Guild Wars 2

Just interested in it, i play pvp most of the time and have 7 lvl 80s but they are not specialized into pve build-wise. I just give you some examples and would like to know your opinion about them, basically: Would you run a dungeons with these types of build or not.
1. Mesmer with full zerk gear, traveller runes, air/fire sigils and wvw infusions. uses 4/4/0/0/6 shatter build. This build can maintain around 10 stacks might for the mesmer and basically oneshots trash mobs but lacks dps against bosses.
2. Celestial Ele 0/2/0/6/6 with hoelbrak runes and battle/doom sigils, weapons d/d. Build provides AoE conditions cleanse and healing along with a few shared boons, permanent vigor uptime and on demand protection as well as 20 stacks might for himself and 12 stacks might for his group. Build heavily lacks direct dmg compared to a zerker build but deals some condition damage. Uses 3 cantrip spells on utility slots (armor of earth, cleansing fire, lightning flash)
3. Berserker Warrior with hoelbrak runes, 2/0/6/0/6 gs/hammer, hydromancy/leeching on gs and impact/battle on hammer. Build offers CC and good condition cleanse for the warrior himself and ok personal dmg. Uses Dolyak Signet, berserker stance and endure pain as utilities with rampage as elite.

These builds are all metabuilds for wvw roaming , the first two also spvp meta builds. 2 of them are full zerker, so people with these builds will join your typical “5k ap zerker exp” groups. Will you kick them? Tell them to change their build or just pass through?
(Note: it is NOT about speedruns, just usual dungeon/fractal clearing.)
(Additional Note: These people are typically not exp at all in dungeons, but have good basic knowledge about doding and "not standing in big red circles)

In most pug groups people will not notice if you are running meta builds. You may get some hate on your warrior because pugs are used to see warrior with gs, and specially if you start spamming that hammer knockback, but if you dont play an opressed class like ranger and necro people will not bother you much.

I keep seeing these whining threads about people saying that the dungeon community is toxic and kicks you on the slightest mistake you make, but i only pug when i run dungeons and the situations where i saw that happening were so rare that i cant remember right now when it was the last time i’ve witnessed that type of behaviour.

What most probably will happen is that the group will disband after the end of the path, so if you for example are pugging CoE, instead of the group staying together for all paths they will leave after the first path is done because they noticed that the dps was terrible and there was no banners/might/reflects/icebow etc.

If it’s got full zerker it’s fine in my book. The Celestial Elementalist I might puke a little at, but it could be worse. The Warrior would be pretty ineffective if he sat in hammer a lot, and the CCs would knock mobs out of AOEs and be pretty aggravating. Really it would depend on how they played; if they were contributing, stacking might, swapping weapons / utilities based on the situation they’d be fine in my book.

PuG toxic drama mostly happens when your group fails to beat a boss multiple times so people start getting attitutdes and kicking each other. It was worse back when kicking the original dungeon owner meant destroying the instance.

I’d say you’re fine, it’ll just make things take longer. For the longest time on Mai Trin I used to do zerker D/F ele with the arcane/water traits, and it was awesome! I would suggest trying to do as many things as you can to help carry pugs though, just to make things easier for everyone involved, even if you run a shatter mesmer, make sure you run those reflects! Heals actually aren’t too bad for keeping horrible pug groups alive and kicking and a slow but steady rate, its just a bit suboptimal, but I’m past caring about what people play myself.

PVP builds generally suck in PVE. Doesn’t mean you have to go get a whole new set of gear, but I’d surely change my build.

If I see a warrior with Hoelbrak runes but willing to Phalanx Strength, nope no problem.
Ele in Celestial but shifts to a 64XXX staff build with applicable utilies (AB,AW,GoS,IB).
Mesmer can do a lot of stuff, honestly if they can manage reflects and general utility, all good, not like they can be awesome on DPS anyways

Now, honestly I don’t kick people anyways and I don’t usually post LFGs but when I do I don’t do the zerk thing. But, I do expect people to try and do the most they can for a group and PVP builds simply focus a lot on mitigation and defense which is simply fluff in PVE where you’re able to avoid most all attacks.

I would say that it’s completely fair to kick people who join a “zerk” group not wearing zerk gear at the very least (it’s also implied that you’re in a good build as well, IE Hammer war without banners… not a good idea).

I do assume most people who run Meta in PVP would be open to the idea of building yourself for the content and willing to make the tweaks if asked… though I’ve certainly met those less desireables kittenpond with things like “lol PVE is easy” as they continually suck… so it’s not always true, just something I believe should be true enough that I refuse to accept the truth

I wouldn’t run a dungeon with those builds simply because I know that they aren’t even close to 90% effective.

I mean it’s like I wouldn’t run an AH WvW frontline guardian build in PvP because AH sucks in PvP and AH also sucks in PvE.

I’ve never kicked anyone for running strength in numbers (for example) in my parties (eg. pugs or super casual tours) but I’d never use that myself.

I don’t know what y’all talking about, my WvW melee bomb guardian is doing just fine in fractals, I’m yet to see my party hp to go under 95%.

Its maybe funny to use spvp or wvw builds in dungeons and fractals for kittens and giggles. But do inform others youre in a casual joking mood

Or in carrying scrubs mood

From my experience. If you’re gonna run non-zerk/non-meta builds, start your own LFG with that description.

I don’t think “zerker exp” LFGs are all elitists. Some people just can’t afford to spend that much time on the game

@OP for a while, I used to run d/p executioner thief, rifle engine (on berserk) and p/p HIGH engine in fractals and dungeons to learn the feel of these classes. They are easy and feasible but far from high dps. You soon learn that a lot utility and defensive of traits will go to waste in pve and it is logical to allocate them to different damage traits once you know the encounters all too well.

The thing is, sure your gear is suboptimal for PvE but why do you have to use bad traits? It would take 5 seconds to re-trait your mesmer and benefit your party a ton. I think we are all cool with you using a Berserker+traveler rune mesmer, but why can’t you change traits?