's hard to justify the developer resources needed for something 10% of the playerbase will play. They had different ideas on how to fix it, but finally with the latest expansion, EoD, they seemed to have settled on Strike missions, which can be developed alongside existing pieces of content. EoD is their first true outing in what strike missions can offer imo. Very excited to see how they continue developing them in the future!

[@fabianodorer4172]

also in the beginning ther where not many classes who cut give bones, just Chrono was vieble for alac and quicknes and warrier for might.

[@zsocash]

True words, to be honest even if Arenanet would release a perfectly balanced, totally perfect raid wing, the majority of players still would not be interested. The reason is simple, it was always like that ever since GW2 was released. In core game I was a dungeoneer and the case was the exact same. It is what it is and it will not change with Strike Missions for sure. Those who do Strikes are the same people doing raids honestly. 90% of the player base in GW2 are casuals, playing an hour a week, or playing daily but only in open world maps. Luckily for us more dedicated players, that remaining 10% of the playerbase is still decent enough in numbers to always have groups to play the hardest pve contents with.

[@goodshowmanythanks]

Still struggling to grasp what people who play this game actually *do*.

[@SttravagaNZza]

@@goodshowmanythanks They play the game. Other MMO feel like you have a string you follow. This is more like playing Minecraft, you login and do whatever you feel to.

[@DerAnanasbaum]

To be fair, the early raiding community was *very* exclusionary, especially in the pug department; and that didn't really get much better until a few years ago

[@GunnGuardian]

One major reason the Wing 1-4 are all over the place difficultly-wise is that DPS Power creep affected them differently. A big example is Slothazor and Matthias. Matthias got nerfed hard by better access to quickness and Alacrity but Slothazor has a lot of invulerable phases and non-dps mechanics so it's stayed much harder. They were much closer difficultly-wise at launch (some would say Matthias was harder) but now Matthias is a joke and Slothazor is a PuG Killer.

[@cel8888]

Matthias is still a pug killer ( unless you have an hscrg )

[@AzuraeJades]

Matthias is a joke until someone put his poison in the last fountain available by mistake. It doesn't mean it's not possible to win the fight, but that kind of dumb moves are comon in raids, unless you play only with very experienced people.

[@sloqcephiroth]

22:49 Audio clues are a thing in this game "Watch your step. Something feels out of place here."

[@kyoschi4396]

😂 i laught so hard

[@jakepepper5854]

that add transition was phenomenal

[@shadowhawx]

I just hopped in here to say this, lol

[@taganwilliamson34]

True art haha

[@ThatGaudyFox]

Genuinely can't wait to see you do the Path of Fire Raids. The Path of Fire Raids are just so well-made and mechanically fluid that they blow the HoT Raids out of the water, and they're definitely a step up in difficulty.

[@alexandrospapadopoulos4297]

I want his opinion on Dhuum, probably my favorite GW2 boss.

[@baronoke5432]

pepelaugh yet another escort mission

[@mrdorak]

I can't wait for them to spend hours trying wing 5, oh boy.

[@alexandrospapadopoulos4297]

Yeah I wasn't at the part where he said it took 7 hours for Deimos... Wing 5 will indeed be interesting!

[@Netster1]

Hi Preach, as someone who quit GW2 in 2019 having achieved almost everything in the game, I know I'm not really the target audience but I have enjoyed watching your journey SO much. Being able to relive that new player, new content, experience through you has been so entertaining and brought back so many good memories. I'm really looking forward to watching you -play through EoD as I've never played it myself and for the first time in four years I feel like I could be tempted to play GW2 again. A big thank you for the time and effort you're making to showcase this great game.

[@xHeigoux]

I'm pretty much the same. got 8k hours in gw 2 and completed every single pve achievement, inclusing hidden achievements and all collections. towards the end I was only really logging in to fullclear raids and occasionally do fractals although I was already full legendary and didn't need the gold. Had a great time with the game, but all things come to an end. And right now I'm having much more fun playing stuff like secret of mana and chrono trigger for the first time :) I don't know if I'll ever play anoother mmorpg in my life. I might try out ashes of creation when that comes out. I've also had an itch to play eve online for the last 15 years, but that would probably be a huge time investment.

[@leonardceres9061]

this is great for you and your friends preach because you guys have ready-made groups to get together and figure this stuff out and have fun with it. Meanwhile, everyone else has to search and bag and scrounge around to cobble together a party and then the first one or two times the group wipes, while trying to figure out a strategy, people start getting butt hurt and leaving group and those that stay become belligerent jerks. Most of these games that are out today would be amazing. IF you had a great group of like-minded individuals with the maturity and tenacity, to have fun while figuring out the mechanics of a fight. But there in lies the rub.

[@Nr4747]

Deimos hardmode used to be ridiculously difficult before it got hit with its first set of nerfs because of tons of (sometimes) randomly overlapping mechanics - and almost all mechanics being extremely lethal on hardmode at the time. For example: Everybody had to dodge/distort every ground smash he does or they would instantly get thrown of the platform - which meant that you had to perfectly coordinate the dodge direction when the teleport circle appeared at the same time or someone would not get ported downstairs, which was an instant wipe.

[@Dreamfillah]

It's not exactly perfect, but it's interesting that the timeframe of raid wipe one-shot mechanics matches with Legion being out when Deimos was released, albeit before 7.2

[@stuartrobertson5062]

Sounds like Mythic Archimonde in HFC

[@HelloFellowMellowMarshmallow]

Haven’t done any raids but that sounded like a rooded up version of Boneskinner’s “walk left” that a lot of people still can’t get used to hahaha.

[@dylanwarwick4429]

@@HelloFellowMellowMarshmallow yes and no, rather, there's a mechanic that pugs LOVE to fail in deimos and it's a squad wiper.

[@lostsanityreturned]

@@HelloFellowMellowMarshmallow Fun fact, boneskinner has actual mechanics... people just ignore them with healing, damage mitigation boons, stab and dodges.

[@TDQ_Gaming]

I'm fairly certain that escort quests are game designers White Whale. They wont feel complete until they create an escort quest that isn't universally hated.

[@timogul]

"I shall be the one to craft the Good Escort Quest!"

[@ikeaira8701]

imo if they just increased the NPC's speed 3x, Escort Quest wouldn't be as bad. Or at Least make the NPC's speed as fast as the Player Character(s)...

[@ASpaceOstrich]

I suspect Escort Quests are one of those things that, on paper, should be good, but for some reason just feel like shit in practice. I wonder if you replace the npc you're escorting with a payload you're pushing it changes things? Cause everyone hates escort quests but considerably less people hate payload escorts and they're basically the same thing when you break them down.

[@ikeaira8701]

@@ASpaceOstrich I feel people "like" payload escorts more is because generally they're faster. Hardly any time is wasted lollygagging around, waiting for the NPC to finish some bs animation that has them run off the path. Payloads, they're straight to the destination with some mobs that may slow ya down for half a second.

[@W4lhalla]

As someone who raided in GW2 back then. Good to see people can still enjoy them. Also surprised to hear that raid participation from the get go was quite low. Remember Anet saying that it was much higher than they expected after they released them. There were quite a few problems with GW2 raiding. One was rooted in how how braindead most of the content was were you could beat most content just by pressing 1. And raids suddenly require an entire skillset that GW2 didn't even teach. But the one that killed the raiding community was on Anet itself. It was the infrequent releases, paired with atrocious raid marketing and classic Anet communication. Waiting time between third and fourth wing was like over 9 months, with no one in the community knowing if Anet would release another wing. And when the fourth wing was released, it turned out to be the easiest of them all... And the classic Anet combination kept going. PoF raids had infrequent releases with strange communications and plans for raids that changed every update ( For example, Anet had 2 raid teams for a while to make releases more frequent but it went to no where and releases were still infrequent ). And after the last PoF raid, there was no communication at all about the future of raiding from Anet. ( Until one small dev forum post revealed that they benched developing raiding for quite a while ). For the Raid bosses. Well there are some quite fun bosses out there. Slothasaur was THE boss were the devs were just having fun doing stuff. Surprised that you like Keep Construct, it was quite a disliked boss in the community, due to bugs, ugly telegraph overlap and rng deciding if you kill ghosts or if everyone gets bombs. Deimos was also a very fun and involved fight... if you weren't the hand kiter. You basically bring in a class whose only job was to not engage the boss and get touched by his hands over and over... The existence of this role is quite a big flaw since this turns a 10 man fight into a 9 man fight.

[@ginbim]

It's really so sad that despite the raids had initially multiple dev teams working parallel with an ambituos plan to release about six wings a year the actual inconsistent launch schedule and lack of communication of it left the fans being frustrated and understandably very disappointed. There was clearly an exciting potential in raids as a concept and especially their later designs were really promising but the constant restructuring and impactful layoffs of the time undoubtedly resulted something nobody wanted to happen and it was handled very poorly to say the least.

[@kellanjones5588]

I was a diehard GW1 fan when i was younger and played a bit of GW2 when it first came out. I love seeing a blind approach to this content. Great video guys!! Keep em coming

[@akoskustos6472]

Fun fact: as soon as you go into speedrunning these filler events and event based bosses like escort and twisted castle become one of the most interesting content. For escort you are basically playing on the edge the whole time and 1 wrong move or mistimed skill resets the fight. In twisted castle you bring classes with specific mobility skills to skip everything and move kinda out of bounds. During W2 bandit trio you also want to bring specific classes and prepare the next event with portals and jumping to places you basically should not be able. W5 also has this, but I do not want to spoil anything. And these have a lot more variaty and time saving potential than bosses.

[@xecor4450]

Bro got carried by heal scourge through first few raids otherwise he wouldnt have the experience of "we just killed it without knowing snything".

[@TheRedGauntlet]

I know right. Heal Scourge is basically cheating in these instances >:

[@kxmode]

13:52 That was a flawless segue into your sponsor. So smooth that I watched the whole thing because I was like "damn that was smooth."

[@VulpineDemon]

I'm going ot call Defile "Oil" now because apparently two games can't have different mechanic names.

[@Alkhaldi92]

I have around 3k LI and 250 KP on almost every boss, it is always fun to see new players joining raids for the first time. Heck, I don't have static and I always clear my weekly raids with pugs/lfg and sometimes I even clear them in a TRAINING run, even though it takes twice the time for a normal clear, however, when we finally clear the whole wing it just feels amazing :) I truly hope one day that Anet focuses on raids more often, maybe make it more easier for the casual players to join raids. I really don't want this part of the game to die =(

[@KotMatroskin]

Big yes on Xera making your heart jump into your throat. I raided for a couple years on and off, and this fight always made me sit on the edge of my seat. The music in it is just absolutely amazing. The dialogue that boss has and the voice delivery - awe striking. Such an amazing boss! Gives me goosebumps every single time. I remember trying to tank and learning the clock and the Krytan number notation and drawing diagrams on a piece of paper. :D Amazing boss! ++

[@nvalidwerdz1078]

Preach has de-aged like ten years since he started playing MMOs, holy shit. Keep up whatever you're doing Mike, looking sharp.

[@andresrodriguez9841]

OMG the transition to the AD was marvelous hahah. GJ.

[@srarts123]

As a note for bandit trio, if you break their defiance bar before they set up the mortars, you don't need to kill the add and can jump back immediately. This is probably something you know now but generally you have somebody with AoE cc skills that can handle it. The bosses themselves actually are kind of interesting as before you read them there are journals explaining their weaknesses which ties to the interactable objects around the arena. Burg is alergic to bees so the bee hives debuff him, Zane abuses the wargs so the wargs do high damage to him, and Nurella's oil barrel fumes are highly combustible so they burn her when you throw them on top of her. It's an annoying encounter for more veteran players as it is a lot of waiting for the mechanics to happen, but it is pretty well thought out Also I don't think the reason raids aren't done by probably 90% of the community and the move to strikes is because of that, but rather the raid community for a long time was extremely toxic. They would require 50+ kills on a boss just to join the group and on the other hand a large majority of players said "I want to the play the game my way, I don't want to have to learn a rotation and gear out a specific way" so it created a huge divide between the experienced and inexperienced players in the game. Many of those players even to today believe raids are extremely toxic while more LFGs don't require any kill proof at all anymore. The other reason for them to move to strikes, and anet has said this multiple times, is because they take less time to develop. The strikes in EoD are all rehashes of story fights made for a party of 10 and they can push out a single boss encounter instead of having to develop an overarching story and set of bosses to fit that story. I personally don't like the strikes nearly as much as the raid encounters because normal is really easy and the challenge motes just aren't fun imo.

[@Muten1988]

Very interesting opinions from somebody who will only do the fights once and never come back. Makes perfect sense, you out level raids in WoW, and a sooth dificulty progression for each encounter is important, since the content have a expiration date.

[@Djynni]

As a GW2 AND WoW player I'm really enjoying your perspective.

[@LLPTV]

You actually get a legendary insight for doing the twisted castle so it kinda is a boss.

[@LegeFles]

That's a recent change.

[@KokkeOP]

exactly. the amount of ignorance I see on these reviews about GW2 is amazing hahaha he don't even kow what's going on and jump to conlusion rapidly. lmao.

[@LegeFles]

@@KokkeOP the irony. You dont know the whole point of these videos is that he's playing the game 'blind' on purpose, which he has mentioned multiple times.

[@kingvonderwelt5090]

Man that final deimos phase really is way too short. He looks freaking epic there!

[@daze4135]

Nah, if they made the fight longer, you'd quickly run out of playable area as more oils and hands still spawn. It's better to think that at 10% Deimos is effectively dead and the last phase is just for spectacle

[@fynale2049]

@@daze4135 *defiles*

[@daze4135]

@@fynale2049 **OILERS**

[@Xbob42]

@@daze4135 ...they could just spawn less of them, or none at all. There's no reason they have to keep spawning, lol.

[@daze4135]

@@Xbob42 then what would be the point of a no-mechanics epic 3rd phase?

[@fozz3498]

Loved the fact you are drinking a beer while explaining the twisted castle. Hilarious - you need one after completing it haha.

[@MiTaReX]

22:40 lies, Twisted Castle is considered a boss and there is a reward for finishing it. A little less than "proper" bosses, but it exists and you still get a Legendary Insight, so it is considered a boss, albeit an easy one.

[@elementotv2893]

Thanks for trying out GW2 and giving it a fair chance. Loving the streams and videos

[@Azsharah]

You guys better prepare, cuz wing 5 is like nothing you’ve ever had before in gw2. Wings 1-4 are actually tied thematically into a gw1 story arc, and was made specifically for it (this is why you guys did not understand a single thing about the story). Wing 5 is a bit similar, meaning gw1 players will know what the wing is about, and wings 6 and 7 are tied to path of fire expansion. Can’t wait to see how you guys will progress in w5! GL and GJ with project MMO so far!

[@nicolefrench2968]

Each game should be relatively self-contained from a lore perspective with adequate resources available to get a general understanding of the needed lore for following a story. I’ve always felt like I was missing out on Lore in GW2. It’s for reasons like this.

[@RedNuii]

@@nicolefrench2968 they explain everything you need to know about gw1 in gw2 through cinematic recaps and lore books

[@nicolefrench2968]

@@RedNuii Can’t definitively disagree. But if they are present, I was never guided towards them. I actually don’t think I’ve seen a single lore book… I’ve seen a few pages, engravings, or tablets that maybe have a paragraph written that I have no context for so most of the information goes over my head. Maybe other people can connect paragraph 1 about some random person read at level 20 in Brisbon Wilds with paragraph 2 read in Ore a month later in your journey about the same person. I usually dont make the connection. The extent of what I remember is usually, “that name sounds familiar.”

[@SoFishtry]

@@nicolefrench2968 GW2 literally shits lore books. If you've never seen one, there's no saving you lmao

[@RedNuii]

@@nicolefrench2968 No flame, but realistically gw2 doesnt guide you to anything. But all through the story it shits out lore books as the other comment said. But I still respect your opinion. :)

[@sssembler]

And there ladies and gentleman we have the Preach cycle. Play an mmo like a fanatic and suck off the developers, 'get bored' and moan about it, swap to other mmo and repeat sucking off (e.g. trip to blizzard hq and sucking up to Ion), play like a fanatic, get bored... flip back to another mmo (Guildwars) and repeat. Likely back to FFXIV next.

[@kungsmurfen]

Any oilers?

[@rkbkirin5975]

My time is much too limited to do raiding - the only reason I can play GW2 at all is because so much of the content is streamline and concise. It's wonderful to find an MMO where you don't have to constantly commit solid blocks of time and adjust your schedule around a video game. Also when I do manage to play for a longer period (once a week at best) it is with a very tight-knit group of friends and we really do not want to have to deal with a larger group of strangers, even if they are polite and helpful. GW2 is our own experience and we're happy with it that way. Plus when I do manage to have a longer block of play time, I really prefer to do WvW over any of the other game modes. For people with the excess time and willingness to join raiding guilds, that's great they can manage it, but I'm very glad GW2 offers enough diverse content that other playstyles can be accommodated.

[@Musicaddictly]

Preach, you playing GW2 is so rad to see. Watching your journey has been amazing, thanks for the awesome content. Cheers!

[@FanOfKOTOKO]

It's been a hot minute since I played but IIRC the first four wings runs somewhat parallel to near the end of Heart of Thorns and alongside Living World season 3, and ultimately concludes a story-line from GW1.

[@Jaydo]

Almost all of the biggest complaints are the things that get extremely easy or take zero time or effort once you understand the encounters over time. W3 Escort, and Twisted Castle both get super fast, super easy. Samarog subphase gets nuked by a push, a pull, and an immob. To put things into context my group does W1-4 in under two hours every week with a few CMs, and we're not reallyt *that* fast. I think one problem with blind raiding in this game is that it's typically done by players who still don't know the mechanics of the base game. To be fair, this can take a long time for people because the game does a terrible job of teaching you about anything.

[@jozzetv]

Also the bosses themselves are really fast encounters. The biggest issues about time, is switching between encounters (trash in between and how to get past it) and player downtime. Waiting for player to take a bio break, someone at the door, phone, getting a drink, switching the build, getting gear from another toon. All of this costs so much time. If you eliminate all that stuff you get a full clear of w1-7 (with some CMs or even all of them) in around 3h.

[@traveling.down.the.road56]

@Jaydo, I see this comment all the time, that GW2 doesn't teach its players anything, but is it really true, or is it because the developers are/were all gamers, who know how to learn game mechanics and skills, and the average GW2 player is somebody who is more used to playing some simple phone platformer game, and they don't bother reading anything in the game, then complain when they get to the first little challenge. Everyone rushes through the base game and story, instead of using that time to learn how the game works, and how different GW2 is in its approach to gameplay and player movement required. Edit: Perhaps if Anet increased the difficulty in the base game, it would force players to learn how the game works a bit more, before they reach level 80? That plus pointing out the importance of boons and conditions as well as break bars, early in the game, might improve the early game experience, and better prepare players for what is to come in Heart of Thorns.

[@Jaydo]

@@traveling.down.the.road56 Anet started in the right direction with the training island in EoD, but that should have been added to every starting map of the base game too, and expanded upon. It's one thing to learn all the ability mechanics and survive the game better, like is necessary for HoT maps, but it's an entirely different thing to communicate to players how to effectively evaluate their own combat performance. Making some parts of the base game harder might help, but something needs to teach players how to read and understand how boons effect your output, and which skills are actually your high dps skills. So many people think the game is just "mash all abilities" still, not realizing they're doing 1/3 or less damage than they could be doing. The other big thing not explained by the game is inventory management. So many people quit the game without knowing what to salvage/tp/vendor/trash, how to salvage all, how to deposit materials, etc. There are a lot of complex systems in GW2 that differ greatly from other MMOs, so I can't blame most of the players for not knowing any better. Anyone who is outgoing/social, willing to research, and will actually play with other people regularly should have an easy time finding the right people to learn these things on their own, though.

[@traveling.down.the.road56]

@@Jaydo Yeah, I agree with everything you said, but Anet has never been good at going back to fix or improve existing code, and waiting all the way until the EoD expansion to add some more training areas to the game is very late in the game.

[@zakuraayame5091]

haven't watched for a while, but when he said 'here we have a floor' ... I finished up with 'now we have to inspect it!'

[@AlbertHoltsclaw]

That skillshare transition. You sneaky bastard.

[@Crimson8Sun]

You do get rewarded in Twisted Castle. I think a lot of the events involving mobs in-between fights give LI for Legendary Armor as well other goodies.

[@sithpanda]

I really love what you did here. Blind raiding is fun, if you can do it. It sounds especially challenging without clues and some of the ridiculousness that ensued.. BUT, it also sounds like there were some hidden gems. I do feel the disappointment of how quickly the final, and hidden, phase went down. There was an initial burst of excitement of something new and then, it's dead? lol. GREAT VIDEO!

[@TheRedGauntlet]

You will have a wild time with the final boss of Wing 5

[@tg7837]

wait, in all the raiding i've done we just called it "Black" not "oil"

[@timogul]

I will say this, I played GW2 practically every day from launch, through about mid 2020. I stopped playing partly because of computer issues at the time, but I had been slowly checking out for a while, and raids were one of the big reasons why. I was just never a "raid" player, and one of the best things about GW2 was that it was a game for people who weren't raid players, and then they added raids, and they locked Legendary Armor behind those raids, which made GW2 players second class citizens in their own game. That's when the love died.

[@traveling.down.the.road56]

Did you forget that Legendary armor (different looking) is also available from playing WvW, and PvP? Also, since the release of SotO expansion, there is another set of Legendary armor that can be acquired by playing PvE content. I do agree with how you felt though, as I was not a GW2 Raid player for a long time. Now I am happy to Raid in GW2, but I still will only do it with players I know, or a static squad, that I know isn't going to flake out and quit just because we wipe a few times.

[@timogul]

@@traveling.down.the.road56 WvW and PvP are worse than raids. The core audience for GW2 is and always has been relatively casual PvE players, people who do not enjoy high challenge, highly multi-player reliant content. Every other aspect of the game is carried on their backs. And yeah, they have added things since then, but it was far too late. That stuff should have been there from the start, or at least by PoF. As for me, it's too late for me to come back, I'm enjoying Genshin too much. Natlan, let's go!

[@traveling.down.the.road56]

@@timogul Sadly, that’s the story of many former GW2 players. Too little and too late with the improvements that the players wanted, the fixes that were needed, and the features that should have been added sooner. Plus, GW2 was initially meant to be a primarily PvP game that would be added to eSports, but it didn’t gain enough traction in that regard.

[@michaeladamson1729]

Nice skill share. Good work.

[@TheJoukai]

Followed GW2 prior to launch, played in the Beta, even did HoT raids up to Gorseval when they first came out- never got beyond that point because the community had an awful gate-keeping mentality. People asked for full ascended gear, having to link raid currency to prove worthiness, all kinds of things like that, and it just soured me on the whole thing- that's not to mention meta comps blocking certain classes out raiding (I recall Necromancer basically being blacklisted from raiding) I just wish they stayed with 5-man content. They could have created more accessible content that's just as mechanically and visually interesting with 5-man instances. Everything about GW2 class pve design concerning boons and composition broke down when they started balancing for permanent 25-might, Fury, quickness for 10-man groups, and the dominant comps in raids caused it.

[@WizKi47]

Well, there is Fractals tho :/ If you want to join accessible pugs, go fractals, if you want more, go raiding. Don't wish Raids become fractals because its literally 5-man raiding.

[@Xariann]

This is very informative, finally a video about endgame I can relate to as a WOW Player. It gives me an idea of whether I want to invest time into raiding.

[@ginbim]

OILERS! And your mount is not a panda. :D And one more thing: YeahBoi!

[@RedNuii]

Don’t forget MIGHT = RIGHT

[@Belastro_]

the sink is dripping at 1:20 kill me

[@BM03]

Holy shit that Deimos boss's second phase looks like you're fighting the antichrist in the final expansion ever. What a sick design and music. The quick death was anticlimactic but, that aside. Damn.

[@LilyNaikiir]

also, a quick tip regarding the people of the raid group who didn't get the deimos kill: if they are the ones to open the instance, it'll open up at deimos and you can help them get the kill (which should be quick since you now know what to do)

[@MoGaiinz]

Glad Preach changed the title of the video.

[@yeti25934]

I'd love to see a revisit of the raid wings with experienced raiders once you're done with your tour of the game, I wonder if/how your opinion would change if you were privy to the strats used by experienced raiders nowadays

[@aid4nski215]

I respectfully disagree, I like the sort of sidequests (shovel some artifacts, defeat bandits) that they do between bosses since they also give some more worldbuilding, and secrets related to the boss. And I really like how some in between boss quests are a chase scene, just shoveling through rubble, bandits and bees, because it gives a change of pace (than just dps-ing 1 singular big boss and doing mechanics) that I personally really like... (and also because i'd consider myself good at platforming jumping puzzles -3- )

[@sinchill5424]

Woot, been waiting on this video. So excited to see how you handle wing 5 ;) rofl!

[@kyoschi4396]

7 h for deimos sooo…. 14 h for mr.death?

[@vaellxju]

From what i see, the druid carried sooooo hard on Matthias, i see him simply deleting some of the mecanics at the end that are definitely not spotable by a "blind" player !

[@vaellxju]

(Or he got lucky, who knows)

[@Orakio]

I'm excited to see your reactions to Wings 5 -7.

[@Richard-ys2ns]

Im giving you the benefit of the doubt that the only reason all that stuff is on your kitchen windowsill is because you removed it from the cupboard during your spring clean. If not then im totally speachless 😮

[@matthiusatomfist1168]

Why did the title change from "this is why nobody raids in gw2"

[@ch.k.3377]

Because each video uses multiple titles for the algorithm.

[@gtarman8d]

Preach, couldn't have picked a better boss to put a skill share add into! Top notch

[@lashonawaldmeister1111]

I think GW2 has a very difficult relationship with difficulty. I believe a large portion of the GW2 playerbase is extremely casual, which is fine, but I remember a decent amount of people being upset about the HoT raids, because they had story, and it tied in with the overall story of the game a little bit, so people were upset when they couldn't experience it, yet weren't willing to "get good" to beat the raids. To this day this still reflects in some of the decisions, especially around strikes, which have a story encounter for 1 person, then the strike version of it for 10 ppl (being very easy), and then the challenge mode, which is for the people that actually want an engaging encounter. GW2 always has to account for such a massively wide gap between the average casual player and the top players, that a lot of encounters can end up being trivial for experienced raiders, while still being unbeatable for a large portion of the community...

[@GarredHATES]

some of the worst things you can put in a video game are, Underwater areas, Unnecessary Stealth segments and escort missions!

[@mormegil231]

The puzzle trash encounters worked fine for the first time - Personally i really loved things like twisted castle. Hell even escort was fine the first time. Gw2 community likes puzzles so it was pretty fine. Might not be for you but it is fine by us. The main issue with these is that when you do it again it is frustrating as hell. Raids in gw2 are made to be farmed and when you are farming then these encounters feel so incredibly bad. I really wish we could skip them after the first clear.

[@4321Enjoy]

if doing the raids a second time is not fun, then they were not fun in the first place, they were something new, not something fun

[@mormegil231]

@@4321Enjoy I 100% disagree with that. This is literally how all puzzles worked since the dawn of time. After you know the solution repeating them is boring (unless you love speedrunning things). That does not mean that puzzles are useless funwise. Are you going to invalidate a whole genre of games just because they are fun only once? Some things are by nature actually fun just the first time. It is just that a good puzzle in repeatable content, after you know it, you should be able to skip it. That is the problem with twisted castle and spirit run encounters. You need to re-do them after you know the solution.

[@RedNuii]

@@4321Enjoy also the raid community is super adamant on having these puzzles and they will never go away. There is something so special about speed running these as compared to just the bosses that it fuels most of the raid scene. In about a week there will be a raid speed run tournament but most of the excitement comes from where groups find shortcuts to puzzles, speed run jumping sections and minimize downtime between bosses. This is why there will never be speed runs for single boss encounters or multi boss with no intermission

[@BangladeshMandalore]

Iron Maidens felt nothing like Sabotha to fight.

[@jl-nz7gh]

Best ad plug ever

[@alexandreduarte4448]

I hope he also looks at the high level fractals. T4 (and CM) shattered observatory might be my favorite fight in the whole game

[@draconidmike]

love all the fair comments, good work and get going

[@cujoegaming5277]

Great to see your journey in GW2! I like raiding and strikes a lot here but am not so much a fan of fractals and the whole collection system. But luckily the MMO RPG market is imo better than ever and I just play the stuff I like and ignore all things I don't like in games these days and aimply play multiple games at a time. Have fun on your journey.

[@zooleebest]

I was fortunate to be able to witness most of this because his stream start before i went home from work. The heartbreak on those first 2 hours of deimos. XD

[@Sigfried2708]

escort is good for player who don't raid, its a "raid" but very simple

[@Trisander]

Preach these videos are honestly so fun to watch please keep them coming

[@jesseganzel2142]

Cant wait to see your D2 content! D2 raids are super different and youll enjoy them. No mandatory* trash between bosses in raids, just glorious visuals and some crazy jump puzzles. Love the GW2 content. I was super Hype when it came out but waffled on the lukewarm reception. Plus WoW at the time was my peak raiding, so i didnt pick it up. Seeing the content through you is awesome.

[@porcin3proph3t4]

rgw issue with your sabatha theory is how long it takes to develop raid encounters. Its highly unlikely they could cop that out and develop it that quick. Possible? maybe

[@jrdougan]

I could imagine different game devs doing it that fast. But not Anet, not then.

[@ginbim]

@@jrdougan when W1-3 was in production there were three dedicated raid dev teams working parallel on 3 wings at once. Then they even announced in an Anet live stream that they would make about six wings a year with the resources they got. But then the whole dev team had to go through a major restructuring and apparently the raid dev resources were seriously cut to do other works. Before that the three teams were capable of producing three boss encounters in less than two months.

[@yundaz]

Can't wait for Asmongold to say... Oh damn this actually looks pretty good.. to then never trying gw2

[@ghostplanetstudios]

He’ll probably nit pick the raid to death. He treats GW2 the way he used to treat XIV before he finally played it himself then completely changed his mind

[@kyoschi4396]

😂that one will never change his mind even though he obviously is wrong…. i mean, how embarrassing would that be

[@hobertbobert1664]

@@ghostplanetstudios Tbh I dont think he liked FF as much as some guys think he liked it. He hasnt touched the game since forever and always gives an excuse if people are asking him to play it. He never outright says it because of the backlash from the cringe community he'll get, but he clearly isnt a fan. I'll bet he will grift GW2 at some point as well just for the $$$. GW2 does fine without him.

[@alexstewart4077]

Ehh he’ll hate it simply because everything cool in the game is in the shop

[@ghostplanetstudios]

@@hobertbobert1664 I came to the same conclusion about him and XIV. He continues to deny that take but eh…actions speak, you know? His excuses are pretty weak too. But as you said, the game will do fine without him as it has been trending upward lately

[@kimaclaret]

I'm about 8 minutes in, and I'm already enjoying the differences in this video direction.

[@batfirst]

Can't wait for the Destiny 2 serie, the way you're approaching raiding is interesting and refreshing to watch

[@Nope-lj5uc]

love it, going to be following your raid journey closely

[@_bits_and_bytes]

Really happy to hear Preach is continuing to play GW2

[@Wistfuldragon]

I've been a raid and strike trainer in GW2 for probably 4-5 years now and I can say that the scene has changed drastically in that time. Bosses that were incredibly difficult upon release (ex, Matthias) have been made easier and more accessible; but it is worth noting that the bosses were a product of their time - they released when only Heart of Thorns elite specializations were in the game, and some of those specs functioned much differently than they do even now. And by and large damage numbers in that time were significantly less - a good benchmark for DPS was a little over 30K, versus vindicator which can pull upwards of 42K+ in the right situations - pulling 1/3 of your potential damage at raid launch simply would not be enough to kill a good portion of these bosses. I'm glad that raids (and end game instanced pve in general) have become more accessible, be it through damage increases, emboldened mode, wider boon access, etc. As you move into Wings 5-7 (Path of Fire raids), I think you'll find an enjoyable experience with most of these encounters, if a bit easier with today's game state. Happy Raiding!

[@gknucklez]

Damage being "significant less" is a bit of a myth. Our static ran multiple Tempests who did 50k at the golem at the time. Daredevil's rota was auto attack, dodge and one other skill and did 30k+ which was therefore the minimum damage even a vegetable could perform. The players simply got better with time and optimized everything. Matthias got easier because you just need a few people who know how to cc and a bit of condi cleanse, who can carry the rest. Sloth on the other hand has many different mechanics which all add pressure to the fight if not handled correctly and the two most important have random targets. It is very easy to wipe an experienced group even today, if the random poison is placed wrongly and the random tank slacks and not move fast enough to the cleared area and face Sloth away from the squad for its breath attack.

[@torgrimhanssen5100]

ooh, condition damage. Back in the "heyday" Triple trouble was practically the hardest content. Not only due to the decap and kill timers but the husks that where only vulnerable to condition damage but also that any additional player that hit it would add to it's HP and you usually only had 2 players on each of the 3 locations dealing with 3 husks on a regular interval and that the husk would move towards the highest density of players.

[@jirikral1794]

Is it just me who does not consider two days spent in the game content a "grind"... idk but whenever I tried to raid in WoW, getting required ilvl took me way longer. I still remember those piles of declined applications for mythic+, raid, and bg groups xD Maybe I missed something tho.

[@Mantorp86]

I can tell you why I don’t do raids. I don’t like to stress out while playing games and GW2 is great for that. I played GW2 for 2k hours from the start and I still play it. I don’t have friends who play GW2 and I don’t want to communicate with know-it-alls from PUGs. I just enjoy world events and public mega bosses and they will probably never change my mind.

[@Scrydragon]

Slothazor appears to be almost identical to one of the fights in Highmaul in WoD -- Brackenspore. With Brackenspore, you had to use the flamethrowers to clear the creeping moss off the ground.

[@Kiwicrack]

That segue for the ad read - crisp, BiS. giving Bellular a run for his money.

[@JohnSmith-rr3jt]

No one raids because there is almost no reason to. When raids came out that was how you got specific ascended gear with specific stats in some item slots, and there was no other way to fill those slots with said specific stats. But since the game has progressed you can get those ascended items in those slots with those specific stats, so now there is no actual reward for raids (aside from raid masteries which serve no purpose outside of raids and cosmetics). Also the fact that the raid meta got so over-optimised (to the same degree as vanilla wow) that unless you had a casual guild that raided (good luck with that) you had to play meta or you would never get in a raid. And trying to get into a raid as a new player was also impossible because they would never take anyone without experience.

[@Tessa_Ru]

I am just, so delighted to hear about the escort quest and the labyrinth thing. Like I would HATE to actually have to do it, but it feels very on-brand with my experiences with the exploration 😂

[@KuroSy]

Great video! Finding out about an encounter without knowledge is really fun! I just want to add a note. Prior 2022 the team comp was very strict in terms of what class you had to bring. We had a lot of "jails" but during the last years anet opened a lot more opportunities for supports and boon bringers. There's more freedom of playstile and thanks to easy mode and strikes i do feel like raids are being more tackled by the gw2 community lately! I hope anet will consider bringing back raids when the community gets more into them! I also feel like content creators like you may have a big impact on that as well! :3

[@Nuh]

I wonder how many more times they'll change the thumbnail lol

[@Battleracc]

Maybe this can inspire more people to join in on GW2 raiding! It's not as intimidating as it seems

[@Northernsolstice]

Maybe, if they actually watch the video. Title makes it sound like all of the raids are trash.

[@chilliewhk]

I played GW2 for 10000 hours and I can unequivocally say I did not enjoy the raids. Luckily the devs later added the main draw of legendary armor to other parts of the game so the PvP/WvW community could stay in their preferred game modes. I may be in the minority for this opinion, but I never felt like I was missing an important part of the game.

[@helix1713]

OMG... you need a cleaner and one of those people that can get rid of the clutter for you... Love your video by the way...

[@gefilte86]

The only reasons I was doing HoT raids is for legendary tokens and gold from weekly CMs. Then, I was focusing on daily fractals CM 98-100 for gold(best time spend/gain ratio) and some nice transmog. Naturaly got the mats for the legendary backpack overtime. Legendary crafting is massive gold sink which gives you permanent gear/sigil/runes unlocks across all your characters in your account and it's massive quality of life. If you are still in LW3, start doing the achievements for Aurora ring. It's pretty challenging , especially the part when you have to dwelve in Draconis Mons ,for 16 days. God never again.

[@gontrandjojo9747]

He won't do legendaries. Legendaries are farm for people who have GW2 as their main (and sometimes only) game. He is a streamer, I think he only wants to do the content the game has to offer and then move to something else (maybe after all it's done play the game casually and not totally leave it, but I don't see him farm for luxury items).

[@Midaspl]

Hey, gonna fix few misunderstandings in there. Wing 2 bandits fight is actually cool and I like it :) . You don't need to stand outside to kill the mortars. You just jump out, CC them and come back to the group using jump pad outside. Wing 3 Twisted Castle is technically 'a boss'. It gives LI, which is a boss-specific reward. Xera is also my favourite boss at W3. Your strat was not that unusual TBH. Current strat is just way more optimal, but it was found some time after the first kill. At the beginning circular strat was the one to go. Wing 4, Deimos - it's 'black' ;) . Also, Deimos has 10% in both phases, but the big one has actually double the health pool of the smaller one, so even if both show 10%, the big one actually has twice more HP. Glad you enjoyed it, some PoF encounters are the best in the game right now, so have fun there :) .

[@dollarbr]

The swap to skillshare sponsor was so damn funny that you got me to subscribe to your channel xD

[@jaydenjezowski4339]

Go back and open the chest at the end of Twisted Castle! There is loot there!

[@JosephSaintClair]

As a previous hardcore wow raider (upto bfa)and a long time gw2 player. You hit the nail on the head. Looking forward to you getting through pof stuff. I think I know what your reaction will be like. Either way. Looking forward to you clearing wing 5. Also looking forward to giggling a bit with your experience with IBS strikes then seeing you do eod strikes. Note: worth doing also doing some of the eod world events for filler!!!

[@Kasaaz]

Twisted Castle sounds like Destiny Raiding. Edit: Oh no, he's doing Destiny 2 raiding now...

[@iwrathg1122]

as a 10 year vet, Twisted Castle is STILL the bane of my existence and I usually find an instance that has TC already cleared because I hate doing it lol

[@G8Thunder]

Can't wait for you to get to the strike missions! Also look forward to seeing your D2 videos; I don't play it a ton, but I think it's a really cool game.

[@Flupperz]

Always wanted to raid in GW2 but it feels like it has a harder barrier to entry than other games IMO. I feel like I wasn't ever really able to pug stuff, you had to have a guild, which was hard to do as someone floating in and out. But I could be wrong

[@andrevanas85]

The raids are actually very easy when you know whats going on and have a half decent group. Best way to go about it is to find a guild that has raid training. they should sort you out quick quick

[@moo3oo3oo3]

@@andrevanas85 I second this. Find a guild that is new player friendly or does raid training and you should be good to go for PUGs.

[@kyoschi4396]

you can also join any trainingraid, the gw2 community is very open for newbies🎉

[@mormegil231]

You are not completely wrong in the sense that yeah learning these fights is way better with a guild or a community to do things as. The thing is that it is not that tough to find one. There are many guilds that do raid trainings and there are big training communities that work well with the in and out schedule some people have, since the training days often have a sign up that are first come first served and not a static group and only really do 1 or 2 bosses a night.

[@erythroniumrene]

There are training groups up every hour every day. I only started plying a couple months ago and have raised all of W1,2 and W4 through pugging in training lfg and experienced. Literally no excuses

[@weissekrahe9670]

"They are wrong, they are incorrect, they are disturbed individuals..." XD LOL Looking forward to you trying out Path of Fire. It's my favorite expansion. Also: Fractals!

[@urowve]

29:40 I can understand the frustration about the escort in W3, but not really about these small "events". When I did it for the first time, I found it interesting, rather than annoying and in most groups, you get the chance to get something to drink/people go afk for a minute or two, so it doesn't matter too much. Also, it should be added that raids in GW2 have some of the best storytelling in the entire game and these two short events in W4 are part of that. You said yourself that you didn't care enough to make yourself familiar with the story and fair enough, you want to see the bosses, but having seen your journey so far, I'm quite convinced that if you made yourself familiar with the empty W4 instance and the story, you would probably enjoy the raid/game more afterwards.

[@urowve]

Having said that, I understand wanting to rush to the next boss if you don't care about the story and that many raiders won't care. But in your case I genuinely believe that you are missing out on enjoyment of the game by trying to rush through and focusing only on one aspect, similar to what you did in HoT at the start.