Guild Wars 2

Karl McLain.5604:

Critical Damage:

• We’re adding a new stat to the game called ferocity which affects your critical damage multiplier, similarly to how precision affects critical chance.
• All existing percentage critical damage stats on gear and items will be converted into the appropriate amount of ferocity, which will then factor into your critical damage multiplier.
• We expect that in the most extreme power DPS focused builds this change will account for a maximum reduction of about 10% damage.
• This change will not affect PvP, as critical damage is already at a much lower value and item attributes will be adjusted in order to compensate for the changes.

While I agree that the berserker meta needs to be addressed, I fail to see how this can be considered a solution in the slightest. Allow me to explain why.

Berserker gear is popular because it offers the most bang for your buck. The harder you hit, the quicker things die, and the faster your team is able to complete a dungeon. Even with the effectiveness reduced by 10%, that fact will not change. Berserker stats will continue to offer the highest DPS and therefore remain a requirement.

What will change is the efficiency of your group. You’re not hitting as hard, so things aren’t dying as fast, and that decrease translates into you spending more time inside of a dungeon.

What does that solve?

From what I understand, people dislike the meta because they enjoy having the option to play different roles in combat. However, this idea struggles to find a place in a game where there is no holy trinity. With support and control utilities readily available to even the most damage-centric builds, there is little reason to defer from maximizing your offensive potential.

However, that’s only half of the problem. I believe that content is the other half. Current dungeons do not offer any advantages to players who opt out of the berserker meta, and these are the aspects that should be focused on.

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

laokoko.7403:

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

You don’t know min-maxers or Flavor of the Month players do you.

Behellagh.1468:

laokoko.7403:

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

You don’t know min-maxers … do you.

Min-maxers are pretty much only going to use Berserker too now. Why use Assassin’s now when precision is so much less important than power as a stat because of a huge critical damage nerf?

Indeed. It went from zerker/assassin mix. To now just zerker. Way to go Anet! Thanks for reminding us that zerker is the only way to go. We were fooled into thinking we were clever for coming up with an optimal gear of mixing. Turns out, full zerker was the answer.

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

Been saying this over and over like a broken record. Huge mistake by Anet, and it won’t fix anything at all.

They want to fix the berserker meta, they do this:

• stop the game from being a grind. The reason people go zerk is to do speed runs. Why do people do dungneon speed runs? Because we need to make tons of gold. Why do we need tons of gold? Because mats and other things are expensive. Precursors can cost upwards of 800 gold, T6 mats for Gift of Might cost upwards of 400 Gold, ascended mats cost 300 gold, etc.

Don’t want zerk? Stop forcing us to grind for months. Let us get our weapons and armor withoutneeding to grind like hamsters for it.

Sadly the game design mechanics (grinding, active defenses, and lack of a trinity in the core design) make zerker the go-to set if you’re trying to be efficient. That will never change until these problems are addressed, and “zerker doing too much damage” is not a problem, it’s a feature of the set, that’s why it’s called zerker and not “pillow puncher.”

Mochann.5298:

• stop the game from being a grind. The reason people go zerk is to do speed runs. Why do people do dungneon speed runs? Because we need to make tons of gold. Why do we need tons of gold? Because mats and other things are expensive. Precursors can cost upwards of 800 gold, T6 mats for Gift of Might cost upwards of 400 Gold, ascended mats cost 300 gold, etc.

Right. Do you remember abyss dye being 2 gold? That’s because there was little money and 2 gold was a lot to accumulate. It was a dream to have that. Precursors were also 30-50 gold.

Now look at the price as the game has given more options to make more money. What do you think will happen if you further increase the income? The prices will raise again because there is more money to be made.

Economics. It’s a valuable class.

It’s not called Zerker, it’s Berserker’s with no z, that’s just a “handy” shorthand, as is “full zerk” (both sound silly/lazy to me, but to each their own.)

A Berserker implies a type of adventurer who goes into battle in a frenzy wrecking havoc (full offense stats) at the risk of his/her own life (which is what is often lacking in most current encounter mechanics, and why it is often preferred over any other gear stat.) It’s entirely illogical to me that 100% of adventurers must have the Berserker’s personality, as that wouldn’t be plausible in most fantasy universes-the personality itself is welcomed, but not its commonality. In short, Berserker’s gear is often preferred because experienced players have learned to obviate the dangers that would be involved in such a supposedly dangerous adventuring lifestyle, leaving them with the offensive prowess but with no practical disadvantages or tradeoffs (poor Rampager’s being worse of, because they are more at risk than a Berserker.)

I do agree that liberating players from a full offense mentality will take more than hitting critical damage, however. That said, I am glad the developers made it official that it was never their intention to glorify the role of DPS as much as it has been in this game, and that it was an honest mistake/miscalculation on their part.
.

You fail to see what problem they were addressing, many people are under the illusion that ascended is the final gear tier. What was the biggest problem that the addition of ascended gear faced? Crit damage, and all flat percent values simply cannot exist in a gear treadmill, see WoW.

In order to fix this issue, they need to convert all flat percents into numbers that can diminish, have hard caps and soft caps, and be adjusted in value when level caps increase.

Boon and Condition duration will have their days.

laokoko.7403:

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

Indeed. Rather just quit the game.

justkoh.4073:

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

Implying an intended game design feature is a " broken mechanic " – you still don’t get what GW2 is do you?

To all the people saying the encounters are too easy and zerker is OP – if you’d have been here at the start of the game you would have known doing 90% of content in full zerker gear ( except for zerging events in orr ) was pure suicide.

It’s not the encounters that have become trivial or easy – they players have just gotten better.
And that would have always happened – think about it – I’ve done possibly close to 300 runs so AC. How could I not know it by heart?

justkoh.4073:

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

I don’t think you realise how much logical fault you’ve just made.

I never read this as fixing the berserker meta – this change seemed clearly focused at normalising crit damage on different slots and on different tiers of gear. Much like the OP, I believe that the berserker meta is driven by content, especially because in PvP, WvW and now with Triple Trouble, berserker is not nearly as strong. I also believe that ArenaNet are aware of the problem, again because we see in Triple Trouble a fight that explicitly involves mechanics for builds other than berserker, and if ArenaNet intended to fix the problem, they’d announce changes to dungeon content as well.

Regarding the form of the content specifically, I know many players enjoy the active mitigation style of play, so clearly breaking that in favour of biggest stat wins is hardly a good solution. The problem appears to be that damage is always more important than support or control, so building fights where damage is not important would shift the meta in a more diverse direction.

PvE is just too easy. That’s all.

I too think it will do more harm than good.

Alex Kelley.2748:

What does that solve?

It reduces the gap between zerker and non-zerker setups. Reduces, not eliminates. The intention being that this makes it more viable to chose a non-zerker setup. If the gap wasn’t reduced somewhat, zerker would still be the prefered setup even if the meta changed, simply because it is much more efficient due to the inherent synergies between the offensive stats. It’s the solution to a scaling problem.

As you correctly pointed out, as long as the meta isn’t reworked, this change alone will not accomplish the stated goal. It is still a neccessary step though.

haviz.1340:

justkoh.4073:

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

I don’t think you realise how much logical fault you’ve just made.

Actually, he is spot on. ‘Active’ Dodges in nearly all games, including the praised for it’s active Combat ‘TERA’ aren’t dodges where you need to get out of the line/arc of attack, but ‘Invulnerability frames’.
A proper dodge mechanic can be seen in TSW, even in the earliest dungeon, the ‘Polaris’. The final Boss in that dungeon has a cone cleave called ‘Slam’, with a 90 degree angle. If you use your single dodge to move towards the enemy as the cast bar for ‘Slam’ finishes, you WILL make a dodge roll…..and eat the damage, get knocked back, AND possibly eat fall damage, too.
In GW2, a dodge at the right moment can be used as mobility, and you weather an unlimited amount of attacks during the window of invulnerability. Remove the invulnerability window from ‘Evade’, and ‘Dodge’ is now working right.

Merus.9475:

I never read this as fixing the berserker meta – this change seemed clearly focused at normalising crit damage on different slots and on different tiers of gear. Much like the OP, I believe that the berserker meta is driven by content, especially because in PvP, WvW and now with Triple Trouble, berserker is not nearly as strong. I also believe that ArenaNet are aware of the problem, again because we see in Triple Trouble a fight that explicitly involves mechanics for builds other than berserker, and if ArenaNet intended to fix the problem, they’d announce changes to dungeon content as well.

It seems like you’re the first person to remotely understand why I made this post.

One correction: I know the change isn’t intended to remedy the issue entirely, but I do think it marks their starting point, and that’s what bothers me.

I believe that the level at which berserker gear allows players to perform should be the standard that support and control roles are enhanced to. Lowering the viability of damage-centric builds to be balanced with those that are more invested in support and control mechanics will only diminish the quality of combat further.

Merus.9475:

Regarding the form of the content specifically, I know many players enjoy the active mitigation style of play, so clearly breaking that in favour of biggest stat wins is hardly a good solution. The problem appears to be that damage is always more important than support or control, so building fights where damage is not important would shift the meta in a more diverse direction.

That is exactly how I feel.

Several dungeon encounters have mechanics that support and control builds could potentially have the strongest counter for. However, no effort was made to keep that potential role-exclusive and so damage wins out.

Here is an example:

In the first explorable path of the Crucible of Eternity there is a room where miniature golems spawn endlessly. When they detect a player nearby, they detonate, knocking back and dealing damage to anyone in range. But these golems have incredibly low health pools which make their threat trivial to all damage-based builds.

Imagine if their health were increased ten-fold. They can no longer be tipped over by a single auto-attack and so controlling them becomes necessary. Take it a step further and make them invulnerable. Now it becomes a matter of supporting your teammates through the constant onslaught.

Those are the kind of changes I would welcome.

If Anet are going to make changes in terms of mob/encounter combat mechanics and AI (the things needed to actually move away from the zerk meta effectively), then they shouldn’t need to nerf the stats in the first place.

The fact that they are nerfing the stats speaks volumes.

Actually, due to the Ascended Gear tier, they learned a lesson they could have seen coming from far already: Flat percentage based bonuses are garbage, logarhythmic scaling stats are ‘better’.

Anet said they need to change things in stages and this is the first step to a longer fix. That’s all it is. It’s not the final solution.

They want to move slowly to give people time to adapt to stuff, and test the changes as they make them. But this is definitely not the final change…just the change they need to make to make the other changes they plan to make.

The change to ferocity is a good one. Balancing the critical damage across your gear like any other stats make sense. It will be easier to change your trinket to change your build over changing your armor with a skin and a rune on it. But the 10% nerf won’t bring anything better to the game. The Zerker will have the same spot and other build will be at the same place. Ya build with defensive stats won’t be as far away of zerker as now, but since every point in defensive stats is useless right now for most case, this won’t change a thing.

Here two idea that could bring some build diversity.
1) Nerf basic defense (meaning dodge and healing skill), but put boost for them in some trait line. This way a full zerker won’t be able to live if he don’t use some defensive trait. This would bring build diversity as people try to get the most DMG out of a build that allow them to survive. You could go for high vigor uptime build to dodge, or a bit more healing to stay alive, or boost your active defense skill. Maybe that a support character will help zerker survive at this point.
2) Put a hard limit on stats. If for exemple you can’t have more that 50% crit damage. Then people will try to create a build that give you exactly 50% but no more so you don’t waste stats. Will you get that in your gear, so you can choose whatever trait you want, maybe you can be an hybrid direct damage and condition damage for maximum dps, or you could bring boons duration to boost your party.

shootist.3607:

Actually, he is spot on. ‘Active’ Dodges in nearly all games, including the praised for it’s active Combat ‘TERA’ aren’t dodges where you need to get out of the line/arc of attack, but ‘Invulnerability frames’.
A proper dodge mechanic can be seen in TSW, even in the earliest dungeon, the ‘Polaris’. The final Boss in that dungeon has a cone cleave called ‘Slam’, with a 90 degree angle. If you use your single dodge to move towards the enemy as the cast bar for ‘Slam’ finishes, you WILL make a dodge roll…..and eat the damage, get knocked back, AND possibly eat fall damage, too.
In GW2, a dodge at the right moment can be used as mobility, and you weather an unlimited amount of attacks during the window of invulnerability. Remove the invulnerability window from ‘Evade’, and ‘Dodge’ is now working right.

Dodging removes damage taken, not risk. Risk is being removed when you play tanky builds, not when you play squishy builds that do have to dodge.

Great idea with making dodge a simple evade without invulnerability. But first let’s remove cleaving (bosses with 450 range melee attacks), severely reduce aoe spam and decrease the differences between classes (hp, defense mechanics).

shootist.3607:

Actually, due to the Ascended Gear tier, they learned a lesson they could have seen coming from far already: Flat percentage based bonuses are garbage, logarhythmic scaling stats are ‘better’.

Why do you assume we’re going to get logarhythmic scaling? They haven’t revealed any specifics about new formula but it will be most likely a linear scaling, like every other scaling except toughness which also isn’t logarhythmic.

As a min max type person myself, I think this could have a substantial impact, but not in PvE. Zerker’s will still be the gear of choice. Assassin’s gear is likely dead.

However, depending on the size of the nerf, it may have a greater impact in WvW, where some vitality and toughness are important.

In my case, my theorycrafting suggests that I will be slightly better off to get new equipment rather than keeping what I currently have. (mainly because Power becomes more important relative to Crit Damage, therefore two pieces of soldier gear is better than a piece of valkyrie and cavalier).

Oh please.

If this works towards putting and end to ‘stacking’, then everyone who is so clingy to the current state of the Zerker meta and eat it frankly.

Good lord some (most) people. This Zerker meta has been so cancerous. It’s still going to be the primary choice for those looking for this abhorrent playstyle. Less emphasis on the style part of the word.

kylwilson.9137:

Oh please.

If this works towards putting and end to ‘stacking’, then everyone who is so clingy to the current state of the Zerker meta and eat it frankly.

Good lord some (most) people. This Zerker meta has been so cancerous. It’s still going to be the primary choice for those looking for this abhorrent playstyle. Less emphasis on the style part of the word.

Stacking is prevalent in wvw yet the meta couln’t be further from berserkers’.

kylwilson.9137:

Oh please.

If this works towards putting and end to ‘stacking’, then everyone who is so clingy to the current state of the Zerker meta and eat it frankly.

Good lord some (most) people. This Zerker meta has been so cancerous. It’s still going to be the primary choice for those looking for this abhorrent playstyle. Less emphasis on the style part of the word.

IMO, this change will do nothing to change the PvE zerker meta. it will still be just as “cancerous” as before, the playstyle just as “abhorrent.”

Just like the introduction of ascended gear, this does nothing in PvE. The effects will be felt elsewhere, where the challenge is more complex that stack and DPS.

(note: I enjoy dungeons, but like any puzzle, they’ve been solved. Without changing the mechanics in the dungeon, changing armor does nothing).

haviz.1340:

kylwilson.9137:

Oh please.

If this works towards putting and end to ‘stacking’, then everyone who is so clingy to the current state of the Zerker meta and eat it frankly.

Good lord some (most) people. This Zerker meta has been so cancerous. It’s still going to be the primary choice for those looking for this abhorrent playstyle. Less emphasis on the style part of the word.

Stacking is prevalent in wvw yet the meta couln’t be further from berserkers’.

You’re making connections in my post that simply aren’t there. If this was a PvE only change then I would understand you (albeit I would sympathise even less).

Personally, I don’t mind the change. I do mind re-grinding gear for the 3 alts I still play regularly.

kylwilson.9137:

You’re making connections in my post that simply aren’t there. If this was a PvE only change then I would understand you (albeit I would sympathise even less).

It’s a change that affects every game mode but is introduced because of pve. Unless you think critical damage is too strong in pvp/wvw. Or that 10% reduction in damage is going to change anything except mixing different types of gear pointless.

You post asks what this nerf solves, stat imbalance. Crit damage has been imbalanced since day 1. 1% of crit damage was not equal to a certain number of points of another stat. This is exactly why people started doing the 3 piece of berserker and 3 piece of another. The % crit dmg on one piece would be worth 16 stat points where on another piece of gear it was worth 12. This fixes the problem and naturally causes pieces of gear that had % crit dmg worth more stat points to lose crit dmg.

This far from a mistake. The real mistake was allowing crit damage to be a % stat to begin with. This is just fixing that mistake.

People spend a lot of time saying this is a mistake without seeing the change at work. How do you know? Max 10% DPS reduction? Max? What if your (yes, I am talking to all you ‘zerkers) implementation only causes 4% or 5%. I don’t think you are going to see that big of an increase in time spent mauling something. Though, I cannot know this until I see it.

If you proclaim this a failure before it’s introduced you have set a thought in place that will remain even if there is only a neglible impact. Don’t worry for naught lest it ruin your play time now.

I have a necro that’s equipped with Berzerker gear (including an ascended amulet and an ascended staff) but traited for toughness and blood magic just so you know that I have some skin in the game.

it all is just coverup from arenanet to stealth nerf celestial gear beacose from current highest crit dmg you get there you will loose 50%

laokoko.7403:

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

except people like me, who bought into the new-ish assassin’s armor set and had my damage nerfed by well over 10%. It was on par with berserker before simply because I was getting critical hits well more than half of every attack, causing more damage per stroke to make up for the loss of the power attribute (something nobody ever seemed to quite grasp). So from my prospective this particular change only served to preserve the meta, and this 10% nerf to berserker’s stats is almost purely cosmetic stacked up to what just happened to the true crit-based gear

Lets say meta changes. No more zerker or gtfo. New meta is half knight/half zerker for example. Big deal. Still no build diversity.

robertul.3679:

Lets say meta changes. No more zerker or gtfo. New meta is half knight/half zerker for example. Big deal. Still no build diversity.

meta wont change over stats on gear, the only thing that can force a meta change is by changing the design of encounters in future combat… the variety of gear available was a mistake in the long run on their part, but again, the only way to rectify is to alter how encounters and progression through any given areas work… not run rampant buffing and nerfing individual attributes

Prior to the addition of Ascended gear, there were complaints that the PvE game was too easy. Some of those who opposed Ascended did so because it added capability to player builds while PvE difficulty remained static.

Is anyone really surprised by this ~10% reduction of the DPS enjoyed by the “top DPS builds?” If you look at all the math posted about Ascended gear, what was the median damage increase estimated for DPS builds? Hint: I’ve seen estimates ranging from 5% and 14%.

So why nerf Berserker and not the other sets? The “other” gear prefixes in GW2 are considered to under-perform. The scaling on those sets was not as robust as on crit-based gear. Also, no one complains about Cleric’s gear being OP in PvE.

Ferocity could have been implemented with little to no reduction in damage. Just manipulate the formula until it is approximately what’s available now. So why reduce critical percentage? Ascended gear was put in piecemeal. Look at the critical percentage on Asc. trinkets versus the lessened scaling on that stat on the later pieces. This was ANet realizing that crit % on Asc. was too much of a good thing.

I’m not saying that the move is or isn’t a good thing, but I believe that’s why it’s happening.

I think that the change they are making is actually a good change but I think it won’t work.

The ‘issue’ is that there is only one good geartype at the moment and that is bezerker. This is not 100% accurate, but for most classes it is. Only among ele’s, guardians and necro’s it is accepted to bring different stats.

The issue is that there are three considerations to make when it comes to deciding on your stats.

1: direct damage
2: condition damage
3: protections

For any build you can say that protection is enough when you and your party stays alive. This is in most situations the case with zerker-gear so no need to spec in protection at all.

Conditions are simply broken in this game. so no need to spec there either.

That leaves only direct damage to spec in, and thats zerker.

By expanding the time of fights slightly by reducing crit damage they are making more situations that zerker is not as viable and they increase the fail rate if you go full zerker.

However I don’t think it will change a lot. the first reason is the elitism. Too many people think too much from the pov of the meta and don’t believe there is anything viable outside the meta. In other words. The only way now to make zerkers go try something else then zerkers is making zerker impossible to use. Otherwise they will just say ‘See, bezerker is still working, Anet failed in nerfing us’. So as long as Zerker will do the job it will stay the meta cause the elitsts will refuse to think out of the box.

I aslo think there is a danger in there. Cause going this way they likely will nerf it more in the future and in the same way. This till crit damage is so far removed it isn’t important anymore.

The real issue with Zerker is the lack of trinity. Cause GW1 doesn’t use Trinity, the game lack specialisation.

In e.g. GW1 you had classes that where good at healing (monks and rits), classes good at CC and buffing (dervish/paragon/mesmer), classes good at tanking (war, sin) and classes good at DPS (ele, necro, ranger). This ment that those classes often specialized. Due to secondary professions it was also possible to build hybrids.

The lack of specialisation has caused that there is a single meta.

So yes, this 10% nerf is a good thing, but it wont work and it will not result in a big change. The main questions is do we really want it to change? Is it so much broken?

My understanding of how ‘zerkers get away with it’ comes from a well-meaning reply I received for my post in the Dungeons sub-forum (which as you know is populated by pro-zerker folks).

Infamous Darkness.3284:

You see people are trying to help you with this area, because the dodge mechanic is quite broken in this game most/any boss can be fought in all berserker gear because without vigor you can still dodge once every 10 seconds (excluding the first 2 dodges you have), and once every five seconds with vigor, a dodge gives you about 3/4s invulnerability meaning that if you have perma vigor you can be invulnerable 15% of the time just with your dodges, this allows you (once you have a good knowledge of the boss and how and when to dodge certain attacks) to kill bosses more quickly while still staying safe by dodging the hardest hitting of the boss’s skills. of course as you are new to dungeons its probably best to start off with a little bit tankier gear until you learn the boss mechanics, and phase out the tankier gear as you begin to feel more comfortable.

my 2 cents

(the actual post is here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Welcomed-classes-in-dungeons/first#post3263682)

I have complete my condition set armor for my warrior now. Comparing the two sets of zerker vs condi I have noticed;

The condi set did better in Fractals than what i thought it was going to, but it still paled to zerker when situations like;
1) Busting out of arch diviners cage takes 1x 100 blades vs 20-25 auto attacks.
2) In Spvp/wvw condi just can’t destroy a treb/gate or any inanimate object in a reasonable time.
3) Too many bosses are just immmune to interrupts/knock downs and melt condiitons off quickly.
4) Champion health pools laugh at conditions. In the warrior thread there is a video of a solo champ in arah. It takes the player 40ish seconds w/ zerker to destroy. After 6-7 minutes with conditions its health is down to 85%.
5) An excessive amount of inanimate objects that can’t be critical hit or condition stacked.
6) Many of the bleed stacks I was aiming to inflict were over written by other professions that even though they are berserker, their passive traits give a percentage to inflict bleed on critical hit. These unintentional conditions over write my conditions. Effectively it swapped [120 DoT] to a [55 DoT]

Berserkers just has so many reasons why it is preferable over carrion etc. It goes much deeper than just zerker can dodge and that is all the defense they need and people who invest in toughness can still get one shot no matter how much they stack defense.
It really is a deep issue that requires a lot more than a damage reduction to zerker.

Behellagh.1468:

laokoko.7403:

No one is going to switch to other set just because of 10% reduce effective.

You don’t know min-maxers or Flavor of the Month players do you.

it still does the most dmg

You say “would” which implies it is just a possibility. They have come out and said what they intend to do.

I think bosses should get a “scaled retribution”. The harder you hit it with a single blow, the larger the percentage of damage reflected back to you is.

@OP – did you also notice with this change came the new Zealot gearsets? Basically zerker replacing crit damage bonus with healing bonus. Most people say lol-healingset, but if they intend to buff fights or make things harder in the future, these sets like Knights and Zealots might have more of a place in the meta.

My first thought with most of what Anet does is “what the hell are you thinking”… then I try to trace a logical path and derive where they might be heading with it. Its best to assume they ‘meant’ to do things the way they did them. That still doesn’t really make them good ideas most of the time.

The only way to change the meta from zerker to anything/everything else is to make PvE monsters behave similar to players. Specifically, this means increasing attack rates and decreasing damage per hit.

As it is, we have to dodge an attack that can 1-2 shot us every couple seconds. This negates the damage 100%, meaning we have no use for toughness, vitality, or healing power.

But if the enemies attacked more frequently and did less damage per hit, we wouldn’t be able to dodge every attack, we’d have to soak up some damage, we’d have to heal up, we’d have to play more strategically. Sure, some of the giant 1-shot attacks need to remain. But that can’t be all there is.

I’m talking about dungeons and fractals

Seras.5702:

The only way to change the meta from zerker to anything/everything else is to make PvE monsters behave similar to players. Specifically, this means increasing attack rates and decreasing damage per hit.

As it is, we have to dodge an attack that can 1-2 shot us every couple seconds. This negates the damage 100%, meaning we have no use for toughness, vitality, or healing power.

But if the enemies attacked more frequently and did less damage per hit, we wouldn’t be able to dodge every attack, we’d have to soak up some damage, we’d have to heal up, we’d have to play more strategically. Sure, some of the giant 1-shot attacks need to remain. But that can’t be all there is.

I’m talking about dungeons and fractals

I don’t think that will fix anything.
The “meta” will never go away. Instead of zerkers it’ll be knight armor with zerker jewels or some other combination that gives optimal DPS and provites just enough survivability that the team can complete the run.

It’ll be figured out in a few weeks after the change and it’ll become the new ’ cancerous meta ’.

Protip : the build + gear you love to run – you know who you are – and you know what type of defensive, tanky gear i’m talking about – no matter how much you want to change and mutilate the game – your choice will never be optimal unless you switch to this or the next meta. And people will never take you on speedruns until you do. Because they don’t have to and because for each of us time is precious.

This isn’t about killing build variety or promoting it.
It is about accepting the simple fact that if you want to be on a good team you should play what is most effective. Even if it is 5% more effective, or less – that’s the way to go.

Harper.4173:

I don’t think that will fix anything.
The “meta” will never go away. Instead of zerkers it’ll be knight armor with zerker jewels or some other combination that gives optimal DPS and provites just enough survivability that the team can complete the run.

It’ll be figured out in a few weeks after the change and it’ll become the new ’ cancerous meta ’.

Protip : the build + gear you love to run – you know who you are – and you know what type of defensive, tanky gear i’m talking about – no matter how much you want to change and mutilate the game – your choice will never be optimal unless you switch to this or the next meta. And people will never take you on speedruns until you do. Because they don’t have to and because for each of us time is precious.

This isn’t about killing build variety or promoting it.
It is about accepting the simple fact that if you want to be on a good team you should play what is most effective. Even if it is 5% more effective, or less – that’s the way to go.

Pretty much.

When it’s the players and not the equipment that matters most this game will finally have become interesting. The computer A.I. is simply too dumb, and the encounters are too rudimentary. A glass cannon assault should always fail but instead it’s the current uber-Meta and nothing else really matters.

I played a game of chess on my computer last weekend and as usual I set its playing strength to always be a tad better than my own. It was an exciting, tooth and nail experience. Guild Wars 2 will never ever come close to this. I still play the game for a variety of reasons but certainly not for the strategy and tactics.

Henri Blanche.8276:

When it’s the players and not the equipment that matters most this game will finally have become interesting. The computer A.I. is simply too dumb, and the encounters are too rudimentary. A glass cannon assault should always fail but instead it’s the current uber-Meta and nothing else really matters.

I played a game of chess on my computer last weekend and as usual I set its playing strength to always be a tad better than my own. It was an exciting, tooth and nail experience. Guild Wars 2 will never ever come close to this. I still play the game for a variety of reasons but certainly not for the strategy and tactics.

Certainly they aren’t there yet, but they are making a push in that direction by adding more interesting battle mechanics. Teq., Marionette, Tri-Wurm are all steps in the right direction.