Guild Wars 2

heartless.6803:

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.

People will be told they’re not wanted regardless of what meta is in effect or what roles are or are not in the game.

It’s the nature of MMOs. Take what you need – throw away anything else.

You can’t break a meta – the concept of meta if understood correctly implies there will always be one.

Bringing them closer in line to what? The rest of what? And why? So bad players can feel better about themselves?

Harper.4173:

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.

But that was what I was referring as the cause of the meta. The lack of a need for those roles causes people to only take what is the sheer fastest. Why take a guardian when I can take a zerker warrior? They do way more damage and there isn’t any need for anything the guardian provides. Thats the problem, those apsects AREN’T needed when they should be.

Group shields, group heals should be important and necessary. Having a build that has some amount of group thought should be important. It shouldn’t be 100% dps me me me me me me me me.

I’m not very high end, I admit that freely. The problem that meta causes, is that it causes people to feel like they have to be that. Zerker has been meta for SO LONG that you feel forced to be that now. You feel that you can’t even pick anything else because it’s just not as good. You can’t go with a plus to healing build because the gain on your group heals are marginal and you lose a ton of your damage potential. It just doesn’t out weigh the cost. So you have to be full zerker, even if you don’t like it. Stats just are screwy, conditions and boons are screwy, when everyone can apply boons nobody does.

Harper.4173:

heartless.6803:

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.

People will be told they’re not wanted regardless of what meta is in effect or what roles are or are not in the game.

It’s the nature of MMOs. Take what you need – throw away anything else.

You can’t break a meta – the concept of meta if understood correctly implies there will always be one.

Bringing them closer in line to what? The rest of what? And why? So bad players can feel better about themselves?

You should never be labeled a bad player for not following the meta build. Thats the problem with this game. If you don’t follow the meta you’re a bad. The problem isn’t the players the problem is the meta. It needs to be broken and brought down to the rest of other builds, that need to be brought up.

A game with a huge diversity such as this game, shouldn’t be seeing the exact same things all the time.

The Meta will never end. Zerker will come to a point where it might be more viable to take one CC and/or conditions build, maybe with 1 healer/buffer… Just becasue ppl are worrying too much. Problem is the condition guy will run condition/power/precision, and the healing guy Power/precision/healing power. Making sinister and zealot part of the meta, but only for specialized runs. most probable would be the conditions guy being warrior/engi or necro (small niche for mesmers) and the healing be done by elementalists… CC would just be a hammer(/mace) warrior willing to scrfifice some DPS for CC, bdoubt there are many players playing warrior without hammers or maces in inventory anyways.

Changing will not change nothing about the meta, just fixing armors and roles, while this could also be done in Zerker the loss in specific DOT and healing could bea bit too big if someone mistypes at a-net, leading to a dungeons to hard,
resulting in “make ’m faceroll again”- threads popping up like weeds, much as “mounts” threads and “nerf zerker” threads atm.

I am no fan of the meta but I consider any stat combination with full off stats being zerk. so zerk/assassin/rampager/sinister/(zealot)…. DOT is “not viable” but can come in very handy…

I guess you’d be runing the new…improved?… guard ZERK META then, 2 dp’s guard (zerk), 1 cc/dps guard/warrior (zerk), or 1 dps thief (zerk), 1 hybrid warrior/necro/engi/mesmer( sinister), 1 heal/dps ele (zealot)…. Still relying on dodges blinds and aegis….

heartless.6803:

But that was what I was referring as the cause of the meta. The lack of a need for those roles causes people to only take what is the sheer fastest. Why take a guardian when I can take a zerker warrior? They do way more damage and there isn’t any need for anything the guardian provides. Thats the problem, those apsects AREN’T needed when they should be.

Group shields, group heals should be important and necessary. Having a build that has some amount of group thought should be important. It shouldn’t be 100% dps me me me me me me me me.

I’m not very high end, I admit that freely. The problem that meta causes, is that it causes people to feel like they have to be that. Zerker has been meta for SO LONG that you feel forced to be that now. You feel that you can’t even pick anything else because it’s just not as good. You can’t go with a plus to healing build because the gain on your group heals are marginal and you lose a ton of your damage potential. It just doesn’t out weigh the cost. So you have to be full zerker, even if you don’t like it. Stats just are screwy, conditions and boons are screwy, when everyone can apply boons nobody does.

Guardians have in fact very high dps, Warriors don’t do “way more damage” than Guardians. Guardians bring group Stability, Aegis, Blinds, AoE Condi removal (more than Warriors) and projectile Reflect / Absorb. Those are things a Warrior can’t bring and are needed for many different runs.

Most “Meta” builds have lots of group thought as you call it, the best groups do a lot of buffing to be effective (and fast), Blind fields, Might Stacking, Aegis/ Stability/ Swiftness, Stealth, Boon removals (when needed), CC, Banners, Fire Fields, AoE Condition removal etc are all used in the current meta.

For some reason people in these “zerker threads” always say that Zerker is only DPS when this is completely false.

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.

Totally! What this game needs is more elaborate mechanisms in PvE, that require different roles to be filled.

DiogoSilva.7089:

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 totally agree: GW1 combat was so much more in depth and allowed different approaches. There were actually teams building around different builds. “Zerk” was non-existent because there were no stats bound to gear: you only had runes and attributes (based on your class).

spoj.9672:

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.

Wrong. In GW1 you had the ability to choose a secondary class pretty easily (you could change secondary profession for a low price in certain hubs). If you wanted to be able to heal yourself the choice went for monk, ritualist or paragon secondary.

maddoctor.2738:

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.

Why boil everything down to Tank/DPS/Healer?

There can be roles such as Boon remover/Condi stacker/Snare/Condi removal/facetanker/water field blaster/Zerk/projectile reflector/Res banner/etc. Players can take multiple roles at the same time.

Leading to multiple builds so that each player can fill a specific niche in case they lack it.

runeblade.7514:

maddoctor.2738:

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.

Why boil everything down to Tank/DPS/Healer?

There can be roles such as Boon remover/Condi stacker/Snare/Condi removal/facetanker/water field blaster/Zerk/projectile reflector/Res banner/etc. Players can take multiple roles at the same time.

Leading to multiple builds so that each player can fill a specific niche in case they lack it.

Most of these roles you are saying are already used in the game. Condi removals are always used, AoE cleansing is important, Projectile reflection, Water Fields for healing, Boon buffer, Boon remover etc

The “Zerker” meta people are so mad against isn’t only DPS, there are loads of roles that are used in this game, even in speedclears.

The issue isn’t in builds, there is already a good variety of builds and abilities in this game. The issue is that all those builds are equally effective with Berserker stats and any other kind of Stat combo. It’s just those “zerker is bad” posts rarely address the real issue.

In this game, your gear does not lock your build.

Also if you force trinity it reduces variety greatly. Currently 7/8 classes have a good place in pve. Imagine trinity. There will be a best dps class, a best tank and a best healer. That’s 3 classes meta, all pigeon holed in very specific builds.

Malchior.5732:

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.

I can snap the ‘zerker meta’s neck in one step:

• All self-heals base value has been decreased by 15%. The contribution of healing power to these skill has been increased such that at 400 healing power you will see healing results equivalent to their current value with healing power zero. character with healing power greater than 550 will see a slight increase in the effectiveness of these abilities.

Done. Zerker for everyone from the hardest of the hard to the sloppiest of the sloppy is dead. After that it becomes a matter of skill and taste how you want to roll on the spectrum between offense and survivability, but glass cannons (which is a joke, there are NO glass cannons in this game because of the frequency of absolute invulnerability dodging) will actually have a risk great enough to consider backing off on pure DPS stats.

Don’t think for a moment it “can’t be done”. The question is actually does ArenaNet have the desire and the will to implement this or any of the half dozen other ways that come readily to mind to strangling the ‘lone wolf’ meta to death? For the most part they seem happy with a game that lets middling skill players think they are wildly expert through deliberate, deeply entrenched lack of challenge in most content.

Xenon.4537:

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.

I havent read through the whole topic yet but I think this is an awesome idéa!

Nike.2631:

Malchior.5732:

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.

I can snap the ‘zerker meta’s neck in one step:

• All self-heals base value has been decreased by 15%. The contribution of healing power to these skill has been increased such that at 400 healing power you will see healing results equivalent to their current value with healing power zero. character with healing power greater than 550 will see a slight increase in the effectiveness of these abilities.

Done. Zerker for everyone from the hardest of the hard to the sloppiest of the sloppy is dead. After that it becomes a matter of skill and taste how you want to roll on the spectrum between offense and survivability, but glass cannons (which is a joke, there are NO glass cannons in this game because of the frequency of absolute invulnerability dodging) will actually have a risk great enough to consider backing off on pure DPS stats.

Don’t think for a moment it “can’t be done”. The question is actually does ArenaNet have the desire and the will to implement this or any of the half dozen other ways that come readily to mind to strangling the ‘lone wolf’ meta to death? For the most part they seem happy with a game that lets middling skill players think they are wildly expert through deliberate, deeply entrenched lack of challenge in most content.

So welcome to the new meta: full Clerics. Oh wait you can already go 5 people with full Clerics and faceroll through content, it will only take longer than zerker but it is doable (and easier). Your idea of “fixing” zerker is to nerf zerker so people run only Cleric now? So what, 1 year later we will get posts “Cleric meta”, each year add something new to swap the meta around but effectively solving nothing?

Windsagio.1340:

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.

Which means that your previous statement was incorrect. They are not designing encounters that the meta doesnt work with. They are just upping the difficulty slightly. Although people are seriously overestimating the danger of mordrem and the new bosses. They are barely any different to what we are used to. The only difference is some condition attacks and high damage attacks on trash mobs which have huge tells. In some ways its even easier because we can see the attacks coming. This is difficult to do when dealing with a large group of molten alliance in the molten fractal. And stacking is still perfectly safe to do. You just have to treat them like you would treat fractal mob groups (CC and blinds).

Mordrem are only hard for people who dont read tells and dont dodge or CC correctly. So it seems people who already run and understand the meta arent really seeing much of a difference in difficulty. But other more casual players are.

Vlad.1739:

@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.

How is that any different to what i said? Take the defence you need and then the rest goes into damage. For a speedrun you obviously dont take more defence than you need. That would be counterproductive.

heartless.6803:

You should never be labeled a bad player for not following the meta build. Thats the problem with this game. If you don’t follow the meta you’re a bad. The problem isn’t the players the problem is the meta. It needs to be broken and brought down to the rest of other builds, that need to be brought up.

A game with a huge diversity such as this game, shouldn’t be seeing the exact same things all the time.

I’m a proponent of changes that adds diversity to encounters and added benefit to PvE builds, but you really shoot the cause in the foot with comments like these.

People have said before and shown evidence that other builds are viable, just not as rewarding as berserker-offensive builds. Whether you’re labeled as bad in the eyes of some stuck up, farmer-gamer isn’t considered a problem the game should seek to change. That is a community problem and should be solved through community means.

The problem really is people trying to make blanket statements about what the problem is. You’re trying to pin community issues, encounter/dungeon design, and likely a few other issues on zerkers which is wrong and will be countered by those who back the status quo. If you want to make headway in your argument, you need to divorce issues involving bickering players (not the issues they bring up, but them crying such-and-such is bad) and focus on a particular problem.

Harper.4173:

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.

So then why go out of your way to make a ratio of efficiency to “wasted time of my life” if you know not everyone measures their playtime in the same way you do? To be passive aggressive and condescending?

But to me, if we’re balling up play in an MMO as ‘tasks’ to be completed on a ‘list’, that’s probably an issue in and of itself.

It won’t die. The only way to kill it would be to make roles, such as “tank”, “healer”, “condi inflicter”, “glass cannon” etc… And if this were the case, a new meta would be created for each role.

I have no problem with zerker, I’d just love it if people stop hating when people don’t run zerker (I run soldier’s on my guardian). I’d also love it if everyone stopped telling people to do zerker. That gives new people the expectation that every other build is bad. That’s not true. It’s up to personal preference.

heartless.6803:

I’m not very high end, I admit that freely. The problem that meta causes, is that it causes people to feel like they have to be that. Zerker has been meta for SO LONG that you feel forced to be that now. You feel that you can’t even pick anything else because it’s just not as good. You can’t go with a plus to healing build because the gain on your group heals are marginal and you lose a ton of your damage potential. It just doesn’t out weigh the cost. So you have to be full zerker, even if you don’t like it. Stats just are screwy, conditions and boons are screwy, when everyone can apply boons nobody does.

You shouldn’t feel that way. You can technically use any armor and build you want and still be viable, but like you said, it’s just not as rewarding. And a lot of ‘zerkers’ don’t even go full ‘zerkers’. They might have a piece or two that is of another nomenclature for personal reasons.

I will agree with you though, boons, conditions and various mitigation tools are rather ‘screwy’.

I have no problem with zerker, I’d just love it if people stop hating when people don’t run zerker (I run soldier’s on my guardian). I’d also love it if everyone stopped telling people to do zerker. That gives new people the expectation that every other build is bad. That’s not true. It’s up to personal preference.[/quote]

Yes! Zerker gear is not my problem if you want to play Zerker, go ahead. It’s the “Only Zerker” mentality. Where I prefer build like: Aoe conditions, or buffer boon builds. Other play styles are viable, but ignored because Zerkers and " top " theory crafters claim they are useless. I just recommend to try and play other build, and find what you want, and what works for you!

One of the reasons for the meta we’re still seeing with Zerker is mentioned in this video, that there’s not enough of a difference between stats to make them useful. It’s why there’s a problem with even Arenanet’s own trinity being absent from the game entirely, because if you spec into any other build it isn’t as effective and it hasn’t always been this way, in fact when the game launched, you could spec into other builds and be fully effective. What happened was over several patches they nerfed PVE for PVP purposes because they didn’t separate the coding for PVE/PVE behaviors early on in the game and this broke many a build in PVE and it also broke roles entirely (and I’m talking Arenanet’s roles not the holy trinity).

If the balance team can go back and fix these roles by adjusting just how effective the scores are for support, and CC and fix the classes that don’t have adequate team condition removal, if we’d see them balance conditions so that specs outside of condition builds don’t have conditions and allow conditions to properly burst tick like they should while changing their setup so that once you reach a certain stack of conditions it will then become a condition that does a bit more damage but that also will allow for stacking over 25, then the Zerker system wouldn’t matter any longer because there would be other choices. Condition skills also have the tendency to not have an initial damage output when landing on all classes, this is a serious oversight in that it makes some classes weak even when using conditions heavily against foes because that class just happens to not have an initial damage output when using conditions which requires it work harder in order to be as effective as other classes that are heavy in the condition builds. The poison grenades for example, do not do the same initial damage that the poison rune does on my necromancer.

I agree with Woodenpotatoes about the combat and how there are essential things missing, like one of the things he mentioned as the ability scores and how little they affect essential things in gameplay like if you have a really high healing score it should affect dramatically how fast you can rez players even while in combat, defense should affect the endurance regeneration.

When I say that classes really aren’t built for the different specs and that there are pieces missing, I’m talking about it from an engineer’s perspective mostly. For example, the removal of the extra heal/condi removal with the Kit Refinement trait needed a replacement because without it everyone is stuck with the slow and often unreliable exploding healing turret. I’m also talking about how with the supply drop we don’t have an overloading turret or control of that particular turret (which is would be unlikely as we’d certain be able to put that on overload in the battlefield) to get it’s usefullness from the spray it releases not from the regen. Explosions are also a big part of the Engineer and particularly the Engineer healing build, but to a very limited degree, we’re basically required to be melee in order to heal anyone and that’s not the case for other classes. Other classes have the option to control where their healing fields land, but with Engineers we’re stuck with bombs only. I think this is a huge mistake in the build of Engineers, the Trait that gives us the ability to heal with each attack should allow ALL explosives to be used in that manner and the heals it deals out should be affected by how large of an explosion it creates. For example, Big ole Bomb should be allowed to cause an Explosive heal itself, and so should the mines, and certainly we should see it on Grenades.

There are other examples on other classes but other people have already pointed them out a number of times, the point is, the reason why we’re still seeing the zerker meta is directly due to the extremely broken up, and simplistic combat system for PVE. There’s several areas for improvement before we’ll actually see them working properly. Until we see a serious balance patch coming that addresses these concerns for PVE we’re going to continue to see a combat system that’s not complete and continue to see the Zerker meta because of it’s incomplete nature.

Disclaimer: The only reason I am arguing is because the mentality of GW1 was/is different. Its hard to differentiate but it is not the same as you paint it.

GW1 was different in that damage needed to score kills can easily be achieved by combining 8-20 of 64 available skill slots, to kill infinite amount of enemies in a tight ball in 3 seconds. GW1 it was possible to have too much damage in GW2 you never can reach that much damage even max dps parties. In GW1 after finding a suitable spike the build would dedicate the rest of the build to defense in GW2 its easy enough to survive and they dedicate most of their build to damage. There is a difference

Loading up on as much damage as possible was not the meta. Monsters melted but could melt players just as fast. Meta was how to defend against more monsters so to kill more at the same time.

The End: My final post on the matter you can disagree but that wont change how GW1 builds were created.

Fair enough. I was a very casual player when i played GW1 so i dont really know much about the speedrun tactics used. So ill give you the benefit of the doubt. But that philosophy still holds true for pretty much every other game and it would hold true even in GW1 if it werent possible to have too much damage. And I would of thought in a record you would still only take the minimum defence needed and the rest goes into utility and damage. Because even with being able to spike with a small pool of skills surely you can spike faster with more? You obviously wouldnt take more healers than you need for example. That would be wasteful.

Content requires damage to complete so if you want to be as fast and efficient as possible you are obviously going to take as much damage as possible/needed while still being able to survive. Which is how the meta is formed in every game. And no matter what changes are made that will still be the concept in which a new meta is formed from. This is what the OP was getting at. No idea why some people cant grasp this concept.

tigirius.9014:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBOlaYlBBZA

One of the reasons for the meta we’re still seeing with Zerker is mentioned in this video, that there’s not enough of a difference between stats to make them useful.

No, no and no. We had a discussion about that already in the dungeon subforum and the problem is not that the different stats are weak, the combat system works fine.
The problem is that the encounters aren’t well designed. There is literally no boss in this game which can’t be killed as zerker because the most bosses aren’t punishing enough.

An example of a failed boss encounter is the first boss of CoF p1, which is meant to apply heavy melee pressure, further intensified by the quickness he gains if his health drops under a certain threshold. 5 zerker players are simply faster killing him than he is in killing them.

An example of a good boss encounter is lupicus, which is extremely hard to beat if you don’t know what to do, thus it might be better for you to run tankier gear. However if you’re familiar with lupicus, you can still use zerker gear.

Id argue that being able to tank like that is vastly more op then berserkers. :P

I guess on Sunday we get similar threads all the time…

As to the OP, what HHR LostProphet said, gear and stats are fine in the game, the encounters need rework.

I think they both need reworks. The bosses need to hit more. HoTW bosses have TONNES of hp and defense, but the damage they deal is so weak, and the AI so dumb I can just go up on the roof (for p2 and p3) and safely attack the final boss without moving. I did this just last night, but got bored and moved INTO the fray. Bosses need to hit more. Tequatl is super easy after the first 25%… He kills lots of people, sure, not because he’s hard, but because people can’t dodge. I can’t remember the last time Tequatl killed me.

However, the stats do need a rework. Especially healing power. I’d probably switch from Soldier’s to Cleric’s on my guard if healing power actually mattered. Toughness doesn’t seem to increase as much. I take as much damage with a +32 toughness equip, as I do with a +0 toughness equip. With a +64 toughness equip, I do however see a difference, enough to matter, but not enough to really stand out. Just enough to let me survive longer than zerker’s gear.

In his commentary, the videographer states that the issue is not the numbers being bad, it’s that there’s no “need” for the build in group play. He came to a similar conclusion in a video showing an ele blasting water fields for 21K heals over 15 seconds.

What I wish these people who post about diversity would get is that if there were a need, then there would be a requirement.

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.

No way, not signed. This is one of the things I like about GW2 – no forced roles.

spoj.9672:

Fair enough. I was a very casual player when i played GW1 so i dont really know much about the speedrun tactics used. So ill give you the benefit of the doubt. But that philosophy still holds true for pretty much every other game and it would hold true even in GW1 if it werent possible to have too much damage. And I would of thought in a record you would still only take the minimum defence needed and the rest goes into utility and damage. Because even with being able to spike with a small pool of skills surely you can spike faster with more? You obviously wouldnt take more healers than you need for example. That would be wasteful.

I believe the difference would be in the cost. I didn’t play GW1 but I know that skills cost energy to use and animation to cast. At some point, adding more skills that do damage probably isn’t particularly as useful as, say, adding a skill that helps manage your energy stores or some other type of utility.

In that respect, there is a parallel between CoH and GW1 in that, there is a point where you can have too much damage. Not only do you have limited energy to power these attacks but you also have limited enhancement slots to boost those attacks so it was definitely beneficial to only take the attacks you ~need~ and spread your enhancement slots across your powers in a way that suites your playstyle (more slots on defensive/control skills to keep yourself alive, slots in buff/debuff to support and if you were offensive focused, max slots on the damage skills).

And if GW1 is as close to CoH as I’d imagine, it probably was much more advantageous to make your skills come up faster vs having more of them.

Nike.2631:

I can snap the ‘zerker meta’s neck in one step:

• All self-heals base value has been decreased by 15%. The contribution of healing power to these skill has been increased such that at 400 healing power you will see healing results equivalent to their current value with healing power zero. character with healing power greater than 550 will see a slight increase in the effectiveness of these abilities.

Done. Zerker for everyone from the hardest of the hard to the sloppiest of the sloppy is dead. After that it becomes a matter of skill and taste how you want to roll on the spectrum between offense and survivability, but glass cannons (which is a joke, there are NO glass cannons in this game because of the frequency of absolute invulnerability dodging) will actually have a risk great enough to consider backing off on pure DPS stats.

Don’t think for a moment it “can’t be done”. The question is actually does ArenaNet have the desire and the will to implement this or any of the half dozen other ways that come readily to mind to strangling the ‘lone wolf’ meta to death? For the most part they seem happy with a game that lets middling skill players think they are wildly expert through deliberate, deeply entrenched lack of challenge in most content.

This would be great for new players lol (/sarcasm)

HHR LostProphet.4801:

tigirius.9014:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBOlaYlBBZA

One of the reasons for the meta we’re still seeing with Zerker is mentioned in this video, that there’s not enough of a difference between stats to make them useful.

No, no and no. We had a discussion about that already in the dungeon subforum and the problem is not that the different stats are weak, the combat system works fine.
The problem is that the encounters aren’t well designed. There is literally no boss in this game which can’t be killed as zerker because the most bosses aren’t punishing enough.

An example of a failed boss encounter is the first boss of CoF p1, which is meant to apply heavy melee pressure, further intensified by the quickness he gains if his health drops under a certain threshold. 5 zerker players are simply faster killing him than he is in killing them.

An example of a good boss encounter is lupicus, which is extremely hard to beat if you don’t know what to do, thus it might be better for you to run tankier gear. However if you’re familiar with lupicus, you can still use zerker gear.

It’s a fair assumption to surmise that it’s all in the encounters, but I don’t think that’s the only accepted flaw with the game’s approach. It’s just the one solution you and a select few have agree on, not the majority accepted stance on the subject.

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

sunset.3056:

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

Oh yes it’s so easy to follow the champ trains yes. Or World Bosses.

I think they did a great job. They didn’t want tanks/healers to really be a thing, and they aren’t. What’s the problem?

Why are people so dead set on fundamentally changing the game?

Personally my only complaint is the lack of new challenging content. What is currently in the game is great, it just has gotten boring over time, some new fresh things would be great. A new Lupi like fight (multiple phases that require quite a bit of learning and practice to deal with) would be amazing.

maddoctor.2738:

I guess on Sunday we get similar threads all the time…

As to the OP, what HHR LostProphet said, gear and stats are fine in the game, the encounters need rework.

Actually no they aren’t they don’t really affect anything the combat is absolutely so homogenized that there is little change in the game when you choose different specs, for example, healing score doesn’t really increase regen significantly. PVPers should not be commenting on a purely PVE situation I’m seeing alot of that happening in these forums. PVE is terribly imbalanced it’s not fun, it’s not exciting, and part of the reason for that is directly due to how stats do so little to actually make choices matter in the game.

You can’t argue that away, it’s still here it’s not going anywhere just because people disagree with it and want harder mobs, because literally the people asking for harder mobs would not be satisfied unless they were fighting 5 bosses at time solo and that’s not how you balance PVE combat. Sorry to burst both of your bubbles there.

As Leo G stated it’s not one thing. My argument that happens to agree with Woodenpotatoes, isn’t that the mobs aren’t hard enough, it’s that the combat isn’t diverse enough. It’s not an unknown factor in this game that the combat is pretty much spamming the #1 button, that doesn’t happen because the mobs are the problem that happens because the combat is terribly bland.

If you believe playing this game is about pressing the 1 button you’re doing it wrong, or you’re not playing the more challenging content.

And again, that’s the problem to me, the fact that a lot of the content is so easy, and then in many cases where it’s not as easy it’s made that way due to zergs.

I found dungeons and mainly Arah to be quite entertaining. Fractals in many situations are great too, my only problem with them is really that some of the models are too small and too easily covered by animations that you cannot see the tells to react. Though I’m not a fan of the random nature of them either, but again mainly because I don’t like getting thrown into the ones that I feel are designed poorly due to the first issue.

The community in this forum is kind of Toxic.
I totally agree with WP that the attributes need an overhaul, and I made suggestions my self for that in the past.

What ALSO needs an overhaul is the PVE it self, so it will actually require build diversity, instead of having everything being do-able by Zerkers.
I made suggestions on that as well!
Quite recently in fact!
Feel free to dig it! I am dyslexic and writing large posts like these is to painful to let them get buried with no answers. :_(

Jerus.4350:

I think they did a great job. They didn’t want tanks/healers to really be a thing, and they aren’t. What’s the problem?

Why are people so dead set on fundamentally changing the game?

Personally my only complaint is the lack of new challenging content. What is currently in the game is great, it just has gotten boring over time, some new fresh things would be great. A new Lupi like fight (multiple phases that require quite a bit of learning and practice to deal with) would be amazing.

I like it too. However, MY problem is that most of the community believe zerker is the only option, and if they find out you don’t have zerker, they discriminate. When someone in a party found out I was running soldier’s they left right after we finished the dungeon, even though they wanted to do other dungeon runs with us.

All I want is diversity in the builds, not necessarily roles. Though, I do believe that is one of few possible ways to remove that discrimination. That, or make healing power stats better, and increase condition damage and remove the 25 stack limit for conditions (on enemies).
Edit: And make bosses hit more. Most bosses are cheese in a large group. Make a challenging fight at least.

tigirius.9014:

As Leo G stated it’s not one thing. My argument that happens to agree with Woodenpotatoes, isn’t that the mobs aren’t hard enough, it’s that the combat isn’t diverse enough. It’s not an unknown factor in this game that the combat is pretty much spamming the #1 button, that doesn’t happen because the mobs are the problem that happens because the combat is terribly bland.

Have you done anything other than general PVE/exploring, World Bosses and Champion trains in this game? If you did, you would know that combat is anything but bland and you can’t “beat” anything just spamming 1.

Try some Fractals (higher levels the better), or some Arah paths, heck most dungeons will do. Unless you join a good team and get carried, you can’t finish anything (at least in a reasonable amount of time) just by spamming 1 or facerolling.

Join a good group in a dungeon, or a guild raid in WvW, or even a good organised team just roaming in PVE (for example SW) and you will see how “bland” the game is. There is tons of buffing/ debuffing/ healing/ stealthing etc to be effective.

Just because players can do lots of things at the same time and not specialize doesn’t mean it’s bland.

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

Oh yes it’s so easy to follow the champ trains yes. Or World Bosses.

I’m pretty sure those are easy too.

Leo G.4501:

spoj.9672:

Fair enough. I was a very casual player when i played GW1 so i dont really know much about the speedrun tactics used. So ill give you the benefit of the doubt. But that philosophy still holds true for pretty much every other game and it would hold true even in GW1 if it werent possible to have too much damage. And I would of thought in a record you would still only take the minimum defence needed and the rest goes into utility and damage. Because even with being able to spike with a small pool of skills surely you can spike faster with more? You obviously wouldnt take more healers than you need for example. That would be wasteful.

I believe the difference would be in the cost. I didn’t play GW1 but I know that skills cost energy to use and animation to cast. At some point, adding more skills that do damage probably isn’t particularly as useful as, say, adding a skill that helps manage your energy stores or some other type of utility.

In that respect, there is a parallel between CoH and GW1 in that, there is a point where you can have too much damage. Not only do you have limited energy to power these attacks but you also have limited enhancement slots to boost those attacks so it was definitely beneficial to only take the attacks you ~need~ and spread your enhancement slots across your powers in a way that suites your playstyle (more slots on defensive/control skills to keep yourself alive, slots in buff/debuff to support and if you were offensive focused, max slots on the damage skills).

And if GW1 is as close to CoH as I’d imagine, it probably was much more advantageous to make your skills come up faster vs having more of them.

Yeah but its about maximising your damage without hindering yourself via resource management and still being able to survive. The core concept is still there. After all the idea behind speedruns and the meta is to go as fast as possible.

You can go safer and less optimal in casual runs. Which is what people do in both GW1 and GW2 and other games. But the meta always follows that efficiency theory otherwise it wouldnt be the meta.

To stop each meta you have to design encounters that do not favor one single playstyle. To stop the zerker meta the majority of encounters should simply not favor direct damage. The devs should create a wide variety of encounters that favor direct damage condition damage bunker builds or heal build in the same extent. In last consequence it would mean the you have to change your equipment for each encounter to be most efficient. The meta would be that there is a distinct meta for each encounter.

Kite.2510:

The community in this forum is kind of Toxic.
I totally agree with WP that the attributes need an overhaul, and I made suggestions my self for that in the past.

What ALSO needs an overhaul is the PVE it self, so it will actually require build diversity, instead of having everything being do-able by Zerkers.
I made suggestions on that as well!
Quite recently in fact!
Feel free to dig it! I am dyslexic and writing large posts like these is to painful to let them get buried with no answers. :_(

How is requiring diversity going to HELP? Do you really want to return back to the hours long “Looking for…” times? The way you say “Zerkers” makes me feel you are completely ignorant of how the game works and haven’t done anything remotely challenging in the game. Try it first and you will see

Those “Zerkers” are not simply pressing 1 and DPSing, they buff each other, debuff the mobs, heal each other, stealth each other, in other words they use good teamwork. Just because players in the game can do multiple things at once isn’t a bad thing, there is no need for specialization, it creates way more problems than it solves.

sunset.3056:

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

Oh yes it’s so easy to follow the champ trains yes. Or World Bosses.

I’m pretty sure those are easy too.

Oh I agreed with you all those are easy. What about anything else?

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

Oh yes it’s so easy to follow the champ trains yes. Or World Bosses.

I’m pretty sure those are easy too.

Oh I agreed with you all those are easy. What about anything else?

With an experienced group, anything is easy. I consider my daily fractal 50s to be quite easy.

sunset.3056:

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

maddoctor.2738:

sunset.3056:

In PvE you can play any set up, any gear choice. This game is so easy that it does not matter what you choose. The only thing that matters, is time…people don’t want to spend 10 minutes kill some boring snore fest boss, they’d rather do it in 20 seconds.

Oh yes it’s so easy to follow the champ trains yes. Or World Bosses.

I’m pretty sure those are easy too.

Oh I agreed with you all those are easy. What about anything else?

With an experienced group, anything is easy. I consider my daily fractal 50s to be quite easy.

So you just spam 1 and faceroll and win right? “Easy” is a big word. By your definition, with an experienced group nothing is hard in any game

Malchior.5732:

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.
snip
People will always prefer the faster methods, so taking 5x longer to kill an enemy isn’t on their list of things to do.
snip
tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Not all players, and I would venture most players, do not need the Meta to succeed in this game. I have lots of gold and things, and I have not run a Zerk build except for maybe a week. I have a good story of being berated by 4 zerkers dead on the ground while I finished off the Dungeon Champ solo on my Ranger, they were actually telling me that my build was kitten. While they lay dead on the ground, just priceless IMHO.
It would appear by your comments that you play for the cool stuff instead of just playing the game. That is where the divide exists between the Zerkers and the players. You can play any way you want, just please do not try to tell me that your way is better. It might be a few seconds faster, but that does not make it better.

Jerus.4350:

I found dungeons and mainly Arah to be quite entertaining. Fractals in many situations are great too, my only problem with them is really that some of the models are too small and too easily covered by animations that you cannot see the tells to react. Though I’m not a fan of the random nature of them either, but again mainly because I don’t like getting thrown into the ones that I feel are designed poorly due to the first issue.

I agree, Arah is likely the place I have the most fun, but then I often PuG’ed and luckily enough, the experience tends to vary with each group. If it felt like I did the same thing every run-through, I’d have quit running that along with AC and CoF. But this is due to me going with the flow rather than expecting a specific tactic to be used and when I start seeing the same tactics on multiple runs consecutively, I start to get grumpy.

When it comes to Fractals, I’ve given up on running them. The highest I’ve gone was lvl35 I believe, and at that point it just felt veeeery samey with the main differences being how punishing the attacks were. Sure, it’s harder, but it’s not variety and due to how punishing the attacks got (and being so high level, the people running them have indeed run these dungeons numerous times), you will see the same approaches over and over and there just isn’t enough of the fractals to give it enough variety to keep my attention. The only real way I got any extra fun out of them was either taking extended breaks or running them with my Ranger.

NaotsuguLH.8915:

Jerus.4350:

I think they did a great job. They didn’t want tanks/healers to really be a thing, and they aren’t. What’s the problem?

Why are people so dead set on fundamentally changing the game?

Personally my only complaint is the lack of new challenging content. What is currently in the game is great, it just has gotten boring over time, some new fresh things would be great. A new Lupi like fight (multiple phases that require quite a bit of learning and practice to deal with) would be amazing.

I like it too. However, MY problem is that most of the community believe zerker is the only option, and if they find out you don’t have zerker, they discriminate. When someone in a party found out I was running soldier’s they left right after we finished the dungeon, even though they wanted to do other dungeon runs with us.

All I want is diversity in the builds, not necessarily roles. Though, I do believe that is one of few possible ways to remove that discrimination. That, or make healing power stats better, and increase condition damage and remove the 25 stack limit for conditions (on enemies).
Edit: And make bosses hit more. Most bosses are cheese in a large group. Make a challenging fight at least.

But there is diversity in BUILDS, just not in your gear. Gear is simply a slider on offensive potential vs defensive potential. If you don’t need that passive defense well, why not go zerk? There is no power gained by making yourself tanky, and well… why should there be? it’s making the game easier by making you more durable.

Where diversity lies is in your trait choices and weapons mostly, then to a lesser degree your runes/sigils.

There are lots of viable options for trait setups, utilities, and weapon choices. Some clearly more suited for different situations than others but there are options.

Looking at say guardian. I have a base setup of the 45005 with GS/Sword+Focus. But, I can swap in mace giving some healing and a block. I can go Scepter for range damage or actually top damage against large enemies that don’t move around. I can also slot in Hammer and change to a 55040 trait setup and nearly match the damage potential, even simply camping hammer while getting perma protection in case people screw up or just happen to be taking damage. Then say I don’t need all that utility of the 45005 setup, I can go 46202 to pull out more damage. I could also go fully supportive with a 35042 hammer build, or even more so with 33044 covering condis, perma protection and master of consecrations for reflects and what not. The amount of builds I can use is decently large. The amount of gear choices remains pretty much 1 though, but why is that a problem?

I really feel that people need to get over the idea that other games have trained them to believe that gear = build. That’s not GW2, traits = build would be close, but even then it’s more than just a single element of the build, traits + weapon + Utilities + runes + sigils + gear = build.

Look at Ele, staff ele will top your damage with multiple trait variations depending on the situation. However you’re likely going to want the Scepter+LH option if you’re the only Ele as you get more might stacking opportunities. Or maybe Dagger + Focus to maximize your flexibility while providing decent might and extra utility in Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh. And again each of these weapon choices match with multiple different trait setups, each being optimal in different situations.

The diversity is there, the gear diversity isn’t really, but the build diversity is.

Edit: Yeah some bosses are overly simple, and some have such low health that they just /poof, disappear. Look at groups on Spider Queen now, Ele + Glyph of Storms + 2X Ice Bow = bye. Heck Goku soloed it in 11s… But then there are good bosses that make you work. Lupi of course is the prime example. Fire shaman is one I’m a fan of as well. Bosses that last a bit, have attacks that everyone has to be on their toes to avoid, and the attacks having tells that can be seen all together make a good boss imo, GW2 has these, just not enough and they’ve been done so much that they’ve become easy.

NaotsuguLH.8915:

I like it too. However, MY problem is that most of the community believe zerker is the only option, and if they find out you don’t have zerker, they discriminate. When someone in a party found out I was running soldier’s they left right after we finished the dungeon, even though they wanted to do other dungeon runs with us.

I feel this is a community problem, not a game problem, but I tend to agree. It sux when I joined a team with my lvl 80 cleric mesmer to do AC one time to help out some guy who was leveling with the dungeon (so sub-80). People get kitteny and when things start to go less-than-smooth, they ditch even when they KNOW it’s not an optimized group to begin with. There’s little wish to experiment and expand out to the variety of builds available.