Guild Wars 2

How would you feel if ANet specifically and intentionally nerfed zerk builds in PvE so that more armor, health, defense, healing, CC, etc. was required? Would it make the game better or worse in your view?

Don’t ask me how they would do this, maybe something like triple the attack rate of mobs in PvE while cutting their damage somewhat proportionately? That might lessen the effectiveness of dodging, aegis, blocks, etc. as players might have to just take more attacks. Changing defiant? Lowering bosses health? However they did it, would it make the game better?

It’s not that those things aren’t desired, it’s that there’s no ‘draw’ to speccing that way. There’s not a heck of a lot of point if you can run glass and still be more than sufficient in providing those additional factors (reflects, aegis, et al).

What needs to be done is the efficiency of being able to provide those, when not specced for them, needs to be better balanced.

Of course, upping the mob hit rate some wouldn’t be bad either. Although, not quite so far as you were thinking…

I think it would make the game worse. I enjoy the action oriented combat, and imo Zerker being to powerful isn’t the problem, it’s the other sets not being worthwhile. I ran Knight’s for a good 8 months, but I found I was at almost full HP the whole time and since it didn’t do me any good to have full HP, I started cycling in Zerker gear. I originally believed I was drawing more Aggro, but now since I have full Zerker I’m still drawing the same amount of Aggro, if not more. Until Toughness draws more Aggro than DPS, and a certain portion of damage is undodgeable (I think 90% of the damage should be mitigated by dodging, but 10% should still be done), Zerker will remain on top not because it’s just too powerful, but because the others are pretty redundant.

They’d do it by increasing the damage of condition builds back up to where they were at launch and they’d give some background bonuses to traitlines that were for healing/support/CC that would improve condition damage at grandmaster.

They’d also have to increase the bonus when these ticks on conditions crit which means they’d have to double or triple the crit damage on condition tick crits. Other titles have already gone through this you see, but history seems to be a problem for game designers of new games today. For some reason there’s a lack of memory concerning what’s already been hashed out in the industry concerning diversity in combat and the different types of combat in mmo development history (which are essentially all the same when you look at the numbers).

Immunity to CC and the lack of per person conditions on some of the conditions (not all) is part of the problem as well with the bosses. They could make certain conditions stack per person without causing a crash.

You don’t make defensive stats more appealing by nerfing offensive ones. And that’s something 90% of the Zerker posters don’t seem to get.

People play full zerker because they can. If you nerf zerker gear people will just move on to the next best DPS set.

You make other stats more appealing by designing encounters in a way they reward more than just DPS. Currently that’s rarely the case.

You know- you can just -choose-- not to have zerker gear. It might be less efficient but the majority of the content is still doable without stacking and zerker gear etc.- It’s just often slower.

I would love to see other stats have a higher value. Would love to see stacking being a bad idea.
But players will use quite a lot of effort—- to find the least effort costing way of doing anything.- and then repeat ad infinitum.

There already is very special issues, where you just cant survive on stacking +zerker – High end fractals.-
Likely here devs thought- ahhh now they have to get toughness and someone use the ridiculous elem heal others, but not them selves—— .
And what does players do?- stack + zerker. but add Warrior with hammer/skelk venom and Fumble bosses- Cause this way is faster.

devs would have to completely rethink the entire system to make it work.
And the first thing to do—- completely split up pvp/pve…. cause no system has ever been able to make balance work using same system for both.

Gearbox.2748:

You know- you can just -choose-- not to have zerker gear. It might be less efficient but the majority of the content is still doable without stacking and zerker gear etc.- It’s just often slower.

Why?

Why do you want other people to stop wearing a specific set of gear? Why can’t they use the builds they like and are comfortable with?

If they actually did this, it’d likely cause many of those who grinded out Ascended zerker gear to quit.

For better or worse, GW2’s PvE is stuck with the zerker meta forever because it’s so tedious to reach max level gear after you hit 80.

frans.8092:

Gearbox.2748:

You know- you can just -choose-- not to have zerker gear. It might be less efficient but the majority of the content is still doable without stacking and zerker gear etc.- It’s just often slower.

Why?

Why do you want other people to stop wearing a specific set of gear? Why can’t they use the builds they like and are comfortable with?

ehm. I don’t… “want other people … etc” .— that was the point of the post.
you can just choose not to wear zerker.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

How would you feel if ANet specifically and intentionally nerfed zerk builds in PvE so that more armor, health, defense, healing, CC, etc. was required? Would it make the game better or worse in your view?

Don’t ask me how they would do this, maybe something like triple the attack rate of mobs in PvE while cutting their damage somewhat proportionately? That might lessen the effectiveness of dodging, aegis, blocks, etc. as players might have to just take more attacks. Changing defiant? Lowering bosses health? However they did it, would it make the game better?

No, that would make the game more passive and boring.

You can slow zerkers down but that won’t change:

• 1-shot mechanics invalidating tanks and heals.
• The way conditions override other party members’ conditions.
• The Defiant mechanic, AKA CC is really only really usable once per boss/champ.

So long as those issues remain, the last two parts of the damage, support, control triangle aren’t going to look too attractive.

SlothBear.9846:

No, that would make the game more passive and boring.

How so? This is what I am curious about. I probably didn’t ask the question well, but assume that nerfing zerker did not slow down the current meta dungeon speed runs, just that the ideal team composition was something other than 5-man zerkers. How would this make things more passive and boring?

For example, if it were accomplished (e.g.) by faster but lower damage mob attacks, players would still have to dodge, maybe even more than now. Positioning would still be required, maybe more often than now as it would be imperative to mitigate damage in other ways besides just the occasional dodge of the huge damage attack. There are probably other things I am not considering, which is why I asked.

Btw, I have no issue with the zerk PvE meta and think the criticism of it is a bit odd. People can currently do whatever content they want with whatever group composition they want. But I’m also not sure why if ANet changed it to something besides D&D (dodge and damage) that it would be a bad thing. If you think about it, dodge and damage isn’t a very complex (or interesting?) combat system. In some ways, even GW1’s combat seemed more interesting.

DarkWasp.7291:

You can slow zerkers down but that won’t change:

• 1-shot mechanics invalidating tanks and heals.
• The way conditions override other party members’ conditions.
• The Defiant mechanic, AKA CC is really only really usable once per boss/champ.

So long as those issues remain, the last two parts of the damage, support, control triangle aren’t going to look too attractive.

My original questions assume that nerfing zerker would specifically involve changing things like you mention here. For example, tripling mob attack speeds while proportionately reducing damage would eliminate the 1-shot mechanic you mention. I also mentioned defiant. If ANet did make changes to those things, would the resulting gameplay be worse or better? I can see folks seeing it either way. I’m just mainly interested in why.

Because you can’t spam stuff like block or heals, it would become a very passive game. You just stand there…with the regen boon that you get from someone using a shout or blast. There’s simply no direct healing in this game, because it was designed like that.

And because the only form of mitigation is basically armor or the protection buff… you’d basically just stand there. The game simply doesn’t work if you try to force in a holy trinity because it was build from the ground up to not have one. We should be asking for more viable ways to deal damage, rather than ask for tanking or healing to become a real thing is this game. Too much would have to change.

I choose to rely on my knowledge of the fight and dodge reflexes to keep me alive rather than sit in tank gear. I take more risk in my playstyle. Are you saying I don’t deserve something in exchange for being glassy?

In any pve fight, if you can’t keep yourself alive in full tank/cleric gear, no amount of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc will keep you alive because the damage is clearly far too high for skill to harp ve an impact.

If you make mobs hit faster but for less damage you greatly diminish the usefulness of active gameplay, thus rendering the gameplay boring and passive. This would be a bad thing.

If more defense and healing become required, then the gear choice, build and/or group composition that does the most damage while providing what’s “required” will replace berserker. You’d still have a limited dungeon meta while losing one gear option. The OP’s suggestion would actually reduce build diversity. This would make the game worse.

I fail to see build or gear choices being an issue in persistent world PvE. Most of the events that people care to do are done en masse. This makes gear choice irrelevant except perhaps in the case of Teq or Wurms. It’s a non-issue here.

Not everyone runs dungeons in GC gear. Making the dungeons harder (which is what’s being suggested) is going to marginalize a lot of the players in laissez-faire groups, while the meta and pseudo meta groups will just use the new best thing. This would make the game better only for those who want more challenging dungeons — a demographic that is better catered to by creating new dungeons they don’t know by heart. The game would be worse for people who prefer fast runs because they are replaying the dungeon for rewards, the only incentive left on their umpteenth run.

Assuming that “nerf zerk” actually means nerf zerk, not just change mob AI, further reducing GC damage would have a negative effect on WvW — which is married to PvE. This would also make the game worse.

Overall, the proposal would only make the game better for one demographic, and that group would be better served by new content — perhaps with better AI (i.e., no glitching bosses).

Rangersix.1754:

Because you can’t spam stuff like block or heals, it would become a very passive game. You just stand there…with the regen boon that you get from someone using a shout or blast. There’s simply no direct healing in this game, because it was designed like that.

And because the only form of mitigation is basically armor or the protection buff… you’d basically just stand there. The game simply doesn’t work if you try to force in a holy trinity because it was build from the ground up to not have one. We should be asking for more viable ways to deal damage, rather than ask for tanking or healing to become a real thing is this game. Too much would have to change.

This makes some sense. Toughness would become more important if attack rates went up and attack damage went down. That would produce more variety in armor types worn by players, but a lot of folks might want to just stand around and soak damage. But even if ANet decided to try and nerf the zerk meta they would never change it so people could do that. It would indeed be passive and boring. Some might argue that right now the game is passive and boring. Stacking plus dodge and damage is all twitch and very little thinking. shrug

Btw, I’d just like to point out that I did not “try to force in a holy trinity” or “ask for tanking or healing to become a real thing.” ;-)

William Bradley Knight.2609:

How would you feel if ANet specifically and intentionally nerfed zerk builds in PvE so that more armor, health, defense, healing, CC, etc. was required? Would it make the game better or worse in your view?

Don’t ask me how they would do this, maybe something like triple the attack rate of mobs in PvE while cutting their damage somewhat proportionately? That might lessen the effectiveness of dodging, aegis, blocks, etc. as players might have to just take more attacks. Changing defiant? Lowering bosses health? However they did it, would it make the game better?

And once again, another post about zerker… You DO know that you can CC, heal, buff, debuff etc while wearing Berserker gear right? You can also use “Active Defense” a lot, so other than health and armor, everything else is doable with any gear stats.

It’s just that with Berserker you do all that, while doing loads of damage too. There is nothing other gear sets can do, that a Berserker can’t do as well. The reason?

Gear does NOT affect your skills, you select your utilities and pick the weapon and traits you want, those are the only deciding factors on your actual “build”, gear plays a far less important role.

I can assure you, “Good” “zerker-only” teams make very good use of active defense skills (dodge/aegis), boon sharing, might stacking, blinds, stealths and the occasional CC, they ARE indeed used in the game. But Zerkers can also use them, while also doing way more damage.

Rangersix.1754:

Because you can’t spam stuff like block or heals, it would become a very passive game. You just stand there…with the regen boon that you get from someone using a shout or blast.

And because the only form of mitigation is basically armor or the protection buff… you’d basically just stand there.

Pretty much what I was going to say. It would turn this into whack a mole without a mole whacker, so basically stand around.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

This makes some sense. Toughness would become more important if attack rates went up and attack damage went down. That would produce more variety in armor types worn by players, but a lot of folks might want to just stand around and soak damage. But even if ANet decided to try and nerf the zerk meta they would never change it so people could do that. It would indeed be passive and boring. Some might argue that right now the game is passive and boring. Stacking plus dodge and damage is all twitch and very little thinking. shrug

Btw, I’d just like to point out that I did not “try to force in a holy trinity” or “ask for tanking or healing to become a real thing.” ;-)

The thing is, you can already do that. Get 5 Guardians in Cleric gear with a semi-bad build and you can run dungeons while standing still auto-attacking without even dodging.

Stacking + dodge + buff + debuff + cc + heal requires little thinking? The difference between the “just stack and dodge” and the “do all” is enormous – especially in speedruns. People see a team of players kill Lupicus in record time and say “hey, that’s super easy, they just stack and dodge”, but in reality they are not only doing that.

Or better yet, when players solo dungeons in record time. It takes some skill to do those, no matter how “no thinking involved” you think it is.

It’s the way content is being designed. Bosses that 1 shot you regardless of armor/toughness and hp. Conditions being capped hinders bringing more than 1 condi based build per party.

It’s a problem with the game design not a problem with the player base just figuring out how to run -x- as fast as possible. Also just to note berserker gear was considered suicidal at one point at the start of the game.

Would probably still stay as the main and best, even when nerfed to the ground, until they realize the solution is to make other builds viable by reworking mobs’ AI.

Other builds are viable already. It’s just a matter of the content you’re doing.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

How would you feel if ANet specifically and intentionally nerfed zerk builds in PvE so that more armor, health, defense, healing, CC, etc. was required? Would it make the game better or worse in your view?

Don’t ask me how they would do this, maybe something like triple the attack rate of mobs in PvE while cutting their damage somewhat proportionately? That might lessen the effectiveness of dodging, aegis, blocks, etc. as players might have to just take more attacks. Changing defiant? Lowering bosses health? However they did it, would it make the game better?

It would make the game much worse.

Making current content tedious doesn’t make it interesting again. It doesn’t make me want to play it.
If they did that I’d stop doing the dungeons ( whatever content was changed).

PVE is now stale. Forcing me to fight for 10 minutes instead of 5, or forcing me into a certain type of gear will not change that.

It would also not change the problem most naive players around the forums call “the zerker meta”.

They would still be kicked left and right out of groups for not abiding to the new “knight meta” ( or whatever new meta appears).

The bottom line is good players will be good and bad players will be bad.
Forcing good players to slow down the rate at which they can power through the content because bad players can’t be as fast and are complaining about it will never be a good thing for the game.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

How would you feel if ANet specifically and intentionally nerfed zerk builds in PvE so that more armor, health, defense, healing, CC, etc. was required? Would it make the game better or worse in your view?

It will change nothing, because u don´t understand basic gameplay mechanics in this trinity less (that means special reqiured roles less) game.

Make an own lfg “chilled run, tanky people welcome” and be happy.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

DarkWasp.7291:

You can slow zerkers down but that won’t change:

• 1-shot mechanics invalidating tanks and heals.
• The way conditions override other party members’ conditions.
• The Defiant mechanic, AKA CC is really only really usable once per boss/champ.

So long as those issues remain, the last two parts of the damage, support, control triangle aren’t going to look too attractive.

My original questions assume that nerfing zerker would specifically involve changing things like you mention here. For example, tripling mob attack speeds while proportionately reducing damage would eliminate the 1-shot mechanic you mention. I also mentioned defiant. If ANet did make changes to those things, would the resulting gameplay be worse or better? I can see folks seeing it either way. I’m just mainly interested in why.

Right, I see that now, my bad.

I do believe it would make gameplay better.

Harper.4173:

Forcing good players to slow down the rate at which they can power through the content because bad players can’t be as fast and are complaining about it will never be a good thing for the game.

To be fair, Harper, I don’t think most of the complaints are about not being able to get speed times. What I’m seeing instead are:

• People are complaining about “lack of diversity” based on a misunderstanding of what “different builds” are in GW2. This is rooted in older-MMO thinking where gear and traits combined to produce “roles” that are distinct and static.
• People are complaining about being kicked. You and I both know they aren’t being kicked in dedicated speed runs (they wouldn’t be invited in the first place), in casual guild runs or in dedicated “anything goes” runs. This is a complaint about not being able to access the convenience of the LFG tool with any set-up. There is a speed issue here, but it’s speed in getting a group, not in completing dungeons faster.
• Then, there’s the trinity crap, which pops up now and again.

It has to be this way. The point of going defensive or CC with specs is an attempt to outlast or disable your opponent. You can’t outlast something that has a thousand times your HP, and you can’t disable the bosses pretty much at all, so what left is there but to spec for as much damage as possible?

That’s not even mentioning that speccing full defense is a less effective defensive measure than hitting your dodge button in PvE.

Unless they make the boss fights more similar to PvP fights (groups of opponents that are in the vicinity of the player in terms of strength and are actually bound to the gameplay mechanics), it’s always going to be this way.

ANet could make the content harder (like the toxic alliance or the aetherblade).

But most people avoid the toxic alliance and go for the easy events instead.

Depends on what you want out of the game. I don’t play zerk, I play warrior in soldiers armor, warrior runes, assassin’s LB/hammer with force/accuracy sigils, soldier ammy, and zerk back/ring/accessory with precise wvw infusions. Then 3 shouts and 0 0 6 6 2. With shout cd reduction, shout heals, shout adrenaline, hammer/LB cd reduction traits. Hybrid crit/bunker is possible and pretty fun to play. Can do enough damage for explorables to go quickly even with a bunch of low level guys in group but also can stay alive in WvW no problem without having to change a bunch of stuff around. I like simplicity. Running full zerk I seem to get borked over by a bad CC chain in WvW. Run full bunker and explorables seem to take twice as long. I don’t like having separate chars, sets, and specs, so I like my compromise. I don’t think full zerk is nearly as necessary as people seem to think. I start “anyone welcome” explorables all the time and run them with really low level guys. If you’re so desperate to cut the run time down by 3 minutes you could just buy the gold for cash instead and save yourself the headache.

What you shouldn’t do is make sustain necessary to clear content; that just gives us trinity faceroll. What you should do is make fight mechanics that allow players to save time by taking damage. By making fights that don’t allow for the maximum possible dps solely through stacka-dakka-dodga but instead would require strategic use of sustain in order to get chances for more damage you add more depth to the system.

To give a possible example, say a boss placed a full-room aoe that deals large damage initially, but the longer you stand in it, the less damage it does and the arena contains an object that turns you into an infinite duration mist form that can be cancelled on demand. A party that has no sustain (full zerk, dps traits) has no choice but to take the invulnerability and wait for the aoe to end. A party that has some sustain (eg a zealot guard with selfless daring) could potentially use their burst heals to survive the initially high damage then the continuing sustain from the guardian to survive the low damage. It would not be possible to simply burst heal, attack for a short time then take the invul and repeat because this would reset the damage to high again and your heal would still be on cooldown.

If you still have attacks that simply must be negated, this creates a boss fight where full zerk is still completely viable, but the optimal party has at least one member with at least some support investment. This also helps to deal with the situation of not being able to mix parties, as currently a full sustain party could win through sustain alone or a full dps party could win through dps alone, but having some of each negates all the advantages of either.

Couple this with giving bosses the ability to use all the same tricks as players for dealing with our attacks and you might eventually have pve that takes some real planning to optimise.

I would quit the game, because I’m not paying another 2-3k gold to gear up all my alts in new ascended gear.

I think that mobs In general need to have more attacks for less. Thi way a dodge is Not gonna save you from the next hit. which will damage you. Suddenly toughness and vitality matter. Suddenly it pays to go into healing.

I also feel that mobs need to have toughness that absorbs direct physical burt attacks, but that may be weak to some elemental attack. maybe some are weak to fire? ( Like Ice elementals), others weak to Burning, but not bleeding, others bleeding not burning, and a lot of mobs should have some tougness to physical damage.

This way Condition damage has a reason.

Maybe make Mobs actually have Better AI? so that control has a purpose?

When I heard about this game, the idea was " Control, Support, and damage" you could decide which one you wanted to focus On regardless of class… sounded revolutionary at first. A change from “The Holy Trinity” but now it’s simply " damage, damage, and damage." The Holy Unity.

I feel the game is currently falling short of it’s promises. There are two basic ways to get more variety of builds. One is…to improve Mob AI… and toughness, and give them attacks that a simple " dodge" won’t obviate….

The other is.. nerf serkers and put in Ferocity.

One is easier than the other. And we see which way they went.

CC, healing, defense, … all of it can be improved through a better encounter/AI design.
Full offensive setups could (and probably should) still work, with developer just making sure that there’s enough smart/skillful gameplay involved on pulling it off and tweaking a encounter when some easy and widely used tactic that trivialiazes it is detected.

Cheap solutions, like changing dodge from a full invulnerability to a damage reduction and/or universally increasing enemy attack speed (some enemies may use a bit of this though) would probably ruin (even more) the PvE part of the game for many players (myself included).
Anything that shifts importance from dodge / active defenses to passive defense / healing would be a terrible mistake IMHO.
I would be fine with favouring things like control, that can benefit from a good timing and coordination (this would still require a huge redesign of encounters).
Armor, on the other hand, is a 100% passive thing, and healing behaves mostly as a sustain source which works the best spammed or as part of a “rotation” and can hardly benefit from good timing. Favouring this would hit the “action based” part of the combat and achieve nothing but shifting the “meta” to “the highest DPS with enough sustain”.

Answer to the thread title: Things like dungeons and world boss fights would take longer, which would not be a good thing at all. In order to break the berserker meta, the other armor stat types would have to be made more worthwhile somehow. Nerfing berserker will not solve the problem or improve anything.

When the time comes I have to shoot 10+ arrows to a single trashfoe because of DPS nerf, I will ragequit. And most of people will do so…

PVE is okay from my Ranger’s perspective. You’re maybe an OP class, like my TANK WARRIOR does twice the DPS than my ~Zerker Ranger.

Nerelith.7360:

When I heard about this game, the idea was “Control, Support, and damage” you could decide which one you wanted to focus.

Whoever first stated that the GW2 Trinity would be damage, control and support did a disservice to the game. Calling it a trinity evoked the old trinity, which has dedicated and static roles. This created the impression that “focusing” on being a healer or controller was going to be a dedicated, static “thing” as part of the optimum strategy for group play.

Even in PvP/WvW, where control is used a lot, it’s not a dedicated role. Nor is healing others a dedicated role, unless I’m much mistaken. Instead, if there is a PvP trinity, it’s Conditions, Glass, and Bunker, with further specialization depending on profession and what you’re doing at any given time.

something to think about…

I see all the time the notion of adjusting mob AI to be more “intelligent” or (insert random what not here)

It is already done. It already exists. the problem is that it is some of the most hated, and despised portion of the entire world of Tyria. Day in and day out there is an equal number of complaints, moaning and whining about a “smart” AI. a low power fast hitting self buffing and group buffing and dodging and moving AWAY from the LoS spot…

the Underground Facility.

ALL of the things you are all asking for in a mob AI exists already in that single fractal. and it murders 90 percent of the playerbase.

think about that

Guys… “No Holy Trinity” (Req) here means your class isn’t focused on one rule (meanwhile it is), so you “can” swap between the trinity or hold on a balanced state.

Sure, we’re still far away from what we’re on about here but on the right way.
(could be the full trait swap at least with weapon swaping).

IndigoSundown.5419:

Nerelith.7360:

When I heard about this game, the idea was “Control, Support, and damage” you could decide which one you wanted to focus.

Whoever first stated that the GW2 Trinity would be damage, control and support did a disservice to the game. Calling it a trinity evoked the old trinity, which has dedicated and static roles. This created the impression that “focusing” on being a healer or controller was going to be a dedicated, static “thing” as part of the optimum strategy for group play.

Even in PvP/WvW, where control is used a lot, it’s not a dedicated role. Nor is healing others a dedicated role, unless I’m much mistaken. Instead, if there is a PvP trinity, it’s Conditions, Glass, and Bunker, with further specialization depending on profession and what you’re doing at any given time.

You ignored the quote you used. " you could decide which one you wanted to focus on."

People say that changing Mob AI would make things harder than they are now, and maybe it might also make the trip to level 80 last longer.

Good. That is what a good game needs, challenge, and longevity. A week to hit level 80, is not good game design.

Honestly, it should take 3 to 6 months of solid consistent game play to hit level cap in my opinion. Then the Crafting would also have value. Crafting is not a major part of the economy because people zip through levels so fast that it doesn’t make sense to do anything other than play the TP, or Buy gems.

A lot of players seem to want the game to be an easy ride from 1-80… and then " the game starts at 80." The problem here is… This type of mentality resists challenge, avoids the need for patience, and dedication. It’s giving in to the cry of youth…" I want it all, I want it all, I want it all…and I want it now."

Sometimes good things are worth waiting for, and that which takes Longer is more appreciated. If the climb to Everest were simple as getting on an elevator… it would be less appreciated.

I think the nerf was an easy out, that ultimately will not work. I think the whole Mob and Boss AI, Mob combat, needs to be re-envisioned. And if it takes Longer to hit level 80… ultimately that is a good thing… even if players scream.

fadeaway.2807:

I choose to rely on my knowledge of the fight and dodge reflexes to keep me alive rather than sit in tank gear. I take more risk in my playstyle. Are you saying I don’t deserve something in exchange for being glassy?

In any pve fight, if you can’t keep yourself alive in full tank/cleric gear, no amount of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc will keep you alive because the damage is clearly far too high for skill to harp ve an impact.

If you make mobs hit faster but for less damage you greatly diminish the usefulness of active gameplay, thus rendering the gameplay boring and passive. This would be a bad thing.

This. Taking away the active gameplay means that there’s no single reason to stay in this game, as pretty much any other gameplay aspects are solved in a better way in other games like WoW.

So in a game where no one forces you to use any kind of play stile (you know… diversity), you want to take away someone’s personal choice because you want “diversity”. My advice to people like you, since you obviously know how to internet, is that you should get together with other people who like to discriminate based on the same reasons (just call it role playing haters for the sake of political correctness) and form a mega guild that bans the use of items that you don’t personally approve because “diversity” without actually ruining the game for everyone else.

p.s. just because we play the same game, that does not mean that I have to invite you in my berzerker only dungeon run because, for some unknown reason, you believe that diversity = optimal and that we all have to be friends and hold hands.

they should simply change up the mob/boss attack patterns and weaknesses.

slow/one-shot attacks favor zerk builds that can simply dodge/block those.
faster/weaker hits would make armor/health more valuable.
mobs/bosses that have crazy high dmg resistance, but are weak to conditions would allow condi builds to be more useful (along with removing condi spam from most weapon sets’ autoattacks, so that power builds don’t overwrite condi builds as much)

As I’m sure people above have already pointed out, nerfing zerk does nothing to improve the appeal of other stats because they lack appeal by themselves. If Anet nerfs offensive stats to the point that defensive stats look as good in comparison, a lot of people are going to leave after spending an hour trying to DPS an unconscious skritt to death.

They just need to change some dungeon/boss mechanics so that brute force doesn’t work on them.

Has anyone of you “pls nerf zerk i want to be dedicated tank/heal” people ever played an action game?

FYI you dont really win a fight by being a sand bag.

Just because gw2 is an mmo (which isn’t a genre by itself) doesn’t mean the mechanics will be your reskinned [insert typical spank and tank rpg game]. Gw2 is (and andvertised as such) mainly an action game mmo hybrid with other elements.

The only ones really able to get away with full berserker gear and standing in the corner and not getting downed every other special are warriors. I don’t like running full berserker gear in dungeons and I suppose its a blessing for all the other people doing it since after they get downed I am there to bail them out and get them back on their feet. I’ve seen more runs fail from people unable to take the hits then from people being too tanky. Not a single class has infinite dodges available at every moment or no CD heals.

Not saying people need to be rolling wvw tank builds into dungeons, but it really wouldn’t hurt if you put on a few pieces of knights gear, your slightly lower dps would hardly be noticeable in the overall speed of the run. In fact it might speed it up because you weren’t downed by random trash or the occasional boss hit causing your personal dps to drop and at least one other persons to stop completely while they get you back up.

Agnima.3714:

The only ones really able to get away with full berserker gear and standing in the corner and not getting downed every other special are warriors. I don’t like running full berserker gear in dungeons and I suppose its a blessing for all the other people doing it since after they get downed I am there to bail them out and get them back on their feet. I’ve seen more runs fail from people unable to take the hits then from people being too tanky. Not a single class has infinite dodges available at every moment or no CD heals.

There are enough dodges and blocks if your group’s damage is no bad joke. Of course, you need to use them properly, and that’s where most people fail.

Bread.7516:

Has anyone of you “pls nerf zerk i want to be dedicated tank/heal” people ever played an action game?

FYI you dont really win a fight by being a sand bag.

Just because gw2 is an mmo (which isn’t a genre by itself) doesn’t mean the mechanics will be your reskinned [insert typical spank and tank rpg game]. Gw2 is (and andvertised as such) mainly an action game mmo hybrid with other elements.

I was here at release. I remember how Gw2 advertised itself. I saw the videos On youtube.

They said that they were doing away with the typical Healer, Tank, Damage Holy trinity. They said there would be no dedicated healer, and No Locked In classes. The idea that if you play an elementalist you arte Locked in to being a damage dealer. etc… warrior tank…etc…

I remember how Gw2 advertised itself.

They said that there would be three basic game mehcaniscs. Control, Support, and Damage. This is what Gw2 promised. Now the tools are there for any of the three.

The issue is, it’s Like being given a toolbox, with hammers , and screwdrivers, and saws, and nuts and bolts, and wrenches, and chainsaws…. then being told " chop down that tree."

Ok, you get the chainsaw and go at the tree. Then they say again " Chop down that tree." so you go again with the chainsaw. All this time, all the game asks is for you to chop trees, so you never touch any of the other tools in the box. Now some players are saying " wouldn’t it be cool if we could join these peices of wood with a screw driver and screws?" And you have many saying " But I Like this chainsaw!!!"

We were told there would be 3 game mechanics… Control, Support, and Damage. We have the tools for all three, but we only have a need for one.

Agnima.3714:

The only ones really able to get away with full berserker gear and standing in the corner and not getting downed every other special are warriors. I don’t like running full berserker gear in dungeons and I suppose its a blessing for all the other people doing it since after they get downed I am there to bail them out and get them back on their feet. I’ve seen more runs fail from people unable to take the hits then from people being too tanky. Not a single class has infinite dodges available at every moment or no CD heals.

Not saying people need to be rolling wvw tank builds into dungeons, but it really wouldn’t hurt if you put on a few pieces of knights gear, your slightly lower dps would hardly be noticeable in the overall speed of the run. In fact it might speed it up because you weren’t downed by random trash or the occasional boss hit causing your personal dps to drop and at least one other persons to stop completely while they get you back up.

Quoted For Truth.