Guild Wars 2

Skoigoth.9238:

No one is forced to run a specific set of gear under any circumstances. As far as I can tell, you can complete everything in this game using whichever stat combination you like. Naturally, people have become better since launch, therefore more people started using purely offensive stats for better kill-times/faster completion of content.
You don´t like the “active playstyle” associated with offensive stat combinations, or simply can´t pull it off? Fine. Use something else and stop bothering other people

What I find funny in those threads is that in other MMOs you have to gear according to the theorycraft or you can’t win the encounters of your level. And surprisingly few people complain and just do as told.

Here you are free too do almost whatever you want and you go through almost everything. There is a better way (as in other games) but the “lesser” customizations are also viable but people complain (see also the trinity thread). Some people want choice but become angry when others have…

Also this thread suffer of too much generalization. It would be a better discussion to give some context to problems. How is berserker gear more rewarding against world bosses? In open world? In exploration and jumping puzzles? All these activities give rewards and I’m not sure the gear affect the reward. In dungeons, berserker gear is not more rewarding neither, because you gain the same amount of token and chest in the end.
People choose their reward rate, if you really want the fast one choose the fast gameplay. If your goal is to play for funny builds then the reward rate shouldn’t be your measurable parameter.

Carighan.6758:

hybrid.5027:

….is bad? And you want to replace those things with passive defenses that you soak up using 0 skill or coordination? LOL again. And you had the nerve to say that my last post was bad. shame on you.

You might get further in life with taking others serious instead of ridiculing them.

Anyhow, the point is valid. This is a RPG. RPGs are traditionally stat-based games, in older times even going so far as to exposing actual random rolls to capture the atmosphere of pen&paper die rolls.
It is entirely natural for a RPG to have a random chance to critically hit, scales by a stat of your character (you seem to accept this, instead of having to aim your weapon as a part of the enemy not showing armor). It is also entirely natural for such games (not GW2 specifically) to make you dodge a blow passively by some chance scaled by your character’s agility, awareness, perception, anything like that.

This isn’t a weird thing. This is actually what many would expect when playing a RPG.
Now ofc, GW2 never had this and was never advertised as having these systems (except crit!), either.
But at the same time, it’s not really in any way absurd for players to request more passive ways to influence the fight.

This is an RPG? I’m sorry but the population it caters to and the way it’s set up pretty much make these “rpg roots” you talk about a very distant memory.

Gamers these days don’t want randomness in their game – and for good reason – it invalidates skill to a degree.

People want clear and predictable environments where they can use their ability and knowledge to succeed.

People who expected this sort of “hardcore RPG” elements should have taken a better look at what the designers promised with the game. Nowhere was it said it would be close to what you consider RPG elements and honestly I don’t see why it should be.

It is absurd to see people asking for more passive ways to influence a fight because GW2’s focus is entirely on active play.
It was advertised as a fast paced action-oriented MMO.

xDudisx.5914:

Tree.3916:

Your argument is not valid and is actually an ad hominem (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem).

The problem here is that there is no problem to fix. The people who balance this game are educated people with degrees in their respective fields. Are you saying that you know more than them and can offer better solutions given the restraints they work with? The fact of the matter is, non berserker builds are rewarded by being allowed to stand in one spot and soak all the damage. That not rewarding enough? Put on some berserker gear and stand in one spot.

“there is no problem to fix” yeah maybe that is why we are always getting class balance updates every few months. Because everything was perfect 2.5 years ago and needed no change. It is obviously the opposite. The devs saw the problem and are always moving away from the zerker easy mode in new content and updates. New bosses that you can’t do critical hits, some bosses with more armor, etc…

I guess people are too salty today becuase of losing 125 power hahaha.

Class balance changes have been driven in 90% of cases by sPVP. So please don’t attempt to misinform people.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

xDudisx.5914:

I guess people are too salty today becuase of losing 125 power hahaha.

Well Why would I care my might stack goes from 875 to 750? I’m comforted by the act you lose 125 power as well, Oh and I almost forgot 125 condition dmg… LOL!

It don’t mean a thing…

I posted in another thread Instead ofthe AC P2 boss dying in 5 seconds he’ll be dying in 5.175 seconds… Well that’s gamebreaking.

In other news today a-net nerfed might, The problem is if a critter needed 30 hits to die it now needs 31… We are outraged??…

All my builds are ruin’t. I now have to run around wearing full Nomads with a sign around my neck that reads ‘MIGHT NERF ATE MY BABY’, and beg for gold in mapchat, and my banks on all three of my accounts have been emptied.

All because mightnerf.

Mightnerf 2015: Never Forget!

Tree.3916:

naiasonod.9265:

snip

Nike had a good idea for normalizing stats. All gear is Celestial and trait distribution would control the stats on characters.

They had a system like this before – or at least similar.

In some alpha builds you could actually assign stats manually ( not sure some of them were tied to gear also ) depending on what you wanted to do.

More precision – more ranged damage
More strength – more melee damage
More vitality – more HP

It went something along those lines. It even had lines that gave more magic damage.
They also had an energy system that was linked to skills and meant you had to manage it on top of cooldowns.

The system was scrapped – possibly because it was considered “too complex” – I could see it happening with them constantly trying to make sure it’s impossible for players to be bad and create completely terrible builds.

Zerk should do tons of damage.

Damage just should not be the only thing that matters for gear.
Active defense could scale better with stats. For examples, warriors get a trait that gives then 1000 toughness for 8 seconds after breaking a stun. It is an active defense, but does not negate the need for defensive stats.

You are still stuck in the Holy trinity if everyone is running DPS.

Harper.4173:

Tree.3916:

naiasonod.9265:

snip

Nike had a good idea for normalizing stats. All gear is Celestial and trait distribution would control the stats on characters.

They had a system like this before – or at least similar.

In some alpha builds you could actually assign stats manually ( not sure some of them were tied to gear also ) depending on what you wanted to do.

More precision – more ranged damage
More strength – more melee damage
More vitality – more HP

It went something along those lines. It even had lines that gave more magic damage.
They also had an energy system that was linked to skills and meant you had to manage it on top of cooldowns.

The system was scrapped – possibly because it was considered “too complex” – I could see it happening with them constantly trying to make sure it’s impossible for players to be bad and create completely terrible builds.

Why do I feel my three-sizes-too-small heart skip a beat, imagining how much more fun that at least theoretically could have been? Alas. …Alas.

Still, some form of normalization is likely the only way they’re going to ever put the instigation of threads like this to bed, though I can’t help but wonder what fresh new hell they’ll create to do it.

I honestly don’t think gear is broken in its current configurations, though if we must do something about it, lets normalize it just like we do in spvp at least.

We don’t run dungeons to gear up anyway, right? The challenges aren’t really supposed to be tests of treadmill-tolerance or even gear checks, right?

So lets remove it from the table of woes entirely – normalize it completely or at least normalize the array of options available.

Spvp demonstrates many perfectly acceptable ways this could be done, and it would almost certainly make it easier for virtually anybody to run dungeons in the stat array even a random group might require.

In such manner, as an example, someone with no zerker gear that wanted to join a zerker run would have no excuse not to throw together a zerker build and hop right in. The gear would be free, and trait resetting is free already.

They’d be free as jaybirds to show us how they can kill all bosses before ice bow 5 is done and so on. I’d warmly encourage them to do so. I’d love to behold such excellence.

They can’t normalize gear. That’s the problem here.

They worked up a system where gear choice is a slider people can use in order to set the difficulty level they can complete content at.

Through gear you can influence the default content difficulty either pushing it up ( and being rewarded with higher clear times) or pushing it down ( but paying for it by having a longer clear time).

Normalizing gear means the default content difficulty now becomes the norm for everyone.

This will effectively skill-gate various populations of players from content depending on their skill level and more importantly their willingness to change,adapt and improve.
That would not be bad in itself but seeing how GW2 is aimed at hypercasual players I don’t really think it’s the road they’re going to take with the game.

Also gear also has a lot of other contributions to the game :

1)It creates a sense of accomplishment
2)It serves as a gold sink
3)It serves as a goal to be pursued by many players ( see ascended)

Off topic : I found a picture of the old system for you.
http://www.teeteehaa.de/gc/gamescom2010/images/guildwars2-hero2.jpg

It was greatly different from what we have today – but again – this is one of the things that was sacrificed on the altar of content accessibility.

All gear is easy mode. If you really want to claim skill, solo the content naked. It has been done.

Zerk is a form of easy mode. Rolling zerk does not make you good.

Thaddeus.4891:

But that the major point right there. Stats are passive buff whatever you do.

I see the problem here. Semantics. Boy do I hate that guy.

Well, you consider stat buffs as passive. Alright. I understand your viewpoint to a degree.

However, consider Healing Power. That is a passive boost to heals. Does that make healing (at least the majority of it) passive? Do you just spontaneously heal during combat? The answer is ‘sometimes’. There are traits and utilities that do passively heal you under circumstances and healing power boosts (some of) that healing.

However, healing can be active and often some of the most potent healing is active. If you’ve built a character who has no passive traits or utilities that heal him and rely on manually activating that heal, that would be reactive healing, with the root word being active. So Healing is both.

Now what about damage? There are passive damage sources via turrets and the like (do they increase damage based on your power?) while there are also active damage sources (which is everything else). The offensive stats affect active skills mostly. Does that make the stat itself passive or active? The answer is, “it’s irrelevant”.

The issue with semantics here is that, I’m not saying the stat improvement should be active or passive, I’m saying what the stat affects should be active or passive. I.e. there should be tools to utilize that rely on those stats to function better. Make a list of utilities and traits (sans the % of X stat traits) that improve directly (and not relatively) with Toughness or Vitality. It’s a short list compared to traits that give 100% crit on X skill (boosted by ferocity/power), do damage when you Y and some such traits.

Thaddeus.4891:

Defensive stats are not good because you can replace them with active defence. And that point right there is unbalancing the PvE game between defense and offense. You are totally right on that point. But where we have different opinion is that you see that as a problem that limit diversity as I see that as a GREAT gameplay design. I don’t want to have defensive stats that give me passive survivability, i want active gameplay that use damage mitigation.

Well, I do see it as a point that limits diversity, but not so much in character building but in encounter design. I see it as GREAT gameplay design as well, shades of unique apparent among its peers but an engineer mindset never becomes complacent. There are always ways to improve, to advance, to experiment and to diversify.

Thaddeus.4891:

You want fewer big attack and more medium attack so that active defense wasn’t enough by itself and that we need more defensive stats to survive, i want big attack that you can dodge or block and few medium/low attack that you can do nothing about except soak it.

FYI, if you’re replying to me, I never said that. If you’re not replying to me, I’m more curious what players really want. Yeah, you have some that want to force some sort of hard trinity so people (or some of them) have to be bunkers. You have yourself who feels satisfied ineffectualizing (lol that’s probably not a word) a mob so its fair to say once that’s done, take out that trash and move on. People brag and tell stories of soloing this or that or how a group rides the thrill of pushing faster clear times or the desire for harder challenge etc. etc.

People say what they think they want. To truly know if it’s what you want, try describing future additions in a form you’d like them to exist. Would it be challenging? How? Would it be varied? What would separate it from current content?

naiasonod.9265:

Beware Thaddeus! If you’re happy with the way it generally works now and don’t believe that Anet is holding their breath awaiting this thread’s consensus, he’ll conclude that you’re just jaded and need to take a break from the game!

Lol we get it, you don’t like having your argument thrown back at you (accusations I’m unhappy? Just because I like to discuss stuff on the forums?). Heh, if you did not like the reply, why not just direct that toward me instead of some indirect snark?

naiasonod.9265:

So, I’ll go sugar and specially speculate something – I hope they normalize all dungeon parties to zerker stats.

Get good or go home. This would simplify the matter entirely, remove all worry on anyone’s part about everyone being proudly statted for maximum kill efficiency and would push the required skill bar up to complete all dungeons, thus expanding the achievement value of so doing.

It’s my new platform on this topic now. I shall defend it without mercy.

If they did that, it probably would be an effort to slow down kill speed to enforce a specific encounter flow. Think of an action game where, once you force a boss to expose himself, you only have time to hit him for so much damage due to character attack speed, damage, positioning, etc.

It would simplify things, perhaps even liberate things so certain traits, skills and equipment can be boosted rather than limited and nerfed to keep them under a certain threshold for the extreme cases.

Marthkus.4615:

All gear is easy mode. If you really want to claim skill, solo the content naked. It has been done.

Zerk is a form of easy mode. Rolling zerk does not make you good.

Why not take it a step further? Play with just one hand while naked. Should be doable right?

I hope you see what I’m trying to explain. All gear can easily be considered easy. The game can be considered easy – it is just a matter of perspective.

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

personally i only see the huge zerk only meta problem in dungeons…

dealing dmg in general pve exploring is good if you wish to blaze trough content faster, tho nothing is yelling at you to play with such gear while you do hearts…

So im i the only one seeing how the problem lies in dungeons and not in the zerk stats?

Current dungeons have no plans of changing any time soon (in fact nobody was working on them at all all this time) But maybe the new group content in HoT will require more sustain damage with burst dmg in key moments along with people casting protection, regen, reflects trough out the battle?

“Its something you’ve never seen before” so im looking forward to being surprised with the promised hard ,exciting challenges .

Leo G.4501:

I see the problem here. Semantics. Boy do I hate that guy.

Well, you consider stat buffs as passive. Alright. I understand your viewpoint to a degree.

However, consider Healing Power. That is a passive boost to heals. Does that make healing (at least the majority of it) passive?

No, that’s not what I mean. Your healing skills is active, but healing power is passive. Same with offensive stats. Your greatsword auto-attack is active, but power, precision and ferocity are all passive buff. For toughness and vitality it’s even worth since they don’t buff a active things, they simply are passive by themselves. There is no stats that improve my game style, they are simple passive buff. I do care about what is active.

1) I do dmg with my weapons and utilities, that’s active and its fun. Its boost by offensive stats like power, precision, ferocity so I want those stats.

2) I survive because of active defense. That’s dodge, blocks, blind, invulnerability, reflect, etc. They are fun, but there is no stats that increase those, so I can take any.

3) Healing power can be fun (love to play a healer in other mmo) and its an active defense that need stats. But the game made it very unpowerful to make sure that we don’t have a dedicated healer in the game that would make a Trinity.

4) Passive defence have stats with vitality and toughness, but that’s not fun AND I can survive with only active defense so no need of those.

Leo G.4501:

FYI, if you’re replying to me, I never said that. If you’re not replying to me, I’m more curious what players really want. Yeah, you have some that want to force some sort of hard trinity so people (or some of them) have to be bunkers. You have yourself who feels satisfied ineffectualizing (lol that’s probably not a word) a mob so its fair to say once that’s done, take out that trash and move on. People brag and tell stories of soloing this or that or how a group rides the thrill of pushing faster clear times or the desire for harder challenge etc. etc.

Ya my bad, there was suppose to have a quote from xDudisx between the two because I was responding to him. But now I can’t find his quote, that tread is too big now lol.

Harper.4173:

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

If full zerk wasn’t easy, then why are non-zerks considered carried?

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

Vukorep.3081:

personally i only see the huge zerk only meta problem in dungeons…

dealing dmg in general pve exploring is good if you wish to blaze trough content faster, tho nothing is yelling at you to play with such gear while you do hearts…

So im i the only one seeing how the problem lies in dungeons and not in the zerk stats?

Current dungeons have no plans of changing any time soon (in fact nobody was working on them at all all this time) But maybe the new group content in HoT will require more sustain damage with burst dmg in key moments along with people casting protection, regen, reflects trough out the battle?

“Its something you’ve never seen before” so im looking forward to being surprised with the promised hard ,exciting challenges .

Not only is the “problem” primarily evident in dungeons, it’s primarily experienced in LFG dungeon queuing. All players can play whatever builds they like, they just cannot get away with joining any group at any time while doing so. The only possible exception to this is players who are grouping with the like-minded and who are upset that they might not be finishing fights at the same speed as the PuG speed clear people.

I love when “speed clear” arah groups take 4 hours and the “ultra-noob” non-zerks clear p4 in 1.5 hours with no wipes.

Marthkus.4615:

Harper.4173:

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

If full zerk wasn’t easy, then why are non-zerks considered carried?

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

Non-berserkers are carried because in a 5 man group with four berserker characters and one Nomads the Nomads fellow did not contribute 20% of the party dps. So in all probability he contributed below his fair share to the group, thus carried.

High deeps means less dodges. Right. Full nomads means zero dodges. Thus zero skill required. You sure this is the logical road you want to go down?

hybrid.5027:

Marthkus.4615:

Harper.4173:

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

If full zerk wasn’t easy, then why are non-zerks considered carried?

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

Non-berserkers are carried because in a 5 man group with four berserker characters and one Nomads the Nomads fellow did not contribute 20% of the party dps. So in all probability he contributed below his fair share to the group, thus carried.

High deeps means less dodges. Right. Full nomads means zero dodges. Thus zero skill required. You sure this is the logical road you want to go down?

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

What Nomads people can ignore is the small attacks. Although Nomads is really only for WvW commanders, where the whole zerg can be routed if the commander goes down.

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

Wow look at that amazing video worthy achievement and team coordination with active defense/healing skill burst.

You are right perhaps dodging is not the only mark of skill.

The only 5 man zerk that is impressive are the ones setting speed records for a dungeon. Aside from that, zerk is low skill play.

Marthkus.4615:

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

Wow look at that amazing video worthy achievement and team coordination with active defense/healing skill burst.

You are right perhaps dodging is not the only mark of skill.

The only 5 man zerk that is impressive are the ones setting speed records for a dungeon. Aside from that, zerk is low skill play.

Marthkus, it looks like you have it all figured out. Why don’t you showcase your prowess and knowledge by gathering two other like minded individuals and register for the upcoming Trio Dungeon Tournament and show us how wrong we really are. If what you say is true, then we will all eat our words when you win the tournament.
Registration Thread: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/18674672-guild-wars-2-trio-challenge-registration-thread
Rules Thread: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/18674461-guild-wars-2-trio-challenge-competitive-pve-tournament-official-rules
I look forward to seeing you compete.

Marthkus.4615:

Wow look at that amazing video worthy achievement and team coordination with active defense/healing skill burst.

You are right perhaps dodging is not the only mark of skill.

The only 5 man zerk that is impressive are the ones setting speed records for a dungeon. Aside from that, zerk is low skill play.

Its low skills because content is 2 years old and everybody know the content by heart. We all want new content and diffcult one because right now we need to push father than the content to have a challenge (record runs, solo runs, etc…)

Marthkus.4615:

Wow look at that amazing video worthy achievement and team coordination with active defense/healing skill burst.

You are right perhaps dodging is not the only mark of skill.

The only 5 man zerk that is impressive are the ones setting speed records for a dungeon. Aside from that, zerk is low skill play.

So much coordination it was barely possible to achieve for a human being

I agree, zerk is low skill but other types of gear are even lower.

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

I was expecting that to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKO11Y55DTM

Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mxlA13ICk

Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMgBBlWz58

Jerus.4350:

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

I was expecting that to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKO11Y55DTM

LOL never saw that one. Did someone ever watched it from start to finish at normal speed? I bet the guys fall asleep in the middle auto-attacking.

Marthkus.4615:

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

High defence means that you have to dodge zero attacks, because they’ll never kill you. Thus, no skill required. Period.

And please don’t try to claim that mob damage is high enough to be a threat to non-zerker players — in reality, it’s often barely enough to threaten zerkers, and is only a serious threat to nudes.

Thaddeus.4891:

Jerus.4350:

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

I was expecting that to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKO11Y55DTM

LOL never saw that one. Did someone ever watched it from start to finish at normal speed? I bet the guys fall asleep in the middle auto-attacking.

I didn’t, skipped around, but then Dub made a better one that’s already at accelerated speed (edited my previous post with it), and he takes even more kicks and what not.

Marthkus.4615:

Harper.4173:

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

If full zerk wasn’t easy, then why are non-zerks considered carried?

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

They are considered carried because they’re not putting out enough damage and thus are slowing everyone else down.

If they had the skill to time their dodges/blocks/evades they would be in full zerk’s – so in a sense they’re less skilled or simply don’t like to play zerker.

But they’re contributing less to the overall shortening of the distance from start to loot – so you’re carrying them because your dps is making it easier for them to get loot.

High dps means you have to dodge less attacks ? Maybe.

But you have to dodge them and not make mistakes – because you can’t really take many hits.

That’s the trade-off – high toughness means you can easily afford to miss 1-2 dodges. Have high vitality too? You can afford to miss 3-4 dodges.
Yes it will take longer but it’s more forgiving.

No matter what you choose to believe it takes more skill to play a 5 man full zerk FOTM 50 or Arah or even CM than it takes to run the same content kitten man PVT.

naiasonod.9265:

Leo G.4501:

naiasonod.9265:

Leo G.4501:

xDudisx.5914:

Harper.4173:

xDudisx.5914:

hybrid.5027:

xDudisx.5914:

Looks like you are trying to underrate the gear just to say that zerker is not a problem. Try running meta traits with nomads and see how much dps you will lose.

The DPS you’d lose is largely irrelevant when you consider that you’d be essentially unkillable.

Yeah, clearlly irrelevant. That is why we see everyone running nomads, clerics, dire, etc and no one running zerker/assassin.

Have you considered that people don’t run those because they don’t need to be unkillable?

Have ever thought that the reason they would be unkillable is because dungeon’s bosses are doing too little dmg and when they do it is concentrated in slow telegraphed skills? If bosses had more armor, less hp, more dmg, and hit more often the game would be much more balance for all the other stat combination available. The reason defensive stats are useless now is because there is little to no unavoidable dmg in pve.

What if the boss’ telegraph attack was still pretty strong, but during the channel of a certain one, it blocks critical hits, has heightened armor and if interrupted, he kind of “explodes” doing AoE CC and ripping all your boons away? If he uses the attack and lands it, he follows up with quick flurries of weaker hits but while doing so is much more vulnerable to damage for a time?

Yeah, that sounds overcomplicated and would lend to being broketastic from the moment it were implemented on into the rest of the game’s lifestpan.

I shudder to imagine them trying to make something that complex playable for the average GW2 player.

Hah, I love this attitude.

Pretty much amounts to “ACCEPT THE GAME THE WAY IT IS! FLAWS, REPEAT TACTICS AND ALL!” I mean, geeze, you’re basically not even trying

Accept it or don’t, I really don’t care what you do. I’ll be over here being reasonably happy with most of what there is, yes, even with its flaws.

But I’ll go on with that, and you go on being however you prefer. In the end, Anet’s gonna do what Anet wants no matter what you, I or Smokey the Bear say about anything.

If it has flaws, say it has flaws.
You shouldn’t defend them.
As I said, in the end it is their interest to make the game better.

naiasonod.9265:

In other news, I have a Dire set on one of my necros. That and her giver’s weapons makes for some yakkety sax times. Its like ‘Trololol, I can’t die, neener neener, OH YOU’RE TRYING TO KILL ME, have some 1m+ long bleeds dealing 21.8k damage and enjoy your terror-trip right out of my face!’

We’re on the same wavelength here. Throw in a sigil of bursting and the proper food/crystal, and critters wither fast.

Tree.3916:

Zenith.7301:

Tree.3916:

Your argument is not valid and is actually an ad hominem (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem).

The problem here is that there is no problem to fix. The people who balance this game are educated people with degrees in their respective fields. Are you saying that you know more than them and can offer better solutions given the restraints they work with? The fact of the matter is, non berserker builds are rewarded by being allowed to stand in one spot and soak all the damage. That not rewarding enough? Put on some berserker gear and stand in one spot.

It is really rich that someone talking about ad hominems goes on and makes an argument for authority right after talking about logical fallacies and on top of that making a circular argument.

Here is some evidence to back up my claims…
Lupicus vs 5 Full Clerics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZgRUtK7LkM
Lupicus vs 5 of the same class for each class
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OamhniesRfg&list=PLrtWAmj0-iOpWgRRX9BOyoLhrn5jGkg7P

Lupicus vs 5 Meta Group (in 2013…)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAK-QYShjro

Which one of those can you just stand and eat all attacks? I’ll give you a hint… it’s the first one.

What we see here in these videos is that content is balanced in such a way that any gear type can complete the content.

What we have here is people who think absorbing damage is not rewarding enough (with which I agree, learning active defense is the most rewarding thing in this game) and think that their “toughness” or “vitality” should contribute to their overall damage which is just absurd.

Instead what you have is a video of guardians and ele farting boons, which are pretty much passive defense as well with the frequency said boons can be applied.

And while the content can be completed, the time to complete is more than SEVEN times greater when a risk free berserker group only needs to dodge OBVIOUS tells and finish the fight in a fraction of the time.

Now, tell me, in a game in which the prestige skins cost 2k+ gold, and you get maybe 5-6g per run, guess which gearset is going to be required in LFG. Hint, not the gear that more than triples your grinding time.

God, i wish everyone (including me) could perfectly dodge every “OBVIOUS” tell. Things would be so smooth.

Harper.4173:

Marthkus.4615:

All gear is easy mode. If you really want to claim skill, solo the content naked. It has been done.

Zerk is a form of easy mode. Rolling zerk does not make you good.

Why not take it a step further? Play with just one hand while naked. Should be doable right?

I hope you see what I’m trying to explain. All gear can easily be considered easy. The game can be considered easy – it is just a matter of perspective.

Still – playing as a full zerker is harder than playing as full PVT.

I play with my neighbors feet and signal to them my every move via inverted Morse code communicated by laser pointer light through their upstairs window.

While naked. And humming a random national anthem while driving a golf cart on two wheels.

Come at me bro.

*this entire post is lies, except the naked part.

Jerus.4350:

God, i wish everyone (including me) could perfectly dodge every “OBVIOUS” tell. Things would be so smooth.

That’s why anet graced us with a defensive gear.

Mapisto.2154:

naiasonod.9265:

Leo G.4501:

naiasonod.9265:

Leo G.4501:

xDudisx.5914:

Harper.4173:

xDudisx.5914:

hybrid.5027:

xDudisx.5914:

Looks like you are trying to underrate the gear just to say that zerker is not a problem. Try running meta traits with nomads and see how much dps you will lose.

The DPS you’d lose is largely irrelevant when you consider that you’d be essentially unkillable.

Yeah, clearlly irrelevant. That is why we see everyone running nomads, clerics, dire, etc and no one running zerker/assassin.

Have you considered that people don’t run those because they don’t need to be unkillable?

Have ever thought that the reason they would be unkillable is because dungeon’s bosses are doing too little dmg and when they do it is concentrated in slow telegraphed skills? If bosses had more armor, less hp, more dmg, and hit more often the game would be much more balance for all the other stat combination available. The reason defensive stats are useless now is because there is little to no unavoidable dmg in pve.

What if the boss’ telegraph attack was still pretty strong, but during the channel of a certain one, it blocks critical hits, has heightened armor and if interrupted, he kind of “explodes” doing AoE CC and ripping all your boons away? If he uses the attack and lands it, he follows up with quick flurries of weaker hits but while doing so is much more vulnerable to damage for a time?

Yeah, that sounds overcomplicated and would lend to being broketastic from the moment it were implemented on into the rest of the game’s lifestpan.

I shudder to imagine them trying to make something that complex playable for the average GW2 player.

Hah, I love this attitude.

Pretty much amounts to “ACCEPT THE GAME THE WAY IT IS! FLAWS, REPEAT TACTICS AND ALL!” I mean, geeze, you’re basically not even trying

Accept it or don’t, I really don’t care what you do. I’ll be over here being reasonably happy with most of what there is, yes, even with its flaws.

But I’ll go on with that, and you go on being however you prefer. In the end, Anet’s gonna do what Anet wants no matter what you, I or Smokey the Bear say about anything.

If it has flaws, say it has flaws.
You shouldn’t defend them.
As I said, in the end it is their interest to make the game better.

Sure. But I don’t agree that certain things are flaws. I’m not in the least way discontented by the fact that zerker is the speedclear meta and generally desired most by those farming dungeons for gold.

I make my gold on the tp irrespective, I couldn’t care less about 3-5 gold a run. It adds up, sure, but it’s not why I’m there.

It doesn’t seem broken to me that if someone wants to farm fast, that need to use the big dps build and gear. It isn’t even remotely necessary to compete any of the content with.

I think those that expect to farm fast gold in their safety net soldiers and nomads and clerics gear are the flaws, however.

You don’t get to have it both ways. It seems that some really feel that deserve it both ways though, and I say, bugger them. They can get good with the fast farming meta or they can be snug and unkillable as bugs in full nomads.

Or anything in between.

Choice isn’t a flaw.

I’m curious how everyone is defining “rewarding” when comparing two stat builds. I mean, everyone receives the same rewards regardless of stat combo. So the only possible definition of “rewarding” I can possibly think of would be just speed of killing things.

I don’t find killing things faster any kind of reward. I rarely play zerker anymore. Mostly because I stopped PUG groups all together and strictly run with guild so I have the freedom to experiment with other playstyles without fear of someone hopping on a high horse. To me it is far more enjoyable playing a build less traveled and still complete all of the most difficult content.

Speedrunning, IMO, is a product of min-maxing. If you want to speedrun as fast as possible it requires a specific type of playstyle. There can only be one ideal build for completing content the fastest. Whatever that is, that’s what speedrunners will gravitate toward. In this case zerker. If you aren’t into speedrunning the who TF cares?

If you are into speedrunning then you have to realize there is an ideal combination to do it absolute fastest. If you want to run a different build, then you don’t speedrun, you just do dungeons normally.

Zerker is no more or less rewarding than any other stat combo. Zerker is just fastest at killing things because that’s how the stats work in this game. There will always been a best stat combo for a specific need (DPS in this case). And before people chime in about DPS being only measure in this game. Yea, that’s MMOs. Sorry to break it to you. Things have HP, things need to lose HP. Some do it better than others, this isn’t rocket science. Last I checked, every dungeon/fractal in this game can be completed with 5 cleric builds if you truly wanted to do it.

Zerker build is top DPS, find a build that still has decent damage output and utility if you want. All stat builds can DPS, but they can’t all be exactly the same, that’s not how stats work….

evilunderling.9265:

And please don’t try to claim that mob damage is high enough to be a threat to non-zerker players — in reality, it’s often barely enough to threaten zerkers, and is only a serious threat to nudes.

Do you even read what you’re writing? This isnt random open-world trash mobs we’re talking about. I mean, clearly you’ve not run CoF and had hellstorms chasing you down. They eat your face off regardless of your armor and stats. Not even protection saves you most times.

Thaddeus.4891:

No, that’s not what I mean. Your healing skills is active, but healing power is passive. Same with offensive stats. Your greatsword auto-attack is active, but power, precision and ferocity are all passive buff. For toughness and vitality it’s even worth since they don’t buff a active things, they simply are passive by themselves. There is no stats that improve my game style, they are simple passive buff. I do care about what is active.

Well I’m glad we understand each other now. I agree, stats themselves are passive. What I’m talking about, though, is what those passive stats affect. The reason we see the divide in application of use in the types of stats is because offensive stats benefit both passive and active offense but defensive stats only benefit passive defense with only healing power affecting heals as the exception. There are even offensive ways to benefit defense (kills rally allies, crit conditions/effects, dead foes can’t hurt you) but how many means of defense benefit your offense? What about boons or conditions? Power improves the damage of Retaliation, what if Weakness augmented your damage in some form based on Toughness, for example?

And I’m getting massive mixed messages here in the thread in general. Do players want “harder” content? Maybe not the majority of players, but do the elite players want harder content at least? But said content can’t be complicated or target specific playstyles?

You have people saying “zerk is hardmode” yet “zerk isn’t a build, it’s a gear set”. A gearset really shouldn’t dictate difficulty, the tactical approach should. For instance:

Harper.4173:

No matter what you choose to believe it takes more skill to play a 5 man full zerk FOTM 50 or Arah or even CM than it takes to run the same content kitten man PVT.

I’d argue that PVT armor in FotM 50 is harder because armor means practically nothing there. If your tactical approach is to win through attrition using armor, you’re handicaping yourself and glass cannon approach is more doable.

And if the tactical approach would be what sets the difficulty, then the tactic changing per encounter could mean the difficulty shifts with your prowess. So is the game’s encounters testing your prowess enough? Should the encounters be demanding you to adapt more or just know when to dodge?

Aidan Savage.2078:

Do you even read what you’re writing? This isnt random open-world trash mobs we’re talking about. I mean, clearly you’ve not run CoF and had hellstorms chasing you down. They eat your face off regardless of your armor and stats. Not even protection saves you most times.

I said “often”, not “all the time”. And yes, I did read what I wrote, and I’m not talking about open world trash mobs.

Non-zerk gear can be a real problem in timed events.

When you are in sivlerwastes trying to kill Husk in 5 minutes and half the people there are wearing nomads…

If you want to spend 3 hours doing a dungeon run in defensive gear fine, but there are open world events which require a certain amount of DPS.

Sube Dai.8496:

Non-zerk gear can be a real problem in timed events.

When you are in sivlerwastes trying to kill Husk in 5 minutes and half the people there are wearing nomads…

How do you know what they’re wearing? Just because you feel like there is a decrease in DPS at your events doesn’t mean the cause is because of gear alone. But you know what? I can play your game.

Zerk gear can be a real problem in timed events.
When you are in Silverwastes trying to kill _________ in 5 minutes and half the people there are unskilled zerkers that end up dying and laying there the whole time.

See what I did there?

Draknar.5748:

I’m curious how everyone is defining “rewarding” when comparing two stat builds. I mean, everyone receives the same rewards regardless of stat combo. So the only possible definition of “rewarding” I can possibly think of would be just speed of killing things.

I don’t find killing things faster any kind of reward. I rarely play zerker anymore. Mostly because I stopped PUG groups all together and strictly run with guild so I have the freedom to experiment with other playstyles without fear of someone hopping on a high horse. To me it is far more enjoyable playing a build less traveled and still complete all of the most difficult content.

Speedrunning, IMO, is a product of min-maxing. If you want to speedrun as fast as possible it requires a specific type of playstyle. There can only be one ideal build for completing content the fastest. Whatever that is, that’s what speedrunners will gravitate toward. In this case zerker. If you aren’t into speedrunning the who TF cares?

If you are into speedrunning then you have to realize there is an ideal combination to do it absolute fastest. If you want to run a different build, then you don’t speedrun, you just do dungeons normally.

Zerker is no more or less rewarding than any other stat combo. Zerker is just fastest at killing things because that’s how the stats work in this game. There will always been a best stat combo for a specific need (DPS in this case). And before people chime in about DPS being only measure in this game. Yea, that’s MMOs. Sorry to break it to you. Things have HP, things need to lose HP. Some do it better than others, this isn’t rocket science. Last I checked, every dungeon/fractal in this game can be completed with 5 cleric builds if you truly wanted to do it.

Zerker build is top DPS, find a build that still has decent damage output and utility if you want. All stat builds can DPS, but they can’t all be exactly the same, that’s not how stats work….

In ‘rewarding’ i meant for the player. there is no reason to change your build and armor stats to something other than zerk (mostly in pve). Its just too good on anything like world events, dungeons, it can solo bosses…
Ill give you an example:
My main character is a thief, and thieves have a bunch of fun skills like traps, caltrops, venoms and elit skills like dagger storm.
But why would I use them?! They arent that effective in pve, they are too weak.
You better put zerk armor and all your signets and just burst damage by spamming backstab.
Even short bow is used only because of its 5th skill for mobility and thats it.
If you like this style, be my guest. But I think arenanet need to make other builds more liked and wanted.
Its like they are saying ‘We gave you a lot of skills but only 2 are actually good. The rest is just foe the show’.

Those builds sucks because of the skills, it doesn’t matter what gear you slap on. A thief’s traps and venom are useless (mostly) even if you deck out in full sinister gear. In expansion there will be new specialization but i honestly doubt it will devalue the gameplay if it turns out that those spec could be decked in full zerk for maximum effeciency.

At least with thief, you have the most build diversity in pve, having three viable weapon sets (D/D for deepz), (D/P for stealth and blind spam) and S/P for survivability and synergy with the IP trait. Not only that, there are many different traits you swap in and out depending on the encounter and the weapon set you go with or the party comp you are in. Its completely irrelevant that you wear full zerk in all of it because the playstyle changes because of the other things i mentioned.

People need to start seeing that gear doesn’t dictate your playstyle, it never did. A PVT D/D thief plays exactly the same as zerk d/d, with the exception of how you can now play extremely sloppy as pvt and not die.

Alot of classes have many different build for pve, but its ALL situational. This is what i love about dungeons and i find it is the least understood part of the game, partially because of people approaching the whole thing with the wrong mindset thing as well as some dungeons being so easy that people join extremely uninformed parties that stack for everything even though its terrible strategy to do now and think thats all dungeons about.

Also if you think meta zerk thief build doesn’t use dagger storm then you are horribly misinformed. In fact, its probably the elite people should be keeping it on their bar 99.9% of the time.

Mapisto.2154:

My main character is a thief, and thieves have a bunch of fun skills like traps, caltrops, venoms and elit skills like dagger storm.
But why would I use them?! They arent that effective in pve, they are too weak.
You better put zerk armor and all your signets and just burst damage by spamming backstab.
Even short bow is used only because of its 5th skill for mobility and thats it.
If you like this style, be my guest. But I think arenanet need to make other builds more liked and wanted.

SB 2 is the nicest blast finisher in game, caltrops stack bleeding, daggerstorm is a swirl finisher.
A firefield and blast = might stacks, a smoke screen with blast = stealth, a static field with blast = swiftness, a light field with blast = retaliation (I think) and so on – daggerstorm + fire field = fire bolts, + smoke screen = blinding bolts and so on.

Not an argument against zerkers as I use all these things with my zerker thieves but don’t underestimate skills and more importantly combos.

Mapisto.2154:

In ‘rewarding’ i meant for the player. there is no reason to change your build and armor stats to something other than zerk (mostly in pve). Its just too good on anything like world events, dungeons, it can solo bosses…
Ill give you an example:
My main character is a thief, and thieves have a bunch of fun skills like traps, caltrops, venoms and elit skills like dagger storm.
But why would I use them?! They arent that effective in pve, they are too weak.
You better put zerk armor and all your signets and just burst damage by spamming backstab.
Even short bow is used only because of its 5th skill for mobility and thats it.
If you like this style, be my guest. But I think arenanet need to make other builds more liked and wanted.
Its like they are saying ‘We gave you a lot of skills but only 2 are actually good. The rest is just foe the show’.

Those thieves skills aren’t being used in pvp as well so I don’t really get your point. Those skills are simply weak except for a few specialized cases (e.g. shadow trap).

No, thieves skills are great – learn to play, the lot of you =)

Azhure.1857:

Sube Dai.8496:

Non-zerk gear can be a real problem in timed events.

When you are in sivlerwastes trying to kill Husk in 5 minutes and half the people there are wearing nomads…

How do you know what they’re wearing? Just because you feel like there is a decrease in DPS at your events doesn’t mean the cause is because of gear alone. But you know what? I can play your game.

Zerk gear can be a real problem in timed events.
When you are in Silverwastes trying to kill _________ in 5 minutes and half the people there are unskilled zerkers that end up dying and laying there the whole time.

See what I did there?

People in zerkers fail because they were not skillfull enough to dodge.

People in defensive gear fail because they never had a chance.

FYI – Zerk is not easy mode…
Go do Arah p4 in 20 mins – that’s a speed clear requiring knowing the encounters well.
Many people would rather take zerk so they learn the encounters faster and what kills them and improve rather than face tank all the dmg in nobads gear and it take much longer. Even if it takes the full zerk team initially longer they learn and improve what active defenses are required where so it takes less time next run eventually improving to times that a non-zerk party cannot achieve.

Then go tell me how long it will take in a non-zerk.

eh, why is this thread even a thing? Playing a non zerk build is literally, in the most literal sense of the word, as rewarding as any other build – we all get the same rewards for finishing a dungeon after all, don’t we?

Now, if you take the time it takes to finish a dungeon into the “rewarding” consideration, that would mean that every other heal/defense/ectect build should be able to finish a dungeon as quick as a zerker, which means that soliders would put out the exact same amount of dmg as zerkers. The zerker meta is dead, long live the soldiers meta!

Now, if for some reason you mean “easy” with rewarding then whaa…? Clearly someone’s been carried hard! In order to survive being all squishy and stuff you have to dodge, blind, reflect and reflect the heck out of enemies. If you dont have at least one or two people in the party that are properly capable of using those skills on the boss your group likely won’t get far. If you’re not one of those people using those skills properly – you’re being carried and need to step up your game BIG time.
It makes no sense/no difference to wear gear that boosts support/control abilities in this game, that doesn’t mean that you can’t/shouldn’t support and control anymore though!

I mean come on people, here are facts
1) there are at least as many “everyone welcome” lfgs as there are “80 zerk 4k ap+ xp or gtfo link gear” groups.
2) every single player – and that includes the 80 mage who runs a weaponless tank build in lvl 40 armor, has the ability to start their own group

so really… why is this even a thing still…