Guild Wars 2

Said every Zerker, ever.

Thoughts on this;

1) Reasons for zerker-only PvE
- Ease of use
- Lack of need to vary gear
- It’s not actually the only thing since PvP has different gear types
- Varying playstyles already existing in the game, separate from gear-driven ones
- Other gear is still viable, just not as efficient

2) Reasons against zerker-only Pve
- Anet have stated they don’t like it
- It’s a waste of a system (Gear)
- Confusing for new players (Of the 25 types of gear, only one is worth buying?)
- Making other gears more relevant does not necessarily mean:
a) Creating a “minimum threshhold” of tankiness (Gear Check)
b) You need to stop using zerker.
c) More viable Gear Types increases build diversity at the cost of nothing.

I guess to me this idea of “Zerker only” being fine is a bit weird. If that’s the case, why not just remove the whole gear system, and everyone gets the same gear and all that changes is your level?

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

With the current way the game is set up a zerker PvE is optimal.

The way I see it, you have a number of hits that will occur before you can kill the enemy. If all of those hits can be mitigated with dodging, blocks, and blinds, then there is no need for any defensive stats at all.

If you can’t, then there’s so many hits you can absorb before you go down. And that’s when other gear comes into play.

But the more you move away from zerker stats the longer it takes to kill stuff and the more hits you have to mitigate.

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

On one hand, it makes life easier- the game is no longer about builds or gear optimization, but rather just getting the highest end zerker gear and then making it look like whatever you want.

On the other hand, it seems such a waste to have so many varying armor types and have their only use to be filler and vendor trash

My solution’s my shield ’n bleed spaming.

dlonie.6547:

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

An excellent point that I have not yet encountered during these zerker meta discussions. This game is sorely overdue for new content and unique encounters.

Other pieces of gear besides berserker are also a viable choice, it all depends on your playstyle and what you want to accomplish.

As an example : my ranger is full zerk gear and in SW she has trouble surviving multiple attacks from mobs that apply conditions (poison/lock/knockdowns) unless i keep dodging like a madman. My warrior is valkyrie, has way more hp, a lot more condition removers (sigil of cleansing f.i.) and is able to survive much longer while having the same power but a bit less crit%. I prefer the latter since i can’t do any dmg while i’m downed or dead.
For me, the choice is simple.

The only reason the zerk meta exists is because ppl focus on doing as much dmg as possible in the shortest amount of time. All good for dungeon runs, but in WvW or any other pve content you don’t need to follow the meta.

I’m just wondering how much of an impact HoT will have on those run of the mill meta builds. I for one, am happy with my own style and builds, and that’s what counts.

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.

cthaeh.2168:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

anabasis.7346:

it’s not needed because it’s not a problem.

I agree, the problem is how easy all the PvE content is. Increasing the difficulty of PvE will solve so many problems.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Most of those MMOs which are older than GW2 do not feature action based combat and active defenses.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Except you’re (apparently) under the misconception that GW2 and WoW (and MMO’s style WoW) are designed with the same holy trinity concept in mind when creating instances. They’re not, GW2 PvE content isn’t created with a tank/healer/DPS party in mind at all. Therefore, since the content isn’t created to have it, nor are players abilities geared towards it at all (read: no direct heals, no taunts), a zerker meta is created from just knowing what to do. This is “seeming” to change with the introduction of the first ever taunt mechanic in GW2 with the Revenant.

This game requires you not to have heals or tankiness but to know when to dodge/block/blind/teleport away from. If I can mititgate all the damage a boss does by just dodging everything I no longer need any toughness or a high health pool or damage mitigation, I need damage to end the encounter as fast as I can. The more I am adept at the game, the less I need defensive stats in PvE.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

That’s because WoW has a hard trinity. Where you have to have a healer and a tank as well as nukers to even complete the content. So saying that they have more than one build type variety even though old content is pointless. They have it because they have to.

What would be a better argument is if you could go into if there are multiple types of healer builds still considered optimal or multiple tank builds or multiple nuker builds. Or if each class just has one optimal build for each role. For a specific raid.

And I don’t know about others who play GW2, but one of the major reasons I picked up this game was because it didn’t have a hard trinity. Where my ability to clear end game content is not dependent on finding others to fulfill other roles.

And the thing about a meta is, it’s always the optimal set up. There is never going to be a huge number of optimal builds. Not for a specific area of play. Because one gear and trait set up will be the fastest. Always. One set up will be able to do it more reliably if two builds tie on paper.

Now is the difference between the meta and non-meta builds to large? Possibly. Could things change to make them closer so that more builds are tolerable by PUG players looking for a quick run? Possibly. But you’ll never get rid of the meta.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

cthaeh.2168:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Unlike those other games, GW2 was explicitly designed to not use the trinity/hard-roles. For GW2 to require specific roles in their dungeons to force a measure of build variety goes against what the game was intended to be. That’s why the “variety” exists in those other games — because you have to have each party member pigeonholed into a role, which ultimately has an ideal/meta build that best suites that role.

Here, the focus is more on profession utility and traits. Rather than asking “Should I bring healing gear?” the question is “Do I swap to this trait?” or “Should we bring X class for its ability to [blind|aegis|condiclear|etc]?”.

I honestly don’t get the big complaint about PvE converging on zerk gear. I mean, yeah — it makes the other gearsets useless, but do people really want to be lugging around 5 sets of gear? I strongly prefer just swapping a trait or utility skill instead.

carabidus.6214:

dlonie.6547:

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

An excellent point that I have not yet encountered during these zerker meta discussions. This game is sorely overdue for new content and unique encounters.

The only problem with this point is it doesn’t explain why zerker is the best gear setup for a group of players doing the dungeon for the first time, with no experience. The age of the dungeon is irrelevant if the users have never experienced it.

Whether the first time in a dungeon, or the 100th time in a dungeon, Zerker is hands down the only way to go. Familiarity with the dungeon seems to be wholly irrelevant to that.

Tolmos.8395:

carabidus.6214:

dlonie.6547:

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

An excellent point that I have not yet encountered during these zerker meta discussions. This game is sorely overdue for new content and unique encounters.

The only problem with this point is it doesn’t explain why zerker is the best gear setup for a group of players doing the dungeon for the first time, with no experience. The age of the dungeon is irrelevant if the users have never experienced it.

Whether the first time in a dungeon, or the 100th time in a dungeon, Zerker is hands down the only way to go. Familiarity with the dungeon seems to be wholly irrelevant to that.

I’m guessing you weren’t playing around launch.

Back when the dungeons were new, zerk didn’t reign supreme. Knights and Soldiers gear was popular, as were AH guardians, shout-heal warrior, etc etc.

5 players going into a dungeon for the first time in full zerk would be a nightmare. Ofc, a new player or two accompanied by 3-4 experienced party members can certainly get by in zerk.

But a full party of inexperienced players? Not so much.

Vargamonth.2047:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Most of those MMOs which are older than GW2 do not feature action based combat and active defenses.

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc. The problems are:

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.

- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

The armor sets have been added to GW2 for a good reason, but they were poorly designed. This game is kind of like good old Pokemon: you can build whatever you want and should be able to play the game in whatever style you want. 20+ year old Pokemon got it right and made toxic stack teams work, made tank/outlast teams work, made nuker teams work, there is no reason that 2012 GW2 can’t do the same.

Mods plz, end the terror :/

dlonie.6547:

5 players going into a dungeon for the first time in full zerk would be a nightmare. Ofc, a new player or two accompanied by 3-4 experienced party members can certainly get by in zerk.

But a full party of inexperienced players? Not so much.

Yep. I bring new people into dungeons regularly since I am a guild leader. 3-4 experienced people can carry 1-2 inexperienced people giving the impression that dungeons are easy even if inexperienced. Once the number of inexperienced people outnumbers the experienced people though, the run becomes very difficult. I cannot imagine a full group of level 35 inexperienced players could complete AC explorable paths in any acceptable amount of time.

Dungeons are easy for us because we are level 80, geared, have full access to traits and skills, and have done the paths so many times that each encounter is memorized.

A glass cannon meta is the best meta we can have for pve. If content is meant to be completed no matter what stat combo our gear has, then purely offensive gear should be viable. And since they are harder to use than gear with defensive stats, the payoff should be faster kill times (assuming you can survive without defensive stats). The problem isn’t berserker gear. The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

Tolmos.8395:

Whether the first time in a dungeon, or the 100th time in a dungeon, Zerker is hands down the only way to go. Familiarity with the dungeon seems to be wholly irrelevant to that.

Actually, dlonie is spot-on with his observation. Like he already pointed out in the reply above, back around launch when the content was new, soldiers/knights stats were commonly used and there were also more defensive builds such as an anchor-guardian involved. Only through routine did that develop into the berserker meta we have now.

These days, new players have it far easier because they have all the strategies worked out already by veterans as well as being accompanied by them. To elaborate based on one of my stereotypes: The average low ap warrior in default cof-armor is bringing the berserker stats as well as the meta-build he copied from the wiki to a group. Surrounded by veterans, everything is going smoothly. However, as a veteran players, you can easily see how his gameplay is not as fluent and he’ll be the first to go down if something turns out to be tricky.

Now, fill a party with five of those stereotypes and you’ll have one big mess…

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc.

They have uses in other game modes, and serve as training wheels for while you’re learning and need more survivability. Other builds besides direct damage are still viable, just not optimal.

Keep in mind that the “dungeons are stale” argument has two prongs:

1) We’ve memorized the encounter so that we can use active defenses to avoid damage.
2) We’ve run the godkitten things so many times that most players don’t want to spend time with just “viable” builds. They want to get through the content as quickly as possible, get their reward, and move on — because we’re bored.

A non-zerk party is fully capable of clearing any content in the game — just not as fast as zerks will. Since the dungeons just aren’t as interesting during the 500th time through, most PUGs ask for speedy groups — enter zerk meta.

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

I think you’re a bit extreme (0 damage with autoattacks…that’ll go over well…). But I agree on premise that conditions are horribly broken in the current state of PvE. Looks like HoT should address some of that, but we’ll see…..

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

Again, a bit extreme. I’m not sure how well the whole “unkillable” thing would work out in practice.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.
- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

Lumped these together because they’re related. It really sounds like you want a trinity, which will not happen.

Healers aren’t needed — each player is his own healer, and has a strong burst heal, and usually a few heal-over-time traits hidden within their tree (and then there’s food…).

We have strong support. A banner-wielding warrior with Empower Allies or Phalanx Strength will increase party DPS by a very significant amount. A thief with offhand pistol will provide tons of support against trash autoattacks. A guardian with WoR or mesmer with feedback provide an amazing level of defensive support against projectiles. A mesmer with timewarp boosts party DPS quite a bit for a period of time.

The difference is that these support mechanisms are tied to traits, utility skills, and profession mechanics, not gear. Which as I mentioned earlier, is a good thing IMO. Much less hassle.

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

Arcadio.6875:

dlonie.6547:

5 players going into a dungeon for the first time in full zerk would be a nightmare. Ofc, a new player or two accompanied by 3-4 experienced party members can certainly get by in zerk.

But a full party of inexperienced players? Not so much.

Yep. I bring new people into dungeons regularly since I am a guild leader. 3-4 experienced people can carry 1-2 inexperienced people giving the impression that dungeons are easy even if inexperienced. Once the number of inexperienced people outnumbers the experienced people though, the run becomes very difficult. I cannot imagine a full group of level 35 inexperienced players could complete AC explorable paths in any acceptable amount of time.

Dungeons are easy for us because we are level 80, geared, have full access to traits and skills, and have done the paths so many times that each encounter is memorized.

A glass cannon meta is the best meta we can have for pve. If content is meant to be completed no matter what stat combo our gear has, then purely offensive gear should be viable. And since they are harder to use than gear with defensive stats, the payoff should be faster kill times (assuming you can survive without defensive stats). The problem isn’t berserker gear. The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

Well put. I’m an officer in [ARES], and back before the 90% of dungeon fans left the game out of sheer boredom, we were one of the more popular NA dungeon guilds. We have explicit mentors roles for people who would teach dungeons, and made it an explicit point to not push meta builds/strats on players. “Play what you want, come along, learn a bit, and have fun” is how we roll. So I’ve seen my share of inexperience players and non-meta builds.

Believe me — a party of non-zerks is non-optimal, but if they lack experience, I’d much prefer to run with them in a more defensive set. They are certainly viable, but most will struggle greatly in full zerk.

PvE top tier:

- Berserker
- Assassins

PvP top tier:

- Berserker
- Assassins
- Celestial
- Rabid
- Dire

WvW (ZvZ)top tier:

- Sentinels
- Soldier
- Knights
- Valkyrie

WvW (roaming) top tier:

- similar to pvp, mis of pvp+zvz

I fail to see the problem. Anet is working on making conditions more viable in PvE, but even without that, why is it so hard for people to understand that with current game mechanics and design there are different sets for different areas of the game. The entire argument about different stats set not getting use it bogus. They just don’t see use in optimal PvE groups.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Vargamonth.2047:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Most of those MMOs which are older than GW2 do not feature action based combat and active defenses.

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

I honestly don’t remember any old game with so much emphasis on proactives defenses (I probably have not played as much MMOs as many other people around though).

All it comes to my mind are mostly numerical passive evasion/block rates and some damage mitigation tools usually reserved to tank/healer specs. I’ve seen really few active full (or almost full) damage avoidance tools, and they always had quite high CDs, behaving more like an Ohkitten button than as your natural form of defense.

On top of that, most bosses I remember were close to immune to interrupts.

dlonie.6547:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc.

They have uses in other game modes, and serve as training wheels for while you’re learning and need more survivability. Other builds besides direct damage are still viable, just not optimal.

Keep in mind that the “dungeons are stale” argument has two prongs:

1) We’ve memorized the encounter so that we can use active defenses to avoid damage.
2) We’ve run the godkitten things so many times that most players don’t want to spend time with just “viable” builds. They want to get through the content as quickly as possible, get their reward, and move on — because we’re bored.

A non-zerk party is fully capable of clearing any content in the game — just not as fast as zerks will. Since the dungeons just aren’t as interesting during the 500th time through, most PUGs ask for speedy groups — enter zerk meta.

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

I think you’re a bit extreme (0 damage with autoattacks…that’ll go over well…). But I agree on premise that conditions are horribly broken in the current state of PvE. Looks like HoT should address some of that, but we’ll see…..

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

Again, a bit extreme. I’m not sure how well the whole “unkillable” thing would work out in practice.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.
- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

Lumped these together because they’re related. It really sounds like you want a trinity, which will not happen.

Healers aren’t needed — each player is his own healer, and has a strong burst heal, and usually a few heal-over-time traits hidden within their tree (and then there’s food…).

We have strong support. A banner-wielding warrior with Empower Allies or Phalanx Strength will increase party DPS by a very significant amount. A thief with offhand pistol will provide tons of support against trash autoattacks. A guardian with WoR or mesmer with feedback provide an amazing level of defensive support against projectiles. A mesmer with timewarp boosts party DPS quite a bit for a period of time.

The difference is that these support mechanisms are tied to traits, utility skills, and profession mechanics, not gear. Which as I mentioned earlier, is a good thing IMO. Much less hassle.

By “0 damage from autoattacks,” “unkillable tanks” “nukers going down in 1 shot”, I obviously meant these as hyperboles, exagerations.

The rest of what you said, well, you just made a list there of everything that is wrong with this game – healers not being needed due to each class having too much heal burst, full supportive classes not being useful due to warriors being able to both support and do damage, and so on and so forth.

In the end it just proves that the trinity concept really isn’t something you can escape from if you want a balanced game. It doesn’t have to be a trinity, with enough creativity you can probably get at least 5 or more essential roles. Ideally, there would be 25 “essential”, playable roles with each gear set (that’s never going to happen, but one can only dream of). There should be more than just one setup that allowed extremely fast dungeon clearing. Finishing a dungeon with 5 of the same builds should be impossible, especially with glasscannon builds.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It was about a year after launch before zerk started becoming dominantly pushed on players. If we were getting regular instanced PvE challenges added to the game, the collective experience level would be knocked down regularly to reset the learning curve.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

I’d love to see a source on this. They designed all gearsets to be viable, not optimal. Again, if this was how the game worked, it’d be dreadful — you’d need to carry each of the 25 sets around so that you could actually do all of the content.

Instead, you get gear with passive defenses that match your experience level, and as you gain experience, you swap in more powerful stats. Your utility comes from your traits, skills, and weapon choices. Would you honestly prefer having one encounter that required one gear set over another?

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

How would strapping on tank/healing/boon sharing/magic find/etc gear encourage creativity? It’d just fill up your inventory.

The boredom arises from stale content, poor AI, and HP-sponge bosses with trivial mechanics. Not lack of gear diversity.

dlonie.6547:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It was about a year after launch before zerk started becoming dominantly pushed on players. If we were getting regular instanced PvE challenges added to the game, the collective experience level would be knocked down regularly to reset the learning curve.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

I’d love to see a source on this. They designed all gearsets to be viable, not optimal. Again, if this was how the game worked, it’d be dreadful — you’d need to carry each of the 25 sets around so that you could actually do all of the content.

Instead, you get gear with passive defenses that match your experience level, and as you gain experience, you swap in more powerful stats. Your utility comes from your traits, skills, and weapon choices. Would you honestly prefer having one encounter that required one gear set over another?

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

How would strapping on tank/healing/boon sharing/magic find/etc gear encourage creativity? It’d just fill up your inventory.

The boredom arises from stale content, poor AI, and HP-sponge bosses with trivial mechanics. Not lack of gear diversity.

Quoted for truth.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

not really. you can run a squishy AP support (sona, annie, something like that), adc, assassin mid lane and two bruisers as jungler and top lane and you could probably win the game if you split pushed well or got ahead enough in the laning phase that the weakness of your composition’s team fight was irrelevant since you had a gold lead.

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

I speak of trinity as part of the game which needs to be considered when designing new content and adressing balance. Something your suggestions and ideas are lacking hard.

Thanks for confirming though that your argument with “other games do it” is void. There are no other games similar to GW2 currently.

maha.7902:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

not really. you can run a squishy AP support (sona, annie, something like that), adc, assassin mid lane and two bruisers as jungler and top lane and you could probably win the game if you split pushed well or got ahead enough in the laning phase that the weakness of your composition’s team fight was irrelevant since you had a gold lead.

In LoL it’s possible to win with everything. They have 100+ champions and make almost all of them viable. You see a fed Nasus, Leona and Amumu coming your way backed by a Vayne and Ziggs, you know the game is over – and there you have 3 tanks 2 nukers. Here in GW2, we have 25 gear sets and people manage to find ways of playing with 1 of them only. It’s a disgrace. Funny thing is, so many people I have seen in GW2 will easily discard LoL as a kittenty teenager game when it’s actually far better designed when it comes to diversity.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

With the dungeons that currently exist, we already see some paths or fractals that are much harder for most groups than others. Ideally, the new content would be challenging enough that it will remain difficult for most groups for a long period. That said, the meta should still be glass cannon because those encounters, no matter how difficult they are designed, should still be able to be beaten using active defenses.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

Gear isn’t a playstyle in itself. In fact, it is less important compared to traits and skills as it should be. And the meta playstyle for pve is a good one. All players should contribute damage. All players should contribute support. All of the meta builds sacrifice personal dps to help out the group.

Playstyles like being a dedicated healer shouldn’t have a place in the meta due to how the combat is designed. And having all stat combos appear in the meta just isn’t realistic.

If you want to play differently while still running a meta build, play a different class.

Edit: It takes too long for me to post. Looks like some of you already have this covered lol.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

By “0 damage from autoattacks,” “unkillable tanks” “nukers going down in 1 shot”, I obviously meant these as hyperboles, exagerations.

When you’ve read these forums as much as I have, you learn not to assume people are exaggerating when they say such thing

As is, nomads/clerics builds are OP defensively. Look around on youtube — there are AFK spider queen solos by cleric eles, nomad warriors solo facetanking Lupi, cleric guardians steamrolling Arah without their dodge keys unbound, etc etc.

The rest of what you said, well, you just made a list there of everything that is wrong with this game – healers not being needed due to each class having too much heal burst, full supportive classes not being useful due to warriors being able to both support and do damage, and so on and so forth.

In the end it just proves that the trinity concept really isn’t something you can escape from if you want a balanced game. It doesn’t have to be a trinity, with enough creativity you can probably get at least 5 or more essential roles. Ideally, there would be 25 “essential”, playable roles with each gear set (that’s never going to happen, but one can only dream of). There should be more than just one setup that allowed extremely fast dungeon clearing. Finishing a dungeon with 5 of the same builds should be impossible, especially with glasscannon builds.

It sounds like you really like the trinity and want it back. We’ll never see eye-to-eye on this, so I’ll leave you be.

But since ArenaNet will not be introducing a trinity or hard-role system, it does sound like this really isn’t the game for you. Food for thought.

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

I speak of trinity as part of the game which needs to be considered when designing new content and adressing balance. Something your suggestions and ideas are lacking hard.

Thanks for confirming though that your argument with “other games do it” is void. There are no other games similar to GW2 currently.

I said that other games have defence and CC active abilities. Never once I have said that they had both defence/CC AND a lack of trinity. Not once. I don’t care for the lack of trinity.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

maha.7902:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

not really. you can run a squishy AP support (sona, annie, something like that), adc, assassin mid lane and two bruisers as jungler and top lane and you could probably win the game if you split pushed well or got ahead enough in the laning phase that the weakness of your composition’s team fight was irrelevant since you had a gold lead.

In LoL it’s possible to win with everything. They have 100+ champions and make almost all of them viable. You see a fed Nasus, Leona and Amumu coming your way backed by a Vayne and Ziggs, you know the game is over – and there you have 3 tanks 2 nukers. Here in GW2, we have 25 gear sets and people manage to find ways of playing with 1 of them only. It’s a disgrace. Funny thing is, so many people I have seen in GW2 will easily discard LoL as a kittenty teenager game when it’s actually far better designed when it comes to diversity.

Are you seriously comparing a MOBA to an MMO? Mind = blown. Yeah done here, no point arguing with that.

How about we start adding comparisons to CS:GO, Battlefield, GTA:V, Dark Souls and any other game that was popular the last 10 years. I’m sure there is a lot of room for improvement if we incorporate the entire spectrum of game types.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

I speak of trinity as part of the game which needs to be considered when designing new content and adressing balance. Something your suggestions and ideas are lacking hard.

Thanks for confirming though that your argument with “other games do it” is void. There are no other games similar to GW2 currently.

I said that other games have defence and CC active abilities. Never once I have said that they had both a lack of trinity and defence/CC. Not once.

Yet your suggestions are entirely based on the other games working in a similar way as GW2, which they don’t.

Dawnbreaker.6215

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

Are we even playing the same game? Have you seen what Nomad’s gear does?

Dawnbreaker.6215:

In LoL it’s possible to win with everything. They have 100+ champions and make almost all of them viable. You see a fed Nasus, Leona and Amumu coming your way backed by a Vayne and Ziggs, you know the game is over – and there you have 3 tanks 2 nukers. Here in GW2, we have 25 gear sets and people manage to find ways of playing with 1 of them only. It’s a disgrace. Funny thing is, so many people I have seen in GW2 will easily discard LoL as a kittenty teenager game when it’s actually far better designed when it comes to diversity.

You can’t compare PvP and PvE. There are several useful gear choices in both sPvP and WvW.

dlonie.6547:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

By “0 damage from autoattacks,” “unkillable tanks” “nukers going down in 1 shot”, I obviously meant these as hyperboles, exagerations.

When you’ve read these forums as much as I have, you learn not to assume people are exaggerating when they say such thing

As is, nomads/clerics builds are OP defensively. Look around on youtube — there are AFK spider queen solos by cleric eles, nomad warriors solo facetanking Lupi, cleric guardians steamrolling Arah without their dodge keys unbound, etc etc.

The rest of what you said, well, you just made a list there of everything that is wrong with this game – healers not being needed due to each class having too much heal burst, full supportive classes not being useful due to warriors being able to both support and do damage, and so on and so forth.

In the end it just proves that the trinity concept really isn’t something you can escape from if you want a balanced game. It doesn’t have to be a trinity, with enough creativity you can probably get at least 5 or more essential roles. Ideally, there would be 25 “essential”, playable roles with each gear set (that’s never going to happen, but one can only dream of). There should be more than just one setup that allowed extremely fast dungeon clearing. Finishing a dungeon with 5 of the same builds should be impossible, especially with glasscannon builds.

It sounds like you really like the trinity and want it back. We’ll never see eye-to-eye on this, so I’ll leave you be.

But since ArenaNet will not be introducing a trinity or hard-role system, it does sound like this really isn’t the game for you. Food for thought.

Why do you hate the trinity gameplay? And how do you know where this game is going after HoT? More than once have I heard that they are trying to bring changes to the current zerk problem. If they balance classes and make glasscanon runs impossible, and if several builds are viable and required for dungeons, it will inevitably lead to the trinity setup. There’s no other alternative. It’s either you can run dungeons with 5 people using the same build, or you can’t and are forced to rely on several builds. If you see any grey zone there then feel free to point it out, because I myself am not seeing it at all.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

I know I said I’d go, but I wanted to share this first:

And that’s with clerics — more power and less defense than nomads. I think this certainly qualifies as:

unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC.

All the MMO’s I’ve played lacked the ability to dodge roll and sidestep enemy attacks. That is what makes the zerker meta so good in GW2. You can dodge literally everything if you’re good enough. It can’t be done in other MMO’s. And I would like it to stay that way. I don’t want unavoidable 1-shot mechanics.

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

I speak of trinity as part of the game which needs to be considered when designing new content and adressing balance. Something your suggestions and ideas are lacking hard.

Thanks for confirming though that your argument with “other games do it” is void. There are no other games similar to GW2 currently.

I said that other games have defence and CC active abilities. Never once I have said that they had both a lack of trinity and defence/CC. Not once.

Yet your suggestions are entirely based on the other games working in a similar way as GW2, which they don’t.

The point being that other games are doing it right, and GW2 isn’t. Proof? Other games have several viable builds, in GW2 you can run the entire game with 1 build.

Maybe, with a bit of critical thinking, you could be led to think that GW2 would be better off just having a system that is confirmed to work than trying to invent something that doesn’t. You must play zerk, yes? Going for things that work rather than being creative is something familiar to you, yes? Then we should be agreeing here.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Cyninja.2954:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I call bullkitten on this. Both defensive, instacast abilities like blocking, or any CC abilities like knockdowns, knockbacks, taunts and stuns have been around long before GW2. Unless you are talking about Runescape which is entirely based on probabilities (and here we are talking about a 14-15 year old browser game) most MMOs of today have mechanics similar to GW2.

Name 1 MMO that does semi-well with active defence and no trinity besides GW2. Just 1 please cause I have a very hard time thinking of one.

Yes, other games have active defences (Tera for one- went f2p) but none of those have no trinity. MAJOR! difference.

With active defense there are a ton, but without trinity there are none. You speak of trinity as if it’s some kind of advantage, but it’s not, it’s more a flaw than anything. No trinity leads to stagnation, it’s a problem.

When you advertise a lack of trinity, you sound like this:

“Hey guys! My car is unlike others, it lacks seatbelts, doors and windows! Look at my innovation!”

I speak of trinity as part of the game which needs to be considered when designing new content and adressing balance. Something your suggestions and ideas are lacking hard.

Thanks for confirming though that your argument with “other games do it” is void. There are no other games similar to GW2 currently.

I said that other games have defence and CC active abilities. Never once I have said that they had both a lack of trinity and defence/CC. Not once.

Yet your suggestions are entirely based on the other games working in a similar way as GW2, which they don’t.

The point being that other games are doing it right, and GW2 isn’t. Proof? Other games have several viable builds, in GW2 you can run the entire game with 1 build.

Maybe, with a bit of critical thinking, you could be led to think that GW2 would be better off just having a system that is confirmed to work than trying to invent something that doesn’t. You must play zerk, yes? Going for things that work rather than being creative is something familiar to you, yes? Then we should be agreeing here.

I am very capable of critical thinking. I am also capable of understanding that change is only possible in a given frame and what you are advocating is not in that frame. Now you can keep living in your deluded fantasy of turning GW2 into another WoW clone, or you could realize what can and can’t be done.

As a not very devote person, I’ll still leave you with this quote of the Serenity Prayer hoping it might part on some wisdom to you:

"
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
"
Serenity Prayer

I’ll stick around for direct questions, too

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Why do you hate the trinity gameplay?

I don’t. I can just appreciate the combat system that is here, without getting hung up on the fact that its different.

And how do you know where this game is going after HoT? More than once have I heard that they are trying to bring changes to the current zerk problem. If they balance classes and make glasscanon runs impossible, and if several builds are viable and required for dungeons, it will inevitably lead to the trinity setup.

If they make glass cannons completely non-viable, that would go against the core design of the game. That isn’t going to happen.

There’s no other alternative. It’s either you can run dungeons with 5 people using the same build, or you can’t and are forced to rely on several builds. If you see any grey zone there then feel free to point it out, because I myself am not seeing it at all.

What you’re missing is that a build is more than gear stats. All zerks aren’t running the same build, there are multiple “meta” trait and skill configurations used for different PvE encounters. Just because they aren’t changing their gear doesn’t mean they’re all playing the same way.

Cyninja.2954:

As a not very devote person, I’ll still leave you with this quote of the Serenity Prayer hoping it might part on some wisdom to you:

"
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
"
Serenity Prayer

It also applies quite well to the conversation in this thread

dlonie.6547:

I’ll stick around for direct questions, too

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Why do you hate the trinity gameplay?

I don’t. I can just appreciate the combat system that is here, without getting hung up on the fact that its different.

And how do you know where this game is going after HoT? More than once have I heard that they are trying to bring changes to the current zerk problem. If they balance classes and make glasscanon runs impossible, and if several builds are viable and required for dungeons, it will inevitably lead to the trinity setup.

If they make glass cannons completely non-viable, that would go against the core design of the game. That isn’t going to happen.

There’s no other alternative. It’s either you can run dungeons with 5 people using the same build, or you can’t and are forced to rely on several builds. If you see any grey zone there then feel free to point it out, because I myself am not seeing it at all.

What you’re missing is that a build is more than gear stats. All zerks aren’t running the same build, there are multiple “meta” trait and skill configurations used for different PvE encounters. Just because they aren’t changing their gear doesn’t mean they’re all playing the same way.

What is according to you the core design of this game?