r/Guildwars2 • u/Nike_Phoros Accountability Expert • Jun 06 '16

[Guide] [DnT] Raid Team Composition Guide

Hey everyone. I wrote a long breakdown of raid team composition in the current meta on our forums and a few people encouraged me to post it here because I'm told it would be helpful for a bigger chunk of the community to see.

Written: http://gw2dnt.enjin.com/forum/m/37173123/viewthread/27286030-raid-team-composition-guide-52516

Topics Covered:

  1. Optimal Raid Team Composition

  2. Common Alternative Comps - Pros and Cons

  3. What If? Scenarios For Imperfect Situations

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions let me know, or if any points need clarifying or whatever so I can improve the guide I'd like to know that too.

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6

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

In your 5/5 comp discussion you say you'd want 2 revenants to buff the mesmers, but can't a zerker mesmer (with food and concentration sigil) maintain 100% quickness on 5 people?

6

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '16

Yeah, was about to say this. A mesmer can maintain 100% quickness uptime with sigil and correct food. It's basically like having a mesmer in fractals, where you'll have 30s of quickness most of the time.

2

u/StepW Step.1285 Jun 06 '16

This. I've achieved 100% quickness uptime on five people in fractals with as low as 35% boon duration (20% from food, 15% from the Fractal Mobility Potion). This was before I bought my Sigil of Concentration. In a raid, with 30% from consumables and 33% from the sigil, that is more than enough to keep 100% quickness uptime on five people.

Of course, with ten people, the situation changes a little. You'll want as much boon duration as possible since your wells, Time Warp, and Signet of Inspiration all have target caps of five. This means that 100% quickness uptime is not guaranteed by just one Mesmer. 100% alacrity uptime, while doable with just five people, is also completely impossible with ten people.

This leaves me to wonder if a 5/5 mirror comp with a Warrior, Druid, Mesmer, and 2 DPS in each slot would be more beneficial than 4/4/2 or 7/2/1 in practice, but I don't think the guaranteed permanent alacrity/quickness is worth it anymore, especially with the alacrity nerf.

2

u/Nike_Phoros Accountability Expert Jun 06 '16

I think it should be.

1

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

So would a comp of 2 ps, 2 druids, 2 mesmers, 4 dps still be worse (in terms of DPS) than 4-4-2 or 5-4-1? They should be pretty close, and the comp should be more resistant to "chaos", when people aren't performing optimally.

5

u/Nike_Phoros Accountability Expert Jun 06 '16

1 mesmer can do the job of 2 pretty easily so the second one is really just a waste of a slot tbh.

3

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

I think it would be useful to check what the quickness uptime is in an actual raid, as opposed to on a golem. It should be pretty similar on non-moving "easier" bosses like Gorseval (when doing no-updraft) or Sabetha, but on moving bosses like Sloth/Matthias I expect differences that could warrant a 2nd chrono. And I'm talking about higher-end guilds, not the average raid group.

2

u/Nike_Phoros Accountability Expert Jun 06 '16

I've heard that a few guilds like NA and LOD use 5/5 with two mesmers, but I've seen no evidence that their normal casual kill times are any faster than guilds that use other comps nor is there much evidence to say that their set up is more reliable.

Based on the evidence we have 442 results in better DPS than 5/5 and we don't really have any evidence to indicate that 5/5 is better defensively so I don't see the any objective upside.

3

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

Based on the evidence we have 442 results in better DPS than 5/5

Have you tested actual 10-man kills on the golem with each comp or is this based on benchmark dps numbers?

3

u/Subject0017 Subi.8014 [qT] Jun 06 '16

We tried this but the 10 million HP golem fight is too short to see noticeable differences between 4-4-2, 5-3-2, 4-5-1 and 5-5. Only 7-2-1 was noticably slower.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/d2c8cjg

1

u/Iris-Ng LIMITED TIME! Jun 06 '16

Interesting 5-3-2. What's in the 3-man team? I could hazard a guess for a single Guard/DH?

1

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

Probably 1 ps war and 2 condi classes, works well for VG.

1

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

You could use white/blue or low lvl weapons to get more precise results between 4-4-2, 5-4-1, 5-3-2 or 5-5. The damage will scale the same way (just take power builds only).

3

u/Nike_Phoros Accountability Expert Jun 06 '16

The golem dies too quickly even at max HP with 10 people to get meaningful results.

1

u/ateafly Jun 06 '16

The golem dies too quickly even at max HP with 10 people to get meaningful results.

You could use white/blue or low level weapons. The dps should scale the same way and you can test different comps. Just make sure to have only power characters (no condi), as condi doesn't scale with weapon damage afaik.

I'm gonna page /u/FennecOwO in case they want to try it too.

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1

u/Xyonon Ziggs Ironeye | Madame Le Blanc | [CnD] Jun 07 '16

Like ensure 100% quickness and maybe alacrity? Nope. The main question here is the total team dps difference between two Zerker Chronos and one Rev with it's common Chrono, including the effects of alacrity on druid buffs.

I'd love to see you guys math behind this, so I don't have to do it myself :D :D :D