Strike Missions 2.0 In End of Dragons? | Blog Post Announcement Details 

As I understand it is, that important boss fights you will have during the story will additonally be turned into Strikes. That would mean that a "Story Mode" strike will be designed for a single player with an additional soft scaling if you play with up to four friends. Then there is your 10man normal mode and your 10man challenge mode.

anyone else really LOVE raids with the lore and VO and new maps and all that? I get that it’s a big resource sink for ANET so strikes make more sense but I’m still a little sad raids are being shelved

9:38 I'm really happy to hear you say this and yes a general new players guide would be useful. Gw2 is a more complicated than average entry in an already complicated genera so this kind of stuff is just the tip of the learning ice berg for new and more casual players that veterans are blind to. You also have: * What skills, armor, trinkets, weapons, runes, sigils, and traits players should use and how all of them work together. * What all the boons and conditions do and just how big of an effect they have on combat. * What active mitigation is and how to use it. * How roles (especially support) work in Gw2. * What damage rotations are and rotations vs skill priorities. * What all the abbreviations and jargon players use mean (this is a BIG one for new players because it makes it hard for new players to understand what vets are talking about). * Other misc topic like combo fields, break bars, etc. Vets aren't blind to these just because they played all the patches over time, it also because they had experience in other mmos or similar rpgs (like Gw1) that do a much better job of explaining the basics before joining Gw2. Over 95% of what I know about Gw2 came from other games, the subreddit, youtube, other fansites, other players, and cultural osmosis: not from playing the game. For someone who doesn't have that background knowledge Gw2 is an overwhelming brickwall of complexity. At this point new players are better off playing FFXIV because for as slow and boring ARR is for vets of other games it does a decent job of introducing MMO basics. Plus the main story quest provides a really good sense of direction for new players. Guild Wars 2's niche are players who are vets of other MMOS but are either burnt out on their first game or need an MMO that better respects their time because of life changes. Hoping strikes can fix this is probably expecting too much. A large part of EoDs really needs to be a tutorial and if Anet really want Gw2 to grow they need to do the core Tyria overhaul you talked about before.

My interpretation: Shiverpeaks Story Mode is the final fight in Bound By Blood. Shiverpeaks Normal Mode is the one you access through Eye of the North. Shiverpeaks Challenge Mode doesn’t exist but it would have more elementals and all the snow would on fire.

End Of Dragons strikes sound really interesting, after the release of the Sunqua Peak fractal, which felt even harder than Nightmare CM in some ways, as it was so mechanically dense, in a similar way to a raid/ more difficult strike mission!

My read on the different levels of challenge was more that some encounters will just be more difficult based on design. Kind of like how you can do the primal fights in FF14 on Extreme, but Ramuh in Striking Tree is definitely considered harder than Shiva in Akh Afah Amphitheatre.

I think the Story mode is different from a normal mode strike. Think of it like the Ice Golem Construct strike. You first encounter the boss during the story, where there was actual story plot / cutscenes and other tasks within the instance. The option to party up if you want like we already have. Its not an actual strike mission but youre familiar with the boss already.

I was hoping they would touch on the grouping lfg interface with smoother transitioning from strike to strikes. We all know how strikes are short and the time is wasted on loading in/out and those 'stupid' buff pillars. I'm hoping they make a sort of queueing system that the commander can pick, or have a voting system for non squads (fractals). So we don't need to return to a hub or lobby each time. One NPC standing in each respective hub. Offering through dialog option (like CMs or dungeon path) a "Dailies" selection menu, the commander can pick or initiate a vote. For fractals the dialog for example would have these Dailies options: 1)CMs + T4 + Recs 2) T4's + Recs 3) T3's Etc... Furthermore the system would also allow the option on the main character selection log in screen to log and waypoint straight into the relevant instance (for alt/role swapping). And by all means I'm ok if they put the same waypoint costing to that login screen just for the sake of speeding things up and making a group content smoother and faster. I dunno a. Option box like, log and join on commander if in squad.

I think the "story" "Normal" and "CM" basically means: 1. Story = The story journal solo version of the fight. Same difficulty as it is today. 2. Normal = 10man strike normal mode. Current strike mode difficulty 3. CM = 10man strike CM mode. Roughly current raid level difficulty. I'm hoping there is some good variety in these (aka MO regular all the way up to Dhuum CM level)

If they balance the strikes off the lowest common denominator specs then it won’t be challenging. If they balance it off of the assumption of meta comps then the weaker specs won’t be taken. Challenging content can only exist if specs are balanced equally. They can each fulfill a different role and succeed in that, then each strike would need to allow for that. They’ve never managed to balance everyone correctly across the game modes even when we had just the 9 cores.

I really think Story mode is the solo version of the boss fight happening during the story. The same deal we've had for a while now (Zhaitan, Mordremoth's mind, Balthazar, Kralk etc.). Then you have Normal Mode Strikes and CM Strikes that can be accessed from the Eye of the North (or whatever new hub they come up with). Its basically their equivalent to LFR from WoW, except that instead of going through the piss-poor experience of throwing 20 complete randoms together, you'll just do the encounters as a single player scenario (probably with allied NPCs from Dragon's Watch). I personally like this a LOT.

I think that they should have added a story mode to raids at the start, a mode that was tuned for one player with gentle scaling. Then the actual normal and challenge modes could have allowed a mode that lets you skip the story parts, talk to an NPC and turn them off while turning on challenge modes etc, similarly to the NPCs in Dragon Response Missions. After a certain time even the biggest lore hound Raiders just want to skip to the action. I guess they're finally getting there with strikes so that's good.

Sounds like three tiers - think of the fight with Whisper of Jormag during story mode of A Shadow in the Ice, which had a few of the mechanics of the actual fight, but it was just an instance. Then, there is the strike mode which has additional mechanics and phases. And then with this new format, they would then add a CM mode which adds further mechanics, increases HP and damage etc.

The worst thing they could have done with the original strikes, was separate the raid economy with the strike economy. Hopefully that is fixed here. Since strikes are supposed to lead to raids there should be active encouragement to invest time in both.

Due to RL obligations i have not been able to raid in so long. Strikes are so much more convenient for me to do with the small amount of time i have.

Here's my interpretation. You have story mode, strike mode, strike CM mode. Story mode is when you fight the boss in the normal story. Most people will do it solo, but you can have up to 5 people as normal. Normal is a 10 man strike, and CM is closer to raid difficulty. Sounds to me like this is meant to be a continual ramp. I think story mode will get harder as you progress the story and will teach specific mechanics, as explicitly teaching mechanics in actual strikes you repeat a lot would be annoying. Then normal mode will similarly ramp up, starting with a difficulty higher than the last story boss. Then the same for CMs.

The ramping difficulty sounds like what most other MMOs do with their raid tiers; the first few bosses are always a little easier to give new players a good starting point and a natural sense of progression through the tier. XIV is the current hotness for MMOs and they've done that exact same tactic with pretty much every raid they've released, the first boss of the expansion in particular is generally a lightweight, Stormblood's a great example of this where its first boss was an unironic first-pull clear for a lot of people. As for the distinction between difficulties, it seems to me that they're basically going to do what they did with the Icebrood Saga strikes where you'd fight the Ice Goliath or the Fraenir in a story instance by yourself but then you can also go into a separate 10-man fight with extra mechanics. I wouldn't expect 'normal' to be synonymous with 'story' because then they'd need to make the story fight be like a public DRM to make sure someone can clear it solo, which does not sound like a great place to teach players solid fundamentals for harder content.

I found a few of the Icebrood Strike missions to be really difficult especially with PuGs and it came to a point where I was really nervous to attempt some of the later strike missions. I hope the EoD Strike missions are more accessible and rewarding and it isn't about having the perfect build set up for them.

I do think its important to have some easier formats for people to get a bit more comfortable with the content, especially if they want new people to join the fray and help create a bigger pool from which everyone can group together. I wonder if the challenge mode is sort of an answer to that so that the initial encounters can vary to a degree (some may just end up easier than others), but when you DO want harder then there's the challenge mode to add the extra spice some people might crave. It does otherwise seem like the strike missions are a nice way to get people into the raid boss mindset and capability so that when they do add a raid at varying points then people are comfier walking into them. You do want some way though to introduce people to harder fights and make things gradual - it's partly why I like FF's normal trials to EX trial formats. As I became comfier fighting in that game the more willing I became to go into the EX fights and those have been some nice training for even trying savage - something I never imagined trying honestly.

They say that the story bosses will be used for Strike Missions in EoD so when you play through the story that would be Story Mode and not the 10 man content of NM and CM. So three tiers or more? I'm a bit confused about the Challenge Mode and then at some point they talk about Challenge Modes.

I think when they say normal and story mode it means the strike is locked till you complete that instance (I highly doubt story will ever need a group). Then the strike unlocks for us to do and thats normal mode.

So basically, the instanced PvE content would be: entry is old dungeons, then strikes 1, high tier fractals, strikes 2 and raids?

Your interpretation is correct, some challenge modes will be easier than others. Think of it like comparing Mursaat Overseer to Dhuum or Qadim, those differences in difficulty at the same tier have always existed.

My hope is that they will combine Raid and Strike currency. I seriously wish this game made something the "core" currency (karma comes to mind but it doesnt matter what it is) and ANY currency/item/token you earn can be converted down to this "core" currency. So in theory I can go play Raids and Story but save up Karma by liquidating things. Then spend that Karma on ascended trinkets, armor, whatever. Having so many currencies never made sense to me and it just helps make the fragmented systems (fractals, raids, strikes for example) feel even further from one another when in reality they are all supposed to be "high level PvE".

I'm not sure if the current strike mission format with its easy "drop in"-function for players would really work very well for CM as challenging as original Deimos (before the first overlap nerfs). We worked on that CM for weeks with a very experienced team and probably wouldn't have wanted random people dropping in.

I want to do harder content but the anxiety from wow continues... Maybe EoD will be my expac!

I'm pretty new to guild wars 2 myself but this sounds really exciting, I hope that it actually ends up working out the way they imagine it will.

What I took from the article is story mode is soloable, while the other 2 tiers are 10-man all the way.

Everytime they consolidate and cleanup currencies ...they tend to add vendors to convert stuff, and it gets even more confusing. Rather than them just tweaking our inventories

So the deep and Urgoz strike missions incoming?

some new player question could be: what options (keybinds, graphics, etc.) are recommended for smooth gameplay

I think story mode is basically the same as, say Fraenir. You fight the boss as part of going through the EoD campaign, and after that you unlock the normal mode with 9 other people, and then there's the challenge mode. Although this time, the story fight might not be completely unrelated to the strikes mechanics. That's my hope anyway, so the story can teach you the basic mechanic you'll always be dealing with, and then normal mode adds mechanics that are relevant for a 10-man team

Do a tier list of PoF, HoT and then a cumulative one, I feel like HoT they were treading new ground and finding their feet, PoF they killed it on most classes, mirage, weaver, awesome design and now EoD it seems like a bit of rushed mess besides warrior and maybe mechanist

You know, in that vein of different scalings of mobs having different abilities and mechanics, based on their difficulty category. This is one thing that guild wars 2 has that I think it does better than virtually every game in the genre, including ff14 specifically, and that's its crrature/enemy/mob deisgn. Never have I seen SUCH variety in mob design, with unique mechanics, which bring different gameplay challenges and encounter deisgn experiences, and can even force a player to respond tactically and reactively to the mobs. It makes moment to moment gameplay FAR superior at many levels.

If there's a difference between story, normal and hardcore mode. Story would be the easiest as all the new personal stories are ment to be solo able, Normal would probably be group or experience players could solo it, hardcore would be self explanatory.

I still don't understand why they didn't add difficulty modes to dungeons, raids or strike missions earlier. That way you can have a simple difficulty for the noobies and the hardcore mode for the 1% world first raiders. They can add that to the story mode too.

They are course correcting because they figured out its heinous to creat lore-rich Raids that the majority of players will never play. Raiding is about the challenge and not the story so THIS sounds like a win-win-win. We are getting our story-mode raids, regular raids and Cm Raids with these strike missions. I'm very excited to play them.

From what I understand of this: I believe we will have a Story Mode, which we play during the story and it's probably single-player and scales up to five, then we will have a Normal Mode, with new mechanics and adjusted to 10 players, and finally a Challenge Mode, with raid boss difficulty. Though I think they should have an Extreme Challenge Mode for those players who like Dhuum CM or/and Qadim CM. For me, I hope we can opt-in for Normal Mode when we reach those moments in the story without losing the story value that Story Mode has. I still hate that we solo'ed Balthazar 😩

Wp, is there a reason you can think of that they couldn't make the current raid bosses into strikes?

For the hardcore they could take the ultiamte format off ff14 and turn like 4 strikes into a raid like encounter for the hardcore.

Just realized we never did get that armor set from the thumbnail

It doesn't matter whether it's strikes, rides, dungeons or fractals, as long as there is engaging and challenging end-game PvE content where players can test limits of their skills and their profession's knowledge. Just don't add any more unskippable cutscenes where players just stand still and listen to NPCs talk to each other.

It's seemed through what has been said by anet that Strikes will be Story Mode (easiest), Normal Mode (Medium), CM (Hard).

I'm hoping they do a CM ramp like FFXIV raid bosses; typically the first savage raid is pretty easy and it gets harder with the last boss in a four boss tier. If the strikes challenge modes work the same way top tier players can have a good, challenging fights at the top end and less experienced players can still start working on the challenge modes and eventually move up to the tougher fights.

would have preferred to see them put effort into infinite dificulty scaling in existing fractals and raids rather than adding strikes at all.

I don’t hate the idea of making some encounters easier than others even in challenge mode. In theory it should give a spectrum of difficulty for people to play

So... Guild wars 2 content difficulty tier list when?

It's odd to me to have the baseline strike be very easy for any of them. Wasn't the point of utilizing the story bosses to have the story instance be "easy" mode? Baseline should push back just a little, some strikes like bears or shiverpeaks pass are borderline completely unfailable.

Cameron was behind all or nothing's kralkatoric fight so ye he does alot of stuff.

would be great if story mode is forcing you to group up, but I think its just the solo part.

The biggest problem for me with any endgame hard content (strikes, raids, whatever) is that ive never done them, and whenever I attempt any of this content I just get shat on and belittled by other players because I don't know what to do. But how can I learn when other players are just arseholes. The endgame stuff needs easy mode where you can learn the mechanics, maybe even pausing the game at points for you to read tooltips or learn to reconise certain telegraphs.

Should you do a currency episode, please waste some time on conversion too. ;)

account tour when

I can't wait for the hardcore "elite/elitist" community to gatekeep the CM Strikes in LFG behind "250 LI", "10k UFE" requirements or something similarly insane, causing the majority of playerbase to avoid such content, causing Anet to stop supporting the content after they see low participation, causing the hardcore community to complain about lack of challenging pve content. Hmm, where have I seen this before...

When they say "challenging," does that mean that it won't be viable to use glass cannon builds for these?

As someone that belive that gw2 should learn from oposing direction then this one i disagree massivly. 5-man is the way to go, and everyone have to do their part in there not get carried by 9 other people. There should be forced solo fights too (similar to the wolverine arena) mainly to teach people how to play and with adventure leaderboard on them to let people see how good they are compared to other players. Bossis should be smarter too not just spin around like clockwork (anyone else love how funny is the golem boss in S4E2 that have line about focusing support first?). Good boss should have you kiting around only attacking when there is openig and then quickly retreat to prevent being nuked, you should be forced to dodge and block constanly, boss should steal/corrupt your boons and transfer/convert to boons its conditions

Everybody is acting like easy mode for instance content is now a totally new idea for Guild Wars 2 all of the sudden? What do you think T1 Fractals are?

fractals when :(

Strikes are still not the same as a raid, save for one they got no detailed environment, no relevance of movement abilities, no puzzles or inbetween events. If theyre strikes, are the rewards daily? How is that gonna relate, compare to raids taking 3+ hours a week to clear for 60-70g. I can't imagine the same kind of static environment as id have right now, just one day a week, we meet and tackle a long and challenging evening. This will just feel like more daily chores instead, I'm already busy enough with fractals. If they are as hard as raids, it's gonna start a whole new killproof scene that people will complain about. And wether or not this will actually motivate people to do cm's when theres enough people happy to buy their Boneskinner achievements, I will believe it when I see it.

How do you feel that there is no info on five-man content?

The Strike Missions were all EASY - jesus, my dude, for casuals Boneskinner is fucking mad impossible....

ye ye.. how about they give us GOOD looking Gen 3 legendaries ah? There's 2 things that matter the most in A new expansion. Elite specs ( which gave nothing but disappointment untill now) and new legendaries. New strikes in 3 different difficulties is not something that matters.

So, raid are the new dungeons? They are doing the same thing again whee they Introduced a format only to than murder it in favor of something else which they don't really support either. Seem like history is repeating itself and people wonder why player don't have much faith in anet vision.

Idk without proper rewards nobody will care

RIP Raiding Scene and I welcome Strike missions as the new "Raid" . Both Elite Raiders/Gatekeepers and ArenaNet ruined the raid scene for this game and it is sad. Imo I look at Strike Missions as like "Trials" like FF14 ,not raids as CM SMs are so easy ,even more than Extreme Trials . Hope future SM CMs will be more difficult like Fractal CM nightmare and higher .

I, for one, can't wait to see how much absurd gatekeeping the GW2 community will do to ostracize new players convincing them to leave the game for greener pastures. Gatekeeping is the REAL GW2 Endgame. "LF4M STORY MODE STRIKE THESE SPECIFIC BUILDS AND CLASSES SO WE HAVE A .05SECOND SHORTER CLEAR."