Guild Wars 2

Harper.4173:

5-8 minutes matter to some people. They matter to me.

If I wasted 5 minutes on each dungeon – provided I ran 3 per day that’s 15 minutes a day. That’s one hour every 4 days.
Assuming I played GW2 for about every day since release ( let’s say 350 days/year) that means 7 days – 7 entire days of my life wasted by slow dungeon runs.
It is a lot.

Also it’s not just the fact that the runs are slow – but wipes and taking a long time personally kill the experience for me. There’s no enjoyment in doing AC p1 in 30 minutes.

Rad post

I presume the first part is satire, but there’s a chance you’re actually serious on the second part;

If you think Meta/not Meta is making your group wipe AC path 1, that’s… God I don’t even know, just so sad.

It’s nice that you’d consider my post satire.

It wasn’t.

Since release I doubt I’ve done 15 days per year without logging in. So the math is real.
Even at my busiest I found the time and the means to play. I like the game and have invested a lot.

Regarding meta/non-meta – it’s not the lack of meta that is making my party wipe. It’s the lack of people who are experienced.
I prefer meta because usually it means the people are somewhat experienced and at the very least similarly minded to me.

I hate it when people don’t know the paths, aggro unnecessary mobs, take wrong turns, fail to do the right thing at the right time and so on. It’s a hassle I’d rather not deal with and if I only take meta people the chances of me going through that are lower.

Feel free to disagree, consider me obtuse or shun me as an elitist try hard.

OK I’ll take it seriously then.

If you’re not using LFG then what you do with your friends is up to you.

If you are using LFG, you’re probably losing more time than you gain via waiting (and again the time gained is tiny on most runs).

And again, our experiences vary, I’ve wiped a tiny % of runs in most cases, and ‘meta’, if it seemed to be a factor, seemed to be worse, but that could be because the wait time is irritating and people who care about running meta are more prone to raging out and yelling at each other and quitting if anything is even remotely not to their liking.

Edit: And just to be clear, I think that’s why you’re seeing fewer and fewer “Meta” demands in the LFG. People are realizing it’s a waste of time and an undue chance of flameout, so they’re dying out.

If you are using LFG, you’re probably losing more time than you gain via waiting (and again the time gained is tiny on most runs).

That’s actually wrong. If you’re using the LFG properly you can filter pugs pretty well and get very smooth runs.
A lot of people I play with have different time zones so getting friends to play with is not an option all the time.
Either way – I have a few LFG rules that I apply when forming any party and generally get me good results if I abide to them strictly.

Your experience with meta-abiding people is rather poor. Do you play on the EU servers?

The reason you’re seeing fewer and fewer meta demands in the lfg is that most of the people who require and demand meta builds have pretty much abandoned dungeons.

In the current economy it’s simpler and easier to make your money off the TP and unless you need tokens there’s no reason to do them anymore.
It’s been done and overdone in these last 2 years. Dungeons came back when rewards were upped but that was good money then – a year and some time ago – not now.

You see more meta being enforced in high level FOTM runs for example – because that’s where the people who cared about meta have moved on ( at least partially).

Harper.4173:

5-8 minutes matter to some people. They matter to me.

If I wasted 5 minutes on each dungeon – provided I ran 3 per day that’s 15 minutes a day. That’s one hour every 4 days.
Assuming I played GW2 for about every day since release ( let’s say 350 days/year) that means 7 days – 7 entire days of my life wasted by slow dungeon runs.
It is a lot.

Also it’s not just the fact that the runs are slow – but wipes and taking a long time personally kill the experience for me. There’s no enjoyment in doing AC p1 in 30 minutes.

Not sure how many people measure their playtime by how many dungeons they do. For me and likely hundreds of others, they measure how long they play by what free time they allot for playing GW2.

That is to say, people don’t schedule 3 dungeon runs a day, they simply allot 30-45min of play. If they can only get 1 run + some dailies in, how would you calculate that in ‘time of my life wasted’?

No matter what you guys suggest, the meta will always be the fastest and most efficient way to beat something, which will always be the point where you no longer need more defense and can focus everything else into offense; Zerker gear falls into this category.(along with Assassin)

Even if you nerf it, or change the game in some way, the meta will shift to another gear/trait set-up to maximize speed. Fact is, the only way to change the “Zerker meta” is to make Zerker non-viable, which will just make some other set the meta. The diversity that people want has always been there, but that doesn’t mean your Magi Condi Guardian will ever win any speed-runs.

It’s like this in pretty much every other game: Run as little defense that you need to survive and dump everything else into your offense, which happens to be Zerker gear. People will always prefer the faster methods, so taking 5x longer to kill an enemy isn’t on their list of things to do.

I can understand if people are angry that they can be kicked, but if a person has to do all their dungeon runs so they can make some money, the last thing they want is someone who is just gonna slow them down by being incredibly sub-optimal, but that’s the beauty of the LFG…just make your own room with your own criteria.

Can Anet make more content that requires, say Condi builds? Yea, but we’d have the same problem: Zerker is made non-viable, but something else would take its place, maybe Sinister gear, for example.

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

The trick is that people are realizing ‘marginally better’ just isn’t worth the dullness and aggro. There are always people who care about minutia like whether people are ABSOLUTELY META OR NOT it’s good for them to isolate themselves.

GW2 content isn’t hard enough that meta actually matters.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

A trinity would also have the same problem.(I know you didn’t say trinity, but bear with me) Even worse actually. Suddenly, I can’t play X class because Y is a better healer and Z is a better tank or the party alreayd has too many DPS roles.
It wouldn’t solve the problem most people complain about.

Malchior.5732:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

A trinity would also have the same problem.(I know you didn’t say trinity, but bear with me) Even worse actually. Suddenly, I can’t play X class because Y is a better healer and Z is a better tank or the party alreayd has too many DPS roles.
It wouldn’t solve the problem most people complain about.

I think GW1 did it really well. Minion masters (to overwhelm opponents or to make them target random pets), control builds (with massive crowd control), healers, protters (damage mitigation), nukers, etc. The most optimal parties always had all of them, and there was at least 1 useful build for each profession.

EDIT

• Prot Monks, ER Infuse Elementalists (using prot monk skills), Ritualists, “Imbagon” Paragons;
• Minion Master Necros, Minion Bomber Necros, Signet of Spirit Ritualists;
• Panic Mesmers, Illusion Mesmers;
• Fire Elementalists, Mark of Pain Necros, any melee cleave builds;

4 different roles right here, and that list doesn’t even includes the classic “tank” role (which was kind of niche in GW1).

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

A trinity would also have the same problem.(I know you didn’t say trinity, but bear with me) Even worse actually. Suddenly, I can’t play X class because Y is a better healer and Z is a better tank or the party alreayd has too many DPS roles.
It wouldn’t solve the problem most people complain about.

I think GW1 did it really well. Minion masters (to overwhelm opponents or to make them target random pets), control builds (with massive crowd control), healers, protters (damage mitigation), nukers, etc. The most optimal parties always had all of them, and there was at least 1 useful build for each profession.

EDIT

• Prot Monks, ER Infuse Elementalists (using prot monk skills), Ritualists, “Imbagon” Paragons;
• Minion Master Necros, Minion Bomber Necros, Signet of Spirit Ritualists;
• Panic Mesmers, Illusion Mesmers;
• Fire Elementalists, Mark of Pain Necros, any melee cleave builds;

4 different roles right here, and that list doesn’t even includes the classic “tank” role (which was kind of niche in GW1).

Gw2 would need a massive change to have as much customization as Gw1…which also suffered from “OP” builds.

GW1 had the problem of waiting for healers etc. So no I would rather not have a game with forced roles. GW1 was good. But gw2 combat is completely different. And its good in its own way.

Malchior.5732:

It’s like this in pretty much every other game: Run as little defense that you need to survive and dump everything else into your offense, which happens to be Zerker gear. People will always prefer the faster methods, so taking 5x longer to kill an enemy isn’t on their list of things to

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Was your intention to create a flame war? Is someone looking for attention? There is no skill requirement in GW2 hence the preference for speed. Bring whatever you want, it works pretty much the same. And it’s not like this in every game, heck it wasn’t like this in GW1.

Leo G.4501:

Harper.4173:

5-8 minutes matter to some people. They matter to me.

If I wasted 5 minutes on each dungeon – provided I ran 3 per day that’s 15 minutes a day. That’s one hour every 4 days.
Assuming I played GW2 for about every day since release ( let’s say 350 days/year) that means 7 days – 7 entire days of my life wasted by slow dungeon runs.
It is a lot.

Also it’s not just the fact that the runs are slow – but wipes and taking a long time personally kill the experience for me. There’s no enjoyment in doing AC p1 in 30 minutes.

Not sure how many people measure their playtime by how many dungeons they do. For me and likely hundreds of others, they measure how long they play by what free time they allot for playing GW2.

That is to say, people don’t schedule 3 dungeon runs a day, they simply allot 30-45min of play. If they can only get 1 run + some dailies in, how would you calculate that in ‘time of my life wasted’?

Harper claims to be a good player. Dungeons may not be as challenging as they could be in GW2, but they are more challenging than most persistent world meta events or the endless avoid-PvP EotM trains.

Sometimes its just frustrating having a run go slowly. Sometimes when you dont filter people a pug can go so horribly wrong that you are forced to abandon ship.

I pugged CM p2 with no requirements the other week. Noone said anything about being new or anything. So i assumed they had at least done the path once. That was a mistake on my part because when we got to the barrels they had no clue, things went horribly wrong and then the last guy alive hid inside a house and didnt understand that he was stuck in combat. So we couldnt res ourselves and he was just waiting there doing nothing. Instead of going and getting himself killed like I told him, he decided to wait until his healing signet fully healed him. I lost my patience and left the party after this and still no movement from him or acknowledgement. From that point on I only pugged CM with people who advertised the meta or I ran with my friends. Some were ok, some were good. And the parties actually filled pretty fast. Even if we had to wait a few mins for people and even if the group failed a bit it still saved me much more time than if id gone and risked another group like that CM p2 group.

Correct LFG tool usage is op.

There are different levels of filtering though, someone can lie about being zerk just as well as they can lie about being ‘EXP’.

Zerk especially won’t protect you from your example, because it’s well known and kind of human nature. The guy in brand-new bought zerker gear will kitten up CM2 just as much as the same guy in Magi’s

GW1 is a trinity game but it still had the same concept of bringing the minimum defence needed and as much damage as possible. Just like every other game when it comes to the meta. GW2 is no different except it has no forced roles and it is not a trinity game. This means noone is excluded in casual groups and you dont have to wait for a specific role to join your party. This is a vastly superior concept to your standard forced roles MMO’s.

I was just giving an extreme example of what happens when you join a group with no lfg requirements and comparing it to the time it takes to fill a meta group. I wasnt saying anything about how effective filtering is. Some of the meta groups i joined definately had some questionable members but we still got through things in a bearable pace. Im not one to care too much as it is a PUG.

Basically what im getting at is. No matter what type of group you want they all fill pretty fast. So there is no reason not to use and respect peoples requirements on the LFG. Players that want to run the meta get faster runs and it doesnt take long to fill groups (as long as you dont get trolls and liars too often). Players that dont care still fill the group fast and they dont need to worry about pressure from other players.

We could end the “Meta” by giving everyone a pointy stick, a whip, and a candle to light their way.

It’s not that I want the meta zerker builds nerfed, but I want other builds to be buffed.

Condi isn’t viable at all in pve instances.
Healing based builds aren’t viable at all in pve instances
tanking based builds aren’t viable either.

Condi has too high a ramp up time for how short bosses last.
Plus to healing is only marginally better then just being a full zerker gear healing
same with tanking.

The real issue is certain stats just blow massive, not that beserker runes are too good.

I shouldn’t be nearly identical in healing and support output if I’m in beserker gear or not.

I think part of the problem is how things are designed for any group setup. It wasn’t designed to need a support character. Because of that and how good dodging is when you know how to use it, you can completely negate the need of a support role. When you don’t need support, or a tank and healer if you’re thinking trinity, then the makeup becomes take only the absolute best dps.

It’s like the tourney, nobody wants celes ele’s and engi’s to be the new “it meta” just like nobody wants zerker warriors to be the meta. Nobody likes being told that just because they’re a bunker guardian or a support staff guardian that they’re not wanted because they’re not the meta.

A-net has to do a better job of breaking metas or bringing them closer in line with the rest.

As I’ve said before ANet clearly buried the Meta when they dissolved their 5man team clearly stating that Meta type content is no longer on the table. All new PVE content seems to be focused on open world encounters that feature the newer mechanic regime introduced in S2 which favors execution over speed. From what I understand most open worlders scoff at zerkers because they spend most of their time laying on the ground pointing there hands at champions.

Actually they are all completely viable. They just arent all optimal. Both tanking and healing is op in PvE. Its just not fast so its not part of the meta. Condi is the only thing which is genuinely weak in GROUP pve. Because it has low max damage and high ramp up time. However condi is at least fairly decent or often superior when soloing.

Berserker isnt too good. Its been nerfed several times but its still the meta because meta is about being as fast and efficient as possible. You wont change the meta no matter what you do unless you want to completely break the game.

heartless.6803:

Condi isn’t viable at all in pve instances.

Condi has too high a ramp up time for how short bosses last.

You just blew it. Condi builds CAN be very much viable in pve instances.

spoj.9672:

Actually they are all completely viable. They just arent all optimal. Both tanking and healing is op in PvE. Its just not fast so its not part of the meta. Condi is the only thing which is genuinely weak in GROUP pve. Because it has low max damage and high ramp up time. However condi is at least fairly decent or often superior when soloing.

Berserker isnt too good. Its been nerfed several times but its still the meta because meta is about being as fast and efficient as possible. You wont change the meta no matter what you do unless you want to completely break the game.

Except what they’re doing, which is designing encounters that the dungeon meta doesn’t work with.

Really? Thats news to me. I havent seen anything which we cant complete using the meta.

We are already using support and control to survive in the meta.

Condi builds aren’t weak at all in pve, some of the fastest dungeon solos has been done by condition builds.

There is a build and a place for everything, if anyone thinks he can just waltz into dungeon with one build, one set of weapon and not adapt to situation then he is simply a bad player.

also there are actually a decent amount of builds in dungeon which again, all depends on the situation. Take thief for example, in most circumstances, you would want to run 6/6/0/0/2 with d/d for maximum backstab dps. But some encounters may make it simply not viable to backstab constantly and/or lots of evades are needed and thus s/p with 5/6/0/0/3 would be better. Then there are situations where 3 points in acrobatic is better for certain bosses where a thief would run out of dodge easily. Thats not all, there are probably more i missed but either way, those people who say dungeon don’t have diverse builds obviously do not understand the encounters at all.

frifox.5283:

heartless.6803:

Condi isn’t viable at all in pve instances.

Condi has too high a ramp up time for how short bosses last.

You just blew it. Condi builds CAN be very much viable in pve instances.

compared to zerker they’re not. They only high equal output if the fight exceeds a certain amount of time. Due to condi builds requiring time to apply and let them roll to get full effect. Zerker doesn’t need that time and can essentially output their damage in a shorter amount of time.

I’m not saying condi is worthless and can’t do it, they can. They’re just lower then zerker, which is the entire point of the thread. They’re lower then zerker, when they shouldn’t be. Instanced stuff doesn’t last long enough for zerker to claim any fame. However in outside world with “raid bosses” that last a long time condi start to shine and zerkers don’t.

Zerker is a burst build time and in instanced environments they literally cannot be beat.

My suggestions for adjusting the PvE meta:

• Add more enemies throughout the game that only take condition damage (like wurm husks)
• Add a new condition called Hemorrhage that gets applied whenever Bleed reaches 25 stacks. Hemorrhage is twice as strong as Burning and lasts 3 seconds and does not stack. It is only meant to proc when Bleed gets too high on PvE mobs, and give an actual benefit to condi players working together.
• Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.
• Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.
• Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

spoj.9672:

Really? Thats news to me. I havent seen anything which we cant complete using the meta.

We are already using support and control to survive in the meta.

Can’t is where you got caught up there. GW is designed sot here’s very little a particular build can’t complete.

Much of the mordrem content is harder for zerkers than for other builds:

More Chain CC,
More Chain Condition application,
Special defense and resistance (husk’s high toughness, front armor on threshers)
more rapid attacks to eat things like aegis
content that’s extremely inefficient for groups.
High yield enemy healers
Very stack-unfriendly attack patterns (root attacks from tetragryphs and the healing threshers, spin/ground AE passthrough from the other threshers, the bug swarms from mordrem trolls, the mass retal howl before they nerfed it)

Again, it’s not impossible for them, but it’s just a touch harder… and an oldfashioned stack is idiocy for a multitude of reasons.

@spoj: Your comments about GW1 being about least defense required are completely wrong. The game was the exact opposite bring as much defense as you can and still be able to score kills via spikes.

TLDR: Bars were built defense to survive perfectly first then left over into a few powerful damage skills. This is how the majority of builds operated. Proof is below.

All variants of triple necro heroes use half the the bar for defense quarter for minions and 1 or 2 strong spike skills. One of the most popular vanquishing builds.

Spiritway second most common build uses ritualists and spirits for high energy management often coupled with necromancers all hybrid builds with only a couple of damage skills.

The difference between speed clear and regular builds was your defense was super broken strong skills and synergies that an entire map or area of it could be agroed and cleared by 1-4 players. A skill that could could scale its damage to the number of enemies agroed like smites, punishment curses, or sliver armor cleaned everything. For areas where that failed ppl used super strong synergies like 100b MoP + FoC spike or something of similar style to clear the area.

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

heartless.6803:

I’m not saying condi is worthless and can’t do it, they can. They’re just lower then zerker, which is the entire point of the thread. They’re lower then zerker, when they shouldn’t be. Instanced stuff doesn’t last long enough for zerker to claim any fame. However in outside world with “raid bosses” that last a long time condi start to shine and zerkers don’t.

Zerker is a burst build time and in instanced environments they literally cannot be beat.

If by “raid bosses” you mean open-world mass-player confrontations, I’d say that’s where they shine the least. If you just mean dungeon bosses, it really depends. How fast does your team kill? I’ve seen some pretty swift boss melts, so lasting a minute and a half really won’t get you in the ballpark even on a hybrid power/condi build. How many condition users? 2 or less is optimal, IMO, and that’s for obvious reasons.

Frankly, I think conditions are just too weak and common to be truly competitive with power. That you have to reach for near max-stacks tells the tale and that nearly anyone can throw their 2cent bleed/burn/ect only disrupts those aiming to maximize the condition stacks’ damage. If you make conditions rarer, you can make them stronger, and if you make them stronger, you don’t have to maintain max stack to get anything great out of it and if you don’t have to maintain max stacks to get the good damage in, then you can thus make potential use out of more condition users contributing to that maximum.

The same can even be said of boons. They’re so common and easy to stack, it’s not really something that requires coordination (you can argue it does, but maybe it’s the elementalist in me that just makes boons seem far too easy) and is more a byproduct of standard tactics. Just like conditions, if you make boons rarer, you can make them more game-changing and interesting.

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Yay for hammer guardians!!!

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

A trinity would also have the same problem.(I know you didn’t say trinity, but bear with me) Even worse actually. Suddenly, I can’t play X class because Y is a better healer and Z is a better tank or the party alreayd has too many DPS roles.
It wouldn’t solve the problem most people complain about.

I think GW1 did it really well. Minion masters (to overwhelm opponents or to make them target random pets), control builds (with massive crowd control), healers, protters (damage mitigation), nukers, etc. The most optimal parties always had all of them, and there was at least 1 useful build for each profession.

EDIT

• Prot Monks, ER Infuse Elementalists (using prot monk skills), Ritualists, “Imbagon” Paragons;
• Minion Master Necros, Minion Bomber Necros, Signet of Spirit Ritualists;
• Panic Mesmers, Illusion Mesmers;
• Fire Elementalists, Mark of Pain Necros, any melee cleave builds;

4 different roles right here, and that list doesn’t even includes the classic “tank” role (which was kind of niche in GW1).

I think CoH did it quite well too.

Technically, CoH did have a meta. It was control&buff, meaning really just the Controller AT who had both buffs/debuffs and crowd control that did moderate damage. Couple moderate damage AoE control with buffs/debuffs and suddenly now they do high AoE damage with the safety of buffs/debuffs, no aggro control needed, no extra AT for tanking required, no secondary backseat buffer to heal, no DPS melees/rangers to plow through things, just a gang of Controllers…

…but Controllers weren’t even that popular. Scrappers and Brutes were. And despite their non-meta status, you’d see more Scrappers and Brutes busting stuff up on teams or solo and they were just as if not more capable of accomplishing things as Controllers due to being self reliant and ~gasp~ FUN!

You could see groups of Scrappers, Brutes, Scrankers (basically an offensively built Tanker) tackling whatever challenges despite Controllers being faster and even yet, there were other compositions that lead to different approaches and styles…like Blaster was likely the most risky but also one of the more popular (mostly due to style) although it was rarer to see a team of all Blasters causing as much havoc as the meta. Masterminds were hit-or-miss. Some people liked them, some hated them while some just found them boring. A team of Masterminds was definitely easy-mode regardless of what content it was, it just wasn’t quite as fast as all Controller teams. All Defender teams made miracles happen when it came to high-end targets but most didn’t like the playstyle.

I could go on and on. But the common blends for team composition were very open. You could get a Tanker to take aggro, or you can get a Controller to just CC everything into submission or even better a Dominator who was better at controlling and does damage on the side…or just get a Defender or Corruptor or Mastermind to spread some buffs/debuffs around to keep you alive…or just make non-squishy teams with Scrappers/Brutes/Stalkers/Tankers. Blasters were really the blacksheep (along with Stalkers to a degree) and yet they were still popular, accepted and played.

I personally don’t know what that crap Meta thing is.
Saw some website with called Meta builds – laughed and left.

Unless, Meta stuff is for newbies who need a hook to grab and catch the idea how to think regarding their own builds that suit their playstyle and taste, then my apologies.

Windsagio.1340:

The trick is that people are realizing ‘marginally better’ just isn’t worth the dullness and aggro. There are always people who care about minutia like whether people are ABSOLUTELY META OR NOT it’s good for them to isolate themselves.

GW2 content isn’t hard enough that meta actually matters.

Actually what’s ironic is that it doesn’t have to be hard in order for it to have fun cerebral combat requirements. Choices that affect the outcome of the combat in this game are simply set on the scores instead of the skills. If they had way more skills say double the amount they have now per weapon per class per trait choice, then maybe they’d come close. They also have simplistic combat in which there is nothing that changes skills up for various purposes ie making a skill freeze instead of catch something on fire, causing a zone (like glue gun for example) to increase damage of a fire effect, making lightning affects increase considerably in water, the list is long.

This isn’t just a problem with this game either. It’s been going on now for a while and the ironic part (that I didn’t mention in the last paragraph) is this. Those who keep asking for things to be harder are actually contributing to the problem of the dumbed down combat. They don’t want combat to be complex because then they’d actually have to think, instead they opt for simpler combat and then ask for things to be harder because they don’t have to think (which is the ironic part) so the hardcore crowd is actually causing the playing field to be more and more dumb as time goes on. Ask yourself this. When was the last time you saw a game in which backstabbing, traps, or bomb ambushes mattered in combat? I’ve not seen on in years!

So long as this is the universal meme of mmo combat so long as players are content with the basic simplistic combat choices this meme will remain the same in every game, every mmo has their simplistic brainless combat spec in it and it’s because of the lack of choices.

tigirius.9014:

This isn’t just a problem with this game either. It’s been going on now for a while and the ironic part (that I didn’t mention in the last paragraph) is this. Those who keep asking for things to be harder are actually contributing to the problem of the dumbed down combat. They don’t want combat to be complex because then they’d actually have to think, instead they opt for simpler combat and then ask for things to be harder because they don’t have to think (which is the ironic part) so the hardcore crowd is actually causing the playing field to be more and more dumb as time goes on. Ask yourself this. When was the last time you saw a game in which backstabbing, traps, or bomb ambushes mattered in combat? I’ve not seen on in years!

So long as this is the universal meme of mmo combat so long as players are content with the basic simplistic combat choices this meme will remain the same in every game, every mmo has their simplistic brainless combat spec in it and it’s because of the lack of choices.

Granted, I’m sort of in the same mindset as you, but it’s hard to make that stuff matter, especially after the fact that the game is already released and past its 2year mark.

I foresee others countering your statements with things about “casual players” to which I’d further counter that considering casuals as some imbecile hoard who needs everything handed to them is grossly generalizing. Casuals are mixed, some maybe being less ‘twitch reflexive’ and more cerebral, others might be in it for fun or variety. If mmo developers are naive enough to believe that simply making their game easier is the way to cater to casuals, they will keep making the same mistakes. Catering to a group as generalized as ‘casuals’ is far more difficult than just making things easy just like catering to the ‘hardcore’ is far more difficult than just making things hard.

Shame on you for opening a second thread on the same topic as the other “meta” thread that is not but a handful of spaces below this one.

Its as low as multiple mount threads.

Shame on you.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

OK you say add roles, have you thought what would that do to the game?

Let’s see, a Tank role, Guardian, Necromancer, Warrior are the “tankier” professions, once players realize the new meta, the one that is best will win. Let’s say the tankiest, with the tankiest gear is Guardian.

For the Healer role, Elementalist, Guardian or Engineer all have great Healing ability. Let’s say the Elementalist beats all the others in the meta as a healer (one of them is bound to win against the others)

There you go, your new Guild Wars 2:

LF Tank Guardian, LF Healer Elementalist, LF 3x Zerkers. Is this ANY better than the simple “LF Zerker” we have now? No it’s not. These kind of roles will only make grouping by far worse and slow while the runs themselves will be the same boring thing we see in other games:

Tank grabs and holds aggro, healer facerolls healing the tank, dps go afk 111111, content done. If there is a wipe, blame the tank, typical.

Be careful what you ask.

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Do you know how much 2500 toughness is? You can’t achieve it through berserker armor… You need almost entirely knights or some other primary toughness gear, plus food. I agree Toughness is an odd stat to chose here, but the idea is to make non-dps stats worth taking in PvE. A berserker hammer guardian would only take away 1 stack of Defiant. He would need to be a bunker guardian to be able to strip more than 1 stack at a time. Then his DPS would suffer, but he would be able to benefit the team in a new way by mitigating the boss’s damage through CC. In retrospect maybe 5 stacks per CC is too much. Maybe it should be 3.

Vitality is another story. It’s harder to balance that idea, but I couldn’t think of any other stat to tie to endurance regeneration. Right now dodging is OP because every build has the same access to it. Vigor is out of control. Just about every zerker build has 90% or more uptime on vigor. Builds that don’t can easily take some shared vigor from an ally. Maybe vitality isn’t the right answer, but I think endurance should be looked at. It should be harder for zerkers to just dodge all the time without someone in an actual non-zerker support build providing vigor or some other form of endurance boost.

Xenon.4537:

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Do you know how much 2500 toughness is? You can’t achieve it through berserker armor… You need almost entirely knights or some other primary toughness gear, plus food. I agree Toughness is an odd stat to chose here, but the idea is to make non-dps stats worth taking in PvE. A berserker hammer guardian would only take away 1 stack of Defiant. He would need to be a bunker guardian to be able to strip more than 1 stack at a time. Then his DPS would suffer, but he would be able to benefit the team in a new way by mitigating the boss’s damage through CC. In retrospect maybe 5 stacks per CC is too much. Maybe it should be 3.

Vitality is another story. It’s harder to balance that idea, but I couldn’t think of any other stat to tie to endurance regeneration. Right now dodging is OP because every build has the same access to it. Vigor is out of control. Just about every zerker build has 90% or more uptime on vigor. Builds that don’t can easily take some shared vigor from an ally. Maybe vitality isn’t the right answer, but I think endurance should be looked at. It should be harder for zerkers to just dodge all the time without someone in an actual non-zerker support build providing vigor or some other form of endurance boost.

So you want to take away the dynamic aspect of the game and add more passive defenses?

Xenon.4537:

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Do you know how much 2500 toughness is? You can’t achieve it through berserker armor… You need almost entirely knights or some other primary toughness gear, plus food. I agree Toughness is an odd stat to chose here, but the idea is to make non-dps stats worth taking in PvE. A berserker hammer guardian would only take away 1 stack of Defiant. He would need to be a bunker guardian to be able to strip more than 1 stack at a time. Then his DPS would suffer, but he would be able to benefit the team in a new way by mitigating the boss’s damage through CC. In retrospect maybe 5 stacks per CC is too much. Maybe it should be 3.

Vitality is another story. It’s harder to balance that idea, but I couldn’t think of any other stat to tie to endurance regeneration. Right now dodging is OP because every build has the same access to it. Vigor is out of control. Just about every zerker build has 90% or more uptime on vigor. Builds that don’t can easily take some shared vigor from an ally. Maybe vitality isn’t the right answer, but I think endurance should be looked at. It should be harder for zerkers to just dodge all the time without someone in an actual non-zerker support build providing vigor or some other form of endurance boost.

About the defiance strip, a thief can easily strip off all the defiance in zerker, the most optimal way to go would still be zerk. In fact even in most pve like the new silverwaste, zerker is still optimal except against the husk, if people were to actually pay attention to the mob attacks and evade everything, it would still be faster to kill them.

Windsagio.1340:

If it were a difference of hours, or completion, sure there might be a point. In the vast majority of cases there isn’t.

And yet people are asking for more strict roles in the game which will make the runs take considerably longer to start (LF Healer/ LF Tank) AND won’t be doable without those roles…. See the other thread on meta with a nice post how to nerf zerker and make vitality/toughness essential in dungeons.

Leo G.4501:

Harper.4173:

5-8 minutes matter to some people. They matter to me.

If I wasted 5 minutes on each dungeon – provided I ran 3 per day that’s 15 minutes a day. That’s one hour every 4 days.
Assuming I played GW2 for about every day since release ( let’s say 350 days/year) that means 7 days – 7 entire days of my life wasted by slow dungeon runs.
It is a lot.

Also it’s not just the fact that the runs are slow – but wipes and taking a long time personally kill the experience for me. There’s no enjoyment in doing AC p1 in 30 minutes.

Not sure how many people measure their playtime by how many dungeons they do. For me and likely hundreds of others, they measure how long they play by what free time they allot for playing GW2.

That is to say, people don’t schedule 3 dungeon runs a day, they simply allot 30-45min of play. If they can only get 1 run + some dailies in, how would you calculate that in ‘time of my life wasted’?

When I play I usually make a check-list. I go in – do the list – usually in the fastest possible manner.

I don’t measure my play time by how many dungeons I do – but it did help with this exercise. There’s an in-game /age function to measure it if I’m interested.

If they allot 30-45 minutes of their time and can only get 1 dungeon run in that amount of time then that’s great for them. What works for them works for them.

I don’t do the same. I set out a goal and aggressively pursue it. If it’s 3 dungeon runs than that’s what it is. If it’s a FOTM run then that’s what it is.

I don’t really care how people manage their time or what they consider to be wasted or not.

I consider time spent doing something that could be done faster at a slower pace wasted. If I can do a certain task in 10 minutes in normal circumstances I’ll consider all minutes past the 10 minutes mark wasted. I could have been done and already doing something else. I didn’t need to spend those extra minutes there.

Windsagio.1340:

There are different levels of filtering though, someone can lie about being zerk just as well as they can lie about being ‘EXP’.

Zerk especially won’t protect you from your example, because it’s well known and kind of human nature. The guy in brand-new bought zerker gear will kitten up CM2 just as much as the same guy in Magi’s

That’s why you don’t just look at gear.

If party DPS drops – you can suspect a non-zerker.
If someone doesn’t drop as fast as they should in full zerk after getting hit you can know he’s lying and easily kick.

The guy in that brand-new bought zerker gear can’t be more than 5000 AP so as a general rule of thumb try to find people with high AP to play with and you won’t have this problem ( Yes I know you can get terrible people at high AP but there’s a lower chance they’ll be bad than the person who’s sitting at 1000 AP).

-I look forward to everyone telling me about their 500-1500 AP friend who’s absolutely godlike at this game and how my statement is so false-

I never said I filter just by gear – just that it’s one of the criteria.

heartless.6803:

It’s not that I want the meta zerker builds nerfed, but I want other builds to be buffed.

Condi isn’t viable at all in pve instances.
Healing based builds aren’t viable at all in pve instances
tanking based builds aren’t viable either.

Condi has too high a ramp up time for how short bosses last.
Plus to healing is only marginally better then just being a full zerker gear healing
same with tanking.

The real issue is certain stats just blow massive, not that beserker runes are too good.

I shouldn’t be nearly identical in healing and support output if I’m in beserker gear or not.

The real issue is that some people don’t understand the game.

Guild Wars 2 was designed in a way that a healing party member is not needed. A healing build – no matter how good or bad it heals will never be needed or wanted because everyone can do their own healing just as the designers intended when they gave us all healing slots and effective healing skills.

You’ll never be wanted as a healer in a group because decent people will be able to manage on their own without you. Because the game was designed like this. It’s not an issue – it’s intended.

Condi does have issues- but due to the way the game is build I don’t think they can fix that.

Tanking is not viable because again – the game was designed in a way that you can’t tank.
If you have high armor in this game it means you’ll be able to take extra hits ( usually 2-5) but by no means will you be able to tank it out with the boss.

This game did away with the trinity – please try to understand it before you post about it complaining that it isn’t what you wanted.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

1) Combat in this game does have roles.

2) The game design philosophy for GW2 clearly stated they’re not going to do roles in the traditional way of doing things like most other MMOs.

The whole concept behind GW2 is that every party set-up will and should be viable.

It’s better because players actually have a choice unlike the set-up where just some set-ups are viable. Players will again only pick the fastest of these but a lot of people will be left out.

I still don’t understand why you write walls of text for this topic when we don’t have the trinity. If you want diversity make your own run or play with guildmates. Simple as that.

maddoctor.2738:

Xenon.4537:

maha.7902:

Rework Defiant along with Toughness. Make it so that Toughness has thresholds at which CC skills remove more than 1 stack of Defiant, up to 5 stacks at 2500 Toughness. This will allow CC builds to be a real thing.

Why toughness? Why not boon duration? Or stun duration? Or… anything else? Why should stacking a defensive stat mean you can shave more defiant stacks?

Rework Endurance so that it regenerates about 50% slower by default. Rework Vitality so that it increases endurance regen by 50% at 2500 Vitality. This is aimed to make vitality more attractive in PvE and force pure zerkers to be a lot more careful about wasting a dodge. Even with Vigor, pure zerkers would still have a net gain of 50% faster regen.

The whole point of vitality is that it gives you more of a cushion for error. In essence, you are required to dodge less, or you can miss dodges and still survive. Why should making yourself not need to dodge as much … enable you to dodge more? I don’t get it.

Add more enemies that deal low damage, yet high speed attacks. The point is to counter them through protection and regeneration, not dodging. This will also allow Retaliation and Confusion to be more viable.

So you basically just make a berserker hammer guardian compulsory.

—

How long did you actually think these idea through?

Do you know how much 2500 toughness is? You can’t achieve it through berserker armor… You need almost entirely knights or some other primary toughness gear, plus food. I agree Toughness is an odd stat to chose here, but the idea is to make non-dps stats worth taking in PvE. A berserker hammer guardian would only take away 1 stack of Defiant. He would need to be a bunker guardian to be able to strip more than 1 stack at a time. Then his DPS would suffer, but he would be able to benefit the team in a new way by mitigating the boss’s damage through CC. In retrospect maybe 5 stacks per CC is too much. Maybe it should be 3.

Vitality is another story. It’s harder to balance that idea, but I couldn’t think of any other stat to tie to endurance regeneration. Right now dodging is OP because every build has the same access to it. Vigor is out of control. Just about every zerker build has 90% or more uptime on vigor. Builds that don’t can easily take some shared vigor from an ally. Maybe vitality isn’t the right answer, but I think endurance should be looked at. It should be harder for zerkers to just dodge all the time without someone in an actual non-zerker support build providing vigor or some other form of endurance boost.

So you want to take away the dynamic aspect of the game and add more passive defenses?

There is nothing wrong with passive defense.