Guild Wars 2

Let me posit something.
The reason people have adopted the zerker mentality is because it’s the most efficient way of playing.
The content is currently not interesting enough to hold a player’s attention based on gameplay alone.
The things that most players are playing for now are achievements and rewards.

Therefore, people aren’t interested in prolonging exposure to content they otherwise don’t enjoy and are looking for the quickest route to the reward.

This won’t change until the gameplay itself and encounter mechanics actually become fun and reactive rather than scripted and tedious.
The gameplay needs to be more rewarding than the items and achievements.

1) PvE is really easy

2) Faster clear times means more loot

Get it.

First of all: no more instant deaths of characters that has maxed toughness.

Standing still and face tanking everything by stacking over9000 toughness and heal pot is the kind of epic gameplay experience we need for a bright, exciting future!

I mean why bothering moving out of the way of getting smashed in the face when you can simply take it on the chin and laugh.

Using skills and abilities, using active defense, using group coordination and thus being able to bring more damage to the fore to clear the content you have done several hundred times before a bit faster? Don’t be daft!

After all having glass dps be optimal in instanced pve makes it totally unfair on all the passive tanky spec guys who only dominate pretty much all of the the games competitive content and plough through the rest of it with relative ease. No they must be optimal in every single facet of the game, including instanced pve.

I for one cannot wait to bow down to our PVT overlords and experience exhilarating multi hour dungeon runs.

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.

This.

I’d also like to add they have great PvP combat system and then failed utterly to account for it in their initial mob designs for PVE. This is why you see so much more diversity in the sPvP and WvW builds. Because there you aren’t facing a clumsy AI, you are facing people. But keep in mind it’s nearly impossible to create a PVE encounter that doesn’t get old the Nth time you’ve done it.

It also boils down to most PvE is meant to be completed by anyone and just about any build. That puts a hard cap on how tough they can make something, it also means players who can build for zerker and stay up through encounters are ALWAYS going to dominate.

Non-zerker builds are already being given preference because they simply can’t make a encounter that would challenge zerkers and still be accessible to non-zerkers. And despite all the bellyaching, zerker builds are every bit a valid play style as any other.

Berserker doesn’t need fixing its the rest of the setup for most classes that do. Almost every class has one build that is vastly superior with berserker gear with that one weapon that you have to have equip to make it all work (GS for warriors for example). This leaves the other 90% of weapons considered worthless because they were made for other specs and gear setups that are almost never used because they are considered inferior.

The issue isn’t about berserker being powerful or really instances and one shot mechanics, its about how boring it can really be to just play one spec and one weapon setup in pve. A few months back I was playing only a couple hours a week not because I didn’t have time but because GS warrior in berserker gear with spec was so boring. It was pretty much the same for the other classes as well since there is little change in play style once you figure the class out.

Condition needs to be fixed to actually be an acceptable dps spec and gear setup even if there are multiples in the same run. Tanky specs should provide boosts that would actually be considered good in groups in much larger areas. Its kinda sad looking at some of the group benefits they have being only a melee range benefit. If anything all group buffs provided by dps traits should be removed and given to those that sacrifice their personal dps to increase the effectiveness of the group. Maybe toughness and vitality should have secondary effects like high amounts of toughness have a chance give protection to you and people around you when you are hit.

Otherwise I don’t see world events keeping people playing this game forever. Without variety its just boring. Who honestly wants to be clones of everyone else of the class you play. Its ridiculous that you almost just expect certain classes to be carrying the same weapons and trait setups as the next one.

Dungeons do need to be changed, but not until class setups between traits and weapons/gear are fixed to be equal and desirable to those playing their class and those playing with those people that choose to play how they did. Variety is a good thing and it needs to be more then just having different classes in a group. Other MMO’s have variety working out and not being shunned and it helps people want to stick around since if they get bored then they can just change it up and do something else and still be valuable.

IndigoSundown.5419:

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…

You mean that insignificantly small minority?

How many people do hard content just for the sake of hard content? very few. And out of them the majority does it for bragging rights. Done it once ? Rights acquired. No need to repeat.

So what then?

Vargamonth.2047:

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.

Sorry to break it to you but GW2’s dungeons were designed in such a way that in 90% of cases if you stick with it and pull through the wipes you’ll eventually get it done.
This is intended – it is by design.

In GW1 if you dies you would accumulate death penalty – when enough stacked and before there were means of removal it could make certain fights a clear death sentence.
In elite areas – UW/FOW a party wipe meant kicking all players outside with the loss of all progress.

What we have in GW2 is easy mode compared to that approach.

The dungeons mind you are not that easy to complete though – you now have certainty that you’ll get them done because you’ve been doing them for the past year – same as the pugs. You now have gear and know your class and build well.

When the game came out that wasn’t the case – the groups didn’t know what to do, were undergeared and not very experienced – the content hasn’t become easier – the players have gotten better.

So how do you fix it? you don’t.
Just add in " Hard Mode " – like in GW1 – put in better rewards for that and give players a chance who want harder content a choice.

That’s pretty much the only thing you can do now – if you revamp it all you’ll basically destroy the average newbie party that are just getting in the game.

Your idea about " encouraging a success " instead of clearing it as fast as possible is silly.
As soon as people learn how to succeed at it consistently ( 5-10 runs ) it will become a race to complete it as fast as possible.
This is true for all content. And if it can’t be cleared fast it won’t be done.

Again I ask – why are SE P2, COF P3 and the new Aetherblade TA path never done? Because they’re too long. Why would people bother?

Even the elite content you mention from GW1 was being cleared by speed runs. Even though there was a possibility of failure – people found out how to do it and became good at it.

You can’t fix " Zerker " because it’s not about zerker gear – it’s about getting rewards FAST and hard.

And in a game where Ascended is a thing, where legendary weapons take a LONG time to build and stuff in the gem store is more and more difficult to get with just in game gold you can’t really expect people to not want the most gold for their time spent now can you?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

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

No matter how the enemy design changes – there will always be the optimal gear set or combo that’ll be desired – whatever that is.
Why do you think that will just go away ? Because people want it to?

Just be prepared for these threads in the future when we’ll call them " the something something mentality ".

Human nature doesn’t change.

maddoctor.2738:

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.

Let’s look at some numbers, starting at 2500 Power versus 2500 Toughness and going up in increments of 10. Weapon damage is Ascended Rifle and Defense is from Ascended Light Armor.

(Power * Weapon 1100 * Coefficient 1) / (Defense 967 + Toughness) = Damage Taken

(2500 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2500) = 793.193
(2510 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2510) = 794.075
(2520 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2520) = 794.953
(2530 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2530) = 795.825
(2540 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2540) = 796.692
(2550 * 1100 * 1) / (967 + 2550) = 797.555

Increase in damage taken < 1 per 10 power investment versus 10 toughness investment.

Now, increasing the coefficient to 3.

(2500 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2500) = 2379.579
(2510 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2510) = 2382.226
(2520 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2520) = 2384.858
(2530 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2530) = 2387.475
(2540 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2540) = 2390.077
(2550 * 1100 * 3) / (967 + 2550) = 2392.664

Increase in damage taken < 3 per 10 power investment versus 10 toughness investment.

Throw in a critical.

(2500 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2500) = 6186.905
(2510 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2510) = 6193.788
(2520 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2520) = 6200.631
(2530 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2530) = 6207.435
(2540 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2540) = 6214.200
(2550 * 1100 * 3 * 2.6) / (967 + 2550) = 6220.927

Increase in damage taken < 7 per 10 power investment versus 10 toughness investment.

Make of these numbers what you will. Seems to me that Toughness scales pretty well with Power, and that the real issue is more in skill coefficient and crit multiplier.

Basharic.1654:

Non-zerker builds are already being given preference because they simply can’t make a encounter that would challenge zerkers and still be accessible to non-zerkers. And despite all the bellyaching, zerker builds are every bit a valid play style as any other.

Of course they can; it’s actually fairly easy to do.
The tricky part is doing it while keeping the risk vs reward idea and avoiding cheap solutions (like an enviromental damage source ticking for X each second), but it’s still far from a difficult task.

Let’s think on a fractal version of the marionette, where the whole group stays on one single lane fighting against an endless stream of enemy waves.

The encounter implies some kind of DPS check (in order to avoid being overwhelmed by stacked waves, which unlike in the open world marionette event, would actually try to kill the players) and the idea of a dead foe not being a threat anymore remains true.
A full DPS group could, however, bring much more damage than what is actually needed and suffer by attrition (higher reliance on defensive skills that could be on cooldown, less capabilities to recover health between waves, …) where a more balanced setup wouldn’t.
It’s all about the details. Depending on how you design the encounter (when does a new enemy wave spawn? can the players get out of combat and fully regen between waves? does the lane provide LoS spots? does it provide some enviromental weapons, like mortars, that players could use if lacking a bit of damage?), you can make it to be beatable by a wide spectrum of setups while offering an easier time to whichever you want.

On top of this defense, every fixed amount of time (or number of waves, depending how you designed the respawn) a portal would activate, allowing ONE character to enter and face a champion in order to sever a chain.

Now again, this would imply some kind of DPS check, and now again, the damage output of a berserker spec could be far from needed. Like it should be for the most part of the game, a full DPS spec would provide a faster completion time while involving a higher risk (specially if having to fight alone, without the cover of some ally defensive tool) of failure, which could be devastating depending on the design (does a single platform fail involve a wipe? If not, will be the defeated player be ported back to the lane or will the group be forced to continue with one memeber missing until that platform gets beaten).

As it happened on the original event, players succeeding on a platform would get that debuff preventing them for entering another portal for a while (another two severing attempts). This would prevent the whole group being carried by some player/build and would allow bringing some kind of dedicated support (which for some unknown reason people seem to love) which won’t need to fight on a platform (and probably lack the needed DPS).