Guild Wars 2

Right now the PvE meta is for the MOST part, Zerker/Assassins Gear or go home. But anyone who does dungeons would know this.

As someone who has followed this game since its inception from what… 2010 was it? And played the beta’s and almost everyday since its release (yeah, I have no life :P) I recall one of this games foundations was the ability to “play how you want” because, NO TRINITY.

The roles in this game are DPS, CC, Support.

People don’t play support because running FULL ZERK doesn’t really effect your support capabilities that much… I mean warrior banners anyone? Guardian protection, block and blind spam anyone? well… you get it. And CC? Everyone has CC built into their weapon abilities so forget about speccing for that.

So this games meta was always going to be a DPS fest. And here we are, with arenanet nerfing crit damage slightly (I do like the ferocity idea, kudo’s) and changing runes/sigils. Now, is ANYONE supposed to believe that a slight nerf will change anything? Clearly it won’t, zerker will still reign supreme.

So my point, if Arenanet really want to address the Meta and make it “better” and allow players to “play how they want”… why not just overhaul the Classes in the game and remaster the way traits really effect your skills in combat? Or even drastically changing the way AI works and responds to and acting group… Of course these are harder to do, but it is the right way of going about that.

Hell, addressing the “problems” with runes actually only serves to stamp out build diversity even more. And it hurts support a lot more than the slight nerf to crit damage furthering Zerker elitist mentality. And if wooden potatoes is right about how the new runes will work, that nerf will not be noticeable since the buff to DPS based runes with things like might duration will only serve to extend the gap of why anyone would need a support based build.

Tell me what you think.

PvE combat simply doesn’t push players to find any alternatives, moreover the alternatives that exist are weak due to the fact that they scale much less than “DPS”.

Say you want to focus solely on support, you wanted to be the supportiest of the supports. What stats would you focus on? What stat do your support skills benefit from? At most Healing Power and Boon Duration, you could argue Precision for any on crit vigor/might effects.

How about control, what stats help increase your ability to control opponents? Condition duration. . . and maybe possibly precision?

Compare that to the amount of damage increasing stats that exist, Power, Precision, Ferocity, Condition Damage, Condition Duration. That doesn’t seem equal to me, does it seem equal to you?

TL:DR There is no purpose for anything other dps in PvE, and even if there was, there is significantly more statistical favor towards dps than any other available role.

CC = unneeded because AI is stupid and predictable
healing = you have enough even if you spec for DPS
DPS = the classes with more life and armor can still do as much DPS as medium and light armor classes, even when built equally for DPS.

PvE is a mess because slow stupid AI and easy access to damage mitigation and “enough” healing make it pretty pointless to be anything but a warrior in berserker gear.

Light armor classes should always do more damage than medium armor classes, who should in turn always do more damage than heavy armor classes, assuming they’re all built for DPS. Smarter AI would go a long way towards making CC actually useful in PvE, and I’d love to see the attack speed for enemies doubled, both the interval and and the rate, while the damage was halved. More pressure and making dodging more difficult would go a long way towards making support more needful. Condition builds should really be a slightly slower but more reliable, lower risk option than DPS builds, but that would require making direct combat actually risky enough for the lower risk to look appealing.

imsoenthused.1634:

CC = unneeded because AI is stupid and predictable
healing = you have enough even if you spec for DPS
DPS = the classes with more life and armor can still do as much DPS as medium and light armor classes, even when built equally for DPS.

PvE is a mess because slow stupid AI and easy access to damage mitigation and “enough” healing make it pretty pointless to be anything but a warrior in berserker gear.

Light armor classes should always do more damage than medium armor classes, who should in turn always do more damage than heavy armor classes, assuming they’re all built for DPS. Smarter AI would go a long way towards making CC actually useful in PvE, and I’d love to see the attack speed for enemies doubled, both the interval and and the rate, while the damage was halved. More pressure and making dodging more difficult would go a long way towards making support more needful. Condition builds should really be a slightly slower but more reliable, lower risk option than DPS builds, but that would require making direct combat actually risky enough for the lower risk to look appealing.

You are so right They do need a class traits and AI rework as stated towards the end of my post. Gear stat tweaks are not the right way to go.

There is no PvE meta, it’s dungeon meta and dungeons have been abandoned by anet for almost a year now so how exactly that’s a problem?

The meta in PvE content that is being developed is zerg, not zerk.

I agree with you that critical damage is not the problem. All my level 80 characters are full zerker and even after the patch I’m not going to change any of their gear because zerker will still be the most efficient way to play the game. Why? Because of the way the game is designed, with every class having healing, condition removal, healing being very weak and a lack of a conventional aggro system to make tanking viable and broken game mechanics like reflection, corner stacking and vigor. If it is possible to avoid damage altogether by using these mechanics then why bother taking defensive stats? I read on another thread where they said that because each condition stack takes up server bandwidth, they are not going to bother removing the 25 condition cap so basically condition builds will never be as good as direct damage builds.

Having said that, they claim that nerfing critical damage is only the first step and that they are going to take other measures which will hopefully increase build diversity. I think they should balance out the classes by creating new skills for every profession because at the moment some classes like the Guardian bring just so much utility for the team while still running DPS builds whereas professions like Necromancer are despised in dungeon teams because they bring almost nothing. Heavy armor classes in general are just too good.

Conditions should work differently across the board – pvp, pve and wvw.

Instead of a stack limit of 25 per victim, there should be a stack limit in terms of how many stacks each person can apply to someone. Perhaps a stack of 10 for each player.

In PvE condition builds are not very useful when you’re in a group. When you solo and in wvw and pvp, condition builds are too powerful. A happy medium between the two should be created.

haviz.1340:

There is no PvE meta, it’s dungeon meta and dungeons have been abandoned by anet for almost a year now so how exactly that’s a problem?

The meta in PvE content that is being developed is zerg, not zerk.

This, people seem to confuse highly niche, gear ping dungeon speed run groups with what is tantamount to the overarching pve model in this game. A massive mistake,

Even within the context of dungeons themselves, the vast majority are not running perfectly optimized zerk groups. The issue is merely people go into it with a preconceived bias (“I hate zerkers”) and as such, everytime they clock a zerk group in LFG they think the world is ending.

The meta in pve is far from full glass zerk when you look at the full picture. The meta in the game overall when you factor in WvW and spvp is again, far from full zerk. But let’s all moan about zerkers, they are doing dungeons faster than me when they are in an optimized group, the bstards!!!!

So what if people can use dps gear and provide support in the pve environ? Where is the issue exactly? Those other gear sets are not invalidated all of a sudden. If you are not good enough to go full glass, you use them. If you want to do more open world stuff they are more optimal, if you want to WvW or spvp they are more optimal and if you want to run dungeons they are still more than viable.

“I want to wear full clerics on my guard and it is unfair that that other guard in zerk can do more damage than me!”. It doesn’t seem to be a case of “play how I want” more a case of “I must be allowed to play how I want and no other option is allowed to be more optimal”. Which is a weird sentiment.

You do realize that your “role” in this damage/cc/sustain has nothing to do with your gear right?
I’ve seen guardians who run healing, protection and reflects as well as stack might for their team while being in full zerker.
Your role =/= your gear.

Your gear is there to determine how many hits you take.
Good player? Zerker gear = don’t take hits don’t die.
Bad player? Mix in PVT = take more hits and still stay alive.

Also Fenrir get is right. You might want to give a thought to what he’s posted.
Full zerker elitist groups are VERY rare.

we need better support skills and (yes i will say it) tanking skills, and along with that some dungeon/fractal bosses revamp that will require the players use both the support and the tanking skills, and then just enjoy! this will indeed be a light trinity but will also be more entertaining

Immensus.9732:

we need better support skills and (yes i will say it) tanking skills, and along with that some dungeon/fractal bosses revamp that will require the players use both the support and the tanking skills, and then just enjoy! this will indeed be a light trinity but will also be more entertaining

Support is already needed if you want to complete the content painlessly. But how can you enjoy facetanking?

Also, the only reason “everyone can see” zerker meta only in dungeons is because the groups that are looking for people with specific requirements fill up much slower. That’s always the case. The vast majority of people are not playing the meta hence it’s not even the meta. Not to mention that the content is apparently niche and no longer being developed.

Get rid of butt-fighting (it’s ridiculous), making tanking stats more meaningful. People don’t tend to take vitality/toughness because a monster is either going to one shot you, or its’ not. They made dodging such a priority that taking anything other than a one shot is simply something we don’t care about.

CC is generally useless because it doesn’t stay on long enough to really do anything but tickle most enemies.

Healing is generally useless because it doesn’t stop you from being one shot when you fail to dodge.

When you make every single other mechanic in your game pointless people stack on damage. This is basic game design philosophy.

Let’s just hope anet doesn’t listen to the feedback filled with hyperboles.

Imho, the real problem is that defensive stats have no impact on active defensive skills.
Thus a char geared with offensive stats still gets the same active mitigation of a defensive-geared char. And this mitigation often consists of a full negation of the damage received, or in a consistent reduction, thus making the passive mitigation even less important.
Some people may think that any gear other than zerk should be “training wheel” gear, but i disagree. All gear should be equally important, just doing different things for different roles.

There are 2 mitigations of damage that mostly responsible for the current state. The first one is aegis which guardian provides and the second are reflections. Decrease their abundance or uptime and it is much harder for glass cannons to play giving tanky gears more viability.

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, the real problem is that defensive stats have no impact on active defensive skills.
Thus a char geared with offensive stats still gets the same active mitigation of a defensive-geared char. And this mitigation often consists of a full negation of the damage received, or in a consistent reduction, thus making the passive mitigation even less important.
Some people may think that any gear other than zerk should be “training wheel” gear, but i disagree. All gear should be equally important, just doing different things for different roles.

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

Other gear and roles do have a massive part to play in this game outside of being “training wheels”. From spvp, through WvW to open world pve and boss fights. In fact when you consider the game in total, zerk is far, far, far away from being the optimal meta.

That zerk can dominate in one small niche of the pve side of the game (speed running dungeons) is really not an issue at all. And in that tiny subset of the game, why shouldn’t non zerk gear been seen as training wheels? Is everyone here moaning about zerk so focused on speed running dungeons and setting records or something? I highly doubt it.

Do people really know what they are asking for here?
Is spvp a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is WvW a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is open world pve a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Can you run dungeons in non zerk gear/groups? Yes.

So we have have the niche of dungeon speed runs seeing zerk as the optimal choice. And people are really crying about that, I mean really? Fine let’s nerf zerk and nerf people who dodge so full glass zerk isn’t a meta in any single aspect of the game anymore and everyone is running around in PVT or as condi/tank. Great diversity.

People really are blowing this completely out of proportion.

I don’t even necessarily care if they nerf zerk; I just want content to be challenging enough that I can’t approach every single aspect of it with exactly the same solution. This whole “bash your face into things with maximum DPS gear” isn’t really satisfying my desire to play a slightly intelligent game.

Like I said, make defensive/cc gear more important and make monsters less spike and more sustained. Whabam, you’ve fixed the whole mind-numbingly boring dungeon issue.

I think the trinity still persists in someway. It’s just not that some classes are bound to dps/tank/heal but any class could fulfill all roles.
The problem of the current meta is simply the lack of challenging content.
You shouldn’t be able to to clear content with zerker only.
Another problem is, that the 3 different armortypes implify a trinity. But since the heavy armor warrior deals the most damage destroyes the idea of every class being equally effective.

Overall I think Judge Banks is right;

What stat’s do you take for SUPPORT and/or CONTROL.?

Condtion Duration, Healing Power and/or Boon Duration. Stat-wise you can improve DAMAGE so much more then SUPPORT or CONTROL.

My belief is that support, control, passive defence & active defence need to be tied back into the stats. Taking these stat will improves these aspects more then someone that doesn’t. At the moment full Zerkers can provide close to the same level of support & control and achieve similar levels of active defence as someone specing fully into control, support and defence. Also the advantages of damage so far out weight support and control currently in game (PvE).

This is one main aspect I’m looking into in PvX-Critical-gameplay-Changing-criticals expanding critical gameplay into control & support. Please have a look and pick my idea to pieces all feedback is welcome.

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, the real problem is that defensive stats have no impact on active defensive skills.
Thus a char geared with offensive stats still gets the same active mitigation of a defensive-geared char. And this mitigation often consists of a full negation of the damage received, or in a consistent reduction, thus making the passive mitigation even less important.
Some people may think that any gear other than zerk should be “training wheel” gear, but i disagree. All gear should be equally important, just doing different things for different roles.

You’re trying to take a game which is balanced around sPvP and where the majority of the playerbase, both in PvE and WvW, focus on zerg combat, and making it balanced around dungeons.
You can’t mess with game mechanics because dungeons just are not developer’s focus, not even close. For some roles to more clearly appear and every gear to matter, we would need a complete redesign of dungeons, which would both require an insane amount of work and keep most PUGs out of the content, and which, for the same reason, is unlikely to happen.

By the way, every gear has its uses.
Several times when I was using an AH build on my guardian, after a couple of wipes in a given bossfight I swapped my for the most part berserker gear to a knight/cleric combination, reallocated traits, grabbed a mace and a hammer and pretty much facetanked the boss.
After I realized how important damage increasing traits were and my build changed, I can’t do it anymore (well, I could do it through regular evades and some block here and there, but doing that reliably for, idk, lets say 2 minutes, would require a better player than myself). Many times (specially for those AC bosses were everybody, no matter what build and gear is using, stack in a corner where it’s almost impossibe to spot what the boss is doing), however, I’ve swapped my berserker armor in favor of a soldier one.

Are this build/gear choices “optimal”? No way. Can the content be done with them? Absolutely.
You can build a group around heavy damage, slotting no more than the required amount of support. You can also build a group around sustain, which is going to be slower (not really that slow if you avoid overstacking support) but is going to have an easier time for the most part. You can even build a group around control, using 5 ranged characters and slotting craploads of AoE chill and single target immobilize.
All of them can complete every content, and all of them can do it in a reasonable amount of time (even if berserker melee will still be the fastest one).

haviz.1340:

There are 2 mitigations of damage that mostly responsible for the current state. The first one is aegis which guardian provides and the second are reflections. Decrease their abundance or uptime and it is much harder for glass cannons to play giving tanky gears more viability.

100% agree.

Aegis is fine, maybe even underpowered when looking at cooldowns, for PvP. For PvE, however, durations are insane and becomes completely OP on speedkill setups.
IMHO, Aegis durations should be decreased A LOT, probably on top of a CD reduction.
The biggest problem here is what to do with Unscatched Contender.

Reflections (even regular area projectile blocks) are situational, but where they work, they are completely out of control.

Vargamonth.2047:

You can’t mess with game mechanics because dungeons just are not developer’s focus, not even close.

Exactly, I don’t think people realize that anet abandoned dungeons almost 1 year ago.

Warkupo.1025:

I don’t even necessarily care if they nerf zerk; I just want content to be challenging enough that I can’t approach every single aspect of it with exactly the same solution. This whole “bash your face into things with maximum DPS gear” isn’t really satisfying my desire to play a slightly intelligent game.

Yeah well, I’ll tell you what I want : I already grinded long enough to gear up my chars in zerk gear, I do not want content that requires me to grind alternative stat sets in the first place.

There’s been alot said about this and I believe that the advocation for a rework of the dungeon/fractals/pve group content is the best approach. Boiling down to bosses causing smaller damage more frequently (but retaining insta-downing attacks that are avoidable).

The light attacks needn’t be unavoidable as some suggest (dodging them might make you vulnerable to focussed attacks or the insta-down). The mobs could do with procing more boons on themselves, and using more evades/blocks themselves and other mobility skills. They could be smart enough to not run into a stacked corner of death. They could, in places, attempt heals and other beneficial effects (this requires Defiant/Unshakable rework that would also promote build diversity and frankly, the game needs anyway).

The above would make support, defense, mobility and conditions much more useful than they already are and present a valid PvE build decision. Raw damage retains its usefulness, is a bit more vulnerable but isn’t hands down the best thing to bring because there’s now more to think about than killing before you’re killed. Essentially, taking the data ANet have gathered about players builds/style/combat in PvP and working it into PvE.

The game shines in the diversity demonstrated by players – if the mobs could replicate a fraction of that it would improve everything. And, because it’s building on what already exists in the game, class rebalancing isn’t necessarily required. In fact, the opposite, it validates existing – but perhaps ignored – class roles/mechanics that have fallen by the PvE wayside.

What are you talking about if your not zerker you gonna be kick? Players kick players because the way they play not because of build. Ive been playing a regen war for sometime and even join zerker group but NEVER ive been kick cause of gear. If you thinking that zerk is the only viable build in this game then you’re an idiot..

Fenrir.3609:

haviz.1340:

There is no PvE meta, it’s dungeon meta and dungeons have been abandoned by anet for almost a year now so how exactly that’s a problem?

The meta in PvE content that is being developed is zerg, not zerk.

This, people seem to confuse highly niche, gear ping dungeon speed run groups with what is tantamount to the overarching pve model in this game. A massive mistake,

Even within the context of dungeons themselves, the vast majority are not running perfectly optimized zerk groups. The issue is merely people go into it with a preconceived bias (“I hate zerkers”) and as such, everytime they clock a zerk group in LFG they think the world is ending.

The meta in pve is far from full glass zerk when you look at the full picture. The meta in the game overall when you factor in WvW and spvp is again, far from full zerk. But let’s all moan about zerkers, they are doing dungeons faster than me when they are in an optimized group, the bstards!!!!

So what if people can use dps gear and provide support in the pve environ? Where is the issue exactly? Those other gear sets are not invalidated all of a sudden. If you are not good enough to go full glass, you use them. If you want to do more open world stuff they are more optimal, if you want to WvW or spvp they are more optimal and if you want to run dungeons they are still more than viable.

“I want to wear full clerics on my guard and it is unfair that that other guard in zerk can do more damage than me!”. It doesn’t seem to be a case of “play how I want” more a case of “I must be allowed to play how I want and no other option is allowed to be more optimal”. Which is a weird sentiment.

you speak of WvWvW and PvP but those have nothing to do with this post at all, PvE stands for Player Versus Environment. And almost everyone I know apart from the condi spammers and the noob level 30-40 guardians claiming they are healers… you didn’t even read the post and don’t say you did (-_-) Besides, arenanet always speak of diversity but running anything but DPS only hurts your team.

Vargamonth.2047:

haviz.1340:

There are 2 mitigations of damage that mostly responsible for the current state. The first one is aegis which guardian provides and the second are reflections. Decrease their abundance or uptime and it is much harder for glass cannons to play giving tanky gears more viability.

100% agree.

Aegis is fine, maybe even underpowered when looking at cooldowns, for PvP. For PvE, however, durations are insane and becomes completely OP on speedkill setups.
IMHO, Aegis durations should be decreased A LOT, probably on top of a CD reduction.
The biggest problem here is what to do with Unscatched Contender.

Reflections (even regular area projectile blocks) are situational, but where they work, they are completely out of control.

Why do the two of you think its okay to try to make others play the way you want? Crab mentality?!? How dare I deviate from your face tank gear! Everyone should be reduced to only wearing pvt/clerics right? The only way anyone should be allowed to survive should be face tank gear/trinity. Lets get rid of any strategic utility use as well…I mean who needs that when you can just face tank. Lets throw that silly play how you want design out of the window because zerk’s playing how they want somehow stops you from playing how you want!

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Reflect is a very useful utility, but again…not the ruin of GW2. This is a situational utility, that I would be fine with them removing….so long as they also remove the mandatory situations where it is needed. I don’t like getting pigeon holed into having to use that specific utility at the expense of other’s that provide more universal appeal.

Fenrir.3609:

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, the real problem is that defensive stats have no impact on active defensive skills.
Thus a char geared with offensive stats still gets the same active mitigation of a defensive-geared char. And this mitigation often consists of a full negation of the damage received, or in a consistent reduction, thus making the passive mitigation even less important.
Some people may think that any gear other than zerk should be “training wheel” gear, but i disagree. All gear should be equally important, just doing different things for different roles.

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

Other gear and roles do have a massive part to play in this game outside of being “training wheels”. From spvp, through WvW to open world pve and boss fights. In fact when you consider the game in total, zerk is far, far, far away from being the optimal meta.

That zerk can dominate in one small niche of the pve side of the game (speed running dungeons) is really not an issue at all. And in that tiny subset of the game, why shouldn’t non zerk gear been seen as training wheels? Is everyone here moaning about zerk so focused on speed running dungeons and setting records or something? I highly doubt it.

Do people really know what they are asking for here?
Is spvp a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is WvW a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is open world pve a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Can you run dungeons in non zerk gear/groups? Yes.

So we have have the niche of dungeon speed runs seeing zerk as the optimal choice. And people are really crying about that, I mean really? Fine let’s nerf zerk and nerf people who dodge so full glass zerk isn’t a meta in any single aspect of the game anymore and everyone is running around in PVT or as condi/tank. Great diversity.

People really are blowing this completely out of proportion.

I’d love this to be perma-pinned to every nerf zerk thread

ODB.6891:

Why do the two of you think its okay to try to make others play the way you want? Crab mentality?!? How dare I deviate from your face tank gear! Everyone should be reduced to only wearing pvt/clerics right? The only way anyone should be allowed to survive should be face tank gear/trinity. Lets get rid of any strategic utility use as well…I mean who needs that when you can just face tank. Lets throw that silly play how you want design out of the window because zerk’s playing how they want somehow stops you from playing how you want!

You seem to be somehow annoyed by my analysis. Are you aware that not everyone who doesn’t like the current state of instanced pve is a zerker hater? In fact it’s the opposite. But I’d like the content to be how it was advertised, requiring coordination and skillful gameplay, not this sad state we currently have .

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Rotating aegis is a basic skill any decent guardian should show. The result is literally facetanking a boss that would otherwise one shot you or at least force to into defense. The duration of aegis is too long that in turns allows a guardian to rotate without much of a thought. If you want to run full glass cannons, the game needs to punish you proportionally to your squishiness.

Reflect is a very useful utility, but again…not the ruin of GW2. This is a situational utility, that I would be fine with them removing….so long as they also remove the mandatory situations where it is needed. I don’t like getting pigeon holed into having to use that specific utility at the expense of other’s that provide more universal appeal.

I’m not going to make up random numbers but a lot of the bosses’ autoattacks are reflectable projectiles. That makes most of the encounters about putting reflects and occasional dodging of slow attacks. There are too many reflects and with any optimal party composition a team has enough projectiles defenses that you just rotate them, again, without any thought.

Reflects as well as aegis should promote proper timing. Their durations need to be severely decreased so you are actually punished for facerolling the content. Right now, it’s not the case.

Fenrir.3609:

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

See, you’re fixated with the whole “facetanking” mentality. One can have defensive stats and still use active defenses properly – it doesn’t depend on gear.
Why do you expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move the same as you but has geared appropriately for a defensive role?
As those active defenses totally negate damage, the passive mitigation doesn’t even count most of the time – making said stats mostly useless.
If they had some influence toward defensive skills, this would change.

I think we’re mixing concepts.

Ofc all “roles” are DPS. Or well, aren’t DPS, because we don’t have any straight-up roles.
There’s no way to be a healer in the classic sense, no way to be a CCer, no way to be a tank, no nothing.

As such, we all share one role. Whether you call that DPS or not is your personal choice, I’ll call it Blurgenfurl.

But once you are of role Blurgenfurl, you can choose different weights. In MMOs past, a frequent issue was whether classes of a role should be balanced in maximizing that role, or in having variety and adaptability (example Shadow Priest in early WoW, and especially during I think Cata Beta when their end talent was the Shadowform Flash Heal).

In GW2, the balance issue is that everyone right now only gains from maximizing power. Never anything else. There’s no reward for a DPSer being adaptable to say, rapid movement or mass interrupts – because those don’t exist.

haviz.1340:

You seem to be somehow annoyed by my analysis. Are you aware that not everyone who doesn’t like the current state of instanced pve is a zerker hater? In fact it’s the opposite. But I’d like the content to be how it was advertised, requiring coordination and skillful gameplay, not this sad state we currently have .

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Rotating aegis is a basic skill any decent guardian should show. The result is literally facetanking a boss that would otherwise one shot you or at least force to into defense. The duration of aegis is too long that in turns allows a guardian to rotate without much of a thought. If you want to run full glass cannons, the game needs to punish you proportionally to your squishiness.

Reflects as well as aegis should promote proper timing. Their durations need to be severely decreased so you are actually punished for facerolling the content. Right now, it’s not the case.

Yes, I am annoyed by the assertion that somehow surviving via utilities/dodging is somehow worse than surviving via face tanking in pvt/clerics. I am also annoyed that you think that anyone not wearing pvt/clerics needs to be punished. Zerk already has a higher penalty rate than pvt for any single mistake…its called instant downed state. I think pvt/clerics does more facerolling of content than zerk ever has. Zerk just does it faster.

The duration of aegis is around 20 seconds if I recall….if you don’t count the fact that one breath from an enemy removes it completely. This is regardless of if it was just applied or is at the 19th second. It doesn’t magically refresh because something looked in your direction sternly. This makes aegis potentially the shortest duration boon in the game. I see balance in that.

ODB.6891:

Vargamonth.2047:

haviz.1340:

There are 2 mitigations of damage that mostly responsible for the current state. The first one is aegis which guardian provides and the second are reflections. Decrease their abundance or uptime and it is much harder for glass cannons to play giving tanky gears more viability.

100% agree.

Aegis is fine, maybe even underpowered when looking at cooldowns, for PvP. For PvE, however, durations are insane and becomes completely OP on speedkill setups.
IMHO, Aegis durations should be decreased A LOT, probably on top of a CD reduction.
The biggest problem here is what to do with Unscatched Contender.

Reflections (even regular area projectile blocks) are situational, but where they work, they are completely out of control.

Why do the two of you think its okay to try to make others play the way you want? Crab mentality?!? How dare I deviate from your face tank gear! Everyone should be reduced to only wearing pvt/clerics right? The only way anyone should be allowed to survive should be face tank gear/trinity. Lets get rid of any strategic utility use as well…I mean who needs that when you can just face tank. Lets throw that silly play how you want design out of the window because zerk’s playing how they want somehow stops you from playing how you want!

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Reflect is a very useful utility, but again…not the ruin of GW2. This is a situational utility, that I would be fine with them removing….so long as they also remove the mandatory situations where it is needed. I don’t like getting pigeon holed into having to use that specific utility at the expense of other’s that provide more universal appeal.

We’re both probably running a full DPS build. We’re just pointing things that are clearly OP.

Aegis is fine, as I said, for PvP. It could block both the oneshot and the 1HP hit, probably the last one if the enemy is any good. That’s why you use it when the attack is incoming instead of precast it.
For PvE, however, boss moves are scripted and Aegis behaves A LOT of times as a fire and forget skill.
If a fight is short enough for, lets say 5 evades being enough to finsih it, a single Aegis application will last the whole fight and will cover one mistake for every party member. This goes clearly against the “risk vs reward” idea.
On a really short bossfight (or in one where the boss has a really slow attack rate), I could even cycle Aegis for the combat to be over without anyone having to use a single evade.

I’m not proposing getting rid of Aegis at all, just making its duration A LOT shorter (around 2 seconds) so I’ve to somewhat time it with boss moves, and probably compensate this with a CD reduction.

Not a lot to say about reflections, it’s clearly obvious that they trivialize many fights.
Solution should probably be more related to the encounters themselves than to the reflection sources.

Manuhell.2759:

Fenrir.3609:

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

See, you’re fixated with the whole “facetanking” mentality. One can have defensive stats and still use active defenses properly – it doesn’t depend on gear.
Why do you expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move the same as you but has geared appropriately for a defensive role?
As those active defenses totally negate damage, the passive mitigation doesn’t even count most of the time – making said stats mostly useless.
If they had some influence toward defensive skills, this would change.

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

ODB.6891:

Yes, I am annoyed by the assertion that somehow surviving via utilities/dodging is somehow worse than surviving via face tanking in pvt/clerics. I am also annoyed that you think that anyone not wearing pvt/clerics needs to be punished. I think pvt/clerics does more facerolling of content than zerk ever has. Zerk just does it faster.

The duration of aegis is around 20 seconds if I recall….if you don’t count the fact that one breath from an enemy removes it completely. This is regardless of if it was just applied or is at the 19th second. It doesn’t magically refresh because something looked in your direction sternly. This makes aegis potentially the shortest duration boon in the game. I see balance in that.

Why do you keep thinking I’m using some kind of defensive gear?

Berserker’s gear users need to be punished because they abandoned all of their passive defense in favour of offensive. I would like people to actually dodge instead of relying on aegis and projectiles defenses which is the case now. Let’s not fool each others, you could give meta dps builds to play-how-you-want crowd, explain basics and they would be almost as effective as you. That’s a horrible design, the skill ceiling is extremely low. If you want to abandon entire passive defense, you should be skilled enough.

The duration of aegis is exactly 20 seconds (excluding +boon duration), both from “Retreat!” and Virtue of Courage. It does exactly what I’m claiming it does, promotes rotations instead of timed usage. Decrease the duration tenfold and let’s find out how many “pro-zerkers” can survive with active defense.

ODB.6891:

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

Why should the dps gear be “more productive”? It should just be different.
And why should the defensive player’s investment go unused if he plays well?
There is rather a large disparity there – it means a player in defensive gear isn’t rewarded for his efforts.
And that is something that should be corrected – all gears should be equally good, just with different uses.

Vargamonth.2047:

We’re both probably running a full DPS build. We’re just pointing things that are clearly OP.

Aegis is fine, as I said, for PvP. It could block both the oneshot and the 1HP hit, probably the last one if the enemy is any good. That’s why you use it when the attack is incoming instead of precast it.
For PvE, however, boss moves are scripted and Aegis behaves A LOT of times as a fire and forget skill.
If a fight is short enough for, lets say 5 evades being enough to finsih it, a single Aegis application will last the whole fight and will cover one mistake for every party member. This goes clearly against the “risk vs reward” idea.
On a really short bossfight (or in one where the boss has a really slow attack rate), I could even cycle Aegis for the combat to be over without anyone having to use a single evade.

I’m not proposing getting rid of Aegis at all, just making its duration A LOT shorter (around 2 seconds) so I’ve to somewhat time it with boss moves, and probably compensate this with a CD reduction.

Not a lot to say about reflections, it’s clearly obvious that they trivialize many fights.
Solution should probably be more related to the encounters themselves than to the reflection sources.

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

The risk versus reward concept has been thrown out of the window a long time ago with the advent of pvt/clerics being able to face tank content with no risk.

That being said, I could get behind shortening the duration of aegis, if the CD is significantly reduced as well. This would also need to be accompanied by a base survival increase for zerk guards as well considering their survivability has been balanced off of boons including aegis and vigor…vigor currently being on the chopping block.

Manuhell.2759:

ODB.6891:

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

Why should the dps gear be “more productive”? It should just be different.
And why should the defensive player’s investment go unused if he plays well?
There is rather a large disparity there – it means a player in defensive gear isn’t rewarded for his efforts.
And that is something that should be corrected – all gears should be equally good, just with different uses.

There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.

Manuhell.2759:

ODB.6891:

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

Why should the dps gear be “more productive”? It should just be different.
And why should the defensive player’s investment go unused if he plays well?
There is rather a large disparity there – it means a player in defensive gear isn’t rewarded for his efforts.
And that is something that should be corrected – all gears should be equally good, just with different uses.

Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.

haviz.1340:

ODB.6891:

Yes, I am annoyed by the assertion that somehow surviving via utilities/dodging is somehow worse than surviving via face tanking in pvt/clerics. I am also annoyed that you think that anyone not wearing pvt/clerics needs to be punished. I think pvt/clerics does more facerolling of content than zerk ever has. Zerk just does it faster.

The duration of aegis is around 20 seconds if I recall….if you don’t count the fact that one breath from an enemy removes it completely. This is regardless of if it was just applied or is at the 19th second. It doesn’t magically refresh because something looked in your direction sternly. This makes aegis potentially the shortest duration boon in the game. I see balance in that.

Why do you keep thinking I’m using some kind of defensive gear?

Berserker’s gear users need to be punished because they abandoned all of their passive defense in favour of offensive. I would like people to actually dodge instead of relying on aegis and projectiles defenses which is the case now. Let’s not fool each others, you could give meta dps builds to play-how-you-want crowd, explain basics and they would be almost as effective as you. That’s a horrible design, the skill ceiling is extremely low. If you want to abandon entire passive defense, you should be skilled enough.

The duration of aegis is exactly 20 seconds (excluding +boon duration), both from “Retreat!” and Virtue of Courage. It does exactly what I’m claiming it does, promotes rotations instead of timed usage. Decrease the duration tenfold and let’s find out how many “pro-zerkers” can survive with active defense.

I don’t think anyone in the game deserves to be punished for their choice of gear sets. Each one offers different pros and cons. I think that whole concept is elitist. While I personally don’t like to group with low damage dealers, I don’t think they need to be punished. I don’t think glass cannons need to be punished either. This is really not an elitist oriented game…the lack of gear inspects and dps meters + the devs willingness to nerf zerk in pve over forum cries of pvt/clerics proves that.

That being said, I can get behind a reduction in the duration of aegis, so long as the reduction is not as extreme as the 2 seconds you are talking about and there is a base line survival increase as we are also getting beat over the head with a vigor nerf soon. There also needs to be a significant CD reduction of aegis utilities. They could make it be more like blurred frenzy than just a one hit block.

ODB.6891:

There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.

But there is in active defense, and it works exactly the same for either offensive or defensive geared chars (albeit worst for defensive ones, since their passive mitigation isn’t taken on account due to those active defenses being full negators).
And they don’t have different uses at the same skill level in your example – you are assuming the one using defensive gear will make mistakes, thus that he’s worse than the one using offensive gear.

Vargamonth.2047:

Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.

And i’m saying there is a problem right there: compared to offensive gear, there is a lack of a proper return on its investment at the same skill level.

You can still play how you want. Nobody is changing that.

I’m really beginning to dislike that phrase.

Manuhell.2759:

ODB.6891:

There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.

But there is in active defense, and it works exactly the same for either offensive or defensive geared chars (albeit worst for defensive ones, since their passive mitigation isn’t taken on account due to those active defenses being full negators).
And they don’t have different uses at the same skill level in your example – you are assuming the one using defensive gear will make mistakes, thus that he’s worse than the one using offensive gear.

Vargamonth.2047:

Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.

And i’m saying there is a problem right there: compared to offensive gear, there is a lack of a proper return on its investment at the same skill level.

If your skill level is beyond the need to invest in a stat who’s sole purpose is to negate mistakes or ignore fight mechanics, then why would you still invest in that stat as it gives you nothing useful at that point…versus stats that can give you something useful at that level?

ODB.6891:

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

a) That could be a good aegis usage in my opinion. Someone was lacking endurance or any other active defense source, you saw the boss attack incoming and you used Aegis … the attack gets blocked and nobody wastes a evade.
If you’re popping just for it to block “something”, that’s not skillful play and shouldn’t e rewarded.

b) Vigorous Precision is currently out of the meta for most dungeons. If you still need vigor, pretty much everybody will meed it … something like a warrior using warhorn as offhand for that fight will be enough to solve the problem.

c) There are a lot of videos out there of bosses being exploded so fast that they hardly could attack 3 times before dying.
One of the best examples is probably a melee Lupicus first phase. It can be done perfectly without dodging any single kick, without timing aegis with kicks and without using every possible aegis activation.

Manuhell.2759:

Vargamonth.2047:

Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.

And i’m saying there is a problem right there: compared to offensive gear, there is a lack of a proper return on its investment at the same skill level.

But that’s, as I said, because you shouldn’t have invested in that defensive gear from the very beinning, as the guy using the power based build shouldn’t have geared himself for condition damage.
You chose the gear you’re going to need. If you are evading every attack and don’t get any use for defensive stats, why on earth did you get a gear filled with them?

Vargamonth.2047:

ODB.6891:

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

a) That could be a good aegis usage in my opinion. Someone was lacking endurance or any other active defense source, you saw the boss attack incoming and you used Aegis … the attack gets blocked and nobody wastes a evade.
If you’re popping just for it to block “something”, that’s not skillful play and shouldn’t e rewarded.

b) Vigorous Precision is currently out of the meta for most dungeons. If you still need vigor, pretty much everybody will meed it … something like a warrior using warhorn as offhand for that fight will be enough to solve the problem.

c) There are a lot of videos out there of bosses being exploded so fast that they hardly could attack 3 times before dying.
One of the best examples is probably a melee Lupicus first phase. It can be done perfectly without dodging any single kick, without timing aegis with kicks and without using every possible aegis activation.

(a) Either way, the duration is a non factor at that point.
(b) Expecting the “have somebody else hold your hand” argument to be okay, is not okay. That’s why warriors got their self sustain buffed so much.
© That is nowhere near the average group. Balance is never done based on extremes.

ODB.6891:

If your skill level is beyond the need to invest in a stat who’s sole purpose is to negate mistakes or ignore fight mechanics, then why would you still invest in that stat as it gives you nothing useful at that point…versus stats that can give you something useful at that level?

Vargamonth.2047:

But that’s, as I said, because you shouldn’t have invested in that defensive gear from the very beinning, as the guy using the power based build shouldn’t have geared himself for condition damage.
You chose the gear you’re going to need. If you are evading every attack and don’t get any use for defensive stats, why on earth did you get a gear filled with them?

And i’m saying that’s an issue with the stats – at the same skill level, you aren’t rewarded for using defensive gear, you are rewarded only for using offensive ones.
There is no influence of defensive stats on defensive skills, whereas there is for offensive stats on offensive skills.
I’m not saying that a defensive geared char should have the same offense of an offensive-geared char. That would make no sense, having dps is the point of investing on offensive gear.
But it should have a better return when using active defenses than an offensive geared char, and as now this doesn’t happen.
How to change them for have this return? Dunno exactly. But i still think something should be done in that direction.

ODB.6891:

Vargamonth.2047:

ODB.6891:

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

a) That could be a good aegis usage in my opinion. Someone was lacking endurance or any other active defense source, you saw the boss attack incoming and you used Aegis … the attack gets blocked and nobody wastes a evade.
If you’re popping just for it to block “something”, that’s not skillful play and shouldn’t e rewarded.

b) Vigorous Precision is currently out of the meta for most dungeons. If you still need vigor, pretty much everybody will meed it … something like a warrior using warhorn as offhand for that fight will be enough to solve the problem.

c) There are a lot of videos out there of bosses being exploded so fast that they hardly could attack 3 times before dying.
One of the best examples is probably a melee Lupicus first phase. It can be done perfectly without dodging any single kick, without timing aegis with kicks and without using every possible aegis activation.

(a) Either way, the duration is a non factor at that point.
(b) Expecting the “have somebody else hold your hand” argument to be okay, is not okay. That’s why warriors got their self sustain buffed so much.
© That is nowhere near the average group. Balance is never done based on extremes.

a) Of course it is. In the situation I describe, when it behaves as a party wide active defense, it doesn’t matter if aegis lasts 2 seconds, 10 seconds or forever.
If it lasts a lot, however, it allows to be used passively too. Fire and forget, and then it will block something if someone messes with an evade.

b) That’s what support is expected to be. Denying that would imply that there’s no need for support in this game.

c) But full offense is nothing but the most efficient extreme setup. Should the game allow those average groups to run it or should demand a higher amount of skill and coordination to make it succesful?

Vargamonth.2047:

c) But full offense is nothing but the most efficient extreme setup. Should the game allow those average groups to run it or should demand a higher amount of skill and coordination to make it succesful?

That’s exactly my points. Running full offense is just too easy.