Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people getting very angry that ANet might be making non-zerker gear viable in PvE. And so I’d like to ask these people why they’re upset about it? Are you happy that there isn’t actually any sort of gear system in PvE? Do you think it’s better or worse to have multiple sets of gear be usable?

They’re upset because they believe they may be forced to re gear, or lug around multiple sets of armor and trinkets.

I would be fine with having multiple gear sets….IF there was a better way to deal with them. Having some templates set up so you could switch gear with a click of a button would make it so I wouldn’t mind having multiple gear sets. But now? Not a chance. It’s bad enough we don’t have a way to save builds and switch them instantly while out of combat.

I am over joyed with the idea that there MIGHT be alternative sets .. I am SO tired of zerker gear being pretty much the only go to set for every class and build (only minor changes for certain world bosses)

isn’t it confirmed that stats will be from gear only when they are taken out of the traits ?

EDIT : well, of course, they will come from profession base stats as well….

Captain Unusual.9163:

And so I’d like to ask these people why they’re upset about it?

Isn’t it obvious? Egotistical people who have berserker gear don’t want any other set to be better than berserker in any circunstance, so they don’t feel like they need a new set of items in order to get “optimal” stats. The fact that they are expecting anyone who does not have berserker to do the very same thing they themselves do not want to do is lost on them, but that’s egotistical people for you.

Most of the complaint’s I’ve seen have centered around having to re-craft an Ascended set. I can’t blame them for that, it’s a ridiculous time gated grind fest.

However, Exotic is easily obtainable and entirely viable, so I ignore those people.

The main issue is going to be that if it becomes truly viable to run different setups for different areas then players will need even more sets of armor. PvP and WvW excluded, let’s just say you want to spec out with one zerker set and one condition set. That’s the full set of armor and a new full set of weapons with all the sigils that go along with it. Storage is already a pain in this game. If there were a way to quickly change sets without having to carry them around with you, then there remains only the pain of acquiring the new gear.

Oh poor babies, their one true gear might have to change.

If ANet is smart they will try to arrange the stats so each profession gets a preferred prefix and a decent alternate.

Captain Unusual.9163:

I see a lot of people getting very angry that ANet might be making non-zerker gear viable in PvE. And so I’d like to ask these people why they’re upset about it? Are you happy that there isn’t actually any sort of gear system in PvE? Do you think it’s better or worse to have multiple sets of gear be usable?

The problem is ANets unwillingness to create more complex game design. That’s about it. They could very well make content that encouraged other builds, they just don’t give a kitten about instanced content and tough encounters.

It’s not a problem with gear, or a problem with the systems, it’s a problem with content and lack there of.

GW2’s been quite the disappointment in that regards, this is coming from an avid zerker player. They seem to be laboring under the idea that making good content is too much of a pain when they can just make a bunch of easy content and rake in the cash from oblivious players who don’t care about anything but shinies. While true, it’s to the detriment of the GAME even if it’s nice for their business.

In wvw a veteran player have a zerk, a tank and a condi gear, so i think we will be ok

Behellagh.1468:

Oh poor babies, their one true gear might have to change.

If ANet is smart they will try to arrange the stats so each profession gets a preferred prefix and a decent alternate.

Aye, currently some profession assassin, some zerk, with the condi cap change some might even go sinister. Such good thoughtful design, such diversity…

I’m an assassin engi mainly, zerk most everything else, but god I’d love some thoughful content design that made me think “you know what having a clerics guard here might actually be pretty sweet, not too bad of a tradeoff and a lot of gain in consistency/ease of play” But, that would take quite a bit of thought on how the content was made and pretty precise calculations on things. Something that seems beyond the scope of ANets intended content design even though I’m sure their devs would like to have that kind of thing. (I have no doubt their devs are as passuionate about the game as their players but time is time, and hastily releasing stuff that is less complex means “more content” and with that more fanboys to rake in money from, it’s quite obvious they don’t give their people enough time to fully develop things by the appreance of so many bugs when they tweak content).

What is everyone talking about? Was there some news released that I didn’t see?

I think there’s just a limit as to how challenging the content will ever get in that regard. They’ve made it where 95% of the content requires little planning before going in as of now. I guess the game could survive a shift toward needing bleeds/DoTs for this boss, someone to soak up damage to handle a mechanic in that instance, but I doubt it will happen.

Prototypemind.4026:

I think there’s just a limit as to how challenging the content will ever get in that regard. They’ve made it where 95% of the content requires little planning before going in as of now. I guess the game could survive a shift toward needing bleeds/DoTs for this boss, someone to soak up damage to handle a mechanic in that instance, but I doubt it will happen.

Exactly, there’s no reason it can’t. The idea behind the game is that you can have any profession fill a role in a group. That doesn’t mean that anything but pure damage shouldn’t be useful. Even having "damage soakers’ being part of design doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be fulfilled by zerk geared players who simply were perfectly on point with active defenses.

But, like you said I doubt they ever get that intricate with their design even though the game is built to be able to do it. I can think of quite a few ways to do this, but yeah… ANet rather release content doable by players with little thought put into their play. Soak up the $$ from players who just want to look pretty, that’s their MO.

A side grade to current zerker gear would be welcome.

A new “zerker” set to replace the old one would be very anoying. Means all ascended equipment has to get regrinded only to end up where we are now.

Many people don’t understand how complicated in the current game it would be to create side grades gear wise. Some think it’s just a button switch here or there. We could end up with an even worse system post change (for example having to lump around 2 or 3 full gear sets. have fun grinding that).

Also meta gear already is not only zerker. Engi and Mesmer benefit from assassins most, ele’s can run celestial for support builds, necros can run condition damage splashed in.

What I rather like to see is:

- more viability for different team setups (2x Ele, 1 guardan, 1 warrior, 1 Thief is getting stale)
- more varied pve content except only pve zerg
- challenging solo content (queen gauntlet like)
- more ways of aquiring gear

Am I happy with the current gear situation? Sure. PvE gear is easily auqired up to exotic and no one will care what you wear unless you do very obvious low damage and/or use wrong utilities. High level fractal pve is the only one where ascended armor gets important.

sPvP has varied sets getting used depending on role in match and class.

WvW is split between roaming and zerg, again very different sets from each other and pve.

Every one unhappy and expecting for some holy grail getting introduced into the game and opening up all of the gear sets, or even only +healing or other defensive stat gear. Yeah, good luck on that, but don’t come here complaining when the meta simply changes to a different damage type which you still will have to grind.

fine in current content…..but not against change as long as content demands it.

soloing open world (anything with power as hi stat works) and soloing dungeons is another matter…tanky condi is kinda better.

Ummm… Non-zerker gear is viable, and has always been viable, but you clear your dungeon a couple minutes faster if you run zerker gear compared to one of the other viable armor stats. (Example: my engineer runs celestial instead of zerker/assassins in dungeons and nobody even notices unless I mention it. Of course I avoid “zerker only exp” groups because I’m not a kitten like that)

That said, New meta will probably be zerker/sinister depending on class. Designing encounters where passive defense is required would be stupid. Again, this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to run soldiers or settlers or whatever, just that the pros trying to shave a few seconds off their clear times will still be running dps gear.

So yeah, I’m cool with current gear situation so long as they don’t cripple my full set of ascended zerker in fractals unless they offer some chance to re-stat my ascended. That stuff was just too expensive.

I am not happy with the PvE gear system. If I had my way, all PvE gear would be of the same strength with selectable stats that can be saved and switched at any time. There would be no time spent grinding for stronger gear, and gear progression would solely be cosmetic. Everyone would be on a level playing field. It’ll never happen, though.

I have no issues with different stat prefixes being worthwhile. In fact, other than condi in large groups (an issue that is purportedly being made somewhat better sometime), I think that different prefixes already serve a purpose in the PvE game. However, some people don’t recognize or discount that purpose.

I do have a problem with obtaining, storing and most of all switching anywhere from 1 to 18 pieces of gear per stat allocation choice. As long as I can get by with the single stat allocation I choose for any given character, I’m willing to live with the stats on gear thing. It’s my hope that I won’t need to start carrying multiple full gear sets just to be able to do different content. It’s bad enough I have 2 sets for some of the characters I’ve WvW’d with.

There are two issues in play with regard to the optimal gear issue: exclusion and opportunity costs.

• Exclusion is a people issue, and no game design change is going to stop it. All a systems change can do is shift the reason behind the exclusion.
• If ANet increases the opportunity cost of wearing glass so that it takes greater skill to pull it off, then all they’ve done is shift the numbers of PvE players using survival stats on gear closer to what it is in WvW. What you’ll see then is more people taking longer to get their dungeons done, and even more reasons to exclude people. The upside of that is that there would be an objectively harder game. However, I don’t see anything they do in HoT being retroactive to the core game, so it’s probably not going to affect dungeon exclusion or reward speed jealousy.

In conclusion, don’t get your hopes up for big changes. What will probably happen is that more people will “need” to start carrying multiple sets to switch to in order to pull off certain content. In other words, a pain in the kitten given how the game treats gear.

I never liked all the different stats in this game. The problem I see is that a lot of people run around with useless crap, taking time to kill an enemy sometimes 4 or 5 times longer than with other gear. This is just broken and it creates a lot of discussion in dungeons etc. as we all know.

Fixed stats for your character would be much appreciated. And those stats should give equally defensive as well as offensive stats. End of discussion and we all can go home, really…

End of discussion and we all can go home, really…

You mean, we can all stop playing.

IF this would be true :

The problem I see is that a lot of people run around with useless crap, taking time to kill an enemy sometimes 4 or 5 times longer than with other gear

…which in fact is nearly impossible, since for that you really need to mess your character up big time.

I simply love the different gears. Not because they are really viable, but because players have options.

Like :

There would be no time spent grinding for stronger gear, and gear progression would solely be cosmetic.

First : grind for gear ? seriously ? you call anything in this game a grind ? If so, please don’t play any other mmo’s because you’ll be hugely disappointed.

Second : if gears would only be cosmetic, i’m sure that you would lose about 80% of the players after about 3 months. The whole purpose of an mmo is to progress through it while obtaining better and more suited gear. Bit like the “quest for amazing loot”.
Without it, people wouldn’t simply play unless it was solely to pvp.
Doing bosses ? why would you, no need for new stuff.
Doing dungeons ? why would you ?
Doing fractals ? why would you ?

You get the picture. Players either choose to play the game like they’ve been ‘told’ how and with what gear they “have to” do it, OR, they choose to do their own thing, wear the gear they want.

I’m really fed up with all those idiots who think everyone has to follow the way they say they have to because it’s so frikkin awesome to speedrun dungeons 25K times… instead of letting people choose the gear they want and the way they play.

I do play a full zerk toon, but it’s not the only one and i’m sure as hell not going to make 3 of the same bland toons in the same ‘meta’.

The ONLY reason players state they don’t want different stats or gears , is because they want everyone to be the same as to ‘compete’ on the same level.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that aint going to happen, because once it does, you’ll be playing the same mindless robots like yourself then.

It’s my hope that I won’t need to start carrying multiple full gear sets just to be able to do different content

And that is what i think more sensible people think about when talking about upcoming changes.

Sthenith.5196:

End of discussion and we all can go home, really…

You mean, we can all stop playing.

IF this would be true :

The problem I see is that a lot of people run around with useless crap, taking time to kill an enemy sometimes 4 or 5 times longer than with other gear

…which in fact is nearly impossible, since for that you really need to mess your character up big time.

I simply love the different gears. Not because they are really viable, but because players have options.

Like :

There would be no time spent grinding for stronger gear, and gear progression would solely be cosmetic.

First : grind for gear ? seriously ? you call anything in this game a grind ? If so, please don’t play any other mmo’s because you’ll be hugely disappointed.

Second : if gears would only be cosmetic, i’m sure that you would lose about 80% of the players after about 3 months. The whole purpose of an mmo is to progress through it while obtaining better and more suited gear. Bit like the “quest for amazing loot”.
Without it, people wouldn’t simply play unless it was solely to pvp.
Doing bosses ? why would you, no need for new stuff.
Doing dungeons ? why would you ?
Doing fractals ? why would you ?

You get the picture. Players either choose to play the game like they’ve been ‘told’ how and with what gear they “have to” do it, OR, they choose to do their own thing, wear the gear they want.

I’m really fed up with all those idiots who think everyone has to follow the way they say they have to because it’s so frikkin awesome to speedrun dungeons 25K times… instead of letting people choose the gear they want and the way they play.

I do play a full zerk toon, but it’s not the only one and i’m sure as hell not going to make 3 of the same bland toons in the same ‘meta’.

The ONLY reason players state they don’t want different stats or gears , is because they want everyone to be the same as to ‘compete’ on the same level.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that aint going to happen, because once it does, you’ll be playing the same mindless robots like yourself then.

It’s my hope that I won’t need to start carrying multiple full gear sets just to be able to do different content

And that is what i think more sensible people think about when talking about upcoming changes.

I think you missed the point of this thread by like a mile.

Just for your information, guild wars 2 endgame is all about bling and looks. Stay around for more than a month and you’ll notice that too.

I still hope that anet will remove all the useless gear stat combinations with HoT expansion.
We really just need berserker in pve, all the others are just for unexperienced under lvl80 players. Especially if there would be only berserker gear left in pve it would make it way easier for anet to balance the enemies right.
(You saw at HoT beta that the enemys are easy targets, they only took like hours to kill because of such useless stuff as celestial gear.)

Best solution and all problems solved for everyone: Remove every gear that isn’t berserker.

Bomber.3872:

I still hope that anet will remove all the useless gear stat combinations with HoT expansion.
We really just need berserker in pve, all the others are just for unexperienced under lvl80 players. Especially if there would be only berserker gear left in pve it would make it way easier for anet to balance the enemies right.
(You saw at HoT beta that the enemys are easy targets, they only took like hours to kill because of such useless stuff as celestial gear.)

Best solution and all problems solved for everyone: Remove every gear that isn’t berserker.

Was about to say the same thing about celestial gear. My god was the whine unbelievable during beta because stuff just woudn’t die.

Sthenith.5196:

End of discussion and we all can go home, really…

You mean, we can all stop playing.

IF this would be true :

The problem I see is that a lot of people run around with useless crap, taking time to kill an enemy sometimes 4 or 5 times longer than with other gear

…which in fact is nearly impossible, since for that you really need to mess your character up big time.

I simply love the different gears. Not because they are really viable, but because players have options.

On paper or rather in theory you are right – versatility is always nice. I know what I am talking about though: back in 2012 I mained a guardian with PVT gear and AH-build, thinking this is the way to play a guardian. More and more I learned to play more aggressively and ultimately I landed on the zerker meta. Killing mobs with my first setup was a pain: it took literally 10-15 seconds to kill a normal mob in Cursed Shore while with the meta setup it takes 2-3 seconds. It’s a huge difference and the problem is that a lot of people use those useless gear. Especially in dungeons this is a problem.

Also, if the meta shifts to something different people need to grind for a new set and it takes a rather big amount of effort/time to complete a full ascended set. You could argue that this is normal in MMOs, but we all know that ArenaNet has a different philosophy and are eager to prevent this.

Where are you getting this from? Has Anet made some recent announcement about them nerfing zerk out of the meta?

People are upset because they MAY need to re-craft their ascended gear. The good player will adapt to a new meta, if it happends. Also bingo.

People are kind of stupid with this. They said the exact same thing when the nerfed ferocity before and a lot of people were thinking that it was about to allow other gear to be optimal. And didn’t and any nerf to zerker will NEVER remove it from the meta.

It’s the concept of zerker that make it the most optimal gear set. It’s meta because it’s a power glass canon gear. By fixing condition they can make optimal a condition glass canon gear (sinister), but that’s it. Glass canon, whatever nerf they want to do will always be the meta in PvE. If they really need to change that they have a limited amount of choice.
1) They need to put obligatory role. Defensive of healing gear will never be meta unless we need them to complete content, which mean getting back to Trinity or something similar to trinity. Which mean waiting for a cleric guy to complete your dungeon.
2) Removing the current active defense. We can play in full zerker because active defense is so powerful. If they remove it then we gonna need some defensive gear to survive. That just dumb down the game. Alternatively they can nerf to the ground active defense and make a stats that improve it. So now the new meta will be whatever offensive gear that have just enough of that stats. Not really an improvement.
3) Limiting gear to 2 offensive stats will force diversity into gear. There will still be one meta gear per profession, but that meta could change from one profession to another. A PS warrior would choose Power, Precision, Boon Duration, but a Engineer meta would be Power, Precision, Condition Duration. It would also limit the difference in dps from from exemple Power, Precision, Healing Power versus a Power, Precision, Boon Duration or Power, Precision, Toughness. As long as you take Power and Precision you have good dps, then even if the 3rd stats you take isn’t the meta the difference isn’t that noticeable. But that idea still have a lot of problem. That mean a mega nerf to dps or complete reworking of ferocity. That mean that the 3 years of balance for PvP is scrap and Anet need to start all over. And it doesn’t really fix anything since there will be only 1 meta gear per profession.

The number 3 might be possible good option, but i’m fine with the current system. No need to ’’fix’’ something that isn’t broken. Every single gear set is viable, there is only 1 that can be optimal and it will always be like that. Whatever anet do.

Thaddeus.4891:

People are kind of stupid with this. They said the exact same thing when the nerfed ferocity before and a lot of people were thinking that it was about to allow other gear to be optimal. And didn’t and any nerf to zerker will NEVER remove it from the meta.

It’s the concept of zerker that make it the most optimal gear set. It’s meta because it’s a power glass canon gear. By fixing condition they can make optimal a condition glass canon gear (sinister), but that’s it. Glass canon, whatever nerf they want to do will always be the meta in PvE. If they really need to change that they have a limited amount of choice.
1) They need to put obligatory role. Defensive of healing gear will never be meta unless we need them to complete content, which mean getting back to Trinity or something similar to trinity. Which mean waiting for a cleric guy to complete your dungeon.
2) Removing the current active defense. We can play in full zerker because active defense is so powerful. If they remove it then we gonna need some defensive gear to survive. That just dumb down the game. Alternatively they can nerf to the ground active defense and make a stats that improve it. So now the new meta will be whatever offensive gear that have just enough of that stats. Not really an improvement.
3) Limiting gear to 2 offensive stats will force diversity into gear. There will still be one meta gear per profession, but that meta could change from one profession to another. A PS warrior would choose Power, Precision, Boon Duration, but a Engineer meta would be Power, Precision, Condition Duration. It would also limit the difference in dps from from exemple Power, Precision, Healing Power versus a Power, Precision, Boon Duration or Power, Precision, Toughness. As long as you take Power and Precision you have good dps, then even if the 3rd stats you take isn’t the meta the difference isn’t that noticeable. But that idea still have a lot of problem. That mean a mega nerf to dps or complete reworking of ferocity. That mean that the 3 years of balance for PvP is scrap and Anet need to start all over. And it doesn’t really fix anything since there will be only 1 meta gear per profession.

The number 3 might be possible good option, but i’m fine with the current system. No need to ’’fix’’ something that isn’t broken. Every single gear set is viable, there is only 1 that can be optimal and it will always be like that. Whatever anet do.

^ that’s pretty much everything

Imagine if they add an armor stats that makes you spam 10k heals like a warrior spams hundred blades, or a stat that improve cc and you could stun mobs for 10 secs, that would be better than it’s now, but still won’t be needed and wont be optimum.

The other issue about changing meta is that ppl expect anet to do something like I mentioned above, but knowing anet it’s more likely they’ll make a new one stats only meta, then you’ll have all the same complaints all over again plus a huge disappointment, quite like they done to daily class wins on pvp dailies.

Another point is, is it worth changing anything? What I see is meta ppl running speedruns because they want the fast gold, there’s no fun involved, that’s why so many non zerkers are kicked, and even zerker ppl that dont know the run. Now if they change meta, and the run takes twice the time, and now is somewhat fun, but you can get the same amount of gold somewhere else, without relying on other ppl, what’s your motivation running the dungeons, yeah it’s fun, 1, 2, 3 times, then it starts getting less and less fun, since the loot is crap you dont have any reason to run those anymore.

Like the guy said, anet cant seem to manage developing challenging content without going back to trinity, I dont think trinity is that bad (but WoW haters do, rofl) i’d be ok with something like a light trinity, something like "for this boss or for this part of the dungeon it’d be nice having one guy more tanky or bigger heals (since all classes can fill any role, one guy switch up his armor and done, if you are amazingly skilled you just retrait and do it).

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Where are you getting this from? Has Anet made some recent announcement about them nerfing zerk out of the meta?

Their focus in HOT is PVE gameplay, and gameplay challenge. People are assuming that this means Zerker will no longer be ideal.

Captain Unusual.9163:

I see a lot of people getting very angry that ANet might be making non-zerker gear viable in PvE. And so I’d like to ask these people why they’re upset about it? Are you happy that there isn’t actually any sort of gear system in PvE? Do you think it’s better or worse to have multiple sets of gear be usable?

I will love the change, differents situations that not make your build and gear optimal are very common in hardcore games, having to adapt or extra sets its considered normal.

Having a autoequip for differents sets its a time saver, i dont like it for inmersive porpouse but i dont see a problem to have the option (i would not use it, except if i need to change faaaast), instead i think its a must have if the pve meta change, so many people would be happy with it.

I think its better to encourage more playing types, that includes armor (but im also for the make it super difficult that will make most cry).

Best way to go is force all gear sets to have 3 different stats.

Offensive stats: Power, precision, ferocity
Defensive stats: Toughness, Vitality, Healing power
Supportive stats: Boon duration, Condition duration, Condition damage

Each set would have one of each defensive, defensive and supportive stats. That’s a total 27 possible combinations, which is a bit more than what we currently have.

Power sets would then most likely become meta, but even then you would have 9 possible choices, which is a whole lot more than only 1.

There’s this thing called a status quo, and people love to maintain it no matter what. Having more varied gear stats and builds in pve will tremendously improve the game, if they pull it off, but many do not want such a big change for the sake of it.

It doesn’t matter what they change. The good players will find the new META and everybody will require that and we’ll have the same situation as now. Players will be crying that the new META is ruining the game and they’ll play sub-optimal armor sets and builds and nothing will change. Just like you don’t want Zerker players telling you how to play why don’t you not be a jerk and expect them to wear kittenty gear for you.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Best way to go is force all gear sets to have 3 different stats.

Offensive stats: Power, precision, ferocity
Defensive stats: Toughness, Vitality, Healing power
Supportive stats: Boon duration, Condition duration, Condition damage

Each set would have one of each defensive, defensive and supportive stats. That’s a total 27 possible combinations, which is a bit more than what we currently have.

Power sets would then most likely become meta, but even then you would have 9 possible choices, which is a whole lot more than only 1.

Calling Condi Dmg a support stat feels like a stretch to me. Unfortunately, the game is simply not balanced evenly between offensive and other attributes. Even within those categories, some attributes will always be more desirable.

Personally, I would rather see the stats themselves overhauled. It would be better to have 5 equally good attributes than 9 attributes with a clear hierarchy between them.

Here’s what I would do:

• Brawn (combines Power & Toughness)
• Agility (Precision, plus Endurance recovery rate)
• Concentration (Condi Dur & Boon Dur)
• Ferocity (Crit Dmg & Condi Dmg)
• Vitality (Health Pool & Healing Power)

This gives us 3 mixed attributes focused on play styles, and 2 that are strictly offensive or defensive. Every attribute is strong and desirable, and choosing between them actually means something.

So everybody would pick Brawn, Agility, and Ferocity. Giving them super zerker? It doesn’t work. People will always pick the one stat set that is king. Going healing or anything else in this game just isn’t profitable. It may be “viable” by definition, but it certainly isn’t advisable.

Meta is Meta because it is the best option, its not an arbitrary decision. No matter what anet does a Meta will emerge.

Captain Unusual.9163:

I see a lot of people getting very angry that ANet might be making non-zerker gear viable in PvE(…)

That would be awesome, im in all favour for all stats viable, same change to every one(as a team) and make mobs more awere and clever actions.

Dinks.2478:

So everybody would pick Brawn, Agility, and Ferocity. Giving them super zerker? It doesn’t work. People will always pick the one stat set that is king. Going healing or anything else in this game just isn’t profitable. It may be “viable” by definition, but it certainly isn’t advisable.

Meta is Meta because it is the best option, its not an arbitrary decision. No matter what anet does a Meta will emerge.

And this is something that a lot of people fail to understand.

Optimal strategy =/= overpowered.

If Berserker stat gear was overpowered, or the other gear sets underpowered, fine, some numbers need tweaks and the issue could be resolved.

The problem is that the sets are balanced, and all people are doing is optimizing their dungeon clear speeds by enforcing an arbitrary set of rules to maximize DPS. It’s human nature to pursue the most efficient known option.

Just making another gear set more useful for content doesn’t change anything but the gear that’s currently defined as being part of the “metagame.” All it does it move the problem to another place. It does NOT get rid of the problem, and no implementation like this ever will.

There will ALWAYS be an optimal way of doing things. For most PvE content except dungeons, these optimizations are not enforced because nobody cares. It’s the same reason why soldier’s/sentinel/dire gear is the optimal set to use in WvW/GvG – people care about it and thus created an optimized way of playing in terms of damage dealt per damage taken.

Dinks.2478:

So everybody would pick Brawn, Agility, and Ferocity. Giving them super zerker? It doesn’t work. People will always pick the one stat set that is king. Going healing or anything else in this game just isn’t profitable. It may be “viable” by definition, but it certainly isn’t advisable.

Meta is Meta because it is the best option, its not an arbitrary decision. No matter what anet does a Meta will emerge.

Not if the effects of the 5 attributes are re-balanced against each other.

The crit ratio and ferocity multiplier in GW2 currently get much higher than they should be if you want other play styles to feel rewarding. It’s a very obvious problem with an equally obvious solution, which would no doubt be the source of endless tears and flames if it were ever implemented. Bringing crits down to a reasonable level would go a long way toward leveling the playing field.

And for crimeny’s sake, increase the attack speed on PvE mobs so it feels more like fighting monsters and less like pushing through weeds. PLEASE.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time getting and managing gear in order to be on par. Getting gear is tedium.

I wish PvE used the gear system from sPvP. Simple, and easy to experiment with different things. One of the reasons I haven’t tried any other stat combos in PvE is that there’s a pretty big switching cost.

I’m not worried. Just because they make other gear stats viable doesn’t mean berserker will be any less so. Seriously doubt berserker will be replaced, anyway.

I think it’s fine, personally. Less time I have to spend worrying about my raw numbers, more time I have to work on my traits and practice my abilities.

DeceiverX.8361:

There will ALWAYS be an optimal way of doing things.

The idea that it’s all about optimizing is a fallacy. It’s a big factor, but not the only one. The factor that’s actually a problem is that players who choose other stat sets and playstyles often don’t feel rewarded for doing so. That includes both literal in-game rewards such as loot, and the emotional reward of being able to put your skills to good use.

Players who choose reactive, supportive, or condition builds don’t have many opportunities to shine. Defense and support just aren’t needed most of the time, and conditions rarely get a chance to do their work. Zerkers are so efficient at cutting everything down quickly, that there’s arguably nothing for other players to do but try to squeeze in a meager amount of damage before the enemy disappears. Trying to tag mobs in a world event when you’re surrounded by zerkers often feels like being an angler fish competing against a school of piranhas. You either become a piranha or go hungry.

Running through PvE with blocks, extra heals, or a condition like confusion is infuriating enough when enemies aren’t aggressive enough for these abilities to ever feel needed or rewarding. Zerkers are simply a stronger adaptation in the context of a game world that allows glass canons to go unshattered, and their floor-wiping capabilities put them in direct competition with other players in a supposedly cooperative game mode. Saying they’re balanced can only be true if you’re speaking strictly in theoretical ideals. In the actual practice of the game, (the meta), they are considered optimal for a reason, and that is the definition of unbalanced.

Not to mention that cutting everything down so quickly can make the game feel easy and unrewarding for even some zerkers. The goal should be to make the game more interesting for everyone, and having a one-sided meta is just…boring. It might be hard to prevent, but we should still try.

Simple, if they nerf berserker gear for current content it would become more boring. Things would be easier (forced toughness) and take longer to complete. That’s all there is to it.

Now if new HoT content would favour condi gear, I doubt the real “elitists” you all seem to hate so much would care all that much, as long as there’s a glass cannon alternative. After all using active defenses is a lot more interesting and active compared to facetanking.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Where are you getting this from? Has Anet made some recent announcement about them nerfing zerk out of the meta?

I was asking the same thing but haven’t gotten any sort of reply. I’m not against some changes (in fact, I think it’s a good idea to mix the game up some more) but confused at what this discussion is aimed to accomplish.

Khalisto.5780:

Like the guy said, anet cant seem to manage developing challenging content without going back to trinity, I dont think trinity is that bad (but WoW haters do, rofl) i’d be ok with something like a light trinity, something like "for this boss or for this part of the dungeon it’d be nice having one guy more tanky or bigger heals (since all classes can fill any role, one guy switch up his armor and done, if you are amazingly skilled you just retrait and do it).

Since I already commented in the thread, my perspective on the matter:

All in all I’m indifferent. I don’t play the game enough to get so frustrated and bored with it that I’ve got some agenda to push. I play when I’m having fun and I stop when I’m not. In that vein, the game works. It’s fun, easy to pick up, challenging to master and there’s a variety of ways to play.

But once you surpass a certain point, you begin to understand how to function, build and play your character, a lot of the initial challenge diminishes. Once you understand how boons, conditions, CC and other mechanics of the game work, the game is never as challenging as it once was and that’s something that won’t ever change unless you suffer from amnesia. After that, it’s just a matter of learning the encounters and that’s something that sort of comes and goes as you play. Lots of encounters end up feeling the same though because there’s little variety in them and part of the problem of that, IMO, stems from how potent our effects are, specifically defensive effects. Dodge is plentiful, mechanics to neutralize foes’s damage are readily available and boons/conditions are rampant.

To speak less generally, regen and heals are great in this game! But the value of them goes down down down when you can simply not take damage or destroy the target extremely fast. Same thing with damage reduction, a boon that reduces damage by 33%!? Add on toughness and other effects/traits to reduce damage further!? That’s amazing! But not if you can easily take utilities that reduce damage to 0 no matter what for specific durations.

Defensive measures should be toned down, IMO, if you want to make encounters challenging without making them cheap/cheat.

not add all it seems only zerk gear is useful

i wish the made gear for players that like to play a kind off support role to
healer ore tanker kind off gear will be great

i no this game don’t have the good old trinity system anymore
but i always play healer or tanker in any other mmorpg

i love to play a support role for my party

Failed observations from OP and trainwreck derail from there on.

The only complaints I’ve seen to take serious has been with the new trait system deleting the stats linked to the trees. And those are probably NOT the full zerkers (who already can rely on active defense), but players who mix and matched around those fixed stats. For casuals in exotics it doesn’t matter, while others maybe have all 8 classes in ascended mixed gear and feel the need to replace half of it if nothing else changes.

And what is PvE in HoT anyway? For all I know it’s 100% LS-like mass zerg events where DPS still is the main ingredient for success. Condition get buffed which is great, but the zerkers will carry the rest as always. Support is never gonna be a thing in this game.

Gulesave.5073:

-Snipped for length-

You fail to back up your claim about optimization creating these issues as a fallacy.

You’ve identified the results of an optimal strategy. That’s all. If sinister gear dealt more damage than berserker gear on every class (and for some it does), everyone would just be using that, and berserker-geared players would feel exactly the same way.

Every single other gear and build combination in this game is just as valid if not more so as a means of completing content. The only real difference, aside from a few select encounters, is that it takes longer.

Your analogy to the fishing contest is flawed; you cannot attribute your lack of speed to hit the mob in time to the way players are playing. Unless you wish to make the claim that the entire concept of building for DPS/burst is a bad idea and nobody should be allowed to do it. In which case, there’s just a forced optimization strategy because it becomes the only option for optimization. You could be full DPS/berserker/whatever and would still get the same number of tags against mobs.

The majority of the complaints also stem from the attitude of speed clear groups excluding anything but players of a certain build/gear situation. And there are very few individuals in the game who don’t want smooth, fast dungeon runs to maximize their gold gain and get more out of their time spent playing. We’ve all had that terrible AC P1 run before. The one that goes on for a ridiculous amount of time because people cannot kill the burrows and maintain aggro off Hodgins. As such, people find optimization in the berserker stat combination, and start only allowing said gear combination in their parties. With GW2’s encounter design, this largely means that success is typically driven by kill speed, and thus players who do not partake are unwelcomed and may feel less useful.

And that’s it: your claim about optimization being a fallacy has no merit. I’d also like to point out that the beserker stat combination is ONLY optimized for PvE speed runs. In every single other game mode, the stat combination is considered sub-par and is rarely used in optimized play – in most cases, you’ll be told to change your build or not play with other people because it’s too much of a liability, especially in PvP environments.

So there’s nothing that can be changed about the set in terms of raw numbers. We’re seeing new mechanics that counter berserker gear in HoT, but if those become too restrictive, a new optimized gear set will emerge and people will just be as exclusive with that combination.

There is no way to prevent what is ultimately going to be an optimization in a given scenario given the time.

If the game feels too easy for some players, they should group with like-minded individuals to complete the game perhaps with no armor at all. And perhaps those same players should stop playing the zergfest that the WBT is which only rewards pressing 1 and offers no risk.