Guild Wars 2

I would like to know how the devs feel about this sense the topic of builds in PvE is build for damage and nothing else when the game offers 100’s if not 1000’s of build options. So the question here is are all build types viable in PvE or do you want us to play the meta?

Anything which gets your from A to B in PvE is viable. Which means as long as the build doesn’t make you unable to complete the content then it works. The meta is there for the people who want to be the best at that content. So I have a load of characters that aren’t meta, but I’d never take them to a speedrun of a dungeon. However sometimes they’re more fun to play and they still fundamentally work. If you’re in a group with people who don’t mind non-meta builds then go for it.

Viable yes, optimal no.

Please understand[u] that the pressure to play the meta comes only from the very small fraction of dungeon speedrunners that cannot adapt to dps dips and thus need everyone to run the most efficient build to ensure group survival.

These people make up an infinitesimally small portion of the game compared to its whole, so you should play what you want and Then find people who feel similarly to you about gearing instead of putting the cart before the horse and basing your gear choices on what someone tells you is necessary.

Eventually you can even pick up gear sets if you need to run with these people in a pinch, but this should not be priority.

Have fun. We’re all too kittened off as it is.

I been using clerics for uh…2 years on my ele. I try to play a ‘healer’. Suffice to say, getting tags for kills/events is extremely difficult; it’s ineffecient, lowest dps ever, often times frustrating, and I don’t really heal all that well…it is quite possibly the very worst set up in game. My thief on the other hand is full serkers and I never have any issues at all, heck my survivability is just about the same yet I can dish out up to 32k on a single button press lol. Is all builds viable in PvE? Yes, but the meta builds will out perform the ‘bad’ ones by a MASSIVE margin. I had hoped HoT would open it up a bit but that sadly does not look like the case; serker is still king.

W/e. Do not use clerics in PvE…you will get yelled at, called foul names, and or get lots of group kicks if people find out. People around here really hate cleric gear players, that’s for sure lol. I need monk runes too but no one wants me around. Sigh.

fixit.7189:

I been using clerics for uh…2 years on my ele. I try to play a ‘healer’. Suffice to say, getting tags for kills/events is extremely difficult; it’s ineffecient, lowest dps ever, often times frustrating, and I don’t really heal all that well…it is quite possibly the very worst set up in game. My thief on the other hand is full serkers and I never have any issues at all, heck my survivability is just about the same yet I can dish out up to 32k on a single button press lol. Is all builds viable in PvE? Yes, but the meta builds will out perform the ‘bad’ ones by a MASSIVE margin. I had hoped HoT would open it up a bit but that sadly does not look like the case; serker is still king.

W/e. Do not use clerics in PvE…you will get yelled at, called foul names, and or get lots of group kicks if people find out. People around here really hate cleric gear players, that’s for sure lol. I need monk runes too but no one wants me around. Sigh.

I wouldnt mind a cleric player if you’re like, willing to be 90% devoted to getting the downed people up and drop boons like crazy.

There’s people that can work with non dps builds, they’re just not the majority.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

fixit.7189:

I been using clerics for uh…2 years on my ele. I try to play a ‘healer’. Suffice to say, getting tags for kills/events is extremely difficult; it’s ineffecient, lowest dps ever, often times frustrating, and I don’t really heal all that well…it is quite possibly the very worst set up in game. My thief on the other hand is full serkers and I never have any issues at all, heck my survivability is just about the same yet I can dish out up to 32k on a single button press lol. Is all builds viable in PvE? Yes, but the meta builds will out perform the ‘bad’ ones by a MASSIVE margin. I had hoped HoT would open it up a bit but that sadly does not look like the case; serker is still king.

W/e. Do not use clerics in PvE…you will get yelled at, called foul names, and or get lots of group kicks if people find out. People around here really hate cleric gear players, that’s for sure lol. I need monk runes too but no one wants me around. Sigh.

I wouldnt mind a cleric player if you’re like, willing to be 90% devoted to getting the downed people up and drop boons like crazy.

There’s people that can work with non dps builds, they’re just not the majority.

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

It’s possible to complete a large chunk of PVE while your character is naked, so it should follow that any build that adds to this is also capable of completing the content. So essentially any build is viable.

The reality in GW2 is that active defenses including dodges, blocks, reflects, and general positioning are more than sufficient to avoid death in basically all PVE content, and so passive defenses are not really necessary once you are familiar with each encounter. If you don’t need the defensive stats, why not just put everything in damage? That’s how the whole zerk meta came about.

People want to finish dungeons as quickly as they can. Nothing wrong with that. I fail to see how this continues to be an issue. For easily predictable PVE content, there will always be one combination that is the fastest, which generally comes to light soon after each patch. Some people don’t want to loosely follow the generally accepted setups, also nothing wrong with that. The two different types just need to stay out of each others way.

On a side note, a lot more build options are generally explored in wvw and pvp, where encounters are unpredictable and some degree of passive defense becomes more valuable.

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

Any build can get you through all of the content in the game. That makes it viable. Some are simply more efficient at it.

When a metasheep says builds aren’t viable, what they mean is that it is not optimal. All builds are viable.

Cameron.6450:

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

Mercy, Time Warp, Feedback with Resistance ^^ RESMER!!!!

Coulter.2315:

Cameron.6450:

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

Mercy, Time Warp, Feedback with Resistance ^^ RESMER!!!!

Continuum split, double timewarp.

If only they made a phantasm that resses on summon…

Cameron.6450:

Coulter.2315:

Cameron.6450:

Coulter.2315:

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Frenzy mercy rune res is best res.

Mercy, Time Warp, Feedback with Resistance ^^ RESMER!!!!

Continuum split, double timewarp.

If only they made a phantasm that resses on summon…

We shall make many bonefiends and farm those 1 famez.

In the simplest sense of the word, yes.

In terms of people potentially nitpicking when you dont play how they want? Potentially.

I get called out for using weapons someone disagrees with often. I know my build hits hard and is ‘viable’.

Coulter.2315:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

fixit.7189:

I been using clerics for uh…2 years on my ele. I try to play a ‘healer’. Suffice to say, getting tags for kills/events is extremely difficult; it’s ineffecient, lowest dps ever, often times frustrating, and I don’t really heal all that well…it is quite possibly the very worst set up in game. My thief on the other hand is full serkers and I never have any issues at all, heck my survivability is just about the same yet I can dish out up to 32k on a single button press lol. Is all builds viable in PvE? Yes, but the meta builds will out perform the ‘bad’ ones by a MASSIVE margin. I had hoped HoT would open it up a bit but that sadly does not look like the case; serker is still king.

W/e. Do not use clerics in PvE…you will get yelled at, called foul names, and or get lots of group kicks if people find out. People around here really hate cleric gear players, that’s for sure lol. I need monk runes too but no one wants me around. Sigh.

I wouldnt mind a cleric player if you’re like, willing to be 90% devoted to getting the downed people up and drop boons like crazy.

There’s people that can work with non dps builds, they’re just not the majority.

The problem is resing downed people isn’t helped by Healing Power anyway :P

Correction: Keeping people up that have recently been downed.

Rymer.4017:

I would like to know how the devs feel about this sense the topic of builds in PvE is build for damage and nothing else when the game offers 100’s if not 1000’s of build options. So the question here is are all build types viable in PvE or do you want us to play the meta?

Everything can be done with anything. But, if you think the devs intended for this game to have every single possible build be good… well, I hope not. Intelligent synergistic choices should be rewarded, while picking something like a Pistol Pistol power engi should be less effective. Being super tanky in content you aren’t getting hit is also pretty silly. Loading up healing power and ranging away from your group. I could go on, but there are things that go well together and things that don’t.

You don’t have to play meta to still have quality. Ran the smoothest trio fractal I’ve ever done last night with a clerics guard making it that way. It synergized well with the 2 of us zerkers supporting us with using toughness to gather more agro while we melted things down. It was intelligent thought but not meta.

To get less extreme, you can do very well with say a GS focused ranger build, it’s not quite on the level of sword focused builds, but it’s good enough to not find it wrong, only tryhard idiots will raise a fuss.

As long as you put something together with some thought put into it you can be effective without blindly following the meta. And as a side note, if you watch speedruns they regularly deviate from meta builds because those people actually know what their skills do and know where they can be more effective with tweaks and not just sitting in the same thing. Diversity exists, it’s just not all inclusive, you can be dumb still too.

Rymer.4017:

I would like to know how the devs feel about this sense the topic of builds in PvE is build for damage and nothing else when the game offers 100’s if not 1000’s of build options. So the question here is are all build types viable in PvE or do you want us to play the meta?

Here’s my opinion.

All build are viable without exception.

Meta is the most optimal build, but there still some variation depending on the situation. For exemple, Radiant Fire or Retribution traits? It’s almost impossible to say which one is 100% meta.

Where the community have some issue is with great and good build (if you want to use the category of Metabattle. Especially in dungeon. Build that should have a wide acceptation because they do a really good job, receive some hate just because they ain’t meta.

On the other hand, a good majority of build options are just bad. They will allow you to do the job like any build. But they won’t be any good.

I would estimate you could use any build assuming you filled in all the traits and got rare or better gear that 90% of the game is trivial, and a good part of the remaining 10% can be gotten through by understanding game mechanics and a functioning dodge key. Exceptions include the few fights that are timed and high level fractals that demand agony resistance.

The amount of sane people that care if you ran a meta build or not is very small and generally specify as such, though there is the occasional nutcase that decides the game should only play in one way. If you don’t join a speedrun, it really isn’t an issue.

Of course, if you want to farm stuff fast or take an interest in a certain content, picking up a meta build is generally productive if you learn to use it. In the end, there are definitely builds that work better than others given a certain context, however, as most content isn’t timed, and there aren’t any objective goals in content beyond completing it, it’s less of an issue as many would claim. Even the accumulation of gold to me is an arbitrary goal the way I see it— it’s merely a thing to purchase things you want, assuming you’re properly geared to a functional level. (Well, obviously you want to be able to afford stuff like waypoints, but that’s very trivial.)

Cameron.6450:

It’s possible to complete a large chunk of PVE while your character is naked, so it should follow that any build that adds to this is also capable of completing the content. So essentially any build is viable.

The reality in GW2 is that active defenses including dodges, blocks, reflects, and general positioning are more than sufficient to avoid death in basically all PVE content, and so passive defenses are not really necessary once you are familiar with each encounter. If you don’t need the defensive stats, why not just put everything in damage? That’s how the whole zerk meta came about.

People want to finish dungeons as quickly as they can. Nothing wrong with that. I fail to see how this continues to be an issue. For easily predictable PVE content, there will always be one combination that is the fastest, which generally comes to light soon after each patch. Some people don’t want to loosely follow the generally accepted setups, also nothing wrong with that. The two different types just need to stay out of each others way.

On a side note, a lot more build options are generally explored in wvw and pvp, where encounters are unpredictable and some degree of passive defense becomes more valuable.

There are 2 issues with it:

1. Its extremely stale. It greatly contributes to people playing a lot less off or abandoning certain content, for example, dungeons and fractals. I am in that group, too much zerker farming caused me to basically quit them and now I just do them occasionally at rare times. its so bad that I dont even see myself going for the upcoming legendary fractal backpiece, this is again, due to stale zerker meta.

2. Toxic gaming environment. You know all the issues here which I don’t need to list. See other posts for reference.

The important thing to remember is that the meta is designed by players. It’s based on mechanics and design choices Anet made but it’s not actually decided by them.

In games with more build choices like pokemon and Guild Wars 1 the meta can change without the developers doing anything because someone discovers a new combination which catches on and then people work to counter it. (Which I think is where the name meta-gaming comes from; meta means ‘bigger’, ‘wider’, and more all encompassing, or outside of its self. So meta gaming is playing ‘outside’ the game by being aware of what your opponent is likely to use and making a build that anticipates it instead of reacting to what happens in the moment.)

As other people have said (almost) all builds are viable, but there will always be just a few which are meta builds: those which are (or are believed to be) the most efficient.

I don’t play meta builds, by choice. I know what they are and how to play them, but I find other things (like my condition/crit ranger) more fun. I’ve never had trouble getting a group when I wanted one.

There are like 1000 ways to build your DPS into the ground and a handful of ways to make a mixed build that doesn’t suck.

Yes, they’re all viable, they’re just not all efficient or fun. I’d personally argue that specializing for healing is currently pretty similar to going naked because of healing powers broken scaling, but again, still viable.

Highest heal I can do with ele with 1963 healing power is around…4k.

My serker thief auto attacks for 12k…and can blind/stealth tank every thing but champs/bosses…ok.

My heal ele takes a large amount of skill to heal/support/drop boons like mad yet my thief is pretty much face roll the 1 key 99% the time. It’s clear dps is by far the best way to go and that…I have issues with.

I wish healing power scaled better and or crit, like say only past 1000 healing power so the DPS players can’t abuse it. I mean cleric ele was once a really good build until they nerfed it to uselessness; devs here hate healing with a passion lol.

Anet should maybe just remove healing power as a stat entirely so players will not be confuse; it’s a worthless stat that scales super bad compared to every thing else.

W/e. I fully ascended my cleric gear; yep, 900 gold I spent on this. LOL!

You can now all facepalm in disgust with me.

All builds are viable in PvE as long as you have some way to tag enemies with damage.

Proof: The Legend of the Karkaroller

The tagging system…yea, that’s the biggest issue for me; it’s entirely based upon first hits/damage done…nothing else effects it like…

- ressing
- healing
- applying yummy boons
- building siege

Add to this…

- healing power as a stat scales poorly, lowest in game.
- healing abilities cannot crit.

Just to name a few; GW2 actively punishes you for taking non-meta builds that use healing power rather than rewarding them; it’s designed to push players to pure DPS in the most part when it comes to PvE. In order to get loots and credit for events…it’s all based on pure damage.

Why exactly does it have to be this way?

Only thing I can think of is to stop afkers but we all know those people just use auto attack macros anyways.

You really don’t need to do much damage for tagging; this is why staff guardians are so popular. It’s more of an issue of finding enough cleave/aoe to get the job done.

I don’t even bother putting on dps gear for open world events where tagging would be an issue. But this has to do more with the events being so easy that healing power is even more redundant than it already is.

Considering that there are people that do content naked and with no traits selected, i’d have to say yes, all builds are viable. Yes, some obviously are way superior to others, but that wasn’t the question asked.

Rymer.4017:

I would like to know how the devs feel about this sense the topic of builds in PvE is build for damage and nothing else when the game offers 100’s if not 1000’s of build options. So the question here is are all build types viable in PvE or do you want us to play the meta?

Consider this: There used to be (tens of?) millions of trait combinations. They reduced it down to 196830.
And unlike the system in GW1, where you could just choose 8 skills that you wanted, they replaced it by weapons (that pretty much define your build, as these are the skills you use all the time. There are exceptions, ofc.), one forced healing skill, 3 forced utility skills, 1 forced elite.
Furthermore, with the new expansion, they came up with limiting certain weapons to certain trait lines.

So, my guess is, they want you to play meta. They’ll probably reduce the available builds even further once they figure how to sell it as an improvement. I suppose their ultimate goal is to have just a couple dozen easily managed builds so they can balance them into a perfect rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock.