Guild Wars 2

Seera.5916:

And people will still figure out what the new meta is and then that will be what is required for speed runs in dungeons.

There will always be a meta and it will likely always be whatever has the highest DPS. Because ANet does not want a party to have to wait for a specific class or build to be able to do anything in this game. Which means everyone has to be able to do everything to some degree. And if you change that, you’ll drive a lot of people away from the game as it’s one of the bigger selling points of the game. That you don’t have to wait for a healer or a tank or whatever.

Every Profession in the game can already do everything to some degree, and that is independent of stats. What OP is suggesting is to make your stats matter beyond taking the only three that matter in 99% of the game (Power, Precision, Ferocity). That isn’t taking a single option away from the people who still want to run full Zerker in everything. And if you say it shoehorns us into taking certain builds, well guess what buddy. GW2 already corners us into taking Zerker as the one and only effective stat combination in the game. That should change, but it wont….

OP’s idea is a bad one because it ignored Ferocity and Condition Damage, and wants to introduce two more stats, making the number of stat combos even more bloated than it already is.

All that said, Power is the most effective stat by developer choice, and you can see it in the math for damage calculation. Power multiplies in damage formulas. Toughness adds in damage formulas. Vitality increases your health by a static amount (10), and healing power increases your healing by a static amount (set by healing coefficient (usually between 0.1 and 1), which makes healing power the least effective stat by far).

Adding 1000 power will roughly double your damage, while adding 1000 toughness will not double your defense. Adding special bells and whistles to Toughness and Vitality isn’t going to change that.

(And actually, increasing the effectiveness of either stat would make it kind of difficult to kill those players, because everyone has access to dodges, evades, invulnerabilities, etc. and giving more effective defense with stat investment would probably break that. The way the game’s stats work sucks, but it can’t change due to design decisions made when the game was made)

Chrispy.5641:

And if you say it shoehorns us into taking certain builds, well guess what buddy. GW2 already corners us into taking Zerker as the one and only effective stat combination in the game. That should change, but it wont….

You can complete all PvE content in whichever gear you like, so the game itself doesn’t force you to wear zerker.

Edit: And I think when looking into whether or not healing power is underpowered one also should have a look at which rate the healing can be/is triggered.
Edit²: The same goes for toughness actually, if people would be able to double their toughness they would vastly prolonge the time someone would need to kill them, meaning that their skills would come off cooldown before their opponent has got any chance to do real damage – so basically you could go into PvP/Wvw and sit there all day while being afk.

Jana.6831

Edit: And I think when looking into whether or not healing power is underpowered one also should have a look at which rate the healing can be/is triggered.
Edit²: The same goes for toughness actually, if people would be able to double their toughness they would vastly prolonge the time someone would need to kill them, meaning that their skills would come off cooldown before their opponent has got any chance to do real damage – so basically you could go into PvP/Wvw and sit there all day while being afk.

1: Doubling your healing power does not double your effectiveness at healing. Doubling your Power does double your damage.

2: Doubling your Toughness does not double the amount of time it takes for someone to kill you (it increases that time by maybe 30%). Doubling your Power does decrease the time that it takes you to kill someone by half. Doubling your precision increases your crit chance by a larger percentage than Toughness does increasing your damage reduction. Doubling your Ferocity increases your critical damage by a larger percentage that Toughness does increasing your damage reduction.

My point still stands while yours is disproven. Power is BY FAR the most effective stat in the game (Followed by Precision and Ferocity), and it makes no sense to invest in other stat combinations.

This means that if I want to be at maximum effectiveness, I have to take Zerker gear.

I can go fight a war with just a pistol…doesn’t mean I’m going to go do it if there’s a better option available.

Loki.8793:

oxtred.7658:

Everytime someone says the meta is about maximising damage, he can’t be taken seriously.

It is though. The current meta is to deal as much damage as possible as fast as possible while utilizing supportive skills to keep the party alive.

And this is exactly the same for all other games including trinity games. You dont take 5 healers. You take the minimum amount of healers and tanks that are required. The rest of the slots are filled with dps players. By not having a trinity you allow inclusion of everyone. Your suggestions work against that. The meta is irrelevant when discussing this issue.

Also i should mention. Many of your suggestions have already been pointed out as flawed. For example making tanky players even more survivable (vitality suggestion). But what hasnt been pointed out is that pretty much all of your suggestions discourage the use of combo fields and teamplay.

By making people spec specifically for certain boons and conditions you are making them be the sole provider of that boon/conditon. Rather than encouraging them to work with their party members to utilize combos and share the load.

There are definately problems with the current system. But those are limited to things such as condi overwrite, lack of condi potency and lack of content difficulty.

Chrispy.5641:

The game actually does force me to wear Zerker gear if you want to be as effective as possible. Like I said its in the math, and the math says that Power is the most effective stat in the game, followed closely behind by precision and ferocity. I know you didn’t read that far, but maybe you should.

Yeah, it’s the most effective way to play but you’re still not forced to do so. And as others have stated there’s always the most effective way in any game – don’t know why this is a huge problem for a lot of you who want the game to be changed. The last time that happened meant for me that my pvt gear in wvw wasn’t viable anymore so I had to go zerkers and I will never be able to play like I used to before the crit nerf. I’m pretty mad because of that actually. BUT on the plus side I learned a lot more about skills, cooldown, hits and survival.

I did read it but answered afterwards.

Jana.6831:

Chrispy.5641:

The game actually does force me to wear Zerker gear if you want to be as effective as possible. Like I said its in the math, and the math says that Power is the most effective stat in the game, followed closely behind by precision and ferocity. I know you didn’t read that far, but maybe you should.

Yeah, it’s the most effective way to play but you’re still not forced to do so. And as others have stated there’s always the most effective way in any game – don’t know why this is a huge problem for a lot of you who want the game to be changed. The last time that happened meant for me that my pvt gear in wvw wasn’t viable anymore so I had to go zerkers and I will never be able to play like I used to before the crit nerf. I’m pretty mad because of that actually. BUT on the plus side I learned a lot more about skills, cooldown, hits and survival.

I did read it but answered afterwards.

You’re still not listening, or paying attention, and you are still refusing to concede the fact that power is much more effective to invest in that any other stat.

Yes power is the most effective stat, 5 gear types have that as their base. But power has to fight against healing, skill cooldown, toughness – just read what I wrote again or try it in wvw/pvp to understand that 1:1 would be a desaster. I have to leave though.

Edit: Oh my, you people on the forums.

Jana.6831:

Yes power is the most effective stat, 5 gear types have that as their base. But power has to fight against healing, skill cooldown, toughness – just read what I wrote again or try it in wvw/pvp to understand that 1:1 would be a desaster. I have to leave though.

Edit: Oh my, you people on the forums.

I WvW with full Zerker and 3100 power. I don’t care about your puny healing power or Toughness, or your dodging or invulnerabilities. You’re going to die against me, and having 3500 armor is only delaying your death by 30% longer than it would have been. That’s okay, You’ll die in 13 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Fine by me!

Chrispy.5641:

Jana.6831:

Yes power is the most effective stat, 5 gear types have that as their base. But power has to fight against healing, skill cooldown, toughness – just read what I wrote again or try it in wvw/pvp to understand that 1:1 would be a desaster. I have to leave though.

Edit: Oh my, you people on the forums.

I WvW with full Zerker and 3100 power. I don’t care about your puny healing power or Toughness, or your dodging or invulnerabilities. You’re going to die against me, and having 3500 armor is only delaying your death by 30% longer than it would have been. That’s okay, You’ll die in 13 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Fine by me!

Yeah that was the point – if you would double the toughness, would you as a zerker still be able to kill the tough guy?
(still have to leave)

Edit: sorry usual if would problem – one day I will learn it.. maybe.

Jana.6831:

Chrispy.5641:

Jana.6831:

Yes power is the most effective stat, 5 gear types have that as their base. But power has to fight against healing, skill cooldown, toughness – just read what I wrote again or try it in wvw/pvp to understand that 1:1 would be a desaster. I have to leave though.

Edit: Oh my, you people on the forums.

I WvW with full Zerker and 3100 power. I don’t care about your puny healing power or Toughness, or your dodging or invulnerabilities. You’re going to die against me, and having 3500 armor is only delaying your death by 30% longer than it would have been. That’s okay, You’ll die in 13 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Fine by me!

Yeah that was the point – if you would double the toughness, would you as a zerker still be able to kill the tough guy?
(still have to leave)

You should probably leave and debate me later then. Sounds kind of important.

The thing is, there’s no point in doubling your toughness to delay your death by 3 more seconds, if you can just double your power and kill me twice as fast.

@Chrispy

Profession?

I agree with a tiny part of the post. Toughness and Vitality already have their use in PvE. They help new player or bad player to play the game with ease. That’s it and it should stay that way.

But I agree that build diversity is always nice. The thing is we already have that. We don’t have it on armor and weapons true. But we have all that on Trait, Runes, Sigils, Skills. Want more might, take the Runes of Strenght. Want more dodge, take sigil of energy. Want to make more protection, take WoP on your hammer guardian, etc. We can expand on that. Add more good Runes for PvE (Only a limited amount that are usefull and only 2 that are great), find a way to have a good source of Weakness (other than Skale Venom) in a build so that useful condition become used in PvE more. Give more CC to the enemies to that stability become precious in some PvE encounter. Give use some good way (without butcher our dps) to have boons duration on us for more vigor to every one in fractal or arah. Give us a good way to increase our condition duration without decreasing too much our DPS so we can give more vulnerability. Fix condition damage so it become good in group PvE.

There is so much ways to increase build diversity and gameplay diversity wihtout forcing ppl into stats like vitality, toughness and healing power. That would only make the game easier.

Chrispy.5641:

Jana.6831

Edit: And I think when looking into whether or not healing power is underpowered one also should have a look at which rate the healing can be/is triggered.
Edit²: The same goes for toughness actually, if people would be able to double their toughness they would vastly prolonge the time someone would need to kill them, meaning that their skills would come off cooldown before their opponent has got any chance to do real damage – so basically you could go into PvP/Wvw and sit there all day while being afk.

1: Doubling your healing power does not double your effectiveness at healing. Doubling your Power does double your damage.

2: Doubling your Toughness does not double the amount of time it takes for someone to kill you (it increases that time by maybe 30%). Doubling your Power does decrease the time that it takes you to kill someone by half. Doubling your precision increases your crit chance by a larger percentage than Toughness does increasing your damage reduction. Doubling your Ferocity increases your critical damage by a larger percentage that Toughness does increasing your damage reduction.

My point still stands while yours is disproven. Power is BY FAR the most effective stat in the game (Followed by Precision and Ferocity), and it makes no sense to invest in other stat combinations.

This means that if I want to be at maximum effectiveness, I have to take Zerker gear.

I can go fight a war with just a pistol…doesn’t mean I’m going to go do it if there’s a better option available.

I don’t think it’s right to compare how offensive stats scale vs defensive stats.

The game was built with the purpose of getting rid of the trinity. There should be no need to wait for tanks and healers to complete content which is exactly how the game is right now.

As for the stats, Vitality scales almost the same way as power, except for the fact that every class starts out with a difference base HP/Vitality before anything is added.

Toughness cannot scale linearly because it isn’t intended to achieve too high of a damage reduction, if you make it scale to the point that you can face tank easily it’d be a very boring game don’t you think so?

As for healing, it’s the same thing, I certainly don’t want to play another game where I can just DPS and not mitigate damage because a “healer” can keep me at full hp except for one hit shots.

You can look at how good Selfless Daring is at healing(1.0 coefficient with healing) with a build for lots of vigor. How easy will the game be if you put 1.0 coefficient on healing symbols, regen, VoR, etc. too?

As for tying in defensive tools to vitality, toughness or healing, it’s just forcing people to run a minimum number of those stats to get to the point where they can survive again.

All that achieves is having people to swap out gear to perform exactly the same as they were in full berserkers previously except you’re just extending the play time to clear content needlessly. The encounters are the same, the mechanics are the same, you’re just forcing people to stay inside that dungeon for however longer the required toughness/healing/vitality affects their damage.

Coldtart.4785:

Dalanor.5387:

Coldtart.4785:

PvE is incapable of ever requiring skill so it’s pointless to change it.

Which team did you participate in the most recent dungeon tournaments?

Did any of those players have to play mindgames against the AI?

You realize there are plenty of activities/sports that do not involve head-to-head competition with other humans right, but rather compete on performance? Are you suggesting those activities don’t really require skill? (skiing, archery, skateboarding, shooting, gymnastics, etc.)

Think of PvE as these activities. Sure it require no skill to pull a string back on a bow (unless you are weak) and fire an arrow. But it does take skill to do it accurately and to hit targets at long distances consistently. Same goes with PvE. Sure it’s easy to make it through a dungeon. But it takes skill to do it faster than anyone else on the planet.

My ultimate point is: you couldn’t do it if you wanted to. (Plus I bet your PvP isn’t as hawt as you might like others to believe)

I hate the current system/zerker meta. Let me list the things I hate about it.

1. Requires people to have experience and skill to maximize their potential. This is unfair.

2. Requires teamplay and coordination to have smooth, easy runs. This is unfair.

3. When I do fractals and get an Apothecary stat ring I get mad because it isn’t useful anywhere. this is unfair, all gear should be useful somewhere.

4. I want to play a tanky support healer since thats what I play in every other MMO I’ve ever played and people don’t want to play with me in gw2 dungeons. This is unfair.

Izaya.2906:

Chrispy.5641:

Jana.6831

Edit: And I think when looking into whether or not healing power is underpowered one also should have a look at which rate the healing can be/is triggered.
Edit²: The same goes for toughness actually, if people would be able to double their toughness they would vastly prolonge the time someone would need to kill them, meaning that their skills would come off cooldown before their opponent has got any chance to do real damage – so basically you could go into PvP/Wvw and sit there all day while being afk.

1: Doubling your healing power does not double your effectiveness at healing. Doubling your Power does double your damage.

2: Doubling your Toughness does not double the amount of time it takes for someone to kill you (it increases that time by maybe 30%). Doubling your Power does decrease the time that it takes you to kill someone by half. Doubling your precision increases your crit chance by a larger percentage than Toughness does increasing your damage reduction. Doubling your Ferocity increases your critical damage by a larger percentage that Toughness does increasing your damage reduction.

My point still stands while yours is disproven. Power is BY FAR the most effective stat in the game (Followed by Precision and Ferocity), and it makes no sense to invest in other stat combinations.

This means that if I want to be at maximum effectiveness, I have to take Zerker gear.

I can go fight a war with just a pistol…doesn’t mean I’m going to go do it if there’s a better option available.

I don’t think it’s right to compare how offensive stats scale vs defensive stats.

The game was built with the purpose of getting rid of the trinity. There should be no need to wait for tanks and healers to complete content which is exactly how the game is right now.

As for the stats, Vitality scales almost the same way as power, except for the fact that every class starts out with a difference base HP/Vitality before anything is added.

Toughness cannot scale linearly because it isn’t intended to achieve too high of a damage reduction, if you make it scale to the point that you can face tank easily it’d be a very boring game don’t you think so?

As for healing, it’s the same thing, I certainly don’t want to play another game where I can just DPS and not mitigate damage because a “healer” can keep me at full hp except for one hit shots.

You can look at how good Selfless Daring is at healing(1.0 coefficient with healing) with a build for lots of vigor. How easy will the game be if you put 1.0 coefficient on healing symbols, regen, VoR, etc. too?

As for tying in defensive tools to vitality, toughness or healing, it’s just forcing people to run a minimum number of those stats to get to the point where they can survive again.

All that achieves is having people to swap out gear to perform exactly the same as they were in full berserkers previously except you’re just extending the play time to clear content needlessly. The encounters are the same, the mechanics are the same, you’re just forcing people to stay inside that dungeon for however longer the required toughness/healing/vitality affects their damage.

Sorry, but your wrong.

Toughness scales additively because Armor equals Toughness + Armor defense. 1 point of Toughness will always raise your armor by 1.

Vitality scales additively because one point of vitality always equals 10 hp.

Precision and Ferocity also scale additively because a certain number of points from either always increases critical chance/damage the same way.

Power scales multiplicatively, because your total attack power is Power x Weapon strength.

There’s the differences. The difference is that all the stats are additive for different values and only power actually multiplies with another stat (which is why doubling your power can double your damage, but doubling any other stat does not double what they do)

While I do have my fun running around PvE(sometimes WvW) in ‘useless’ Magi gear because I have it, I’m fooling myself if I don’t say that I’m more effective running around in Zerker gear with 3000+ power. Power builds, and specifically Berserker gear, is the most effective in the game. The math proves it. (and I never said that was a bad thing)

Damage = Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor
Did you just forget it or didn’t you know?
Genuine question.

I though you had somewhere to go. Besides that, Damage takes Power and Toughness into account (as well as weapon power and armor defense), and nowhere was I talking about the total damage formula, just the individual parts.

Power multiplies with Weapon Strength (and skill coefficient modifier). Toughness adds with Armor defense to get an armor value.

Toughness and Power are still not equal when it comes to comparing the two. 1 point of power is ALWAYS more effective than 1 point of Toughness.

Genuine Question : What part of that do you not understand?

oxtred.7658:

Everytime someone says the meta is about maximising damage, he can’t be taken seriously.

Well, every meta in every MMO ever made was about maximising efficiency. Maximising DPS is, for the most part, enough be as efficient as possible. And please don’t read this as “you have to get as much damage as possible” but as “reducing the support- and defensive capabilities to a minimum and raise the damage as far as possible without hurting the speed”. Not that I agree with anyone who’s ever used that argument but please don’t use flawed arguments to reenforce your opinion.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

oxtred.7658:

Everytime someone says the meta is about maximising damage, he can’t be taken seriously.

Well, every meta in every MMO ever made was about maximising efficiency. Maximising DPS is, for the most part, enough be as efficient as possible. And please don’t read this as “you have to get as much damage as possible” but as “reducing the support- and defensive capabilities to a minimum and raise the damage as far as possible without hurting the speed”. Not that I agree with anyone who’s ever used that argument but please don’t use flawed arguments to reenforce your opinion.

Yup, and investing as much as possible into support without loosing too much dps is not even close to maximising damage. That’s 2 different mindsets.

Yeah I already have been away for a few hours, didn’t you notice?

Yeah it was just about what your double armor would do to the formula – but since there’s only cryptic stuff about that anyway I can’t really calculate how much it would change – I wish I could but my if/would problem is more urgent.

Anyway: I’m a mediocre thief and have been a rather bad thief and I found that surviving with pvt was impossible after April 15th – so I traded toughness for more ferocity+critchance. And it works a lot better. I would try my pvt gear again (to see if that was a L2P issue) but I have long salvaged it. Problem I had was that my skills were always on cooldown wheras my opponents “had all their ready” (they didn’t need them for a long time as I didn’t really do damage).

Edit: Not sure if I don’t understand you or if we are talking cross purposes – I think that increasing toughness would “break” the game

Chrispy.5641:

Izaya.2906:

Chrispy.5641:

Jana.6831

Edit: And I think when looking into whether or not healing power is underpowered one also should have a look at which rate the healing can be/is triggered.
Edit²: The same goes for toughness actually, if people would be able to double their toughness they would vastly prolonge the time someone would need to kill them, meaning that their skills would come off cooldown before their opponent has got any chance to do real damage – so basically you could go into PvP/Wvw and sit there all day while being afk.

1: Doubling your healing power does not double your effectiveness at healing. Doubling your Power does double your damage.

2: Doubling your Toughness does not double the amount of time it takes for someone to kill you (it increases that time by maybe 30%). Doubling your Power does decrease the time that it takes you to kill someone by half. Doubling your precision increases your crit chance by a larger percentage than Toughness does increasing your damage reduction. Doubling your Ferocity increases your critical damage by a larger percentage that Toughness does increasing your damage reduction.

My point still stands while yours is disproven. Power is BY FAR the most effective stat in the game (Followed by Precision and Ferocity), and it makes no sense to invest in other stat combinations.

This means that if I want to be at maximum effectiveness, I have to take Zerker gear.

I can go fight a war with just a pistol…doesn’t mean I’m going to go do it if there’s a better option available.

I don’t think it’s right to compare how offensive stats scale vs defensive stats.

The game was built with the purpose of getting rid of the trinity. There should be no need to wait for tanks and healers to complete content which is exactly how the game is right now.

As for the stats, Vitality scales almost the same way as power, except for the fact that every class starts out with a difference base HP/Vitality before anything is added.

Toughness cannot scale linearly because it isn’t intended to achieve too high of a damage reduction, if you make it scale to the point that you can face tank easily it’d be a very boring game don’t you think so?

As for healing, it’s the same thing, I certainly don’t want to play another game where I can just DPS and not mitigate damage because a “healer” can keep me at full hp except for one hit shots.

You can look at how good Selfless Daring is at healing(1.0 coefficient with healing) with a build for lots of vigor. How easy will the game be if you put 1.0 coefficient on healing symbols, regen, VoR, etc. too?

As for tying in defensive tools to vitality, toughness or healing, it’s just forcing people to run a minimum number of those stats to get to the point where they can survive again.

All that achieves is having people to swap out gear to perform exactly the same as they were in full berserkers previously except you’re just extending the play time to clear content needlessly. The encounters are the same, the mechanics are the same, you’re just forcing people to stay inside that dungeon for however longer the required toughness/healing/vitality affects their damage.

Sorry, but your wrong.

Toughness scales additively because Armor equals Toughness + Armor defense. 1 point of Toughness will always raise your armor by 1.

Vitality scales additively because one point of vitality always equals 10 hp.

Precision and Ferocity also scale additively because a certain number of points from either always increases critical chance/damage the same way.

Power scales multiplicatively, because your total attack power is Power x Weapon strength.

There’s the differences. The difference is that all the stats are additive for different values and only power actually multiplies with another stat (which is why doubling your power can double your damage, but doubling any other stat does not double what they do)

While I do have my fun running around PvE(sometimes WvW) in ‘useless’ Magi gear because I have it, I’m fooling myself if I don’t say that I’m more effective running around in Zerker gear with 3000+ power. Power builds, and specifically Berserker gear, is the most effective in the game. The math proves it. (and I never said that was a bad thing)

Yes toughness increases armor additively but that’s not where it stops with regards to how toughness scales with damage reduction.

You can refer to this ancient thread during the early days with regards to toughness:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/

I will reiterate that facetanking mobs with 99% damage reduction isn’t intended, that’s why you get diminishing returns when it comes to damage reduction from toughness. It is working as intended.

The current meta isn’t about dmg, the current meta is just :

Make sure you get no damage.

This requires a bit of knowledge about mechanics.
1 you need to learn to dodge (do not doubledodge, only dodge when needed)
2 know attacks and reflects
even though reflects have been nerfed, they are a very good source of dmg. and damage negation (which is the priority)
3 use blinds & aegis, these 2 cmbined with dodges allow for damageless play, blinds =miss, aegis is miss even on hit, dodges could prevent dmg if both are not there
4 Conditions can make a for a problem,if an AOE attack HITS… you’ll sustain DOT
and you need to remove the condition. but we were not hit. we can blind/and dodge
5 If you get no dmg at all why would you spec in vitality, if you do not get hit you could survive with 1 HP, same reason armor is useless. Or Healing…
6 Condition dmg could be usefull but conditions have caps in place so they are negated after a stack is full still if 1 person could focus whole or completely on conditions conditions could make life easier
-blinds = primary source of no dmg
-weakness = 50% fumbles (-50%dmg on hit), no crits from enemies, dmg reduction
-poison = less healing effectiveness (-33% health gained on heal)
-frozen = -66 movement, +66% skill recharge lowering enemy DPS by 40%
-confusion = dmg on attack…
-fire = DMG
-bleeds =DMG
-torment=DMG
7 BOONS
interesting as they are a big part of your survivability:
Stability: Prevents fear, knockdown, daze,stun so you can keep your rotations up. If your enemy cannot disable you this is useless.
Aegis: blocks the next attack (any attack)
Protection: -33% dmg received from direct dmg.
Might: additional DPS and DOT
Fury: +20% crit chance, generally boosts dps
Vigor: additional endurance boost: more dodges
Swiftness: faster skipping of trash
Retaliation looks nice but we try to not get hit, so it wil be useless, but if you do get hit: you’ll do some dmg against your enemy. The amount is low if not useless, reflects are way better… scales very bad with power.
Quickness 150% attackspeed and recharge

SO in the end interesting stats could be:
for dps
power: the modifier on whcih your physical dmg scales
precision: chance of critting, critical being150% of a normal attack modified by ferocity
ferocity: improves how far yourcritical dmg will scale
condition dmg: the modifer on which your condition dmg scales (dmg)
condition duration: lengthens conditions when applied (uptime)

less interesting:
boon duration could provide a source of dmg mitigation…. but does no actual additional dmg all others above do….
Healing power: increases aount of hitpoints regained when healing, countered by poison
Armor: mitigates physical dmg useless vs conditions
Vitality: gives more hit points…

Healing power synergizes with armor. As armor reduces incoming dmg and healing power increases healing.
Vitality’s only function is to make sure you die a second later allowing for a bit more time to trigger a healing skill, vitality buys a bit of time, but you need a lot more healing power to regain the same % of hitpoints when having a high vitality…

Put in order of DPS usefullness:
power
precision
ferocity
boon duration
toughness
healing
vitality.

in order condition dmg usefullness
condition dmg & power
precision
condition duration (& ferocity)
toughness
healing power
boon duration
vitality

In the end a DOT (DAMAGE OVER TIME) or Condi character will get hampered by an extremely fast kill, as damage over time needs TIME to be effective; so a party of 5 DPS-ers will generally outdmg a 4DPS, 1DOT or 4DPS, 1 Hybrid set, though the latter 2 wil actually see benefit in vey long fights as the enemy will suffer secondary effects while suffering conditions as well…

Best set of boons and conditions for dmg mitigation:
Blinds/aegis/chill/protection/weakness/vigor//poison

Best set of boons and conditions for dmg
Might/fury/fire/bleeds/poison/torment/confusion/retaliation

In the end I’d think a group of 4 guardians (zerk) and 1 necro(zerk/sinister) should give the best dps and uptime. but that’s just my 2 cents.

Zerk is King as it delivers most DPS, more then any DOT players could even do if no cap existed…

Within this meta all non offensive stats tend to fade, as is condition duration, as it has no viable armor stat combo’s/ weapon combo’s.
And an ultra tank (nomad or sentinel) will always be destroyed by DOT… leaving only a little window for conditions if paths would contain 1 tanky boss…

Izaya.2906:

Yes toughness increases armor additively but that’s not where it stops with regards to how toughness scales with damage reduction.

You can refer to this ancient thread during the early days with regards to toughness:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/

I will reiterate that facetanking mobs with 99% damage reduction isn’t intended, that’s why you get diminishing returns when it comes to damage reduction from toughness. It is working as intended.

I see no conflict here. Let me show you why :::

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (Toughness + Defense)

I’ll be using that damage formula. To make it easier for you to understand, weapon power and Defense are both equal to 1000 and the skill coefficient is 1.

If Power and Toughness were 1000 :::

1000 × 1000 × 1 / (1000 + 1000)
1,000,000 / 2000 = 500

If Power and Toughness were 2000 :::
2000 × 1000 × 1 / (2000 + 1000)
2,000,000 / 3000 = 667

If Power and Toughness were 3000 :::
3000 × 1000 × 1 / (3000 + 1000)
3,000,000 / 4000 = 750

In all three calculations, all values remained the same, except for Power and Toughness. Both of which were the same value in each calculation. Notice how damage went up. Its because Power multiplies with weapon strength (and skill coefficient) before the division takes place, while toughness only adds with armor defense. And this is before you throw in critical damage and vulnerability, both of which also multiply with the total damage to make the number even higher.

So, yeah, I’m still right. I never said that was a bad thing either, nor do I really want it to change to where all stats are equal, but my point still stands, and not one of you have been able to disprove it yet. Power is more valuable as a stat than any other stat in the game, and its foolish to invest in other stats if you want to be as effective as possible.

The gold stat begs to differ.

The problem isn’t the meta, meta is about efficiency and effectiveness. The core problem is the mechanic design of the game that encourages it. This includes bosses’ fight mechanic and the combat+damage+buffs mechanic of every single classes.
It can’t be fixed overnight or even at all without changing the game as a whole.

The same thing on how mess up the whole condition damage vs. white damage fiasco.

Aanet has tried to fix this by nerfing stats and sometimes classes, latest victims of this would be warrior’s adrenaline and ele’s fgs. It simply won’t work.

I don’t think you can fix this zerk meta preference at all. It will drive away players in huge numbers. Given this is B2P cash shop game, they had to choke loots and rewards in a severe way. OP suggestion will drive the game more into trinity system but still in grey area which will cause encounter longer, while aanet isn’t willing to dish out better rewards for encounters everywhere. No1 is gonna do, for instance, an AC exp for 40mins+ with lousy loots.

All you left with is play the game for what it is. Yes, the pve does feel cheap n hollow. You can blame zerk all you want. Pvp side ain’t any better with bunker+condi. The crappy spvp map design. Eotm train chuchu party, map that basically encourage it.

Can’t fix it. It’s done. Just play. Dress up your toons, that’s about it.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

It is really sad that Guild Wars 2 has a beautiful combat system….. much better than any other game I’ve ever played… and we just stack in the corner for LOS and max dps.

The problem is, they can’t change the meta from full zerker team till they add back some of the things they removed from the trinity.

They can’t make enemies deal damage more frequently without improving the scaling on stats like healing power….. which to be honest is the worst stat in the game (and Anet made it that way purposely).

If an enemy attacks once every ten seconds for 50,000 dmg, nobody will ever die, even though it is a one-shot skill. (provided they know how to dodge)

If that same enemy attacks once every 5 seconds for 25,000 dmg, players probably still won’t die (because they still have an additional dodge roll)

If that same enemy attacks once every 2.5 seconds for 12,500 dmg, players are going to begin struggling to completely avoid damage due to lack of endurance…. but endurance can be boosted, and additional skills provide evade mechanics.

And finally if that same enemy attacks once every second, and deals 6k dmg, people would be getting melted in zerker gear, since they do not have the endurance or skills to dodge, and lack the toughness to survive…. and it would give even full pvt players a run for their money.

The problem is that NONE of the enemies in this game attack fast enough to give any player any reason to run anything other than max dps with no survivability.

Every single attack that would kill a zerker in one hit can be completely avoided by evading.

Halve the damage of enemy attacks, and make enemies attack twice as often and you will find out what a world of a difference it will make.

This is flawed. See the Arah no dodges video – where people in full defensive gear unbind their dodge button and faceroll one of the most challenging dungeons in the game without much effort.

Tanking is already that strong in this game. Why would we want more of this faceroll easy mode situations?

Harper.4173:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Halve the damage of enemy attacks, and make enemies attack twice as often and you will find out what a world of a difference it will make.

This is flawed. See the Arah no dodges video – where people in full defensive gear unbind their dodge button and faceroll one of the most challenging dungeons in the game without much effort.

Tanking is already that strong in this game. Why would we want more of this faceroll easy mode situations?

I’m more and more tempted to run with my mesmers in these tanky groups so i can moa morph the boss to show them how great rapid attacks are.
/evil laugh

Harper.4173:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

It is really sad that Guild Wars 2 has a beautiful combat system….. much better than any other game I’ve ever played… and we just stack in the corner for LOS and max dps.

The problem is, they can’t change the meta from full zerker team till they add back some of the things they removed from the trinity.

They can’t make enemies deal damage more frequently without improving the scaling on stats like healing power….. which to be honest is the worst stat in the game (and Anet made it that way purposely).

If an enemy attacks once every ten seconds for 50,000 dmg, nobody will ever die, even though it is a one-shot skill. (provided they know how to dodge)

If that same enemy attacks once every 5 seconds for 25,000 dmg, players probably still won’t die (because they still have an additional dodge roll)

If that same enemy attacks once every 2.5 seconds for 12,500 dmg, players are going to begin struggling to completely avoid damage due to lack of endurance…. but endurance can be boosted, and additional skills provide evade mechanics.

And finally if that same enemy attacks once every second, and deals 6k dmg, people would be getting melted in zerker gear, since they do not have the endurance or skills to dodge, and lack the toughness to survive…. and it would give even full pvt players a run for their money.

The problem is that NONE of the enemies in this game attack fast enough to give any player any reason to run anything other than max dps with no survivability.

Every single attack that would kill a zerker in one hit can be completely avoided by evading.

Halve the damage of enemy attacks, and make enemies attack twice as often and you will find out what a world of a difference it will make.

This is flawed. See the Arah no dodges video – where people in full defensive gear unbind their dodge button and faceroll one of the most challenging dungeons in the game without much effort.

Tanking is already that strong in this game. Why would we want more of this faceroll easy mode situations?

You only took half of what I said to heart.

Also, I surely hope you aren’t saying that Arah should be used to gauge difficulty in this game.

Simply because the dungeon is long does not make it any harder.

People solo the dungeon, I personally have never bothered to do such a thing, but have done it three man on several occasions.

Also, using reflects and aegis will end up falling short the same as dodging would if the enemies just attack more often (or differently).

In addition, many bosses get destroyed easily if you know the fight…. melted by a single reflect skill (Lupicus). Can be auto attacked from max range (ooze)… Rendered useless with immobilize (tar elemental) or are rendered useless by reflects and stacking in the corner (Alphard). …when they could use attacks compounded by players stacking on top of eachother (Malrona in Twilight Arbor) or just mechanics/attacks that aren’t so easily abused.

Listen to ALL of what I’m saying, rather than spouting off “People can still play without dodging.”

If you increase the attack style and speed of enemies enough while proportionately decreasing their damage with each attack, you will find that enemies will melt even the toughest players, regardless of toughness, vitality, healing power, reflects, aegis, endurance, etc.

That is the only way to break zerker.

How far the developers go in that direction is up to them.

guess which enemies attack more often

dredge

guess who enjoys fighting them

absolutely nobody (insert smart-* response from one guy in the entire world who enjoys it) enjoys fighting them

“breaking zerker” will involve making the game so casual unfriendly that even if ANet wanted to, they couldn’t risk the loss of money, people already whine about mordrem mobs being too hard, or doing story instances until their armour broke (are you serious, come on, wiping at an LS instance until your armour is broken how bad do you have to be for that to be happen).

Ropechef.6192:

if you wish the “zerker” meta, to go away.

you must create content SO hard that the “berserkers” cry. Not just rivers, but oceans.

~Wethsopu

That’s actually not a solution to zerk-bias for dungeons. It’s not about how hard it is, it’s about how hard it is to avoid taking damage. It’s not hard to imagine an encounter that requires a massive heal power to overcome a background DoT you can’t dodge or out-heal with skills for instance. I’m not advocating such an approach but there are other approaches to make that zerk-bias less so.

Admittedly, I would prefer to see synergies between defensive/offensive stats that rival a pure zerker gearload for performance but it’s actually not really necessary to do that if the concepts of the PVE encounters don’t change.

Chrispy.5641:

Seera.5916:

And people will still figure out what the new meta is and then that will be what is required for speed runs in dungeons.

There will always be a meta and it will likely always be whatever has the highest DPS. Because ANet does not want a party to have to wait for a specific class or build to be able to do anything in this game. Which means everyone has to be able to do everything to some degree. And if you change that, you’ll drive a lot of people away from the game as it’s one of the bigger selling points of the game. That you don’t have to wait for a healer or a tank or whatever.

Every Profession in the game can already do everything to some degree, and that is independent of stats. What OP is suggesting is to make your stats matter beyond taking the only three that matter in 99% of the game (Power, Precision, Ferocity). That isn’t taking a single option away from the people who still want to run full Zerker in everything. And if you say it shoehorns us into taking certain builds, well guess what buddy. GW2 already corners us into taking Zerker as the one and only effective stat combination in the game. That should change, but it wont….

OP’s idea is a bad one because it ignored Ferocity and Condition Damage, and wants to introduce two more stats, making the number of stat combos even more bloated than it already is.

All that said, Power is the most effective stat by developer choice, and you can see it in the math for damage calculation. Power multiplies in damage formulas. Toughness adds in damage formulas. Vitality increases your health by a static amount (10), and healing power increases your healing by a static amount (set by healing coefficient (usually between 0.1 and 1), which makes healing power the least effective stat by far).

Adding 1000 power will roughly double your damage, while adding 1000 toughness will not double your defense. Adding special bells and whistles to Toughness and Vitality isn’t going to change that.

(And actually, increasing the effectiveness of either stat would make it kind of difficult to kill those players, because everyone has access to dodges, evades, invulnerabilities, etc. and giving more effective defense with stat investment would probably break that. The way the game’s stats work sucks, but it can’t change due to design decisions made when the game was made)

I don’t agree with the OP. His solution will not get rid of meta builds, which is what OP claims to hate.

All of my posts in this thread have been against this solution.

Seera.5916:

I don’t agree with the OP. His solution will not get rid of meta builds, which is what OP claims to hate.

All of my posts in this thread have been against this solution.

No, I never once said I hated meta builds. Where did you get this idea?

What I want and advocate for is more build variety seen in the meta and to have other stats aside from power and crits have some sort of relevance in the meta.

Meta is about optimal builds. If you want ptv/ condi guards to be part of the meta, it’s asking for those builds to be competitive time wise with dps oriented gear, while they are still easier to play.

~reads the OP~

Eh, it’s not a horrible idea but rough around the edges.

In a way, it encourages players to seek wider variety of stat combinations (stat combinations by nomenclature) but at the same time limits their potency in the actions they normally perform. Looking at each defensive change:

- toughness, blocks, protection, aegis, and stability. Making toughness the catch-all for defense and overall less-damage-takey will force players to take a certain threshold of toughness or else they’ll be incapable of gaining significant use of these mechanics. Also, it feels like it will disproportionately aid certain professions more than others…like Guardian, Elementalists and Engineer which have 3 or more of the above attributes to take advantage of it while professions like Thief or Warrior might only have 2 or less at any given time.

- Vitality, dodges, swiftness and vigor. The same as above, it will enforce a threshold of vitality to gain a certain level of use from these mechanics. The thing is, players will just reshuffle their attributes to better round themselves out but keep themselves as pearshaped toward damage dealing as possible. But I will say that trying dodges/stamina recovery to vitality is probably something that needs to happen regardless of if the rest of your idea is good. There should be a higher emphasis on using dodges sparingly or aim for utility that gives you more stamina. Shaving some off the default and giving it to Vitality stacks (and then sum) would be rather refreshing and likely hurt zerkers more than anyone else.

- Healing power, rezzing, downed HP and given/received healing. Frankly don’t see anything wrong with this as it really affects nothing but not dying. However, it feels really easy to get people up as it is so this change would have to make it slight or end up making it a cake stroll to get yourself back up as long as you’re not constantly pelted by foes.

The rest about boon/condition duration aside, I feel it might be slightly better to give each stat an offensive side and a defensive side instead so if a player wants to aim for a zerk build, they indeed have a means to keep themselves alive….but knight’s and nomad’s builds would also have an offensive side to accomplish damage as well.

Something like:

• power = base-strike damage, potency of vulnerability, absorb threshold (blocks nullify conditions/CC and damage up to X and the rest goes through; retaliation shaves off a portion of the attack received)
• precision = multi-strike damage, critical chance, fury duration, reflect duration, blink duration (after a dodge you can blink past AoEs, as well as automatically blink after receiving a crit)
• toughness = decrease base-strike damage, increase block duration, increase protection potency, retaliation damage potency and CC duration.
• vitality = increase base HP, decrease multi-strike damage, increase stamina, increase fury potency (decreases duration but increases attack speed)
• healing = increase healing received and granted, increase downed HP and revival speed, decreases DoT, increase condition magnitude (increases the chance of foe cleansing failure)

Kind of bad examples but I didn’t really think the ideas through.

But on top of that suggestion, I might also put in that there likely needs to be better options for swapping builds on the fly to take advantage of such an idea. Like, you might have a button that allows you to flip-flop between an offensive power/precision build to a vitality/healing build (armor, traits, weapons) kind of like a longer weapon-swap limited to something like 2.5min, so players can still maintain the scope of what they can do now but only under specific circumstances.

I under stand how u feel Loki.8793, the game is made in the mechanic where u can evade all attack, negate all attack. New play style is less likely to occure, but some players are still finding it.

I also have a zerker armor and tinker set to play with group and run a dungeon but I have another set to play and get another aspects of the game too. Sometime I run cleric guardian, carrior guardian, condition warrior, shatter Mesmer, bleeding Mesmer and healing elemtalist. It’s quit fun to play another aspect of the game and I am sure that all the surrounding players will experience a good performance of an unusual build.

I hope to see the day.

maha.7902:

guess which enemies attack more often

dredge

—Snip—

I think the only area some of us are concerned in breaking the meta in is dungeons which was never meant to be casual friendly. I personally don’t agree with balancing structured content around people who don’t even have patience for it to begin with anyways (seriously, why are they even playing a video game if they aren’t even willing to sit down with it, go watch a bloody movie).

Whether the game becomes casual unfriendly or not if the meta gets “broken” entirely depends on HOW it gets broken. If I’m just deliberately making encounters punishing for the sake of being very punishing, obviously yes this will happen. Now if we make challenges that are just outright extremely varied, now we can have people from varied backgrounds that can approach the content together(This makes content approachable by more people, by appealing to a large array of personalities, remember GW2 was advertised as a very social experience where everyone can come together and play) and come up with multiple solutions for success which all have very close clear times.

Now here’s a question:

What if people of the zerker meta and “play how you want” builds, or trinity comps, or hybrid comps, are achieving similar and competitive clear times as the content is designed to force people in making the most out of their builds?(Just so long as the skills of these teams are equal, what would change here is probably the tactical options and their approaches to the challenge, obviously groups with higher levels of toughness would have to do more dangerous pulls or extreme pushes to keep on time to counterbalance the fact that they can take less damage, this is where high toughness specs will require a lot of skill, to be able to pull onslaughts of mobs and survive the duration while maintaining target aggro until things die, or to undergo extreme conditions to suffice requirements for encounter success and speed that are not only optional but provide advantages if done successfully).

Keep in mind.

When I say kill off the zerker meta I don’t mean blow up berserker stats. The zerker meta and using Berserker builds (even if its dictation of the meta) are not the same subject(Plus, I have a full set of ascended berserker stats on 1 character and full berserker ascended trinkets on 6 different characters, Im obviously gonna take a good hit from another nerf like that).

What I propose is this:

If I am in berserker and my friend is in berserker obviously or goal is quite clear, blow everything up before it even flinches.

Now:

If I am in berserker and my friend is in PvT, or mindset and tactical perspective changes. My friend will undergo more extreme conditions to provide me a more sublime opportunity to kill a TON of more things at the same time, still making the same clear times, just different approach now.

Raid Bosses?

Multiple objectives that can be done to complete the same goal that is doable by the respective gear types.

Everyone from different walks of life can approach the same challenge with different skill sets and can achieve competitive success just so long as they are good at what they do.

In Spvp, your stat choice is part of a build setup that SHOULD dictate what job your gonna do, it should in no way be a signal for what your skill level is, your here to perform a job so you should take the augmentation to perform it admirably, this should be the same mindset in PvE and the content should be dictating multiple avenues of approach that encourages variation. I’m not gonna play bunker guard with a berserker amulet with two thieves on the opposition, neither am I gonna play a dps guard using a clerics amulet when I need to kill these thieves in a quick burn rotation, doesn’t make sense. If I’m using engineer and I’m expected to last, win my fights, and provide any support I need to and be malleable to the situation, I’m obviously gonna run celestial and not settlers.

oxtred.7658:

Meta is about optimal builds. —Snip--.

Doesn’t have to be that way, look at TERA online, Lancers and Warriors are not easy to play competitively, both of these are tank high armor high avoidance archetypes.

I honestly don’t see the connection between toughness and skill, there are a multitude of games where high armored archetypes are the harder setups to play. If you have high toughness characters than you should be taking advantage of it. If people are in high toughness than why are you pulling ascalon soldiers behind the pillar in the last room of the ascalon fractal? what you should do is just charge in, support your NPCS with might stacks, healing, blinds, weakness, and boon strips to get it done faster for example.

What I’m most curious about is what players who appreciate the current PVE meta think about combat/balance updates in the future? Should Anet balance PVE builds with this current meta in mind? Acknowledging, for the sake of argument, that there are “training wheel” stats and builds, where should Anet focus their development efforts with regard to shifting numbers around and making underused builds more viable? Or do you believe that some underused builds shouldn’t be made more “viable” because they were intended to be excluded from the meta? I’m having a hard time picturing evolution of the combat and balance where a meta is considered near perfect. Help me out here.

Loki.8793:

Seera.5916:

I don’t agree with the OP. His solution will not get rid of meta builds, which is what OP claims to hate.

All of my posts in this thread have been against this solution.

No, I never once said I hated meta builds. Where did you get this idea?

What I want and advocate for is more build variety seen in the meta and to have other stats aside from power and crits have some sort of relevance in the meta.

Because every build will never be equal to each other. There will always be a build that’s just better than the rest. Or a small set of builds.

The more variety gets coded into being required the more of a trinity this game becomes. And one of the main selling points of this game was no trinity. No having to wait for a healer. No having to wait for a tank.

I don’t have to wait for a boon booster or a condition giver or a healer or a whatever. I can go out and do things by myself. I can give myself boons. I can give conditions and I can cure conditions. I can heal myself and I can go to town on enemies.

Your solution means I have to give up things that I can do because I can’t spec for everything. Meaning there will be less things that I can solo, even if I’m the best player in the game (and I’m not). So if I give up my ability to give conditions very well, that if content is made that requires conditions be given, I’ll likely have to partner with someone else to do it.

Im beginning to think that the OP is actually videogamermike…

nightwulf.1986:

What I’m most curious about is what players who appreciate the current PVE meta think about combat/balance updates in the future? Should Anet balance PVE builds with this current meta in mind? Acknowledging, for the sake of argument, that there are “training wheel” stats and builds, where should Anet focus their development efforts with regard to shifting numbers around and making underused builds more viable? Or do you believe that some underused builds shouldn’t be made more “viable” because they were intended to be excluded from the meta? I’m having a hard time picturing evolution of the combat and balance where a meta is considered near perfect. Help me out here.

But conversely, they shouldn’t change the balance simply to get rid of the current meta. Balance shouldn’t be making every build the meta build for everything.

In a perfectly balanced MMO, there would likely still be a meta.

Speed runs in dungeons = killing things the fastest, which inherently means DPS is king. So whatever build gives the highest group DPS without sacrificing too much personal DPS is king (zerker is the current meta).

Specific events will have a specific set of conditions that will make certain builds better than others and those builds will be meta for their specific events. Or aspects of the game. And it may vary from class to class based on class specifics and what they would bring to the group (MMO’s rarely have things designed for just one player)

Seera.5916:

nightwulf.1986:

What I’m most curious about is what players who appreciate the current PVE meta think about combat/balance updates in the future? Should Anet balance PVE builds with this current meta in mind? Acknowledging, for the sake of argument, that there are “training wheel” stats and builds, where should Anet focus their development efforts with regard to shifting numbers around and making underused builds more viable? Or do you believe that some underused builds shouldn’t be made more “viable” because they were intended to be excluded from the meta? I’m having a hard time picturing evolution of the combat and balance where a meta is considered near perfect. Help me out here.

But conversely, they shouldn’t change the balance simply to get rid of the current meta. Balance shouldn’t be making every build the meta build for everything.

In a perfectly balanced MMO, there would likely still be a meta.

Speed runs in dungeons = killing things the fastest, which inherently means DPS is king. So whatever build gives the highest group DPS without sacrificing too much personal DPS is king (zerker is the current meta).

Specific events will have a specific set of conditions that will make certain builds better than others and those builds will be meta for their specific events. Or aspects of the game. And it may vary from class to class based on class specifics and what they would bring to the group (MMO’s rarely have things designed for just one player)

You see, I can understand that there will always be an ideal meta for certain circumstances. That, at least to my small mind, seems to be an unavoidable consequence of having choices. But I guess I was asking whether people feel that skills and stats tied to the current meta need tweaking at all? The first part of your response suggests that we need only minor changes if any to the current pve meta because it is meta for a reason. The second part of your statement suggests that we should expect builds to not be as effective for every situation, ala counter build enemy comps in GW1. Would that, and should that also apply to dungeons? That would be a very different situation than what we have now even outside of dungeons. I get the impression that what people who appreciate the current meta would be looking for in future updates are primarily skills and stats that a) provide group support b) group defense c) increase group damage. Consider how people laughed at devs for the new mesmer trait Disruptor’s Sustainment. Are we going to continue to deride development efforts in areas that we feel don’t support the meta and attempt to push people toward “bad builds”? Is it possible to create a more empowering “meta”? Or should devs just go with the flow?

Edit: Apparently I don’t know my ABC’s.

Seera.5916:

Loki.8793:

Seera.5916:

I don’t agree with the OP. His solution will not get rid of meta builds, which is what OP claims to hate.

All of my posts in this thread have been against this solution.

No, I never once said I hated meta builds. Where did you get this idea?

What I want and advocate for is more build variety seen in the meta and to have other stats aside from power and crits have some sort of relevance in the meta.

Because every build will never be equal to each other. There will always be a build that’s just better than the rest. Or a small set of builds.

The more variety gets coded into being required the more of a trinity this game becomes. And one of the main selling points of this game was no trinity. No having to wait for a healer. No having to wait for a tank.

I don’t have to wait for a boon booster or a condition giver or a healer or a whatever. I can go out and do things by myself. I can give myself boons. I can give conditions and I can cure conditions. I can heal myself and I can go to town on enemies.

Your solution means I have to give up things that I can do because I can’t spec for everything. Meaning there will be less things that I can solo, even if I’m the best player in the game (and I’m not). So if I give up my ability to give conditions very well, that if content is made that requires conditions be given, I’ll likely have to partner with someone else to do it.

You’re focusing way too much on the direct example I gave to illustrate my suggestion rather than the suggestion itself, which I explicitly stated multiple times not to do.

I maintain the characters are too strong at the moment and can do too many things at once with absolutely no investment. This is what has lead to the stale meta we have seen for the past 2 years. My suggestion is to limit what a character can do naturally and to open up options through specialization, where stat choices are not just purely for stats but also directly affect the potency of your skills. This is exactly what was done in GW1 and it worked fabulously, and there is very little reason why it wouldn’t work similarly here.

When your only complaint is that you don’t like the inconvenience of not having every option in front of you at all times, it’s clear you aren’t thinking about the game but instead are only thinking about yourself. You’ve been spoiled, and it shows.

Loki.8793:

Seera.5916:

Loki.8793:

Seera.5916:

I don’t agree with the OP. His solution will not get rid of meta builds, which is what OP claims to hate.

All of my posts in this thread have been against this solution.

No, I never once said I hated meta builds. Where did you get this idea?

What I want and advocate for is more build variety seen in the meta and to have other stats aside from power and crits have some sort of relevance in the meta.

Because every build will never be equal to each other. There will always be a build that’s just better than the rest. Or a small set of builds.

The more variety gets coded into being required the more of a trinity this game becomes. And one of the main selling points of this game was no trinity. No having to wait for a healer. No having to wait for a tank.

I don’t have to wait for a boon booster or a condition giver or a healer or a whatever. I can go out and do things by myself. I can give myself boons. I can give conditions and I can cure conditions. I can heal myself and I can go to town on enemies.

Your solution means I have to give up things that I can do because I can’t spec for everything. Meaning there will be less things that I can solo, even if I’m the best player in the game (and I’m not). So if I give up my ability to give conditions very well, that if content is made that requires conditions be given, I’ll likely have to partner with someone else to do it.

You’re focusing way too much on the direct example I gave to illustrate my suggestion rather than the suggestion itself, which I explicitly stated multiple times not to do.

I maintain the characters are too strong at the moment and can do too many things at once with absolutely no investment. This is what has lead to the stale meta we have seen for the past 2 years. My suggestion is to limit what a character can do naturally and to open up options through specialization, where stat choices are not just purely for stats but also directly affect the potency of your skills. This is exactly what was done in GW1 and it worked fabulously, and there is very little reason why it wouldn’t work similarly here.

When your only complaint is that you don’t like the inconvenience of not having every option in front of you at all times, it’s clear you aren’t thinking about the game but instead are only thinking about yourself. You’ve been spoiled, and it shows.

Your example should be the perfect example of your suggestion brought to the table. So if you don’t want people to use your example, then you shouldn’t have posted it as it is and posted something that you would like people to use.

Specialization leads to a trinity. Or a Duo. Or a Quartet.

Then LFG’s will turn into: Looking for – 1 condi, 1 healer, 1 boon, no DPS.

And that’s what ANet did not want to happen. It did not want to have players having to wait for a specific build to join their group in order to complete content. Your suggestion would cause that.

I mess up in a dungeon, I at least have the ability to heal myself a good bit if I wasn’t stupid too quickly beforehand. If you make me have to specialize in healing to do so, then I have to make sure my groups have a healer if I don’t specialize in healing. And if I specialize in healing, I will have to give up something else. Which means that’s one less group I can join. The group not looking for a healer but that something else that I had to give up to be able to heal myself well. So I have to wait to play the game.

Specialization without the game needing it will lead no where. No one will change. Because until the game forces players to have a variety, there won’t be a huge variety in the meta. And if you force people, you create a trinity (or however many types of players you need to survive).

Everyone will travel in zergs because there will likely be enough people in them that they’ll have every necessary build in the necessary numbers. Because the manifesto says I can play how I want to play.

Your solution actually goes against that line in the manifesto. Playing how I want may mean I don’t get to do content that I want to do. Because no group wants the specialty that I want to do.

If you don’t force the best that will happen is that a few gear options get changed to some of the “training” wheel builds to give a bit more survivability, but DPS would still be king. Zerker would still be the primary gear set. And there will be those who won’t need to change a thing because they are that good (I am not one of them, I die quite often in Clerics gear).

nightwulf.1986:

Seera.5916:

nightwulf.1986:

What I’m most curious about is what players who appreciate the current PVE meta think about combat/balance updates in the future? Should Anet balance PVE builds with this current meta in mind? Acknowledging, for the sake of argument, that there are “training wheel” stats and builds, where should Anet focus their development efforts with regard to shifting numbers around and making underused builds more viable? Or do you believe that some underused builds shouldn’t be made more “viable” because they were intended to be excluded from the meta? I’m having a hard time picturing evolution of the combat and balance where a meta is considered near perfect. Help me out here.

But conversely, they shouldn’t change the balance simply to get rid of the current meta. Balance shouldn’t be making every build the meta build for everything.

In a perfectly balanced MMO, there would likely still be a meta.

Speed runs in dungeons = killing things the fastest, which inherently means DPS is king. So whatever build gives the highest group DPS without sacrificing too much personal DPS is king (zerker is the current meta).

Specific events will have a specific set of conditions that will make certain builds better than others and those builds will be meta for their specific events. Or aspects of the game. And it may vary from class to class based on class specifics and what they would bring to the group (MMO’s rarely have things designed for just one player)

You see, I can understand that there will always be an ideal meta for certain circumstances. That, at least to my small mind, seems to be an unavoidable consequence of having choices. But I guess I was asking whether people feel that skills and stats tied to the current meta need tweaking at all? The first part of your response suggests that we need only minor changes if any to the current pve meta because it is meta for a reason. The second part of your statement suggests that we should expect builds to not be as effective for every situation, ala counter build enemy comps in GW1. Would that, and should that also apply to dungeons? That would be a very different situation than what we have now even outside of dungeons. I get the impression that what people who appreciate the current meta would be looking for in future updates are primarily skills and stats that a) provide group support b) group defense c) increase group damage. Consider how people laughed at devs for the new mesmer trait Disruptor’s Sustainment. Are we going to continue to deride development efforts in areas that we feel don’t support the meta and attempt to push people toward “bad builds”? Is it possible to create a more empowering “meta”? Or should devs just go with the flow?

Edit: Apparently I don’t know my ABC’s.

Probably. There is no perfectly balanced MMO.

Devs should push the balance to what they feel fits best with their vision of where the game should go. Not the people who yell at any change that may harm their precious meta. The meta can change from one build set to another without needing the blessing of the meta followers.

They shouldn’t nerf something because it’s the meta. They should nerf something because it’s overpowered.

I never played GW1 so I can’t really get the reference enough to answer the question about dungeons. I’m game for opening up variety in builds that could be used in a serious group of dungeon runners who don’t necessarily want to see how fast they can do a dungeon that time (fastest possible will always be about group DPS with the smallest personal DPS sacrifice possible).

Seera.5916:

snip

Your comments can be broken down into 2 parts.

1. Specialization will cause people to have to look for and wait for specific builds to do team-based content.
2. You want to be able to do everything your class can offer without having to invest into it.

For 1, since you seem to haven’t realized it yet, the game already is that way. It’s just not as apparent. And its not as apparent because everyone runs the same kitten thing in PvE. In PvP, people have to fill specific roles. In high level fractals, people have to fulfill specific roles. In WvWvW roaming groups, people have to fulfill specific roles. In zergs and world bosses, people have to fulfill specific roles. And when you are in LFG pugs, you still need to fulfill roles. I don’t know what game you’ve been playing, but it sure isn’t this one.

For 2, you seem to have this fear of not having every option given to you at every moment. Specialization creates depth. It means you have to think ahead and choose what and how you are going to approach something. This is the very concept GW1 was built on, and is arguably one of the fundamental reasons for its success.

When you have every option given to you, there’s no thought in what you do. You can just rush in, swap a utility or two, and bam, everything is covered. There’s no skill in this. There’s no depth. There’s no fulfillment. It just turns the game into an effortless grind for rewards.

If specialization were implemented into the game, the game would change, there is no question about that. The question is how it will change, and how that change would influence the game and community. You claim that the change would be negative, but you don’t give much reason for that other than the need for specific roles being more apparent that it is now. And that isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. If anything, I feel the game would become a lot more social from the change, and a lot less mind-numbingly casual.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but despite GW2 being a game where it is easy to play with other people, it really isn’t that social. In GW1, when you were in a PUG, you were constantly talking to people. In GW2, when you are in a PUG, you’re lucky if someone says more than “Hello” when they enter the party.

God forbid the change makes you have to talk to people in an MMO and coordinate a team. God forbid you have to think about your character and how to play him, and learn the actual game mechanics. God forbid the reward comes from the actual game play. No, you would rather not think about those things and just face roll everything as you always have.

This is why I said you aren’t thinking about the game and instead are only thinking of yourself.

Seera.5916:

Probably. There is no perfectly balanced MMO.

Devs should push the balance to what they feel fits best with their vision of where the game should go. Not the people who yell at any change that may harm their precious meta. The meta can change from one build set to another without needing the blessing of the meta followers.

They shouldn’t nerf something because it’s the meta. They should nerf something because it’s overpowered.

I never played GW1 so I can’t really get the reference enough to answer the question about dungeons. I’m game for opening up variety in builds that could be used in a serious group of dungeon runners who don’t necessarily want to see how fast they can do a dungeon that time (fastest possible will always be about group DPS with the smallest personal DPS sacrifice possible).

I just wanted to start off by saying that I agree with you on a lot of these points. Especially the point on not changing the meta just because it’s the meta.

My GW1 context I was trying to use may not have been the best example. I’m not one to compare GW1 combat and GW2 often because the systems are so very different. In GW1, depending on what your build was and what type of enemy compositions you ran into, it was possible to run into hard counters to your team composition or specific builds. I was remembering how I would often run a minion master necro build in Prophecies which relied on corpses. Depending on what my route was to my end destination, I might have run into a zone where a lot of the enemies didn’t leave corpses or exploited them before I could. A more effective run through that area required planning out my build in advance the next time through since I could be extremely effective in one area but almost dead weight in another.

Zones were basically just large dungeons and you couldn’t change your build unless you wanted to start over. GW2 offers far more flexibility and far fewer hard counters to the various builds we can create in PVE. Just like the GW1 system, there are pros and cons to this flexibility which I can appreciate. GW2 is just such a different beast compared to GW1 and I think it hasn’t reached it’s zenith in terms of design just yet. I feel like GW2 has been feeling out where the lines should be drawn on content difficulty, player skill, and enemy interaction since release. Part of that learning process has resulted in the creation of the meta we have now and is starting to manifest itself in the way Mordrem enemies are designed. I actually find myself changing builds to better deal with Mordrem as opposed to fighting risen where my strategy and focus largely was the same as most other content. I think we are going somewhere positive in terms of build strategies. I was just curious how other people felt and what they wanted from future combat.

Yes, lets make a massive change to gameplay years after release, it’s always so successful when games do that…

Jerus.4350:

Yes, lets make a massive change to gameplay years after release, it’s always so successful when games do that…

Honestly, any change to the enemy AI and pet AI to make them useful sounds like a massive undertaking but some people absolutely believe that those things have to be fixed. That would result in a potentially fundamental change to how you interact with npc combatants. Same goes for changes called for regarding condition damage calculations which would shift combat potential to new areas which have been closed off pretty hard for a long time. Are those sort of massive changes welcome or unwelcome? I think if there is a good reason for a big change, it should be welcome. Obviously, if you don’t agree with the underlying logic behind said changes, feel free to disagree. But a positive change is a positive change. Unless you don’t agree with it. And the cycle starts all over. Can’t account for taste.

Loki.8793:

Seera.5916:

snip

Your comments can be broken down into 2 parts.

1. Specialization will cause people to have to look for and wait for specific builds to do team-based content.
2. You want to be able to do everything your class can offer without having to invest into it.

For 1, since you seem to haven’t realized it yet, the game already is that way. It’s just not as apparent. And its not as apparent because everyone runs the same kitten thing in PvE. In PvP, people have to fill specific roles. In high level fractals, people have to fulfill specific roles. In WvWvW roaming groups, people have to fulfill specific roles. In zergs and world bosses, people have to fulfill specific roles. And when you are in LFG pugs, you still need to fulfill roles. I don’t know what game you’ve been playing, but it sure isn’t this one.

For 2, you seem to have this fear of not having every option given to you at every moment. Specialization creates depth. It means you have to think ahead and choose what and how you are going to approach something. This is the very concept GW1 was built on, and is arguably one of the fundamental reasons for its success.

When you have every option given to you, there’s no thought in what you do. You can just rush in, swap a utility or two, and bam, everything is covered. There’s no skill in this. There’s no depth. There’s no fulfillment. It just turns the game into an effortless grind for rewards.

If specialization were implemented into the game, the game would change, there is no question about that. The question is how it will change, and how that change would influence the game and community. You claim that the change would be negative, but you don’t give much reason for that other than the need for specific roles being more apparent that it is now. And that isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. If anything, I feel the game would become a lot more social from the change, and a lot less mind-numbingly casual.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but despite GW2 being a game where it is easy to play with other people, it really isn’t that social. In GW1, when you were in a PUG, you were constantly talking to people. In GW2, when you are in a PUG, you’re lucky if someone says more than “Hello” when they enter the party.

God forbid the change makes you have to talk to people in an MMO and coordinate a team. God forbid you have to think about your character and how to play him, and learn the actual game mechanics. God forbid the reward comes from the actual game play. No, you would rather not think about those things and just face roll everything as you always have.

This is why I said you aren’t thinking about the game and instead are only thinking of yourself.

1. But not to the degree of a trinity. That’s what I mean by specialization. Specialization to the point where you need others to fill other specific things. Where you have to sit and wait for a healer to have a chance at doing something. And that’s the only way changing gear and traits alone will affect the meta to allow for a variety given the current AI. And how much variety that would have is questionable. Certain classes would likely be able to fill certain roles better.

I get that there’s already some specialization given dungeon LFG’s looking for specific classes. As they can do specific things that other classes can’t. Like Ele’s bring the FGS, LH, and IB. But if you don’t get an Ele, you won’t be unable to complete the dungeon. It just won’t be as fast if it’s a dungeon that benefits from one or more of those.

And if the specialization goes the way of the trinity then the manifesto is broken yet again. Because I’d have to wait for others with a specific build to do content. And wasn’t that something this game was not supposed to have? Long waits to play the game while you waited for someone with the right build to show up.

I don’t see how the AI of this game will be anything but DPS is king with how it currently is and that’s not a wide variety of builds. So the changes to gear and stats would have to be to such a degree that it would be like having a trinity to increase variety of builds because there would be a wider variety of roles that need to be filled.

The way to change the meta is to allow for variety (which is what the OP wants), is for the AI to change. If fights are made longer due to the changed mechanics from the AI, then condi builds become more viable. Because condi damage is over time. If fights are made longer, then support builds become more viable because they give boons and remove conditions in order to speed up the fight. But no one build becomes required.