Guild Wars 2

Vargamonth.2047:

And that’s exactly my point.
Whenever some content is allowed to fail (winning the event becomes dominant over doing it fast) and no DPS checks are included, the most deffensive setups will always be the safest choice.
DPS checks are needed in order to disallow the most survivable setups and force players to take as many risks as they’re confident on handling.
No matter how you design a content, there’ll be always an optimal strategy. When that strategy is about using the spec that reduces the risk the most, there’s absolutely no point on using anything else and build diversity gets completely destroyed.

Yes this is where we disagree. I am not saying you are wrong. But we want very different things.

“Identifying animations” in Living Story events only works if it is 40+ players vs 1 single boss. We cannot have other mobs around that can provide a serious threat.

Why?

Because if these assistant mobs does provide a serious threat, “identifying animations” will become too difficult. Imaging fight against 1 world boss, at the same time being chased by 10 assistant mobs that can all legitimately one-hit-kill you. It will be too difficult to “identifying animations” all these attacks at the same time.

Getting hit is unexpected. So they will hurt a lot. The game is pretty much Devil May Cry in “Dante Must Die” mode.

I personally love the idea of fighting one world boss, while being chased by 10 assistant mobs. Getting hit is expected, yet deals less damage. As a result the players can equip tanky gears to survive these attacks.

BTW I am not saying a tanky gear character should be able to face tank absolutely everything neither. But a reasonable amount of damage avoidance will allow him to survive.

I still stand by my point that the current mobs are very very bad at killing berserker players. That’s why berserker is the norm; it is the optimal damage. If the berserker players does die often, the optimal damage will no longer be berserker. It will be somewhere between berserker and tanky gear. And that’s what it should be.

Rough example:

Berserker: Dies on average once every 5 minutes. Deals 3 times the average damage.
Hybrid: Dies on average once every 30 minutes. Deals 1 time the average group damage.
Pure tank: Dies on average once every 60 minutes. Deals 0.5 time the average group damage.

I also disagree with the point on timer is a requirement. It isn’t. My hold the circle event does not need a timer. The players just need to survive against all the attacks from the mobs, until the mobs run out of troops.

Since it is game over when the players losses the circle for merely 3 seconds, there is very little time to WP and run back. That means the players cannot get wiped at all.

In the above event, there is incentive to go all 3 type of gear: Berserker, hybrid and tanky. Why?

Berserker: Kill mobs before the next wave of mobs (reserves) arrive.
Hybrid: Constant damage.
Tanky: Absort damage. Heal allies. “Troll” the control circle if the fight goes south (just like WvW), to give a slight chance for the dead players to WPing and running back.

So we will have players of all 3 types doing their part. All 3 types are useful in their own ways. That’s exactly what the game should promote: Build Diversity.

Many other things they can do. This is just one idea.

Astralporing.1957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They have been trying to discourage the zerg mentality these last two updates for LS.

Considering that the knights do not scale down very well, and have to be zerged, i’d say that they didn’t even try. The only difference is that instead of one zerg, you have to have 3 of them.

I did say trying . . . but the zerg, as we know, adapt to situations and continue on anyway

Ohoni.6057:

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

That’s the problem. Too much balance discussion focuses around PvP tactics, which are completely irrelevant to PvE. You can have build that devastate in PvP and are completely useless in PvE, or that are worthless in PvP but dominate in PvE.

PvP is proof that this game can be balanced if they worked really hard to restructure PvE. A lot of content just needs to be instanced and enemies need to be reworked in those instances to provide adequate balancing.

hannah mee.7925:

Ohoni.6057:

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

That’s the problem. Too much balance discussion focuses around PvP tactics, which are completely irrelevant to PvE. You can have build that devastate in PvP and are completely useless in PvE, or that are worthless in PvP but dominate in PvE.

PvP is proof that this game can be balanced if they worked really hard to restructure PvE. A lot of content just needs to be instanced and enemies need to be reworked in those instances to provide adequate balancing.

sPvP is far from being balanced… look into the pvp and profession subforums

It’s not that people can’t do enough DPS for these things, it’s that they refuse to.

They get hit or downed once in melee and rather than learning when it’s safe to melee they range 100% of the time.

Even if you explain about the condition mechanics before the fight people will still be spamming condition fields, I especially love getting chain blinded from someone’s smoke field.

Tell them that the boss takes extra damage when its condition shield is off and to save Time Warps and such for those periods… and you’ll see Time Warps when its shield is up, and none when it’s down.

People turn their brains off in zergs. Likely because their contribution matters little if at all, or they learned how to play the game in Champ trains. You can get anything you want in this game by zerging, and the majority do. They will never get the oppurtunity to learn how to play as long as the primary focus remains on zerg content because there is absolutely no indication of your personal performance in them. And of course since you personally cannot visibly affect the outcome why even try. You might as well turn off and just wait to see if the zerg knows what it’s doing this time (it doesn’t.)

I don’t blame people for being dumb. I blame the content that forces me to rely on them. And I blame the game design that tells them it’s ok not to learn, these other 100 people will carry you.

Killface.1896:

If there is no ´DPS test´ it would be way to easy….

Sort of. The HPrime fight is actually kind of hard. Not frustratingly hard, but it’ll mess you up if you aren’t paying attention. Its right about where it should be for non-dungeon temporary content.

The Knights fight is(or was) a Zerg along party that gave some pretty fine crap-loot. It gave a LOT of it, but it was still crap.

Its less of a dps check and more of a build check. Power/precision/crit builds do 100% damage during condition reflect. Once condition crash hits, all damage to the boss is increased based on the number of conditions applied. Condition damage/duration builds however lose all of their damage from those stats for 50% of the fight. If too many people in your group are built for condition damage, you won’t even make it to the first condition crash.

I don’t think its intended to be this way, but its definitely a result of the fight scaling up.

I mean, new living world content is not the only piece of this game where “zerker” gear is appreciated. Look at the LFG. Most of the LFM says “zerker only”. It’s becoming obvious that game is not balanced and that other options than zerker are not viable for fights ANet is designing. Especially support builds and playing styles.

Absence of the holy trinity was a bad mistake for GW2.

PvP is proof that this game can be balanced if they worked really hard to restructure PvE. A lot of content just needs to be instanced and enemies need to be reworked in those instances to provide adequate balancing.

No, I don’t want PvE to be more like PvP. If I wanted to PvP I would just PvP. I don’t want to PvP. All they need to do is start considering that this game does include PvE elements when they do their balance passes. Too often if something is over or under balanced in PvP they take a wild swing at it as fast as possible (maybe not for the better, but at least they’re doing something), while issues that only impact PvE play they tend to just leave on the back burner, because apparently they don’t give a kitten.

CHIPS.6018:

“Identifying animations” in Living Story events only works if it is 40+ players vs 1 single boss. We cannot have other mobs around that can provide a serious threat.
…

It depends on how the whole event is designed.
Marionette could have over 100 players involved and the whole fight was still decided by small fights over platforms where active defenses were perfeclty viable.
Escape from L.A., going for citizen rescue, didn’t need a single player blob at any point ( I duoded miasma events without any problem at all).

The idea of 40+ players fighting a single giant foe (what Battle for Lion Arch bring to us) is something I absolutely dislike.
It can provide some people a sense of epicness, but doesn’t offer anything new mechanic wise. It’s pretty much like any dungeon encounter, just easier to recover from death (be it by WP respawn if possible or ressed by another player) and without the ability to chose your allies.

CHIPS.6018:

I personally love the idea of fighting one world boss, while being chased by 10 assistant mobs. Getting hit is expected, yet deals less damage. As a result the players can equip tanky gears to survive these attacks.
…

I’m always up for fighting several enemies, adds or just multi-bosses, at the same time (not only for open world, also for dunegons). I honestly think it fits way better the combat mechanics (which are balanced around sPvP), allows more room for control (getting rid of that Defiant nonsense, at least for dungeons, where the amount of control skill is finite) and increases the skill cap of glass cannons specs by forcing them to monitor several threats.
If the AI will be smart enough to avoid being funneled into a corner and perform some nasty skill combinations (like chilling a player that tries to flee from a melee heavy hitter or snaring one at the same time a pulsing AoE lands over him), that would be awesome.

We probably disagree in the perfect amount of adds/enemies.
For me, having 3-4 weaker champions (still big models to not be cluttered by an insane amount of players) where we have a single Knight would be ideal. Playing a full damage spec would be way harder (currently I just need to avoid a extraction attack every 20 seconds or so, which is ridiculous), but still possible with good positioning and awareness.
A blob of monsters would be, as you previosuly pointed, completely unreadable and not the kind of fight I would enjoy.

CHIPS.6018:

I still stand by my point that the current mobs are very very bad at killing berserker players. That’s why berserker is the norm; it is the optimal damage. If the berserker players does die often, the optimal damage will no longer be berserker. It will be somewhere between berserker and tanky gear. And that’s what it should be.

Berserker (or any other triple damage stat combination) should always be the highest damage dealing gear AS LONG as you’re capable to survive while using it.
And you’re right, monster AI is a complete crap. A lot of people, myself included, agrees on that and points at it as one of the main culprits on making glass cannon specs not skill demanding enough for most of the content.
For a player that can’t properly survive in berserkers, as you said, a more balanced should be the optimal choice for damage.

In order to make this work, however, you absolutely need to keep the “identifying animations” idea alive. Otherwise, dying on berserkers would be something completely random and the balanced/hybrid approach would be statistically superior, making berserker not suboptimal (tanky gear is suboptimal damage wise, but at least increases your survivability and allows you miss evades more often) but just 100% useless.

CHIPS.6018:

BTW I am not saying a tanky gear character should be able to face tank absolutely everything neither. But a reasonable amount of damage avoidance will allow him to survive.

I also disagree with the point on timer is a requirement. It isn’t. My hold the circle event does not need a timer. The players just need to survive against all the attacks from the mobs, until the mobs run out of troops.
…

If you’re fighting against a quite zergy amount of enemies, damage becomes fairly unpredictable. If a tanky character can be bursted down so fast that a good reaction time /skillful play is needed in order to retreat to safety (and with a proper personal/team setup, be fully recovered in a few seconds), then everything else would explode and become right unplayable.
On the other hand, if you’re fighting against a single readable enemy, you’ll need a terrible performance (missing several avoidances in a row) to fail.
There’s only one exception to this and that’s about the damage being high enough to almost oneshot the tanky character, and that bring us back to the glass cannon spec which eliminates the threat faster.
Without DPS checks, tankiness is just a much safer way to success.

I’ve no problem with your defend the circle idea. It’s too zergy for my preferences but a lot of people would enjoy it and absolutely has its place.
However, there’s actually a DPS check in that fight. You still need to clear waves fast enough for not being overwhelmed by reserves and fail the event because of a lack of damage.

I would play that event either as a glass cannon staff elementalist (dealing as much AoE damage as possible) or as a hybrid/tanky guardian (fighting in frontline, trying to contain the enemies for the ranged DPS players to stay safe and have an easier time landing their area damage).
I would never play it as a tanky Wave of Wrath spamming guardian who stays in some weird midline where doesn’t “tank” anything, not even receive damage (no point in being tanky, not even talk about traiting for Altruistic Healing), does crappy damage and whose support isn’t THAT good as some people think.
You can expect, however, a good amount of players using this spec (specially if there’s loot for tagging enemies) or any other weird thing like glass cannon frontliners (exploding in matter of seconds and, obviously, not respawning at WP and waiting to be resed at the ned of the fight) or tanky single target ranged backliners. Then, the event would fail and people would complain on the DPS check being too extreme, only organized communities / large guilds being able to complete it or the game being zeker or GTFO.
I hope you get my point here.

Malediktus.9250:

sPvP is far from being balanced… look into the pvp and profession subforums

You mean all those people crying that they suck? Yeah, that’s nothing new – there’s hardly a coherent argument for why PvP is imbalanced that can’t be concluded with “because I’m bad at the profession I play.” The fact that any class, with any setup can hotjoin and do well allows for more unique playstyles. Of course there are always team imbalances, but that’s mostly because choosing which team to join is a terrible idea because stronger players tend to stick with stronger players. Team balancing is an extreme issue, but hardly relevant to the balance of professions, gear and viability.

PvE doesn’t have that. When some people suck at PvE, there is a strong argument that it could be because their profession is broken in PvE.

Ohoni.6057:

No, I don’t want PvE to be more like PvP. If I wanted to PvP I would just PvP. I don’t want to PvP. All they need to do is start considering that this game does include PvE elements when they do their balance passes. Too often if something is over or under balanced in PvP they take a wild swing at it as fast as possible (maybe not for the better, but at least they’re doing something), while issues that only impact PvE play they tend to just leave on the back burner, because apparently they don’t give a kitten.

Issues that only impact PvE are a lot larger than minor skill, trait and attributes edits though. Making PvE more like PvP would solve a great deal of problems with the game, instanced content in general tends to solve a great deal of problems – Guild Wars 1 did right with instancing. The reason for that is that if enemies are on the same playing field as regular players (in terms of health, attributes, traits/skills), such as how it was handled in the first game, your options for diversity become greater because defensive/offensive makes a larger difference as a whole.

The current structure of PvE offers little room for diversity because it’s basically Dodge or Die.

kokiman.2364:

RyuDragnier.9476:

kokiman.2364:

CHIPS.6018:

So I just tried that “Kill 3 Legendary Clockworks” quest. It is nothing but a DPS test. Can we please stop having quests like these?

These quests are saying:
If you are not using berserker gear, go home.

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

He’s right though on that it’s a DPS check…a massive one. They buffed the toughness of the knights along with the 50 person cap.

But still there are 50 people attacking one mob, if everyone would come with his best geared character and at least informs himself abuot the event, uses buff food, the lions arch damage buff and skills that support group damage, the fight would go wayyy smoother than it does now.

But like I said the main problem is the “me” mentality in MMOs these days, when it used to be a “we” mentality.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

This may be shocking for you but I play the game to have fun, not to make you happy.

Issues that only impact PvE are a lot larger than minor skill, trait and attributes edits though

Not always. Sometimes it comes down to that abilities that aren’t a problem when you only have to worry about 5 v 5 are a much bigger problem when dealing with massive swarms of people. Condition stack overflows, for example, is practically a non-issue in PvP, aside from some hardcore condi builds, while they happen constantly in PvE situations with multiple condis.

Making PvE more like PvP would solve a great deal of problems with the game, instanced content in general tends to solve a great deal of problems – Guild Wars 1 did right with instancing.

No, it would not “solve” things, it would just make it a very different game. There are advantages, sure, but massive disadvantages at well. I really enjoy the ad-hoc non-partying cooperation of GW2, and would quit the game in a heartbeat if it was instanced solo dungeons like in GW1.

Spiuk.8421:

You can crit the knights.

Knights are not world bosses. I was replying to a comment specifcally about the usefulness of bringing berserker gear to world boss fights.

haviz.1340:

ShibVicious.9681:

Seeing as I’m pretty darn sure you can’t crit world bosses like Tequatl, yes you are a dead weight in zerkers gear. 2 of the 3 stats that gear offers you are rendered useless.

But haven’t we all heard that vitality and toughness were useless?

In a situation where you can’t score critical hits, I genuinely do not see a downside to being able to deal the exact same amount of damage whilst also having a significant increase to both your armor rating and health pool.

Vargamonth.2047:

If you’re fighting against a quite zergy amount of enemies, damage becomes fairly unpredictable. If a tanky character can be bursted down so fast that a good reaction time /skillful play is needed in order to retreat to safety (and with a proper personal/team setup, be fully recovered in a few seconds), then everything else would explode and become right unplayable.
On the other hand, if you’re fighting against a single readable enemy, you’ll need a terrible performance (missing several avoidances in a row) to fail.
There’s only one exception to this and that’s about the damage being high enough to almost oneshot the tanky character, and that bring us back to the glass cannon spec which eliminates the threat faster.
Without DPS checks, tankiness is just a much safer way to success.

I’ve no problem with your defend the circle idea. It’s too zergy for my preferences but a lot of people would enjoy it and absolutely has its place.
However, there’s actually a DPS check in that fight. You still need to clear waves fast enough for not being overwhelmed by reserves and fail the event because of a lack of damage.

I would play that event either as a glass cannon staff elementalist (dealing as much AoE damage as possible) or as a hybrid/tanky guardian (fighting in frontline, trying to contain the enemies for the ranged DPS players to stay safe and have an easier time landing their area damage).
I would never play it as a tanky Wave of Wrath spamming guardian who stays in some weird midline where doesn’t “tank” anything, not even receive damage (no point in being tanky, not even talk about traiting for Altruistic Healing), does crappy damage and whose support isn’t THAT good as some people think.
You can expect, however, a good amount of players using this spec (specially if there’s loot for tagging enemies) or any other weird thing like glass cannon frontliners (exploding in matter of seconds and, obviously, not respawning at WP and waiting to be resed at the ned of the fight) or tanky single target ranged backliners. Then, the event would fail and people would complain on the DPS check being too extreme, only organized communities / large guilds being able to complete it or the game being zeker or GTFO.
I hope you get my point here.

I am glad we agree that the mobs must stop following the rarely hitting the players, one hit killing model.

This should be replaced by the often hitting the players, but lower damage model.

Yes berserker should always deal the highest damage, if the player can survive with it. At the same time, tanky characters should survive longer than berserker gear. The medium that Anet should aim for is hybrid, somewhere in the middle. Berserker is the extreme in damage, while tanky is the extreme in survival.

The biggest obstacle right now is that too many people is using berserker already. So Anet may be hesitant to make new contents and AI that can effectively killing off berserker gear players (e.g. 90% chance for berserker to die once every 5 minutes). Anet may be worried about the outcry from the berserkers.

But this is important for the long term of the game.

The defend the circle idea is just one of many. The key is to make all 3 types of gears useful. The event, instead of being a DPS test, now test and see if the players know what they are doing. Here is how the players may fail the event.

Berserkers: If they do not know how to survive, they will die rapidly. The zerg DPS will drop and the player zerg will wipe. Zerg wipe=game over.

Hybrids: Somewhere in the middle.

Tanks: If they do not know how to either absorb damage for or heal their allies, their allies will die around them. This will drop the zerg DPS. The waves after waves of mobs will eventually kill everyone. Zerg wipe=game over.

ShibVicious.9681:

In a situation where you can’t score critical hits, I genuinely do not see a downside to being able to deal the exact same amount of damage whilst also having a significant increase to both your armor rating and health pool.

If it’s useless it means it’s useless and you shouldn’t have to use it. So is it useless or not? Because I’m constantly reading that defensive stats are useless. Was it always a hyperbole? I don’t like using hyperboles in serious discussions.

haviz.1340:

ShibVicious.9681:

In a situation where you can’t score critical hits, I genuinely do not see a downside to being able to deal the exact same amount of damage whilst also having a significant increase to both your armor rating and health pool.

If it’s useless it means it’s useless and you shouldn’t have to use it. So is it useless or not? Because I’m constantly reading that defensive stats are useless. Was it always a hyperbole? I don’t like using hyperboles in serious discussions.

But if you want a significant increase in both your armor rating and your health pool, you simply play a warrior instead of any other class in zerker gear.

kokiman.2364:

CHIPS.6018:

So I just tried that “Kill 3 Legendary Clockworks” quest. It is nothing but a DPS test. Can we please stop having quests like these?

These quests are saying:
If you are not using berserker gear, go home.

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

Riku.4821:

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

OHKO is the norm, and the reason zerker is meta in the first place. Problem is the “tanks” also die in 1 hit, or maybe 2-3 with no ability to heal up between attacks. Better to kill everything before your dodges/blocks/blinds/invuls run out, and as a bonus the trash that couldn’t ever kill a tank dies faster too!

Riku.4821:

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

People don’t WANT to play berserkers, people WANT to play the most efficient build. When there is no reason to bring anything other than pure damage, the gear set that offers pure damage is going to become the most efficient build.

One Hit Kills punish all gear sets equally, so they would not change the meta. You would need to increase the rate of attacks that mobs use in order to punish players who take no Toughness/Vitality. Passive defense is fairly pointless in this game primarily because active defense is more effective (you take 0 damage) and recharges fast enough to be available for each one of a boss’ telegraphed big hits. If you only have to fear the big hits, then all players have equal defense because you can mitigate all damage using player skill alone. If all players have equal defense, then adding more useless defense is useless, which is exactly why berserker gear is king.

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

CHIPS.6018:

I am glad we agree that the mobs must stop following the [b]rarely hitting the players, one hit killing [b]model.

This should be replaced by the often hitting the players, but lower damage model.

The problem here is that thoughness should had been modeled (at least for PvE) as a flat damage reduction, being specially effective against fast frequent attacks (which are hard if not impossible to actively mitigate) but next to useless agains the big moves (which would be the place for evades/dodges to shine).
With proper attack/damage rates, this would be much more in line with the idea of an action based combat MMO. What we have now is hardly possible to balance (I can show you some weird math to “prove” it if you want)

CHIPS.6018:

Yes berserker should always deal the highest damage, if the player can survive with it. At the same time, tanky characters should survive longer than berserker gear. The medium that Anet should aim for is hybrid, somewhere in the middle. Berserker is the extreme in damage, while tanky is the extreme in survival.

The biggest obstacle right now is that too many people is using berserker already. So Anet may be hesitant to make new contents and AI that can effectively killing off berserker gear players (e.g. 90% chance for berserker to die once every 5 minutes). Anet may be worried about the outcry from the berserkers.

But this is important for the long term of the game.

Not exactly. Tanky characters should have an easier time surviving (which already happens btw).
This is not supposed to be a classic number based MMO where you can measure the time one spec would stay alive. Even if numbers play a huge role, the ability to survive must be highly dependant on player skill and a godlike player should perfectly survive in zekers for longer than a terrible one in soldiers.
If everything could be reduced to numbers, then there would be an optimal build and everybody would stick to it.

The problem with berserker gear is how unchallenging the content is. Surviving as a glass cannon is just easy enough to ignore more defensive specs..

CHIPS.6018:

The defend the circle idea is just one of many. The key is to make all 3 types of gears useful. The event, instead of being a DPS test, now test and see if the players know what they are doing. Here is how the players may fail the event.

Berserkers: If they do not know how to survive, they will die rapidly. The zerg DPS will drop and the player zerg will wipe. Zerg wipe=game over.

Hybrids: Somewhere in the middle.

Tanks: If they do not know how to either absorb damage for or heal their allies, their allies will die around them. This will drop the zerg DPS. The waves after waves of mobs will eventually kill everyone. Zerg wipe=game over.

But there’s a DPS check. If damage specs fail at surviving or tanks at defending them, players are likely to be overwhelmed and lose the combat.

Yes, the 3 types of gear are useful, but that’s completely different from any character, no matter what spec/gear uses, being useful. They’re only if they do what they’re supposed to do.
Soldier gear may have its place, but won’t work on a bearbow ranger (without even piercing arrows) spamming autoattack at the backline. Unless you’re extremely forgiving with the DPS requeriments (in which case a lot of tanks and a few hybrids would be enough and nothing would have changed), this kind of builds could and would make the event fail and then complaint about berserkers one more time.

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

Maybe, just maybe, “build diversity” is also about every character being able to be tuned/customized to fit better different purposes and not exactly about allowing every mixture of random builds to be succesful in any context.

Vargamonth.2047:

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

Maybe, just maybe, “build diversity” is also about every character being able to be tuned/customized to fit better different purposes and not exactly about allowing every mixture of random builds to be succesful in any context.

Nope, build diversity is pretty much dead and that since not far after release. With DPS (DD) being the only role that exists in PvE, everything besides that is obsolete.

But this is not the players fault, it is just bad game design.

mtpelion.4562:

Riku.4821:

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

People don’t WANT to play berserkers, people WANT to play the most efficient build. When there is no reason to bring anything other than pure damage, the gear set that offers pure damage is going to become the most efficient build.

One Hit Kills punish all gear sets equally, so they would not change the meta. You would need to increase the rate of attacks that mobs use in order to punish players who take no Toughness/Vitality. Passive defense is fairly pointless in this game primarily because active defense is more effective (you take 0 damage) and recharges fast enough to be available for each one of a boss’ telegraphed big hits. If you only have to fear the big hits, then all players have equal defense because you can mitigate all damage using player skill alone. If all players have equal defense, then adding more useless defense is useless, which is exactly why berserker gear is king.

Photoloss.4817:

Riku.4821:

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

OHKO is the norm, and the reason zerker is meta in the first place. Problem is the “tanks” also die in 1 hit, or maybe 2-3 with no ability to heal up between attacks. Better to kill everything before your dodges/blocks/blinds/invuls run out, and as a bonus the trash that couldn’t ever kill a tank dies faster too!

I proposed a simple fix which made zerkers actually have a disadvantage but far more strength then everyone else. While Tanks had more advantages over others in terms of living. Zerkers die from OHK while tank players have a “chance” to die from OHK. more tough/vital less chance to die.
People need to think, reason, and agree in order to get anything done.

Riku.4821:

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

If the mobs are successful in killing large quantities of berserker gear users, they will not WANT to play as berserker any longer. Dying isn’t fun.

CHIPS.6018:

Riku.4821:

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

You are correct in all matters. But the problem is it jsut seem to many people WANT to play berserkers. The only way they could solve that is remove it. OR make the game to punishing to DPS race players by adding OHK or harder mechanics than press 1.

If the mobs are successful in killing large quantities of berserker gear users, they will not WANT to play as berserker any longer. Dying isn’t fun.

People are going to rage and rage quit if they use your method of balancing.

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

Bosses are a negotiation though. They ask for certain things and the player has to provide them. The current boss asks for two things: 1. 50% of the time it asks you to deal as much direct damage as possible, condition damage is 100% useless, and 2. 50% of the time it asks you as a group to maintain at least 50 stacks of Conditions, while still dealing as much direct damage as possible, condition damage becomes somewhat useful here.

This means that even factoring in the “burn phase” condi builds are only half as effective as normal during this fight, if that (since the burn phase is typically much shorter than the “take a nap condi” phase).

That isn’t necessary. Removing the “no condis need apply” buff alone would have make them at least equal participants in the fight, if perhaps not the ideal build for it due to the traditional limitations of the class. If they wanted to go the opposite direction, they could have added in buffs that enhance the use of Condis, like perhaps one that doubles the strength of conditions while halving their durations (meaning more people’s stacks would get used if you could keep them up).

They chose to make the mechanics deliberately hostile to condition builds, they were by no means forced into this by “the meta.”

Naetell.3815:

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

Current meta for dungeons, this is the living story we’re talking about. The metagame in pve refers to the most popular techniques and I’m pretty certain that berserker’s is not the most popular gear amidst casual players that do this content.

haviz.1340:

Naetell.3815:

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

Current meta for dungeons, this is the living story we’re talking about. The metagame in pve refers to the most popular techniques and I’m pretty certain that berserker’s is not the most popular gear amidst casual players that do this content.

That’s why they probably have to be carried through all those time gated events.
And that’s probably why the events still fail.

And there is nothing you can personally do about it. Sounds frustrating.

haviz.1340:

If it’s useless it means it’s useless and you shouldn’t have to use it. So is it useless or not? Because I’m constantly reading that defensive stats are useless. Was it always a hyperbole? I don’t like using hyperboles in serious discussions.

Toughness and Vitality are by no means useless stats, the problem is by taking gear that has them you greatly reduce your dps, as you will very rarely crit and when you do you do practically no extra damage, and seeing as most of pve ultimately comes down to fighting enemies that deal large spike damage as opposed to sustained damage, it makes more sense to kill them quicker so they don’t get to hit you with it as often.
However as I mentioned you can’t crit world bosses, making the precision/crit damage on berserkers gear more “useless” in those situations than having that extra survivability that will keep you in the fight for longer.

haviz.1340:

If it’s useless it means it’s useless and you shouldn’t have to use it. So is it useless or not? Because I’m constantly reading that defensive stats are useless. Was it always a hyperbole? I don’t like using hyperboles in serious discussions.

As Shib said, they’re not “useless.” Useless is a strong term to use. The problem with Defensive gear setup is that in most of PvE it doesn’t matter. Many champions/legendaries can OHKO a player who doesn’t dodge, regardless of their offensive/defensive setup. This is why I personally call PvE “Dodge or Die.” Many trash mobs won’t deal enough damage (and if they do, it’s in conditions) to make defensive setups any more useful than damage (think the best defense is a deadly offense). Only world bosses which are designed as structures, so crit hits don’t work on them, really dissuade any use of maximized DPS gear.

In PvE, there’s just not much reason to use any more defensive gear than absolutely necessary for the player because more defensive gear doesn’t make up for the DPS loss because in any situation that it could be useful, you look closer to find that it’s not actually useful.

TLDR; Defensive gear is “useless” in PvE by the standard that maximizing on it actually hurts a player more than help them in any way.

GW1 had nothing like dps problem
GW2 has only DPS-design for PVE. You may build up any kind of build but it doesn’t matter. Zerk Is the only way to play and ppl who want to try to make a decent build are cutted out. A friend of mine sold his account because of that and he really loved GW1, for both PvE and PvP. He played condition mesmer and he really liked it but he was forced to play a zerk build due to the mechanics of the game itself. Condition build are slow and some kind of condition like confusion are useless against mob due to the small duration and the slow attack of mobs. The condition can only work greatly in a massive events like world bosses because of stack from many source. Same things for support, the boon’s and heals are too fast or small that if you build a support build you are much useless than a pure dps due the lack of damage/endurance. GW2 doesn’t repay ppl for play good build of been a good player but for selfishness and DPS. You can undestand that by all the dead spreading in any area, during events like world bosses or LS, and from the only way to see any class (DPS or useless).

Remove all the classes, just make a merged unknown zerk class. Ppl need only to choose the race, because that doesn’t influence DPS. Remove things like Healing Power, Condition Damage, Vitality and Toughtness. Only DPS count and the skill to dodge the incoming attacks. That can be usefull in WvW too. The kills can be faster and balanced by the strategy of players and commanders. GW2 is not even a item-based game but a zerk-style game. What a shame.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

That’s why they probably have to be carried through all those time gated events.
And that’s probably why the events still fail.

And there is nothing you can personally do about it. Sounds frustrating.

The only thing that’s frustrated for me is the lack of scaling of this event. Barely dented the knight in 10 minutes of soloing which probably means it scales up from 30-40 people.

hannah mee.7925:

As Shib said, they’re not “useless.” Useless is a strong term to use. The problem with Defensive gear setup is that in most of PvE it doesn’t matter. Many champions/legendaries can OHKO a player who doesn’t dodge, regardless of their offensive/defensive setup. This is why I personally call PvE “Dodge or Die.” Many trash mobs won’t deal enough damage (and if they do, it’s in conditions) to make defensive setups any more useful than damage (think the best defense is a deadly offense). Only world bosses which are designed as structures, so crit hits don’t work on them, really dissuade any use of maximized DPS gear.

In PvE, there’s just not much reason to use any more defensive gear than absolutely necessary for the player because more defensive gear doesn’t make up for the DPS loss because in any situation that it could be useful, you look closer to find that it’s not actually useful.

TLDR; Defensive gear is “useless” in PvE by the standard that maximizing on it actually hurts a player more than help them in any way.

I have to disagree. Even if full glass setups champions/legendaries rarely one hit you, let alone with defensive setups. There are only few champions that utilize true oneshots (Crusher in Arah p3 for instance), a vast majority of fights do not include one shots. That’s a very common hyperbole which often leads to the conclusion that defensive stats are useless which was my point from the start.

Moreover, defensive stats needs sustainability in form of passive and active healing and other typical defensive tools like blocks and blinds. To achieve better healing you need to increase your healing power. So you could say that berserker’s gear has a nice synergy with all of its offensive stats but at the same time defensive stats (vit/toughness) has a synergy with healing power and boon duration.

Defensive stats is not useless for people that don’t want to improve or they rather play like a typical mmo with healers and tanks. Yes, playing like this is slower and less efficient but that should be the case since gw2 is a game with active combat and that should be promoted, not passive resilience. Do you or would you play tanks in dark souls?

CHIPS.6018:

Yes berserker should always deal the highest damage, if the player can survive with it[/b]. At the same time, tanky characters should survive longer than berserker gear. The medium that Anet should aim for is hybrid, somewhere in the middle. Berserker is the extreme in damage, while tanky is the extreme in survival.

The biggest obstacle right now is that too many people is using berserker already.

do you have any proof or statistics for that? because my pug runs say otherwise. i rarely meet berserker players (and even more rarely good berserker players) and most of the time i end up soloing encounters for them. even when they are using the most extreme tanky gear in the game.

berserker is a minority in this game and as long as the active combat system exists good players will always use berserker.
and tbh with you its the only reason why i am even playing this game. because if i do a mistake i will be punished for it. challenge = fun.
if i wanted to be brainafk all day and press 1111111 i would be playing a different game.

main problem is content is stale and people have experienced the same content for 1,5 years.

you can do whatever you want, remove berserker, change AI, fine. in the end people will still be using the most efficient gear for their skill level and then the cryhards will post threads like this one again.

Naetell.3815:

Fenrina.2954:

Riku.4821:

Yeah expect this idea these “unique snowflakes” have was the selling point to this game when it came out.. So people ARE entitled for playing how they want.

There’s an additional factor. The devs have been talking about “build diversity” as a design goal for quite some time. Required bosses that want lots of berserker gear is rather contrary to that goal.

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

there are no roles in this game. its the concept of gw2.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Nope, build diversity is pretty much dead and that since not far after release. With DPS (DD) being the only role that exists in PvE, everything besides that is obsolete.

But this is not the players fault, it is just bad game design.

your build in gw2 is defined by your weapons and traits. not by your gear. dps isnt a role.
in top guilds every single player is support (offensive AND defensive support), cc, and
dps at the same time. exactly what the devs where talking about when they made this game.

CHIPS.6018:

If the mobs are successful in killing large quantities of berserker gear users, they will not WANT to play as berserker any longer. Dying isn’t fun.

you can finish all of the pve content in this game without armor. if they destroy my berserker gear i will run around naked and still be faster than most people.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

NoTrigger.8396:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Nope, build diversity is pretty much dead and that since not far after release. With DPS (DD) being the only role that exists in PvE, everything besides that is obsolete.

But this is not the players fault, it is just bad game design.

your build in gw2 is defined by your weapons and traits. not by your gear. dps isnt a role.
in top guilds every single player is upport (offensive AND defensive support), cc, and
dps at the same time. exactly what the devs where talking about when they made this game.

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

gw2 doesnt have a trinity, so no healers and no tanks.
everyone is everything at the same time. that was 100% obvious from the beginning and thats how they advertised their combat and playstyle system.

and i have to disagree with “nothing else needed but dd”.
i know this thread is mainly about living story but maybe you should check out some record runs from top guilds. you will realize offensive and defensive support as well as cc is used.

NoTrigger.8396:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Nope, build diversity is pretty much dead and that since not far after release. With DPS (DD) being the only role that exists in PvE, everything besides that is obsolete.

But this is not the players fault, it is just bad game design.

your build in gw2 is defined by your weapons and traits. not by your gear. dps isnt a role.
in top guilds every single player is upport (offensive AND defensive support), cc, and
dps at the same time. exactly what the devs where talking about when they made this game.

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

This is an interesting conversation topic that has also been on my mind for some time. Thank you for bringing it up. The mechanics for aggression from NPCs always seemed a little off to me – not way off, just a little.

Trait allocation and armor stats, along with player dps, correlate a little weakly (wobbly?) to mob aggression selection. There is some RNG going on. In previous MMOs I have played, targeting for aggression very strongly correlates to damage taken from players, heals given from player to player, and aggression control mechanisms so players could tank in various ways drawing fire from other types of builds. It forced players to plan the group make-up and combat roles, which was not a broken system, just different from the every-job-can-do-anything design for GW2.

I have to admit wishing for better aggro-to-dps correlation, though. I feel the factor relating to toughness is a little too strong compared to the one for damage so it is difficult to manipulate NPC aggression through play.

Timers and big health pools are just a general excuse for poor fight mechanics.
Unless we deal with zerg blobbing every event because it’s safe, we won’t see good fights.

Wondering why people like Lupicus and Queen’s Gauntlet arena even more? Because you can’t just say “kitten it” and skip/exploit (at least less than others)

I love fights when I have to tweak couple things maybe, like adjust utilities, maybe prepare with other trait and actually try to play the game dealing with boss, no handholding.

When your biggest threat is a timer, incredible health pool and ONE big-hit attack killing you from time to time…. That’s not a fight, that’s beating a dummy.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

haviz.1340:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

I probably wouldn’t design content for 150 people in GW2, it is simply not really designed for large scale battles with many NPCs.

Just imagine 150 players fighting an army of enemies, not just a single HP sponge, or groups of 10, but hundreds of enemies.

Well this game was never even designed around zergs in the first place, that is why all this is a futile discussion anyways.

haviz.1340:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

Fractals is instanced.

Instanced requires more balance.

Your point is moot.

That would be fine if they were my own conditions, but I keep getting other users’ conditions and it’s bullkitten.

JackDaniels.1697:

The condition reflect buff is much welcomed, we just need to adapt to it, and stop whining because you’re getting downed by your own conditions

hannah mee.7925:

haviz.1340:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

Fractals is instanced.

Instanced requires more balance.

Your point is moot.

Which is what I agreed on in second paragraph.

CHIPS.6018:

Getting hit is unexpected. So they will hurt a lot. The game is pretty much Devil May Cry in “Dante Must Die” mode.

Heh i recall seeing early video of a thief 1v1-ing a dungeon boss, and quipping how much it made me think GW2 was multiplayer Devil May Cry thanks to all the acrobatics and evades.

Malediktus.9250:

hannah mee.7925:

Ohoni.6057:

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

That’s the problem. Too much balance discussion focuses around PvP tactics, which are completely irrelevant to PvE. You can have build that devastate in PvP and are completely useless in PvE, or that are worthless in PvP but dominate in PvE.

PvP is proof that this game can be balanced if they worked really hard to restructure PvE. A lot of content just needs to be instanced and enemies need to be reworked in those instances to provide adequate balancing.

sPvP is far from being balanced… look into the pvp and profession subforums

But the SPVP balance issues and the PVE balance issues are polar opposites. Where as in SPVP high bunker and conditions are the way to play, it will get you a very different experience in PVE. And not because the player side numbers change, but because the enemy side numbers change (often massively so).

Still new to the game, so not sure if this is valid or not. Could they award bonus damage to parties taking place in the event.

This promotes playing together and usually a party or team has been playing long enough together they should be able to work as a team.

Maybe even have a way for two separate guild parties to join giving a modifier to damage.

This would allow people who like to play individually still play like that. Just they would need a whole lot of individuals to take the knight down and still might not. Where as 3 or 4 parties maxed out in players would literally wipe the floor with the knight.

Dilligaf Wyt

NoTrigger.8396:

do you have any proof or statistics for that? because my pug runs say otherwise. i rarely meet berserker players (and even more rarely good berserker players) and most of the time i end up soloing encounters for them. even when they are using the most extreme tanky gear in the game.
berserker is a minority in this game and as long as the active combat system exists good players will always use berserker.
and tbh with you its the only reason why i am even playing this game. because if i do a mistake i will be punished for it. challenge = fun.
if i wanted to be brainafk all day and press 1111111 i would be playing a different game.

you can finish all of the pve content in this game without armor. if they destroy my berserker gear i will run around naked and still be faster than most people.

Nearly everyone I know runs berserker for pve. We aren’t proud about it. You know why?

Because tbh running berserker isn’t that hard. Not hard at all.

Instead of saying "We are awesome! ", we are saying “The game does not punish berserker players enough.”

And btw, your gear is indeed part of what defines your build. Compare your stat naked with your stats will full gear on. That’s a huge difference in stats.

CHIPS.6018:

Nearly everyone I know runs berserker for pve. We aren’t proud about it. You know why?

Because tbh running berserker isn’t that hard. Not hard at all.

Instead of saying "We are awesome! ", we are saying “The game does not punish berserker players enough.”

And btw, your gear is indeed part of what defines your build. Compare your stat naked with your stats will full gear on. That’s a huge difference in stats.

That’s not exactly a proper sample size. Nearly everyone I know in the game has 20+ years, does it mean there are no people younger than that?

This game doesn’t punish for a lot thing.

Your build is mostly defined by your role, tell me how does power define if you are support or control specced? Those are defined by your weapons, traits and utility skills. Gear (stats) defines your build but it’s not the only factor and not the biggest one.