Guild Wars 2

We all know which stat set to wear once we hit 80. We know it, our grandmother knows it, heck the neighbour’s dog is already wearing it.

One of the causes for this might be how underwhelming defense stats are. Starting with healing power. It seems to me some professions (looking at you guardian) make it their point of honor to taunt and mock anyone silly enough to raise his healing power.

So my suggestion is this – make that healing power count. For real. Lower the default value of healing skills that are powerful from get go, while increase the healing power coefficient. Make those zerks work for their win with weak heal that will leave no room for mistakes.
Make those that bothered with it feel the difference in much more reliable and strong healing, giving meaningful sustain.

Just my 2 cents on the issue.

So basically, you want to punish everyone else just so you can be a healer?

You take me for someone far more altruistic then i am.
I simply want zerks to earn their “meta” status facing some real survival issues since they willingly discarded their defense for damage. If they can back it up with skilled play – glory to them. But no covering their rears with powerful heals that they didn’t invest a single stat point into.

So given i want to make live on zerks harder…yes. I want to punish everyone else (in this game and current broken balance at least) (evil laugh)

I think you forget it will affect every stat set that doesn’t include healing power, this is really just a bad idea. This would affect far more than just people playing with berserker stats. In fact it would affect people that don’t use berserker stats even more, because berseker users just dodge.

Yeah. Because people who play berserker are only able to survive because of those powerful heals…

Have people who ask for berserker to be nerfed, whether directly or indirectly, ever actually played with that stat combo?

Ah then that is room for discussion. I believe that indeed defense stats need reworking, especially given the game’s action nature and fact that in some cases 5k hp more is 1 sec longer life ..

I believe thoughness should have stronger effect on defense stat. Weak heal but tough? Then you’ll take litte damage and still have way better survival then zerks.

Vitality is tricky as it does not amp up heals like healing power or toughness that reduces damage heals gotta deal with. In this scenario it’s more like vitality just delays the inevitable. But it’s still better being heavily wounded with more of it, then dead with less. Perhabs it should hamper conditions somewhat or give off a small passive hp regen. That however would apply only to vitality above the default 916 that each character possesses.

Well, the last time I was playing meta ele build I was using my healing skill just to get more might stacks instead of healing myself and that build is the most squishest build we could consider.

Zerks do not have to earn any “meta” status or whatever. Meta is simply what most people consider to be the best way to play at the given time. Nerf the prime builds and something else takes their place and you have another crusade to lead. Proverbial hydra.

Zerk vult!

Ayrilana.1396:

Yeah. Because people who play berserker are only able to survive because of those powerful heals…

Have people who ask for berserker to be nerfed, whether directly or indirectly, ever actually played with that stat combo?

hand risen Didn’t feel that much harder then playing more tanky version. Mobs fell fast so didn’t get that much damage in vs me. If zerker was hard (as it should be) you wouldn’t get dungeon runs wanting zerks across the board, because it would be a build only few elite % would be able to sustain under fire.

Neither healing nor any other stat is the cause of GW2s non-existent build diversity.

In reality the problem is dodge. Literally every single design decisions made about dodge discourages and even kills build diversity, strategic play, and interesting encounter designs. I think dodge is a great idea, but they couldn’t have done a worse job than how they slapped it in to the game without any interaction with every other gameplay system.

rotten.9753:

Well, the last time I was playing meta ele build I was using my healing skill just to get more might stacks instead of healing myself and that build is the most squishest build we could consider.

Zerks do not have to earn any “meta” status or whatever. Meta is simply what most people consider to be the best way to play at the given time. Nerf the prime builds and something else takes their place and you have another crusade to lead. Proverbial hydra.

Zerk vult!

Then you played it right and kudos to you for managing your defense well. The healing change would not hurt skilled zerkers like you, since as you pointed out, heal wasn’t really needed for healing in the first place.

Let’s say that someone is running Pvt in a dungeon because they are not so confident of their abilities than other people are. Let’s say he has 30k health. Will all that health help him if his heal is reduced to something small like 4.3k, or even less? No. Reducing heals is just a really stupid idea and does not promote build diversity, it promotes the opposite.

Conncept.7638:

Neither healing nor any other stat is the cause of GW2s non-existent build diversity.

In reality the problem is dodge. Literally every single design decisions made about dodge discourages and even kills build diversity, strategic play, and interesting encounter designs. I think dodge is a great idea, but they couldn’t have done a worse job than how they slapped it in to the game without any interaction with every other gameplay system.

Now that’s a very astute and fresh observation!
I have to agree – dodge and endurance regeneration at times are pretty much like those powerful heals – easy and effective defense that in some cases (warriors for example) does not require any investment into defensive stats or traits whatsoever, making defensive builds more non-viable.

Lazaar.9123:

Let’s say that someone is running Pvt in a dungeon because they are not so confident of their abilities than other people are. Let’s say he has 30k health. Will all that health help him if his heal is reduced to something small like 4.3k, or even less? No. Reducing heals is just a really stupid idea and does not promote build diversity, it promotes the opposite.

Let’s say heal is 6.3k Will that help him if his Vit is higher? Stil not. Heals do flat amount of healing regardless of max hp. Issue in both scenarios that should be adressed by a-net somehow.

Exactly, so reducing heals is pointless, and does nothing but harm stat sets that do not include healing power.

The fact that I can dodge is far more relevant to my zerker surgical strategy than everything else combined, including blinds and blocks.

Go ahead, Nerf the heals. They’re pretty much dead last of all the things that keep me alive anyway, and not by a close running.

If I need to heal, I’m probably dead irrespective at that point. I go through an awful lot of fights not taking much damage because I, on my guardian especially, regen stamina at 100% rate on crits and big bumps on weapon swap.

So hey, take heals out entirely. See how that works out for everyone else. We zerker aficionados will likely be amongst the least affected.

Your utter unfamiliarity with zerker is showing. Might want to clean that up a bit. It’s kinda embarrassing.

These “nerf zerker” threads are just like those “holy trinity” threads that just need to be auto-closed.

There’s a bit of disconnect in comparing Berserker stats to Healing Power.

Berserker highly synergizes with all three components of damage because of its multiplicative nature. To oversimplify: Power x Crit Rate x Crit Damage.

Toughness, Vitality, and Healing Power do not. The only factor there that is close to multiplicative is Toughness, because it reduces damage by dividing it, thereby giving a character more bang-for-buck in Vitality and Healing Power. But, Healing Power does not multiply with Vitality; all it does is supplement it additively.

Worse still, the coefficients on Healing Power skills are terribly low, meaning you don’t get much back for it. Just by that notion, I wouldn’t mind seeing definite healing numbers drop so that Healing Power coefficients rise to scale healing better. Only to give it meaning, not to spite anyone else’s gear. (Geez.)

I wonder what would happen if higher Vitality gave more Endurance?

…people would still use glass gear?

you realise if people need an extra dodge they just stick on an energy sigil or trait for vigour, right?

and what is the rationale behind making a stat which makes you not have to dodge as much … allow you to dodge more?

maha.7902:

…people would still use glass gear?

you realise if people need an extra dodge they just stick on an energy sigil or trait for vigour, right?

and what is the rationale behind making a stat which makes you not have to dodge as much … allow you to dodge more?

There are two directions they could take dodge that would allow it to open up more build diversity, and you’ve unknowingly addressed both of them.

The first and easier one, make dodge unalterable. The exact same uptime for every player, every class, at all times during every fight. This would mean the elimination of sigil of energy and quite a few traits, as well as the vigor boon. But doing so would allow the designers to make encounters around that exact uptime. If they want to require some other mechanics or statistical advantage besides DPS in a fight, it is a simple matter to raise the frequency of attacks or mechanics above the players dodge uptime.

The second and much more difficult (but in my opinion more fun, interesting, and engaging) path would be to integrate energy gain in to the existing stats. Energy gain is lowered around the board, and compiled by some combination of stats and character attributes. You could go the bare minimum with this, maintaining the energy system as it is, with only the build dependency added in. Or, you could go so far as a new skill slot for energy skills, a ‘tank’ slot to match our ‘healing’ slot. Giving each class build options with their energy skill similar to how the healing skill works, or even make the efficacy of energy skills based on stats and build.

And as to your question, I don’t see why you even asked seeing as this is after all a thread about build diversity, the purpose would be to give you choice, something GW2 lacks to some degree in every game mode. You could choose to build dodge, or health, or armor, or healing to defend yourself and stay in a fight, rather than solely dodge.

All in all, this thread was only created to find a way to punish people using berseker, as they have some sort of weird hatred towards it.

This thread is not really about build diversity, but the OPs quest to make a viable “Tanky” build the games new “meta”. ….(or a HEALER possibly?).

Not saying the OPs goals are invalid, but the method is not very well thought out.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This thread is not really about build diversity, but the OPs quest to make a viable “Tanky” build the games new “meta”. ….(or a HEALER possibly?).

Not saying the OPs goals are invalid, but the method is not very well thought out.

Didn’t we just see today, the game-wide nerf of a boon which entire DPS build paths are founded on among multiple classes? Balance and diversity are just as much achieved by bringing down as building up. There is nothing wrong with his suggestion, nor anything hateful in it, if anything in this thread sounds hateful it is the unjust typifying in your post and that of the guy above you.

Instead of that, how about weaker Res heals?

For every additional player that res, each res heal gets cut by 50%.

First resser heals for 100%.
Second resser heals for 50%
Third resser heals for 25%
Fourth resser heals for 12.5% and so on.

Healing power, on the otherhand, increases healing from ressing.

It won’t destroy zerkers group, but it’ll make them more risky. It’ll make healing power more useful in mediocre pugs but not as useful in speedrun groups because they don’t need ressers. More build diversity without making healing power a requirement.

Everyone wins.

Conncept.7638:

Didn’t we just see today, the game-wide nerf of a boon which entire DPS build paths are founded on among multiple classes? Balance and diversity are just as much achieved by bringing down as building up. There is nothing wrong with his suggestion, nor anything hateful in it, if anything in this thread sounds hateful it is the unjust typifying in your post and that of the guy above you.

You forget that nerf was targeted at PvP, not PvE. The might nerfs actually don’t affect people using berserker stats much, it actually affects other builds much much more. (The ones that use might to compensate damage lost by not using berserker, also condition builds that use might)

Most heals in the game that could theoretically be ‘abused’ to make a zerker character too tanky have inherent weaknesses already, so in so far as this is a problem, a better solution would come in the form of changes to content.

A similar principle applies to the question of how to make sure that zerker stats are only used by a tiny, elite, few, a goal that I don’t think anyone has a particular problem with.

thefantasticg.3984:

These “nerf zerker” threads are just like those “holy trinity” threads that just need to be auto-closed.

If the fact that people see fit to discuss things like this somehow offends you, then I’m afraid that’s too bad. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you participate. In much the same way that nobody is holding a gun to some zerkerhater and making them join full-zerk parties in LFG.

Lazaar.9123:

Conncept.7638:

Didn’t we just see today, the game-wide nerf of a boon which entire DPS build paths are founded on among multiple classes? Balance and diversity are just as much achieved by bringing down as building up. There is nothing wrong with his suggestion, nor anything hateful in it, if anything in this thread sounds hateful it is the unjust typifying in your post and that of the guy above you.

You forget that nerf was targeted at PvP, not PvE. The might nerfs actually don’t affect people using berserker stats much, it actually affects other builds much much more. (The ones that use might to compensate damage lost by not using berserker, also condition builds that use might)

Completely beside the point. A lack of build diversity in the PvP game mode is just as unacceptable as any other and has nothing at all to do with Anets aversion to splitting skills between game modes.

And anyway, no it wasn’t, nothing in the preview, the patch notes, or any developer comments state that this was a PvP focused change. In fact the preview specifically states they wanted to lower might’s “overall power”. If anything this looks to be their next step in dealing with PvP zerkers following the sweeping nerfs against the entire stat set across the game.

evilunderling.9265:

Lazaar.9123:

All in all, this thread was only created to find a way to punish people using berseker, as they have some sort of weird hatred towards it.

All in all, this post was only created to find a way to punish people wanting to talk about this subject, as if they have some sort of weird hatred towards it.

Deluded much? Read third past down.

Lazaar.9123:

Deluded much?

I don’t make copypasta jokes very often, so you’re asking a lot if you expect them to be any good.

But to be fair, I did miss your other posts in this thread, I just assumed you were posting something in the same vein as the other guy I quoted.

There is nothing wrong with zerker. Yes, it is the ideal stat combination to kill things the fastest. So what? Are we really saying we don’t think it’s fair that one stat combination is better than others when it comes to killing things the fastest? Only one can be the fastest, these are stat combinations. One of them will be the best for DPS.

Make heals more useful and/or don’t let zerker heal as much? How does that solve anything? That doesn’t affect speed of killing. So speedrunners will still want to go zerker, they don’t care about healing. “Well it’s not fair because the GW2 dodge system makes healing useless so they have top DPS and can easily avoid damage” Ok, and? That’s how the combat is designed. All classes can dodge. However it doesn’t time dodges for you.

People can and often do fail at dodge timing. Zerker is designed as a glass build, the ability to dodge alone isn’t what avoids damage. You have to look for visual cues and time it properly. We’ve all seen bad zerker players. They can quite literally be the lowest average DPS on your team because they keep dying.

It’s the far less common really good zerker players that everyone seems to want to compare the stat build to. That’s not fair. They’ve chosen to have to pay attention to dodge timing/usage/positioning during all difficult encounters in order to have the highest DPS output.

Personally, I think it’s a fair trade-off. If I want to run my PVT guardian I gain the ability to make errors and not die for it. But now I do less damage. That’s also fair.

The only glaring problem with GW2’s combat system as it is is condition damage caps. The way it works now is a deterrent to group with more than one condition build. I don’t think that’s OK. But Berserker stats? There’s truly nothing wrong here guys.

Don’t speedrun if you don’t want to min-max a DPS build. That’s the entire point of speedrunning, there can only be one best build for that and it’s zerker.

evilunderling.9265:

thefantasticg.3984:

These “nerf zerker” threads are just like those “holy trinity” threads that just need to be auto-closed.

If the fact that people see fit to discuss things like this somehow offends you, then I’m afraid that’s too bad. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you participate. In much the same way that nobody is holding a gun to some zerkerhater and making them join full-zerk parties in LFG..

Doesn’t offend me, it amazes me the snowflakes have made it this far in life if anything. I guess that’s a side affect of modern technology… Sadly, Anet Devs read bad suggestion threads like this, even if they don’t comment, and need to be shown that OP has a bad suggestion, just incase they couldn’t see it for themselves. And just because people see fit to discuss bad suggestions doesn’t make them good suggestions. It’s just people squabbling and blabbering about a bad suggestion. Thread still should’ve been auto-closed.

thefantasticg.3984:

Sadly, Anet Devs read bad suggestion threads like this, even if they don’t comment, and need to be shown that OP has a bad suggestion, just incase they couldn’t see it for themselves.

Telling people that someone’s suggestion is bad and that they just shouldn’t read it, instead of elaborating on why it’s bad, is not a compelling counterargument. And threads like this can be interesting, can produce new suggestions that aren’t bad, and ideally serve to educate the people making bad suggestions if nothing else.

Doesn’t affect zerker builds, boosts cleric builds, nerfs PVT types.

Why stop there though, might as well also drop condition damage’s base damage, and raise the multiplier so that those who spec for it get greater max potential, and those with zero points in it do a lot less.

By the way, vitality conflicts directly with healing power. In cases where damage is determined by your toughness, it has no effect, but in certain cases, damage is calculated as a % of your total HP, in which event the more vitality you have, the worse off you become.

In particular, the most prominent points this appears are fractal Agony damage, Golem Mark II’s lightning fields, Arah p2’s poison fields (which, frankly, you can entirely ignore at this point) and of course Quicksand in Dry Top.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Make those zerks work for their win with weak heal that will leave no room for mistakes.

I agree, because that’s how it already is. Berserker’s gear leaves no room for mistakes. People survive encounters as glass cannons because they’re familiar with the fight mechanics and know when to dodge. Healing might allow one mistake, but one more means dead.

Depends on your build really. Full zerk wars may allow as far as 3 mistakes given the current strength of healing signet. Full zerk thieves can’t survive even one and healing power does nothing if every attack one-shots you.

I wouldn’t mind giving healing power more of a use since it’s really weak at the moment. But this will nerf users of Knight/Soldier, not users of Berserker/Assassin, for the most part.

If anything, it’d drive PVT users to use more Berserker, if PVT no longer gives as much additional survivability as it does at present.

As someone who runs celestial war, I marvel at all the various ideas and balance changes that do not affect me at all.

I have a zerker set. It does more damage. It does not allow me to carry a weak pug group through a dungeon.

I would like to nerf the noob zerk meta. Somehow discourage stacking.
I shake my head whenever people think they are good because they run zerk and then do not know how to dodge because all they did was stack at the right places up to that point.

There is the problem of people delaying runs because they use limited damage gear even though they’re personally capable of running higher risk-reward builds.

And then there’s the greater problem of people wiping because they use high risk-reward builds they can’t survive in.

How about no?

You can get guardian to heal well over 2k with each dodge if you go full heal healing so its ok and dont think we want it to be to strong as healing meta is really boring ;D

Please play some PvP or WvW before coming in here saying healing is too OP.

Zerker is actually harder to play. Only reason its like how it is now is because people got used to the content 2 years later.

I’d go for more varied mobs. Any GW1 veteran, including myself, can tell you how mobs operated in 1. You did not go glass cannon on them. Sure, there was the trinity to back you up and what not but nonetheless the mob AI was far superior to GW2.

The game environment breeds diversity not just stats.

I’ve said this in every “zerker meta solution” thread I’ve posted in.

The solution isn’t a change to stats or a mechanic, it needs a change to the way encounters are designed. If enemies didn’t stack on AE and instead moved out of it, if enemies dodge rolled and used evasion like the player does to avoid large burst, if enemies were more vulnerable to conditions and sometimes not vulnerable to direct attacks, if, if, if.

Just design better encounters and the zerker meta will fall behind. Zerker works because enemies are really dumb.

Lazaar.9123:

Exactly, so reducing heals is pointless, and does nothing but harm stat sets that do not include healing power.

Yeah, healing power needed to have stronger heals…how broken is that? Almost as bad as…i dunno…power-less stat sets not boosting your direct damage? The horror!

And about me punishing one stat set:
a) it was sarcasm (my 2nd post)
b) more like 2 stat sets (hi assassin’s)

Might nerf isn’t really zerker nerfing – they get hit by that one the least, because they already have lots of their own base power, while might itself is a flat number that does not scale with caster’s or receiver’s power stat. So the low power guys benefit from it more then zerks, least % wise. Though i understand that as a boon it was the single most important one and that was unbalanced.

And yes, this zerk meta problem is coming from more then one source, healing power is just one of many ways to address it. I would generally say that balancing stat effectiveness is one of many ways to address it, balancing the pve encounters being another.

The point is zerker has every right to be fastest killing stat set, but that should come at a price of high skill floor required to pull it off. While atm in dungeons you see zerks happily stacking together taking full damage from attacks like it was nothing, “cause stack and we’ll kill it before it kills us, as long as we do full dps and ignore it’s attacks” And shamefully often that indeed works.

The thing is, the arguments in this thread are just going to go around and around, being constantly repeated until it’s either 50 pages long, forgotten, or closed. The same thing happens to every other of the dozens of threads that are made about anything concerning the ‘meta’.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

How about no?

How about hell no.

Malthurius.6870:

I’ve said this in every “zerker meta solution” thread I’ve posted in.

The solution isn’t a change to stats or a mechanic, it needs a change to the way encounters are designed. If enemies didn’t stack on AE and instead moved out of it, if enemies dodge rolled and used evasion like the player does to avoid large burst, if enemies were more vulnerable to conditions and sometimes not vulnerable to direct attacks, if, if, if.

Just design better encounters and the zerker meta will fall behind. Zerker works because enemies are really dumb.

I just want to point out, that in many cases they tried this. There are enemies that look for range, there are enemies that will trigger evades. It’s simply that it’s very mediocre AI that controls it and we’ve learned to manipulate it. “don’t target the hunter” at hunter/crusher in Arah p3, not doing so avoids his jump back, just as an example.

But… that isn’t a problem of “zerker” it’s a problem with PUG tactics, or not even necessarily PUG but simply AI manipulation tactics. If I can avoid hits, I can wear zerk and will be better for it. If they avoid my field damage (lava font/symbols/whatever) then I simply re-evaluate what skill choices I make, Staff on Ele likely goes down in priority while Dagger goes up.

Though in regards to your comment about condi’s, again, I’d just re-evaluate but then I may go sinister, I’m still not going to look at defensive options unless they down right force me to, which I think is a bad idea for many reasons people have already stated.

Jerus.4350:

I just want to point out, that in many cases they tried this. There are enemies that look for range, there are enemies that will trigger evades. It’s simply that it’s very mediocre AI that controls it and we’ve learned to manipulate it. “don’t target the hunter” at hunter/crusher in Arah p3, not doing so avoids his jump back, just as an example.

But… that isn’t a problem of “zerker” it’s a problem with PUG tactics, or not even necessarily PUG but simply AI manipulation tactics. If I can avoid hits, I can wear zerk and will be better for it. If they avoid my field damage (lava font/symbols/whatever) then I simply re-evaluate what skill choices I make, Staff on Ele likely goes down in priority while Dagger goes up.

Though in regards to your comment about condi’s, again, I’d just re-evaluate but then I may go sinister, I’m still not going to look at defensive options unless they down right force me to, which I think is a bad idea for many reasons people have already stated.

In beta weekend 1 of the game, a lot of mobs had better AI. For example, mobs would actually step back out of a guardians whirling wrath and step back in when it finished. Or they would actively move out of placed AE, as a neat side note, you could also hit enemies from places they couldn’t reach and they wouldn’t regen to full. For whatever reason that was removed inbetween betas. My guess is because it was also exploitable, but in an entirely different manner from how thing are “exploited” today.

To “exploit” in GW2 now is to run past mobs, LoS, Stack, and AE in most cases. In Beta weekend 1, you could manipulate the AI in such a way that they would never throw a punch because they would be too busy trying to avoid you. Surely there is a better way to program the AI that they won’t mindlessly take your AE stacking spam or run around dodging your AE all day to where they can never retaliate. So I know very well that they’ve attempted smart AI before… but it’s always been dumb and they need to try it again and do it better, because I truly believe that to be at the heart of the problem.

The tactics of the game allow for the zerker meta. If mobs were harder to rally into one spot and evaded damage while still being dangerous, the zerker meta will become less valuable by virtue of the tactics that bred it being obsolete. Chances are that if the enemy can gain and retain an advantageous position and avoid damage, you’ll eventually run out of defensive options yourself and die to damage unless you’re really good at dodging the right things, have really good support in the party, or are somewhat defensive yourself.

thefantasticg.3984:

These “nerf zerker” threads are just like those “holy trinity” threads that just need to be auto-closed.

That is ridiculous. These forums are here for the sharing of ideas, opinions, complaints, and the like. If you don’t like a certain subject — Just avoid them. Also please don’t forget that no player controls what is or isn’t nerfed, buffed, added, removed, or changed in the game. Its the Devs that make that decision.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

We all know which stat set to wear once we hit 80. We know it, our grandmother knows it, heck the neighbour’s dog is already wearing it.

One of the causes for this might be how underwhelming defense stats are. Starting with healing power. It seems to me some professions (looking at you guardian) make it their point of honor to taunt and mock anyone silly enough to raise his healing power.

So my suggestion is this – make that healing power count. For real. Lower the default value of healing skills that are powerful from get go, while increase the healing power coefficient. Make those zerks work for their win with weak heal that will leave no room for mistakes.
Make those that bothered with it feel the difference in much more reliable and strong healing, giving meaningful sustain.

Just my 2 cents on the issue.

This is how “weak” Healing Power is at the moment:

And you want to make it even stronger? :S

You can find loads of videos like this one of people using gear with Healing Power (usually Cleric or Celestial) facerolling hard content…