Guild Wars 2

NoTrigger.8396:

and another step in the right direction would be to fix all the exploits in dungeons.

Honestly there aren’t that many left that are useful. When an exploit takes longer than just doing it the way intended, then the way intended will get done… unless you are referring to skipping mobs? Cause if you try to get that pulled I’ll just stop doing dungeons and go to TP flipping because you can’t nerf that.

Somehow I expect the devs to take the route that is as lame as possible.

@thefantasticg.3984
im referring to swimming around under arah and afk autoattack bosses from there.

I have the bad feeling, that Anet will do their next big mistake and just nerf berserker-gear.

All of my 6 toons are full zerker with exotic/ asxended quality. So i spent some time/ money/ efford to get it.
If they nerf it in a way that this gear becomes obsolete, i would just quit playing.

Another point: Is this the right time for changes? I think it would have been better BEFORE introducing ascended weapons and armor.
Oh wait, no, it fits perfectly in Anets money-sink-system.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Unless you guys are going to DRAMATICALLY decrease boss HP, increase dmg from mobs/bosses, and fix things like condi application, then no, nothing will change the meta.

What I do NOT want to see, is even higher boss HP pools and the like. Stop catering to people who are upset that they can’t run with a good group(HELLO, create a guild/find a group of people to run with, it’s NOT hard to do). Don’t punish players who play well together and WANT to do it that way. sigh. This is yet another case of ANet acquiescing to the minority (albeit very vocal).

The game needs MORE mechanics and MORE punishing modes(ie: “hardmode” dungeons). Don’t kitten the game in favor of people who want to run selfish builds and afk tank everything.

Also: WHY are you doing this RIGHT after you guys implemented Ascended armor? You do realize people just got done/still in the process of spending HUGE amounts of money and time on that right? GG to them when you (potentially) completely kill the DPS meta.

I do agree that skilled players should be able to equip zerker gear and speed run a dungeon, but it’s gotten to the point where everyone is just a glass cannon min/max build who just stacks for every mob and most bosses and never takes any hits, i’ve actually been kicked numerous times for having a shout healing Guardian or a condition damage Warrior. Here’s my two cents

1. Remove Defiant, it makes control builds completely useless, instead, give enemies buffs when they get interrupted, so we can use the boon stealing skills many classes have but never use in pve.

2. Address stacking and other dungeon exploits, the reason people can get away with zerker builds is that everyone just stacks at a safe place and rolls their face on the keyboard until the enemies are dead, its not fun in the slightest and not challenging at all.

3. Lastly, give bosses some control abilities, it would stop the tank and spank tactics and encourage teamwork through spreading stability, interrupting attacks or spreading out. As it stands, the only tactics I’ve needed for most bosses is spam attacks, dodge aoe’s repeat.

Rising Dusk.2408:

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

The dominance of Berserker/DPS is because of the WEAKNESS of other archetypes, not the strength of Berserker/DPS. So long as you and the rest of the balance team remain cognizant of that, whatever changes you make will be good. We do want condition builds to be good in PvE. We also would like you to completely get rid of Defiant stacks and use some other means of control reduction (give bosses stability when they use a skill or something, so that there is counterplay and we can remove the stability to CC them, for instance) so that control builds like Hammer Guardian/Warrior are useful in PvE. These sorts of changes will be welcome and wonderful for the PvE meta, and will also not hurt the direct damage players, which is good and helps keep things paced appropriately for speed clears.

The biggest change I think that can help condition damage dealers in PvE is to, in general, reduce the HP of enemy mobs and increase their Toughness. In this way, condition damage does greater percent damage over time, whereas if you tailor the enemy stats appropriately direct damage percent damage over time will be unchanged. This would be an optimal approach that helps all schools of thought.

But please, whatever you do, don’t nerf Berserker/DPS builds heavily! If you do that, you just slow down the game’s action, and you will alienate and damage countless players, and shoot yourself in the foot.

+15 chars and a bucket of zerks

I’ve said this before on the CDI, but the answer isn’t either reliance on the holy trinity or all zerker.
Anet didn’t want to do the Holy Trinity of tank/dps/healer because they didn’t want the community to force players to be a spec to get dungeon invites. However, the zerker meta is doing exactly the same thing, thus it is not superior to the trinity within the given reasoning.

What needs to happen is first for stats to have equal weight. As it stands now, speccing DPS, especially berzerker’s, greatly increases DPS. In comparison, stacking any other combination of stats yields much lower results. Toughness & health stacking does not make you live that much longer as zerker players. Healing power does almost nothing at all. Boon duration, while nice in theory, has 0 viable gear sets to support it.
Condition damage… well, it’s limited by the mechanics of the game itself, which is a huge problem to make it equal to the other stats. It needs a complete redesign to be on par with direct damage.

Note that none of these changes actually change the meta as it stands. People will still ask for 5x zerkers because it would still work and still be the best. And neither should we ask for nerfs to the spec because it would involve a complete overhaul of dodging mechanics and making the game stand out less in the already saturated MMORPG market.

I don’t want to see a complete reliance on the holy trinity. In fact, I’d rather see more than 3 roles being prominent in pve. Tanking, healing, CC, DPS, buffing, other ideas welcome, should all be worthwhile specs and offer a different play experience.
We already have relevant stats for most of these in the game, and number tweaking could already do a lot, as well as opening new stat combinations.

The rest is actually up to dungeon and encounter design. Having all dungeons require the same build setup is archaic nonsense.
So we’ll have encounters where all zerker’s/dodge for your life skill play is rewarded as well as encounters that require CC and buffing/debuffing and where dodging mechanics are not rewarded (ie, mobs that dodge/heal/CC the DPS). Taking the right build to the right place is also a form of skillful play. It’s called being prepared.

As for solo dungeon runs. The only reason this is possible atm is because the current dungeons are ridiculously easy. They were not designed for solo play, and neither should it be taken into account when designing dungeons/adjusting class balance.
It’s nice that it IS possible, but it has never been design’s intention.

NoTrigger.8396:

@thefantasticg.3984
im referring to swimming around under arah and afk autoattack bosses from there.

There are some places in open world you can do this to champs, too. It’s not an exploit so much as the NPC isn’t coded for going on land or into water. Of course the easy fix would be you couldn’t hit anything that isn’t on land if you’re in water or or land if npc is in water… That would mean there was an exploit in the 1st place which I don’t believe there is.

Prinny Kaiser XX.1376:

I 2. Address stacking and other dungeon exploits, the reason people can get away with zerker builds is that everyone just stacks at a safe place and rolls their face on the keyboard until the enemies are dead, its not fun in the slightest and not challenging at all.

You do realize stacking isn’t an exploit, right? It’s using the intended mechanics efficiently as possible. Of course, if you think stacking is an exploit I have to immediately dismiss anything you say outright as you simply do not understand the game mechanics are built around melee and being in melee range to share boons.

One of the things that I actually liked about one of the “exploits” that they patched, in SE path 3 the pipe and ledge that you could run up to drop down by the first champion. It was a moderately difficult JP under pressure from the opening mobs that people often run past and all it did was bypass some easy mobs. The jp was about the same difficulty as just killing the bombers IMHO (assuming a good zerk team). Then they removed it and took an option away from us (it didn’t look like an exploit like running over the caves in CM used to, it had an obvious ledge and path that looked like it was meant to be used). I don’t mind skipping trash, or fighting it, but I think its actually more fun if they included more of those kind of mechanics so groups that can’t burn down trash as effectively as zerk teams can or can’t run past groups as well as skilled players at least have an option to get through content. One would have the make the JPs long enough that killing trash would be about the same time otherwise the zerk teams would just use the JP for even faster runs however.

I don’t count on any of that actually happening though, its not like there is an actual dungeon team anymore. But it would be interesting for the new LS instances and fractals as they come out.

Please try to remember a Ranger class exists in this game too guys. Adding more random AE that’s unavoidable only makes the Ranger class more and more useless because the pet has poor control, poor responsiveness, and no way to avoid damage currently despite rangers begging for all of the above for a year.

The class already has a damage handicap in the 25-40% range because the pet is expected to make up the difference. That’s a lot of damage a Ranger has to make up for when the pet is dead or inactive to pull their weight. The utility they provide isn’t going to account for all of that.

thefantasticg.3984:

I don’t understand why you’d want to run anything other than DPS unless you are in 40+ factals… but even then…

Full zerker gear, and parties that know how to max out DPS are even more important at high level Fractals then the rest of PvE in GW2. PvE in GW2 is designed in such a way that for a skilled player, defensive stats are worthless the vast majority of the time… this is even more true in high level Fractals. There are some enemies (some Dredge Vets) which take might/vuln stacking, reflecting, full zerk parties minutes to kill.

One of the biggest jokes that is tossed around in my parties when killing some enemies with terribly, terribly inflated defensive stats, is “imaging doing this without zerker gear”. Some encounters like the HotW P3 boss are great examples of this, where most of the full glass cannon party are literally tabbed out, browsing the internet, and auto attacking without dying.

Anet better not be taking the lazy way out, by effectively buffing the PvE enemies already inflated defensive stats (by nerfing glass cannon builds).

The player character are more so balanced around PvP, while PvE is largely HP sponges with terribly easy to dodge attacks. Also, if glass cannons are nerffed, that just means that the Condition meta in PvP will simply be relatively buffed.

In my eyes one major issue lies in the boss mechanics. They favor too often pure damage on the boss. Many mechanics can be annulled by raw damage.

I remember Canachs Lair where healing turret spawned. You could ignore the turret by simply increase the damage on the boss. Same case with COF P1. Just make more damage on the boss than the crystals can heal. The proper mechanic would scale much faster. At a certain point the heal should massively overrun the damage taken by the boss if the source for the heal is ignored. There is another mechanic where conditions heal the boss. Also there the effect is too weak to notice a significant heal. I think the bosses need mechanics that you can’t circumvent easily.

The instabilities from the fractals would also be a nice source/inspiration for boss mechanics: bosses reflecting critical damage back to the players ; bosses healed by critical damage; conditions on the target transformed to boons; removing shields by performing certain combo fields and finishers.

The next issue is dodging. In most cases we can dodge too often. As a result many skilled players can avoid all damage. They do not have to rely on toughness or heals to stay alive. Since the game is very dodge-centric bosses spew red circles like mad trying to produce more damage sources than we can dodge. I think we should reduce the importance of the dodges in dungeons. We should leave dodge or die mechanics behind us. If we can dodge less we are more prone to damage. This would mean we need other tools to reduce the damage and to stay alive. There should be other punishments to players beside instant death if you cannot avoid the damage. In AC near the spider queen we have mobs that become invulnerable if you get hit. This is a nice mechanic: mistake does not mean death but time-out as damage dealer. We need more of this kind of punishments.

thefantasticg.3984:

NoTrigger.8396:

@thefantasticg.3984
im referring to swimming around under arah and afk autoattack bosses from there.

There are some places in open world you can do this to champs, too. It’s not an exploit so much as the NPC isn’t coded for going on land or into water. Of course the easy fix would be you couldn’t hit anything that isn’t on land if you’re in water or or land if npc is in water… That would mean there was an exploit in the 1st place which I don’t believe there is.

i dont think you understand what i mean.

i mean this kitten right here that hasnt been fixed for over a year now:

Naetell.3815:

I’ve said this before on the CDI, but the answer isn’t either reliance on the holy trinity or all zerker.
Anet didn’t want to do the Holy Trinity of tank/dps/healer because they didn’t want the community to force players to be a spec to get dungeon invites. However, the zerker meta is doing exactly the same thing, thus it is not superior to the trinity within the given reasoning.

What needs to happen is first for stats to have equal weight. As it stands now, speccing DPS, especially berzerker’s, greatly increases DPS. In comparison, stacking any other combination of stats yields much lower results. Toughness & health stacking does not make you live that much longer as zerker players. Healing power does almost nothing at all. Boon duration, while nice in theory, has 0 viable gear sets to support it.
Condition damage… well, it’s limited by the mechanics of the game itself, which is a huge problem to make it equal to the other stats. It needs a complete redesign to be on par with direct damage.

Note that none of these changes actually change the meta as it stands. People will still ask for 5x zerkers because it would still work and still be the best. And neither should we ask for nerfs to the spec because it would involve a complete overhaul of dodging mechanics and making the game stand out less in the already saturated MMORPG market.

I don’t want to see a complete reliance on the holy trinity. In fact, I’d rather see more than 3 roles being prominent in pve. Tanking, healing, CC, DPS, buffing, other ideas welcome, should all be worthwhile specs and offer a different play experience.
We already have relevant stats for most of these in the game, and number tweaking could already do a lot, as well as opening new stat combinations.

The rest is actually up to dungeon and encounter design. Having all dungeons require the same build setup is archaic nonsense.
So we’ll have encounters where all zerker’s/dodge for your life skill play is rewarded as well as encounters that require CC and buffing/debuffing and where dodging mechanics are not rewarded (ie, mobs that dodge/heal/CC the DPS). Taking the right build to the right place is also a form of skillful play. It’s called being prepared.

As for solo dungeon runs. The only reason this is possible atm is because the current dungeons are ridiculously easy. They were not designed for solo play, and neither should it be taken into account when designing dungeons/adjusting class balance.
It’s nice that it IS possible, but it has never been design’s intention.

You’re ALWAYS going to have meta, FoTM, or “anchor” builds in an MMO no matter if you have the trinity or not. The reason being: simplicity. Just because there is no need for a trinity, doesn’t mean people won’t be “pigeon holed” by specific builds/“requirements”. Everyone(at least everyone intelligent) wants to maximize utility(both party and self), thus, the reasoning behind people running VERY specific builds.

Personally, I think people feel lost without the trinity. I can’t tell you how many players I’ve encountered in dungeons/Fractals who literally do not understand the reasoning behind having GROUP utility. They think that because there is no trinity that they now need to go FULL self EVERYTHING. WRONG. You need to have more group cohesion instead of self/specific class reliance.

I agree with you that scaling of stats benefits those focusing on dps. I would like to see things like condi and healing addressed, but due to their current implementations and overall game mechanics…there is just ZERO reason to run those in PvE. Until things DRAMATICALLY change( and I mean 100% reversal from what we have now) the meta going forward will remain the same.

NoTrigger.8396:

thefantasticg.3984:

NoTrigger.8396:

@thefantasticg.3984
im referring to swimming around under arah and afk autoattack bosses from there.

There are some places in open world you can do this to champs, too. It’s not an exploit so much as the NPC isn’t coded for going on land or into water. Of course the easy fix would be you couldn’t hit anything that isn’t on land if you’re in water or or land if npc is in water… That would mean there was an exploit in the 1st place which I don’t believe there is.

i dont think you understand what i mean.

i mean this kitten right here that hasnt been fixed for over a year now:

Ohhhh. Nope. Never needed to use that one.

Surbrus.6942:

thefantasticg.3984:

I don’t understand why you’d want to run anything other than DPS unless you are in 40+ factals… but even then…

Full zerker gear, and parties that know how to max out DPS are even more important at high level Fractals then the rest of PvE in GW2. PvE in GW2 is designed in such a way that for a skilled player, defensive stats are worthless the vast majority of the time… this is even more true in high level Fractals. There are some enemies (some Dredge Vets) which take might/vuln stacking, reflecting, full zerk parties minutes to kill.

One of the biggest jokes that is tossed around in my parties when killing some enemies with terribly, terribly inflated defensive stats, is “imaging doing this without zerker gear”. Some encounters like the HotW P3 boss are great examples of this, where most of the full glass cannon party are literally tabbed out, browsing the internet, and auto attacking without dying.

Yeah, I never got into higher level fractals because I got tired of trying to find goods. Kept getting stuck with bads causing fractal runs to go longer than an hour and that’s way too long for me to be stuck in a dungeon of any kind.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Make the Supports more rewarding. Biggest mistake was to split builds to “permanent” DPS or Support – instead of letting use the needed kind in time.

If you manage to make my Ranger even more unplayable….
Keep in mind the promo videos showed 1-2 shot kills. We need 3+. Destroy the DPS and we’ll end up hitting a dirty rat for half minute…

I have to agree about the fact that zerker/sin meta is too strong. I also have to agree that nerfing (or buffing) gear is not the way to go. In fact I think the majority of the complains could be summarized in three points:

• Defiant – One of the biggest problems that plagues the current meta. Defiant should have never been a complete invuln for CC for the duration of the stacks. It should have been a percentage reduction on CC abilities per stack (i.e. 4 stacks Defiant equals 80% reduced effectiveness of CC) or something similar that didn’t completely force a DPS mindset. There also needs to be a cooldown period after Defiant has been stripped before it can be gained again.
• Condition Cap – The second biggest problem in the current meta. A condition cap essentially tells players that, “Hey, we’re gonna cap the damage you can do if you play this way.” That’s not cool. Either increase the stack-size on conditions (in PvE) to 100 or create a “condition overflow” mechanic so that anything over the cap is reduced in effectiveness, but not ignored.
• Bulky Bosses – I understand the intent on higher HP pools for bosses, and even higher HP pools when scaled up. The problem is that this type of combat is pretty backwards. It further reinforces the zerker/sin meta because the bigger hits are more effective at peeling the HP than anything else. If anything, Defiant should work on damage much like I suggested earlier where it is reduced in effectiveness until the stacks are stripped.

I think by fixing these problems with similar solutions it would greatly improve the quality and diversity of the game. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in the past with how the game is being handled is that players are being punished for playing [the meta] certain ways. That should never be the case.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That was really tl;dr. I should stop typing out posts when I’m bored. Just read the last bit, the rest is kinda just me ranting at silly things.

EDIT: I made it less kitten lol

I find nothing funny about people like you that deslike popular methods to get nerfed. Har har har your so silly to be against a method that works and doesnt waste time.

Now if it gets damage reduction, investments went to waste, frustrated players, increased wasted time in dungeon and fractals.

I quit doing world bosses because the “ideal design is to spam attacks on a foe you cant crit for 10 minutes”. Not to mention what it takes to do tequatl now is depressing my server never does it vs before only 10 people in 4 minutes.

Basically, it has to be any of the following, AND NOTHING ELSE, or I quit:

- Not a single stat point is changed in DPS gear/builds
- Condition gear/builds and support abilities/gear buffed to match or come close to the potential of physical damage
- Dungeon encounters redesigned such that Control and Support are encouraged alongside damage but not replacing it, as well as emphasising co-ordination and positioning

You have to be VERY, VERY careful. If you just nerf DPS gear and encourage people to wear defensive stats somewhere, then Warriors and Guardians will be THE meta, because they can just afford to have more damage while having more passive survivability. It will be no better than the all-Berserker meta now. My Thief can only bring immense DPS and stealth skipping – you would push my class in to absolute obscurity if you just did that.

tldr; this had better be an incredibly thorough, coherent and well-thought out plan to equalise Damage, Control and Support while taking in to account the strengths and weaknesses of all classes. Otherwise, we’ll just be stuck with Soldiers, and Adventurers and Scholars will just be alts to pick cherries.

Vargamonth.2047:

A higher amount of threats, however, would not only make full DPS setups less optimal, but also the game overall harder and more coordination requiring, so high chances are on organized teams (currently running DPS specs for the most part) being the most interested and the largest part of the casual community raging against it even if a zerker meta nerf is achieved.

Definitely agree here. Fights with multiple mobs where CC matters, positioning isn’t as cut-and-dry, and target selection or swapping is important are more interesting, provide different experiences with different group compositions, and can usually be more challenging without adding in too many insta-gib attacks.

But you still need some single mob fights for variety.

I’m fine with making condition gear more desirable. But please don’t make condition gear with defensive secondary stats good. Right now all content is faceroll, even more so if using toughness. Making PVT/etc. deal more damage would result in facerolling dungeons in fast time without any risk.
In my opinion defensive gear is for bads who do not even deserve dungeon completion. At least they take longer than proper playing people, at the moment.

Take defensive stats out of the game or remove any offensive attributes from them, that would be a good change. As this won’t happen, just leave it as it is. But, I repeat, do not make defensive gear desirable, not at all. Rabid deals way too much damage right now compared to direct damage.

somsom.5201:

You’re ALWAYS going to have meta, FoTM, or “anchor” builds in an MMO no matter if you have the trinity or not. The reason being: simplicity. Just because there is no need for a trinity, doesn’t mean people won’t be “pigeon holed” by specific builds/“requirements”. Everyone(at least everyone intelligent) wants to maximize utility(both party and self), thus, the reasoning behind people running VERY specific builds.

Personally, I think people feel lost without the trinity. I can’t tell you how many players I’ve encountered in dungeons/Fractals who literally do not understand the reasoning behind having GROUP utility. They think that because there is no trinity that they now need to go FULL self EVERYTHING. WRONG. You need to have more group cohesion instead of self/specific class reliance.

I agree with you that scaling of stats benefits those focusing on dps. I would like to see things like condi and healing addressed, but due to their current implementations and overall game mechanics…there is just ZERO reason to run those in PvE. Until things DRAMATICALLY change( and I mean 100% reversal from what we have now) the meta going forward will remain the same.

Of course you’re always going to have a meta. It is up to the developers, however, to make the usefulness of each class/spec as close together as possible, instead of pushing one stat combination/spec as the default through the game mechanics alone.
People will always theorycraft. I’m in that boat myself. And personally, I think it’s ridiculous that there’s only 1 build.
Even in WoW back in its glory days, with a heavy trinity meta, there were still two to three viable dungeon specs per class for the majority of the classes.

The current meta will remain the same if nothing is done, hence the thread, I’d imagine.

thefantasticg.3984:

NoTrigger.8396:

thefantasticg.3984:

NoTrigger.8396:

@thefantasticg.3984
im referring to swimming around under arah and afk autoattack bosses from there.

There are some places in open world you can do this to champs, too. It’s not an exploit so much as the NPC isn’t coded for going on land or into water. Of course the easy fix would be you couldn’t hit anything that isn’t on land if you’re in water or or land if npc is in water… That would mean there was an exploit in the 1st place which I don’t believe there is.

i dont think you understand what i mean.

i mean this kitten right here that hasnt been fixed for over a year now:

Ohhhh. Nope. Never needed to use that one.

since this game is from arenanet and i was told by the support to post such information on forums so the devs will see it, im not sure anymore if it is an exploit or just an asura jesus walking on water.

OMG !!!!! Plz remember that we are crafting ascended armor and I think a lot of zerk……..Wasting mass po ???? Hope no.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Depending what you do, you will have a major exodus of the hardcore players from this game. People spend a lot of time trying to min/max DPS in this game because it is the most viable way to play PvE in this game with the high enemy health pulls and the ability for skilled players to dodge away from 1hit kills. The majority of players run terrible soldiers/clerics builds in PvE because that is what they ran well leveling their character and think that 1k crit is good (it isn’t if you were wondering).

So what are our options:
- Nerf Zerk and Sin gear stats: this is a terrible solution due to the massive time invested into making the respective ascended pieces for these. Any massive stat nerf would be a complete slap to the face to players who spent a lot of time working on building these pieces and they will likely just move from this game. DO NOT DO THIS ANET
- Tweak meta traits/skills: Essentially decrease the damage modifiers some trait lines provide. This will likely switch people off their specific trait builds as long as it is still the best DPS option. As the game is right now, the hard core pve’ers will always trait for highest DPS.
-Increase rate of attack of enemies/decrease damage – as it stands, toughness is not a very helpful stat, me in my zerks gear (at 2000 armor) vs. someone in tanky gear (3000 armor) will die in 2 shot vs. 3. However, if I am good at dodging attacks I will die in 5 shots (I have vigor so I can get that dodge back) and they will die in 3 (dead no DPS is still no DPS). As such decrease the damage of mobs so toughness gear is more viable, make it so zerks can take 5 shots and a tank can take 9 right to the face. But also make it so the enemies attack faster so it is not a simple matter of blind spamming enemies and dodging all of their attacks. This is a much more time intensive plan, but would likely improve the game as a whole.
- Change agro mechanics: Right now, in most fights (not all) enemies initially will go after high toughness but then switch to highest DPS. This is why if you have 4 people in tanky gear and 1 in DPS gear, that person will be the one taking damage while everyone else feels good about themselves because they can survive the 0 attacks they are taking. Instead have it so toughness/armor garners most threat. That way you can viably have a tank in your group while your DPS focuses this boss. It is then also the job of the DPS to help keep the tank up with AoE heals. This might be too close to the holy trinity for Anets liking though.
- Do nothing: the meta is set, if you want to run a soldiers/clerics build run in a group who allows that, if you want to run a full zerks build then run in a speed clear group. I have seen no problem with this so far (except for a few upset people who whine about getting kicked from a group that they didn’t read the LFG for). I play how I want, you play how you want. With this option, nothing big will be screwed up in the patch, and people will stay with the game.

Dub.1273:

I’m fine with making condition gear more desirable. But please don’t make condition gear with defensive secondary stats good. Right now all content is faceroll, even more so if using toughness. Making PVT/etc. deal more damage would result in facerolling dungeons in fast time without any risk.
In my opinion defensive gear is for bads who do not even deserve dungeon completion. At least they take longer than proper playing people, at the moment.

Take defensive stats out of the game or remove any offensive attributes from them, that would be a good change. As this won’t happen, just leave it as it is. But, I repeat, do not make defensive gear desirable, not at all. Rabid deals way too much damage right now compared to direct damage.

I used rabid but because I mainly WvW and do dungeons for downtime with friends for fun. I mean obviously I shouldn’t be doing massive damage wearing condi/precision/toughness but… I shouldn’t be totally weak, especially on fights where something increases damage like dredge fractal or crystal golems in arah.

Don’t have the time to handle 2 characters or id have a zerker jus chillin for dungeons.

This sounds like an awful proposal by ArenaNet, truly ominous stuff. Don’t bow to the people that don’t know how to play by nerfing the damage specs that reward risk!

EDIT: If you feel that you have to bow to the bads on this then improve the AI or attack frequency.

do nothing combined with making pve content more challenging and difficult is the best option arenanet has. but its too much work i guess.

its even too much work to communicate with the dungeon community.

Change how aggro works, and Punish player stacking via mechanics.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Make the aggro system more transparent: the more health/armor/healing you have, the more aggro you take. The more damage you deal, the less aggro you incur.

This specifically is something I really can’t agree with.
The downside of glass cannon builds should be that they’re made of glass. Do not artificially “protect” them.

And it doesn’t make logical sense either. When we attack a group of enemies, we snipe the high-dps-low-health targets, first. It’d make sense for more sentient mobs to do the same, in most~all cases. Identify you as the biggest threat → remove you.

This would in turn be what brings character-value to defensive stats / utilities / traits. If you forego them, you’ll die. A lot. If you focus entirely on them it’s easy to survive but you overdid it. Find the right balance so you survive while maximizing your chances at bringing down the enemy.

To that end, what we need are mob auto-attacks. Right now it is too easy to dodge everything incoming, which means that the best balance of defence and offence is no defence at all. Defence is built into every character, plenty of it.
To reduce it, add baseline damage, so that dodging can no longer avoid all damage- only the special attacks. Now if the base damage would still be plenty to threaten a pure glass cannon, those builds would have a certain liability in that a single misstep could kill them (as they’re walking the edge just from the autoattacks).

As such, their potential damage is much higher, but their rate of death is also much higher. This just needs to be balanced to be in check. As in, deal twice the damage, die twice as often. In burst situations you’re an asset, in hold-out situations you’re a liability. A specialization just like any other one.

There needs to be more focus on support by “condition” professions such as Necromancer so Chill, Weakness, Chill, Fear actually does something usefull rather than just being “random” back before when Fear went through Defiant i could actually do interrupts on bosses to save team mates!, that’s support as well, the boon support is already pretty kitten good but we need more focus on the Condition support.

Machupo.1095:

OMG !!!!! Plz remember that we are crafting ascended armor and I think a lot of zerk……..Wasting mass po ???? Hope no.

There have been some hints regarding making it possible to swap stats on Ascended gear.

I think one thing that needs to be fixed too which makes speed runs so easy is fix the bug of meteor shower or similar skills in corners. If there is no place for the bolts to rain make them disappear instead of making them all rain down in that corner which does insane damage. The second thing is whirl attacks against a wall/corner.
If they fix these two the overall damage of speedrun groups will drastically be lowered.

And overall the only way to make full zerker setups less possible is to make it so that attacks come faster that you don’t have enough endurance to dodge all the stuff.
Even then it will probably be possible but if you have to dodge more/replace yourself more. Then at least a more balanced group won’t be that much worse damage wise because they can stay on the boss with some healing/damage mitigation.

A very good group will still be able to run full zerker if they share protection/regen and such stuff.

Vargamonth.2047:

Elrey.5472:

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

What bothers me is not that zerkers do more damage, but the point that zerkers can ignore most of the mechanics due to killing bosses before they can use their skills.

If an enemy do a really big attack each 45 seconds but you kill the boss in 40 seconds… there is the reason of why I hate zerker. It’s cheating in a sort way of speaking.

That’s clearly one of the biggest issues with zerker in PvE. It’s supposed to be a risk vs reward spec, but sometimes (too many times if the group is coordinated enough and stacks boon/vulnerability correctly) it can easily bypass that risk.
The easiest solution would be just about increasing armor/HP on enemies , but then the game could become extremely annoying for all those “play what you want” groups.

I would say swarms of trash mobs might make Toughness, Vitality, and/or Crowd Control a bit more appealing, but since most of the Berserker/DPS builds include plenty of cleave I don’t think it would make much of a difference.

“do nothing combined with making pve content more challenging and difficult is the best option arenanet has. but its too much work i guess.
its even too much work to communicate with the dungeon community.”
I agree 100%, a lot of people use zerk (and I) because PvE is too easy , even fractal lvl 50, that’s why we can afford having less hp. Make PVE more challenging and we won’t be able to have full zerk.

Machupo.1095:

“do nothing combined with making pve content more challenging and difficult is the best option arenanet has. but its too much work i guess.
its even too much work to communicate with the dungeon community.”
I agree 100%, a lot of people use zerk (and I) because PvE is too easy , even fractal lvl 50, that’s why we can afford having less hp. Make PVE more challenging and we won’t be able to have full zerk.

good players will still be able to run full berserker, bad players wont.
thats the key point here.
and thats how it should work.
but since the pve content is so faceroll, even the worst players can get away with full berserker at the moment.

Thread:
I welcome the announcement of work on the DPS meta. IMO, a nerf is actually the smarter way, but not only a nerf. I think right now berserker builds are too strong, compared to what PvE offers. As such buffing non-zerker builds isn’t a fix – it’ll just make PvE trivial independent of the build you run.

However, on occasions I’ve run completely stupid builds, and if you misspec your char, PvE feels oddly… balanced. :o
This makes me think that we’re just too strong, as player characters. Hence I’d go with a nerf.

But not exclusively. Points where to tweak the PvE meta, IMO:

• Too many stats benefiting direct attacks. Remove one. Doesn’t need to be replaced with a condition stat, rather I’d like to see a fourth defensive stat. Dodge was one idea, but it feels too random since we have player dodge. Maybe a stat which increases endurance regeneration? Since you cannot attack while dodging, this works well.
• Add autoattacks to mobs, making glass cannon setups – independent of whether based on direct attacks or conditions – forced to soak some attacks, instead of just dodging everything. This would also make interrupt-based play much easier because mobs would be casting something quite often. The attacks don’t need to be powerful, they just need to provide a baseline of outgoing damage.
• Revisit the aggro-system on a per-mob basis. Specifically, I think smarter enemies like humanoids should identify and attack “weak” characters (Berserker, Assassin, Rampager etc) as a priority. On the contrary, simple beasts could go for the visibly largest character (including flashy large-scale AE effects), while flying enemies would first try to single out ranged characters. Etc. Make it feel more believable, while at the same time making it more predictable for us.
• Give us more ways to add to the fight in more defensive ways. Right now we interface with enemies by damaging them. If they had an autoattack, we can also viably disable them in a more reliable fashion. To add to that, have abilities which cleave “as necessary”, so defensive characters can actively soak that, or DPS-focused ones can take one for the team. Have NPCs which are powerful but need protection in more fights. Have, in turn, NPCs which protect us, making us feel like the newbies again. And most importantly – though GW2 continues to impress me here – have more non-combat gameplay, even in dungeons. Not only puzzles, but also reaction tests, memory tests, discussions where you need to win over an audience, etc. This alone would do a lot for spec balance because it dulls the edge of each camp.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

It takes months to grind just for ascended weapons and trinkets, that’s not gonna fix it myself and other people will get really angry if it’s not viable anymore. Just make harder content or let us choose the stats on ascended stuff because it takes forever to make them and you just can’t change the meta whenever you want since people put all those efforts into getting them in the first place.

There is room to improve PvE experience, without nerfing zerk players if they want to stick with that stuff.

- Remove One Shot mecanics and replace them by huge damage :
same for Zerk players who would die to this hit, if they avoid the strike = same experience for us; but the average player with a tankier set may survive a strike or two.

- Don’t increase bosses HP, but make enemy combat more dynamic, for example, more dodge / blocks usage, like recent foes around Nightmare Tower.
More challenging for everyone, does not change the damage done by Zerk players, but needs active gameplay to land the strike, instead of DPS it in close combat without a need for a brain.

With the advent of the Ascended gear grind, this could well be a bad thing, depending on how they do it.

Currently, for PvE, if you have zerker Ascended, you’re all set. You only had to go through the unholy gear grind once. If they make changes so that you require another set of gear (through nerfs, through more “structure” bosses, for example) then people will not be happy.

It’s hard for Anet to win because of the situation they put themselves in. (They can increase the viability of other gear, but Anet’s MO is usually to nerf and nerf hard.)

The overreactions in this thread are hilarious.

The problem with the zerk meta is that it’s just too good and overwrites any possibility of running anything else. I’m not talking, like, “I play how i want y u kick cleric thief i go post on reddit about elitists” builds, I’m talking legit builds that are highly disincentivized to run anything that isn’t raw DPS. For example, I’ve got a guide up on Guru for a hammer spec that deals damage almost equal to GS and which stacks permanent protection and Strength in Numbers for what is almost a 50% damage reduction for everyone in melee, at the cost of maybe 2-3% worth of damage, tops. I would still never run this build in an organized group even though I’m basically doubling the effective HP of everyone nearby because we just don’t care about that and would rather have the extra 2-3% damage. Rewarding the player for putting every possible point into DPS no matter the ratio of defense tradeoff involved in doing so isn’t rewarding skill, it’s just rewarding lazy building. If GW1 builds were just “put the 8 highest DPS skills on the bar and unload them on cooldown” the game wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting.

Along the same lines, the game currently is designed so that unless you are speed running, you really have zero incentive to contribute to any dungeon. Objectively speaking, if I wanted to get the most reward for the least effort involved, I would absolutely run a cleric bearbow. I would basically not be putting any effort whatsoever into any of the content since I’m out of range of most of the attacks, yet I still get all the same rewards and loot as everyone else. The run would take maybe 5-10 minutes longer but considering I’m putting in 1% effort versus 100% I’m basically getting 100x the effort:reward payoff. The problem is that most pugs subscribe to this mentality whether they’re aware of it or not. Either they genuinely just don’t care and “play how they want” or they just don’t realize they aren’t properly pulling their weight. Alternating mechanics to FORCE players with less DPS to make a contribution (which is fundamentally what the aggro thing is about) will improve quality of life generally because it will force contribution from all players AND on an organized zerk group it won’t even change anything because aggro will still be evenly distributed, the way it is now.

So basically, what it’s about is:

1) Encouraging build diversity by incentivizing the use of traits, weapons, and gear that have good damage/defense tradeoffs.
2) Making players pull their own weight.

I hardly think that’s unreasonable or ruining the game however Anet decides to go about doing it.

Also, how many of you run Aetherblade path on a regular basis? Making fights require coordination is a bad thing, even if encouraging it is good. It is possible for a single bad pug to actively screw over 4 good players with very little effort in multiple parts of that dungeon. That is bad design.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

You’re a year too late for most people.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The overreactions in this thread are hilarious.

The problem with the zerk meta is that it’s just too good and overwrites any possibility of running anything else. I’m not talking, like, “I play how i want y u kick cleric thief i go post on reddit about elitists” builds, I’m talking legit builds that are highly disincentivized to run anything that isn’t raw DPS. For example, I’ve got a guide up on Guru for a hammer spec that deals damage almost equal to GS and which stacks permanent protection and Strength in Numbers for what is almost a 50% damage reduction for everyone in melee, at the cost of maybe 2-3% worth of damage, tops. I would still never run this build in an organized group even though I’m basically doubling the effective HP of everyone nearby because we just don’t care about that and would rather have the extra 2-3% damage. Rewarding the player for putting every possible point into DPS no matter the ratio of defense tradeoff involved in doing so isn’t rewarding skill, it’s just rewarding lazy building. If GW1 builds were just “put the 8 highest DPS skills on the bar and unload them on cooldown” the game wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting.

Along the same lines, the game currently is designed so that unless you are speed running, you really have zero incentive to contribute to any dungeon. Objectively speaking, if I wanted to get the most reward for the least effort involved, I would absolutely run a cleric bearbow. I would basically not be putting any effort whatsoever into any of the content since I’m out of range of most of the attacks, yet I still get all the same rewards and loot as everyone else. The run would take maybe 5-10 minutes longer but considering I’m putting in 1% effort versus 100% I’m basically getting 100x the effort:reward payoff. The problem is that most pugs subscribe to this mentality whether they’re aware of it or not. Either they genuinely just don’t care and “play how they want” or they just don’t realize they aren’t properly pulling their weight. Alternating mechanics to FORCE players with less DPS to make a contribution (which is fundamentally what the aggro thing is about) will improve quality of life generally because it will force contribution from all players AND on an organized zerk group it won’t even change anything because aggro will still be evenly distributed, the way it is now.

So basically, what it’s about is:

1) Encouraging build diversity by incentivizing the use of traits, weapons, and gear that have good damage/defense tradeoffs.
2) Making players pull their own weight.

I hardly think that’s unreasonable or ruining the game however Anet decides to go about doing it.

Also, how many of you run Aetherblade path on a regular basis? Making fights require coordination is a bad thing, even if encouraging it is good. It is possible for a single bad pug to actively screw over 4 good players with very little effort in multiple parts of that dungeon. That is bad design.

maybe the 4 good players arent that good when one bad player can ruin their experience?

bad design is that even the worst players can get away in berserkers gear.
it means the content is too easy and too faceroll.
and this hasnt anything to do with berserker gear.

making other builds better gets my +.
nerfing berserker and nerfing the playstyle of very good players is just the wrong way.

gw2 has a combat system designed to avoid damage instead of tanking damage.
the game developer has to deliver content for such a combat system.
and this is where the problem really begins.

its arenanets fault that most bosses can be killed by going afk and turning autoattack on.
its arenanets fault that they never communicate with the dungeon community.
its arenanets fault that they test their new dungeon paths together with “pro testers” instead of asking top PvE guilds to take a look at it.

they have to hurry up or wildstar is going to take over the gw2 PvE community.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The problem with the zerk meta is that it’s just too good and overwrites any possibility of running anything else….

Everything you said is right. But if their solution involves pushing people to have more than one set of gear, then many are not going to be happy. Ascended gear is here and people simply don’t want to grind a second set.

Their efforts to make the game less stale directly conflicts with the existence of Ascended gear grind.

I know that this is risking edging into holy trinity territory, but I think the devs could go further to buff the support options of Mesmers. Instead of making the heal-on-shatter only personal, make it a decent group heal (and don’t make it compete with condition clearing on shatter!). Make using any healing skill (especially ALL mantra uses, not just the charge) remove conditions or also group heal. Or give the option of shattering clones grant chaos armor, etc. And make healing power scale better.

I’ve been playing an inspiration mesmer in open-world events in Orr especially, and I’m finding that when I do, there is a noticeable difference in how many folks die, I’m able to keep Jonez up at off-hours events where he’d get hit by champs and go splat. That’s not really viable for dungeons, but as an inspiration-specced mesmer it’s been pretty fun.

With mantra of pain and other specs, it’s feeling right now like a smite specced poor man’s disc priest, or a gimpy smite monk from GW1. I’m still damaging, but I’m offering some utility.

Group condition clearing with mantras is just not there yet, though. Null Field is still a superior choice because of the boon strip/total condition nullification, even with a longer recharge.

To be clear, I’m not asking to play someone who mostly just heals, but like some classes get a lot of regen/etc, allow Mesmers to bring more group heals and cleanses as we damage.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Why don’t you guys maybe… buff condi and different builds rather than nerfing the zerker builds?

I just today got the required guild commendation for the Ascended accessory. Threw all my gold+ Laurels yesterday for the zerker Armor, Weapons, amulet + Scholar Runes and sigils. I was so happy that I finally made the most optimal build to run with my friends in organized groups. I am just hoping you don’t nerf it too hard farming those gold and laurels again for the new “meta” build just isn’t fun for me.

Look at this thread maybe?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvE-The-Problem-with-Conditions-A-Fix/first#post3477978

Jon, how about this (aggro-related): based on another concurrent pre-requisite, when this mob receives an attack that takes 10% of his life at once it will immediately rage at the offending player making so that they need to be cautious when bursting, or at least diminish the rate bursts occur. This would proc too much with simple mobs so I’d imagine applying this to champions and legendaries only.

Controlling incoming damage by a sort of “payback” would then slow down the zerker-past-everything-and-emerge-victorious meta.