Guild Wars 2

One of the main selling points of the game was no Holy Trinity. However this seems to make combat and dungeons a lot LESS fun to play than if there was a trinity in my opinion. The meta is stagnant, you either go full berserker and facebash the boss before he can do any real damage or you’re being detrimental to your team. I’m wondering how we can fix this. The other patch, I saw they ramp up healing power and base healing on a few guardian healing abilities, which is a good idea however there needs to be some serious remodeling of the entire system soon, or else many people will end up losing interest in the game. I’m not trying to flame I’m a huge fanboy of this game and defend it every chance I get, I play everyday and have almost 1300 hours logged. I really love this game and I just want to see it go in the right direction.

How do you think Arena Net could solve this problem of an only berserker meta. How can support and control builds make it into the scene?

The only way I can see this happening is scale healing power properly across the board, and introduce fight mechanics that somehow negate full berserker parties. We really do need some sort of soft trinity. The meta is stagnant and boring.

I just realized I only take 30% less damage in full toughness compare to berserker.

The problem I believe is berserker and tank have the same ablility(beside the limited different in trait).

Maybe if tank have better ability and more ability(for example only tank guardian can use reflect etc), that’ll promote different build.

Aka remove the whole skill system, and use skill tree like every other mmorpg out there, so if you want defense ability you have to spec for it.

1) Anet could make difficult and challenging encounters.
This is clearly too difficult and time consuming, not to mention a poor RoI compared to RNG boxes, so we can cross this off the list.

2) Anet could remove defiant
CC would actually be useful against bosses, but than you’d just need one warrior with a mace/shield and a hammer and 4 more with axes anyway.

3) Anet could add gimmick fights
More slow boring, lure X to Y so X can take Z damage for A seconds repeat ad infinitum.

I’ll just stick with Axe/Mace.

This is a challenge because the game is designed for any combination to be able to do any dungeon/etc.

I think the main issue is you just don’t get enough out of Toughness, Healing Power, or Condition damage

Toughness can protect you a little bit but even a full Toughness build won’t keep you up for eternity. Compared to crit damage it doesn’t scale nearly as well.

Healing Power doesn’t scale well with anything except maybe a few skills. It especially doesn’t scale well with many traits or utility skills thus pushing Healing support builds out of the way

Finall Condition Damage, DoT builds can be really fun to play but this stat scales poorly. Between having to stack conditions (bleeds mostly) to do decent damage, there being a cap, and those stacks not lasting incredibly long amounts of time, puts this set up behind. Bleeds only get 5% of Condition added to their damage. I think this should be at least 10%.

Another issue Condition builds have is they don’t scale with increased damage traits like Berserker’s Power or Vulnerability. I think this would help condition damage builds immensely. As it stands right now if you go full damage, conditions are good additional damage. If you go full condition damage, your regular damage doesn’t support it as well

well, they could lessen the gap between defence and dps gear.

Make defense gear do more dps.

The truth is, I don’t really know. If berserker people don’t have a problem surviving, Im’ not sure what’s the point on making tank build more durable and healing build heal more.

My suggestion is make certain skill as unlock so you can only use it if you have a certain number of toughness or healing power.

Encounters need to deal high damage on a more frequent and consistent basis instead of just one big “dodge now” burst every 5-10 seconds. When you can avoid 100% of the damage in a fight with timely dodging, defense and healing don’t matter and are even a waste of time in most cases. Casting your 1.5 second heal costs you 20k damage output.

ANet removed the static, dedicated role system, so they need to replace it with something, such as fluid roles that are built into the fight themselves.

Not only this, looking more closely, there are some decent mechanics in the game that give roles. Unfortunately, a lot of them can be brute-forced.

For example, The Lover’s fight.

Remove the boulders, make the ‘closeness’ mechanic come into play more often and adjust it so they give up after X seconds, and then you got:

• Damage (bosses and adds)
• Control (preventing them from getting close)
• Positioning (keep them as far away as possible to give the best chance possible)
• Support (removing conditions, damage mitigation)

As well as this, repeating what some people have said:

• Change Defiant (from stacks to a timer, and it doesn’t trigger if you interrupt, making Interrupt builds more viable if they add skills and more traits based around interrupting)
• More regular incoming damage
• Build mobs like players as much as possible (traits, weapon-sets, utility skills ect), as well as working on improving AI so mobs work together, making use of Combo Fields and finishers, interrupting skills ect.

Caffynated.5713:

Encounters need to deal high damage on a more frequent and consistent basis instead of just one big “dodge now” burst every 5-10 seconds. When you can avoid 100% of the damage in a fight with timely dodging, defense and healing don’t matter and are even a waste of time in most cases. Casting your 1.5 second heal costs you 20k damage output.

Pretty much this. Toughness needs to also have a greater effect. Having it add to armor which gives it a starting value of around 2k means that even if you stack it you’re not having the same damage reduction as you could get damage increase from power (which starts at just 1k).

shockwave.1764:

One of the main selling points of the game was no Holy Trinity. However this seems to make combat and dungeons a lot LESS fun to play than if there was a trinity in my opinion. The meta is stagnant, you either go full berserker and facebash the boss before he can do any real damage or you’re being detrimental to your team. I’m wondering how we can fix this.

Better mob AI and making dungeons “living” in the same way the world is (so you can’t learn them as something stagnant).

In my observation it’s been the same in every MMO. No doubt for economic reasons (cost effectiveness) devs stint on AI and varying things around, which means people learn dungeons, which means damage is king, which means all class variation dissolves into hybrid soup, where everyone can do everything, but there’s no need, since damage is king.

Trinity is not the solution, at least not in the sense of a “fixed” Trinity, but HAVING SOME USE FOR THE THINGS WE CAN ALL DO OTHER THAN DAMAGE is. That use can only come from more intelligent mob AI and a non-stagnant dungeon system that you can’t just learn once and be done with it.

The PvP and WvWvW metas are generally more dynamic and interesting because of this very reason – playing against people is always more challenging than playing against AIs, and “damage is king” seldom works (unless the devs break something, which sometimes happens).

A lot of what has been said here is spot on.

Zerk is the dungeon meta for the sole reason that you can memorize a dungeon and all of it’s mechanics and then dodge anything that really hurts. You can’t do that in WvW or PvP, where there is arguably a “bunker” meta.

So, a more adaptive AI on bosses would definitely help. Making fights against mobs feel more fluid and organic, and far less predictable would already shift things away from always Zerk.

The next problem is bosses who have one dangerous burst and the rest can be ignored. Again, you can learn the tell and dodge the dangerous thin, and ignore the rest even without tanky gear. Having mobs and bosses designed to do more consistent damage over time so that the whole party can’t just dodge everything would help.

Agony is the supreme example of doing it wrong. Agony attacks are single, large damage, telegraphed bursts. On top, HP pool and toughness have no effect on it what so ever. So why bring anything other than Zerk and maybe a source of Vigour?

The final problem is ANet can’t seem to design content that is attrition build friendly, or even that all of their classes work in for that matter. The gauntlet is a prime example. Rather than making the fight the challenge, an artificial time limit is a good part of the challenge. And that time limit means you have to run Zerker to have a chance (I’m sure someone out there will do it in other gear, but you get the point). It was the same thing with that Golem on SSC, get him down to a certain HP level and he does constant, ramping up damage. Again, your only option here is to bring a lot of high-powered direct damage.

Since all PvE is pretty easy it is obvious that most people decide to clear maps/events/etc as fast as they can. So it does not matter if you have more cooldowns or evades when all mobs die without any chance. Same with bosses. Solution is: more challenging content with difficult mechanics like “Gauntlet”.

I came here to find answers that will help me keep my hope for this game that I love so much, but I’m getting sick of the berserker monotony. People don’t want me in a party for dungeons, fractals, raids, act aggressive if I’m not a zerker and even got kicked out from a guild because I hate and will never play berserker. I’m really desperate and I think I’m going to quit the game for this reason. If Arena Net doesn’t change the AI, mechanics, nerf the zerkers and boosts the tank/healer/support builds, there won’t be any change. I apologise for the negative rant, but I love this game and gives me great pain to see it reduced down to a toxic berserker pile of button mashing “entertainment”.

Are you playing necromancer by any chance?

And seriously, with launch of HoT zerker cancer meta started to die away. We have healing builds now, condi is more than viable, and some classes can use non-zerker gear for power to equal effect. Hell, my current gear is a horrible mess of all the wrong stats, and I never got kicked out of any groups. Just find a better guild who won’t kitten your brain.

Besides zerk, thers is plenty of other options IMHO…

• in PvE Viper/Sinister, Zerk/Assassin and Zealot are fine
• in WvW Trailblazer/dire/rabid , Knights/soldiers/cavalier/Valkyrie and Clerics/Minstrel/ Nomad are fine

• in PvP you’ll need to find you own balance.

Outside these basic suggestions there is quite some more if you want.
condition healing builds (trapper druid?)

The “zerk only” is a long past station, mostly forced upon you by Metabattle and old experiences. you can see this in HoT and fractals, dungeons still tend to be DPS oriented, due to the fact they didn’t get a rework, but In most cases this is no real problem as long as you do not have 5 condition only builds

Wintermute.5408:

Are you playing necromancer by any chance?

And seriously, with launch of HoT zerker cancer meta started to die away. We have healing builds now, condi is more than viable, and some classes can use non-zerker gear for power to equal effect.

Healing builds are often also running zerker, condi builds use the same mentality (alls stats for damage, none for sustain/survivability).

When you hear about zerker meta, it doesn’t mean specifically berserker and berserker only – assassin, sinister and viper are part of that as well. This doesn’t mean the problem OP brought up is no more – defensive stats are still considered a waste.

what’s stagnant about this meta? it’s the meta that promotes active defense, good positioning, dodging….

Increasing damage dealt by defensive buids promotes standing in one place dealing damage while some other guy saves your kitten, or while you tank the damage. What’s the point in it?

Astralporing.1957:

Wintermute.5408:

Are you playing necromancer by any chance?

And seriously, with launch of HoT zerker cancer meta started to die away. We have healing builds now, condi is more than viable, and some classes can use non-zerker gear for power to equal effect.

Healing builds are often also running zerker, condi builds use the same mentality (alls stats for damage, none for sustain/survivability).

When you hear about zerker meta, it doesn’t mean specifically berserker and berserker only – assassin, sinister and viper are part of that as well. This doesn’t mean the problem OP brought up is no more – defensive stats are still considered a waste.

Sorry, but you probably missed the actual zerker meta. Meta of “get the kitten out of group noob you don’t have zerker gear go uninstall and die”.

Defensive stats have place in raids, necro and probably some others can play around vitality, and condi is the definition of not-power build, utilizing completely different stats. Are glass cannons more desired? Yes. But it’s nowhere near old cancer-meta, and now we have multiple options for glass cannons.

the problem never was or is about the actual zerker builds, its people with no imagination or plain bullies who read something on a forum and don’t like change and try to force the build onto other people – something that is not part of the GW2 philosophy.

il give a real example, i play a mix of zerker and auromancing ele in PVE because i like the idea of healing the group out of trouble – its not ‘min-max’ but its a good build and it is fun and it is useful for the group. On one occasion 1 person was pretty obnoxious because he found this out, and ‘complained’ because the instance would take much longer – when in reality it may have been a minute or so slower at best. Not everything has to be a loot race, its often a lot more fun when its not.

now i think of it, an even better example, I was in a full zerker group, and 3/5 wiped on a trash group, and they demanded and swore and threateentd to leave because the other 2 fought to survive and eventually got there. 1 it was bloody rude, 2 If they had not been zerker that wouldn’t have happened and the run would have been quicker. – what you have is a group with no flexibility with a single strategy – stack and spam your face off.

This thread is two years old.

Redenaz.8631:

This thread is two years old.

hahahah and you see people seriously replying to it

SkyShroud.2865:

Redenaz.8631:

This thread is two years old.

hahahah and you see people seriously replying to it

So? It’s far more sad, that two years later, and after dozens of pithy as-little-work-as-possible attempts to fix this problem, that this thread is just as applicable as it ever was.

This problem is never going away without major changes to the fundamentals of the gameplay system, they started expanding this game on a broken foundation and have only ‘fixed’ it by denying it was ever even broken in the first place.

Encounters need to be designed around a regular and constant damage output rather than cheesing burst damage rotations with no thought put in to their mechanics. Dodge needs to be brought in line to be a part of the game, rather than a mechanic entirely removed from the remainder of the game’s systems.

But it’s never going to happen, the developers are going to let this game burn before they ever admit their initial design goals were flawed. Pride comes before the fall, as they say.

Is the problem really as severe as it was? I don’t really follow what builds are popular, but I seem to hear a LOT more variety nowadays, especially since HoT released.

I don’t have my finger on the pulse of all the different sub-communities, but is zerker really the only popular choice for HoT maps, raids, WvW, etc?

Redenaz.8631:

Is the problem really as severe as it was? I don’t really follow what builds are popular, but I seem to hear a LOT more variety nowadays, especially since HoT released.

I don’t have my finger on the pulse of all the different sub-communities, but is zerker really the only popular choice for HoT maps, raids, WvW, etc?

it is not

raids top dps builds include viper’s, sinister and zerk’s, with some oddball specs using other builds (power reaper uses Valk’s)
raids also require healers which use magi’s or zealot’s
there’s also the boonstacking chrono which uses some commander’s

fractals use the same statspreads as raids, but they also use assassin’s and i think rampager’s might even be viable. depends on what class/spec you’re running

open world is tuned such that you can broadly use whatever you like. so long as you don’t die, the boss is dying, so it’s npnp

wvw is right out; depending on your role and class you could use a very broad mix of stats and still be viable. frontline uses traditional defensive statspreads as well as new concentration statlines from HOT. backline does the same with offensive spreads, and viable condition stacking opens the door for a lot of builds. roaming has just as much variance as spvp does.

so no, we are miles away from the ‘zerk or die’ meta

Conncept.7638:

SkyShroud.2865:

Redenaz.8631:

This thread is two years old.

hahahah and you see people seriously replying to it

So? It’s far more sad, that two years later, and after dozens of pithy as-little-work-as-possible attempts to fix this problem, that this thread is just as applicable as it ever was.

No its not. People run conditions. People run healing with druids. People get someone with a lot of toughness for raids.

Stop lying

Save the necromancy for in game

Holy thread necro Batman! Did you consider that pve is not the only thing one can do in game? There’s plenty of other stat setups one can use, zerker or variants of it happen to be best in optimal pve play. I don’t really see that as a problem tbh.

Gizmo confirmed #1 thread necromancer worldwide.

There will always be a 100% optimal way to complete any pve content and that way will always be the way that clears it the fastest. No matter what Anet does to change the meta the result will be exactly as ‘stagnant’ as what we have now.

Its way better now then it ever was. There are fewer that post full zerker only in most modes. There was obce a time when no one wanted necros to join in group. Can you believe that.

There’s a reason this thread died in August (before you necro’d it). And that reason is that a lot of people request a lot more than just zerker smash builds. The metas and party searches are now flooded with conditions, tanks, and even the odd healer. You must be pretty unlucky if you’re still only seeing people request zerker only teams.

Serophous.9085:

Conncept.7638:

SkyShroud.2865:

Redenaz.8631:

This thread is two years old.

hahahah and you see people seriously replying to it

So? It’s far more sad, that two years later, and after dozens of pithy as-little-work-as-possible attempts to fix this problem, that this thread is just as applicable as it ever was.

No its not. People run conditions. People run healing with druids. People get someone with a lot of toughness for raids.

Stop lying

IKR! people use condi for roaming
some people are still stuck in certain area, specifically dungeon instead of going beyond that and explore the whole game

Sinisters gear on an elite spec condition warrior melts things in PvE, quite good in WvW too.

This thread has been necrobumped and is now closed.