Guild Wars 2

Don’t forget about your stats for mounts and ‘sub-classing’…

Yet another convoluted and contrived idea requiring a complete rebuild of the game.

And it still does nothing to change what the intentions of imaginary ‘needed’ changes are.

\O/ #shocking

Stooperdale.3560:

‘Zerker only’ is a combination of problems
- no defensive balance is required in PvE – full dps provides defense by killing enemies
- the condition cap prevents conditions from being useful in PvE
- this only leaves 3 required stats : power, precision, and ferocity – dire and zerker

The first solution should therefore be a change to the condition cap. This would bring variation in builds with players selecting from four dps stats. This would also bring variety of gear and play style for different classes.

You would still see ‘dps only’ groups but that is a much harder issue to solve. If experienced dungeon runners need vitality/toughness when they are using optimum tactics, optimum builds, and good dodges, what hope is there for beginners?

Pretty much the problem of PvE.

What’s the most common mob stats in PvE?

• Very low Armor (General cause to Direct Dmg vulnerability)
• Spike dmg potentials (Deal high dmg per attack)
• High HP (Used as to compensate rank ups for increased difficulty, but is very vulnerable to Direct Dmg)
• Overly simple abilities (Can hit 1 mob, inflict 1 stack of this condition, etc)
• Attacks once every 3-5 seconds (Dunno why vast majority of mobs still attack so slow)

Rarely mobs will display traits like Heavy Armor, Heavy DoT, Heavy Boon usage and etc.
This will narrow the TRUE usefulness of other stat sets to Champs and above rank mobs, since they are not always the type of mobs which melts in 1-3 seconds, under insane numbers of glass cannons…

Not to mention professions like Necromancer and Engineer, which don’t possess good Direct Dmg properties.
Necromancers are masters of Attrition combat. (You let your enemy bleed to death, while destroying their advantages)
Engineers are Jack of All trades with potent “Condition burst” abilities along with many Control effect inflicting skills. (Mix of everything, but never master of 1 path)

I could put it other way too.

Direct Dmg builds and Berserker stat are given the general superiority over vast majority of PvE content.

Other builds and stat sets are limited to the extremely small minority of mobs, which consists of mostly Champions and above ranked boss monsters with special mechanics, that prevents simple combat styles from taking the lead.

There’s another problem from this “Universal mob Design”: majority of combat mechanics are not used in the most of the PvE, due to over simplified mobs, you’re not required to dodge most of the time or use some other abilities, since majority of mobs cannot kill you, unless you go AFK…

While not exactly about Berserker stats, but these Berserking Glass cannons don’t need to invest in defenses and other abilities for majority of PvE content. They’re only encouraged to invest in maximum DPS, since everyone else are doing so, if they don’t, they might not hit “the max dmg contribution threshold” of the reward requirements.

Support is not very important either, if you can kill the mob fast enough, why waste DPS on longevity, when the combat scenario never takes too long…

Berserker gear really doesn’t matter much from a performance perspective.

The difference between full Berserker armor and full Soldier armor is only slightly more than having a single trait difference.

The difference between full Berserker everything and full Soldier everything is roughly 4 traits.

A 100% Berserker character deals less than 50% more damage than a full Soldier character – if your full Zerk group can drop a boss in 10 seconds, a full Soldier group can do it in 15.

It matters so, so much less than using high damage traits, properly buffing your group and maintaining strong damage rotations that it should honestly be an afterthought.

Berserker gear mostly matters for signaling. You can’t ping your traits, or ping that you can play your character properly, which is what really matters. But you can ping your gear, and pinging whatever DnT uses at least shows that you’ve done 5 minutes of homework and have some degree of seriousness about what you’re doing.

The distinction is crucial. People have wildly inaccurate views about the actual relative merits of different sets of gear, all they know is that Berserker is best. Chipping away at the margins or adjusting the differences won’t matter at all; Berserker will still be the highest damage, and thus it will still send the clear signal of seriousness, which is all that really matters here.

Ensign: Don’t forget that a fight that takes longer also means that you might get in trouble with the cooldown of your weapon-/skills.

Jana.6831:

Ensign: Don’t forget that a fight that takes longer also means that you might get in trouble with the cooldown of your weapon-/skills.

For sure, though this is more an issue with active defenses (Wall of Reflection, Feedback, Virtues / Aegis, running out of endurance, etc) or compressing more damage into a Time Warp than slightly less optimal DPS patterns. Squeezing out more damage (via optimized damage gear) while your buffs and active defenses hold out can be really important for streamlining a dungeon run.

I am not saying that it’s not important, it really is, especially when you have a lot of practice at a particular dungeon.

I’m saying that people massively overestimate the importance of that particular piece of the puzzle. You would think from the way people talk that Berserker gear was responsible for a 10x difference in the damage they deal, not a 1.5x difference.

Afya.5842:

The problem isn’t in zerker gear but the whole pve mechanic.

First, mobs generally have low armor, high hp. So this favors direct damage over condi. See husks in wurm fight in contrast, they have super high armor but low hp. This is from one extreme to another. This aspect of the game really needs some balance.

Second, condi doesn’t gain advantage from vulnerability and damage modifier. 25 stacks of vuln are became useless. Either change vuln to something else than also help condi, or make another equivalent condition to boost condi damage.

3rd, defience, unshakable, control builds became absolute useless in front of it. Blind and aegis are suppose to do the same thing, but with unshakable, blind stands no chance. So for some class like necro which is condition centric, it’s in a huge disadvantage compare to say guardian which is boon centric. Unshakable really HAS to go.

4th, 90% of the bosses use OHKO spike damage, so healing build is useless if the teammates can dodge. This promote self dodging/blocking than rely on teammate’s heal. Imo, some fights should change so boss do sustain damage.

5th, there just isn’t one full damage condi gear in game. Rampager is hybrid at most.

I think I pretty much sum up the whole pve problem for you. If you still can’t understand the problem isn’t in zerker gear, I really can’t help anymore.

^ this and nothing else

In any game, as players progress, they become more skillful at playing their characters, which means that they can survive situations that would kill less skillful players, which means that they can get away with more of a “glass cannon” build.

The downside of a glass cannon build is, of course, that you are more fragile in combat. However, if player skill compensates for this, then why go any other way? So, it’s almost inevitable that skilled players will gravitate towards such gear, driving up the price. It’s not because “berserker is overpowered”. It’s because players get better with time and practice. If you nerf berserker gear, then whatever the next highest DPS gear is will become the new berserker gear. If you nerf that, then whatever is currently third in DPS will become the new berserker gear, and so on.

This is true in PvE. In WvW, on the flip side, players get better and better at killing other players, so the glass cannon build becomes more difficult to pull off successfully.