Guild Wars 2

I really haven’t seen a thread like this. There may be a few, as I did not do any amount of searching. If so, I apologize.

How would YOU incentivise using gear other than zerkers in PvE?

I’m not saying that players aren’t justified in forcing others to use zerkers, because they are. Zerkers gear is the optimal choice if you’re out in open world PvE or Dungeons.

I personally have never used zerkers and find no issue finding groups for content, but having this mentality clouding Guild Wars 2 is some what disheartening.

So, once again, how would you incentivise using gear other than zerkers?

My suggestion:

Cause defencive stats like Vitality and Toughness to interact with skill cooldowns. For example, toughness could lower a warrior’s stance cooldowns.

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

The problem isn’t that Zerker gear is somehow superior to other gear, it’s just that DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in dungeons and high-level fractals.

DPS also has the side-effect of making things a lot easier thanks to the vastly higher kill-speed.

I recently had the pleasure of doing Fractals level 49 on my Thief. I have 16.000 HP which is quite significant for a Thief.

But guess what, it made no difference whatsoever. Basically anything that hit you was a 1-shot. The Vitality was completely wasted. The most extreme example are the mobs in the Char Fractal where the Mages kill you instantly before there’s even any sort of animation.

4000 extra HP in that scenario made little to no difference.

15% extra Precision however would have.

The appeal of Zerker gear is because of stupid game-design and its obsession with instant-gibs. No amount of stat shuffling is going to change that.

That’s why every PvE class guide is basically about how to maximize your DPS/group DPS.

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already do break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already to to break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

Or you’d have to learn to stun an enemy before a killshot. Or wait until an enemy has burned its dodges.

You do make good points, though. It’s something that would have to be done carefully.

timmyf.1490:

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already to to break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

Or you’d have to learn to stun an enemy before a killshot. Or wait until an enemy has burned its dodges.

You do make good points, though. It’s something that would have to be done carefully.

It would add a bit more strategy to the game. That a feature we really haven’t seen in any MMO.

DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in this game period.

Until at which time they get away from 1 shot mechanics and or make support builds/healing viable noting will change.

Also, Add into the fact the reducing the overall player bases dps by nerfing zerker sets will simply making zerker required instead of desired.

If content takes longer to kill and the game continues to based only on DPS – what do they think will happen? Players will end up being less inclined to invite anyone BUT zerkers since content is already taking longer to kill then before.

In short they are making zerker required by this change.

Azreell.1568:

DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in this game period.

Until at which time they get away from 1 shot mechanics and or make support builds/healing viable noting will change.

Also, Add into the fact the reducing the overall player bases dps by nerfing zerker sets will simply making zerker required instead of desired.

If content takes longer to kill and the game continues to based only on DPS – what do they think will happen? Players will end up being less inclined to invite anyone BUT zerkers since content is already taking longer to kill then before.

In short they are making zerker required by this change.

Agreed – in addition, new content, especially “hard” content like the jungle worm, has deliberately been made into a dps check. You must deal out a tonne of damage in a limited time window or you fail.

With the removal of the trinity, there just isn’t much variety that can be put into mobs and players are so vulnerable that mobs have to go down fast or people die. The elementalist particularly suffers from the current set up of the game in pve. Their only way to prosper was to put down their staff and to pick up daggers, acting just like thieves.

So the iconic ranged caster is best suited in overwhelming melee…..that’s the kind of messed up logic that the current set up causes.

As some have said already the problem is with the way NPC’s attack/damage spikes. For the most part the attacks are too infrequent with massive spike damage. It is to a point where no degree of toughness is enough to mitigate the damage…..instead you must rely on dodging or some form of invulnerability. Hence, at the end of the day why invest in much defense when it is going to offer such limited return versus higher offense capabilities that shorten the fight? Taken to the extreme the old maxim of “the best defense is a good offense” holds true.

Overall, this has led to limited builds and equipment choices not to mention relatively “canned” strategies for clearing mobs. Stack up and focus as much firepower as possible to limit the time the AI has to deal that spike damage. You really just need to learn “hey when he raises his hand above his head get ready to dodge” and other than that go full offense. To me it’s pretty boring compared to what it could be.

Can it be fixed? That I don’t know but I doubt they would want to invest the time required to change all the old content. However, on new content I think they could make this change. Increase the frequency of AI attacks while lowering the burst significantly could lead to a situation where maximum offense with limited damage mitigation isn’t necessarily the best option.

I myself was never a fan in any game of 1 shot mechanics.

It’ s a lazy and poor design ideal that limits the player base as a whole.

GW2 as it is now

• Direct damage stats matter to the whole party, because encounters are completed by killing mobs.
• Condition stats might matter to a party, but not if too many players are using condition damage builds.
• Healing power matters to the whole party, but only if the player is using group heal effects. Boosting one’s self heal does not matter to the group. Healing power matters much less than the damage stats, though, because of the need to reign healing in for balance purposes and because of the nature of how damage is applied by mobs.
• Survival stats matter only to the player using them. They do nothing for the rest of the party (Unless you count allowing the survival character to revive others. I don’t because anyone can revive and because survival stats are often not enough to allow face tanking mob damage while reviving).

What to do?

• You could allow build options that permitted survival stat characters to share their Toughness/Vitality with party members, but then you’d have to redesign group content so that an all-out direct damage approach is not the better option. You’d also have to consider what effect this would have on WvW (and in sPvP if this was not a Pve/WvW option only.
• You could make things like boon duration matter more, but to do so you’d probably have to nerf existing boon duration — which is already sufficient for PvE purposes. Again, the effect of this option on the PvP modes might make the cost larger than the benefit.

A problem with the two options I mentioned above is that if the content is designed to “require” one player with survival stats to share and another with a boon build, you would have replaced “GLF2M Tank and Healer for x” with “GLF2M Soldier and Buffbot for x.”

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

IndigoSundown.5419:

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

I agree with this. Bosses with 30-60 stacks of Indignant, immunity to half your control skills (pulls, blinds, warding lines etc), “structural” bosses that can’t be critted (and the loss of all the CC that depends on crits), gigantic HP pools: these things contribute to the DPS fixation. If boss mechanics were redesigned to make CC viable & needed you would see less of the DPS mentality out of necessity because right now it’s 100% DPS.

The problem isn’t just that “what one-shots you in zerker gear still one-shots you in PVT gear”: support and control aren’t stat-dependent, however damage is. Boon duration and condition duration are more easily obtained through traits and food and even then they translate in +1,5 secs protection party wide, +3 secs weakness on target which I don’t think is that useful. You can support in zerker gear as much as you could in PVT gear. You can control in zerker gear as much as you could in PVT gear. The only thing besides damage that is stat dependent is mitigating damage, and you won’t need that as long as you can dodge properly. You also don’t need to be able to soak damage while ressing a team mate, where PVT gear would be beneficial, if your party can dodge properly.

You don’t need stats to support, control or mitigate damage so damage dealing gear is the most convenient choice.

To add to that, control isn’t that useful against bosses thanks to unshakable.

Not sure if there is hate mechanics, but mobs should target the guys doing the highest DPS. Lots of times, I see mobs targeting guys with high toughness. I noticed myself getting attacked more when my armor was high vs. zerk gear. Zerking is low-risk, high return, which is why it is the way it is currently.

Tim.5681:

IndigoSundown.5419:

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

I agree with this. Bosses with 30-60 stacks of Indignant, immunity to half your control skills (pulls, blinds, warding lines etc), “structural” bosses that can’t be critted (and the loss of all the CC that depends on crits), gigantic HP pools: these things contribute to the DPS fixation. If boss mechanics were redesigned to make CC viable & needed you would see less of the DPS mentality out of necessity because right now it’s 100% DPS.

timmyf.1490:

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already to to break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

Or you’d have to learn to stun an enemy before a killshot. Or wait until an enemy has burned its dodges.

You do make good points, though. It’s something that would have to be done carefully.

Which warrior skill is a 1500 range stun?

The toxic knights actually dodge except they seem to have infinite endurance plus a homing whirlwind attack.

The dodging mechanic is the problem. Every single person can just press a button every few seconds and take zero damage and evade every single bit of dmg being thrown at them from every source. No need for any heals from anyone else, let alone a healing class. This is the reason Berzerker reigns.

Every player can heal themselves better than any healer ever could because of the dodge mechanic. There is no reason to have more health, or toughness if you can just press dodge instead, especially if you have vigor. The only way to fix this, is to put traits in toughness and vitality that increase damage more than zerker stats would. There are already traits which turn vitality into power. Do that more, make them more extensive, and you’ll see all this zerker garbage and all the players who subscribe to it, dwindle away and be called scrubs eventually. That is how you solve it.

Look it is this thread again. Zerker doesn’t need a fix – you take defensive stats assuming that you take damage, and if you trust your skills enough to be able to survive without any defense you are free to do so and enjoy the benefits. It is working exactly as intended.
What is needed however is to make conditions a viable alternative in PvE but I’m sceptical about the possibilities to implement that considering conditions are way OP in PvP. I don’t think it can be done without completely splitting PvP and PvE balancing but as it seems atm Anet isn’t willing to do that.

If you want to “fix” the zerker mentality, probably you should “fix” the farm mentality first.
If the content were challenging enough so just finishing it could be seen as a success, then we might see a lot more of diversiity. As long as it’s balanced around random and uncoordinated PUGs and mostly around repeating it over and over in order to farm gold, it’s quite understandable for people to chose the spec that gets it done faster.

timmyf.1490:

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already to to break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

Or you’d have to learn to stun an enemy before a killshot. Or wait until an enemy has burned its dodges.

You do make good points, though. It’s something that would have to be done carefully.

With stuns at 60+ second cooldowns? Yeah, right…

Asumita.2174:

Not sure if there is hate mechanics, but mobs should target the guys doing the highest DPS. Lots of times, I see mobs targeting guys with high toughness. I noticed myself getting attacked more when my armor was high vs. zerk gear. Zerking is low-risk, high return, which is why it is the way it is currently.

It is not low risk. Try fractal 49 just for fun and see how ‘low risk’ it is.

hendo.1940:

Tim.5681:

IndigoSundown.5419:

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

I agree with this. Bosses with 30-60 stacks of Indignant, immunity to half your control skills (pulls, blinds, warding lines etc), “structural” bosses that can’t be critted (and the loss of all the CC that depends on crits), gigantic HP pools: these things contribute to the DPS fixation. If boss mechanics were redesigned to make CC viable & needed you would see less of the DPS mentality out of necessity because right now it’s 100% DPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtFWy-ccTk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1-rF2Q3uw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKQtrOVR7w

I hear voip, and i hear kittening on PUGs. PVE should not be tuned for the former, and should be tuned for the latter. If you need a drilled group and VOIP to pull of interrupts, they are worthless.

For this to happen ArenaNet would have to commit to a hard separation of pvp to pve. Currently all pve healing & tankiness is designed around pvp. Obviously player damage in pvp is significantly lower than in pve so it’s balanced for that.

However, what that leaves us with in pve is a situation where support healing is worthless, tankiness is worthless because they are being balanced against output from PLAYERS when we are being pitted against output from PVE.

I personally wish that arenanet would stop developing all this temp content and focus on making their game better, but for whatever reason they love all this fluff.

digiowl.9620:

I hear voip, and i hear kittening on PUGs. PVE should not be tuned for the former, and should be tuned for the latter. If you need a drilled group and VOIP to pull of interrupts, they are worthless.

And that’s exactly the problem here.
Once you tune the content for random PUGs of arguably low skill level and absence of VOIP (so absence of any true form of real-time teamwork), you automatically prevent it from being challenging enough for full-berserker coordinated/meta groups to struggle.

Dee Jay.2460:

The problem isn’t that Zerker gear is somehow superior to other gear, it’s just that DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in dungeons and high-level fractals.

DPS also has the side-effect of making things a lot easier thanks to the vastly higher kill-speed.

I recently had the pleasure of doing Fractals level 49 on my Thief. I have 16.000 HP which is quite significant for a Thief.

But guess what, it made no difference whatsoever. Basically anything that hit you was a 1-shot. The Vitality was completely wasted. The most extreme example are the mobs in the Char Fractal where the Mages kill you instantly before there’s even any sort of animation.

4000 extra HP in that scenario made little to no difference.

15% extra Precision however would have.

The appeal of Zerker gear is because of stupid game-design and its obsession with instant-gibs. No amount of stat shuffling is going to change that.

That’s why every PvE class guide is basically about how to maximize your DPS/group DPS.

Just to give another proof.
I have tried to solo Arah p2 first boss a few time. Started with my full zerk warrior…always failed when the boss was about 30% hp… 1 hit by the ball-thing that she casts (since puts red circle in a place and the ball goes to a totally different place) After a few failures like that, I was like “Let’s see if I go full Ptv!” So I went to throw a few AC and HotW tokens into a full PTV armor (power toughness vitality). Guess what? 1 hit by the ball, only difference was that I never managed to bring the boss below 70% hp with such a lowered damage, which made my chances to defeat it way lower. (I am no pro, I can’t dodge everything forever, if the fight lasts 20 mins I can’t get to the end).

Asko.4120:

Look it is this thread again. Zerker doesn’t need a fix – you take defensive stats assuming that you take damage, and if you trust your skills enough to be able to survive without any defense you are free to do so and enjoy the benefits. It is working exactly as intended.
What is needed however is to make conditions a viable alternative in PvE but I’m sceptical about the possibilities to implement that considering conditions are way OP in PvP. I don’t think it can be done without completely splitting PvP and PvE balancing but as it seems atm Anet isn’t willing to do that.

They’re splitting the changes in the coming patch between PvE and PvP I believe. If this is indeed the case, there is NO excuse for having left conditions to wither away in PvE this long.

Pip.2094:

Just to give another proof.
I have tried to solo Arah p2 first boss a few time. Started with my full zerk warrior…always failed when the boss was about 30% hp… 1 hit by the ball-thing that she casts (since puts red circle in a place and the ball goes to a totally different place) After a few failures like that, I was like “Let’s see if I go full Ptv!” So I went to throw a few AC and HotW tokens into a full PTV armor (power toughness vitality). Guess what? 1 hit by the ball, only difference was that I never managed to bring the boss below 70% hp with such a lowered damage, which made my chances to defeat it way lower. (I am no pro, I can’t dodge everything forever, if the fight lasts 20 mins I can’t get to the end).

The problem is that you can easily find proofs telling exactly the opposite.
For example, when I PUG for AC I swap my Berseker/Scholar armor for my old WvW roaming PVT/Pack one and slot Hammer as my secondary weapon (even if not traited for it).
Why? Because most PUGs, even if lacking the damage to take down both Spider Queen and, specially, Kholer before they become a threat, still stack on those corners which, while amazing for speedrunning, prevent you many times from spotting enemy animations.
If Kholer spins while on my Zerker gear, I get downed before I can properly react and pop up Shelter or Renewed Focus. If I use soldier armor and spam my hammer autoattack, however, I can both easily survive the attack and reduce the damage my teamates would receive.

Asko.4120:

Look it is this thread again. Zerker doesn’t need a fix – you take defensive stats assuming that you take damage, and if you trust your skills enough to be able to survive without any defense you are free to do so and enjoy the benefits. It is working exactly as intended.
What is needed however is to make conditions a viable alternative in PvE but I’m sceptical about the possibilities to implement that considering conditions are way OP in PvP. I don’t think it can be done without completely splitting PvP and PvE balancing but as it seems atm Anet isn’t willing to do that.

Anet has split PvP and PvE balancing. The last zerker change did not affect PvP.

Azreell.1568:

I myself was never a fan in any game of 1 shot mechanics.

It’ s a lazy and poor design ideal that limits the player base as a whole.

The problem with 1-shots in GW2 is that even they don’t make content more challenging, just more tedious.

Thanks to downed-state and easy revives no amount of damage is going to be hard to overcome.

InfernoHero.5687:

I really haven’t seen a thread like this. There may be a few, as I did not do any amount of searching. If so, I apologize.

How would YOU incentivise using gear other than zerkers in PvE?

I’m not saying that players aren’t justified in forcing others to use zerkers, because they are. Zerkers gear is the optimal choice if you’re out in open world PvE or Dungeons.

I personally have never used zerkers and find no issue finding groups for content, but having this mentality clouding Guild Wars 2 is some what disheartening.

So, once again, how would you incentivise using gear other than zerkers?

My suggestion:

Cause defencive stats like Vitality and Toughness to interact with skill cooldowns. For example, toughness could lower a warrior’s stance cooldowns.

Zerker is not the issue. There will ALWAYS be optimal gear – and people with the " zerker mentality " will always want to play with people that have that optimal gear.

Zerker is and never was an issue. There’s always going to be that ONE set or ONE item combo that’s the most effective – and will be the most sought after.

There’ve been countless threads about this. It will never change.

Vargamonth.2047:

If you want to “fix” the zerker mentality, probably you should “fix” the farm mentality first.
If the content were challenging enough so just finishing it could be seen as a success, then we might see a lot more of diversiity. As long as it’s balanced around random and uncoordinated PUGs and mostly around repeating it over and over in order to farm gold, it’s quite understandable for people to chose the spec that gets it done faster.

If just finishing it could be seen as success why would anyone do it more than once?
People play for the rewards and sometimes for the bragging rights.

I’ve done EVERY dungeon path once – for the achievement – but only do a few of them because they’re easy and reward me the most.
If you amp up the difficulty and make everything " a challenge" then prepare to have a lot of content that nobody will do.

Example : high-end fractals – look at the CDI topic – everybody wants better rewards and better means to acquire fractal weapons.
People do the content because of the rewards, not for the sake of doing it. This is true for almost every MMO game.

Bring back the trinity!

One guy stands and taunts and gets all the aggro, another guy spam 11111(or whatever his heal skill is) to heal the tank, the the zerker noobs can be DPS.

Also remove dodge because its op.

Harper.4173:

If you amp up the difficulty and make everything " a challenge" then prepare to have a lot of content that nobody will do.

… including the people who were asking for a challenge…

chronometria.3708:

timmyf.1490:

Enemies need to attack faster but with smaller damage spikes. Enemies should also dodge big, telegraphed attacks the same way players would.

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already do break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

GOOD!

Then immobilize, cripple, daze, stun, chill will actually be useful. Then anet can lower the hp to compensate. Bad groups will take forever, good groups will finish dungeon very fast.

Harper.4173:

Vargamonth.2047:

If you want to “fix” the zerker mentality, probably you should “fix” the farm mentality first.
If the content were challenging enough so just finishing it could be seen as a success, then we might see a lot more of diversiity. As long as it’s balanced around random and uncoordinated PUGs and mostly around repeating it over and over in order to farm gold, it’s quite understandable for people to chose the spec that gets it done faster.

If just finishing it could be seen as success why would anyone do it more than once?
People play for the rewards and sometimes for the bragging rights.

I’ve done EVERY dungeon path once – for the achievement – but only do a few of them because they’re easy and reward me the most.
If you amp up the difficulty and make everything " a challenge" then prepare to have a lot of content that nobody will do.

Example : high-end fractals – look at the CDI topic – everybody wants better rewards and better means to acquire fractal weapons.
People do the content because of the rewards, not for the sake of doing it. This is true for almost every MMO game.

Of course MMO content needs replayability and rewards.
I’m not saying that you should feel rewarded just by the fact of completing this content, but that it would be actually hard enough for a failure to be expected.

When I PUG for some GW2 dungeon, I’m fairly certain on having it finished. It might take longer than I expected, there can be a wipe at some point … it doesn’t matter at all. It’s just a brief delay on getting my gold.
It’s possible, however, to have content where failure is a quite feasible option and something must be paid for the access. Even if eventually would be speedcleared (like every PvE content), this kind of content encourages you to ensure a success over trying to do it as fast as possible, and that might be an option for different gear stats to have a chance.

Obviously this is the kind of design that a lot of people won’t ever step into and I don’t expect it to ever happen in GW2 (even if I’m pretty much describing GW1 elite zones), but it’s also obvious that if they keep tuning the content based on an average player PUG, it’s not going to be hard to speedclear it on berserkers.

Honestly, you would literally need to re-design a significant portion of the game and the way it plays.

AI, skills, mechanics, profession balance.

Guild Wars 2 will never be in a place where sets outside of Berserker will be as effective. Why? Because Arenanet aren’t daring enough to make drastic changes to their game. Everything is run through 157.5 different CDI threads, and then probably goes through 615 iterations that are not even reflective of community input.

I’m nokitten Arena-Net here, but they really need to get ballsy. It’s like profession balance, if they spent more time rolling out constant changes; we might get somewhere. I think they need to break the game, before they can fix it. Hell, it’s already broken.

Asking the wrong questions. There is no “zerker mentality”.

The game removed roles and left one. Every single encounter in GW2 is a dps check, and when it’s not a dps check 9/10 it’s badly done.

Design flaw. Period. We’re just mice in a maze. Don’t blame the players for taking the shortest route to the cheese.

ArenaNet has made it 100% clear they’re not changing it either. Get zerker gear and stack son.

The biggest part of the problem is that the three stats on Berserker gear have a MASSIVE synergistic effect with each other. Your overall damage is increased, you crit more often and your crits cause more damage. Those three stats should never have been together on the same piece of gear. You should have to decide whether to crit more often but not cause as much damage per crit, or vice versa… or to hedge your bets and simply increase base damage across the board (flatten out the peaks and valleys and emphasize a strong consistent average). But having all three of these together is a level of epicness equivalent to a guitar-playing undead dude riding on a dinosaur that’s standing on a laser that’s mounted to a rocket which is strapped to the back of a shark.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6r71meMvq1qzozj1.jpg

If each piece of gear only had one offensive stat, one defensive stat and one “utility” stat (gold find, XP gain, karma gain… perhaps Agony Resistance and other special types of fractal/dungeon damage resistances…) then we’d have a lot more variety of viable builds.

Using this system, there is no struggle between offense and defense.

Everyone has offense – it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Precision: I crit a lot but each one isn’t very hard
- Intensity: I don’t crit as often but when I do I hit hard
- Power: I don’t crit as often but I have a higher base damage

And everyone has defense – again, it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Vitality: I can survive a spike but am weak to pressure
- Toughness: I can survive pressure but am weak to spikes
- Healing Power: I’m fairly squishy overall but compensate with strong heals

Mix and match one stat from each of those two categories to your heart’s content, and throw in your “utility” stat for flavor. Most gear would be on even footing unless you’re facing specific mechanics that call for one gear type over another (i.e. a boss that exclusively uses condition damage, but you’re wearing your spike-defense gear).

Again, there’s no issue of offense vs. defense – each piece of gear has one (and only one) stat bonus from each of those two categories. But there’s still plenty of room to create builds by choosing what type of each category you bring, and how they synergize with (or compensate for) your skill and trait choices. The whole concept of Tank and DPS is thrown right out the window as far as your gear is concerned (though your skills and traits can still lean you toward one of those roles).

And you can also mix and match stats between armor pieces. For example, do you play it safe and choose toughness on half your gear and vitality on the other half, or go 100% into one at the expense of the other? Perhaps you have traits and skills which grant you extra Intensity, so you’ll complement that by wearing gear with higher Precision. Or maybe you have skills which proc special effects on a crit – the crit damage isn’t as important as simply proccing that effect, so you heavily emphasize Precision as your exclusive offensive stat on all gear (you’re triggering special effects more often at the expense of overall damage).

Unfortunately, the Berserker genie has been out of the bottle for far too long, and I doubt we’re going to see any kind of significant gear overhaul like this now. But really, I think a system like this would create a much more diverse set of gear builds that we have now.

Dee Jay.2460:

The problem isn’t that Zerker gear is somehow superior to other gear, it’s just that DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in dungeons and high-level fractals.

DPS also has the side-effect of making things a lot easier thanks to the vastly higher kill-speed.

I recently had the pleasure of doing Fractals level 49 on my Thief. I have 16.000 HP which is quite significant for a Thief.

But guess what, it made no difference whatsoever. Basically anything that hit you was a 1-shot. The Vitality was completely wasted. The most extreme example are the mobs in the Char Fractal where the Mages kill you instantly before there’s even any sort of animation.

4000 extra HP in that scenario made little to no difference.

15% extra Precision however would have.

The appeal of Zerker gear is because of stupid game-design and its obsession with instant-gibs. No amount of stat shuffling is going to change that.

That’s why every PvE class guide is basically about how to maximize your DPS/group DPS.

This is arguably not entirely true. Zerks works because it has the best stat-synergy. It give you damage, increases your critical damage and increases your chance to critically damage someone overall. It’s the most self rewarding stat-set in the game.

Meanwhile, condition damage is pretty stronk in PVP but say you use condition damage in PVE and enjoy being the laughing stock of anyone remotely serious about this game.

chronometria.3708:

Changing AI like that is a very bad idea. This actually happened back in beta, in regards to AOE attacks, to the point where nobody could actually land an aoe attack on a mob and putting aoe on ones self meant that a mob would never engage you in close combat.

I`m a warrior with a rifle…so any change like that would mean that rifle would become a pvp only weapon as my killshots would never land. Some ranged mobs already do break off frequently and that’s ok for them, but if all mobs did that, for, say, thousand blades, then we may as well all just use auto attacks all day and where is the fun in that?

if this is true, I really wish they have left the beta AI.

that would made the GW2 world better interesting place, also would force people to play better, use CC and play together.

InfernoHero.5687:

I really haven’t seen a thread like this. There may be a few, as I did not do any amount of searching. If so, I apologize.

How would YOU incentivise using gear other than zerkers in PvE?

I’m not saying that players aren’t justified in forcing others to use zerkers, because they are. Zerkers gear is the optimal choice if you’re out in open world PvE or Dungeons.

I personally have never used zerkers and find no issue finding groups for content, but having this mentality clouding Guild Wars 2 is some what disheartening.

So, once again, how would you incentivise using gear other than zerkers?

My suggestion:

Cause defencive stats like Vitality and Toughness to interact with skill cooldowns. For example, toughness could lower a warrior’s stance cooldowns.

as long as the active combat system exists, good players wont need defensive gear. changing AI so monsters attack faster will only nerf the “fun”.

what arenanet can do so bad players will be punished for running berserker is simply developing new dungeons with bosses like lupicus.

content is stale and boring. even the worst players can get away after 1,5 years of playing the same content.

digiowl.9620:

hendo.1940:

Tim.5681:

IndigoSundown.5419:

A saner option might be to restore the original design intent to make the GW2 replacement for tanking, the use of CC, to be a more reliable option, and to rebalance group content so it’s actually needed. While redesigning mob behaviors and the way boss mobs deal with CC would be a hefty undertaking, this would not affect PvP combat, and is therefore a more viable option.

I agree with this. Bosses with 30-60 stacks of Indignant, immunity to half your control skills (pulls, blinds, warding lines etc), “structural” bosses that can’t be critted (and the loss of all the CC that depends on crits), gigantic HP pools: these things contribute to the DPS fixation. If boss mechanics were redesigned to make CC viable & needed you would see less of the DPS mentality out of necessity because right now it’s 100% DPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBtFWy-ccTk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1-rF2Q3uw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKQtrOVR7w

I hear voip, and i hear kittening on PUGs. PVE should not be tuned for the former, and should be tuned for the latter. If you need a drilled group and VOIP to pull of interrupts, they are worthless.

as far as i know arenanet made explorer mode especially for organized groups and to provide them a “mind blowing experience”.
anet failed to reach that goal but im pretty sure this is going to change in the future.

dungeons shouldnt be tuned for PUGs.
99% of the game is tuned for them already. enough is enough.
no more easy-mode content.

As others have said, I’ll go ahead and share my motto/playstyle: If you can kill it fast enough, you don’t need to worry about toughness/vitality. Berserker for life until there comes a new stat set that does more damage.

In high level fractals, everything hits so hard that it doesn’t matter how much toughness/vitality to have, you will lose a lot, if not all, of your health.

Not that I’m saying we need a dedicated healing class (we most certainly DO NOT), but without such a role available, you improvise by doing more damage and killing things faster before it can kill you. You also have to buff your party with your own skills and help each other up as soon as they go down. 1 defeated player greatly reduces your overall damage, thereby increase the damage they take in return. So if you REALLY want to help your team: kill things as fast as you can, revive the downed ASAP, and provide whatever little boons/support you can so they can do more damage, too.

To make anything other than damage or damage/support hybrid builds viable in places like really high level fractals, you would need a dedicated healing class with skills like Protective Spirit from Guild Wars. It’s how lvl 20 players can take on level 30+ enemies and survive in GW1 (plus GW1 had a far superior health regeneration system). For a lvl 80 character to take on a level 85+, you pretty much need a dedicated healing class. The high level fractals are deliberately designed so that, eventually, you CANNOT progress to any higher levels no matter how high your AR is because everything kills you in one hit even with all your boons/toughness/vitality. Even at a low 40, some foes hit for 15-25k damage. Nothing survives more than one hit from that.

So yeah, kill it yesterday.

The typical proposal to solve the zerker issue is to change the AI/design of mobs but there are already mobs in the game that counter “zerkers”. They attack much much faster than other mobs, they have more complex skills/abilities and they come in groups (they also buff each other).

I’m talking about the Edge of the Mists mobs, and especially the Aetherblades, which appear to attack at a player-like speed, other mobs in EotM are well designed too.

They should make a dungeon with EotM mobs/bosses it would be fun and way way more challenging than any other dungeons we have now.

Also, the training npcs in the Heart of the Mists also attack at player-speed, so this type of AI is already in the game, it isn’t used in dungeons for some obscure reason, but it IS there.

Have you people even played an action game? Or should taking a punch to the face be rewarded?

hurr durr traditional mmorpg tank garbage

I’m not entirely sure why people think being made to strap on PVT or clerics and facetank some damage makes for challenging or interesting content.

It is also rather telling that those people who bemoan the zerk meta in instanced pve, more often than not fail to mention the fact that when considering the whole game their beloved tank/condi/cc specs are in fact the dominant force/meta for the main part.

The only mentality that needs fixing here is the one coming from the anti zerk camp if we are being honest about it.

“Zerk is easy and takes no skill, unlike my super dooper shout heal clerics facetank! You must think of the children and nerf those nasty zerkers!”. “It’s just not fair that my WvW lolzerg PVT warrior door smashing group is not as optimal in instanced pve as a dedicated full glass zerk group, burn them all!”.

With the amount of one shot mechanics in this game, you can never fix the zerker mentality. Not to mention, your dungeon bosses are all immune to your other skills, stuns, roots, snares or other things, all that matters for your dungeons, is DPS.

In a game without trinity where there is no healer, you are forced to make one shot mechanics. If you add more intense mechanics where people take damage, you need healers.

Sadly, this is where GW2 design for dungeons falls apart.
I think the biggest mistake GW2 took was that, they ignored their biggest hitter.
They should have buffed the event rewards and make people join events somehow, instead they buffed the dungeon rewards.

GW2 dungeons were already wrong design wise, only allowing certain meta classes like 3XWarriors1XMesmer1XGuard. Buffing them only made people realize how faulty their endgame was.

I swear to you, if this game gave 2 golds for every event chain that you complete in 60+ zones, i’d do them like crazy. I hate dungeons in this game really bad.

Maximus Delion.8719:

The biggest part of the problem is that the three stats on Berserker gear have a MASSIVE synergistic effect with each other. Your overall damage is increased, you crit more often and your crits cause more damage. Those three stats should never have been together on the same piece of gear. You should have to decide whether to crit more often but not cause as much damage per crit, or vice versa… or to hedge your bets and simply increase base damage across the board (flatten out the peaks and valleys and emphasize a strong consistent average). But having all three of these together is a level of epicness equivalent to a guitar-playing undead dude riding on a dinosaur that’s standing on a laser that’s mounted to a rocket which is strapped to the back of a shark.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6r71meMvq1qzozj1.jpg

If each piece of gear only had one offensive stat, one defensive stat and one “utility” stat (gold find, XP gain, karma gain… perhaps Agony Resistance and other special types of fractal/dungeon damage resistances…) then we’d have a lot more variety of viable builds.

Using this system, there is no struggle between offense and defense.

Everyone has offense – it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Precision: I crit a lot but each one isn’t very hard
- Intensity: I don’t crit as often but when I do I hit hard
- Power: I don’t crit as often but I have a higher base damage

And everyone has defense – again, it’s just a question of what ONE type you choose:

- Vitality: I can survive a spike but am weak to pressure
- Toughness: I can survive pressure but am weak to spikes
- Healing Power: I’m fairly squishy overall but compensate with strong heals

Mix and match one stat from each of those two categories to your heart’s content, and throw in your “utility” stat for flavor. Most gear would be on even footing unless you’re facing specific mechanics that call for one gear type over another (i.e. a boss that exclusively uses condition damage, but you’re wearing your spike-defense gear).

Again, there’s no issue of offense vs. defense – each piece of gear has one (and only one) stat bonus from each of those two categories. But there’s still plenty of room to create builds by choosing what type of each category you bring, and how they synergize with (or compensate for) your skill and trait choices. The whole concept of Tank and DPS is thrown right out the window as far as your gear is concerned (though your skills and traits can still lean you toward one of those roles).

And you can also mix and match stats between armor pieces. For example, do you play it safe and choose toughness on half your gear and vitality on the other half, or go 100% into one at the expense of the other? Perhaps you have traits and skills which grant you extra Intensity, so you’ll complement that by wearing gear with higher Precision. Or maybe you have skills which proc special effects on a crit – the crit damage isn’t as important as simply proccing that effect, so you heavily emphasize Precision as your exclusive offensive stat on all gear (you’re triggering special effects more often at the expense of overall damage).

Unfortunately, the Berserker genie has been out of the bottle for far too long, and I doubt we’re going to see any kind of significant gear overhaul like this now. But really, I think a system like this would create a much more diverse set of gear builds that we have now.

I like that idea a lot. Just use two stats and get rid of the third option. When they are buffing the rune sets this sounds like a really good combo.

Hakkology.3189:

With the amount of one shot mechanics in this game, you can never fix the zerker mentality. Not to mention, your dungeon bosses are all immune to your other skills, stuns, roots, snares or other things, all that matters for your dungeons, is DPS.

I don’t know man, my control skills work against dungeon bosses. I can snare them, stun them for up to 5 seconds and decrease their damage output (weakness). What dungeon bosses did you have in mind?

P.S. : It’s still not too late. This game’s power comes from events. Give us rewarding events all around the world and make events more populated on every zone. Events force us to use utility skills, survival skills or other skills that you would never consider using in dungeons. Events make builds like PVT make sense.

Open world is so hard for berserkers’ that they wouldn’t be able to complete them. Not to mention most of the players forgot how to survive when there is a pressure because they just stack. Open world events are the future of gw2 pve and they force people to play together which is the spirit of all the mmos, unlike instances.

Maximus Delion.8719:

The biggest part of the problem is that the three stats on Berserker gear have a MASSIVE synergistic effect with each other.

This is a notion I see a lot, but this simply isn’t true. All stats have a synergistic effect with each other, and defensive stats scale in the same manner as offensive stats in respect to each other. Vitality scales geometrically (that is, they multiply each other) with toughness and linearly with healing power (via healing capacitance), and toughness scales geometrically with both vitality and healing power.

The solution to the zerker problem is about how enemy encounters are designed. With the active defenses every class gets, there’s no reason to not run berserker in PVE. Enemy attacks are slow and easily kited, dodged, blocked, etc. Enemies behave in a straightforward manner, running directly into your blade and doing nothing else. Enemies have a ton of gimmicks that don’t amount to anything meaningful.

The good news is, these changes are already taking place with enemy design. The zerker mentality itself might only be a temporary issue.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Maximus Delion.8719:

The biggest part of the problem is that the three stats on Berserker gear have a MASSIVE synergistic effect with each other.

This is a notion I see a lot, but this simply isn’t true. All stats have a synergistic effect with each other, and defensive stats scale in the same manner as offensive stats in respect to each other. Vitality scales geometrically (that is, they multiply each other) with toughness and linearly with healing power (via healing capacitance), and toughness scales geometrically with both vitality and healing power.

The main issue with Toughness is that it scales badly compared to power. The main damage formula is Power * Weapon / Toughness + Armor, in other words, each 10 points in Power are way more rewarding than 10 points in Toughness and you need more Toughness to offset the extra damage of Power, making Toughness a poor choice compared to Power.

The solution to the zerker problem is about how enemy encounters are designed. With the active defenses every class gets, there’s no reason to not run berserker in PVE. Enemy attacks are slow and easily kited, dodged, blocked, etc. Enemies behave in a straightforward manner, running directly into your blade and doing nothing else. Enemies have a ton of gimmicks that don’t amount to anything meaningful.

The good news is, these changes are already taking place with enemy design. The zerker mentality itself might only be a temporary issue.

Yes, Arenanet has shown a great change in mob design with EotM mobs and hopefully they will continue with those improved mob designs and apply them to dungeons/fractals and even general pve.