Guild Wars 2

Lack of Diversity is bad for every game, especially massively multiplayer one.
Before i get to QQ let me introduce myself

I’ve always played as healer or support in every kind of RPG game so when i started playing GW my first class of choice was guardian – just because it was labeled as a support and team player. Not expecting it to be WoW-like healbot i finally settled in hammer/staff AH build with knight gear. I was really happy with it because it was giving me exactly what i wanted, reactive support game play with decent survivability and damage, it was also pretty competitive in dungeons and fotm (at the times when 20 level was the highest beatable one).

And then zerker meta came…

Most of zerker players are actually right, you don’t anything than uber dps to stomp hardest of dungeons and only justification for not running full zerker build is lack of skill and sloppy dodging, what is more i even agree with the statement that crit damage nerf makes the game even worse since zerker groups can’t carry 1-non zerker.

What the game needs to increase diversity and make people that just hate all-in damage game play happy again is either nerfing berserker into oblivion or changing whole dungeon system on a deep level.

First option is probably a bad idea because as i genuinely love supporting and healing there are surely people who genuinely love low survivability and high spikes of crits and the should have their fun too.

What second option needs is in my opinion:

-Adjusting condition cap in dungeons so condition based builds aren’t kitten by it. Condition build become viable = more diversity = profit.

-Adding “threat” system and making the AI slightly better so high damage dealing players are getting focused by bosses and thus are having harder time (I’ve read about threat system in gw2 before but i’ve never seen it work tbh)

-Changing at least one encounter in every path in every dungeon to have type of damage that can’t be mitigated by dodging to make healing and boons more relevant (i am talking snowstorm in svanir fractal, homing missiles, melee attacks that can’t be dodged etc. )

-Changing some of the bosses large abilities trigger from “cast every 5 minutes” to cast every “33% of health lost”. Assuming that it takes 5 minutes for a zerk group and 15 minutes for a normal group to take down one single boss it doesn’t change anything to a normal group but makes zerk group’s life harder because instead of one big hit they have to withstand 3 of them.

-Adjusting traits, abilites and stats to a level where being full time supporter is not being laughed at, increasing impact of healing power and adding utility and healing skills that can be used to effectively support others (like guardian’s healing breeze but actually useful)

-Adjusting traits, abilities and stats so being more sturdy doesn’t mean one can’t dodge… for example traits that increase threat making boss more likely to attack “the tank” or control abilities that involve getting hit to prevent damage on teammates.

I am aware of fact that changes I’am proposing would turn the class system more to mmo’s holy trinity (tank-dps-healer) but i really wouldn’t like to see gw transformed into WoW. What i’d like to see is more diversity, interesting meta and one’s ability to play whatever style he or she wishes to.

holy trinity is actually more interesting and deep than holy entity (full berseker warrior)

I’d love to hear your input
-

They don’t need to bring back the holy trinity, they just need to stop punishing people who want to invest in healing or tanking while making alternatives just as appealing.

I’ve seen other MMOs, typically ones that sport class-free systems, achieve this simply by dint of not having fixed classes with fixed skill sets; people are more willing to experiment, they see others with non-trinity builds perform just as well and give it a try because it sounds fun. Even if one or two metas rise to the top, nobody demands them for dungeon runs (though that’s also related to better dungeon and encounter designs), so new players don’t feel punished for experimenting.

In short, stop nerfing zerk, buff everything else, and make dungeons have challenges that don’t come with stupidly massive HP pools and predictable attacks that can be mitigated with a single dodge (which can then be recharged with more critical hits).

beGreen.4190:

I am aware of fact that changes I’am proposing would turn the class system more to mmo’s holy trinity (tank-dps-healer) but i really wouldn’t like to see gw transformed into WoW. What i’d like to see is more diversity, interesting meta and one’s ability to play whatever style he or she wishes to.

Rather than asking the game to adapt to you, perhaps consider adapting to the game. Organized dungeon groups are using diverse professions and skill loadouts to enjoy their optimized runs. GW2 roles are fluid, change from minute to minute, and need not be tied to gear.

You are asking for roles to be tied to specific professions or specific builds – including traits and especially gear. Getting some players used to the old stand-by to accept the new paradigm that ANet tried to introduce seems to be too much of an ask. However, there are people who have embraced the existing system, with its faults.

Thing is, under the current system, you can play whatever style you prefer. However, to do so you are under the same restrictions as those who want to use the existing mechanics to their fullest. You have to develop a group that wants what you want. What you’re asking for is to have the PuG experience enforce the type of play-style you prefer.

The down side to this request is that making it so that dedicated healing is desirable to all groups is the same thing as making it so that dedicated healing is necessary. This removes the possibility for others, the people who don’t want what you want to play the game the way they want to. Whereas, the current system does not enforce the berserker style — although it does encourage it.

Asmodeus.5782:

Monsters should hit weaker and more often, that’s one simple and useful adjustment. You won’t be able to dodge it all – tough/vit/healing suddenly become needed in the team.

Dredge.

And guess what?

They’re almost universally hated by people in this game.

Guess what else?

You CC and drop weakness on them but still run full glass cannon so that you can take hits but burst quickly enough through it.

There is only a lack of diversity in speed running. Capable players can defeat the dungeons with any reasonable build, full diversity. Inexperienced players are no better with dps builds than survival builds if they don’t know tactics.

If speed runners have to use clerics gear to run the dungeons at half the speed just to survive, is the game going to be better for anyone? If the best can still use zerkers and the merely good players have to slow down, is that any better? What extra will the best players be doing when most players use same common knowledge tactics and shared builds already?

I think most players want better a variety of tactics in dungeon so that corners and stacking are not universal solutions. I’m not sure that playing the same game in different armor will make them feel better.

Asmodeus.5782:

Monsters should hit weaker and more often, that’s one simple and useful adjustment. You won’t be able to dodge it all – tough/vit/healing suddenly become needed in the team.

And in what would that result? Forcing players to use these builds because otherwise they cant complete the content, thus lowering build diversity more than anything else and secondly creating more skilless play since beating an encounter because you were able to tank the hits thanks to defense stats has nothing to do with skill whatsoever.

OP, you, as well as many, many others, fail to see the real problem here. Its has nothing to do with berserker being the best gear(and stop referring to berserker as build, its simply the stats you are using. You can play any build you want and will still be able to do it best with berserker gear.). Berserker was the best gear long before there was this meta and lfg tool and this hate and pro vs anti discussions. Long, long before that.. since the start of the game to be precisely. So what has changed since then to cause this? Nothing has changed! ..THAT is the problem.
We have the same few dungeons since launch with only one single path and 12 mini dungeons added since. People played them, people learned them, people mastered them, people start them for maximum profit which happens to beat the dungeon in the shortest amount of time. For that, people maximize their damage output, which in this game happens to be berserker gear -could be any other, would make no difference- because this allows for the fastet runs. The people who mastered the paths share their tactics and more and more master it resulting in more and more wanting to only do it as fast as possible. This is same for every other game and mmo btw, people master it and it will stop being difficult and then people want to maximize their time and thus use was does the most damage – if they do not its only because the game FORCES them to do otherwise and they maximize the damage they can do while being put under the restrictions the game gave them – and that is what i would call bad game design.
There are way to few dungeons and the amount of new content getting added in that regard is beyond laughable- There are simply too many people who know how it all goes to put it simply. And when time the only thing is that matters damage is the only thing that matters -because “damage” is the only thing that will drain your enemies health bars- meaning berserker gear is the only thing that matters.
It is as simple as this.

beGreen.4190:

i finally settled in hammer/staff AH build with knight gear. I was really happy with it because it was giving me exactly what i wanted, reactive support game play with decent survivability and damage

What kind of support the AH guardian gives that zerkers unable to do?

beGreen.4190:

snip

The only thing an increase in condition cap will do is to allow more damage if you have more than one condition profession stacking it up beyond 25 stacks. The problem with condition damage is how often you can continue to apply those conditions. In PvP and WvW conditions are stronger cause you can condi bomb someone and take a threat out but not in PvE. Once your conditions run out your dps drops and you can’t reapply a bunch of conditions again since they are on cool down. While Zerk you will always have a skill that will take advantage of those stats when other things are on CD (AA for example).

“Threat” doesn’t change anything. In fact a 5 man zerker group is better in this. Since only 1 person will get the aggro at a time. So the other 4 players just have to position well to do dps and dodge/using active defenses when they need to when aggro switches. For corner stack nothing changes since people who know how to use active defenses don’t care about so called “threat” since they will dodge/block/evade attacks based on the boss’ tells.

The problem with healing is that in order to make healing remotely good you have to make it viable but the problem with that is that you will go back to the holy trinity. Making bosses have attacks that you can’t dodge or block is just bad because then you are going towards trinity where you have tanks and healers. On top of that GW2 revolves around active abilities. So anything that is passive will be weaker because of it. Why have vitality and toughness when a well timed dodge is simply better. To try to promote vitality or toughness is to get rid of active abilities like dodging. For boons most of them are used. Fury, Might, Vigor, Aegis, Swiftness (for running trash), Stability, Protection (Fractals). The only boons that aren’t really useful is regen (passive) and retal (since you don’t want to get hit to begin with) .

beGreen.4190:

-Changing some of the bosses large abilities trigger from “cast every 5 minutes” to cast every “33% of health lost”. Assuming that it takes 5 minutes for a zerk group and 15 minutes for a normal group to take down one single boss it doesn’t change anything to a normal group but makes zerk group’s life harder because instead of one big hit they have to withstand 3 of them.

Doesn’t change anything really. Organized groups will have high uptime of blocks, aegis, and evades on top of their normal 2 dodges. Zerk is already tough unless you use your active defenses well. This just makes PuGs harder than anything else and since it is a big hit PTV or any tank will have to dodge anyways unless the big attack doesn’t do that much damage then it defeats the point of having it in the first place. If a zerk warrior say dodges 2 and tanks 1 hit and survives then what is the point? But if it does high damage where everyone has to dodge then why do you have to run tanky passive stats when evades from weapon skills, aegis, blocks, and dodges are simply better?

There is a lot of support in GW2 however people assume that healing = support and if you can’t heal someone then you aren’t supporting them. I’ll pull out the guardian as an example. You have hallowed ground, purging flames, sanctuary(fractals, CoE one boss on a particular path), Wall of Reflection, Retreat, Shield of Avenger, and Stand your ground. That is like 7/11 utilities that actually support that are viable to be used. Nobody can expect every skill to be good anyways. Looking at a Obal’s 20/25/0/0/25 build you can see that it has a lot of support in it. Every time you blind you inflict vuln and this comes from GS skills along with focus skills. On top of that you have your virtue of justice which blinds, burns, and inflicts vuln on foes. Then you give might to your allies and when you kill stuff it refreshes and you can do it again. Remember a lot of professions will take advantage of these conditions since they do +% more damage when foes have these so you are support them in this way as well. You have increased duration and reduced recharge on consecrations which you will use a lot like Wall of Reflection and purging flames for a longer fire field (more might stacks) and more condition removals. What does say an AH build bring? Very little heal and some toughness versus blinds which are better than toughness or healing and vuln to take out threats faster. On top of that your team gets more might. Pure of Voice? 3 shouts = 1 purging flames. I’d take purging flames any day and save 2 utility slots. As you can see even for full Zerk guardian using Obal’s build they carry a lot of support that are just plain superior to other alternatives.

There will never be a case where people can play whatever style they want. In any game there are things that are better than other things at any point in time. You can look at the popular game LoL and know that some champions just do better for a specific role than other champions. For GW2 certain builds will just be better than other builds it is very difficult to have a game where everything is equal to each other.

As for diversity, there are build diversity when you run full zerk for different professions. If you look at the builds post patch you will see for professions like Ele, Warrior, Guardian for example you have some options. For some other professions you might see only 1 good option (Engi). Or they might be outclassed in every way for a group (Necro). Just how games are.

For most people they will find it more interesting to just play better. Understanding why certain traits are used more in PvE by top dungeon players/guilds. Skill rotations. Utility swapping. Fields (I have seen people not know blasting smoke field = stealth).

Holy trinity isn’t interesting at all. The only thing holy trinity does it that it makes it a requirement to have certain types of classes and/or builds in a group for a specific dungeon/raid. The thing with GW2 is that the content is really easy that people feel the need to not play better since they can get by with whatever. So people will naturally feel that content is boring or one dimensional since you don’t have to do anything special to succeed but there is some depth that you will only see in organized play (example is uses for say Ice Bow #5).

I personally would like to see more diversity of builds in the game but to do that I think things need to be a lot more equal.

For example if you give up 10% of attribute ‘a’ then you gain 10% of attribute ‘b’
Let’s assume
1. Player one – gave up 10% health for an increase of 10% damage
2. Player two – gave up 10% damage for an increase of 10% health

For build diversity to work, if both players were put head to head they would both die at the same time.

The issue we have in GW2 now is that the loss in damage under the current system is not compensated equally in a practical normal game play application by the gaining of other attributes; therefore you will not get the build diversity you want.

To add to this nothing should be truly equal otherwise there is no evolution (see perfect imbalance).

Kibazuka.1390:

Asmodeus.5782:

Monsters should hit weaker and more often, that’s one simple and useful adjustment. You won’t be able to dodge it all – tough/vit/healing suddenly become needed in the team.

And in what would that result? Forcing players to use these builds because otherwise they cant complete the content, thus lowering build diversity more than anything else and secondly creating more skilless play since beating an encounter because you were able to tank the hits thanks to defense stats has nothing to do with skill whatsoever.

OP, you, as well as many, many others, fail to see the real problem here. Its has nothing to do with berserker being the best gear(and stop referring to berserker as build, its simply the stats you are using. You can play any build you want and will still be able to do it best with berserker gear.). Berserker was the best gear long before there was this meta and lfg tool and this hate and pro vs anti discussions. Long, long before that.. since the start of the game to be precisely. So what has changed since then to cause this? Nothing has changed! ..THAT is the problem.
We have the same few dungeons since launch with only one single path and 12 mini dungeons added since. People played them, people learned them, people mastered them, people start them for maximum profit which happens to beat the dungeon in the shortest amount of time. For that, people maximize their damage output, which in this game happens to be berserker gear -could be any other, would make no difference- because this allows for the fastet runs. The people who mastered the paths share their tactics and more and more master it resulting in more and more wanting to only do it as fast as possible. This is same for every other game and mmo btw, people master it and it will stop being difficult and then people want to maximize their time and thus use was does the most damage – if they do not its only because the game FORCES them to do otherwise and they maximize the damage they can do while being put under the restrictions the game gave them – and that is what i would call bad game design.
There are way to few dungeons and the amount of new content getting added in that regard is beyond laughable- There are simply too many people who know how it all goes to put it simply. And when time the only thing is that matters damage is the only thing that matters -because “damage” is the only thing that will drain your enemies health bars- meaning berserker gear is the only thing that matters.
It is as simple as this.

This is an excellent post, providing exactly the correct reasoning as to why the holy trinity should never be implemented.

@OP: GW2 is not a stats game. At least not like other MMO’s. It’s heavily a skill-oriented one. Therefore, direct support and dedicated roles aren’t as effective, or simply put, they’re simply less necessary.

That’s not to say I don’t agree with you to some extent – I think dungeons should be designed better to accommodate for different group archetypes. Clearing speed should not be dependent entirely on how fast a group can simply drain health bars but perhaps allow for more diverse plays such as being able to skip certain areas by traversing difficult environments which would be impossible to complete without some dedicated heals or an inherently tankier party. This then offsets the time spent killing minibosses and trash by cutting down on run speed towards the boss.

I want to highlight a particular segment as well:

Kibazuka.1390:

The people who mastered the paths share their tactics and more and more master it resulting in more and more wanting to only do it as fast as possible.

And this is precisely where the support/tank/DPS trinity comes from. It ends up being the best solution in many games because rather than have everyone be mediocre at everything and struggle by the content, having dedicated roles makes the experience easier, faster, and much more streamlined. This is especially apparent with how most games calculate damage, as usually this process is nonlinear past certain defense thresholds.

First off, and I mean “FIRST OFF!!!!!” all balancing has to be done in WVW first. You want to change how builds function, change the events/mobs/bosses. Stop screwing up a competitive PvP environment with complaints of PvE and dungeons.

The title alone “Zerker nerf isn’t enough” is so short sighted I not even going to go any further.

Nerf zerker more so we can spend another 10mins on boring bosses with massive health pools

Ok. Let’s straighten this out with a simple question and then I’ll elaborate…

How in the world do you balance a game within the ‘Healer/Tank/Dps’ architype when you’re a game company that proports to do away with that!?

The Answer: It’s impossible and impractical…

For these 3 types of play to be ‘equal’ would not be ‘doing away with the trinity’ at all.

You’ve gotta see that this was the case from the beginning. ‘Zerker’ isn’t some crazy new fad that has taken over GW2. As I day one Thief, that mained an Assassin in GW1 for over 7 years, I can attest to this.

Dodge gives us 100% damage reduction AND we have a self heal. Those two things are INCREDIBLY potent in tandem, and, after learning the content, who would not forsee DPS becoming the most important statistics. As soon as they put a cap on conditions but not DPS, they put a harsh line between those two. The others were already striked out before they even stepped up to the plate tbh.

_"Hey ‘Healing Ele’, I appreciate your enthusiasm for my well-being, but I can already dodge this guy’s attacks and heal myself. so why don’t you help me kill this kitten already since this guy is scaled with both of us here!?!"…..

THIS is the DPS mindset. I’m sorry it makes you feel irrelevant but that is how the MECHANICS of the game work, so I am sorry for dissing your Cleric gear when you are the highest DPS profession in the game.

If you are not familiar with the encounters or have slow internet or some other hinderance then most people will understand, but don’t expect, BASED on these things, that a group who ‘has it all’ want to slow themselves down when loot is completely random and the ONLY tangible rewards are achieved through destroying content as fast as possible.

It doesn’t matter what your MF is or what area of the game you’re in, when loot tables are completely random, getting the highest/quickest amount of drops will be the most sound approach for Gold Per Hour. Speed running dungeoneers made this association VERY long ago and the game didn’t change since then. Our tactics haven’t changed since then either. If anything, we’ve honed and improved those tactics multiple times over. With that said, I will guarentee that there is no ‘Meta’ in the sense of there is ONLY one way to play, BUT DPS is the ONLY way to play. ‘Zerker’ isn’t a build but a build archetype that relies soley on DPS and ACTIVE DEFENSE to get the job done. You can run a Shout/DPS Guardian, a Consecration/DPS Guardian, etc, BUT if DPS isn’t somewhere in your build, then you are working with an inferior product.

It’s like you go to a steakhouse and think, "Do I want the Fillet Mignon, the Porterhouse, the Primerib with a topshelf wine, or, MAYBE, will I JUST have the ‘free rolls and a side salad with water’….it’s a simple choice if you would like to TREAT YOURSELF to the best you can have. OR are you somebody who wants to OVERPAY for little satisfaction with NO ‘nutritional value’.

20-30g speedclear PLUS loot drops/session group or are you ok investing four+ times the effort to recieve the same end.

In a game that is based around having the ‘sweetest of the sweet’ cosmetic appearence (at a high cost), this has become a VERY simple choice among MANY people who would like the ‘fillet mignon’ and be ‘served first’. This is COMPLETELY disreguarding the fact that, once you build ‘liquidity’, it only puts you in a place to grow that ‘egg’ once you get accostumed to other aspects of the game and how to ‘chase those dollars’.

TLDR: Anything other than a DPS setup is ‘training wheels’ for ‘casuals’ and anyone who takes themselves seriously will quickly disreguard this style of play, as it is COMPLETELY unnecessary.

Maybe another suggestion: try running arah p4 with 2 players on characters below lvl 30. There you have your need for protection. But be advised that it may take a couple of hours to get them through the entire dungeon

Angelweave.1856:

For build diversity to work, if both players were put head to head they would both die at the same time.

By this logic, bunker builds are OP, not glass cannons. Condition builds also beat GC builds — because the mitigation provided by the game’s invulnerability frames means players can avoid spike damage. Meanwhile, the counter to conditions is a build with a lot of removal, health, or both — which glass builds don’t have. Applying a PvP criteria to what is essentially a PvE discussion only works if the two game modes are essentially the same. As we know, this is not true in GW2.

The simplest of things to do is if anyone does not want to take part if strong dps builds then it would be best to be in a guild that doesn’t care what your gear or build is for dungeons etc. If there’s any parties in LFG wanting zerkers only then it’s easy enough to not join that party. No one is forced to do what they do not want to do on GW2. GW2 does not really have much on support classes and skills compared to most MMOs I’ve played.

Most MMOs I’ve played had proper healing classes that were naturally weak in DPS but healed superbly but also in many MMOs there are no self healing skills, mostly potions and such which increases the need for a healer in more difficult content. In GW2 the need for support characters is minimal as a party of 5 players in strong DPS gear can still use certain support skills to help make a dungeon run more smoothly.

If anyone has problems with parties wiping in dungeons then it’s probably just a fail group, nothing else. I’ve had FOTM runs go extremely fast, no wipes, no incaps yet I’ve had some pug runs be quite time consuming. Everyone should play the way they want to play but if anyone is not doing good damage then they are holding back the party and essentially being carried. There are different variety builds that are extremely effective that do not have to be full zerker, just put in the time to test and try things.

Tman.6349:

Ok. Let’s straighten this out with a simple question and then I’ll elaborate…

How in the world do you balance a game within the ‘Healer/Tank/Dps’ architype when you’re a game company that proports to do away with that!?

The Answer: It’s impossible and impractical…

For these 3 types of play to be ‘equal’ would not be ‘doing away with the trinity’ at all.

You’ve gotta see that this was the case from the beginning. ‘Zerker’ isn’t some crazy new fad that has taken over GW2. As I day one Thief, that mained an Assassin in GW1 for over 7 years, I can attest to this.

Dodge gives us 100% damage reduction AND we have a self heal. Those two things are INCREDIBLY potent in tandem, and, after learning the content, who would not forsee DPS becoming the most important statistics. As soon as they put a cap on conditions but not DPS, they put a harsh line between those two. The others were already striked out before they even stepped up to the plate tbh.

_"Hey ‘Healing Ele’, I appreciate your enthusiasm for my well-being, but I can already dodge this guy’s attacks and heal myself. so why don’t you help me kill this kitten already since this guy is scaled with both of us here!?!"…..

THIS is the DPS mindset. I’m sorry it makes you feel irrelevant but that is how the MECHANICS of the game work, so I am sorry for dissing your Cleric gear when you are the highest DPS profession in the game.

If you are not familiar with the encounters or have slow internet or some other hinderance then most people will understand, but don’t expect, BASED on these things, that a group who ‘has it all’ want to slow themselves down when loot is completely random and the ONLY tangible rewards are achieved through destroying content as fast as possible.

It doesn’t matter what your MF is or what area of the game you’re in, when loot tables are completely random, getting the highest/quickest amount of drops will be the most sound approach for Gold Per Hour. Speed running dungeoneers made this association VERY long ago and the game didn’t change since then. Our tactics haven’t changed since then either. If anything, we’ve honed and improved those tactics multiple times over. With that said, I will guarentee that there is no ‘Meta’ in the sense of there is ONLY one way to play, BUT DPS is the ONLY way to play. ‘Zerker’ isn’t a build but a build archetype that relies soley on DPS and ACTIVE DEFENSE to get the job done. You can run a Shout/DPS Guardian, a Consecration/DPS Guardian, etc, BUT if DPS isn’t somewhere in your build, then you are working with an inferior product.

It’s like you go to a steakhouse and think, "Do I want the Fillet Mignon, the Porterhouse, the Primerib with a topshelf wine, or, MAYBE, will I JUST have the ‘free rolls and a side salad with water’….it’s a simple choice if you would like to TREAT YOURSELF to the best you can have. OR are you somebody who wants to OVERPAY for little satisfaction with NO ‘nutritional value’.

20-30g speedclear PLUS loot drops/session group or are you ok investing four+ times the effort to recieve the same end.

In a game that is based around having the ‘sweetest of the sweet’ cosmetic appearence (at a high cost), this has become a VERY simple choice among MANY people who would like the ‘fillet mignon’ and be ‘served first’. This is COMPLETELY disreguarding the fact that, once you build ‘liquidity’, it only puts you in a place to grow that ‘egg’ once you get accostumed to other aspects of the game and how to ‘chase those dollars’.

TLDR: Anything other than a DPS setup is ‘training wheels’ for ‘casuals’ and anyone who takes themselves seriously will quickly disreguard this style of play, as it is COMPLETELY unnecessary.

THANK YOU! THIS MAN/WOMAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH!

People…listen. Either you can be content with the little money and trashy gear you have, or you can work for it and strive to be the best. There is always going to be a “best way” of clearing something. And the best way is ALWAYS measured by how EFFICIENT you are. This is especially true considering that hypothetical “perfect players” who never make mistakes will not need Vit/Tough. It would serve no purpose. While there is no such thing is a perfect player, a good zerk player is generally very close. Let’s say a zerk player needs to avoid damage. OK. Let’s use the most reliable method in the game and DODGE. Because GW2 is not a numbers game, it is possible for builds like this to happen, where it is possible for 100% of all damage to be negated. And for a skilled player, regardless of builds, they will always avoid most of the damage.

Name.9625:

Maybe another suggestion: try running arah p4 with 2 players on characters below lvl 30. There you have your need for protection. But be advised that it may take a couple of hours to get them through the entire dungeon

how many players have made it to Cursed Shores on a lvl 30 char. There are a few professions actually capable of this, but 1 hit on the way you’re guarenteed to die. I would love to do Arah with anyone who is actually capable of making it there with a level 30 char b/c that says a LOT about them tbh.

Tman.6349:

how many players have made it to Cursed Shores on a lvl 30 char. There are a few professions actually capable of this, but 1 hit on the way you’re guarenteed to die. I would love to do Arah with anyone who is actually capable of making it there with a level 30 char b/c that says a LOT about them tbh.

It’s not a problem for most of the classes. Maybe except necro cause his mobility is just bad.

Do you know the other reason why zerker is so popular? There’s no punishment for wiping. You can simply redo the encounter. Ask anet to change it so the wipe means start from the scratch (like in gw1).

That should increase the viability of defensive stats. I would anticipate a lot of QQ-ing about that but think about that. If someone would QQ, he’d be just told to get more toughness/vitality/healing power. OP’s objective would be met without any nerfing, balance changes or gameplay design.

haviz.1340:

Do you know the other reason why zerker is so popular? There’s no punishment for wiping. You can simply redo the encounter. Ask anet to change it so the wipe means start from the scratch (like in gw1).

That should increase the viability of defensive stats. I would anticipate a lot of QQ-ing about that but think about that. If someone would QQ, he’d be just told to get more toughness/vitality/healing power. OP’s objective would be met without any nerfing, balance changes or gameplay design.

I’m sure this is why the dungeon meta includes Runes of the Scholar right?

This would punish non-zerker groups far more than DPS goups I promise.

I’m talking mostly about fractals. But if you would say that in fractals zerker meta isn’t that prevalent, why do people want to get rid of it when it’s prevalent only in 1 game mode? You don’t see zerker meta in pvp, wvw and the rest of pve.

Also, I can promise you that zerker groups wipe more often than more defensive groups and most of the people cannot adapt when something unexpected happens. One mistimed dodge and a vast majority of people can’t react to a following change of circumstance.

Tman.6349:

Name.9625:

Maybe another suggestion: try running arah p4 with 2 players on characters below lvl 30. There you have your need for protection. But be advised that it may take a couple of hours to get them through the entire dungeon

how many players have made it to Cursed Shores on a lvl 30 char. There are a few professions actually capable of this, but 1 hit on the way you’re guarenteed to die. I would love to do Arah with anyone who is actually capable of making it there with a level 30 char b/c that says a LOT about them tbh.

Well we just escorted a lvl 23 ele and a lvl 25 warrior to cursed shore. If you know the ways and have a mes or a thief to escort them, that´s pretty easy. But even without you just have to kill everything on the way.
And of course in there you need a lot of patience

If you don’t like the zerker play style, that’s ok. You can start your own group and play however you want.

But here’s the deal folks, no matter what changes A-net makes, there will always be what is considered “the best way to play.” So if you nerf direct damage into the ground, you’ll just be trading it for something else. It might be more varied, but it might also be more restrictive. I.e., only 2 guardians and 3 eles!

Right now I don’t find it hard to find a non-zerker group. And with all the different ways to get or craft zerker gear, it isn’t hard to join the club. And for those who consistently do dungeons, be careful, you might find yourself joining the club because the game punishes all builds besides direct damage.

haviz.1340:

I’m talking mostly about fractals. But if you would say that in fractals zerker meta isn’t that prevalent, why do people want to get rid of it when it’s prevalent only in 1 game mode? You don’t see zerker meta in pvp, wvw and the rest of pve.

Also, I can promise you that zerker groups wipe more often than more defensive groups and most of the people cannot adapt when something unexpected happens. One mistimed dodge and a vast majority of people can’t react to a following change of circumstance.

Skilled players wouldn’t wipe to begin with anyhow. Wipe = reset just punishes everyone else like PuGs and such.

PvE is mostly zerk. The only time you wouldn’t use it is say a structure like Tequ then PTV is acceptable. Even then Zerk is still called upon for adds at Tequ or burn phase for Wurm. So it still matters.

PvP your zerk amulet has vitality by default and you can’t really have full zerk but as you can see zerk amulet is used often. Thiefs, S/D Ele, S/F Ele, Supcutie Shatter Mesmer, and a number of other builds. If you say zerk + dps trait lines then I have to say look at the guardian build. It doesn’t just go say 6/6/x/x/x it is 4/5/0/0/5 so as you can see the traits account for the defense and survivability part just like what you will see in any WvW or PvP build.

WvW group run a mix of tank, tanky dps, and high dps. Zerk groups wipe as much as defensive groups. The difference is skill. A skilled group of dps can take down other groups simply through skill. A defensive group with low skill will get wiped regardless.

As your skill increases where you can use more active defenses at the right time: Stability, Aegis, Protection, Dodges, Evades, etc. The less you need of defensive stats and the more offense you will have available to you since you are using a lot of defense stats.

The mechanic to encourage better build diversity already exists within guild wars 2.

It’s called retaliation.

However during beta, bosses that reflected damage utterly destroyed hundreds of players. And since then it’s been very rare to see a boss with Retaliation or Damage reflection up.

CuRtoKy.8576:

Skilled players wouldn’t wipe to begin with anyhow. Wipe = reset just punishes everyone else like PuGs and such.

Humans aren’t machines, even the best pve guilds can wipe, not to mention typical zerker pugs.

PvE is mostly zerk. The only time you wouldn’t use it is say a structure like Tequ then PTV is acceptable. Even then Zerk is still called upon for adds at Tequ or burn phase for Wurm. So it still matters.

PvE instanced is mostly zerk, open world is too casual to even care about that. And most people play open world.

PvP your zerk amulet has vitality by default and you can’t really have full zerk but as you can see zerk amulet is used often. Thiefs, S/D Ele, S/F Ele, Supcutie Shatter Mesmer, and a number of other builds. If you say zerk + dps trait lines then I have to say look at the guardian build. It doesn’t just go say 6/6/x/x/x it is 4/5/0/0/5 so as you can see the traits account for the defense and survivability part just like what you will see in any WvW or PvP build.

My point, not everything is zerker. Condie engies, spirit rangers, bunker guardians, condie wars, bunker wars, decap engies, etc.

WvW group run a mix of tank, tanky dps, and high dps. Zerk groups wipe as much as defensive groups. The difference is skill. A skilled group of dps can take down other groups simply through skill. A defensive group with low skill will get wiped regardless.

Again, meta isn’t zerker. You just admitted my point.

As your skill increases where you can use more active defenses at the right time: Stability, Aegis, Protection, Dodges, Evades, etc. The less you need of defensive stats and the more offense you will have available to you since you are using a lot of defense stats.

I’m not sure you understood my point at all.

Alice.8694:

The mechanic to encourage better build diversity already exists within guild wars 2.

It’s called retaliation.

However during beta, bosses that reflected damage utterly destroyed hundreds of players. And since then it’s been very rare to see a boss with Retaliation or Damage reflection up.

Why would you call a necessity to pick healing as diveristy? There would be virtually no diversity when you have to get more sustain. Please, think before suggesting something, introducing unavoidable damage will never increase diveristy, it would only reduce it because now you have to run a certain build in order to complete a content.

CuRtoKy.8576:

haviz.1340:

I’m talking mostly about fractals. But if you would say that in fractals zerker meta isn’t that prevalent, why do people want to get rid of it when it’s prevalent only in 1 game mode? You don’t see zerker meta in pvp, wvw and the rest of pve.

Also, I can promise you that zerker groups wipe more often than more defensive groups and most of the people cannot adapt when something unexpected happens. One mistimed dodge and a vast majority of people can’t react to a following change of circumstance.

Skilled players wouldn’t wipe to begin with anyhow. Wipe = reset just punishes everyone else like PuGs and such.

Everyone wipes. It happens. Haviz wipes, I wipe, we all wipe.

Bring back the “you wipe, you’re out” mechanic for dungeons, and watch the amount of ‘zerkers’ drop by a significant amount.

CuRtoKy.8576:

Thiefs, S/D Ele, S/F Ele, Supcutie Shatter Mesmer, and a number of other builds.

The only build (well, I mean, in this case, class actually) that is even remotely considered meta in TPVP in your list is Thief. Ele have been kicked out of the tpvp meta and turned into freekills for a long time and mesmers have also been kinda weak to the condi meta. There is literally nothing more cringe inducing than doing soloq and seeing more than one ele in your own team. They are tolerable in small amount but any decent thief that spots a glass canon ele will start shutting him down like crazy. In fact thieves are the reason why berserker is almost completely non-viable on other classes. Going berserker on other classes = playing the role of a thief, without the mobility of a thief, and the ability to get out of fights when the **** hits the fan. Anything that wears zerker in TPVP is just a subpar thief doing the role of a thief without being as good as a thief.

Guys i believe most of you here got me wrong.

Bringing balanced groups up to a level where they can compete with full zerker groups is not bringing holy trinity back. It’s a fundamental balance change. People are hindered for playing the game the way they like what is the purpose of rabid or cleric gear in the game when it’s pointless to use it on a decent level pve.

Sure i can find myself a casual group which is not speedrunning and doesn’t mind my cleric gear but that group is still 3 times worse than 4 warriors and mes. This basically kills the whole purpose of having gear other than zerker and soldier (for bad players lol) in the game.

There will always be “the best way” to play the game i agree but right now this “best way” is 2 times too “best” if you catch my drift.

Also asking me why dont I run support build with zerker is stupid. It doesn’t feel right, it’s clearly not what creator of the game intended and you guys know it

If such a mechanic get implemented, i still want to suggest to make a boss with high regen that can’t killed until a certain treshold of dps is reached, similar to the CoFp1 effigy and let see how “diversity” is a good idea when you make a gearset obsolete.

edit:

Also asking me why dont I run support build with zerker is stupid. It doesn’t feel right, it’s clearly not what creator of the game intended and you guys know it

I suggest you to read trough this to get familiar with your class.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_guardian_skills

Most of your support abilities aren’t gear dependent and since you wear Knight armor i assume you don’t care about healing, not if it is good or anything.

edit2:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Altruistic_Healing
Are you aware of that AH guardians heals only themselves? And the shout trait is just an adept, so anyone can grab it if needed.

Remove stats from gear, all stats should come from traits and passive signets. There you go, no more complains about zerkers.

Dalanor.5387:

edit:

Also asking me why dont I run support build with zerker is stupid. It doesn’t feel right, it’s clearly not what creator of the game intended and you guys know it

I suggest you to read trough this to get familiar with your class.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_guardian_skills

Most of your support abilities aren’t gear dependent and since you wear Knight armor i assume you don’t care about healing, not if it is good or anything.

Recently, I’ve been trying phalanx strength for lulz and I’ve been running it without changing gear. It’s a supportive trait and when devs were introducing it on ReadyUp they haven’t said it’s for support warriors that do not wear zerker gear. I don’t get OP’s sentiment at all.

why do people like getting hit?

haviz.1340:

Remove stats from gear, all stats should come from traits and passive signets. There you go, no more complains about zerkers.

i like this, armor should just be plain armor.

Bread.7516:

why do people like getting hit?

It’s nostalgic. Trinity and stuff.
Too bad, that you can get these only in non-zerker gear.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frost_Aura_%28effect%29

haviz.1340:

Remove stats from gear, all stats should come from traits and passive signets. There you go, no more complains about zerkers.

i like this, armor should just be plain armor.

Same as in pvp? But how would you solve the loss in stats? Or Anet should rebalance everything outside of pvp?

This game is very Dps-driven. I think the most frustrating moment in Gw2 was, when I played a medicore equipped Guard and couldn’t finish the CoE preevent because of the lack of dps… the guy repaired the console faster than I could kill him(even with another medicore equipped guard which was so nice to help me we were unable to solve this event. Tried it about 30 min, it was simply impossible) → switched to full zerker → no problem. I think it would be fun to implement some mechanics which rewards a wider range of builds, though they shouldn’t nerf zerker.

If they lower the damage requirement to kill mobs, that would make full optimized berserker faceroll easy.
And honestly, until you can tank and heal mobs to death, damage oriented builds are the way to go.

Dalanor.5387:

Same as in pvp? But how would you solve the loss in stats? Or Anet should rebalance everything outside of pvp?

“Just” increase the stats gain from traits.

Dalanor.5387:

edit:

Also asking me why dont I run support build with zerker is stupid. It doesn’t feel right, it’s clearly not what creator of the game intended and you guys know it

I suggest you to read trough this to get familiar with your class.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_guardian_skills

Most of your support abilities aren’t gear dependent and since you wear Knight armor i assume you don’t care about healing, not if it is good or anything.

edit2:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Altruistic_Healing
Are you aware of that AH guardians heals only themselves? And the shout trait is just an adept, so anyone can grab it if needed.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in my guardian (been playing since half a year and he is my only character) and trust me i know what I am talking about.

Support abilities not being gear dependent is actually massive BS

Gear dependent: Healing Breeze, Healing Meditation, Staff’s Empower, all of the symbols, Orb of Light, Selfless Daring trait, Virtue of Resolve – all of those abilities have two things in common firstly they scale with healing power and secondly they are not worth using (with virtue of resolve being remotely useful)

Also i used AH build not because i thought AH heals my team but because it promoted supportive gameplay while not being laughable.

beGreen.4190:

.Support abilities not being gear dependent is actually massive BS

Gear dependent: Healing Breeze, Healing Meditation, Staff’s Empower, all of the symbols, Orb of Light, Selfless Daring trait, Virtue of Resolve – all of those abilities have two things in common firstly they scale with healing power and secondly they are not worth using (with virtue of resolve being remotely useful)

I said most of them. =] If you want to nitpick, don’t forget Wall of Reflection.

Also i used AH build not because i thought AH heals my team but because it promoted supportive gameplay while not being laughable.

Sorry, people often misunderstood the tooltip, but i still can’t see why it’s good for you, or anybody else in your party for that matter, that you use this build with this gear.

People forget that you gain far more effective health and survivability from pvt gear than you gain Dps from zerker gear.
From a statistical point of view, defensive stats already offer a far better bang for your buck.

The problem is.. Defensive stats could be absolutely amazing and people would still ignore them because they simply aren’t needed. This clearly shows us the problem is not the gear but the game.

Problem : increasing the rate of attacks and lowering their damage results in active defense such as block blind and dodge being significantly less useful, resulting in a far less engaging and active game.

beGreen.4190:

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in my guardian (been playing since half a year and he is my only character) and trust me i know what I am talking about.

Support abilities not being gear dependent is actually massive BS

Gear dependent: Healing Breeze, Healing Meditation, Staff’s Empower, all of the symbols, Orb of Light, Selfless Daring trait, Virtue of Resolve – all of those abilities have two things in common firstly they scale with healing power and secondly they are not worth using (with virtue of resolve being remotely useful)

Also i used AH build not because i thought AH heals my team but because it promoted supportive gameplay while not being laughable.

Logically speaking, why is that massive BS? If you want to change your build, you don’t have to get 500g+ to get new ascended armour/weapons/trinkets.

The “holy trinity” is not actually more interesting. “Full time healers” are not needed in this game. Players who got used to playing full time healers got used to being carried along in PvE. Now, GvG was a whole different story – specialization was needed.

If a person wants to play as a dedicated “healer” I think they need to form their own groups so they can tailor the composition to their own play style.

The OP starts with the statement that “lack of diversity is bad” then goes on to outline why he/she prefers not to play that way. Maybe work on your skill bar to make it more diverse. Berserker does not need to be nerfed to oblivion to suit your play style, you need to learn to adapt.

Problem : increasing the rate of attacks and lowering their damage results in active defense such as block blind and dodge being significantly less useful, resulting in a far less engaging and active game.

Increasing the rate of attacks results in dredge which nobody likes.

People need to be careful what they wish for.

Dredge wouldn’t be so bad if you could blind them and the respawns were more reasonable. My biggest problem with zerg enemies with a high rate of attack is that well timed blocks, dodges and blinds aren’t rewarded.

I know it’s a debatable subject but I miss the trinity and feel it allows for far more interesting fight mechanics. Sunstrider, vashj, shade of aran, alar, reliquary, gorefiend etc.. I see no fights in gw2 which are as intricate or as fun as that. If the no trinity system truly allowed for better pve, why haven’t we seen it yet?

fadeaway.2807:

Dredge wouldn’t be so bad if you could blind them and the respawns were more reasonable. My biggest problem with zerg enemies with a high rate of attack is that well timed blocks, dodges and blinds aren’t rewarded.

I know it’s a debatable subject but I miss the trinity and feel it allows for far more interesting fight mechanics. Sunstrider, vashj, shade of aran, alar, reliquary, gorefiend etc.. I see no fights in gw2 which are as intricate or as fun as that. If the no trinity system truly allowed for better pve, why haven’t we seen it yet?

Try melandru in cursed shore before megakittens come there.