It’s unfortunate that the “ZERK IS GREAT” mentality borders on religious fanaticism.
And on the other side of things, the extreme obsession people have with “changing the meta” (as in, to make the builds they like good) borders on religious fanaticism too, so why make a statement like that when it applies to both parties?
Difference is, people who follow the meta don’t incessantly post threads about it all the time whereas people on the other side are constantly ranting about it to the dismay of literally everyone who has to read the forum.
I’ve been thinking this a lot myself recently. In “the old days” we still had the zerker meta, but people were willing to talk about it, “troubleshoot” various and creative ways other stat combos might be brought up to par (not DPS wise, but desirability wise. Not that anyone seriously thought Anet was going to implement their think-tanks, but still).
Well, no. The meta now is more open than it’s ever been. After a few revelations, guilds became a lot more open and willing to test suggestions as long as either there seemed to be some sort of decent justification for why it’s good or if it’s backed by a known member of the community (it was actually a few of us in high-end guilds which even convinced people that phalanx strength was a good trait, you’re welcome).
They argue (quite aggressively) that Arena Net intended for everyone to eventually end up in Zerker gear, that all other stat combos were purposefully made to be subpar compared to Zerker,
Subpar in the sense of speed of clearing content, yes. If you strip your character down to the bare minimum of defensive stats, you should be rewarded accordingly. If we look at two extremes, there is no way a nomad character should be clearing content anywhere near as quickly as a berserker one, because otherwise risk = reward doesn’t exist.
perhaps most terrifying— that any attempts to make options/choice/diversity even a little more varied will somehow “destroy” the game irrevocably, regardless of what approach one might take (wether it’s character-side centric, or AI/Encounter design centric).
Suggestions generally consist of forced roles, and in a game where you are encouraged to play however you want and where content is meant to be achievable by any variation of classes and players of varying skill level, imposing forced roles runs completely counter to that, and yes it would destroy the very principles the game was founded on. Forced roles aren’t the answer. Different roles which can be performed by a number of different classes are. To take the simple example of the husks in the wurm event, engineers, necromancers and warriors, rangers even mesmers are the classes that can output a large amount of conditions. There you go, a role, and you weren’t forced in to running a specific class. Projectile defense is another role that isn’t class specific. Warriors, mesmers, guardians, elementalists, thieves, rangers, engineers all have varying amounts of projectile defense skills. The key thing to note about these two functions I’ve mentioned is that for most content they’re not even strictly necessary. You can clear fractals without projectile defense. it’ll be painful, but you can do it. it’s not like a tank where you basically have one or you can’t progress.
To acknowledge that builds which employ Zerker gear are the most “optimal” in the current PvE environment is one thing, but I find the fervid belief that Arena Net would create (and continue to create) all kinds of Stat Combos, Traits, and Utilities that are intentionally meant to serve no function (because they are non-zerk, or do not synergize with the zerk stat spread) genuinely bizarre.
or maybe, people here forget that PvP and WvW exist where a whole ton of stat combinations are used. the game doesn’t revolve entirely around PvE and people need to realise this.
