Guild Wars 2

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

There is no problem with zerker.

Look at the other areas of the game: spvp and wvw. While there are players wearing zerker there its not as abundant. Why? Because the philosophy of bring max dps to kill faster does not work there. The reason for this is because players aren’t fighting against npcs but other players who are actually smart and have a skill set equal to their own.

You can not stack a player in a corner to max dps them, you can not use wall of reflect and expect a player to keep using projectiles to kill themselves. In pve you can do this, because the AI is ridiculously dumb. If they moved out of aoes, moved out of corners, if they stopped dpsing or went to melee after getting hit with a few reflect projectiles and used actual skill sets players have then we would see a much different meta in pve.

The fault is in AI not zerker.

The main problem I have with the GW2 zerker or burst meta is that makes gearing so boring for pve. There are absolutely no gearing decisions to be made. No real reason to think in 99% of pve, just grab zerker and go zerg. I like the action elements of the game, but there is no reason for the other stat combos in pve.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

i mention dungeons as an example…. which is pve… cause i was referring to pve

and you start talking about spvp… we have a bit of a disconnect here

yes, in spvp things are very different. you typically dont have as many people playing glass there as you have running bunkers or conditions or support. it’s not the same environment as pve where “zerker dps is king, everything else need not apply”, and (outside the slight issue with conditions) is (a bit) better balanced than the pve aspect of the game.

I’m not disagreeing the fact that currently DPS is the optimal build in PvE.

Just that whether there is a zerk build that is best in DPS and still able to do other stuffs.

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

the difference between the “support” warrior and full dps warrior builds are around ~600DPS, the difference between full DPS guardians and “support” guardian is around that benchmark too.

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

the difference between the “support” warrior and full dps warrior builds are around ~600DPS, the difference between full DPS guardians and “support” guardian is around that benchmark too.

What about the difference between full DPS guardians and full DPS warriors?

And can the full DPS guardians still do those things (protect aegis reflect)?

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

the difference between the “support” warrior and full dps warrior builds are around ~600DPS, the difference between full DPS guardians and “support” guardian is around that benchmark too.

What about the difference between full DPS guardians and full DPS warriors?

And can the full DPS guardians still do those things (protect aegis reflect)?

30/30/0/10/0 GS war – 12.9k dps (dps build)
20/30/10/0/10 gs + sw/f guardian – 12,080DPS (dps build, assumes no unscathed contender which is a 20% damage modifier, so I guess if you throw that in it goes up to like 14.5k)

full DPS guardians lack the extra 15 points in virtues which means they miss out on the second trait, but the master trait tends to not actually matter that much unless the dungeon is condition heavy.

but beyond that, full dps guards can do everything the dps support guard can (20/25/0/0/25)

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

But that’s only true for armor and weapons. A Zerk guardian have to sacrifice a bit of dps to bring more support.

4/6/2/0/2 is a more DPS oriented guardian build with Unscathed Contender. But you can go 4/6/2/2 for more Aegis and stability. You can change Unscathed Contender (dmg) for master of consecration (support).

A full DPS warrior will have a particular build, but right now, most of the time that warrior will sacrifice a bit of personal DPS in order to bring EA, 2 Banners, etc. Or a phalanx warrior will also sacrifice DPS to give more might to the party.

So there is already a tradeoff to choose. The problem is that tradeoff come from runes, sigil and trait only. With the armor, the tradeoff is between DPS and Surviability. You can choose a bit of support from your gear with boons duration, but these gear give you so little amount of boons duration that its useless and anyway the 2 other stats are pretty bad. There is no Power/Ferocity/Boons duration gear that you could choose 2-3 piece to gain a good amount of boons duration to be more support. Or a Power/Precision/Condi Duration for a character that could keep 25stacks of vulnerability during longer fight. Its a hard thing to balance and that’s why Anet went for the easy way and gave us 1% boons duration for each piece. Its easy to not break the game if you give useless stuff. Its harder to give good support on gear without breaking the balance and that’s why gear is only a tradeoff between dps and survivability.

That’s a place where they could improve.

Edit :

30/30/0/10/0 GS war – 12.9k dps (dps build)
20/30/10/0/10 gs + sw/f guardian – 12,080DPS (dps build, assumes no unscathed contender which is a 20% damage modifier, so I guess if you throw that in it goes up to like 14.5k)

full DPS guardians lack the extra 15 points in virtues which means they miss out on the second trait, but the master trait tends to not actually matter that much unless the dungeon is condition heavy.

I think guardian with unscathed contender, the overall dps would be more like 13-13.5k dps, since you won’t have aegis all the time. I guess you could have about 14k for some boss fight if you have a good managing of your blind and your focus block to keep your aegis on most of the fight, but still. 14.5k would only be the theoretical maximum.

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

the difference between the “support” warrior and full dps warrior builds are around ~600DPS, the difference between full DPS guardians and “support” guardian is around that benchmark too.

What about the difference between full DPS guardians and full DPS warriors?

And can the full DPS guardians still do those things (protect aegis reflect)?

30/30/0/10/0 GS war – 12.9k dps (dps build)
20/30/10/0/10 gs + sw/f guardian – 12,080DPS (dps build, assumes no unscathed contender which is a 20% damage modifier, so I guess if you throw that in it goes up to like 14.5k)

full DPS guardians lack the extra 15 points in virtues which means they miss out on the second trait, but the master trait tends to not actually matter that much unless the dungeon is condition heavy.

I suppose that means full DPS guardians = no protect aegis reflect?

If so, what this basically means (and what I’m trying to say) is that full dps guardian can go on par with full dps warrior, but in order for him to be able to do something else like CC, protect, reflect whatever, he will have to give up some of that DPS.

And since in pve, dps is king, whats the point of that? If you’re running a zerk build, you might as well go full dps, no protect whatever.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

No. It’s not all about damage, you know. If they added encounters where heal, defense and condi are equally necessary as damage instead of the stack in corner and dps ‘meta’, it would mean going full-out damage would be harder and not easier than going tanky.

That way DPS/condi/heal/tank is balanced out.

edited my post, dps and support guards can do aegis, protect, reflect just fine, literally the only difference is missing out on a second virtues trait.

Sirendor.1394:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

No. It’s not all about damage, you know. If they added encounters where heal, defense and condi are equally necessary as damage instead of the stack in corner and dps ‘meta’, it would mean going full-out damage would be harder and not easier than going tanky.

That way DPS/condi/heal/tank is balanced out.

Do you remember 1.5 years ago when it was all balanced and then everyone played for a year, learned the encounters, did them a million times, and no longer needed AC soldier gear or clerics? Because I remember. What you’re asking for is for us to be back in that position. There is nothing inherently wrong with dungeons. What is wrong is that there aren’t any new ones. Apart from aetherpath. But we all know how that worked out.

Sirendor.1394:

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Please tell me you are not being serious. You can use all the CAPITALS you want, it doesn’t make your post anymore correct.

There will always be an optimal approach to specific content and as such there will always be a meta for said content.

There will always be group synergies that work better than others and as such there will always be a meta.

Furthermore the notion that everything should have the same “efficiency” is rather daft. Why should those able to use higher risk dps gear have the same kill speed as those in crutch loltank gear? Moreover efficient at what exactly pray tell? How do you balance every single build and gear stat combo (and combination of them within a group setting) to be exactly the same efficiency across all content and all game modes?

Thaddeus.4891:

Not totally true. Support is extremely desirable, but there no gear stats that improve support, meaning that nothing in the gear you choose, will help you support better. But, you improve your support from Trait, Runes, Sigils, etc and you see quick if someone don’t get the meta, because most meta have a high amount of support in their build. Just think a second. When you just a composition for you group, what are you looking at? DPS only? If that was the case, then you would choose 5 elementalist. But not. You say, oh i want a warrior because of FGJ, Banner, EA. I want a guardian for blind, aegis, reflect. I want a thief for stealth, vulnerability, blind. I want a ranger for spotter, frost spirit and reflect. I want a Mesmer for Time Wrap, portal, reflect, pull. Even Ele are there for support too with might and fury. Every profession can do dmg and should concentrate a good deal into that. But that’s the support that give a identity to each profession. That’s a BIG part of all those meta, but a great deal of people just forget or just don’t know about that. Meta = DPS only. Meta = the best builds the community can come out with.

You’re supporting my point here. Not refuting it. But I am in agreement for the most part. The base issue is that because of how armor, traits, etc work, the mesmer in the zerker armor is going to be more desirable than the mesmer in say.. valk armor, because the former is going to do more damage while still being able to provide all the same support as the latter.

Now, you can push that further. Anet can give us more meaning in Condition damage so that’s not staying useless in PvE like it is now (with some exception). They can create armor and weapons stats that can upgrade your support capability like you can do with runes, trait and sigil right now. They can make CC more meaninfull and engaging (since I my opinion, they seem to figure out that CC was too powerful against bosses at the end of the production and simply put Defiant to fix the situation, destroying a big part of CC with that). But even with all that. DPS will still be a major part of the game and should stay the same. Toughness and vitality should still be a stats for learning or for player less good. Healing power shouldn’t overpowered to make a Healer possible in the game. Give more diversity for some meaningful support, cc, condition build, but don’t nerf zerk just because you hate it.

I don’t hate zerk gear. (I hate some of the people that wear it, but that’s entirely different and has nothing to do with the gear.) I’m not calling for it to be nerfed either, at least not directly.

Yes, gear needs some tweaking, so it has a better support / cc / etc effectiveness. Monster AI and mechanics need some tweaking too. Defiant (and Unshakable) needs to be adjusted, in some instances its just far too much. Beyond that, it doesn’t need to be used on every boss as a gimmick to make it harder. They could implement condition reflect on some (that was fun on the knights). They could give them skills like GW1 healing hands or healing seed where taking damage heals them. Hell make 2, one for straight damage, one for condition based damage. They could give them something like Mirror of Anguish where they mirror the CC back at the source (that could make for some fun kitten). I guess in short, they need to make monsters more like people and give them real skill bars to use.

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

the difference between the “support” warrior and full dps warrior builds are around ~600DPS, the difference between full DPS guardians and “support” guardian is around that benchmark too.

What about the difference between full DPS guardians and full DPS warriors?

And can the full DPS guardians still do those things (protect aegis reflect)?

30/30/0/10/0 GS war – 12.9k dps (dps build)
20/30/10/0/10 gs + sw/f guardian – 12,080DPS (dps build, assumes no unscathed contender which is a 20% damage modifier, so I guess if you throw that in it goes up to like 14.5k)

full DPS guardians lack the extra 15 points in virtues which means they miss out on the second trait, but the master trait tends to not actually matter that much unless the dungeon is condition heavy.

I suppose that means full DPS guardians = no protect aegis reflect?

If so, what this basically means (and what I’m trying to say) is that full dps guardian can go on par with full dps warrior, but in order for him to be able to do something else like CC, protect, reflect whatever, he will have to give up some of that DPS.

And since in pve, dps is king, whats the point of that? If you’re running a zerk build, you might as well go full dps, no protect whatever.

And now you reach the balance between DPS and good support

The full DPS guardian can still give as much blind as a more support guardian. He can also give some aegis and reflect, just not as much.

I’m talking about good support, because they help to have a better run. Reflect is really powerfull, since it allow you to reflect projectile back to the boss so that,s more dmg and you protect your team that can melee the boss, not waste dps by dodge too much, keep you party alive and keep your party at 90%+ hp for the runes of scholar. Same thing with blind and aegis. You can stack more ennemies at the same time with those, giving you the ability to attack more mobs at the same time for a faster run. In dungeon like CoF or CoE, the need for more support is limited, but in dungeon like SE, CM or Arah, more support will allow you for a better, faster run than if you would bring the minimum support you can.

DPS is king, but even the king need a court to help him reign. The meta is not about maximizing DPS and only DPS. Its about giving the best build possible. On the guardian, there is a hammer meta build so you can give perma protection to your team. That’s not the best DPS the guardian can give, but it allow you group to fight in melee some of the toughness boss in the game, so increasing the total dmg of the party.

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

maha.7902:

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/viewforum/4280860/m/6563292

we have builds for every single class

No, what I meant is that would a zerk guard provide the optimal DPS relative to say a zerk warrior and STILL be able to provide all those aegis/reflect?

Im more inclined to think that because he is able to do something (CC etc) he should sacrifice a little bit for DPS.

But that’s only true for armor and weapons. A Zerk guardian have to sacrifice a bit of dps to bring more support.

4/6/2/0/2 is a more DPS oriented guardian build with Unscathed Contender. But you can go 4/6/2/2 for more Aegis and stability. You can change Unscathed Contender (dmg) for master of consecration (support).

A full DPS warrior will have a particular build, but right now, most of the time that warrior will sacrifice a bit of personal DPS in order to bring EA, 2 Banners, etc. Or a phalanx warrior will also sacrifice DPS to give more might to the party.

So there is already a tradeoff to choose. The problem is that tradeoff come from runes, sigil and trait only. With the armor, the tradeoff is between DPS and Surviability. You can choose a bit of support from your gear with boons duration, but these gear give you so little amount of boons duration that its useless and anyway the 2 other stats are pretty bad. There is no Power/Ferocity/Boons duration gear that you could choose 2-3 piece to gain a good amount of boons duration to be more support. Or a Power/Precision/Condi Duration for a character that could keep 25stacks of vulnerability during longer fight. Its a hard thing to balance and that’s why Anet went for the easy way and gave us 1% boons duration for each piece. Its easy to not break the game if you give useless stuff. Its harder to give good support on gear without breaking the balance and that’s why gear is only a tradeoff between dps and survivability.

That’s a place where they could improve.

Edit :

30/30/0/10/0 GS war – 12.9k dps (dps build)
20/30/10/0/10 gs + sw/f guardian – 12,080DPS (dps build, assumes no unscathed contender which is a 20% damage modifier, so I guess if you throw that in it goes up to like 14.5k)

full DPS guardians lack the extra 15 points in virtues which means they miss out on the second trait, but the master trait tends to not actually matter that much unless the dungeon is condition heavy.

I think guardian with unscathed contender, the overall dps would be more like 13-13.5k dps, since you won’t have aegis all the time. I guess you could have about 14k for some boss fight if you have a good managing of your blind and your focus block to keep your aegis on most of the fight, but still. 14.5k would only be the theoretical maximum.

Yeah it only make sense that the trade off in armor is only between dps and survivability, after all we only have five primary stats – 3 of them to dps, 2 to survivability.

The question though is what do you do with that survivability? Zerk is optimal because, yes you can survive a little bit longer with toughness-vitality, but then so what?

This is also the point where game mechanics fundamentally has to change, because many things in game don’t put so much significance on that minute difference in survivability.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

Lilith, even though in the end, everything resolves in killing and surviving; it doesn’t mean that all we can do is damage and tank. Cleric is out of the question because it empathize healing and healer is not a supported role in GW2. But we could have another set which increases the effectiveness of our boons (not the duration), making might grant more power or fury more crit. Having such a stat would turn a player into a support role who can at the same time increase Zerk effectiveness. Defiant could be change, instead of having a stack value, it could have a cumulative value (like an HP bar) and having a stat that increases CC effectiveness to reduce that defiant faster or even bypass it in some cases. This would make players specialized in control very effective in such task.

These are just 2 examples I imagine could help having support and control as viable roles without even touching zerk. Of course, the dungeon design has to go along side by side. The dungeons we have today are kinda of a joke.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

No. It’s not all about damage, you know. If they added encounters where heal, defense and condi are equally necessary as damage instead of the stack in corner and dps ‘meta’, it would mean going full-out damage would be harder and not easier than going tanky.

That way DPS/condi/heal/tank is balanced out.

Do you remember 1.5 years ago when it was all balanced and then everyone played for a year, learned the encounters, did them a million times, and no longer needed AC soldier gear or clerics? Because I remember. What you’re asking for is for us to be back in that position. There is nothing inherently wrong with dungeons. What is wrong is that there aren’t any new ones. Apart from aetherpath. But we all know how that worked out.

I’ve considered that it might be that zerker is just meta now because dungeons became too easy when people figured out they could make them helpless health bags.
That however, is not something that is to be blamed on the players: they just found a way to complete dungeons faster, and they wanted to complete them faster because
they got boring but were (and are) still reliable sources of income.

I do think the fact that this was possible is to be blamed on the dungeon design as such, and particularly the crowd control immunity. On top, conditions are just in a weak spot and healing isn’t needed because
A) you either get hit for half your HP or
B) you don’t get hit by negating damage through dodging or simply moving out of AoE (fairly easy).

One of the problems with bosses is that you don’t really need toughness/vitality to survive them, because most of the dps negating goes through dodge, block or evade.
Does this promote ‘action combat’: in part it does, but once people know how to evade it’s like playing tennis: you are the man, they are the ball, either you hit or you miss, but you’re never in danger of the ball killing you.

Yes, I know it’s slightly paradoxal because on one hand active defense makes combat more active, but on the other hand it makes anything but “dps” useless.
I still think that can be changed by adding harder encounters (read as ‘challenging’, not as ‘taking a long time to kill’).

Mesket.5728:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

Lilith, even though in the end, everything resolves in killing and surviving; it doesn’t mean that all we can do is damage and tank. Cleric is out of the question because it empathize healing and healer is not a supported role in GW2. But we could have another set which increases the effectiveness of our boons (not the duration), making might grant more power or fury more crit. Having such a stat would turn a player into a support role who can at the same time increase Zerk effectiveness. Defiant could be change, instead of having a stack value, it could have a cumulative value (like an HP bar) and having a stat that increases CC effectiveness to reduce that defiant faster or even bypass it in some cases. This would make players specialized in control very effective in such task.

These are just 2 examples I imagine could help having support and control as viable roles without even touching zerk. Of course, the dungeon design has to go along side by side. The dungeons we have today are kinda of a joke.

“turn a player in to a support role”?

each player is meant to be supporting, dps and cc’ing, you’re not meant to have a player exclusively doing one thing.

this just confirms what I thought the whole time, people just want to play afk buff bots because they’re so interesting and everyone loves playing support roles in trinity games hence the complete lack of healers in like every trinity MMO ever.

Mesket.5728:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

Lilith, even though in the end, everything resolves in killing and surviving; it doesn’t mean that all we can do is damage and tank. Cleric is out of the question because it empathize healing and healer is not a supported role in GW2. But when we could totally have another set which increases the effectiveness of our boons (not the duration), making might grant more power or fury more crit. Having such a stat would turn a player into a support role who can at the same time increase Zerk effectiveness. Defiant could be change, instead of having a stack value, it could have a cumulative value (like an HP bar) and having a stat that increases CC effectiveness to reduce that defiant faster or even bypass it in some cases. This would make players specialized in control very effective in such task.

These are just 2 examples I imagine could help having support and control as viable roles without even touching zerk. Of course, the dungeon design has to go along side by side. The dungeons we have today are kinda of a joke.

I don’t think you’re understanding that in truly efficient runs, control and support are major factors in that efficiency. The problem is we’ve done each path a million times. We know which attacks will kill us and which won’t. We have tactics created over the course of 1.5 years that have grown to where we are today. This Involves clever use of support conditions, boons, crowd control and controlling defiant. It takes time to get there. We have had the time. If we were still soldier gearing, Cleric healing for 50HP PER tick, ranging bosses our gameplay would not be better. It would not have evolved at all and we would be stagnant.

Thaddeus.4891:

And now you reach the balance between DPS and good support

The full DPS guardian can still give as much blind as a more support guardian. He can also give some aegis and reflect, just not as much.

I’m talking about good support, because they help to have a better run. Reflect is really powerfull, since it allow you to reflect projectile back to the boss so that,s more dmg and you protect your team that can melee the boss, not waste dps by dodge too much, keep you party alive and keep your party at 90%+ hp for the runes of scholar. Same thing with blind and aegis. You can stack more ennemies at the same time with those, giving you the ability to attack more mobs at the same time for a faster run. In dungeon like CoF or CoE, the need for more support is limited, but in dungeon like SE, CM or Arah, more support will allow you for a better, faster run than if you would bring the minimum support you can.

DPS is king, but even the king need a court to help him reign. The meta is not about maximizing DPS and only DPS. Its about giving the best build possible. On the guardian, there is a hammer meta build so you can give perma protection to your team. That’s not the best DPS the guardian can give, but it allow you group to fight in melee some of the toughness boss in the game, so increasing the total dmg of the party.

So from this its safe to say that (even in PvE) its no longer true that “DPS (hence zerk) is king”?

That’s some very deep explanation you give in the last paragraph that I appreciate, but it also means that actually, even though in the end its still the damage output that matters, there are certain ways to increase the total optimal damage output by not going for the best DPS build for one individual (in this case the semi support guardian). Am I right?

If so, this changes things, because now the statement “the game still rely too much on zerk/dps” has a different meaning.

projectcedric.6951:

Yeah it only make sense that the trade off in armor is only between dps and survivability, after all we only have five primary stats – 3 of them to dps, 2 to survivability.

The question though is what do you do with that survivability? Zerk is optimal because, yes you can survive a little bit longer with toughness-vitality, but then so what?

This is also the point where game mechanics fundamentally has to change, because many things in game don’t put so much significance on that minute difference in survivability.

I think that part of the game is ok. Toughness and Vitality are there for
1) Learning the game. So much stuff you need to learn when you start the game, having some passive survivability will free up you focus to learn the games mechanics and the encounter. (Also go for veteran players in new hard content, that don’t really exist right now )
2) For player that are less good. And I’m not saying that in a bad way. Player that play not enough to develop the skills, player that are just casual enjoy the game and having fun, etc.

And that’s good. Now where its less good is for
Support : Like i said, its stupid right now. 1% per piece if i remember, with the other 2 stats being useless.
Healing power : It a hard balancing. You don’t want it to be too powerfull for not getting back to having a healer, but right not is so useless because of the so bad scaling.
No gear diversity : Only zerker is good right now, which is a shame. Its not build diversity because most profession have several ways to reach a good build. But ppl only see zerker. ‘’OMG there is only zerker that’s is good that’s bad’’. If they could bring a bit more diversity into gear (making condi useful in party, boons duration, condition duration, etc.), that would at least change a bit the situation.

Fenrir.3609:

Why should those able to use higher risk dps gear have the same kill speed as those in crutch loltank gear?

Because zerk isn’t ‘higher risk’ at all. If you can dodge on a PVT warrior, you can dodge on PPF warrior, it doesn’t matter how high your armour is. In fact, it’s easier with PPF because it takes less time to kill the boss, meaning you have to do less dodges than someone with PVT gear.

Skill on zerk is at the same level as skill on any other gear set, and some gear sets are probably harder than zerk, for example cleric, just because it’s lower damage.

the game SHOULD rely on dps….every single game relies on dps….the real problem is there is literally ZERO reason to go into any of the other stats, except for Assassin for a critical proc heavy build….and Knights/Valkyrie for a bit more tankiness…..or Rabid/Carrior for Condition damage

projectcedric.6951:

So from this its safe to say that (even in PvE) its no longer true that “DPS (hence zerk) is king”?

That’s some very deep explanation you give in the last paragraph that I appreciate, but it also means that actually, even though in the end its still the damage output that matters, there are certain ways to increase the total optimal damage output by not going for the best DPS build for one individual (in this case the semi support guardian). Am I right?

If so, this changes things, because now the statement “the game still rely too much on zerk/dps” has a different meaning.

It always been that way. Even a year ago then the ’’optimal’’ party composition was 4 warrior and a mesmer. The warrior were view as the best way to bring good DPS with vulnerability, might and fury. While the mesmer could bring portal, timewrap (which was twice more powerful then) and feedback. We already saw tradeoff between personal dps for more support stuff (but back then is was only offensive support for the most part).

A good group composition will try to get 25 stack of vulnerability, 25 stack of might, constant fury, blind, aegis, reflect, weakness, protection and a good amount of stats increase like banner, EA, spotter, frost spirit, etc. Maybe not all of those, all the time in all situation. But you want to bring the utilities that are best in some situation. DPS is the main focus and even those support are there only to bring the overall DPS of the group up. But to think that meta is only ZERKER, DPS, STACKING, FGS is totally wrong.

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

Yeah it only make sense that the trade off in armor is only between dps and survivability, after all we only have five primary stats – 3 of them to dps, 2 to survivability.

The question though is what do you do with that survivability? Zerk is optimal because, yes you can survive a little bit longer with toughness-vitality, but then so what?

This is also the point where game mechanics fundamentally has to change, because many things in game don’t put so much significance on that minute difference in survivability.

I think that part of the game is ok. Toughness and Vitality are there for
1) Learning the game. So much stuff you need to learn when you start the game, having some passive survivability will free up you focus to learn the games mechanics and the encounter. (Also go for veteran players in new hard content, that don’t really exist right now )
2) For player that are less good. And I’m not saying that in a bad way. Player that play not enough to develop the skills, player that are just casual enjoy the game and having fun, etc.

And that’s good. Now where its less good is for
Support : Like i said, its stupid right now. 1% per piece if i remember, with the other 2 stats being useless.
Healing power : It a hard balancing. You don’t want it to be too powerfull for not getting back to having a healer, but right not is so useless because of the so bad scaling.
No gear diversity : Only zerker is good right now, which is a shame. Its not build diversity because most profession have several ways to reach a good build. But ppl only see zerker. ‘’OMG there is only zerker that’s is good that’s bad’’. If they could bring a bit more diversity into gear (making condi useful in party, boons duration, condition duration, etc.), that would at least change a bit the situation.

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Why should those able to use higher risk dps gear have the same kill speed as those in crutch loltank gear?

Because zerk isn’t ‘higher risk’ at all. If you can dodge on a PVT warrior, you can dodge on PPF warrior, it doesn’t matter how high your armour is. In fact, it’s easier with PPF because it takes less time to kill the boss, meaning you have to do less dodges than someone with PVT gear.

Skill on zerk is at the same level as skill on any other gear set, and some gear sets are probably harder than zerk, for example cleric, just because it’s lower damage.

That’s not true. You can argue that its not harder enough to go Zerker compare to soldier, but that’s definitively harder and need more skills. Did you saw the Arah video where a group of cleric tanky guys disable the dodge button and facerolled everything in it. They didn’t dodge once. It took them SO MUCH TIME, but they did it. I can’t count how many time I saw ppl at CoE now dodge the Subject Alpha aoe. They could just take the dmg man. I couldn’t believe it the first time, but it true. Did you try a full DPS ele? That’s the hardest thing i never did in that game lol.

You can survive with a meta build, but its not as easy. Like i said, you could say that its not harder enough. But for the numbers of ppl wihtout full DPS build that i found in pugs, i guess that a large majority of ppl can’t or don’t want to play full dps.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mesket.5728:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

Lilith, even though in the end, everything resolves in killing and surviving; it doesn’t mean that all we can do is damage and tank. Cleric is out of the question because it empathize healing and healer is not a supported role in GW2. But when we could totally have another set which increases the effectiveness of our boons (not the duration), making might grant more power or fury more crit. Having such a stat would turn a player into a support role who can at the same time increase Zerk effectiveness. Defiant could be change, instead of having a stack value, it could have a cumulative value (like an HP bar) and having a stat that increases CC effectiveness to reduce that defiant faster or even bypass it in some cases. This would make players specialized in control very effective in such task.

These are just 2 examples I imagine could help having support and control as viable roles without even touching zerk. Of course, the dungeon design has to go along side by side. The dungeons we have today are kinda of a joke.

I don’t think you’re understanding that in truly efficient runs, control and support are major factors in that efficiency. The problem is we’ve done each path a million times. We know which attacks will kill us and which won’t. We have tactics created over the course of 1.5 years that have grown to where we are today. This Involves clever use of support conditions, boons, crowd control and controlling defiant. It takes time to get there. We have had the time. If we were still soldier gearing, Cleric healing for 50HP PER tick, ranging bosses our gameplay would not be better. It would not have evolved at all and we would be stagnant.

I don’t think you truly understand what I have said.

If I give you a stat that will scale might and other buffs potency to provide more power, more crit, more etc… having a player full on that stat could totally change the outcome of the rest of the party. What if your elem’s might instead of giving X might, grant you X+20% might? that 20% increase would result in more DPS than the missing zerk gear on that elemen. Get it?

Same would go for control if the core was a bit different and also if dungeons were more challenging, more clever not just dodge or die mechanic. Currently you can use kittened strategies like stacking and skipping half the dungeon. Even though they say its not illegal, I hardly believe they wasted on someones salary to design just that. It obviously went wrong.

maha.7902:

Mesket.5728:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Not this kitten again…

1. Even if you nerf zerk into oblivion something will always be the “meta” and people will look to utilize that.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The PURPOSE for BALANCING is to make sure there ISN’T A META.

Make everything as efficient as everything else and be done with it.

Because cleric gear should absolutely damage just as much as berserker and berserker should be just as tanky as soldiers. Right. Gotcha.

Lilith, even though in the end, everything resolves in killing and surviving; it doesn’t mean that all we can do is damage and tank. Cleric is out of the question because it empathize healing and healer is not a supported role in GW2. But we could have another set which increases the effectiveness of our boons (not the duration), making might grant more power or fury more crit. Having such a stat would turn a player into a support role who can at the same time increase Zerk effectiveness. Defiant could be change, instead of having a stack value, it could have a cumulative value (like an HP bar) and having a stat that increases CC effectiveness to reduce that defiant faster or even bypass it in some cases. This would make players specialized in control very effective in such task.

These are just 2 examples I imagine could help having support and control as viable roles without even touching zerk. Of course, the dungeon design has to go along side by side. The dungeons we have today are kinda of a joke.

“turn a player in to a support role”?

each player is meant to be supporting, dps and cc’ing, you’re not meant to have a player exclusively doing one thing.

this just confirms what I thought the whole time, people just want to play afk buff bots because they’re so interesting and everyone loves playing support roles in trinity games hence the complete lack of healers in like every trinity MMO ever.

No, this confirms you want nothing more that what you currently have because it is probably one of the easiest games in the market and you don’t want to think numbers. Just copy/paste somebody else min/max build and stack/smash/repeat.

Thaddeus.4891:

A good group composition will try to get 25 stack of vulnerability, 25 stack of might, constant fury, blind, aegis, reflect, weakness, protection and a good amount of stats increase like banner, EA, spotter, frost spirit, etc. Maybe not all of those, all the time in all situation. But you want to bring the utilities that are best in some situation. DPS is the main focus and even those support are there only to bring the overall DPS of the group up. But to think that meta is only ZERKER, DPS, STACKING, FGS is totally wrong.

Why?

As long as it means that to be able to optimize the DPS, support builds have a significance too, I think its okay. I don’t think there is an alternative to this approach especially that the game we are playing revolves around combat – in the end its still about dealing and taking damage.

What I find wrong is that when the statement “zerk/dps is king” means that literally the only build that is significant is a full dps build.

Sirendor.1394:

Fenrir.3609:

Why should those able to use higher risk dps gear have the same kill speed as those in crutch loltank gear?

Because zerk isn’t ‘higher risk’ at all. If you can dodge on a PVT warrior, you can dodge on PPF warrior, it doesn’t matter how high your armour is. In fact, it’s easier with PPF because it takes less time to kill the boss, meaning you have to do less dodges than someone with PVT gear.

Skill on zerk is at the same level as skill on any other gear set, and some gear sets are probably harder than zerk, for example cleric, just because it’s lower damage.

1. Yes it is higher risk and yes it takes more skill to use. Your average player is less likely to be able to use a meta zerk build than something else more forgiving.

You seem to be implying that because capable players are able to use zerk with little risk that the build/set has equal or lower risk in general. Which is patently false.

2. It’s not hard/er to use clerics.

3. The crux of your initial post was used to try and argue that “there wouldn’t be a meta”. I pointed out why that was false. You seem to have ignored that. I take it you realise your mistake and concede the fact that clearly there would always be a meta for specific content and that clearly the idea of making everything perfectly balanced and “efficient” across all content is simply a ridiculous one.

projectcedric.6951:

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Why it is not ok? Toughness and Vitality have a role. They are learning gear in PvE. Why everything must be good at high level end game? Look at it like F1 racing. They put everything in the speed. In F1 the perfect engine would broke 1sec after the car pass the finish line. Why? because tough engine that last longer are bigger and have more material on them. Thicker side, thicker engine part to be more resistant. But the weight of a more resistant engine will cost you speed and the victory.

Same thing here. In the high level end game, you want to have as less personal survivability as possible, because that cost you some dps. Personnal surviablity only profit you and only you. Its not like the support i talked about that profit all the party and improve the overall capability of the group. That’s why survivability is rarely included in meta, but support is. And I think its a good, no great thing.

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

WARNING! Wall of text incoming.

About that filthy berserker meta: The race for damage is not something new. In ANY game that involves players cooperating vs an AI, in the absence of a strong trinity you WILL see a pure damage oriented meta.

WHY ? It has been said countless times -> If you haven’t to rely on others to survive, you can just go glass canon and finish content faster. This race for DPS is neither a problem in LoL (coop vs IA during lane phase only) nor in ME3 multiplayer (and you can find other games, they do not have to be MMORPGs)

WHY is it not a problem in these two games ? Because there are several efficient ways of dealing damage in these games (AD & AP in LoL; biotic or gun or tech in ME3). The meta allow DIVERSITY. Diversity of the meta is what matters here.

Back to GW2: in PvE, there is only one way to deal efficient damage -> direct damage. Condition are screwed because of the stack cap. No diversity of DPS build in GW2

Second problem about GW2:
What is the most efficient way to clear a dungeon ? LoS mob, stack them in a corner and use the cleaving melee and FGS to blast them to bitz. This is why the top 1% speed clearers are not affected by the AC spider nerf -> The spider is dead before it can spit a poison field anyway. This broken tactic is viable only with a full party of glass canon min-maxed dudes. And this has an important consequence:

Corner stacking turns a supposed challenging content in a gearcheck. Let me say this straight:
Gearcheck SUCKS

Gearcheck encourages elitism, and gold farming. Corner stacking encourages class segregation and dumb mentality. This is something some ppl in the dungeon forum do not want to recognize because they make profit out of it at the expense of others

If the gw2 dungeons were well designed, such thing should not have been possible. They made a step forward good design with fractals and aetherpath: Some bosses are designed to avoid corner stacking and actually require some skills beyond the might stacking rotation and FGS use. Gearcheck is less common in these two dungeons than in arah for this precise reason.

In the end the game relies too much on zerkers enforcing gearcheck
How to get rid of this ?
1) An alternative way to see big numbers with an alternative optimized gear (conditions damage is the prime candidate but suffers from engine limitation).
2) The end of corner-stacking though redesign of the old dungeons.

projectcedric.6951:

Xenon.4537:

projectcedric.6951:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

Pray tell what kind of build this is on what profession. Im interested now. It seems like an OMNI GODLIKE build to bring to spvp.

He’s referring to something like a zerker guard who can still apply reflect wall, aegis, and protection. Or a zerk mesmer who can perma reflect (assuming the kitten warden doesn’t bug out). These builds can be great in dungeons. Spvp is a different story.

Hmmm… are those efficient builds when it comes to dps? They sound very karate-middle to me.

I’m pretty sure phantasm mesmer with reflects is the top mesmer build for dungeons right now… If you have a better build for dungeons, I’m all ears.

Thaddeus.4891:

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

One way is to revert back to the Trinity System. Here, toughness and vitality is crucial for the tank, which is crucial for the DPS to do his job.

But we don’t want that do we?

So, there could be other options even given GW2 system. For example, maybe part of killing a dungeon boss is that for a set period of time, the boss is invulnerable, and that everyone in the room is dealt with some condition damage they cannot evade. If the whole party is wiped, the boss will go back to full health and party cannot proceed any further. So there must be at least one person with enough vitality to withstand it.

Its a very ugly idea, I know. But what I’m saying is that, there are ways in which combat-centric gameplay can be designed so that build diversity becomes crucial in high level end game, EVEN IF in the end its still DPS that does the final job.

VodCom.6924:

In the end the game relies too much on zerkers enforcing gearcheck
How to get rid of this ?
1) An alternative way to see big numbers with an alternative optimized gear (conditions damage is the prime candidate but suffers from engine limitation).
2) The end of corner-stacking though redesign of the old dungeons.

Completely approve number 1)

Number 2 is also good, but partially. Stacking is nice sometimes. If you need to do some stuff to be able to do it. I like to stack ALL the spiders in TA up (the spiders before Malrona). It can be really hard. But, if the party have a good amount of DPS and the party can put a good amount of blind, aegis. Then it can be done. That a hard stack to do, I don’t want to get rid of stacking together.

Stack should still exist, just not be the way to go for most fight.

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Why it is not ok? Toughness and Vitality have a role. They are learning gear in PvE. Why everything must be good at high level end game? Look at it like F1 racing. They put everything in the speed. In F1 the perfect engine would broke 1sec after the car pass the finish line. Why? because tough engine that last longer are bigger and have more material on them. Thicker side, thicker engine part to be more resistant. But the weight of a more resistant engine will cost you speed and the victory.

Same thing here. In the high level end game, you want to have as less personal survivability as possible, because that cost you some dps. Personnal surviablity only profit you and only you. Its not like the support i talked about that profit all the party and improve the overall capability of the group. That’s why survivability is rarely included in meta, but support is. And I think its a good, no great thing.

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

Since you touch a racing game, let me answer you with another racing game example:

If Mario Kart is designed the same way GW2, everyone would be using Bowser and Kong cause they were the fastests (with bad driving and acceleration, but still the fastests). All other characters would just be learning characters but once you knew how to play, the races would be just lots of Bowsers and Kongs in very straight courses.

Since the guys designing Mario Kart knew better than ANet team, they made a game where even slower characters had their advantages because the courses were also designed in such way.

Currently our dungeons have no “curves” so we can all play Bowser and think its fine.

Xenon.4537:

I’m pretty sure phantasm mesmer with reflects is the top mesmer build for dungeons right now… If you have a better build for dungeons, I’m all ears.

Like with the case with the guardian, I’m not comparing it with the support mesmer. I’m comparing it with other builds (including other classes) that are full dps.

Anyway, this point is moot now, as we have already progressed much down the conversation.

Thaddeus.4891:

Stack should still exist, just not be the way to go for most fight.

You are very right. My statement should not have been so absolute.

Corner stacking is a good way to deal with trash mob. It should not be the be-all end-all of dungeons.

Mesket.5728:

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Why it is not ok? Toughness and Vitality have a role. They are learning gear in PvE. Why everything must be good at high level end game? Look at it like F1 racing. They put everything in the speed. In F1 the perfect engine would broke 1sec after the car pass the finish line. Why? because tough engine that last longer are bigger and have more material on them. Thicker side, thicker engine part to be more resistant. But the weight of a more resistant engine will cost you speed and the victory.

Same thing here. In the high level end game, you want to have as less personal survivability as possible, because that cost you some dps. Personnal surviablity only profit you and only you. Its not like the support i talked about that profit all the party and improve the overall capability of the group. That’s why survivability is rarely included in meta, but support is. And I think its a good, no great thing.

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

Since you touch a racing game, let me answer you with another racing game example:

If Mario Kart is designed the same way GW2, everyone would be using Bowser and Kong cause they were the fastests (with bad driving and acceleration, but still the fastests). All other characters would just be learning characters but once you knew how to play, the races would be just lots of Bowsers and Kongs in very straight courses.

Since the guys designing Mario Kart knew better than ANet team, they made a game where even slower characters had their advantages because the courses were also designed in such way.

Currently our dungeons have no “curves” so we can all play Bowser and think its fine.

Except to win and get the rewards in gw2 you don’t have to beat the fastest group. Unless your ideal reward is beating the world records. Which it obviously isn’t.

projectcedric.6951:

Thaddeus.4891:

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

One way is to revert back to the Trinity System. Here, toughness and vitality is crucial for the tank, which is crucial for the DPS to do his job.

But we don’t want that do we?

So, there could be other options even given GW2 system. For example, maybe part of killing a dungeon boss is that for a set period of time, the boss is invulnerable, and that everyone in the room is dealt with some condition damage they cannot evade. If the whole party is wiped, the boss will go back to full health and party cannot proceed any further. So there must be at least one person with enough vitality to withstand it.

Its a very ugly idea, I know. But what I’m saying is that, there are ways in which combat-centric gameplay can be designed so that build diversity becomes crucial in high level end game, EVEN IF in the end its still DPS that does the final job.

Exactly. Its an ugly idea, and I can only find other ugly idea. Its hard to make personal survivability meaningful in a group settings except if its for tanking. DPS, Support and CC is suppose to be the GW2 trinity, and all those help a group. But survivability don’t. It only help the player that run it and is only useful if the content is hard enough. But it doesn’t change anything if we get the content harder. More ppl will need survivability if content is harder, but there will always be ppl good enough to play without it. You can move the bar, but its will still be there and the optimal way of playing will still be without survivability gear, the optimal will only be harder to reach. That’s all.

projectcedric.6951:

Thaddeus.4891:

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

One way is to revert back to the Trinity System. Here, toughness and vitality is crucial for the tank, which is crucial for the DPS to do his job.

But we don’t want that do we?

So, there could be other options even given GW2 system. For example, maybe part of killing a dungeon boss is that for a set period of time, the boss is invulnerable, and that everyone in the room is dealt with some condition damage they cannot evade. If the whole party is wiped, the boss will go back to full health and party cannot proceed any further. So there must be at least one person with enough vitality to withstand it.

Its a very ugly idea, I know. But what I’m saying is that, there are ways in which combat-centric gameplay can be designed so that build diversity becomes crucial in high level end game, EVEN IF in the end its still DPS that does the final job.

That is a pretty ugly idea. I would rather they add a secondary effect to toughness and vitality which increases the chances of taking aggro by a % per point. Say someone with over 3k toughness would have a 75% higher chance of gaining boss aggro within a certain range.

Edit: but before any of that, I would rather they overhaul the defiant system to allow CC builds to be more viable. The idea of control, support, damage in GW2 suggests that someone could effectively tank by keeping the boss locked down with stuns and immobilize. But of course that’s not really possible by a single person right now.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mesket.5728:

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Why it is not ok? Toughness and Vitality have a role. They are learning gear in PvE. Why everything must be good at high level end game? Look at it like F1 racing. They put everything in the speed. In F1 the perfect engine would broke 1sec after the car pass the finish line. Why? because tough engine that last longer are bigger and have more material on them. Thicker side, thicker engine part to be more resistant. But the weight of a more resistant engine will cost you speed and the victory.

Same thing here. In the high level end game, you want to have as less personal survivability as possible, because that cost you some dps. Personnal surviablity only profit you and only you. Its not like the support i talked about that profit all the party and improve the overall capability of the group. That’s why survivability is rarely included in meta, but support is. And I think its a good, no great thing.

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

Since you touch a racing game, let me answer you with another racing game example:

If Mario Kart is designed the same way GW2, everyone would be using Bowser and Kong cause they were the fastests (with bad driving and acceleration, but still the fastests). All other characters would just be learning characters but once you knew how to play, the races would be just lots of Bowsers and Kongs in very straight courses.

Since the guys designing Mario Kart knew better than ANet team, they made a game where even slower characters had their advantages because the courses were also designed in such way.

Currently our dungeons have no “curves” so we can all play Bowser and think its fine.

Except to win and get the rewards in gw2 you don’t have to beat the fastest group. Unless your ideal reward is beating the world records. Which it obviously isn’t.

You sure about that? please take a look at the meta… what are the best teams doing? The same thing just faster. The faster you can complete something, the better you are at playing. Unfortunately we come to this.

Anyway, it was just an analogy pointing that in a game well designed, the obvious treat is not necessarily the best in all scenarios. Other stats could be useful too if the content was better designed.

Mesket.5728:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mesket.5728:

Thaddeus.4891:

projectcedric.6951:

This makes it sounds more like toughness and vitality has no place in higher level end game, and that is why its not ok because… (fast forward to your point about no gear diversity)… its exactly the reason why there is no gear diversity, because there is no significance to toughness and vitality in higher level end game, as much as dps is significant.

Why it is not ok? Toughness and Vitality have a role. They are learning gear in PvE. Why everything must be good at high level end game? Look at it like F1 racing. They put everything in the speed. In F1 the perfect engine would broke 1sec after the car pass the finish line. Why? because tough engine that last longer are bigger and have more material on them. Thicker side, thicker engine part to be more resistant. But the weight of a more resistant engine will cost you speed and the victory.

Same thing here. In the high level end game, you want to have as less personal survivability as possible, because that cost you some dps. Personnal surviablity only profit you and only you. Its not like the support i talked about that profit all the party and improve the overall capability of the group. That’s why survivability is rarely included in meta, but support is. And I think its a good, no great thing.

Also, if you can come up with a good way to make toughness and vitality the best way to go in a game. Tell me, i never found one.

Since you touch a racing game, let me answer you with another racing game example:

If Mario Kart is designed the same way GW2, everyone would be using Bowser and Kong cause they were the fastests (with bad driving and acceleration, but still the fastests). All other characters would just be learning characters but once you knew how to play, the races would be just lots of Bowsers and Kongs in very straight courses.

Since the guys designing Mario Kart knew better than ANet team, they made a game where even slower characters had their advantages because the courses were also designed in such way.

Currently our dungeons have no “curves” so we can all play Bowser and think its fine.

Except to win and get the rewards in gw2 you don’t have to beat the fastest group. Unless your ideal reward is beating the world records. Which it obviously isn’t.

You sure about that? please take a look at the meta… what are the best teams doing? The same thing just faster. The faster you can complete something, the better you are at playing. Unfortunately we come to this.

Your dungeon run rewards have nothing to do with how fast you complete it or how fast another completes it. That was my point.

Thaddeus.4891:

Exactly. Its an ugly idea, and I can only find other ugly idea. Its hard to make personal survivability meaningful in a group settings except if its for tanking. DPS, Support and CC is suppose to be the GW2 trinity, and all those help a group. But survivability don’t. It only help the player that run it and is only useful if the content is hard enough. But it doesn’t change anything if we get the content harder. More ppl will need survivability if content is harder, but there will always be ppl good enough to play without it. You can move the bar, but its will still be there and the optimal way of playing will still be without survivability gear, the optimal will only be harder to reach. That’s all.

Lol. I KNOW, I KNOW.

Yeah ok, maybe something like this:

Xenon.4537:

That is a pretty ugly idea. I would rather they add a secondary effect to toughness and vitality which increases the chances of taking aggro by a % per point. Say someone with over 3k toughness would have a 75% higher chance of gaining boss aggro within a certain range.

Edit: but before any of that, I would rather they overhaul the defiant system to allow CC builds to be more viable. The idea of control, support, damage in GW2 suggests that someone could effectively tank by keeping the boss locked down with stuns and immobilize. But of course that’s not really possible by a single person right now.

But hey, its not our job to think creatively about it.

Consider that if we can even come up with an ugly idea and a not-so-bad idea, my point is that its possible and it should be done. They (devs/game designer) should be the ones thinking creatively about it.

Mesket.5728:

Since you touch a racing game, let me answer you with another racing game example:

If Mario Kart is designed the same way GW2, everyone would be using Bowser and Kong cause they were the fastests (with bad driving and acceleration, but still the fastests). All other characters would just be learning characters but once you knew how to play, the races would be just lots of Bowsers and Kongs in very straight courses.

Since the guys designing Mario Kart knew better than ANet team, they made a game where even slower characters had their advantages because the courses were also designed in such way.

Currently our dungeons have no “curves” so we can all play Bowser and think its fine.

Interesting point. I used to play mario kart back when I was a kid. But sadly i didn’t play for a long time (it was such a nice games to play with my friends ) So i can’t really talk about the deeper gameplay and character selection in it.

But you are right, there shouldn’t be only 1 way to do stuff. Right now GW2 PvE is limited to DPS and Support (but not in gear). It not only 1 choose or we would have only Ele in our runs. No, Warrior and Ranger bring offensive support, Guardian bring defensive support, Thief bring stealth, Mesmer bring utilities.

Could diversity be improve? Ya of course. But Anet din’t broke the game by eliminating diversity. They only limited it. We have a bunch of diversity in the game (that not everybody can see sadly because of ZERKER), but there is so much place to improve that to bring that game farther.

Mesket.5728:

You sure about that? please take a look at the meta… what are the best teams doing? The same thing just faster. The faster you can complete something, the better you are at playing. Unfortunately we come to this.

Yes, quite sure.

If a speedrun team is doing a dungeon path three times faster than you are do you not get any rewards for doing that dungeon path or something? Have they been in the dungeon first, taken all the loot and left you with nothing perhaps?

PVE is not competitive unless you are in an elite team striving for world records. You can go in and do the dungeon in non zerk gear using non meta builds, get the rewards and move on.

People seem to be upset that their facetanks are able to do the content but not do it as quickly as full glass cannon players. Which is rather amusing really.

Fenrir.3609:

Mesket.5728:

You sure about that? please take a look at the meta… what are the best teams doing? The same thing just faster. The faster you can complete something, the better you are at playing. Unfortunately we come to this.

Yes, quite sure.

If a speedrun team is doing a dungeon path three times faster than you are do you not get any rewards for doing that dungeon path or something? Have they been in the dungeon first, taken all the loot and left you with nothing perhaps?

PVE is not competitive unless you are in an elite team striving for world records. You can go in and do the dungeon in non zerk gear using non meta builds, get the rewards and move on.

People seem to be upset that their facetanks are able to do the content but not do it as quickly as full glass cannon players. Which is rather amusing really.

^ yup.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Your dungeon run rewards have nothing to do with how fast you complete it or how fast another completes it. That was my point.

You’re right, the speed of a dungoen run is not the problem. The problem is: “If you don’t have 5k AP and full berserker gear, you can’t PUG for arah”.

This is what drives some people (including me) mad. It is very difficult to find a group for arah during my time play that does not have these requirements.

The fundamental issue is that if I switch from zerker to valkyrie armour, the completion time increases from 30 minutes to 1hour and a half because you can’t corner stack anymore. The group is forced to do the dungeon the “classic” way which is way slower.

Thus the toxic gearcheck.