Guild Wars 2

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Mixchimmer.7230:

[snip]

In order for the meta to change, they must completely rework encounters with the AI. The AI must be smart, and punish players more. Anet would have to do a ton of work.

Instead, it seems they are just going to nerf some stats, and some gear, which will fix nothing. The gameplay will still be, kill everything as fast as you can. It will just be up to us to figure out what gear does it the best, which probably still be zerker unless they hit it so hard conditions become relevant. Either way, its still a dps race.

Most who are arguing against changing anything, already knows anet won’t do the necessary steps to properly shift things, since it would require a whole rework of all encounters, and all PVE mobs. Nerfing zerker won’t change the meta, it will still be kill stuff as fast as you can and learn 2: dodge, reflect, block and blind.

Well you won’t have me arguing that content is at least part of the problem.

Tequatle was supposed to be a cool new fight with neat new intriguing mechanics. Instead we got a 15 minute DPS check with other mechanics sprinkled on top. If they were going for a PvE meta with less reliance on DPS I don’t think that was the way to go about it.

I’m just glad they’re at least taking some sort of step to try and cull the zerker dominance.

I personally would rather see significant bumps in defensive stats than I would nerfs to zerker. Though I won’t disagree a real change in the meta would take a lot more than that. Who knows — we’ll see what happens.

Smiley.5376:

Changing the way stats work is not the correct way to adress the dps/zeker meta… That’s the easy way out and will just create more unbalance !

How can anet not see this ?? “critical damage changes” sounds HORRIBLE. seems like conditions will be even more OP in pvp now…

EXACTLY like blood red anarchid explained in his other post: to adress dps meta(a PVE ISSUE) they CAN NOT change the way stats work because stats are already balanced correctly among professions. What has to change is the way mobs work so that they require more intelligent play !

Teamplay between support, control, condi AND dps specs will again get a role in this game if they adress this issue EXACTLY like Blood pointed out…

Actually, there is a way in which they may be able to do this without making critical damage unbalanced in PvP.

By making the critical damage formula so that more pieces of armor give less of a benefit at the top end.

In PvP we simply cannot get the amount of critical damage and precision that we can in PvE. So a change to the top of the curve could make a relatively big difference to PvE while but a minor one to PvP.

A quick experiment shows:

With food, sharpening stones, fury, 25 stacks of precision from a sigil (should be power, I know) and an incomplete ascended berserker set (only have 5 of the trinkets, rest exotic). My mesmer has a 97% chance to crit and has 119% critical damage in PvE.

In PvP this same mesmer has an 81% chance to crit and 60% critical damage. (In theory I could add 2% more critical damage by using runes of divinity.)

Some more skills could ofcourse increase these values, but it gives a rough idea.

Now without any might and vulnerability, but with some damage % increases through traits, my pistol phantasm hits a foe for 7046 damage with all crits. This same pistol phantasm in PvP only hits for 4,313 (all crits again).

Both were aimed at light armored foes (at least… I think that ice-imps are light armored?) many times just to check for the highest amount of damage.

That is more than a 60% damage increase!

And this is without taking into account any vulnerability/might/banners or traits that your profession may have to increase the damage even further. (Everything that increases your damage will make this difference bigger since it is amplified by the critical damage difference)

Nor taking into account that we crit 17% less often.

Now I am not saying that critical damage should be reduced to what it is in PvP , since all gear is stronger in PvE than it is in PvP. But the 60+% damage does allow for a lot of wiggle room to operate in before actually having an effect on PvP balance.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Proven.2854:

But as it is the current meta for PvE is degenerative.

This is one of those statements that should require massive amounts of evidence before people accept it, but clearly you take it as somehow self-evident.

The current meta for PVE is working perfectly. Give a complete noob a set of zerker gear and send him into Arah p1 for the first time. See if he can even make it to the champ entities. Give him full tank gear, he might actually make it. The entire concept, as I have described elsewhere, is that in PvE you take as much defensive gear as you need to survive… and no more. This system is working exactly as intended.

The problem is that the content is old and on farm. There are good tactics for every dungeon and fractal and even bad players have done the content enough that they don’t need the tanky gear anymore. This isn’t because Zerker gear is magically turning them into good players. It’s because even bad players can learn content given a long enough amount of time.

If an xpac dropped tomorrow, with 5 new dungeons/elite zones with many bosses that had good and unique lupicus style mechanics, all the bad players who currently get away with zerker would go back to faceplanting regularly and nobody would argue that Zerker is too powerful.

It really does bother me that people are treating this as a gear problem when it’s so obviously a content problem. It really does bother me that the devs are treating it as a gear problem, most likely because it’s easier for them to deal with a gear problem and not a content problem.

If there is any problem now, its that there is a barrier of entry for new players who are expected to run zerker in pugs but haven’t had the year+ of time to learn the encounters. Those players do need time to learn and they should be using tanky gear if needed but they are put off because they are late to the game. If they were joining the game right at the release of a new xpac as I described it would be much less of a problem.

But again, that points to a content problem.

the problem is that the stats system isnt based around playstyles, but more, as you said by how much dmg you can avoid.

best CC gear? beserkers, support gear? berserkers or givers depending on if your support is boon heavy, and needs longer durations to be effective. even tanks are sometimes better off in berserker

also, AI is poor.

phys.7689:

the problem is that the stats system isnt based around playstyles, but more, as you said by how much dmg you can avoid.

best CC gear? beserkers, support gear? berserkers or givers depending on if your support is boon heavy, and needs longer durations to be effective. even tanks are sometimes better off in berserker

also, AI is poor.

AI is a content problem.

And I don’t see the concept of playstyle and gear being separate as a problem at all. Traits determine your playstyle, gear determines you offense/defense spectrum. It could easily be argued the opposite, which many want, is worse. Let’s say you take “tanky” traits. Why would you want to be locked in to tanky gear? If you take supporty traits why would you want to be locked in to supporty gear?

If you value variety and open ended character creation you would actually prefer the current system. Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

A lot of people on these forums want that sadly…. They want to be “the healer” or “the tank”. Even though gw2 was suppose to be completely against that..

People want roles because in an everyone does everything for himself they can’t handle all the different things they need to take care of and become worse players for it.
So they want their little role to learn and maybe they’ll do better.

The meta will still be dps oriented – I’m just sorry for the people that invested in ascended zerker.
There will still be gearchecks, the dungeon community will still be as it was before – nothing will change except the optimal set we deal dps with.

Critical damage changes – really won’t change anything. They’re addressing the symptom of a problem they can’t really fix.

Harper.4173:

People want roles because in an everyone does everything for himself they can’t handle all the different things they need to take care of and become worse players for it.
So they want their little role to learn and maybe they’ll do better.

The meta will still be dps oriented – I’m just sorry for the people that invested in ascended zerker.
There will still be gearchecks, the dungeon community will still be as it was before – nothing will change except the optimal set we deal dps with.

Critical damage changes – really won’t change anything. They’re addressing the symptom of a problem they can’t really fix.

I don’t want roles because I can’t handle everything else. I do quite well in-fact — I’m no pro or anything. I consider myself a rather experienced player and am quite good at maintaining awareness of all the multiple things going on in combat. I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Saying I (or any other player) would want roles because we can’t handle everything is an extremely un-fair assumption and isn’t really constructive.

I respect your opinion — I only ask that you respect others. Being condescending and insulting doesn’t help anyone.

@Blood Red Arachnid:

There is nothing wrong with DPS being king. Doing damage is a highly popular role. But from an RPG perspective, there is a missing element to mitigate damage that should be present: resource management. Management of resources is a staple of RPGs that GW2 seemingly ignores. While players do have to manage their dodges to an extent, it is obviously not working as a mitigating factor. This is probably due to the high uptime of both dodges and full damage when correctly dodging. It’s probably not helping that it’s the sole relevant resource to manage, and common to all professions. Cool downs on skills don’t work either, especially with the effectiveness of auto-attack.

Without limiting all out damage with resource management, the game ends up being solely focused on mitigating damage through dps. Armor really isn’t about surviving longer, as it is about making whatever resource that keeps the character alive more effective, and last longer. Since active defense is common to all professions, and is the primary source of survival, armor becomes meaningless, and actually detrimental to group compositions.

I don’t know what the answer is on this one, and you may already be well aware of this missing game design element. If I could give any suggestion, it would be to look towards other “DPS is king” games, and try to integrate what works there into GW2. DDO comes to mind, actually. While it had it’s glaring flaws, it did succeed in having good class interaction and build diversity. All of that interaction and build diversity was completely dependant on a strict resource management scheme. Otherwise it would have been optimal for everyone to run a Warforged great-axe barbarian, with one Warforged sorcerer for buffing DPS.

With all sincerity I say “good luck!”.

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

You’re both right?

TBS, MOBAs, and some Action RPGs all feature roles that have other duties while also splitting the responsibility of Damage. It’s very likely that’s ultimately the intention in GW2 given they list Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends as chief influences.

But, you know, when I played their inspiration games I never once thought of myself as DPS with a sorry side order of Support when playing a Medic or Janna, and in GW2 that impression is absolutely unshakeable. I felt just as Support focused as my WoW Priest, even though these games obviously featured much more naturally aggressive support roles than a game where that role is defined entirely by ally health bars.

Everybody’s a DPS hybrid doesn’t have to equal everybody’s gameplay feels like DPS.

The fact people feel that way that just underscores how bad this imbalance really is and how much more iteration Anet has to put into the translation of this concept into their game.

I just hope that if they plan on nerfing crit damage, it’s a PvE only change and won’t affect PvP and WvW. I rarely ever PvE and could care less about who can clear a dungeon the fastest, but i do care about all the ascended gear that i invested a ton of time and money on being completely invalidated because of a few PvE whiners who can’t clear dungeons as fast as their friends. And crit damage is already reduced in SPvP, so it’s a non issue there. Nerf it there, and condi spam will become even more prevalent than it already is and no one wants that. And i don’t get why they’d want to nerf overall crit damage anyway when it’s mainly warriors and thieves you hear complaints about about how much damage they do. Why carpet bomb the issue and nerf crit damage all together when you can just tone down the insane amount of damage those two classes deal rather than further nerfing other classes that have trouble dealing damage to begin with in the first place?

Mixchimmer.7230:

I think people from the side of keeping the current DPS meta really truly enjoy the high risk / high skill but very high reward feeling of it. Currently It’s true that you take as much defensive gear as you need, and if you’ve gotten really experienced and feel you’ve reached a high skill level within the game, you no longer need any defensive stats. In this situation your reward for being really good is that you get to put out more DPS than anyone else (and why shouldn’t it be?). Once it was discovered that all DPS on all players in the party is one of the most optimal ways to run through content, it is what everyone started running, (which again, why shouldn’t they?). In this scenario, if everyone in your group is extremely skilled and running full zerker because of it, you are rewarded with very fast rewards for such skilled play.

I actually like the idea of a high-risk, high-reward style of play. Unfortunately, not all professions are equal. Rather, some professions lend themselves to zerker play without much risk due to naturally baked-in survivability.

A full glass elementalist or thief pales in comparison with a full zerker warrior. I would just assume the devs fix those types of imbalances first.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Proven.2854:

But as it is the current meta for PvE is degenerative.

This is one of those statements that should require massive amounts of evidence before people accept it, but clearly you take it as somehow self-evident.

The current meta for PVE is working perfectly. Give a complete noob a set of zerker gear and send him into Arah p1 for the first time. See if he can even make it to the champ entities. Give him full tank gear, he might actually make it. The entire concept, as I have described elsewhere, is that in PvE you take as much defensive gear as you need to survive… and no more. This system is working exactly as intended.

The problem is that the content is old and on farm. There are good tactics for every dungeon and fractal and even bad players have done the content enough that they don’t need the tanky gear anymore. This isn’t because Zerker gear is magically turning them into good players. It’s because even bad players can learn content given a long enough amount of time.

If an xpac dropped tomorrow, with 5 new dungeons/elite zones with many bosses that had good and unique lupicus style mechanics, all the bad players who currently get away with zerker would go back to faceplanting regularly and nobody would argue that Zerker is too powerful.

It really does bother me that people are treating this as a gear problem when it’s so obviously a content problem. It really does bother me that the devs are treating it as a gear problem, most likely because it’s easier for them to deal with a gear problem and not a content problem.

If there is any problem now, its that there is a barrier of entry for new players who are expected to run zerker in pugs but haven’t had the year+ of time to learn the encounters. Those players do need time to learn and they should be using tanky gear if needed but they are put off because they are late to the game. If they were joining the game right at the release of a new xpac as I described it would be much less of a problem.

But again, that points to a content problem.

In other games, if after all the characters/matchups/strategies/encounters are figured out it is found that one or more character(s)/strategy(ies)/playstyle(s) is so much more effective than the majority of options in the game, the game is considered degenerative. That’s the current issue with PvE, and there are many ways that it can be solved. Blood Red Arachnid called for an AI and encounter redesign, and I agree with that sentiment.

From my point of view, you’re taking what the developers said and did in the past as proof towards their intentions of the current situation. You’re also assuming that they’re going back on their actions as a response to the player base when it could easily be because they didn’t realize that the consequences of their actions didn’t match their intentions.

I also see that you’re fine with the situation now because it does have a balance within it and the content is easy enough to clear even if you’re not using the absolute best by a wide margin strategy. I’m personally not fine with it because it doesn’t match up with the rest of the game. Even in WvW you’ll find organized groups using a combination of builds requiring Soldier, Berserker, Cleric, Dire/Rabid, and maybe other types of gear. And a lot of this gear I assumed was created with the intention of not having one or two sets be the absolute best for PvE as well.

Alternatively I can just go back to PvP and WvW where DPS isn’t the be all and end all king, because encounter design doesn’t make it valued so much further above the rest and all of the ways players have to mitigate DPS from AI is extremely effective on other players too.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

I agree with and have been agreeing with everything Nike has been saying. The absence of the trinity leaves only one primary role, but we still have secondary roles that everyone should be adhering to. Offensive support and defensive support. This support is via utilities, profession specific utilities like aegis, death shroud, attunements, etc and via weapon abilities. This game is not as one dimensional kitten many keep trying to make it out to be. People are just stuck in that trinity mindset and will not let themselves see the reality of how this game is designed. You are supposed to be multi-tasking, but people only want to do one thing. You are supposed to be contributing your 1/5 of the team’s dps while also supporting your party with your utilities, profession mechanics, and weapon abilities…while also managing your resources (cool downs, endurance, profession resources such as adrenaline). It is so frustrating when playing with pugs and you have 3 guardians in the group…got at least one camping staff like he/she is a dedicated healer. Got at least 2 of them that never use their virtues once.

Its only logical that in the absence of required tanks and healers…that dps is the primary role. You don’t heal enemies to death or kill them by soaking their damage up…you actually have to kill them with damage. This isn’t going to change by people crying about how zerker’s can clear content faster than them. Despite what ANET is saying and doing, they know this too. They didn’t think this “zerker dominance” was an issue until the forum crying reached critical mass…which says this isn’t about an “imbalance” between gear sets. They know this is at the core of their game design and they are just doing what every MMO in the past has done and eventually failed because of….“forum balancing”. They are appeasing what they see as the largest percentage of the player base at the expense of what appears to be the smallest percentage of their customers. It makes business sense to a degree…until they repeat this process enough that it keeps targeting more and more “smallest percentages” of their customers and they drive too many people away.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

A lot of people on these forums want that sadly…. They want to be “the healer” or “the tank”. Even though gw2 was suppose to be completely against that..

They want it because it was so easy to just stand around and spam 11111 with a tank targeted as a healer. Those trinity games didn’t even require them to know the encounter completely….just get told what to do by the tank, who would also stand in one or two spots and spam a couple of abilities until it was over.

What is killing me is that ANET is actually trying to make this into a trinity game…despite the entire premise on what this game was going to be about when I purchased it. Any steps to make tanking (pvt) more prominent/exist or make healing (clerics) required/necessary in pve…means trinity. They are doing this at the expense of everyone who did actually read the game’s description before purchasing.

This guy rocks. :P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Adjust-Equipment-to-Fix-DPS-Dominance-in-PvE/first#post3507667

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

About the CritDamage nerf itself … it’s not a baby step in the right direction, it’s a stab in the dark, an absolute blindness on what’s going on.
Make some calculations and you will realize that you can replace half of a zeker meta build gear for solider and retain over 80% of the damage uotput.
If having a boss being downed in 10 seconds by a full zeker group is a problem, a group of balanced geared (mix of zeker and soldier) characaters doing it in 12 seconds is nothing but an even bigger issue.
Unless they do something really extreme (with probably terrible results for WvW, maybe even for sPvP), what’s going to be achieved? Would a 10%-15% damage decrease change something at all? If anything it’s going to benefit that soldier-zeker mix which is quite more toxic IMHO.

If you want something like making bosses last longer or reduce the gap between different “playstyles”, and you want to do it as easy and brutish as possible, you don’t nerf some gear, you attack the real reason of those disparities: traitlines.

70 trait points aren’t just 1400 stat points (which is a lot), there are also extremely redundant. Toughness/Vitality traitlines are filled with survival tools, while
Power/Precision ones often grant access to additional damage boosts.
This creates huge disparities on damage outputs, but the situation can go even worse when you scatter a lot of cheap damage boosts over different traitlines.
Look at a popular 30/10/10/10/10 elementalist staff build. What’s the reason behind investing in a such a way? Are they looking for a bit of armor and health? Maybe some condition removal or another utility source? No, it’s just damage.
10% increased damage when you are withing a range of 600, 10% when you’re health is above 90%, 20% when your enemy is under 33% HP, 10% against burning foes … all of them multiplicative. I guess you get the picture.

Unless you’re running some kind of burst spec, those traits will be often outperformed by utility (even survival) ones in PvP. You still might have one or two for some builds, but it’s not like you are going to scan the traitlines looking for them.
Even with that, devs keep improving these traits, probably because doing this is a lot easier than introducing new functionalities. Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage increase for guardian) was boosted from 5% to 10% in the last balance patch even after users had stated that it didn’t address the issues with the class and wasn’t needed.
Something like Merciless Hammer (20% CD reduction on hammer skills, 25% increased damage on disabled foes) will always be more interesting for PvP than a 10% damage increase when using a hammer.

Against the current PvE mechanics, however, swapping some utilities (even traits) here and there is more than enough to cover punctual needs, and those damage boosts are just the best choice BY FAR.
I just can’t believe that devs are trying to nerf PvE speedkilling and have not figured yet how huge the role of these traits is and how little use for a PvP scenario many of them have.

Obviously, as dozens of people already stated, the best solution is about improving enemy AI and mechanics so utility can outperform raw damage … instead of that, we don’t only get a cheap and easy solution. We get the wrong one.
I guess everything is going as expected :P

Time and time again it’s been said, but your tanky, your healy builds will NEVER be effective without a reinstatement of the trinity.

DPS will FOREVER run the meta, and like it or not, that’s how it stays if the game is to stay alive.

It’s too late to have the trinity reinstated.

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

But that part already exist.
What do you want to do? Make it the only part where you can fail the event (which almost never happens)? Get rid of defense phases and make the regular spawns (which are usually handled by 3 small 4-5 man groups) go for those batteries?

How do this punish crappy turret usage? How do this punish people dying at Tequatl itself over and over?

The only problem with Tequatl is that it scales horribly and is designed to require A LOT of people.

I am one of those that think that DPS needs a rework in the game. This game was brought with the idea that you can do anything and have fun. Nice idea. But not only you can do anything, from DPS to support to control, but you can do it all at the same time WITHOUT COMPROMISE. This is the sad state : anyone can do anything, but we are all doing the same.
Why I don’t like it? Because it is boring as hell but doing anything but the most optimal feels unatural.

There are two things that bother me :
- balance (this is obvious, who does not want a balanced game? And balance means compromise)
- stacking gameplay (this is purely subjective)

Still, and before the flaming, I think that if Anet goes for the easy route of nerfing DPS damage from gear they are doing it wrong. DPS players SHOULD be doing the best DPS. They just should not be doing the best of everything else.

For the stacking there is no easy solution :
I think the thing to revise in priority is the encounters AI and the technical limitations of other types of damage/control. I don’t talk about the lambda trash, but bosses. I find it hard to understand why the IA can’t at least understand that everyone is stacked on his toes or running around like a headless chicken and react to it.

For the balance, I think that Anet tried a too complex approach and now the game is a balance nightmare. Now this is how I would have done it. I know this is never going to happen, but why not think about it for some minutes at least?
An easy balance needs simple character builds and gear.

My crazy idea would have been :
- Weapons would only give power, no other stat
- Armors only toughness
- Sigils unchanged
- Runes : remove stats, only secondary effects
- Trinkets : same as runes.
- Total endurance will counterbalance toughness (heavy classes only one bar, medium two and light three).
- All players would have the same base stats apart from that
- Boons are shared with the team with no distance check. There will be a range check for people outside the group.
- All profession skill trees would have the same separation to force compromising (same separation not same skills/traits in them!!!):
— A branch of Power and Endurance Regen
-- A Branch of Conditions and Condition Duration
— A Branch of Toughness and Boon Duration
-- A Branch of Vitality and Healing Power
— A Specific Branch for each Profession.

Of Course each branch would contain the traits associated to each discipline.
Players would have ot compromise. If they go full power and Conditions they would have poor boon duration toughness, healing and vitality, being more susceptible to conditions and having less active defenses and no access to specific class branch.
If they go full toughness/Power they do no condition damage, are weak against conditions and can’t boos their specific branch.

Crazy and surely not optimal, but diversity is born from compromise. As long as anyone can do it ALL everyone will do the same.

PS : Oh, yes : get rid of critical increasing stats. It’s a nightmare to balance. In a game without dexterity stat they make no sense.

Now, this is more for the next MMO developer that might happen to pass through these forums. Wink Wink…
For Anet : don’t go the easy nerf route, please.

its not true that ANY profession can be effective at support defense and DPS at the same time..

I d argue that only 2 can and that is exactly the reason why they are so requested.

Example In fotm pug you don t care wich build of guardian you get…dps or support will make your run easy anyway…

If you have more than one you can almost afk…i say this from months but seems someone posted a vid of semiafk bloomhunger kill with 2 guardians in dungeon section….. (cleric gear)

And devs want to change crit damage…..

(take an ele…the second it wants to get ANY FORM of support, it loses just 50% of his dps AT LEAST).

LordByron.8369:

its not true that ANY profession can be effective at support defense and DPS at the same time..

I d argue that only 2 can and that is exactly the reason why they are so requested.

Example In fotm pug you don t care wich build of guardian you get…dps or support will make your run easy anyway…

If you have more than one you can almost afk…i say this from months but seems someone posted a vid of semiafk bloomhunger kill with 2 guardians in dungeon section….. (cleric gear)

And devs want to change crit damage…..

(take an ele…the second it wants to get ANY FORM of support, it loses just 50% of his dps AT LEAST).

I am sad. All those lines and you only retain that?
Well, let’s be picky then. I never said professions can do it all, I talked about players. That is the reason there are two most wanted professions : because players know that with them they can do it all with little compromise.

Better now?

Disclaimer: I am personally for mixing up the current meta, but understand that not everyone agrees. However, a few of people in favor of the current DPS meta seem to be misunderstanding what many in favor of changing it want. This post is directed at those.

I am not sure how you can read the OP and still think we all just want to have the current system but being able to facetank it while pressing 1 and deal the same damage as zerkers. Either you did not thouroughly read the OP and many responses in this thread, or you just try very hard to convince yourself all against it are bads who would like to play this game with the most passive playstyle possible so you do not have to consider there are also good arguments on our side.

Try to see that many who understand the meta are not against zerker as a high risk/high reward playstyle, but against the dominance of DPS itself. The fact that every problem can be solved with more damage just turns high end PVE bland for many people. We would like to see more mechanics that heavily encourage other playstyles, perhaps even encounters (or dungeon path themes) where damage hardly matters at all.

Another thing often misinterpreted by you: most posts I saw do not ask for a reinstatement of the trinity. Anet is treading on new ground with this and many applaud it. But if you do not have trinity you need to devise new mechanics to ensure that different roles have meaning, and while they tried, this is where they fell short. Many people here proclaim that no trinity means DPS is the end goal. But this seems to be coming from the assumption that since this game removed the trinity and ended up with a DPS meta, every attempt to remove the trinity regardless of other factors will result in DPS metas. But one just has to look at PvP or WvW to see that this is untrue. These modes have problems of their own, and one could conclude that it is harder to balance different roles without a spoon fed trinity, but that does not mean it is impossible, and that certainly does not mean DPS is the only way to go.

Tl;DR: What the OP, I and many others want is for arenanet to further refine their system to try and show that diversity within a no trinity system is possible. While those against may disagree for various reasons, some need to stop hiding behind the false accusations that we are all just bads that want it easy. We want it different.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

How much damage you deal to a boss will ALWAYS be the defining factor when succeeding or failing an encounter. No matter how many gimmick mechanics are slapped on – players will learn them – and the bottom line will always be HOW FAST YOU CAN KILL THAT BOSS.

@ODB – secondary roles do exist – might stacking classes / reflect classes / stealth classes.

Vargamonth.2047:

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

But that part already exist.
What do you want to do? Make it the only part where you can fail the event (which almost never happens)? Get rid of defense phases and make the regular spawns (which are usually handled by 3 small 4-5 man groups) go for those batteries?

How do this punish crappy turret usage? How do this punish people dying at Tequatl itself over and over?

The only problem with Tequatl is that it scales horribly and is designed to require A LOT of people.

Almost never happens? Unless something has changed without me noticing, it constantly fails outside of the forced overflows that the Taco specific guilds maintain.

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

But that part already exist.
What do you want to do? Make it the only part where you can fail the event (which almost never happens)? Get rid of defense phases and make the regular spawns (which are usually handled by 3 small 4-5 man groups) go for those batteries?

How do this punish crappy turret usage? How do this punish people dying at Tequatl itself over and over?

The only problem with Tequatl is that it scales horribly and is designed to require A LOT of people.

Almost never happens? Unless something has changed without me noticing, it constantly fails outside of the forced overflows that the Taco specific guilds maintain.

I mean the defending phase every 25% HP, when Tequatl flies away and waves of risen start attacking the batteries/cannon for 2-3 minutes.
I’ve only seen this phase to fail ONCE out of about 20 succesful Tequatls (each ones having 3 phases like this), and it was because a weird cannon oneshot.
When Tequatl fails, it’s almost always because of timeout.

problem with zerks is that they die very fast and you are forced to revive them to win the boss fight and you will probably die aswell.
chop some damage on the gear and give them survivability, even rename the gear if u have to .
also redisign some healing and defensive spells to be more useful from useless weapons like guardian mace/shield etc because at the time its pointless to use anything else than greatsword/staff everything else is situational.

(sorry for typos)

jihm.2315:

problem with zerks is that they die very fast and you are forced to revive them to win the boss fight and you will probably die aswell.
chop some damage on the gear and give them survivability, even rename the gear if u have to .

Or dont join in a zerker group as a non-zerker, so you wont drag the whole group down, risking a full party wipe, because your lower dps ends up with a longer fight, zerkers run out of active defenses and dodges and they start to lick the floor, one by one.

Zerkers is fine. PVT is fine. Just avoid eachother for gods sake …

ps: nothing personal, dont feel offended

Another problem I see here the words Zerker and PvE in the same sentence.

and also when you say Zerker what class are you talking about because as a main Guardian going Zerker is no way efficient and it’s pretty laughable because of way those traits work.

so what Classes are all you people talking about?

I’ve always had a problem with the traits and what stats they are paired up with

I think thief, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer have the most trait pairings that make sense.

for the life of me how is Precision and Condition damage supposed to work together?

anyways Zerker is a build, whats the Class.

Dalanor.5387:

jihm.2315:

problem with zerks is that they die very fast and you are forced to revive them to win the boss fight and you will probably die aswell.
chop some damage on the gear and give them survivability, even rename the gear if u have to .

Or dont join in a zerker group as a non-zerker, so you wont drag the whole group down, risking a full party wipe, because your lower dps ends up with a longer fight, zerkers run out of active defenses and dodges and they start to lick the floor, one by one.

Zerkers is fine. PVT is fine. Just avoid eachother for gods sake …

ps: nothing personal, dont feel offended

I don’t think it’s fine. Zerkers are only fine with other zerkers. That’s just not the way the game was intended to be played (supossedly, you could play any spec you wanted). I am able to do quite a lot of damage with my hybrid necro, but sorrounded by zerkers it’s not fun, as they kill things so fast they make conditions useless (which means their damage is unbalanced)

This doesn’t mean that zerker is the only problem: conditions are not fine with other conditions, for example. how dumb is that. And support doesn’t bring enough to justify the dps loss. The pve is unbalanced beyond imagination.

Harper.4173:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

How much damage you deal to a boss will ALWAYS be the defining factor when succeeding or failing an encounter. No matter how many gimmick mechanics are slapped on – players will learn them – and the bottom line will always be HOW FAST YOU CAN KILL THAT BOSS.

That’s the current pve meta. It’s true that it’s dps centric. But the problem of current meta again is HOW THE BOSS DO DAMAGE rather than on the player side. Zerker can survive in current meta because boss doesn’t do sustain/other form of dps and active defense abilities that help them stay alive in this meta even easier is independent from stats.[/quote]

Zepher.7803:

Another problem I see here the words Zerker and PvE in the same sentence.

and also when you say Zerker what class are you talking about because as a main Guardian going Zerker is no way efficient and it’s pretty laughable because of way those traits work.

so what Classes are all you people talking about?

I’ve always had a problem with the traits and what stats they are paired up with

I think thief, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer have the most trait pairings that make sense.

for the life of me how is Precision and Condition damage supposed to work together?

anyways Zerker is a build, whats the Class.

Zeker isn’t even a build, is a type of gear.
A character using full soldier gear can outdamage another one in full zekers depending the traits/runes each one is using.

Guardian is prefectly fine in berserker gear.

Condition damage and precision work together through traits/sigil that inflict additional conditions on critical hits.

Afya.5842:

But the problem of current meta again is HOW THE BOSS DO DAMAGE rather than on the player side. Zerker can survive in current meta because boss doesn’t do sustain/other form of dps and active defense abilities that help them stay alive in this meta even easier is independent from stats.

This has been said in a few threads here but it cannot be underlined enough. It is one of the major problems.

Dodging and other forms of active defense (blinds/reflects/etc.) + slow, telegraphed one-shot attacks = no real need for survivability stats

Combine that with the PVE bosses being as good as immune to CC, having huge health pools (Vitality) and comparatively low Toughness, and the only logical conclusion from a player perspective = “kitten heals, kitten tougness/vitality, kitten CC – let’s go zerk, dodge all and burn the bosses down as fast as possible”. Ideally while stacking so you get all party buffs and can res each-other when one is downed.

Zel

Zepher.7803:

anyways Zerker is a build, whats the Class.

You already answered yourself. Zerker is a build, thus every class can go way.

As a guardian, you should go something likes THIS.

And a really good video about zerker guardian build:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKZP3oyik0

Harper.4173:

People want roles because in an everyone does everything for himself they can’t handle all the different things they need to take care of and become worse players for it.
So they want their little role to learn and maybe they’ll do better.

Funny, that’s like me saying die hard meta-DPS defenders are unable to contemplate or handle more advanced concepts than “hit stuff, dodge obvious” and are now panicking ^^

Which isn’t constructive at all. So let’s focus on the discussion and not silly stuff like that, okay?

Zepher.7803:

and also when you say Zerker what class are you talking about because as a main Guardian going Zerker is no way efficient and it’s pretty laughable because of way those traits work.\

If you don’t even know the very most basics about this game, could you please refrain from cluttering up the thread?

Zepher.7803:

and also when you say Zerker what class are you talking about because as a main Guardian going Zerker is no way efficient and it’s pretty laughable because of way those traits work.

I’m not sure what you’re tlaking about. Zerker guard is Amazing DPS.

Well said, OP.

Hopefully we see some actual reworked combat mechanics instead of just messing with gear. Players are smart enough to adjust their own stat combinations if there’s some purpose to doing so.

OP and Nike is right. This is a content and mechanics issue. It’s not a gears issue. The bosses are all built around dps. You can’t cc them nor strip their boons as they will regain it instantly. Condition cleanse, everyone can do it themselves. So of course going full dps is the key to quicker success. If we don’t change the mechanics of the game then there will be no point in running any type of setup except for dps. Even in a holy trinity setup, having members that brings good dps is important. Why would anyone want to weaken the dps members of their group? If you want to diversify gear setups then you make new content or rework old content that utiliize these type of gameplay. Calling for zerker nerf is simply missing the point. It does nothing but upset players who have invested so much time and money in Ascended Beserker gears. Overall, it will weaken all groups total dps, no matter the combination.

I see this change to critical damage just like when players were complaining there is nothing to grind for in this game, so Anet introduce Ascended gears. Yea now we are stuck with that nonsense. So here we are, players complaining there is no roles to play, no “trinity”. Are we heading back to that route again? Trying to make Guild Wars 2 into WoW Wars 2? I think support roles should have it’s place to make dungeon runs a lot more smoother and efficient but it should not be required. All group setups should be able to complete content. Again, nerfing zerker gears or critical damge does not encourage any incentive to use any other gears. It just ruin the fun of this game for a significant portion of the player base. I think defensive gears need more boost. What is the point of defensive gears if you’re still getting one-shotted or two-shotted?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Just quoting this so people who hate reading the whole thread see it. This is the point here. The only issue I see needing some fixing, is making condi builds slightly more viable. Not on par with zerker, since condi builds can build for tank and damage at the same time.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

phys.7689:

the problem is that the stats system isnt based around playstyles, but more, as you said by how much dmg you can avoid.

best CC gear? beserkers, support gear? berserkers or givers depending on if your support is boon heavy, and needs longer durations to be effective. even tanks are sometimes better off in berserker

also, AI is poor.

AI is a content problem.

And I don’t see the concept of playstyle and gear being separate as a problem at all. Traits determine your playstyle, gear determines you offense/defense spectrum. It could easily be argued the opposite, which many want, is worse. Let’s say you take “tanky” traits. Why would you want to be locked in to tanky gear? If you take supporty traits why would you want to be locked in to supporty gear?

If you value variety and open ended character creation you would actually prefer the current system. Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

If the only purpose in stats on gear is to say your ability to avoid dmg, then it should not exist. Just remove it totally and put somewhere you can set your difficulty level.

At least that wont require grinding, and cause their to be only one or 2 sets that have any value.

the point of stats is supposed to be deciding your playstyle, if they dont do that, then there is no purpose in having like 10-12 different armor sets.

You shouldnt get the same benefit from tanky skills, if you want to be a glass cannon., just like defensive built players dont get the same benefits from dmg skills.

Tank doesnt get the same benefit from a 10% more dmg trait, or damage on dodge roll, or next hit does critical dmg, so why do dps get the same benefits from aegis, vigor, blind, etc. why does dps get same value as a support build.

As long as this is the case, there will always only be a few viable sets at a time.

and gear isnt really accurately representing dmg/defense anyhow, because all dmg skills are effected, few defense skills are effected. a Bersker armor wearer has way more defensive potential than a tank armor wearer has dps potential.

meh, its not complicated at all from what i see.

points are :

Some people
1, never learn how to use their class.
2, just want to facetank and watch a movie while hitting 1 key.
3, complain because they got ripped apart by some other player thats better in skills.
4, angry because they are generally not accepted in a group because of various reasons.
5, just to make life hard for others because they cant get it their way currently
6, want the game to be “MY WAY,MY GAME, MY PLAY!” instead of playing it as it is.

the game have alot of active and passive defense mechanics, like DODGE, BLIND, INVUL, STABILITY, PROJECTILE BLOCKING, PROJECTILE REFLECTING and many others that you can learn to use.

also there are a lot of skills that give you VULN, MIGHT, FURY, RETAL, BANNERS to support and quicken the pace of a particular task.

Issue now that is being debated, is that zerker dominating pve i assume.

here is a few key points, you guys might have missed out.

skilled players :

1, Understand how and what they need to succeed with less resistance.
2, Knows how to play their class.
3, Can support other team members by surviving and dealing more damage by being alive.
4, Uses all their understandings to maximize damage dealt and make things go faster.

MISC players :

1, DO not understand or use their classes to their full potential.
2, Complain because they are not accepted into groups.
3, having issues coping with game, not understand why people are doing certain things.
4, do not know what they are doing. running into a death trap.
5, Have an attitude that does not want to accept any suggestions to improve their understanding with their classes.

Regardless of armor type, there are 2 specific types of people that do pve. ignorant and arrogant, and people that are willing to learn.

there are no such thing as MY BUILD IS FOR THIS, I CANNOT USE SOMETHING ELSE. which is false when you can swap over temporary just for handling the situation.

some of the people say, condition players are not wanted. is that entirely true?

Vuln+ mightstack engi are pretty highly sought after. they run condi duration and conditions, they also buff might so team does 25% more damage and gain 25 stacks of might.

Condi necro with wells and duration stacking, which can effectively BLIND for long periods, convert conditions into boons. stack conditions for other players that have traits for higher damage dealt when someone have certain conditions.

just 2 examples.

now, THE ONLY DISCRIMINATION ingame pve, are towards those that refuse to LEARN, refuse to UNDERSTAND, refuse to BE A TEAM PLAYER.

regardless of HOW YOU CHANGE the meta, THERE WILL BE PLAYERS THAT STILL GET KICKED, EVEN MORE OFTEN due to the fact they DO NOT utilize or understand THEIR CLASSES.

also, the tradeoff with zerkers are they die one hit deal more damage, while pvt survives more hits deal less damage.

if the so called crit change is to reduce crit damage, it will be a very broken day for alot of classes/roamers, and pve’rs

why?

first of all, you are handicapping yourself now before you even get to understand the classes. you NEVER KNEW u can do that kind of damage or DODGE that way.

comparison pvt/vtc/zerker/assasins

you say pvt deal much less damage, but did you count in that they can HEAL because they did not get DOWNED?

zerker dies much faster, meaning does not allow mistakes.

its all about the player skill against each other. how you play, is your choice, but breaking everyone else gameplay because you cant understand or accept the fact that you are inferior towards other people skills is just plain bad.

learn to overcome, learn to accept. learn to work towards improving instead of complaining and begging for a nerf where in the future, you will regret the handicap you have placed upon yourself. and everyone else.

Boyd.5438:

you say pvt deal much less damage, but did you count in that they can HEAL because they did not get DOWNED?

The problem is that the damage loss isnt even THAT much.
A zeker meta guardian replaces weapons/armor for soldier and retain about 81.5% of the damage. A FULL soldier meta guardian still deals 62% of full zeker damage.

The damage loss comes from gear, but even more from defensive trait/runes/sigils and lackluster boon/vulnerability stacking.

Since your gear selection doesn’t impact your ability to dodge (which is the single greatest defense mechanism), there is little penalty for going all zerk. If the dodge mechanic were changed in a meaningful way, it could essentially balance out gears (in that gear selection has an impact on your survivability in addition to your DPS).

Examples (any/or)

• Lower vigor regeneration rates (so fewer dodges)
• Dodge doesn’t negate damage but instead reduces it by X% based upon toughness
• Vigor regeneration tied to a defensive stat like Vitality

This makes dodge effectiveness based upon stats which now has an impact if you stat for damage over defense.

So when will the devs actually give substantial information regarding the changes rather than dance around the issue and give the community absolutely nothing?

full soldier meta guardian does nowhere near a full zerker guardian damage, i have full soldier, full clerics and full zerker spec guardians… the risk on a full zerker guardian pretty much die 1 hit but deals very high damage comparable to thiefs auto attack at glasscannon mode.

cleric guardian hits like little girls with a bolster.

full soldier guardian deals damage but never will crit much damage.

consider this.

any class @ a 100% crit chance and 122% crit damage will deal

base damage +122% more every hit. tradeoff is 1 hit KO.

where soldier build will get around max 30% crit and at most 60% crit chance.

meaning base damage + 30% @ 60% crit chance lottery. BUT survive more hits and allow more mistakes to be made.

100% crit rate also allows you to have sigils and conditions/boon on crit proc more often.

thats on the pve front.

wvw front is a different story all togather.

also u got to understand, IF YOU DIE U NEVER DID ANYTHING.

meaning its based on skills what u can achieve. not everyone have the same skill level or the understanding to survive that. especially people that complain all the time.

if you run PVT/soldiers, be prepared to hit less. if you run zerkers, prepare to die 1 hit.

juno.1840:

Since your gear selection doesn’t impact your ability to dodge (which is the single greatest defense mechanism), there is little penalty for going all zerk. If the dodge mechanic were changed in a meaningful way, it could essentially balance out gears (in that gear selection has an impact on your survivability in addition to your DPS).

Examples (any/or)

• Lower vigor regeneration rates (so fewer dodges)
• Dodge doesn’t negate damage but instead reduces it by X% based upon toughness
• Vigor regeneration tied to a defensive stat like Vitality

This makes dodge effectiveness based upon stats which now has an impact if you stat for damage over defense.

dodging sometimes isnt what is making people survive, its the fact that they know when to dodge, and the stale AI is allowing it. OR because they know how to counter.

even if you remove vigor totally from the game, you still have aegis, blind, invul, stability, and skills that dodge on cast. most players that do pve content dont even bother with vigor because the normal bar works well enough. adding in with aegis, retreat, shelter, renewed focus etc for guardians, or shield stance, endure pain, and whirlwind slash skill etc offhand riposte.

some people even prefer blocking and deal damage if hit. because it maximize DPS.

now how are you going to counter that? remove block next?

I wonder if anyone brought up condition damage.

All this talk about zerker dominance but one of the reasons why it’s so dominant is that the alternatives for defeating enemies are so bad.

If pve conditions were a viable alternative, then at least it wouldn’t just be zerker. If you want build diversity…

And personally, I like the fact that utilities, defense, control, and healing can be viable without having to wear crappy gear for it.