Guild Wars 2

fadeaway.2807:

Excalibur.9748:

Good. Tired of zerk elitists telling you’re useless/holding the team back if you’re not using full zerk.

Sounds like somebody isn’t skilled enough to play a zerker.

Thats the only people I know who don’t play at least 50% zerker…

Let’s turn pve into an AI driven wvw raid. Bunker builds for all.

fadeaway.2807:

stale.9785:

I mentioned this in another thread, but I’ll throw it here, since it fits.

- make toughness far more important. IE: make damage mitigation important. What we have is encounters where the bulk of the enemies do almost no damage, and bosses operate on 1-shot mechanics.

What we need are encounters where the “trash” mobs deal upwards of 1k damage on cleave attacks, others give retaliation to themselves and their allies, and more are de-buffing the players. Seriously – a change to mob design would change the entire meta. If debuffing mobs, clearing conditions and controlling mob movement became as important as dealing damage to the enemies, well, the “dps dps dps dps 111111” meta would just die.

What’s the point of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc if mobs hit frequently and mitigation (aka passive play) is required?
You’ve just removed a core mechanism of gw2, removed skill play, and promoted passive play.

You need to choose, when to dodge, what to dodge and how to dodge, instead of just operating by “big multi-attack incoming, use dodge. After this, another attack comes, pop aegis, so you can keep hitting.” If all there is are one shot abilities, even the dodging core mechanic becomes trivial, because utilmately everyone can do it. You see the attack, you dodge, then you keep on hitting and hitting and hitting, till the next overly exaggerated one shot mechanic is fired at you, where you dodge again.
In pvp, you get hit by small attacks left and right and use your dodges whenever you need a brief second to set up a bigger attack or your enemy throws a big attack. Something like this would work for PvE, too. It would force players to use their brain for once.

Jesus. When did running Berserker’s gear become synonymous with a player being skilled?

There’s simply no reason to utilize any gear typing outside of zerkers, because no content is challenging enough to punish players who sacrifice defensive stats for damage.

You trade survivability for damage output and need to utilize dodging etc. more… but its hardly applicable when you can steam-roll most content with 0 risk.

Reducing the effectiveness of Berserker’s gear would do nothing, increasing the effectiveness and viability of other gear typings would do nothing – revising the games content across the board? DING DING DING. SUCCESS IMMINENT.

That’s why WvW. You can actually run gear types other than zerkers and create synergy between builds… something all but irrelevant in PvE.

naphack.9346:

You see the attack, you dodge, then you keep on hitting and hitting and hitting, till the next overly exaggerated one shot mechanic is fired at you, where you dodge again.
In pvp, you get hit by small attacks left and right and use your dodges whenever you need a brief second to set up a bigger attack or your enemy throws a big attack. Something like this would work for PvE, too. It would force players to use their brain for once.

This won’t happen. The processing requirements of the AI to act human won’t let it happen.

fadeaway.2807:

What’s the point of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc if mobs hit frequently and mitigation (aka passive play) is required?
You’ve just removed a core mechanism of gw2, removed skill play, and promoted passive play.

Active mitigation doesn’t change. You still need to dodge out of the big hits, you should still block those special attacks. But to say that we should be using these to avoid mob autoattacks seems a little silly and would only favor professions that have easy access to vigor.

It’s more skillful play to know exactly when to use active mitigation, and not waste it on the smaller and more frequent mob autoattacks. Right now we just simply knee-jerk and dodge whenever something is going to attack us because we can.

This won’t remove GW2’s core mechanism, it makes it even more pertinent. You can’t dodge and block everything, you have to be skillful enough to know what and when to do so.

Also if mobs have frequent small autoattacks, it will make stacking in corners and chaining Aegis against the current few and far between boss attacks a lot harder.

Seriously, I wonder why some ppl play this game since some want the root of combat mecchanics to be changed.
This game is based over dodge and avoidance, not over mitigation of damage
The dmg you receive cant’ be outhealed, end of the story.
Would be facepalm otherwise.
If you dont’ like it, dont ask to be changed, go play something else as proper tank and healer and stop moaning to all others that adapted to it.
Stop to asking for healing to be worthing, Healing Power should be removed from the game as self-standing stat – for how it is now – and totally reworked in concept – They did it with magic find and was a good call the way they adjusted it. -

The dominance is from the weird context.

Zerk is efficiency

Bunkers = keep zerk alive.

Support = make zerk better.

Zerk properly played = you don’t die and no need for support when you get more dmg.

So efficiency.

Reduce dominance? More content where the Zerker will be slammed solo if he doesn’t play really well.

Fenrir.3609:

It will be somwhat amusing if zerk gets nerfed and then everyone starts moaning that everything is taking to long to kill.

“Omg do more damage to Teq you nubs we are running out of time!!”.

Expecially because you can’t crit Tequal, so Berserker is useless against him. I would seriously laught if any berserker would call Soldier gear user “noob” at Tequal.

Shadoekin.3928:

This won’t remove GW2’s core mechanism, it makes it even more pertinent. You can’t dodge and block everything, you have to be skillful enough to know what and when to do so.

Thats how it is now. Thats why we can go full zerker. Once you learn the meachanics whats the point? There isn’t one.

Shadoekin.3928:

Active mitigation doesn’t change. You still need to dodge out of the big hits, you should still block those special attacks.

Why do I need to block those special attacks if I’ve just loaded up on defensive stats?
Are they enough to one-shot me still?

Sounds like zerkers with perma-protection are the new meta.

aelfwe.4239:

We dont need to farm another ascendent set because after 1,5 year you realized that pve is zerk based.

“We don’t want balance”. I mean think about it, ultimately that’s what you’re saying.

Seriously, they could link this every time someone asks for some kind of balance change. Just say that it shouldn’t be done because well, “players are invested already”.

Daerian.6523:

Fenrir.3609:

It will be somwhat amusing if zerk gets nerfed and then everyone starts moaning that everything is taking to long to kill.

“Omg do more damage to Teq you nubs we are running out of time!!”.

Expecially because you can’t crit Tequal, so Berserker is useless against him. I would seriously laught if any berserker would call Soldier gear user “noob” at Tequal.

If only zerkers had power.

Hahaha, Anet is gonna make the same mistake that Soe made back in the day with Star wars galaxies… they’re gonna do a massive revamp of the fight system (forcing players to change all their gear and weaponry) and in less than a week lose over 70% of their player base. Star wars galaxies for as much good work as they did afterwards (returning their fight system back to the original plataform) could never recover. Then again history repeats itself.

Daishi.6027:

Reduce dominance? More content where the Zerker will be slammed solo if he doesn’t play really well.

Interesting idea, make more content where the players are temporarily split up and self-reliant. Lack of group shared buffs and lack of stacking to help each other up would make pure zerker possible but extremely unstable.

Nandor The Stampede.1593:

Hahaha, Anet is gonna make the same mistake that Soe made back in the day with Star wars galaxies… they’re gonna do a massive revamp of the fight system (forcing players to change all their gear and weaponry) and in less than a week lose over 70% of their player base. Star wars galaxies for as much good work as they did afterwards (returning their fight system back to the original plataform) could never recover. Then again history repeats itself.

I like how you don’t know how NGE worked.

i want just to say a thing here….

Balancing is good…

But consider those people with ascended armors and weapons….

if you just nerf zerkers you could ruin YEARS of the grinding… possibly scaring even more players…..

COnsider a way out of your “balancing” since we perfectly know means usually “nerf to the ground”.

fadeaway.2807:

Shadoekin.3928:

Active mitigation doesn’t change. You still need to dodge out of the big hits, you should still block those special attacks.

Why do I need to block those special attacks if I’ve just loaded up on defensive stats?
Are they enough to one-shot me still?

Sounds like zerkers with perma-protection are the new meta.

Special attacks would be those that employ control effects and/or inflict conditions. Defensive stats will not save you from getting knocked down and such.

Think of it this way:
Passive mitigation goes against “passive” damage (mob autoattacks)
Active mitigation goes against “active” damage (special attacks and one-shots)

Also, if mobs have frequent autoattacks, Confusion would actually be useful in PVE, but the efficacy of Blind would be reduced.

Shadoekin.3928:

fadeaway.2807:

Why do I need to block those special attacks if I’ve just loaded up on defensive stats?
Are they enough to one-shot me still?

Sounds like zerkers with perma-protection are the new meta.

Special attacks would be those that employ control effects and/or inflict conditions. Defensive stats will not save you from getting knocked down and such.

Think of it this way:
Passive mitigation goes against “passive” damage (mob autoattacks)
Active mitigation goes against “active” damage (special attacks and one-shots)

Barely worth it then. I’ll just facetank that big hit that gives me some lame knockdown or condition and then cleanse it, while keeping up the dps.

In the scenario you are describing, a group of zerkers with protection will far outperform a bunch of people with mitigation stats. This wouldn’t change the meta, and it has rendered dodge mechanic useless. Dodge mechanic needs to allow you to avoid near death attacks, things which you are either going to die from, or be in a situation which is incredibly difficult to recover from. Otherwise people won’t bother.

Fenrir.3609:

Daerian.6523:

Fenrir.3609:

It will be somwhat amusing if zerk gets nerfed and then everyone starts moaning that everything is taking to long to kill.

“Omg do more damage to Teq you nubs we are running out of time!!”.

Expecially because you can’t crit Tequal, so Berserker is useless against him. I would seriously laught if any berserker would call Soldier gear user “noob” at Tequal.

If only zerkers had power.

If only Zerkers could take more than one hit Tequatl or dodge everthing in this mass of people…
If we are talking about using only Zerker in dungeons because it’s “optimal” and calling everybody “noob” if they are not, you should do the same to people using Zerker at Tequatl, because it’s far from optimal. Or you are just duplicitous.

Theres a simple fix make Ascended gear like Legendary and just have “Select stats” option but make it cost like the same as a trait reset… Done (Y)

I still feel they just need to make other stuff viable nerfing Zerker doesnt solve a lot and annoys like 90% of the PvE players who already dont have a lot to cling on to currently :P

So many infractions flying out because people are making valid points.

Reminds me of the many many zerker threads in the class forums when you tell people zerkers are the best in pve (which they obviously are or we wouldn’t have these threads so active and with anet devs posting). People don’t like to be told that a) there is an optimal way of playing and b) it requires skill which they sometimes don’t have. That is the biggest problem right there with zerker meta really… to pull it off you need to be half decent.. in a game which was advertised as casual and play-how-you-like people don’t want to be told they need to be reasonably skilled to join the best groups. That lack of skill is what is causing people to complain and say skilled zerkers should not be so great.

fadeaway.2807:

Barely worth it then. I’ll just facetank that big hit that gives me some lame knockdown or condition and then cleanse it, while keeping up the dps.

In the scenario you are describing, a group of zerkers with protection will far outperform a bunch of people with mitigation stats. This wouldn’t change the meta, and it has rendered dodge mechanic useless. Dodge mechanic needs to allow you to avoid near death attacks, things which you are either going to die from, or be in a situation which is incredibly difficult to recover from. Otherwise people won’t bother.

But then you are forgetting the fact that you are reactively using a stunbreak and/or a cleanse. Do you choose to use the dodge to avoid, or utilities to remedy the special attack.

You still need your dodge. We’ve only given mobs more frequent autoattacks so they attack every 1/2 second instead of every 1-2 seconds. This attrition creates those near-death situations and obviously no one is going to facetank a knockdown at under 50% hp and let the mob further autoattack us to death if we ran out of stun-breaks.

Yes, it makes buffs such as Protection more important. Yes, it makes conditions such as Weakness more important. That is the point, so we don’t have a pure DPS meta and players need to do more than just remember a dps rotation with a double-tap every few seconds.

We don’t want to diminish the Zerker/Sin builds and gear, we want to raise the significance of everything else.

P/S: Giving mobs more frequent autoattacks means an increase in their overall dps and could be balanced by tweaking their health pools. I can appreciate mobs being deadlier, instead of taking a long time to meet their inevitable demise.

Daerian.6523:

Fenrir.3609:

Daerian.6523:

Fenrir.3609:

It will be somwhat amusing if zerk gets nerfed and then everyone starts moaning that everything is taking to long to kill.

“Omg do more damage to Teq you nubs we are running out of time!!”.

Expecially because you can’t crit Tequal, so Berserker is useless against him. I would seriously laught if any berserker would call Soldier gear user “noob” at Tequal.

If only zerkers had power.

If only Zerkers could take more than one hit Tequatl or dodge everthing in this mass of people…
If we are talking about using only Zerker in dungeons because it’s “optimal” and calling everybody “noob” if they are not, you should do the same to people using Zerker at Tequatl, because it’s far from optimal. Or you are just duplicitous.

There was no mention whatsoever about dungeons in that post.

There was no mention whatsoever about anyone who ever enters a dungeon in non zerk gear being a noob in that post.

There was no mention that anyone who ever entered a dungeon or pve’d should be “zerk” in that post.

I didn’t even comment on soldiers gear in the post.

The post reflects on a period in the future which may see non zerk players calling others nubs or otherwise getting upset because they bemoan the lack of damage due to a zerk nerf, not visa versa.

Zerkers can survive just fine doing the Teq encounter should they know what they are doing. If they get dropped then wearing PVT or any other gear is unlikely to have saved them due to the nature of their death (i.e. massive damage).

At no point at all have I been duplicitous. The general point of the post was obvious, if they nerf glass cannons then it would not be a surpise if many of those calling for the nerf subsequently get upset that the content is taking longer because there is less dps going about.

If you want to wear PVT et al in pve, you go for it. Not sure why you should complain that those in more glass damage gear can run faster groups, clear content quicker if they know what they are doing mind you.

Then you shouldn’t choose Tequatl, one of the few places of the game when Zerker is more than suboptimal, as point of your anegdote/example.

Daerian.6523:

Then you shouldn’t choose Tequatl, one of the few places of the game when Zerker is more than suboptimal, as point of your anegdote/example.

Yes, i’ll readily admit it was a god awful example.

Zerker is working perfectly fine for the most part.
You trade survival for damage, which makes you completely reliant on active defenses and increases the punishment for any mistake you could made. As a tradeoff, you kill things and complete dungeons faster for a better gold/time ratio.
Risk vs Reward, plain and simple.

The only issue, and the only fair complaint against DPS setups I can understand, is about insane amount of DPS making all that risk suddenly disappear.

We could take a look at Lupicus speedkills to show this.
There’s an undeniable show of high skill in almost any solo video out there. Just during the first phase players need to be in almost constant move to avoid being hit by locust swarms while evading every grub summon and every subtle kick animation (which is a oneshot for many classes on zerker).
IMHO this kind of gameplay absolutely deserves better results than bringing defensive stats so kicks can be endured and healed or stacking at range where this attack doesn’t even happen.

When you bring in a full DPS group, however, the fight goes in a completely different fashion.
First of all, there’s more than enough cleaving DPS to rip locusts apart before they can do anything; all need for movement is gone. Second, if the DPS is high enough, the phase can be finished so fast that kicks can be easily covered with aegis, which are long lasting enough to be precasted against an obvious pattern without worrying on them being wasted on any other minor damage source.
Players just need to avoid grub casts, which are really slow and obvious, and keep DPSing the boss. After that, a mesmer Feedback is enough to direclty finsih off phase 2, and even the whole fight with a few tricks that have been already shown to us.
There’s some organization and coordination here that should be rewarded, that’s for sure. There’s also tactic development, but that merit would belong only to those that used it for the first time and/or showed it to the world, not to any random player (like me) watching a video on youtube.
The coordination is far from high demanding, the execution is quite simple and the risk … the risk is just gone, completely nonexistant. It’s an obvious case (and there are a lot more) where playing full DPS not only doesn’t involve the risk is supposed to, but allows the execution of a tactic which removes all of it and still receives the full reward of a speedkill.

This shouldn’t be about how to make full DPS setups useless, even unplayable, as many suggestions along this thread try to accomplish.
It shouldn’t be a debate about which playstyle pleases us more and how our preferences aren’t as much rewarding as others, or about ways to bruteforce diversity.
and bring our loved specs into optimal groups.
Actively reacting to enemy animations is harder than facetanking and filling bars. It just involves more player skill over passive play and thereby deserves better rewards (in this case, freeing room for damage stats so faster runs can be achieved), and this comes from someone who has played healer/support for most of his MMO
Damage becoming the best form of defense, that’s what kills the idea of risk vs reward and the real problem we should be discussing about.

There’s only one easy and fair fix for this, and it’s just increasing the time it takes to kill things, be it through a raw increase on NPC HP/armor or demoting (promoting) every gear, from lvl 1 to 80, to double stat combinations, which is pretty much the same but also handles some downscaling issues. Needless to say that I don’t expect most people to like the idea :P
A selective nerf on full offensive combos is not reasonable at all when there’s a whole PvP enviroment that shares gear and doesn’t exactly suffer from this (most likely from the opposite if anything).

Other than that, there’s only the developing of more complex encounters and more polished AIs (LoS stacking should probably disappear); of making PvE more like PvP, where some specs use zerker but others don’t (and almost none zerker + DPS traits) and where every character capability (power burst, sustained damage, conditions, control, support, …) has its place.
Desirable? Absolutely. Likely to happen? I really doubt it.

I have an excellent idea to solve all of this…instead of nerfing zerk gear, ANET buffs zerk gear by adding a baseline amount of toughness and vitality to zerk gear. While they are at it they remove pvt/clerics/celestial/valkrie/etc from pve…replacing it with the new and improved zerk gear. This new baseline amount would be below the current hoard our current zero dps bretheren are sporting, but enough to provide a minimal safety net for them to learn to play without attempting to face tanking everything. This would be making there only one pve stat combination. This would force equal ground with gear. This would eliminate people trying to play like there is a trinity in this game, when there clearly is not. They wouldn’t even have to put the extra baseline stats on the gear..do it just like magic find. This eliminates non contributors in pve dungeons/fractals. You have no excuse for poor performance anymore and getting booted is your own fault…can no longer blame it on zerkers or elitists. You still have a minimal safety net and all of your functionality.

Carighan.6758:

aelfwe.4239:

We dont need to farm another ascendent set because after 1,5 year you realized that pve is zerk based.

“We don’t want balance”. I mean think about it, ultimately that’s what you’re saying.

Seriously, they could link this every time someone asks for some kind of balance change. Just say that it shouldn’t be done because well, “players are invested already”.

Wut? O.O

What’s about.. NO? lol

Pls don’t quote extrapolate sentences to change what i’m saying.

And don’t be silly with generalized statements like “we dont want balance”.

I want balance.

The only issue is that moving pve meta from zerk to some other kind of gear isnt balance at all.

Its just a way to make easyer an easy content like istances in way to make 2 finger people able to stand alive without dodge and stop they to complain to not find place in party because unable to stand alive in zerk.

A great balance, gg xD

Do you want balance?

Ask for hardest content rather asking anet to change stat in way to make ptv able to dodge in your place.

Like selenya said that’s an avoiding game, we need harder content to have a balance not some ridicolous gear change lol

Wanna make it suck to zerk? More like teq, more like the tower of nightmares, more trash like undead in Arah, more snares, more immobilize, triple (or more) the mob density everywhere and BOOM! U CANT HAZ ZERK DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200.

But seriously.. nothing will wipe out a mob of zerkers like an uncritable condition spammer with even more conditions caused by environment effects AKA Teq and Tower of Nightmares.

I agree though that the core mechanics of aggro, dps and other things need to remain as they are, and these changes be focused only on SOME new content in the future. Another step to properly dumb down the zerk fest would be to add more closed doors between bosses in instances, I know everyone hates this, but closing those doors and forcing people to deal with the things that do damage exactly as the OP said bosses should, will force people to take off the zerk for a few minutes to deal with things that require that extra bit of time, force you to pick your focus and accept that there will be some damage you’re just not going to be able to dodge out of.
For the above, fight mobs in arah in zerk gear vs something a bit more balanced (as opposed to just skipping past them willy-nilly as all the kids not worth a pack of kools do). This is where the closed doors and forced encounters will wear down the number of leet zerkers vs the ones who actually have enough skill to get away with it.

Honestly, I don’t want to see the “DPS is king of PvE” meta go away entirely, but if the dev’s so chose, the mechanics to make it happen already exist, and there are design features like forcing people to deal with mobs and not just run past them from boss to boss. These things exist, but nobody runs them because the balance of loot also needs to be shifted.

Said balance: The final dungeon reward box needs to contain less than 50% of the total loot for the dungeon… more like 30% or less, and the rest needs to be distributed such that skipping anything means a massive reduction in the quality of the overall run (skipping kholer in AC cause he doesn’t drop epic? nothing a shot at asc weapon/armor box wont fix) etc…

So yes, plenty of other things they can do to kill off zerking noobness without changing overall mechanics, and without punishing people who are actually good enough at what they do to NOT put anything towards defense.

I would like to also see more gear viable in PvE, but I don’t think nerfing Zerker/Assassin is the way to go about it.

I feel the best way to go about it at the moment is to possibly think about the way in which mobs defence is setup, currently it is just massive hit-points, I would suggest making it more toughness/armour based; this way condition builds would have a bigger impact than they currently do without out-right destroying Zerkers.

It’s much harder to think of a way to make support gear more viable than it is currently, one way may be to increase the effect healing power has overall as well as decreasing the bases. I’m sure there are better ways of doing that though.

Sorry but, what equip you guys want to wear in PvE?

Only problem here are heavy condition classes/builds, which could see a buff if Anet changes the way conditions work and link it to other 2 offensive stats to produce a burst. As long as the new meta doesn’t turn into some crappy condi/bunker where people sitting in full defensive builds/equipments can deal as much damage as pure glass cannon zerkers, then I don’t mind it.

Other than that, what equipment sets you want to play without introducing tanks and healers? And introducing the trinity would mean to trash the manifesto even more.

Also without a revamp of ascended time/cost, and without a multibuild system, how you guys plan to deal with the changes?

Inimicus.7162:

Said balance: The final dungeon reward box needs to contain less than 50% of the total loot for the dungeon… more like 30% or less, and the rest needs to be distributed such that skipping anything means a massive reduction in the quality of the overall run

Irrelevant. The speed of clearing all the trash or just the bosses is still in favor of zerk gear. What has skipping to do with the discussion at hand?

Inimicus.7162:

Wanna make it suck to zerk? More like teq, more like the tower of nightmares, more trash like undead in Arah, more snares, more immobilize, triple (or more) the mob density everywhere and BOOM! U CANT HAZ ZERK DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200.

But seriously.. nothing will wipe out a mob of zerkers like an uncritable condition spammer with even more conditions caused by environment effects AKA Teq and Tower of Nightmares.

I agree though that the core mechanics of aggro, dps and other things need to remain as they are, and these changes be focused only on SOME new content in the future. Another step to properly dumb down the zerk fest would be to add more closed doors between bosses in instances, I know everyone hates this, but closing those doors and forcing people to deal with the things that do damage exactly as the OP said bosses should, will force people to take off the zerk for a few minutes to deal with things that require that extra bit of time, force you to pick your focus and accept that there will be some damage you’re just not going to be able to dodge out of.
For the above, fight mobs in arah in zerk gear vs something a bit more balanced (as opposed to just skipping past them willy-nilly as all the kids not worth a pack of kools do). This is where the closed doors and forced encounters will wear down the number of leet zerkers vs the ones who actually have enough skill to get away with it.

Honestly, I don’t want to see the “DPS is king of PvE” meta go away entirely, but if the dev’s so chose, the mechanics to make it happen already exist, and there are design features like forcing people to deal with mobs and not just run past them from boss to boss. These things exist, but nobody runs them because the balance of loot also needs to be shifted.

Said balance: The final dungeon reward box needs to contain less than 50% of the total loot for the dungeon… more like 30% or less, and the rest needs to be distributed such that skipping anything means a massive reduction in the quality of the overall run (skipping kholer in AC cause he doesn’t drop epic? nothing a shot at asc weapon/armor box wont fix) etc…

So yes, plenty of other things they can do to kill off zerking noobness without changing overall mechanics, and without punishing people who are actually good enough at what they do to NOT put anything towards defense.

Yes, please make all of the dungeons like Arah.

I love doing Arah, and pugs are terrible at it because their PVT can’t soak up Lupicus or Alphard’s attacks.

10minute fights on sub-bosses arent fun. thats why everyone is running zerker gear. if they add some anti zerker mechanism nobody will run dungeons anymore because the time is no longer worth the effort. the dungeon rewards are pretty bad compared to the champ trains atm so nerfing the speed will hurt the dungeon community more than it helps these little cleric crybabies.

oh and dont forget about some fractals, have fun @49 grawl 1st boss or dredge. i really want to see how a group full of bunkers performs there.

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

Add retaliation and random conditions on you when mobs take dmg.
Full beserker teams will have major issues if implemented correctly.

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

You have absolutely no way of knowing what they will actually do any more than we actually know. What we do know is their track record of “fixing” things…and its not a pretty picture. That leans in favor of them making a bad decision…so yes…we are speaking up.

On a side note, we are in this situation now because pvt/clerics/etc are upset that they are not wanted in dungeons/fractals. They are upset that speed runs exist and they are not optimal/useful in a speed run. They are upset and it is affecting their “fun/enjoyment” of this aspect of the game. They respond by crying for nerfs to those who do not share their perspective. What about the “fun/enjoyment” of those who like speed runs. Those who like zerk gear. Those who get excitement off of living on the edge…knowing full well that taking one hit is going to down you, so you better be on your A-game? Those who take it as a personal challenge to see how flawless and fast of a performance you can squeeze out of your build/character/gear. Is the need to force yourself and your gear/play style choice onto an opposite minded group so intense that this opposite minded group needs to have their “fun/enjoyment” taken away or diminished?

A fix to the condition cap would go a long way.

Many players already bring their PVT/Cleric/All Signet stuff to dungeons and do just fine, it just take them twice as long as pure damage groups. Isn’t that the tradeoff you do for being lazy and only carrying one set of armor among the excess of different stats available? Same goes the other way of course. Especially in high-level Fractals where full-zerk players who can’t handle it become a burden.

Based on previous experiences though, it will be fun to watch the flood of tears from asc. zerk armor crafters who just spent all that gold when Celestial become the new meta. Because all those 20? different gear combinations in Anets infinite wisdom become unimportant outside WvW.

naphack.9346:

fadeaway.2807:

stale.9785:

I mentioned this in another thread, but I’ll throw it here, since it fits.

- make toughness far more important. IE: make damage mitigation important. What we have is encounters where the bulk of the enemies do almost no damage, and bosses operate on 1-shot mechanics.

What we need are encounters where the “trash” mobs deal upwards of 1k damage on cleave attacks, others give retaliation to themselves and their allies, and more are de-buffing the players. Seriously – a change to mob design would change the entire meta. If debuffing mobs, clearing conditions and controlling mob movement became as important as dealing damage to the enemies, well, the “dps dps dps dps 111111” meta would just die.

What’s the point of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc if mobs hit frequently and mitigation (aka passive play) is required?
You’ve just removed a core mechanism of gw2, removed skill play, and promoted passive play.

You need to choose, when to dodge, what to dodge and how to dodge, instead of just operating by “big multi-attack incoming, use dodge. After this, another attack comes, pop aegis, so you can keep hitting.” If all there is are one shot abilities, even the dodging core mechanic becomes trivial, because utilmately everyone can do it. You see the attack, you dodge, then you keep on hitting and hitting and hitting, till the next overly exaggerated one shot mechanic is fired at you, where you dodge again.
In pvp, you get hit by small attacks left and right and use your dodges whenever you need a brief second to set up a bigger attack or your enemy throws a big attack. Something like this would work for PvE, too. It would force players to use their brain for once.

That’s what I’m talking about. Add to that enough smaller packets of damage that attrition becomes a concern. Either through mobs dealing more damage in general, (which can be mitigated through either toughness or protection/blind/healing) or being more capable of dropping poison/bleeding.

Generally, I’m talking about making it so that zerker would still do what it does (kills quickly) but make having toughness, vitality, the ability to cleanse and heal areas and debuff foes desirable.

Oh yea, I still remember how they fixed Elementalists in PvP from Apex to absolutely useless and unwanted. And shatter mesmers, and beastmaster rangers, and all those other specs that have been “fixed”.

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

What’s zerg gear? PTV?

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

Sorry, you mind explaining me how you think it would affect the combat? While equipped full dps, I still bring all the support my party needs when playing, let’s say, my guardian, via build, elite and utilities. Pretty much what every other class does.

Gameplay would be exatly the same with an healing power equipment, with possibly a different choice of weapon. Now, unless they actually introduce pure healing and tanking roles, spitting a lil more on their own manifesto by going back to the trinity system, how you think a lil more of healing could help the combat?

Also how playing a support/bunker only build would require more brain than playing the same exact kitten while being glass cannon and dealing alot of damage at the same time?

Vargamonth.2047:

Zerker is working perfectly fine for the most part.
You trade survival for damage, which makes you completely reliant on active defenses and increases the punishment for any mistake you could made. As a tradeoff, you kill things and complete dungeons faster for a better gold/time ratio.
Risk vs Reward, plain and simple.

The only issue, and the only fair complaint against DPS setups I can understand, is about insane amount of DPS making all that risk suddenly disappear.

We could take a look at Lupicus speedkills to show this.
There’s an undeniable show of high skill in almost any solo video out there. Just during the first phase players need to be in almost constant move to avoid being hit by locust swarms while evading every grub summon and every subtle kick animation (which is a oneshot for many classes on zerker).
IMHO this kind of gameplay absolutely deserves better results than bringing defensive stats so kicks can be endured and healed or stacking at range where this attack doesn’t even happen.

When you bring in a full DPS group, however, the fight goes in a completely different fashion.
First of all, there’s more than enough cleaving DPS to rip locusts apart before they can do anything; all need for movement is gone. Second, if the DPS is high enough, the phase can be finished so fast that kicks can be easily covered with aegis, which are long lasting enough to be precasted against an obvious pattern without worrying on them being wasted on any other minor damage source.
Players just need to avoid grub casts, which are really slow and obvious, and keep DPSing the boss. After that, a mesmer Feedback is enough to direclty finsih off phase 2, and even the whole fight with a few tricks that have been already shown to us.
There’s some organization and coordination here that should be rewarded, that’s for sure. There’s also tactic development, but that merit would belong only to those that used it for the first time and/or showed it to the world, not to any random player (like me) watching a video on youtube.
The coordination is far from high demanding, the execution is quite simple and the risk … the risk is just gone, completely nonexistant. It’s an obvious case (and there are a lot more) where playing full DPS not only doesn’t involve the risk is supposed to, but allows the execution of a tactic which removes all of it and still receives the full reward of a speedkill.

This shouldn’t be about how to make full DPS setups useless, even unplayable, as many suggestions along this thread try to accomplish.
It shouldn’t be a debate about which playstyle pleases us more and how our preferences aren’t as much rewarding as others, or about ways to bruteforce diversity.
and bring our loved specs into optimal groups.
Actively reacting to enemy animations is harder than facetanking and filling bars. It just involves more player skill over passive play and thereby deserves better rewards (in this case, freeing room for damage stats so faster runs can be achieved), and this comes from someone who has played healer/support for most of his MMO
Damage becoming the best form of defense, that’s what kills the idea of risk vs reward and the real problem we should be discussing about.

There’s only one easy and fair fix for this, and it’s just increasing the time it takes to kill things, be it through a raw increase on NPC HP/armor or demoting (promoting) every gear, from lvl 1 to 80, to double stat combinations, which is pretty much the same but also handles some downscaling issues. Needless to say that I don’t expect most people to like the idea :P
A selective nerf on full offensive combos is not reasonable at all when there’s a whole PvP enviroment that shares gear and doesn’t exactly suffer from this (most likely from the opposite if anything).

Other than that, there’s only the developing of more complex encounters and more polished AIs (LoS stacking should probably disappear); of making PvE more like PvP, where some specs use zerker but others don’t (and almost none zerker + DPS traits) and where every character capability (power burst, sustained damage, conditions, control, support, …) has its place.
Desirable? Absolutely. Likely to happen? I really doubt it.

This. This, this, this. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear being high risk, high reward. The problem is that that risk ratio should be even with the percentage of damage gear substituted for defensive gear. Right now such a ratio only extends to a certain point, beyond which it actually becomes LESS risky for your party to spec more into damage and less into defense. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, and should be more than enough proof that zerker gear is (comparatively) too powerful.

Throwing random ideas out there.

Does the MIGHT boon need to be adjusted to be stackable only up to.. say.. 5.. but the amount of power given doubled? This makes stacking might less of a ‘meta’ thing to do and easier for the common group to achieve, but lowers the max group dps.

The goal should be to allow defensive stats to do damage, but in a wholly different manner – defensively.

This way, defensive builds would simply be a different playstyle, but on equal ground.

Here’s my illustrative example:

Add more Retaliation to all trait lines with Toughness in them. Base Retaliation damage on Toughness instead of Power. Now, you can make a Thorns build, that has damage mitigation, and is also capable of doing lots of damage (although only when you are hit – which makes it a completely different way of dealing damage).

Otherwise, aggression will always be favored over defense. It can’t be any other way. If the game favored defense, you would run into prolonged battles that sometimes never ended. Aggression has to have the edge in order for fights to reach a conclusion.

The Berserker meta simply reflects this fact taken to it’s utmost, logical extreme.

There’s two ways to do defense – base it on opportunity, or base it on build (passive defense – like Toughness, Vitality).

I say make defense based MORE on opportunity than it already is – but this would require adding additional defensive options, such as more active blocking and dodging, and unerplaying passive defense even more than it already is. I would be fine with that, but it would require a rework of many systems, and at that point you might as well simply scrap all the passive defense stats, like Toughness and Healing Power.

Let’s think about the dodge mechanic. Why does it have to be dodge for every class, and every build? Why can’t it simply be my “active defense” slot, the specific skill changing depending on my build and/or class?

For example, if I am playing a class that uses Shields, why can’t there be a minor trait that transforms dodge into block (but uses the same amount of Endurance – instead of dodge rolling, I stand and block with Shield).

This would allow the player to customize active defense. You could do the same with Precision – turning it into a Parry instead if traited for it. Defensive stats could also affect these skills in some way (aside from Vigor). For example, if you Dodge, then maybe pts. into your ‘agility’ line (whatever that happens to be for your class, I’m assuming Precision) could affect things like animation speed, distance dodged, evade frames (+ 0.2 seconds of evade frame per 5 pts???), but if you had Block instead (Toughness), then maybe instead of a full block, it simply reduced dmg. greatly, and pts. in that line reduced the amount taken (or maybe something else….just throwing stuff out here), and if it were a Parry instead, maybe trait points could increase the likelihood of an interrupt or daze on Parry.

Black Box.9312:

This. This, this, this. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear being high risk, high reward. The problem is that that risk ratio should be even with the percentage of damage gear substituted for defensive gear. Right now such a ratio only extends to a certain point, beyond which it actually becomes LESS risky for your party to spec more into damage and less into defense. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, and should be more than enough proof that zerker gear is (comparatively) too powerful.

Yes, this is incredibly counter intuitive. The reason being that tank gear exists in pve in the first place and this game is not meant or designed to have tanks. The same can be said for healing gear and healers. These gear types are very useful in pvp environments…that is where they should have been restricted to from day one. Now you have all of these players mad that their tanking gear and healing gear is not accepted in pve content.

NoTrigger.8396:

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

sorry son, but you do realize that this post makes you look like you are stupid, right?

you HAVE TO use your brain when using berserker gear.
you HAVE TO dodge at the right moment.
you HAVE TO use blocks and other stuff at the right time.

tanky gear lets you turn off your brain.

get your facts straight.

Nothing of the things you listed depends on berserker’s gear, though.
Oh, sure, one good player can do those things. But he could do them with any other gear as well, they aren’t gear dependant at all. And the opposite is true, too. There are quite many bad berserker players that live lying on a floor.

ODB.6891:

Black Box.9312:

This. This, this, this. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear being high risk, high reward. The problem is that that risk ratio should be even with the percentage of damage gear substituted for defensive gear. Right now such a ratio only extends to a certain point, beyond which it actually becomes LESS risky for your party to spec more into damage and less into defense. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, and should be more than enough proof that zerker gear is (comparatively) too powerful.

Yes, this is incredibly counter intuitive. The reason being that tank gear exists in pve in the first place and this game is not meant or designed to have tanks. The same can be said for healing gear and healers. These gear types are very useful in pvp environments…that is where they should have been restricted to from day one. Now you have all of these players mad that their tanking gear and healing gear is not accepted in pve content.

It comes back to how differently PVP and PVE plays out mathematically.

A warrior in soldier can actually outlast a win in a direct PVP slugging match with a warrior in berzerker.

But this is never possible in PVE because most mobs above fodder can match or exceed a soldier warrior. This while the majority of their damage output is found in the spike they do every 3-4 seconds (i think i calculated one of those silver rimmed toxics to doing about 3-4x the damage of their normal hit in their spike, and this seems to be the pattern across the PVE board).

And dodge is also the least expensive defensive move in terms of recharge time pr use. 10 seconds after a dodge it is ready to be used again. Most other defensive moves in the game have 3x or longer recharge time between uses.

End result is that it is the go to defensive move unless there is some kind of gimmick involved (projectiles that can be reflected back or similar).

We see the same problem with elite skills. Sure they are massive, but their recharge is so long that people hesitate to use them at all in case they misjudge and so waste it.

But dodge is so readily available it can be virtually spammed.

Manuhell.2759:

NoTrigger.8396:

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

sorry son, but you do realize that this post makes you look like you are stupid, right?

you HAVE TO use your brain when using berserker gear.
you HAVE TO dodge at the right moment.
you HAVE TO use blocks and other stuff at the right time.

tanky gear lets you turn off your brain.

get your facts straight.

Nothing of the things you listed depends on berserker’s gear, though.
Oh, sure, one good player can do those things. But he could do them with any other gear as well, they aren’t gear dependant at all. And the opposite is true, too. There are quite many bad berserker players that live lying on a floor.

it doesnt depend on berserker gear. but its strange how non berserker players have trouble to dodge at the right time.
maybe because they are tanky enough to ignore the dodge key and thats why they never learn to use that skill the way its meant to be?

and yes, bad berserker players die alot. thats right. and thats exactly what i was talking about. you have to use your brain if you want to play berserker.

and manifibel said its the opposite basically.

digiowl.9620:

ODB.6891:

Black Box.9312:

This. This, this, this. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear being high risk, high reward. The problem is that that risk ratio should be even with the percentage of damage gear substituted for defensive gear. Right now such a ratio only extends to a certain point, beyond which it actually becomes LESS risky for your party to spec more into damage and less into defense. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, and should be more than enough proof that zerker gear is (comparatively) too powerful.

Yes, this is incredibly counter intuitive. The reason being that tank gear exists in pve in the first place and this game is not meant or designed to have tanks. The same can be said for healing gear and healers. These gear types are very useful in pvp environments…that is where they should have been restricted to from day one. Now you have all of these players mad that their tanking gear and healing gear is not accepted in pve content.

It comes back to how differently PVP and PVE plays out mathematically.

A warrior in soldier can actually outlast a win in a direct PVP slugging match with a warrior in berzerker.

But this is never possible in PVE because most mobs above fodder can match or exceed a soldier warrior. This while the majority of their damage output is found in the spike they do every 3-4 seconds (i think i calculated one of those silver rimmed toxics to doing about 3-4x the damage of their normal hit in their spike, and this seems to be the pattern across the PVE board).

And dodge is also the least expensive defensive move in terms of recharge time pr use. 10 seconds after a dodge it is ready to be used again. Most other defensive moves in the game have 3x or longer recharge time between uses.

End result is that it is the go to defensive move unless there is some kind of gimmick involved (projectiles that can be reflected back or similar).

We see the same problem with elite skills. Sure they are massive, but their recharge is so long that people hesitate to use them at all in case they misjudge and so waste it.

But dodge is so readily available it can be virtually spammed.

You can clear dungeons without having to use the dodge key at all. You don’t even need to utilize those “op reflections” for it nor really anticipate a move and react accordingly. Hell even defensive cooldowns can become obsolete once you stack up enough defensive stats and boons. This is a TRULY brainless playstyle.

We ran arah p2 without dodging at all (dodge key unbound) or using strong defensive abilities (shieldstance, renewed focus etc). Just walking through it. NO reflections used at alphard or lupicus. We wiped like 2 times. Once @Alphard because of 4 (or 5) consecutive explosions after a single pull (seriously?!) and once while skipping to the last boss because of … reasons.