Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing for about a month now, got a character to level 80, started running dungeons and fractals, and basically I’m at the point where I feel like the character system in this game is just fundamentally broken.

Basically what I’ve noticed is that this game is completely infested with what I call the Berzerker Cult. It’s people who insist that absolutely no gear except berzerker gear has any value whatsoever, and people who have any kind of survivability stat or use healing are just terrible players who need those things because they aren’t good enough to avoid getting hit in the first place. Necromancers and Rangers are basically treated like lepers when it comes to dungeon runs because they have pets that can mess up stacks and simply don’t do enough damage. Most gear sets are completely worthless and nobody uses them at all. Apothecary or Nomad gear is considered downright laughable by most people. You can’t even buy half the prefixes from the dungeons, but nobody cares, because nobody uses them.

I don’t know if the devs saw the irony in calling their endgame content FOTM when indeed, unless your spec and gear is the Flavor Of the Month you don’t really go far in Fractals Of The Mist.

There are several things that are just fundamentally broken with the way this game works.

Giving people the option to stack healing power to the point where they are basically kitten for every other purpose is an absolute design fail in a game where healers are never needed. Why create the option? Purely to bait people and then smacking them down?

The game really fails to create a good dynamic between damage dealers and support characters. I understand that they didn’t want to have the trinity, and I fully support that, but a game doesn’t need to enforce the trinity to make playing a healer viable. All the game has to do to make playing a healer useful is to make sure that a damage dealer who is being healed can deal more damage!

There are no mechanics in the game that let you trade hitpoints for bigger damage, so there is no point in having a character that can put those hitpoints back in a party of good players. That is the most fundamental design oversight in this game, and it makes party composition extremely one sided. Maybe you can benefit from the odd banner or reflection wall here or there, and applying buffs is nice, but none of those things benefit from stacking the support stat in the game.

None of the fights are designed in such a way that exposing yourself to damage lets you dish it out better, and none of the abilities are designed in such a way that you can burn health to inflict more damage either. All of the boss moves that can really kill you can be avoided, and inflict so much damage that you can’t heal through them anyways.

The same goes for defensive stats. The only place where they are rally good is in PvP, because when you’re up against other players you can’t just dance around everything they throw at you like it’s a jumping puzzle. Too bad giant dragons and murderous demons don’t ever give anyone cause to think “maybe I can’t avoid getting hit all the time”.

I mean, sure, it does take a certain skill to run through a level 50 fractal in full DPS gear without getting hit. I won’t deny that that is an impressive feat. However, it is incredibly boring that there is basically one accepted way of doing that, and the entire PvE experience in this game boils down to letting yourself be molded into that one singular rigid pattern.

Why can’t the game have systems that make sure that a DPSer with the support of a healer can spike his damage enough to actually appreciate the heals?

Why can’t the game have enemies that can deal with people who sacrificed all survivability for more damage?

That’s how some people choose to run their game. Not a design fault, it’s just “quicker”, the faster it’s done the better for some people.
What I would like to see is some sort of Enrage mechanic to most if not all bosses which would give a proper place to those taking a front line in dungeons or wanting to support their party. Will that actually happen though? Probably not.
I suggest making your own lfgs.
I personally take whoever is online in my guild dungeoning, setups including whatever people want to play, necro, “healer” Guards or eles, bearbows. I don’t care, it’s all for fun for some people so you might be surprised who you find.

You’re better off ingoring metakittens. Speedrunning something that’s boring, to run it once again…really what’s the point. You could be doing SW, and get 3 times more loot.

Haleydawn.3764:

What I would like to see is some sort of Enrage mechanic to most if not all bosses which would give a proper place to those taking a front line in dungeons or wanting to support their party.

I don’t think making bosses get more and more dangerous as time goes on would make people any less hellbent on killing them as fast as possible.

I think what this game needs is an overcharge mechanic for all character classes where they can start burning their health pool to inflict more damage. If you can spike your damage by maybe 25% when you’re getting constant heals a party with a healer actually does more damage than a party without a healer. That way you get the best of both worlds, people get to optimize their runs without having to abandon all semblance of build diversity.

add raids with boss mechanics requiring certain roles…. you don’t have to run them but you can

Idea!

Overhealing: If you heal over your max HP you get a multiplicative damage buff. This would turn something like Water Ele into a team DPS support.

So, to summarize, the OP’s TL:DR is “I want trinity”? Did I get that right?

Seriously, yeah Zerk is the only good stat. In PvE :o

The other stats are here for WvW and sPvP.

1. There is no dedicated roles. This is how game works and how it was advertised.
2. “One singular rigid pattern” is what you get when devs abandon entire game mode for 2 years. You probably have not seen strict “1 build” meta before because Anet did it first on this scale.

1. Only the jerks think that all players who use non-meta gear are horrible players. Meta players themselves encourage new players to use more defensive gear until they get better at the game before going full-meta. All they ask is that non-meta players respect their LFG’s and not join their groups. And that’s not too much to ask.

2. Necros and Rangers suffer from the too many have played them bad and jaded other players. Bad impressions can take a while to go away.

3. Flavor of the Month? I thought you were complaining that only one gear set is king? How can it be Flavor of the Month gear wise but only one gear set is king? Not sure what you’re complaint here is due to that contradiction.

4. I used to run full Clerics gear (Healing Power main, Power, Toughness) on my Elementalist with a build meant for personal survival. I solo’d 90% of the map completion I did on that character. That 10% was mostly not solo’d because other people happened to be there, I did not ask for assistance. I only asked for assistance for a few skill challenges that were just too difficult (and would have been too difficult for my skill level no matter the gear and build I had). There are only 3 slots on armor for gear and you only have so many traits you can have. You have to give up the usage of several stat modifiers or opt for a minor boost to everything on your gear. You give up the usage of 2 trait lines no matter which 3 lines you go for. If you choose more defensive gear and more defensive traits, you are more likely to have to give up offensive options.

I didn’t feel too terribly underpowered and only geared to meta when I started doing dungeons for tokens for my legendary. And only then to increase the number of groups I could join. I knew I could find groups that would have accepted my previous build.

5. That’s the thing, in this game, the trinity of damage, support, and control are all done within your own character. No one character focuses solely on damage. No one character focuses solely on support. Or control.

This game is balanced around active defense. AKA: let’s avoid taking damage or getting controlled. Dodges, reflects, protection, stability, stun breaks, etc.. People who spec for pure heal support in a good group will have very little to do. Because everyone is avoiding getting hit or avoiding damage through active defenses.

6. The only way to make people go full healer in the meta is to make it required and that is not what ANet set out to do when they made GW2. They did not want a system where players had to wait for someone with a specific build/class combination to join their group.

You seem to be asking for required roles, which is something that a good majority of players do not want and bought GW2 for that specific reason. Which was what Basandra Skye was basically saying.

1. A-net did not enforce the zerk meta the player base does they put it in there game but only by reason they thought many would play all types of builds.

2. Dungeons can be run with any group make up and stat types and no they do not get harder if you do not run full zerker you can run a dungeon in full nomads and still finish it in about 20 mins or less.

3. This game has more build diversity then any mmo out there right now.

4. Gear makes up about 40% of your build traits make up another 40% and runes and sigels make up the last 20% by mixing and matching the amount of builds is huge.

5. Most players feel there time is spent better grinding gear and bosses and dungeons as fast as they can to be more effective use of there time in game why I do not know.Maybe better payout overall as in more gold earned not like it really effects them in real life.

6. This game was made for one reason FUN thats it read what the devs have always said they made this as a game you could pick up play and then leave for a while come back and pick up and play with out the need to worry about what you missed even though living world season 1 messed with that but all else is that way.

Do not sweat the small stuff like zerkers and such make your own groups and run the way you want it can be alot more fun then stressing that your build is ineffective when most builds have flaws for a reason. Want to try some fun builds mess with your characters with gear and traits test in the mists or test in pve you can use greens to test and they work fine for that. Then move up to exotics when you find a build type you like.

This game might be mega easy mode to everyone on the forums but every game becomes that way after a while its what you make of it that makes it fun for you if you like zerker speed then go with it if you like support play support you like to heal play a healer even though healing is active healing it can be fun. The whole game is your playground at level 80 and soon that playground is going to change with HoT and it will be more exciting then ever.

Colin has already stated they’re trying to make other roles other than DPS more prominent in HoT, but that’s a ways away, so until then I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with starting your own parties (and explicitly stating it’s casual) or running exclusively with friends/guildies.

Every week a new thread full of people complaining about the zerker meta instead of just forming their own lfg where zerker isn’t required. Is it so hard to just form your own group? Everything is viable, some people just like to find the meta-game. It happens in every MMO since the beginning of MMO’s and will continue long after GW2 is dead. You don’t have to play Meta, what you have to do is respect people that want to and stay out of their parties.

Aetrion.8295:

I’ve been playing for about a month now, got a character to level 80, started running dungeons and fractals, and basically I’m at the point where I feel like the character system in this game is just fundamentally broken.

Basically what I’ve noticed is that this game is completely infested with what I call the Berzerker Cult. It’s people who insist that absolutely no gear except berzerker gear has any value whatsoever, and people who have any kind of survivability stat or use healing are just terrible players who need those things because they aren’t good enough to avoid getting hit in the first place. Necromancers and Rangers are basically treated like lepers when it comes to dungeon runs because they have pets that can mess up stacks and simply don’t do enough damage. Most gear sets are completely worthless and nobody uses them at all. Apothecary or Nomad gear is considered downright laughable by most people. You can’t even buy half the prefixes from the dungeons, but nobody cares, because nobody uses them.

I don’t know if the devs saw the irony in calling their endgame content FOTM when indeed, unless your spec and gear is the Flavor Of the Month you don’t really go far in Fractals Of The Mist.

None of the fights are designed in such a way that exposing yourself to damage lets you dish it out better, and none of the abilities are designed in such a way that you can burn health to inflict more damage either. All of the boss moves that can really kill you can be avoided, and inflict so much damage that you can’t heal through them anyways.

The same goes for defensive stats. The only place where they are rally good is in PvP, because when you’re up against other players you can’t just dance around everything they throw at you like it’s a jumping puzzle. Too bad giant dragons and murderous demons don’t ever give anyone cause to think “maybe I can’t avoid getting hit all the time”.

I mean, sure, it does take a certain skill to run through a level 50 fractal in full DPS gear without getting hit. I won’t deny that that is an impressive feat. However, it is incredibly boring that there is basically one accepted way of doing that, and the entire PvE experience in this game boils down to letting yourself be molded into that one singular rigid pattern.

Why can’t the game have systems that make sure that a DPSer with the support of a healer can spike his damage enough to actually appreciate the heals?

Why can’t the game have enemies that can deal with people who sacrificed all survivability for more damage?

I ran a mid range fractal today with a horribad zerker group. I mean, horribads. About 1/3 way through I switched my armor and utilities so that they would stop dying all the time, and it barely got us through. It was so pathetic, I was on my engi and had more stealth for our party then the mesmer (just for example). There were 3 warriors, 1 was all signets, the otehr one was better, had the decent signets and banners. the ranger was ok, he kept himself up while managing to do decent deeps, but he had absolute zero team utility that would help out the guys that kept downing all the time.

the screwed up thing is that 90% of the zerker baddies say / think that it isnt them, and make comments like “well you just got grouped with bad people that need to L2P”…. while in actuality, it is them, the very people that make those sort of comments that are the baddies, including the ones in this and other threads like these on these forums.

Things are supposedly goign to change in the HoT expansion where a wider variety of builds will be required for content completion, but knowing a-net, I won’t believe it until I see it. Hell, I won’t even buy the expansion cause all the WvW issues + this kind of stuff, until I see that they actually mean what they say and do something in the right direction.

Seera.5916:

5. That’s the thing, in this game, the trinity of damage, support, and control are all done within your own character. No one character focuses solely on damage. No one character focuses solely on support. Or control.

This game is balanced around active defense. AKA: let’s avoid taking damage or getting controlled. Dodges, reflects, protection, stability, stun breaks, etc.. People who spec for pure heal support in a good group will have very little to do. Because everyone is avoiding getting hit or avoiding damage through active defenses.

I have run many zerk groups and heals get used as much as your active stuff does cause its active to along with many skills that trigger heals on effect and can be seen in many speed runs done by some of the top guilds on youtube there using there heals just as much to add extra dmg reduction with it. See that is how healing works here in GW2 is it works as a damage sponge just like protection reduces the damage you take healing does the same thing but retroactively.

This whole thing were zerkers never take damage is a farce and big one cause you will always take damage there is no way to stop it for a whole fight unless you cheat. And yes I do run zerker runs in dungeons when I want to get tokens fast. I have never seen one where you did not take damage at all except against normal mobs not bosses you will get hit there and 90% of the time the guard or ele with pop off a heal to give there team back health.

The reason ranger and necro are not liked in dungeon runs is cause they do not bring a thing to the group via damage reduction with reflects, condi cleanse, Protection, and retaliation they dont have alot of that even though the ranger has more condi cleanse then most they do not do the rest. But they could bring heals that work in the same manner and keep the team alive just as well sense zerks does not require as much healing heck regeneration can cover the loss almost. Joking but really the reason why so many play zerks is because its more effective way to use there time to earn gold faster sense everything melts away faster.

Look at all other mmo’s the trinity went from tank, healer, dps, support, off tank, and control to tank, healer, and dps because it made things faster and easier to manage not just for the devs but the players as well. Here we have a huge amount of build options but when the game released the first thing many did was start looking for the best dps and it stuck because it was faster and more effective way to do dungeons and bosses pretty much everything but soon this will change with the new AI coming with HoT owe and if you do not know about the new AI here take a look.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

That will explain it all and if not tech savy go to about 24 mins and watch it in action for your self and yes this is mob AI that is coming with HoT. This will be fun to see the forums light up with the games to hard till everyone figures out the new AI. Then it will go right back to this games so easy my cat can play it.

Rymer.4017:

Seera.5916:

5. That’s the thing, in this game, the trinity of damage, support, and control are all done within your own character. No one character focuses solely on damage. No one character focuses solely on support. Or control.

This game is balanced around active defense. AKA: let’s avoid taking damage or getting controlled. Dodges, reflects, protection, stability, stun breaks, etc.. People who spec for pure heal support in a good group will have very little to do. Because everyone is avoiding getting hit or avoiding damage through active defenses.

I have run many zerk groups and heals get used as much as your active stuff does cause its active to along with many skills that trigger heals on effect and can be seen in many speed runs done by some of the top guilds on youtube there using there heals just as much to add extra dmg reduction with it. See that is how healing works here in GW2 is it works as a damage sponge just like protection reduces the damage you take healing does the same thing but retroactively.

This whole thing were zerkers never take damage is a farce and big one cause you will always take damage there is no way to stop it for a whole fight unless you cheat. And yes I do run zerker runs in dungeons when I want to get tokens fast. I have never seen one where you did not take damage at all except against normal mobs not bosses you will get hit there and 90% of the time the guard or ele with pop off a heal to give there team back health.

The reason ranger and necro are not liked in dungeon runs is cause they do not bring a thing to the group via damage reduction with reflects, condi cleanse, Protection, and retaliation they dont have alot of that even though the ranger has more condi cleanse then most they do not do the rest. But they could bring heals that work in the same manner and keep the team alive just as well sense zerks does not require as much healing heck regeneration can cover the loss almost. Joking but really the reason why so many play zerks is because its more effective way to use there time to earn gold faster sense everything melts away faster.

Look at all other mmo’s the trinity went from tank, healer, dps, support, off tank, and control to tank, healer, and dps because it made things faster and easier to manage not just for the devs but the players as well. Here we have a huge amount of build options but when the game released the first thing many did was start looking for the best dps and it stuck because it was faster and more effective way to do dungeons and bosses pretty much everything but soon this will change with the new AI coming with HoT owe and if you do not know about the new AI here take a look.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

That will explain it all and if not tech savy go to about 24 mins and watch it in action for your self and yes this is mob AI that is coming with HoT. This will be fun to see the forums light up with the games to hard till everyone figures out the new AI. Then it will go right back to this games so easy my cat can play it.

Good zerker groups don’t take enough damage to warrant a dedicated healer given active defense and their own healing skill. That better?

Wish they’d convert the word “broken” to “kitten.”

So tired of that overused term.

We’ve been talking about this for years OP. It’s past time to fix it. I still log in daily but what it boils down to is all of us have been given the illusion of choice. Sure, you could run Assassin’s gear. Or Keepers.

I had a blast with this game for a long time, but even making a bunch of different statted gear viable after so long doesn’t change the fact that they are building open world PvE into a Dry Top/Silverwastes hybrid group zerg.

We won’t ever get new dungeons again and might not get new Fractals. They announced a Fractal mastery track but does that mean we are getting new ones? Who knows. They are mum on a lot of pertinent info and want me to pre-order? Give you money for this thing before a certain date to get a character slot without all the information? I don’t buy anything like that. No thanks.

i think the issue here is that there’s essentially no downside to berserkers/assassin gear. It’s the triumvirate, increased base damage, increased crit effectiveness, and increased crit probability. The three stats just work together in an ideal fashion, and the only way to ‘fix’ it is to break it entirely, by making the contribution from each of those stats so worthless that even despite the synergy, the affix would just suck.

(in case it’s not obvious, i’m NOT recommending that the devs create yet another useless stat combo)

To actually ‘fix’ the current meta, if it’s regarded as something broken, i think that berserker gear needs to go altogether. If you really want those stat combos you have to hybridize, e.g. pieces of valkyrie and knights will give you those same stats but toughness & vitality as well.

…of course, then we’d face the (quite legitimate) crying of people who simply don’t need those defensive stats. (i’m not one of them)

would all this improve the game? unlikely, in my opinion.

Aetrion.8295:

Why can’t the game have enemies that can deal with people who sacrificed all survivability for more damage?

It could. Phrased like that, I’m at a loss to understand why it has to ? What do you care if someone else wants to go glass canon?

If you rephrased your question as, “can we get smarter and more dangerous foes?” I’m sure most of us would be on board with that. And so far, that’s been the trend. Silverwastes is more dangerous than other open world areas, the related foes in instances were, too. Now, the AI needs to get better, too.

So I’m hopeful we’ll see more challenging content in the future.

I don’t have a problem with it when someone wants to build a glass cannon, I just think it’s idiotic that the way the game currently works DPS stats synergize into absolute absurdity while defensive stats and particularly healing power are total garbage.

I mean you basically get three stats that flat out multiply on top of each other, and have no efficiency cap in the game, since there is no such thing as “overdamage”, and then you get a whole bunch of other stats that only have mild synergies if any that have a clear cap on their effectiveness, because for example all the healing in the world is completely worthless unless there is damage to heal. Demand for damage is infinite, demand for defense is not. In fact, the main reason why glass cannons are easily playable because demand for defense is very often zero.

The real question is: Why doesn’t ArenaNet care if someone doesn’t want to play a glass cannon?

You want required healers which is NOT what GW2 is about. GW2 is about being able to do group content with any combination of builds. All tanky builds, all glass cannon builds, all hybrid builds, or a combination of builds. All able to do content.

And not about waiting for players to come around to heal them.

Because ANet wanted to move away from dedicated healers, they had to put into place a means for players to stay alive. And they did this through self heals, active defense, support, and passive defense. And since this game is about active game play, they focused more on the active defense (dodges, moving out of range) over the passive defenses (armor stats).

The current meta of glass cannon is also an indirect result of the fact that the content being played has been around for 3 years. Just looking at builds, the most difficult one is the glass cannon. As it has no room (or very little) for mistakes.

When the game first came out, glass cannon builds were not the meta. Because we didn’t know the game as well as we do. And as we learned, more competitive players started looking for ways to up the challenge when the content became easier. This is when things like skipping and going toward more glass cannon builds started happening. And over time, more and more people skipped trash mobs and more and more people went more and more glass cannon. Until where we are today.

Until there are new dungeons, there will likely be no change in the PvE meta. When new ones are added, if they do ever add new ones, they will likely have their own meta which will gradually change into the most difficult set up like the current dungeons have.

The game does not have and hopefully will never have any dedicated roles.

Go look at the meta builds. And I mean really look at them. The rotations. The traits used. The skills used. Their gear may be DPS oriented, but their traits and skills are mainly support and control related. Necros aren’t highly wanted in dungeon groups not because of their DPS levels, they have high DPS levels, they’re not wanted because of their lack of group support.

Aetrion.8295:

I don’t have a problem with it when someone wants to build a glass cannon, I just think it’s idiotic that the way the game currently works DPS stats synergize into absolute absurdity while defensive stats and particularly healing power are total garbage.

I mean you basically get three stats that flat out multiply on top of each other, and have no efficiency cap in the game, since there is no such thing as “overdamage”, and then you get a whole bunch of other stats that only have mild synergies if any that have a clear cap on their effectiveness, because for example all the healing in the world is completely worthless unless there is damage to heal. Demand for damage is infinite, demand for defense is not. In fact, the main reason why glass cannons are easily playable because demand for defense is very often zero.

The real question is: Why doesn’t ArenaNet care if someone doesn’t want to play a glass cannon?

A video from another thread about how “weak” defensive stats are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chkMBzXKxAs

There are loads of others out there.

Defensive = easy but slow, offensive = hard but fast

There is no problem with the defensive stats themselves, the problem is in the encounter / mob design

Aetrion.8295:

The real question is: Why doesn’t ArenaNet care if someone doesn’t want to play a glass cannon?

The state of the game right now is an unintended consequences of poor game design which did not kitten (<-@ssess is censored lol, oh Anet … cmon ahaha, it’s a legit non cursing word) and predict player base behavior on long term basis.
Simple as that.
Like other has said, there was no zerk meta @ beginning but over the years, player base becomes fluid with almost everything they do in this game. (Condi is very viable now btw, though i understand what you said about other defensive stats being useless).
Time and experience trivialized everything in this game. Even SW is like a joke now these days.
I’ll give HoT xpac a month or two at most …. then every1 will sail trough it no problem.
If you couldn’t come to term with it, perhaps it’s best to move on.
It’s just the way it is in this game.

I know that humans are social animals, but the degree to which players choose to empower people whose ideas about gameplay they detest amazes me. If you don’t like the way people think, then don’t hang with them and especially, don’t lend credence to their ideas by accepting them.

That’s not to say there aren’t some issues with game design, but I don’t believe the issues are rooted in the math behind the game. If that were true, you’d see similar problems in all modes. For instance, Seera pointed out the real reason for Necro hate in dungeons.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I know that humans are social animals, but the degree to which players choose to empower people whose ideas about gameplay they detest amazes me. If you don’t like the way people think, then don’t hang with them and especially, don’t lend credence to their ideas by accepting them.

That’s not to say there aren’t some issues with game design, but I don’t believe the issues are rooted in the math behind the game. If that were true, you’d see similar problems in all modes. For instance, Seera pointed out the real reason for Necro hate in dungeons.

It’s either you blend in or being an outlier/outcast. It’s the same with society in rl tbh. Nothing is surprising with the meta behavior. Mmorpg wise, meta exists beyond GW2, it’s almost on every other mmorpg you could find. The problem with GW2 is extremely amplified because of the game design, which is very one dimensional, DPS with everything else being side dish only.
It is rooted to the game design. Necro doesn’t have any support considered as being substantial by community is another poor sighted design.

Aetrion.8295:

snip

Honestly, I’m so tired of threads like these.
If you want a trinity this isn’t the game for you.
We don’t need healer in PvE – if you want to be a healer, go to wvw, there you will be appreciated.
And you can always look for a guild – most guild mates don’t really care about the build of others.

If you play this game for a bit longer you likely will be able to do any PvE content in full zerkers – and maybe you’ll find that this thread was unneccessary.

We did a dungeon tour with a condi ranger today, zerker isn’t the only viable stat. The runs basically took the same time compared to having a full zerk ranger.

The ‘trinity’ in GW2 comes in the form of CC (fear, knockdowns, knockbacks etc), support (eg. aegis, blinds, stripping defiance, reflects etc) and DPS. Every class is viable in dungeons/fotm and with the exception of Necromancer they are all in a fairly good place. Even a good Necromancer can provide blinds and chills where required.

You just need to get better at this game and learn how to use your class fully (eg. utilities, blast finishers, dodging). Good players don’t need a ‘healer’, they just blast water fields or use their own heal in order to heal or mitigate the damage in the first place with reflects, blinds, absorbs etc

I guess if they bumped up enemy damage and increased the effectiveness of toughness and healing power there would be less zerkers running around. Build more upon the soft holy trinity? Idk.

It’s probably the dumb ai also actually.

But then there would still be an optimal way to build your class and everyone would use that instead. Then people would ask for it to be nerfed or something else buffed cause lel I’m different f meta builds.

Berserker is the most efficient for pve. Dungeons are very poorly designed and have had almost no adjustment since launch, and anet has essentially given up on dungeons altogether and won’t be making any more in the foreseeable future.

It’s really as simple as that. The game has all sorts of potential for encounters and group dynamics and build diversity, but as far as dungeons are concerned killing the enemies as quickly as possible is virtually always the best and easiest strategy. There is nothing that requires or encourages having more defense statistics or taking extra healing power. Surviving is possible and often quite easy without building around survival, so you’re only handicapping yourself and your group.

Pvp has all sorts of viability for lots of builds and playstyles and that’s because the enemies/fights are varied and interesting.

TO ANET’S CREDIT however the silverwastes have enemies that are more diverse and the bosses are more than just blindly burning down as quick as possible, and with the revamp to conditions berserker is not the only viable stat set for pve (but full offensive is still the only way to go).

Templar.3418:

I guess if they bumped up enemy damage and increased the effectiveness of toughness and healing power there would be less zerkers running around. Build more upon the soft holy trinity? Idk.

Toughness and Healing Power are just fine as is proven by many videos on youtube with easy-mode no-dodging runs.

What will happen if they just increased the damage of foes? Would it make a “Healer” viable? No it won’t. Next we know everyone is running Knight or Valkyrie gear instead of Berserker, how much better is that for diversity/variety?

The mobs damage and health is already increased when you advance in fractals.

And you know what? The meta is still at berserker gear even at level 50.

stof.9341:

The mobs damage and health is already increased when you advance in fractals.

And you know what? The meta is still at berserker gear even at level 50.

That’s because although the damage is increased at 50, the hit points are increased by a LOT MORE. And since mob attack speed is the exact same defensive skill power is increased a lot. For example blocking a skill that does 10000 damage with Aegis is 10 times more important than blocking a skill that does 1000 damage.

So fights take considerably longer, defensive skills become a lot more powerful, why wouldn’t everyone just use Berserker at 50?

knight and valkyrie?

No they wouldn’t… They’d use cavalier and zerk/sin as the only thing you need to surviuve would be toughness. DPS counter = toughness…

To refill huge health pools you need healing , but if you use toughness you mitigate damage and you do not need this healthpool, also you will not need healing as is as the base healings are suffice to say plenty to fill the gaps.

So effectively this game has 5 stats:
power
precision was retuned giving no additional benefits. (not nerfed, neither boosted)
ferocity
condition dmg
toughness
These 5 were all buffed when the june 23 patch hit.

condition duration wasn’t available from gear and stayed equal most trait lines containing condition duration were “power” lines not used by condtion builds in the first place

And why do the other stats not count

boon duration was nerfed, and the result ing maximum boon duration is now less then 50% (45% unless speccing food and such) destroying any chance for DPS buff.
Boon duration was often coupled with defensive and/or healing stats

healing was nerfed on all people NOT running full healing armors (including zealot, cause they do not have trinkets, nomads cause it’s a minor stat, shamans, apothecary and so on.) Safe to say most interesting healing / DPS builds are non viable atm. The 300 points removed means they were being nerfed 20-33% instead of recieving a buff due to the boosts in stats for the above mentioned stats. Often in combat or otherwise temporary and conditional buff were put back in to replace the former 300 healing…

vitality is stricken as the larger healthpool will make draining it a little bit timeconsuming but NO CHARACTER CAN REFILL IT AGAIN! due to the dumb way healing functions. Thge fact it did grow makes for an even worse problem when trying to get your healthpool refilled. worsening its problem,

Precision was nerfed : the baseline precision boost players got doesn’t increase their crit chance. And you lost sources of precision on top of it which if I’m not wrong results in a slight drop of crit chance at max stat levels.

Funfact:
The people who feel “threatened” by the meta, are those who run around, join parties that clearly were not searching for them, and harass other players for playing the way they want.
Open your own lfg, so you – and everyone like you – can be happy.
Threads like these are the epitome of hypocrisy.

>“There is no-one playing dungeons without stacking and skipping”
False, I’ve just seen a guild recruiting in Mt. Maelstrom today, advertising that they don’t stack or skip dungeons. Can’t remember their Tag or name, but these people exist. Ask around to find them. And meanwhile stop harassing the rest of the playerbase for playing in a way that YOU personally don’t like.

Basandra Skye.4031:

So, to summarize, the OP’s TL:DR is “I want trinity”? Did I get that right?

If you actually read it and interpreted it that way…. Sure I guess you could look at it like that.

To me it was more directed at the berseker stat meta needed just to be apart of dungeon runs and anything PvE and the OP wishes to use other stats such as healing where he could play a different role that wasn’t just DAMAGE DODGE DAMAGE DODGE DAMAGE WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT DODGE NOW BURST WE WIN – no team play/role needed except standing in the same spot and rezzing eachother who were downed.

The problem is that healing will only ever be needed when it improves DPS of the team. The only way Healing improves DPS of a player is if that player would be dead without it.

Ergo, the only way healing will help is if people will die without a healer. Which is similar to saying that healing is required.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

knight and valkyrie?

No they wouldn’t… They’d use cavalier and zerk/sin as the only thing you need to surviuve would be toughness. DPS counter = toughness…

vitality is stricken as the larger healthpool will make draining it a little bit timeconsuming but NO CHARACTER CAN REFILL IT AGAIN! due to the dumb way healing functions. Thge fact it did grow makes for an even worse problem when trying to get your healthpool refilled. worsening its problem,

As a matter of fact my main, who’s the strongest out of all my thieves (I also have a full zerker), uses valk armor, rest zerker – that’s my wvw setup and I ran with that gear and also the traits for forever, no matter whether PvE or WvW. He’s the strongest because of his runes of strength. Since he’s mainly a D/D thief my valk armor is as good as zerkers, damage wise. My other (zerker) thief would be only marginally stronger with runes of strength (he’s using pack) – My valk armor does help me if I’m stupid, although it’s only 2,2k more health and my guard buddy can refill my health to 100%. So yeah, there are these insane people who use valk.

Sadly as long as the dungoen mechanics stays as they are, zerk all the way baby! And for someone who does both pve and WvW, they tend to have the same geartype as having seperate ascended gear is costly, at least for me – and zerker works great for both as utilties/trait provide the defense you need if you can handle the content.

nacario.9417:

Sadly as long as the dungoen mechanics stays as they are, zerk all the way baby! And for someone who does both pve and WvW, they tend to have the same geartype as having seperate ascended gear is costly, at least for me – and zerker works great for both as utilties/trait provide the defense you need if you can handle the content.

And the alternative “Cavalier, Knight or Valkyrie” all the way is so much better.

Jana.6831:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

knight and valkyrie?

No they wouldn’t… They’d use cavalier and zerk/sin as the only thing you need to surviuve would be toughness. DPS counter = toughness…

vitality is stricken as the larger healthpool will make draining it a little bit timeconsuming but NO CHARACTER CAN REFILL IT AGAIN! due to the dumb way healing functions. Thge fact it did grow makes for an even worse problem when trying to get your healthpool refilled. worsening its problem,

As a matter of fact my main, who’s the strongest out of all my thieves (I also have a full zerker), uses valk armor, rest zerker – that’s my wvw setup and I ran with that gear and also the traits for forever, no matter whether PvE or WvW. He’s the strongest because of his runes of strength. Since he’s mainly a D/D thief my valk armor is as good as zerkers, damage wise. My other (zerker) thief would be only marginally stronger with runes of strength (he’s using pack) – My valk armor does help me if I’m stupid, although it’s only 2,2k more health and my guard buddy can refill my health to 100%. So yeah, there are these insane people who use valk.

But your thief uses another mechanic to stay alive, instead of toughness it relies on not getting hit through stealth otherwise known as an active defence (like blinds, aegis, weakness, protection, invisibility (looks the same, is not the same) and DODGING… You are using a dungeon set, with some precision replaced by vitality.
IMHO You are running thief in WvW as in a dungeon, though I’d probably run full zerk in dungeon. (used to run valkyrie (chest/legs) myself on thief , now changed it to Zerk. And in WvW I’d probably go valkyrie with assassins (and maybe some zerk).

If you do not get hit you do not need toughnes and the added vitality will keep yopu alive longer if your target proved to be a conditions user. As I recall thieves are not masters at condition removal…

If you’d use cavaliers you could go acro (not that I’d advise it, but you could) with valkyrie acro would be a suicide, especially with the added stamina now gone from traits…

You know as well as I do if you’d be in the melee group your thief would melt.
If you wouldn’t have stealth would you still use Valk?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

But your thief uses another mechanic to stay alive, instead of toughness it relies on not getting hit through stealth otherwise known as an active defence (like blinds, aegis, weakness, protection, invisibility (looks the same, is not the same) and DODGING…

No, my thief doesn’t survive because of blinds as I’m running 11001 in dungeons. Cloaked in shadows is in the third line². I used that before but in the end I’m doing the same everybody else does – I dodge. And even if – your argument was that people use clerics instead of valk and that’s not really true- my problem usually isn’t direct damage, my problem are condis. And for that valk is the way to go – but valk also helps against direct damage as I have a higher health pool, so something hits me slightly harder but I have a slightly higher health pool than someone wearing clerics.
²For skills I use Shadow Refuge, blinding powder and smoke screen and surprise I use none of these skills for myself but to rez my party members or to blind mobs if my party is about to be wiped.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

You are using a dungeon set, with some precision replaced by vitality.
IMHO You are running thief in WvW as in a dungeon, though I’d probably run full zerk in dungeon. (used to run valkyrie (chest/legs) myself on thief , now changed it to Zerk. And in WvW I’d probably go valkyrie with assassins (and maybe some zerk).

Thanks for this insight and that has to do with what? I only explained how it comes that I ran valk in dungeons – because I was running around with that gear anyway and because it worked/works.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

If you wouldn’t have stealth would you still use Valk?

I don’t know, I can run any dungeon with no matter what class (although I have never done one with my engi), most of them are full zerker. But I guess I’m the most useful with my thief as that’s the class I can play best. And by the way, I also have an full zerker thief and I survive with him just as good. But truth be told: my dungeon groups are usually pretty good, so part of my survival is because of a good guard.

i’m playing a hybrid warrior with a mix of rabid and knight stuff and i’m fine with it but,
sometimes i feel like toughness against mob is a joke, because with 3700 armor i still get hit by huges 5000 and more.

Though all this, i find defensive stat usefull even in pve, its not everybody who can play that good in zerk and so often they die, then i’m here to relieve them

usually they die because the boss did not get killed as fast as expected…
I’m not even trying to be sarcastic here, it is simply the fact that you shouldn’t join meta-groups if you don’t run meta gear. You make it literally worse for them by not running full dmg, instead of helping them like you falsely imagine.
In this game, offense is the better defense. People who don’t run full out dps in a group that consists of 4 berserkers not only contribute less, but stretch the encounters artificially, and therefore cause the downstates for other zerkers. This is why people react so toxic if you come with non-zerker builds. You ruin their run.

maddoctor.2738:

Templar.3418:

I guess if they bumped up enemy damage and increased the effectiveness of toughness and healing power there would be less zerkers running around. Build more upon the soft holy trinity? Idk.

Toughness and Healing Power are just fine as is proven by many videos on youtube with easy-mode no-dodging runs.

What will happen if they just increased the damage of foes? Would it make a “Healer” viable? No it won’t. Next we know everyone is running Knight or Valkyrie gear instead of Berserker, how much better is that for diversity/variety?

It could make a healer more viable actually.

Example – Toughness mitigates 6000 of a 9000 damage attack. The healer heals what I can’t cover for myself whilst throwing out some condi cleanse and CC. JUST AN EXAMPLE.

I should save my active defence for the high damage strikes I know are coming whilst the healer keeps my hp up through the enemy’s mid damage auto attacks.

Also faster attacking enemies. If they attack so slowly that I can chain active defence before all my abilities are on cool down then we probably won’t ever need healers. O_o

Usually around 2200 toughness on my Guardian with a pretty good dps output and no healing power. Hp around 18k or so.

Seriously my Guard keeps alive easy mode tanking the Annihilator without coming close to death in the Silver Wastes and this is with a zerg trying to take it out. If the enemy attacked faster I’d probably get killed eventually.

That kitten Teragriff from Indigo though. I can mitigate most of the damage it puts out but If I mess up even once with ability timing and the like then I’m already in a shiet place. It attacks quickly and hits rather hard.

It’s in those times when I am fighting an enemy too quick for my active defense abilities or many enemies at once that I am glad there are people around me throwing out heals and condi cleanses. I’d die without them at times.

If they did increase enemy damage and attack speed or w/e then healers would easily become more important.

They should just build more upon the soft holy trinity without going full blown wow style.

Seeing as these enemies are in the SW they are probably going to do these things in HOT anyway.

The crap my Guard goes through would easily wreck a zerker. They need more of this.

Edit: NEED MORE ENEMIES LIKE THOSE LEGENDARIES OR MORE SWARMS OF ENEMIES.

Aetrion.8295:

Basically what I’ve noticed is that this game is completely infested with what I call the Berzerker Cult. It’s people who insist that absolutely no gear except berzerker gear has any value whatsoever, and people who have any kind of survivability stat or use healing are just terrible players who need those things because they aren’t good enough to avoid getting hit in the first place.

Out of sheer curiosity, how does anyone even know that you have a survivability stat? I’ve played this game since early release and have run well over 1000 dungeon runs and have never once been asked to ping my gear. And of those 1000 runs, I’ve maybe done 100 in zerker gear, the rest have been in either celestial or gasp PVT, and have had no problem getting groups for dungeons or even FoTM50.

The zerker cult exists purely for speedrunning. If you are the type of person that wants to get through a dungeon as fast as humanly possible, then there will only be one optimal build. That goes for any game. There is always a best for a specific purpose. For speedrunning it is zerker. Most people these days seem to be in a giant hurry and think shaving off 5-10min from a dungeon run is priority, so they run zerker, which is fine, some days I want to speedrun, too.

That’s all it is. Avoid speedrunning groups and you will see that no one cares what gear you are wearing. Zerker only groups make up a small fraction of LFG postings.

Jana.6831:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

But your thief uses another mechanic to stay alive, instead of toughness it relies on not getting hit through stealth otherwise known as an active defence (like blinds, aegis, weakness, protection, stealth or invisibility (looks the same, is not the same) and DODGING… {corrections made for clarity}

No, my thief doesn’t survive because of blinds as I’m running 11001 in dungeons. Cloaked in shadows is in the third line². I used that before but in the end I’m doing the same everybody else does – I dodge. And even if – your argument was that people use clerics instead of valk and that’s not really true- my problem usually isn’t direct damage, my problem are condis. And for that valk is the way to go – but valk also helps against direct damage as I have a higher health pool, so something hits me slightly harder but I have a slightly higher health pool than someone wearing clerics.

No I was talking cavaliers. (toughness/power/ferocity) as a damage mitigation instead of valkyrie (power/vitality/ferocity), clerics was only mentioned briefly with regard to the recent nerfing of most minor healing sets (being mentioned as not being afflicted by this heal nerf) and is only relevant when talking about healing builds and your thief isn’t a healer. Cavaliers has no precision , so adding some assasin to buff precision is an option.
Also conditions are easily cleansed by aoe condition cleans (light fields & whirl?) or shout cleanses ? maybe a support character can give youi some suggestions, guards warriors? or use a condition removing sigil?

Jana.6831:

²*For skills I use Shadow Refuge, blinding powder and smoke screen and surprise I use none of these skills for myself but to rez my party members* or to blind mobs if my party is about to be wiped.

So you do use stealth for defence instead of toughness… and other active defences, stealth to make sure you do not get hit, added to the other active defences (smoke screen is a block/blind… so a typical example)

Jana.6831:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

You are using a dungeon set, with some precision replaced by vitality.
IMHO You are running thief in WvW as in a dungeon, though I’d probably run full zerk in dungeon. (used to run valkyrie (chest/legs) myself on thief , now changed it to Zerk. And in WvW I’d probably go valkyrie with assassins (and maybe some zerk).

Thanks for this insight and that has to do with what? I only explained how it comes that I ran valk in dungeons – because I was running around with that gear anyway and because it worked/works. I just showed I have some other idea’s I didn’t say you made a bad choice, I even said i used it before.

I’m primarily used to play dungeon and WvW, Valkyrie is a WvW set in my eyes, in dungeons I’d expect most thieves to run full zerk. I made a error in asuming you were a WvW runner as well.

Jana.6831:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

If you wouldn’t have stealth would you still use Valk?

I don’t know, I can run any dungeon with no matter what class (although I have never done one with my engi), most of them are full zerker. But I guess I’m the most useful with my thief as that’s the class I can play best. And by the way, I also have an full zerker thief and I survive with him just as good. But truth be told: my dungeon groups are usually pretty good, so part of my survival is because of a good guard.

I’m glad you like thief, but why do you think people would run support or toughness or healing?

Do you think your story has relevancy? I think so:

You seem to need to rely on healing from your partner ( blinds/aegis/reflects/heals/protection/regeneration)
You seem to need added condition removal (often used by support builds, you can heal people up but if they still have their 25+ stacks of -fill in name here- they’\ll continue to die faster.

In the end you can be what you are due to a support based character, even if he runs full zerk. Showing support is neccesary.
But it’s at present impossible to build ANY compeditive build for support other then zerk in dungeons or PvE, showing the system is broke, as anyone can support enough being full dps without any support or healing, which to the original poster and me shows the system as is IS broken.

2 years ago the shout heal builds and mace guardian were frowned upon but they have use, with the new system I see more guardian using mace.
At least when not using “sinister15 stack burning cheese builds”.

This original post was regarding power/precision/ condition dmg and ferocity being so OP the other stats were considered broken in the build system, the build system is both the attribute choice and the trait selection, at least so it was interpreted by me

Another post from someone that really does not understand how the game was designed to NOT be like “other” MMOs. I GET that new players want to play what they are used to doing in other games, but just because you CAN’T does not make GW2 “broken”….it’s just different. You can either embrace it or (per OP post) attempt to request that it be made just like all the other MMOs out there (a pointless quest).

Also, the “Cult of Zerker” issue is purely a Dungeon/Fractal thing (and only if you are trying to farm the mode for max profit vs time). The idea that this nitch mode needs “fixing” to the detriment of the rest of the game is quite narrow minded and selfish.

Draknar.5748:

Out of sheer curiosity, how does anyone even know that you have a survivability stat? I’ve played this game since early release and have run well over 1000 dungeon runs and have never once been asked to ping my gear. And of those 1000 runs, I’ve maybe done 100 in zerker gear, the rest have been in either celestial or gasp PVT, and have had no problem getting groups for dungeons or even FoTM50.

Experienced players can spot that very fast during the first boss. There are just not many experienced players in LFG. And even if you run into a premade not that many will care what you are running unless you fail to do your job.