Guild Wars 2

Perhaps because it’s an issue that is important to them, and just as, over the past three years— we saw post after post of people wishing for some sort of feedback/solution to the “condition problem,” (some) people would enjoy hearing and/or seeing something from Arena Net that clarifies their stance and/or activities regarding this subject.

The problem is, their solutions can be found in literally any other MMO in the market. GW2 is not “that other MMO”, so why shoehorn standard MMO combat principles in to GW2? Why are these people even playing this game if they want designated roles in a game specifically designed to not have them?

I got bored of this game, so guess what I did? I stopped playing and went off to play games I enjoy.

What I did not do, is constantly rant about how the game is boring/bad/dull/repetitive/etc. etc. and hope to the beings above that ANet would answer my pleas.

Heaven forbid people come to the forums to discuss what’s important to them. Oh! And I also forgot the part in the EULA where it’s stated that all player’s must read every single post, wether their interested in seeing it’s content or not.

But it’s not discussion. It’s two uncompromising vocal sides shouting past each other. Literally go and read every single thread in the past … year? about “build diversity”, “the meta”, and “zerker gear”. You will get the same culprits in every single thread spewing bile at each other. It’s tedious, it’s boring, and quite frankly I just don’t care for it, and I doubt many people on here enjoy posting or replying in them that much when the topic has been beaten to death.

Given that the OP began this discussion by talking about fractals and that I stated specifically that the Zerker stat was optimal in PvE, I assumed it was relatively clear that we were discussing this subject from a PvE standpoint. But then I suppose it is significantly easier to point at the other game modes and say “see, everything is just fine,” and pretend that those game types somehow impact PvE than it is to actually talk to people. ^.^

And here is the thing, people confuse optimal and viable. You can use anything in PvE, but like every single video game ever made in existence, there is always an optimal solution, or optimal solutions. In this case it’s offensive gear paired up with an offensive support build (if someone has the gall to tell me a guardian traiting for extra effects on virtue usage is “just DPS” I will honestly just cry).

And then in PvP, you have optimal builds. PvP just happens to instead involve celestial which the tiny PvP community incessantly moans about just as much as PvE’ers on here moan about berserker gear.

I thought this kind of complaining was exclusive to the GW2 community, but when I started playing league, and visited their boards, the reddit, etc. I noticed they had exactly the same complaints about stagnant metas. It’s like no matter where you go or what game you play, you will always have babies throwing their toys out of their pram wanting things to change and they will whine and complain either until it happens, or just whine and complain to infinity. And then when the LoL meta shifts, you get a whole new bunch of people complaining about the new meta. Do the same in GW2, and you will get exactly the same thing with people playing suboptimal builds which aren’t accepted and wanting to be accepted. It’s a never ending cycle, and if people would realise that the forums would be so much more pleasant.

Obtena.7952:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Honestly if you want armor diversity (IDK why you would), get rid of dodging, get rid of all forms of passive defense, make mobs have more clear-cut agro rules.

Getting rid of those things doesn’t diversity builds … it just shifts the meta to something else more healing/armor/HP focused.

Getting rid of those things is probably the first step to building a trinity, which by definition has 3 “types.”

At the end of the day this is the sort of thing these people want. It’s silly, but that’s the end result of what they’re requesting.

Apolo.5942:

Paradox.1380:

Mirta.5029:

Well they’re changing conditions caps. With Silverwastes having high armour mobs that should be ideally killed by conditions, the meta might change depending on what boss mechanics will be.

I run a hybrid necro as my fractal toon with high health pool and I’ve yet to be one shooted by anything in as high as 49. Is the difference between 49 and 50 really that bad?

No. The only thing about 49 and 50 that is annoying is that 50’s Instability is random Agony. Its annoying but not going to one-shot you with enough AR. Honestly, I’ve very rarely been one shot by anything in Fractals, because I play Active Defense.

That is exactly my point, you dont get 1 shotted because you dodge/blind what ever, but when you miss, then they 1 shot you, that is the problem, if armor is not going to prevent that, then it is a useless stat, rising difficulty makes it only more useless.

I’ma Knight’s/Cleric’s Combo Guardian, and there are rare times when I don’t time properly and get hit and I normally don’t get one shot. It also helps that I run low Health Pool high Armor (I have just shy of 3.5k Armor). I’m all for them ramping up difficulty. Having good toughness and the like on top of properly timing your dodges and CC are all well-rounded and fun ways to play.

If the people you run with don’t wanna have fun I don’t know what what to tell you, but my groups never gripe about having me in a party ever.

Aidan Savage.2078:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think the point of zerker armor is not that defensive armor doesn’t work, it’s that there is no need for it.

Who cares if you have 50k toughness and 500k Health. If you play the game well it doesn’t matter if you have 20 health or 20,000 health because you can use active defenses to ignore ALL damage.

Once you are good enough at the game the only difference between full defensive armor and zerker armor is that things take 100x longer to die.

The best way to learn the game is to put on zerker armor and make yourself learn it.

The other armor types function just fine, they are just not needed.

Hardly “not needed.” Frankly if that’s your viewpoint, you arent doing game content where they ARE needed and recommended. The whole “because I dont see a use for these armor stats they must not be needed” mentality is a crippled mentality.

Besides, even active defenses run out at some point. What are you going to do then? Zerker builds pretty much have one last huzzah and then go splat. Builds with defensive stats and tweaks can withstand it and keep going.

Beyond that still, if you have crap for health, and suffer from “pug syndrome,” zerker aint gonna save you when your party starts dropping like flies. Being built the way I am, I can pick up the flies so they can keep doing damage. To that extent, their damage is my damage because I’m keeping them alive. But I suppose it’s a lost cause on people who really dont care to hear, see, or understand that they’re wrong.

It’s unfortunate that the “ZERK IS GREAT” mentality borders on religious fanaticism.

Just because you are not good enough to run zerker does not mean no one is.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Just because you are not good enough to run zerker does not mean no one is.

Ah yes, the fanatical “I’m going to insult you because I cant come up with a good defense” line. I’m sorry the truth hurts zudet. Frankly I’m not going to bother further discussing it with you since you seem to want to refuse to have a meaningful discussion. So I’ll leave it at this:

Who deals more damage? The crap zerker running “meta” that dies 10 seconds into the fight, or someone running stuff with vitality and toughness and solos the last 70-80% of the boss?

choice 3: the meta player who can dodge key tells and doesn’t die

maha.7902:

choice 3: the meta player who can dodge key tells and doesn’t die

and that person probably runs in professional premade groups, while the population tries to emulate the meta set by him and ultimately ends up less useful than that guy in PVT.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Who deals more damage? The crap zerker running “meta” that dies 10 seconds into the fight, or someone running stuff with vitality and toughness and solos the last 70-80% of the boss?

Mirta.5029:

and that person probably runs in professional premade groups, while the population tries to emulate the meta set by him and ultimately ends up less useful than that guy in PVT.

Bad players are bad players no matter the gear they equip. Sure sometimes they would live longer by equipping some gear without full damage stats, but sometimes they would also deal more damage by equipping more gear with full damage stats.

I pug a lot and have experienced both situations, full zerkers dying early and often, and full tanks/healers being unnecessary even hindering or dying despite their equip. I’ve seen 2 guards running heal/tank dying early at bloomhunger, without placing one wall, another player followed soon. Managed to get it down from 50% as a zerk d/d thief with the help of a zerk gs warrior, just using dodges and the occasional smoke screen. I’ve been in groups at mai trin with people dying left and right and I was forced to solo her last 25%, once as a zerk warrior, twice as a zerk guardian. In a group consisting of a warrior, thief, ele, ranger and me as a guard I had to beg them to equip more damage gear at the grawl fractal because while we could root/cripple/freeze/stun/knockback the spawning shamans, we could not get the first one down before the second one spawned. Resulting in us being overrun when the 4th spawned while second and third were still alive. I’ve also managed to join a 4 person [KING] fractal group a few times via the lfg tool. I felt like a 5th wheel while running with them. They did not need me, they could have finished without my help. I actually had to carefully follow their lead, because they did some things differently than i was used to.

I’m not a perfect player. I still do mistakes by wasting endurance, aegis, block skills or by overlooking a tell. But since I switched from a more balanced equip to pure damage I learned a lot about the encounters: tells, target selection criteria, blockable attacks, order of attacks, even a feel for the ability cd of boss mobs. All these things can be learned and once learned will make it easier to overcome the encounters.
Equipping pure damage gear forced me to learn all that, but for me understanding an encounter is fun. For others it’s work.

The player base can not only be divided by their risk mentality but also by their willingness to invest time into the game.
Group A is the “It worked once, so i’ll continue doing it this way” group. They avoid risk and are not interested in learning about the encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group B is the “It could be done faster, but better safe than sorry” group. They also avoid risk, but invest time to understand an encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group C is the “So that’s how it works, can we get it done faster/better” group. They enjoy the increased risk of optimizing and invest time to understand an encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.
Group D is the “X said that’s good/ideal so i’ll use it” group. They enjoy the risk but do not want to invest time into understanding the encounter. Being part of this group is Ok.

These groups are not absolute. Some people enjoy only a certains amount of risk but stop at some point, some invest some time to understand an encounter but dont want to understand every encounter. Still these groups can be used to classify the playerbase sometimes even by looking at the meta threads on this forum:
“pure Zerker is faster” vs “a dead person deals no damage, so a tank/heal spec helps the run go faster” (C,D vs A,B) both points are correct depending on how you calculate the risk for you.
“learning an encounter makes it go smoother” vs “I only play for fun, I dont want to ‘work’ in the game” (B,C vs A,D) again both points are correct depending on your understanding of fun and work.
In some form or the other these statements have been in almost every thread on the meta and will continue to be used to refute arguments in threads yet to come. All points are correct for the corresponding groups, because the mentality of the person behind each point is different. Arguing about it is not much different than arguing about some people prefering apples over oranges (those heathens ). Just accept that they are different and want different things in life, you don’t have to play with them, just like they don’t have to play with you.

Apolo.5942:

and upping fractal levels

Where did you get this info from?

Mirta.5029:

maha.7902:

choice 3: the meta player who can dodge key tells and doesn’t die

and that person probably runs in professional premade groups, while the population tries to emulate the meta set by him and ultimately ends up less useful than that guy in PVT.

strange, I was able to do this just fine when I pugged

it may surprise you, but non-terrible players do actually exist while pugging.