Guild Wars 2

had a long… passively aggressive conversation with a few fine folk in Lion’s Arch and discovered the 80 Zerker Experienced meta is so inflexible that any word against it is seen as either noob-ish or self centered (if your not 80 zerker with specific traits, your being carried). Regardless of ArenaNet’s official stance on it, i understand the need for some form of meta so the ultra-casuals this game is targeted at don’t have to over think gear choices, but why is it so infinitely inflexible? is it a problem of game design (bosses simply NEED to be max dps’d to death), or stubborn community opinion?

this was brought up after seeing an LFG post with so many requirements i forgot i was reading a request for random players off the street.

It is not necessary to have specific traits/equipment.
Most dungeons can be run without any armor or traits.

However most people have done the dungeons so often that they just want to finish it as fast as possible.
To be as fast as possible specific meta builds have been created to achieve this.

Groups that want to be as fast as possible usually advertise their group as “zerker, meta, ‘speedrun’, ‘fast run’, dmg”

Ultra casuals play how they want. All welcome groups fill super fast. People that run berserker and are pugging to force people to run berserker, that I don’t understand. It’s better to join a dungeon guild at that point.

Pretty sure that people just want to get stuff done as quickly as possible.

Berserker groups tend to fill up pretty quickly as well.

Dungeon guild groups have certain advantages, but are impractical for many players because it takes more time and effort to put together a guild group than to create an LFG listing. We’re at a stage in the game where most people who run dungeons should know the deal, and most PUGs are at very least capable.

EcoRI.9273:

Ultra casuals play how they want. All welcome groups fill super fast. People that run berserker and are pugging to force people to run berserker, that I don’t understand. It’s better to join a dungeon guild at that point.

^ This

The same LFG folks that are writing a mini novel worth of requirements are the “meta-zerk heads” that have given pugging a bad taste. In all honestly with such high requirements they need to be in a guild rather than forcing that upon the rest of the community.

I do agree though that groups that list themselves as casual or “everyone welcome runs” are generally going to be the best to work with: low pressure, generally positive attitudes, etc. Sure, it may not be done at top speed (gasp), but you’ll walk away still wanting to play the game.

It’s weird how casuals are less tolerant than meta players.

You don’t see us hootin’ and hollerin’ for Anet to change the game so that you guys have to conform to our play style.

The dreaded Z-word is a nice big red flag to let you know to steer clear if that ain’t how you party.

It’s really not as strict as people make it sound. Though, you have try-hard kittens who don’t actually understand it, but just mindlessly follow and repeat whatever they saw on some video.

Gear, you have Zerk/Assassins and even Sinister will be making a big play soon I think, at least being a decent option. You don’t need defensive stats so why take them? And healing power is purposefully bad.

Traits/weapons, well every profession has a variety of good PVE builds, I almost never see people complain when I run speedy kits on engi because it’s not optimal. Nor do I get complaints when I lazily stay in 45005 guard build even when it’s not needed. I run D/F Ele because I find it the most enjoyable and, nope, not once have I been booted from a group or even asked to change my setup. I honestly can’t even remember anyone commenting on it.

So no, gear people have an expectation, build they want some form of intelligent PVE build, IE don’t run a PVP build like shoutbow or those 00266 Ele build or whatever they are. They just don’t help much because if you play well you don’t need mitigation in PVE the vast majority of the time.

Pug inflexibility can be problematic, but it is also easily overcome.

dlonie.6547:

Pug inflexibility can be problematic, but it is also easily overcome.

i don’t normally comment in my own posts (self bumps are lame) but… i just cant stop laughing. kudos.

CheesyPuns/10

KaosNinja.4967:

i understand the need for some form of meta so the ultra-casuals this game is targeted at don’t have to over think gear choices

wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone calling other people who follow the meta as ultra-casuals. You should revisit the definition of that word, because it’s the exact opposite.

Now all zerkers are filthy ultra casuals that need to step up their game and use their brain kek

Would it be wrong to point out that isn’t a pug? That is totally a french bulldog.

Valkyrie.1794:

Would it be wrong to point out that isn’t a pug? That is totally a french bulldog.

Shh don’t ruin the illusion that it was still cute and funny.

Infenso.6329:

Valkyrie.1794:

Would it be wrong to point out that isn’t a pug? That is totally a french bulldog.

Shh don’t ruin the illusion that it was still cute and funny.

But… it is still cute and funny!

My wife pointed that out to me immediately after I posted it xD

I’m not a small dog kind of guy :P

It was pointed out to me that a group of pugs is called a grumble, certainly seems fitting in the gaming sense.

KaosNinja.4967:

i understand the need for some form of meta so the ultra-casuals this game is targeted at don’t have to over think gear choices, but why is it so infinitely inflexible? is it a problem of game design (bosses simply NEED to be max dps’d to death), or stubborn community opinion? .

There is a portion of the community that view metabattle as a bible. Whatever change you can make to metabattle is blasphemy and it make your build horrible. Those people are the worth. They don’t really know about the game and their opinion isn’t really worth listening to. They don’t even have an opinion, they just regurgitate metabattle. Here a couple of exemple.

- Changing sword to mace for a guardian is around 1-2% lost in dps, but if they see you with a mace, they will freak out.
- Signet of Fire was meta a couple months ago on Elementalist and if you weren’t running it, you were bad. By then speed runners were already using glyph of storm. Now that metabattle catchup with speed runners, you are bad for running signet of Fire.
- Metabattle used to put S/X as meta. If you were running both an Ele and a Warrior, the warrior was better to change to the standard dps build. Now, it’s the other way around and it’s the ele that better change to staff. In reality they are both good option, but these clown just follow what metabattle say.

Any of those are Tell-tale signs of someone that don’t really understand the game, they just copy paste whatever metabattle tell them. And sometime they are not even up to date.

savacli.8172:

EcoRI.9273:

Ultra casuals play how they want. All welcome groups fill super fast. People that run berserker and are pugging to force people to run berserker, that I don’t understand. It’s better to join a dungeon guild at that point.

^ This

The same LFG folks that are writing a mini novel worth of requirements are the “meta-zerk heads” that have given pugging a bad taste. In all honestly with such high requirements they need to be in a guild rather than forcing that upon the rest of the community.

I do agree though that groups that list themselves as casual or “everyone welcome runs” are generally going to be the best to work with: low pressure, generally positive attitudes, etc. Sure, it may not be done at top speed (gasp), but you’ll walk away still wanting to play the game.

I usually have to pug to get one or two people and the only time i really ask for specific classes if i want the run to be fast or its higher fractals. besides that I just put in zerk since at least it somewhat filters “better” people in. In fact I met most of my friends either through pugging since our runs are usually enjoyable.

Before I met the friends i have in the game i pugged everytime i did a dungeon and usually just joined zerk groups. Rarely have i had a bad experience since the runs are usually pug fast and the people are generally nice. Most people I see post zerk just as a half measure to at least get 75% of the party as full zerk and somewhat experienced.

On the other hand some of the “everyone welcome” parties are pretty bad experiences. Not to say that zerker parties aren’t since the kittens who asks for gear links or are super specific and accuse people when the run isnt going well are much worse. But In the dungeon runs I’ve done with “accepting” groups things end up going pretty poorly if its a moderately difficult dungeon and when it starts taking forever or people start wiping its just a horrible experience.

So not all pugs asking for zerk are bad, and not all welcoming parties are great. As far as my own pugging methods and what i have seen, a majority of people asking for zerk pugs probably don’t care if you are running an easier build or using valk they just want a damage oriented group.

(And ive seen a ton of people from dungeon guilds lfg’ing with zerker requirements and some of them have been real kittens. Obviously guilds dont entirely solve the problem of not having enough members.)

KaosNinja.4967:

had a long… passively aggressive conversation with a few fine folk in Lion’s Arch and discovered the 80 Zerker Experienced meta is so inflexible that any word against it is seen as either noob-ish or self centered (if your not 80 zerker with specific traits, your being carried). Regardless of ArenaNet’s official stance on it, i understand the need for some form of meta so the ultra-casuals this game is targeted at don’t have to over think gear choices, but why is it so infinitely inflexible? is it a problem of game design (bosses simply NEED to be max dps’d to death), or stubborn community opinion?

this was brought up after seeing an LFG post with so many requirements i forgot i was reading a request for random players off the street.

It is a not a problem. It is a choice.

Let me tell you a story – this game’s dungeons for example have been out for nearly 3 years. They were fun, challenging and done for the experience for maybe the first 3 months of the game.

After that time most people who ran dungeons did so to farm them. To farm tokens or gold out of these dungeons.

The issue is this – if people want to farm they want to get their reward as soon and as quick as possible and unless you’re willing to do everything you can to achieve that result people who run that way will not want to play with you.

It’s as simple as "I want to play the game a certain way and those who don’t want to play it my way can go their own way. I only play with people like myself*.

KaosNinja.4967:

is it a problem of game design (bosses simply NEED to be max dps’d to death), or stubborn community opinion?

It’s basically a problem with game design. I had a looooong post a year or so back about this, but to boil it down to basics: ArenaNet tried to be cutting-edge by going “hurpa durp, no more holy trinity for gw2, kitten a hurrrrrr” and ended up basically doing this:

Tanking is useless, in part because there is no stable aggro system (no way to consistently generate it, no consistent way to deaggro) and in part because defensive stats are useless against bosses who can do thousands of damage in a single hit. That is, by the way, most bosses. Additionally, tanking is useless because hard CC is effectively useless in dungeons, again because of those bosses and because Defiance/Unshakeable exist. Of course, certain bosses exist without them, but only because they are mechanically designed to be able to be punished to beat them, e.g. Three-Toed Tootsie (imagine fighting her if she had Defiance/Unshakeable; no one would want to fight her, much less kill her).

Another core point is this: if they wanted us to tank, why did they include Dodging??? Taking 0 damage is better than taking any damage, they should know that very well.

Healing is useless because of a lot of reasons. The first is that everyone can self-heal, rather than there being a class that can specifically heal and do it well. The second is that, like the defensive stats, healing power is nullified by the fact that BOSSES DO METRIC BOATLOADS OF DAMAGE, and you can’t possibly heal fast enough to compete with that kind of damage. Plus, the only way to get downed people up is to either physically go up to them and get ‘em up with F, or have a skill that lets you do that from a distance. There’s not many. So you can’t simply heal them back to fighting condition, even though that would be pretty logical.

The final, budding crux of this point is: since everyone can build DPS, you are literally foolish to build anything else, as it all detracts from your overall DPS.

That is why the zerker build meta is so unflexible. There is literally nothing else that is viable. At least as far as efficient runs go.

If you have a couple of friends who can do it, you can run around in dungeons and beat bosses in Nomad’s armor! But I bet you’re gonna hate it because it’ll take hours and it just wasn’t as good as beating up people in Zerker gear.

Thaddeus.4891:

basically speaks the truth of pug

When I joined a fractal pug group with my ranger, I was immediately welcomed with a question: “What your most played class?” and they warned me to “melee”. Then they proceeded to pull Mossman to underwater… zzz… The rest of the fractals, I had to finish everything whenever they dropped down, even though the guard and ele camped range all the time. In the end, they just had to kick me before I got the final chest at Jade Maw when I had the worst lag and couldn’t help but disconnecting a few times.

dlonie.6547:

Pug inflexibility can be problematic, but it is also easily overcome.

10/10

It’s a pretty common misconception that the dps meta is revolved around earning quick money when the reality for most people is that doing things optimally is fun and challenging and doesn’t get stale quite as fast as running the same easy paths over and over with no real goal in sight.

Then again there’s people like me who really love their money.

Money + skill testing content that doesn’t require 30 ppl to all be at that skill level. And having a goal, it’s quite nice to look back at when I first failed my DnT trial and compare it to now when people thank me for carrying them. It’s nice to know I haven’t spent 9 months accomplishing nothing.