Guild Wars 2

http://youtu.be/eXTd9YfMJlw

Here is a comparison of play how you want builds vs zerker meta builds against Lupi.

The Play How You Want builds

Guardian – Paladin 2.0bal – 0/15/30/20/5 Cleric with Mercy Runes Celestial/Zerker trinkets and Zerker Weapons
Necromancer – Conditionmancer – 10/30/0/30/0 Rabid/Carrion with Krait/Afflicted Runes http://youtu.be/NDm3nZgFLoo
Ranger – BowBear – 30/20/10/10/0 Rabid with Adventurer Runes
Engineer – Flamethrower Engi – 10/30/0/20/10 Zerker with Scholar Runes
Warrior – Shout Heal War – 30/10/0/30/0 Knight Armor with Soldier Runes and Zerker Weapons and Trinkets

The Zerker Meta builds

Guardian – 10/30/0/5/25
Necro – 30/25/0/0/15
Ranger – 30/25/0/15/0
Engineer – 30/10/0/0/30
Warrior – 30/25/0/0/15

The real question is, which was more fun?

Cookie’s flamethrower making barbecue out of lupi’s butt was cute.

Thumb up for bear’s name.

Can’t beat our not-a-single-dodge-lupi kill.

Wethospu.6437:

The real question is, which was more fun?

The play how you want one was at first. After the charm wore off it just became painful.

Flamethrower is so enjoyable to use. I’m pretty upset that it’s so awful

You guys have all of my respect. Great vid, rock on

But, but you can’t melee and dodge grubs if you play how you want :<

Isslair.4908:

But, but you can’t melee and dodge grubs if you play how you want

Yup. All at range and eating every stupid grub would have been more realistic for the play how you want fraction.

CptAurellian.9537:

Isslair.4908:

But, but you can’t melee and dodge grubs if you play how you want

Yup. All at range and eating every stupid grub would have been more realistic for the play how you want fraction.

We tried playing deliberately bad, and I got pretty close to rage quitting. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to be what you hate >:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

obal.3218:

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

Honestly, that’s all it really comes down to. Time. Everything else is based on the player, not the build. I care much more about efficiency than about speed, which, despite what people seem to think, are actually two different things.

Black Box.9312:

obal.3218:

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

Honestly, that’s all it really comes down to. Time. Everything else is based on the player, not the build. I care much more about efficiency than about speed, which, despite what people seem to think, are actually two different things.

Which run was more efficient after you watched both?

Imagine if tanking was possible , a full group of “play how you want” would facetank lupi and would be like wtf? How do we kill it he ain’t losing no hp !

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Black Box.9312:

obal.3218:

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

Honestly, that’s all it really comes down to. Time. Everything else is based on the player, not the build. I care much more about efficiency than about speed, which, despite what people seem to think, are actually two different things.

Which run was more efficient after you watched both?

He just admitted that they were purposefully trying to play bad and were using builds they aren’t comfortable running with. If you think that’s a fair comparison, I really hope you don’t hold any sort of political influence.

Black Box.9312:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Black Box.9312:

obal.3218:

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

Honestly, that’s all it really comes down to. Time. Everything else is based on the player, not the build. I care much more about efficiency than about speed, which, despite what people seem to think, are actually two different things.

Which run was more efficient after you watched both?

He just admitted that they were purposefully trying to play bad and were using builds they aren’t comfortable running with. If you think that’s a fair comparison, I really hope you don’t hold any sort of political influence.

No, we were actually trying. What we said was, we TRIED to play badly, but it was too hard so we ended up actually trying (other than obal skill clicking).

Actually I’m not really following what you’re trying to argue, I’ll just leave it be.

Black Box.9312:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Black Box.9312:

obal.3218:

Emanuel.9781:

Alright, alright. It’s settled. In the next few days, you’re going to see a real “play how you want” lupicus kill. Actually, i’m not sure if it’ll be possible to kill him in that setup.

Time will tell.

The point was to get a clean run on both play how you want build and a zerker meta build to compare times.

Honestly, that’s all it really comes down to. Time. Everything else is based on the player, not the build. I care much more about efficiency than about speed, which, despite what people seem to think, are actually two different things.

Which run was more efficient after you watched both?

He just admitted that they were purposefully trying to play bad and were using builds they aren’t comfortable running with. If you think that’s a fair comparison, I really hope you don’t hold any sort of political influence.

I didn’t say we were trying to play bad. We were trying to get a clean run like I said to show the difference which was 3x and that was with some amazing rng on the play how you want run where he just stood there and did nothing in phase 3 for the most part. It would have been longer if he wasn’t feeling as lazy as running the builds we had. If I was trying to play bad then I probably would have had to heal up more than 0 times. The only thing I did bad was skill click but I did well with that

Don’t get me wrong.
I appreciate the general sentiment behind something like this. Direct Damage building is way out of hand in PvE. This is a legitimately bad thing. It deserves pointing out.

But there’s another part of me that thinks this is the First World Problems of MMORPG balance. Oh no, it totally functions just fine and is still ridiculously easy to complete, truly this is the worst thing that ever happened. You know how many games I’ve played where I would’ve killed for my balance problems to be something as stupid as this?

So, Good on you guys for putting a concrete number to and raising awareness of the imbalances in PvE character building. But, on principal, I think I’m going to have to roll my eyes a bit.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Don’t get me wrong.
I appreciate the general sentiment behind something like this. Direct Damage building is way out of hand in PvE. This is a legitimately bad thing. It deserves pointing out.

But there’s another part of me that thinks this is the First World Problems of MMORPG balance. Oh no, it totally functions just fine and is still ridiculously easy to complete, truly this is the worst thing that ever happened. You know how many games I’ve played where I would’ve killed for my balance problems to be something as stupid as this?

So, Good on you guys for putting a concrete number to and raising awareness of the imbalances in PvE character building. But, on principal, I think I’m going to have to roll my eyes a bit.

Building your character like an idiot versus building your character so power is highlighting imbalance lol

If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I think GW2 actually tidied it up. When I was playing WoW, for a number of patches, mDPS was difficult, sometimes very RNG dependent, to compete with rDPS, but that’s just numbers. The actual imbalance was that rDPS didn’t have to maneuver so much for the duration of many fights while mDPS always had to dodge puddles and make sure to always be opposite the tank so they wouldn’t get cleaved. So it was effectively compounded that melees dealt typically less damage, but also had to move around more, and any time spent moving is time spent not doing DPS; it was a double loss.

But it’s the opposite in Guild Wars. You say direct damage is loaded; a staff/scepter Guardian spamming 1 is direct, cabbage damage. What is more true is that melee weapons are just loaded and benefit, then, even moreso from stacking multiplicative percentage-based damage modifiers. Yes, yes, now we’re talking. Instead of taking the risk to melee and dealing comparatively sub-optimal damage (WoW), we take the risk (much greater in this game as well) to melee and really see the effect of our ability to do so.

Or maybe that’s not what you were getting at, at all; just how I took it in an my sentiments regarding it. This post could still be taken on it’s own for QQbaby perma 1200 range auto-attacking pugs.

Not entirely sure what you’re saying, so, probably not?

Well there’s two dichotomies regarding damage imbalance.

Direct vs Condition
Range vs Melee

I think you were speaking to highlight an imbalance, but I’m not sure what, because you only really said that direct damage was highly imbalanced compared to the rest.

I was putting more, solid lines between these dichotomies that you briefly pointed out to illustrate that while it may be as you say, and as we see, but that I feel it was intentional, not a mistake, with my main talking point being (to paraphrase):

Melee DPS is skewed in WoW because they’re almost always weaker AND have to move around resulting in loss of DPS during fights.
Range DPS is reigning powerhouse because for whatever reason, it’s just stronger, but they don’t need to move as much in most pulls.

GW spun this. They identified that melee was risky, and ranging was a BHB job for girlscouts, and aptly rewards people in the fray with (admittedly) exorbitant DPS gains, instead of (contradictory as it is) the other way around.

Oh, oh. I get it now.
My bad. I didn’t mean to say anything about melee vs ranged, I’m more talking like power vs. conditions. (vs. any other which way you can build your character in PvE that’s totally rotting on the shelf right now.)

I guess glass cannon would have probably been the better word choice.

Condi is strong in that it takes only 2 stats investments to get damage out of it, leaving alot of room for defensive traits.

But condi is also weak because there’s only 2 traits that affect it: condi damage and condi duration, which means in PvE environments there’s little you can do to trade for more damage. Also condi damage scaling with condi damage is linear while power+traits+crit damage are exponential.

In the end, Condi damage of any sort, even shamans/settlers will output more DPS than PVT/Clerics against things that don’t cleanse/are non-structures and of course if the other party members don’t intrude with bleed cap/overwrite your burns/poisons with their weaker ones.

Condi is especially good for casually soloing content since it’s safer to use than zerker.

The real discussion is that the “play how you want” builds took 3 minutes for these guys to win. That’s just orders of magnitude better than PUGs just in terms of pure skill. There’s a lot to learn if you just shut up and listen.

I don’t think the play how you want builds are play how you want enough.
These are more accurate:

AH Shout mostly staff camping Guardian
MM Axe camping Necro
Double Bearbow Cleric RegenShout Ranger
Grenade Bunker Engi
Heal Shout Rifle-GS Kill-everything Warrior

Actually, play how you want guards would take 10 Radiant and take Signet of Mercy instead of WoR. My bad.

Play how you want needs to have a 14/14/14/14/14 celestial tank guardian.

Chopps.5047:

The real discussion is that the “play how you want” builds took 3 minutes for these guys to win. That’s just orders of magnitude better than PUGs just in terms of pure skill. There’s a lot to learn if you just shut up and listen.

4 minutes, 3:59 does not round down lol

There seems to be a lot of conusion going on as to what this thread really shows, either that or am I having trouble undestanding the posts of more then a few people in this thread. Maybe I need more coffee.

I thought the point was to show, despite how vocal the community is about saying that you must gear a certain way to be successful and Anet is not honoring the ‘play how you want’ playstyle, Obal is showing us that it isn’t the gear at all that that makes the character, it is the player.

All of these players are skilled dungeon players and with this thread they are basically saying they can complete any of the content with any character como, any build.

So while straight damage builds may be the best, you have all the options you want.

CryxTryx.9208:

All of these players are skilled dungeon players and with this thread they are basically saying they can complete any of the content with any character como, any build.

So while straight damage builds may be the best, you have all the options you want.

This was known though. We just knew it would take way longer. As shown in the video. So it just confirms what we knew. You can play how you want, but it takes a lot longer to finish material. This is why certain groups require zerker gear, so they can finish content quicker. Find like minded folk, and enjoy the game

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

CryxTryx.9208:

All of these players are skilled dungeon players and with this thread they are basically saying they can complete any of the content with any character como, any build.

So while straight damage builds may be the best, you have all the options you want.

This was known though. We just knew it would take way longer. As shown in the video. So it just confirms what we knew. You can play how you want, but it takes a lot longer to finish material. This is why certain groups require zerker gear, so they can finish content quicker. Find like minded folk, and enjoy the game

I agree. Personally I like to challenge myself but I also like to find ways to complete content the best way I know how. If that means stacking and LOS’ing so be it. I don’t see much point in needlessly prolong a dungeon if there is a quicker way to learn it.

I do and try to find like minded players and group with them, but I am still pugging more often then not. I don’t require gear checks or anything like that, however I will give suggestions and I do ask most of my groups know the encounters if they are going to join me.

This is where I find we come under fire because we have the percentage of the community calling us elitiest because we wear beserker and want to play with other expirienced players.

Finding like minded folks to group with is considered to be elitiest because I’m excluding people from my groups.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Oh, oh. I get it now.
My bad. I didn’t mean to say anything about melee vs ranged, I’m more talking like power vs. conditions. (vs. any other which way you can build your character in PvE that’s totally rotting on the shelf right now.)

I guess glass cannon would have probably been the better word choice.

Ran an Arah p3 yesterday, one guy used his wvw warrior condition build and we didn’t even notice. Although it’d obviously be more noticeable if all 5 were condition. I think it’s time for a 5 man condition lupi kill, for science!

But that wouldn’t even be much faster than a warrior solo :P

Can you taste colors?

zencow.3651:

I don’t think the play how you want builds are play how you want enough.
These are more accurate:

AH Shout mostly staff camping Guardian
MM Axe camping Necro
Double Bearbow Cleric RegenShout Ranger
Grenade Bunker Engi
Heal Shout Rifle-GS Kill-everything Warrior

Actually, play how you want guards would take 10 Radiant and take Signet of Mercy instead of WoR. My bad.

I was going for the current meta of these builds. Scion is really pushing for his paladin 2.5 and won’t listen to reason so I used that for guardian. I saw the flamethrower engi and shout heal wars were updated/new topics on the front pages of guru profession sections. We really had no clue how to build a bearbow so Brazil just played how he wanted with that. You also can’t go wrong with The new conditionmancer (perfected guide).

Good to know you’ve done proper research.

obal.3218:

We really had no clue how to build a bearbow so Brazil just played how he wanted with that

As a former bowbear, the trick is to just pick traits that you think are cool.

+50% dmg in the downed state , perfect trait for bearbows.

Young Somalia.1706:

Well there’s two dichotomies regarding damage imbalance.

Direct vs Condition
Range vs Melee

I think you were speaking to highlight an imbalance, but I’m not sure what, because you only really said that direct damage was highly imbalanced compared to the rest.

I was putting more, solid lines between these dichotomies that you briefly pointed out to illustrate that while it may be as you say, and as we see, but that I feel it was intentional, not a mistake, with my main talking point being (to paraphrase):

Melee DPS is skewed in WoW because they’re almost always weaker AND have to move around resulting in loss of DPS during fights.
Range DPS is reigning powerhouse because for whatever reason, it’s just stronger, but they don’t need to move as much in most pulls.

GW spun this. They identified that melee was risky, and ranging was a BHB job for girlscouts, and aptly rewards people in the fray with (admittedly) exorbitant DPS gains, instead of (contradictory as it is) the other way around.

Fury Warriors….Mut rouges….ice DK in cata….unholy DK in Wrath….feral DKs in Cata….Ret palys had BC and some parts of Cata…

The only ranged spec that was above everything else was arcane mages.

That being said, I like range DPS. I don’t think my damage should suffer.

I’m actually curious now that it shows up here… How much worse is the FT ZerkerScholar Engineer than Nades ZerkerScholar, or is it a playstyle thing, or what? Engineer is the only class that I don’t have at 80, and FT sounds like it’d be a lot of fun, but it’d be a shame if it were that bad. Something about spamming grenades makes me not want to level my Engineer up at all, but I’d also of course want to be as close to optimal as possible.

Full zerker scholar flame thrower does like 2k damage auto attacks and inflicts burning. Grenades does like 3k and does bleeding stacks, poison, and massive vuln stacks. Also has utility blind and chill.

FT has a blind too, and packs a pretty high uptime fire field. Also, are those FT auto attacks per tick (since it ticks multiple hits)? My gut also says that with the 50% chance to cause vuln on a crit, that FT would maintain a much higher stack of vuln on targets than nades would (though this could be a wash since each nade throw chucks several grenades). Flamethrower also maintains a lot of might on its own assuming Juggernaut and has a +15% damage trait (I’m assuming your FT numbers have this, though). Is there any documentation of the dps differences of these in the current meta anywhere?

I also just realized that this is probably the wrong forum for this discussion, but I’d rather talk to you cats about it than the angries in the Engineer subforum.

I feel like I’m being sucked into the flamethrower guru thread all over again.

I feel with you.

So just a recap. Flamethrower is new Engie Meta. Boom!

Rising Dusk.2408:

FT has a blind too, and packs a pretty high uptime fire field. Also, are those FT auto attacks per tick (since it ticks multiple hits)? My gut also says that with the 50% chance to cause vuln on a crit, that FT would maintain a much higher stack of vuln on targets than nades would (though this could be a wash since each nade throw chucks several grenades). Flamethrower also maintains a lot of might on its own assuming Juggernaut and has a +15% damage trait (I’m assuming your FT numbers have this, though). Is there any documentation of the dps differences of these in the current meta anywhere?

I also just realized that this is probably the wrong forum for this discussion, but I’d rather talk to you cats about it than the angries in the Engineer subforum.

1. That’s the total damage by one auto
2. Long as channel, major downtime between autos
3. Solo might stacking sucks

Damage difference is so enormous and obvious most engi players default to grenades. I’ve never seen a PuG use FT even.

Thats funny because whenever ive got a pug engi they have always been flamethower engis. The engi subforum is full of how do i make FT build for pve.

Maybe it’s an EU thing? :P

Id be willing to agree with that except these forums have both NA and EU players.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I feel like I’m being sucked into the flamethrower guru thread all over again.

Sorry about that. I don’t much care for Guru, but I visit this site regularly.

zencow.3651:

Damage difference is so enormous and obvious most engi players default to grenades. I’ve never seen a PuG use FT even.

Shame, but I guess it is what it is. Thanks for letting me know what to expect when I eventually level my Engineer.