Guild Wars 2

There are a lot of discussion about the so-called zerker-meta problems. Yet those weekly/daily threads end up as being the same discussions about what is hard or not, how new stats should be introduced or how scaling should be changed. But in the end exhaustion make those threads disappear without any consensus nor dev intervention.

Maybe it could be nice to gather some details from the people considering there is a huge problem in the game. To do so maybe a bit of organisation is required by answreing those questions.

Which content is affected? Open world PvE (a specific World boss? Some categories of events?) WvW (when roaming? when zerging? when defending?)? Dungeons (all of them or specific paths?) ?

What is the problem? Try here to give details. For example if you talk about condition viability, is it in a context where everyone play condi build ? Is it a problem of gear or of build?

How does it negatively impact your game experience? Can’t you complete some specific content? Isn’t it possible to find people to play with? Try to give some insight on the frustration generated.

I hope that answering those questions may help to actually focus the discussion and maybe help the dev team to propose solutions or other players some advices that could make everyone happy

Agreed. I have never been a fan of nerfing the best performing spec in order to achieve balance, rather – I advocate to actually assessing those performing less than favorable and find out ways how to bring them up. One of the grueling issues, the main one, I have felt for this game is that while I like the idea that the Holy-Trinity is nearly gone… that came at a price. Damage specs provide benefits two fold 1) It’s a, “Kill it before you die.” and 2) The quick-way.

Unfortunately healing and dot damage just isn’t viable. I am also bias since I do play an Asuran Warrior and this Might nerf (plus the nerfs we suffered previously) really showed itself, or will soon :P

I think the prevalent reason why we don’t see much of anything else but zerker is because defensive stats are almost useless or counterproductive in a pve setting.

Even with tanky specs, most professions simply can’t stand in place and take damage. They NEED to avoid attacks, especially the powerful ones with big tells. Additionally, there is no aggro mechanic in this game, at least not a reliable one, meaning you can’t spec defensively to be a tank. What this means is the best form of defense in this game is proactive defense, or preventing the damage before it hits you. And this is the start of the problem.

Defensive stats, such as healing power, toughness, and vitality, are all reactive. They only take effect AFTER you take damage. This means good players will be proactively defending, avoiding all the damage thrown at them, and never end up using their reactive defensive stats.

Another underlying problem is how strong supportive and defensive skills in this game are with no investment into them. Skills used to survive encounters, such as AoE blinds, blocks, reflects, boons, and non-damaging conditions have their full effectiveness with little to no investment into them whatsoever. This means you can spec for complete damage and still be extremely supportive to your group and take no damage.

I think, if we were to see different specs over zerker, vitality, toughness, and healing power would need to change to inherently affect the potency of support and defensive options and not just be flat stat changes. As it is now, they directly go against proactive play and only serve to allow a player to make more mistakes. Thus, toughness, vitality, and toughness should affect defensive and supportive options to further encourage proactive play. That, or they should be removed altogether.

Defensive stats are not useless, they are just not needed for experienced people.

@ Loki : when you say the damage is too strong whatever your gear, do you refer to specific encounters or content?
And about non damaging conditions, does condi duration help to increase the time window of action. For example, is a short duration cripple easy to land a the right moment on a teragriff and if not does condi duration bring some comfort to be sure it will be affected at the moment it charges? Or have every crippling skills a too long base duration?

“I certainly agree that we need to improve effectiveness of condition damage builds against objects. We have some ideas, but none of them are simple and easy to implement/test. Rest assured it is something we recognize as a problem.

Jon (Peters) " From 2012

“Actually this is not true and is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.

Jon (Peters)"_ From 2013

There has been “dev intervention.” I’m not sure what more we can add since it sounds like they have been pondering this issue for a very long time already and probably trudged through mounds of feedback and suggestions over the years. But if you choose to continue this discussion, it might help if you format it like a CDI since people are going to gravitate toward offering solutions anyway. What’s really important is that people try to wrap their heads around the potential issues their solutions will create. It’s a great exercise in problem solving to understand that there may be consequences (warranted or not) to suggestions.

rotten.9753:

Defensive stats are not useless, they are just not needed for experienced people.

Or players that use classes that can dismiss a ton of damage or spread condis like a lunatic without effort besides pressing keys, just need to see videos and add gear for that, it’s hard nowadays to find those good players since even a new player can achieve high damage and kill any other good players, its just a matter of chance nothing more, even if chance is reduced it happens eventually, because setting class to make more damage is more important then understand most of skills/utilities.

On the pve side some(moslty like those in LS) mobs have high pool of vitality and that makes other stats besides zerkers or high damage builds not working properly, as example i play a power/toughness builds with a little bit critical arround 30% chance with 178% crit, and mobs are bunkers to me lol, i receive almost the same damage while playing with naked character, and this shows how game is only prepared for press key to win mentality, hence why zerker is the best and optimal for pve, anything besides that is a burden, even i find myself surviving easier with zerker gear than anything else, its just not my play style.

Btw im not talking to s/tpvp.

problem

pugs want only zerk wars eles gaurds for speed clears

problem this causes

this excludes newer players and those who just cant be botherd to learn to zerk / and those with reaction time issues and unable to play glass cannon

how to fix.

sadly this can never be fixed as there will always be people who can and people who cant. be it willingly or unwillingly due to many things such as IRL disability’s etc.

the only way around this is to find a guild that does not enforce the zerk meta to group content.

Which content is affected?

All of PvE but very specifically dungeons and fractals.

What is the problem?

Honestly? Zerk elitists are the only issue – i.e. those who insist everyone be zerk, learn zerk, and not be “kittens and scrubs”. This leads to exclusion in guilds, in dungeons, and in fractals by zerk elitists. Pretty frustrating when the LFG tool for the thing you want to do is full of ‘zerk only’.

The lesser problem this causes is that it completely washes diversity out of a game which encourages exploration of builds, eliminates challenge by zerk builds breaking content which should be difficult, sucks the fun right out of dungeons, and discriminates against those who have reaction time difficulties or IRL disabilities which will not “get gud” with practice and make zerk not a viable play style.

Personally, I’ve not had an issue with feeling “less viable” because my builds do what I expect them to. I don’t expect to break the game and down enemies in a single swipe though either.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?

It sure is super fun to be called r*kitten and have a group of aholes punt you from a dungeon even though you’re doing a stellar job and they’re the ones dying. Sure is great to need to run a fractal and have to take a group of complete newbies because the others are all “ZERK or GTFO”. What happened to actually enjoying the game and setting challenges for yourself? What happened to the diversity of a group contributing to completing content? I’m scared to PUG for dungeons because I don’t need the added negativity – I have tried zerk, I have a few partial zerk, it is extremely hard for me to play because I have reaction and depth perception issues.

Aerlen.5326:

Honestly? Zerk elitists are the only issue – i.e. those who insist everyone be zerk, learn zerk, and not be “kittens and scrubs”. This leads to exclusion in guilds, in dungeons, and in fractals by zerk elitists. Pretty frustrating when the LFG tool for the thing you want to do is full of ‘zerk only’.

Anyone preventing you from starting your own non zerk group/guild? I guess not except you, so no it’s not an issue, it’s only matter of you not using available tools to find players who are similar to you and who want to play game in manner you do.

Which content is affected?

In short: Zerk meta is affecting dungeons , imo the problem isnt in the zerker gear it self, its how dungeons work, and how mobs work,and how bosses in dungeons work.

Zerker meta is only effecting dungeons (imo) Nobody really cares what you are running with in the pve while you are exploring or killing megabosses. Sure, if you pay attention you will notice your self that at tequatl PTV would be best option when hitting tequatls feet since you cant crit tequatl. Tho defending turrets and batteries is another thing.

So zerk meta only is effecting dungeons only,what can we do about it?
Well let me first say that in this situation i dont think zerker gear is the problem… its just how dungeons work. There are no real hard elites and hard bosses that require any real tactic,timing or mechanic to fight or to stay alive during the fight. Is just stack in corner, nuke the boss, pay attention to aoe on the ground and a few of his special attacks that you can simply dodge away…and thats if he is able to cast is before his face melts off in 10 seconds.

As for PvP and WvW its a place where risks/rewards apply. You are fighting more “inteligent” and stronger enemies and group of enemies in those aspects of the game. So you will tend to give your character some sort of toughness and vitality as well as stun breaks and condi clenses.

Now imagine if we had that kind of enemies in dungeons? would we still stack in corner with our full zerker gear and wait for that one in 10 second attack ? ofc we wouldnt.. cause we know the boss would target the weakest player,and spam all sorts of skills that will make him go down asap and the boss would notice the enemies hard hitting atacks, aoes and move away form them… The boss would even heal him self up form time to time.

What is the problem?
The problem is the mobs abilities, the mobs AI and the structure of the dungeon.

Mobs ai is NOT threatening at all,its actually quite predictable. So predictable that ,as you an see, you can go full glass cannon and stay alive 100% by simply dodging its attacks.
Mobs abilities are super weak compared to the players ones. Attacking once per 5 second, throwing 1-2 special skills every10 seconds that can be dodged without out a sweat . (i suggest adding skills and cooldowns from player professions to all mobs as gw1 did)

The structure of the dungeons are pretty basic in most cases. A large amount of parts of dungeons can simply be skipped one way or the other. Trough stealth,portals,teleporting or simply running.

More traps, more interactions with mechanics,more preparations, more build ups, and most importantly → more rewards for doing so. If you dont reward a player with anything worth while for doing a 5man trap puzzle to open up the next part of the dungeon people will simply ignore that path completely and go for other much easier and faster paths.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?
While all professions are able to go full zerker some professions just benefit more from it than the other.
Resulting in people wanting and picking only players with a specific type of profession (warrior,guardian,elementalist, some include thieves and mezmers cause of their stealth,teleports and reflections)

This results in players who dont play those classes getting rejected to enter dungeons. And those who do play those classes might be new to the dungeons and wish to learn the ways of speed clear zerker way…but people dont have patience ,and will kick you cause you are a noob.

It creates a group of leetists players who want to group with other leetists who are already geared and know how to speed clear dungeons.

It’s a nice try, but this thread will probably end the same way as the others because the two sides on this one just can not seem to connect. Your post already starts by considering there is a problem, which many people do not agree on. Anyway, my take:

Which content is affected?
Dungeons, all of them.

What is the problem?
People seeing groups on LFG requiring damage builds (called zerkers) and sometimes other things (that vary in degrees of ridiculousness) because they want a fast run. These groups tend to fill slower than groups that welcome everyone. Then three things are likely to happen:
-people create their own party, have 2 minutes of patience, problem solved.
-Instead of trying to make a group, or perhaps trying once for a minute, they wrongly perceive they cannot play the content they want anymore because of these zerkers and feel there is a problem. Then they come to the forum demanding big changes to something that is working as intended, and propose dubious, sometimes outrageous solutions, each time starting a new thread instead of posting on one of the existing billions.
-They try to join a group they know they don’t fit the description of, get told off, then continue as the former option describes.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?
It does not impact mine at all, but the sooner people realise there is no gamebreaking problem related to zerkers, the sooner they can enjoy their game again.

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

Vukorep.3081:

How does it negatively impact your game experience?
While all professions are able to go full zerker some professions just benefit more from it than the other.
Resulting in people wanting and picking only players with a specific type of profession (warrior,guardian,elementalist, some include thieves and mezmers cause of their stealth,teleports and reflections)

This results in players who dont play those classes getting rejected to enter dungeons. And those who do play those classes might be new to the dungeons and wish to learn the ways of speed clear zerker way…but people dont have patience ,and will kick you cause you are a noob.

It creates a group of leetists players who want to group with other leetists who are already geared and know how to speed clear dungeons.

This thread is a pretty bad idea considering the topic is done to death lately. It only makes matters worse when you have people saying things like the bolded section above that are patently untrue. If grossly inaccurate statements are repeated by people who don’t know any better, it will eventually become the “truth.” We don’t need more echo chambers for uninformed positions.

Marthkus.4615:

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

You entire premise is flawed.

Passive offense scales with offensive stats
Passive defense scales with defensive stats

How well you dodge and how tight your DPS rotations are has everything to do with your play skill and nothing to do with your passive stats.

hybrid.5027:

How well you dodge and how tight your DPS rotations are has everything to do with your play skill and nothing to do with your passive stats.

If this was true then there would be no zerker meta because people would do the same DPS regardless of gear.

The issue is that players can have equal defenses regardless of gear through the non relation between stats and dodge.

Marthkus.4615:

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

Yet the slow attacking, 1 shot mechanic, corner stacking AI still would exist.

The issue is more on a content design level than it is on a stat balance level.

Here’s an example:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks once for 15,000 AoE damage.
You dodge it, damage taken = 0. All tank stats ignored.

Lets try this again with a new improved PvE:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks twice for a total of 15,000 non-AoE damage.
You dodge the first attack but did not have enough energy for the second.
Damage taken = 7,500. You wish you had a tank in your party that would take the aggro instead.

I’m not saying every enemy should avoid AoE and attack really fast, I’m saying NOT every enemy should stand around and do slow AoEs.

DarkWasp.7291:

Marthkus.4615:

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

Yet the slow attacking, 1 shot mechanic, corner stacking AI still would exist.

The issue is more on a content design level than it is on a stat balance level.

Here’s an example:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks once for 15,000 AoE damage.
You dodge it, damage taken = 0. All tank stats ignored.

Lets try this again with a new improved PvE:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks twice for a total of 15,000 non-AoE damage.
You dodge the first attack but did not have enough energy for the second.
Damage taken = 7,500. You wish you had a tank in your party that would take the aggro instead.

I’m not saying every enemy should avoid AoE and attack really fast, I’m saying NOT every enemy should stand around and do slow AoEs.

This would limit builds, not create build diversity, this has been said thousands of time before.

Gyler.8150:

DarkWasp.7291:

Marthkus.4615:

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

Yet the slow attacking, 1 shot mechanic, corner stacking AI still would exist.

The issue is more on a content design level than it is on a stat balance level.

Here’s an example:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks once for 15,000 AoE damage.
You dodge it, damage taken = 0. All tank stats ignored.

Lets try this again with a new improved PvE:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks twice for a total of 15,000 non-AoE damage.
You dodge the first attack but did not have enough energy for the second.
Damage taken = 7,500. You wish you had a tank in your party that would take the aggro instead.

I’m not saying every enemy should avoid AoE and attack really fast, I’m saying NOT every enemy should stand around and do slow AoEs.

This would limit builds, not create build diversity, this has been said thousands of time before.

How so?

Galespark.7835:

It’s a nice try, but this thread will probably end the same way as the others because the two sides on this one just can not seem to connect. Your post already starts by considering there is a problem, which many people do not agree on. Anyway, my take:

Which content is affected?
Dungeons, all of them.

What is the problem?
People seeing groups on LFG requiring damage builds (called zerkers) and sometimes other things (that vary in degrees of ridiculousness) because they want a fast run. These groups tend to fill slower than groups that welcome everyone. Then three things are likely to happen:
-people create their own party, have 2 minutes of patience, problem solved.
-Instead of trying to make a group, or perhaps trying once for a minute, they wrongly perceive they cannot play the content they want anymore because of these zerkers and feel there is a problem. Then they come to the forum demanding big changes to something that is working as intended, and propose dubious, sometimes outrageous solutions, each time starting a new thread instead of posting on one of the existing billions.
-They try to join a group they know they don’t fit the description of, get told off, then continue as the former option describes.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?
It does not impact mine at all, but the sooner people realise there is no gamebreaking problem related to zerkers, the sooner they can enjoy their game again.

I think I could have written the exact same thing than you except for the first answer (I don’t think high level dungeons are so much of a trouble because less people do them).
Of course I personally don’t see any problem but at least I hoped that when those who think the game is awful, toxic, not diverse (and so on…) really wonder what is the exact problem we don’t have to loose ourselves explaining how it is unnecessary to rebuild the entire game to shift from the actual situation to a situation where everyone is happier

Right now, some hide behind the “stats in the game are bad” argument to put all the frustration they have. If it is possible to reorient the thinking towards a “AC zerk meta is not my playstyle but thanks to LFG I can easily do it in 2 minutes (group filling) +20 minutes of dungeon run” then the frustration could be lifted, games are not made to generate frustration.

DarkWasp.7291:

Marthkus.4615:

It is really simple.
Active offense scales with stats.
Active defense normally does not scale with stats.

Quick fix.
Instead of skills making you invincible, they massively increase toughness
Total Endurance scales with vitality
Endurance regeneration scales with healing power.

Bam done. Zerker meta broken without nerfing zerker damage.

Yet the slow attacking, 1 shot mechanic, corner stacking AI still would exist.

The issue is more on a content design level than it is on a stat balance level.

Here’s an example:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks once for 15,000 AoE damage.
You dodge it, damage taken = 0. All tank stats ignored.

Lets try this again with a new improved PvE:

You have enough energy left for one dodge.
Your enemy attacks twice for a total of 15,000 non-AoE damage.
You dodge the first attack but did not have enough energy for the second.
Damage taken = 7,500. You wish you had a tank in your party that would take the aggro instead.

So instead of LF Zerk only, we will have LF 1 Tank + 4 Zerk only? What exactly is this solving? Instead of instantly starting any dungeon group, waiting a couple of hours?

What’s next? Remove healing from players except for those who invest in healing stat and make it LF 1 Healer, 1 Tank and 3 Zerk?

Maybe also add a couple of mobs in each dungeon that are immune to power damage and can only be killed by conditions because why not, let’s have build diversity.

LF 1 Healer, 1 Tank, 1 Condi, 2 Zerk. Group Gathering time: 10 hours, welcome to the new meta.

Guess what happen when ARenanet “fixes” the zerker meta? The meta will simply change to a new meta and will be back at the same spot.

The problem to me isn’t that there is a Zerker Meta, the problem is that the content currently favors zerker build. Most timed bosses except world boss favor zerker They need to change the way stats work so that Zerker are heavily punished for not being very good zerkers.

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

maddoctor.2738:

So instead of LF Zerk only, we will have LF 1 Tank + 4 Zerk only? What exactly is this solving? Instead of instantly starting any dungeon group, waiting a couple of hours?

What’s next? Remove healing from players except for those who invest in healing stat and make it LF 1 Healer, 1 Tank and 3 Zerk?

Maybe also add a couple of mobs in each dungeon that are immune to power damage and can only be killed by conditions because why not, let’s have build diversity.

LF 1 Healer, 1 Tank, 1 Condi, 2 Zerk. Group Gathering time: 10 hours, welcome to the new meta.

Quite simply I did not want to put every possible example I could come up with in a post. That would generate a lengthy post. Different enemies have different mechanics.

The idea was to get away from slow, 1 hit skills, fully dodgable skills.

I am currently part of the zerker group. I enjoy how easy LFG is in the game currently. Obviously it’s going to hurt us when other builds become more useful. However, better to be hurt by harder content than to just be nerfed and do the same thing slower.

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

Marthkus.4615:

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

This goes right back to what I keep saying in every one of these threads. They need to address scaling. Like you said, CoE, Arah, Fractals… the level 80 content that people regularly do, bet people are dodging in HoTW too.

AC though, hell no, why? Why dodge when I can kill things so fast that they can’t even attack back?

They need to address how the scaling damage works and prevent us from instantly killing these things, at least not without having perfect coordination.

So the main issue comes in sub 80, not all, dungeons?
I used to think that down scaling is a bit too generous in low level dungeons, but then I thought that these dungeons were good training ground for those who learn to play the meta before they tackle with serious things like Arah or high level Fractals.
But maybe the training ground is too easy ?

About Aegis and boon, I wouldn’t really talk about spam. They actually need a good timing and a good rotation from what I see.

Marthkus.4615:

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

Stacking is not a problem by itself and its encourage be several things in the game. The two main reason to stack is because of melee and boons sharing. And there is no problem whatsoever with that. Of course some particular stacking tactic can be a kitteneezy, but those are specific problem that come from the encounter design and not the mechanics.

1) It depend. Some boss are really just too easy and even pugs can down some of these boss before he can do anything (mostly AC have this problem, but some other boss as well). I agree that’s a problem, but again that’s a problem with the encounter. I mostly only run Arah and rarely in a full party now because making sure you dodge all the attack at the right time is so much fun.

2) Completely true. Some boss have nice adds that make the fight harder, but give you a small chance of rally if you group help you. But a lot of boss like kholer have stupid weak adds that die only because of the AoE and are really only rally bot. Again, its failed design in the encounter. If i go down in a fight like Lupi or HotW path 1 boss, you gonna have to work together to get your friend up and that’s a way better design.

3) That’s just untrue in most situation. Yes if you take some simple fight a guardian can negate most damage, but for the vast majority of the time that just isn’t true. In all the best fight in the game that isn’t true at least. This complain it just weird are you really saying that you don’t need to dodge in zerker? I would like to see that. Zero dodge in a full zerker group, lets make some video of that. How many dungeon could be made like that?

That discussion go over and over as ppl complain about specific stuff in the game and blame it on zerker and the games mechanics, while clearly some fight don’t have these problem. Its all about how encounters are designed, the age of the content as ppl get better and better at it and the level of difficulty of that content.

Jerus.4350:

Marthkus.4615:

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

This goes right back to what I keep saying in every one of these threads. They need to address scaling. Like you said, CoE, Arah, Fractals… the level 80 content that people regularly do, bet people are dodging in HoTW too.

AC though, hell no, why? Why dodge when I can kill things so fast that they can’t even attack back?

They need to address how the scaling damage works and prevent us from instantly killing these things, at least not without having perfect coordination.

Difference between needing zero dodge and having to dodge maybe 10 times per arah path is not huge.

My quick suggestion.
For every ally you share space with, increase the damage multiplier by one. That way 5 man stacks take 5x damage.

If the zerk meta didn’t stack, I would have far less problems with it.

While I barely use berserker gear nor have I a clear idea of the Meta build, I do stack in many occasion to share boons with my groups. Basically your suggestion will strongly affect my average level casual gameplay…..

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

How well you dodge and how tight your DPS rotations are has everything to do with your play skill and nothing to do with your passive stats.

If this was true then there would be no zerker meta because people would do the same DPS regardless of gear.

The issue is that players can have equal defenses regardless of gear through the non relation between stats and dodge.

You’re missing a point :

1)Offensive stats = passive offense.
2)How well you do your rotation = active offense.

Both of these together will dictate your overall DPS.

Funny thing is most current metas don’t stack (including zerk) for most bosses and now fight in open.

So yet again brainy smurfs this solves nothing and will only hurt the non zerk players more – they have been conditioned to Zerg and stack.

I don’t see anything new in this thread that was not raised in last months zerk a meta thread .

Ranael.6423:

While I barely use berserker gear nor have I a clear idea of the Meta build, I do stack in many occasion to share boons with my groups. Basically your suggestion will strongly affect my average level casual gameplay…..

Good.

Honestly the stacking meta is more of a problem for me than the zerker meta.
So much of the content gets ruined by stacking.

Marthkus.4615:

Difference between needing zero dodge and having to dodge maybe 10 times per arah path is not huge.

You can dodge only 10 times in Arah? I can believe it if you were in a record run guild that kill stuff faster than anyone else and know all the animations. But I don’t know why, but I don’t thin you are so I call bullkitten on that one.

Marthkus.4615:

My quick suggestion.
For every ally you share space with, increase the damage multiplier by one. That way 5 man stacks take 5x damage.

If the zerk meta didn’t stack, I would have far less problems with it.

So everybody should be range? Because i need to stack on the boss if i want to melee him so what should i do? Swing my GS in the air hoping for the boss to die somehow because I shouldn’t stack on him? We should play together to have might and fury because those boons have a limited range for sharing? My guardian would only use aegis and reflect for himself because ppl shouldn’t be stacking next to me? How is that better?

There are lots of places around a boss.

Anet could also just add collision mechanics that prevent you from standing on people.

Marthkus.4615:

There are lots of places around a boss.

Anet could also just add collision mechanics that prevent you from standing on people.

Yup and I use that space. My party move around bosses in a 300 range without problem and that’s stacking. What exactly is your definition of stacking? Are you talking about corner/wall stacking? Or are you talking about stacking all in the same spot?

Because both those definition of stacking are not good strategy in 80% of the fight in this game. They are old habit die hard for pugs that don’t really understand the encounters very well, but continue to play how they always played because they are used to it. There is no more FGS, so most good team kill the boss in place wihtout pulling him in a corner and other stuff like that. Yes some particular boss are better kill on a wall/corner, but they are very few.

There is a collision mechanics in the game. If you don’t have it, its because YOU deactivate it. So are you crying about that feature because is optional and you would want it to be mandatory?

stacking doesn’t mean one single spot, it means being in a 360 radius circle to share boons. As some people melee most of the time the center of the circle is the boss…..

Stats should just be removed entirely from this game. The only real reason these stats are in GW2 is “well because everyone else does it”.

Rather than having to invest in game wealth into specializing your stats (effectively making some skills useless if they don’t line up with the proper stats), the skills should just be balanced to work without the stat investments.

Personally I rather like how Celestial is starting to be the PvP stat distribution, because it makes many more playstyles and skills more viable, because your stat investment isn’t leaving them useless. Celestial is the closest to “no stats” you can get, as it is not specialized. Zerk only in PvE works somewhat as well, but just too bad that leaves so many horribly underpowered skills (mainly condition damage skills).

I guess this doesn’t fit into the OP’s neat little format, since I’m not talking about minor [pointless] adjustments.

Seriously, why do people complain about stacking? Stacking promote team play. Isn’t this good for the community? If I have to be far away from my teammates, do I play as a group or am I alone in a fight with multiple other people who do their thing without interacting with each other?

As a guardian, I like the fact that if I can predict an attack from a boss, I can aegis my allies to negate that damage. I find it fun that I have to hold my light field so we can stack might and that when I see a fire field I have to think of blasting it to get to most damage.

Marthkus.4615:

There are lots of places around a boss.

Anet could also just add collision mechanics that prevent you from standing on people.

So why take the option out of the game?

You’re free to not stack and to play with people who don’t stack. Aren’t you?

Marthkus.4615:

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

Skill clicker identified. No wonder you complain, obviously jealous of people who use keybinds.

Which content is affected?
All content

What is the problem? People. People are jerks or lazy. The jerks demand the best optimal build forged by other people who spent time researching and finding the best high dmg specs. If you don’t spec that way, you are called a scrub and people with thin skin get hurt, not realizing its just over a computer screen and you will never see that person ever again.
The lazy are people who stand there asking to join a group and dealing with jerks, not realizing they can just make their own group and say all are welcome and be off playing. Instead, its better to sit there, do nothing, and complain.

How does it negatively impact your game experience? Only when I am chatting in map chat and it comes up, turning into a debate when people were trying to have fun, and thus the fun is ruined cause rage.

Also seeing the same topic over and over again on the forums.

Solution: I’m the one leaving those empty bottles of rum in the silverwastes

Magic Learner said: “Anyone preventing you from starting your own non zerk group/guild? I guess not except you, so no it’s not an issue, it’s only matter of you not using available tools to find players who are similar to you and who want to play game in manner you do.”

There a reason you’re picking on me specifically and justifying some toxic behavior?

I have a small guild. I spend 90% of my time with people who aren’t elitists. They don’t always want or have time to do dungeon/fract content. That leads me to the LFG tab. Enter the problem with some people who view this game as an extension of their penii (which might get changed to ‘kitten’ because of the forum filter).

Aerlen.5326:

Magic Learner said: “Anyone preventing you from starting your own non zerk group/guild? I guess not except you, so no it’s not an issue, it’s only matter of you not using available tools to find players who are similar to you and who want to play game in manner you do.”

There a reason you’re picking on me specifically and justifying some toxic behavior?

I have a small guild. I spend 90% of my time with people who aren’t elitists. They don’t always want or have time to do dungeon/fract content. That leads me to the LFG tab. Enter the problem with some people who view this game as an extension of their penii (which might get changed to ‘kitten’ because of the forum filter).

Magic Learner wasn’t aggressive at all so why are you ?
His question makes sense. You say you have to do with the LFG tab, but in that tab any solo player can promote his group of 1 person with a “p1 no stress, no meta required” comment. If you don’t do it there must be a reason, and he’s asking for it.

Ranael.6423:

stacking doesn’t mean one single spot, it means being in a 360 radius circle to share boons. As some people melee most of the time the center of the circle is the boss…..

That is not how the term stacking is used in the game.

You can pretend that that is what people are asking you to do in pug groups, but that is a good way to get yourself kicked.

Stacking is everyone standing on top of each other by a wall or corner, not moving.

It should never work in any situation. It looks ridiculous. I cannot even tell you the number of times people have been like, “Oh what is that game” then see the stacking meta and say, “Wow, I don’t want any of that”.
I have to agree with them. I don’t want to stack, but I want to run dungeons. And no you can’t just start your own group because very few people can be bothered not to stack.

Which content is affected?

An incredibly narrow segment of the game, consisting of the easier dungeon paths which PuG’s farm. Some will make the case that other content is also affected, but since the examples given almost always come down to easy dungeon paths, the issue is primarily experienced in that content.

What is the problem?

There are five problems, with instances of more than one problem manifesting in the same post.

1. Some posters cannot accept the way the game was built, and prefer a system where hard roles are required to complete group content.
2. Some posters either do not understand or are unwilling to accept the role that stats are meant to play in GW2.
3. Some posters want to wear their preferred gear set while getting into any group posted in the LFG. They believe (mistakenly) that exclusionary behavior is caused by stats, when this is clearly not the case.
4. Some posters believe that the opportunity cost for wearing glass gear is too low or the benefits too high. This is often accompanied by the mistaken belief that survivability stats don’t have synergy.
5. Some posters want dungeon encounters to be more interesting and challenging. This in itself is a laudable goal, but blaming the lack of interest or challenge found in current dungeon paths on a gear set is a massive reach. There are several much simpler explanations, including: “Big bag of health with little going on” bosses; lack of dungeon content additions; and the practice effect caused by massive repetitions of paths by dungeon goers.

The underlying cause of most all of the expressed problems lies in a lack of understanding of how the game functions or a failure to analyze the real issues.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?

If you look at the list of expressed problems above, the perceived negative impacts should be obvious.

Ranael.6423:

I hope that answering those questions may help to actually focus the discussion and maybe help the dev team to propose solutions or other players some advices that could make everyone happy

I’m not a dev, but I’ll offer the following advice to the five demographics outlined above.

1. This is not intended to be a hard roles, trinity game. If that game mechanic is a make-or-break issue for you, you might be better served playing one of the games that offer that kind of play. While it doesn’t hurt to ask, ANet has demonstrated a commitment to stick to their vision of the game even when it does not match every customer’s desires.
2. Stats determine whether your damage is primarily condition or direct or somewhere in between; and how glass v. bulky you prefer to play. Stats do not equal roles in a game where roles are not a thing and were never intended to be a thing.
3. Exclusionary behavior is a people issue, not a game mechanics issue. You cannot eliminate a people issue with a mechanics solution.
4. ANet has twice nerfed high-end direct damage in the last nine months (Ferocity and Might Nerf). The first change did not end exclusionary behavior and the second change will not end it. If you still think glass has too little risk for the reward, make your case with numbers, not with vague complaints and hyperbole.
5. Continue to ask for harder and/or more interesting encounters, but realize that stats is not the main issue.

That’s all I’ve got.

Hi there.

So we all know Berserker is the only true Meta, and it’s discussed ad nauseam on the forums. We have varying opinions on how much of a problem it is, and various opinions on how to address it assuming it is a problem. I personally think it is a problem, simply because it makes character building a lot less interesting and it makes characters a lot less diverse.

Part of what I’m here to say is that direct nerfs to zerker values are not the solution. Many of us know this already. The Zerker meta isn’t really born from Zerker being objectively superior to other stat combos, as can be seen by the greater diversity present in PvP. The problem instead lies in one very simple quirk of PvE game-play:

Offense is largely passive while Defense is largely active.

That’s it. Because of this, you get a lot more mileage from focusing on offensive stats while minimizing damage through active defense. It’s honestly just a bad design in the context of GW2’s overall combat system. Conditions are really only a problem due to stacking limits, otherwise they’d be more competitive with Berseker. Some people argue that the only solution to that problem is a grand, from-the-ground-up overhaul of Mob AI.

The other part of what I want to say is that, while, yes – this would be one potential solution, it is not the only possible one. I think the situation can be dramatically improved by a few relatively simple changes:

1. Monsters need to have their Health Pools dramatically reduced, then given a Dodge/Evasion stat that lets them mitigate damage from some player attacks. They don’t necessarily need to move around a lot and visually evade attacks.

2. Precision should be tweaked to affect not just critical-hit rates but also to-hit rates for all attacks. This would need to be carefully tuned, but ideally would make Precision as a standalone attribute more competitive with Power (granting viability to Assassin’s stats, for example) and also grant it some synergy with condition damage.

3. Monster attacks, in general, should receive a significant increase in frequency with a reduction to the amount of damage per hit. Players should have neither the desire nor the ability to try dodge all incoming attacks. Active dodging should mostly be reserved for the occasional large, telegraphed attacks coming from various monsters. Standard defense should be more evenly split between active dodging and passive damage absorption.

4. A greater synergy should be built between healing skills and boons to allow for greater support build options.

That all sounds horrible.

Randomly missing attacks unless you stack a lot of precision? Not only is this a terrible idea as anyone who doesn’t build for high precision is left out in the cold, but how does this change anything? Zerker builds already go for pretty high precision.
And again, randomly missing…. As if it isn’t frustrating enough when an ability bugs out and fails, you want to make this a feature. This will also just shift the focus even more on spamming AA.

Monsters attacking more frequently will hurt everyone who doesn’t build for Healing power. Someone with vitality or toughness sure will last longer than a full zerker, but I’d love to see you try and balance it out in such a way that the former can substain a fight while the latter can’t. Likely anything that cannot refill their healthpools fast enough will sooner or later die, or it will not make a lick of difference.

And than there is the big difference between sustainability even while zerker. My Warrior can go full zerker and still out-toughness, out-healthpool and out-heal my Engineer on whom I’ve dedicated 1/3ths of all my stats on either toughness or vitality.

If this hypothetically were to happen I predict frustrating pve content with even less build diversity, but still with zerkers on top.

1. Monsters need to have their HEALTH Pools dramatically reduced, then given a Dodge/Evasion stat that lets them mitigate damage from some player attacks. They don’t necessarily need to move around a lot and visually evade attacks.

have you ever fought the archers in CM who just randomly start evading? literally the most annoying mobs in the game. they’re standing there auto attacking and evading everything.

2. Precision should be tweaked to affect not just critical-hit rates but also to-hit rates for all attacks. This would need to be carefully tuned, but ideally would make Precision as a standalone attribute more competitive with Power (granting viability to Assassin’s stats, for example) and also grant it some synergy with condition damage.

assassin’s stats are already viable and feature in some meta builds.

3. Monster attacks, in general, should receive a significant increase in frequency with a reduction to the amount of damage per hit. Players should have neither the desire nor the ability to try dodge all incoming attacks. Active dodging should mostly be reserved for the occasional large, telegraphed attacks coming from various monsters. Standard defense should be more evenly split between active dodging and passive damage absorption.

or you get a hammer guardian for permanent -33% incoming damage. crisis averted, no need to use PVT.

4. Lastly, the concept of the soft trinity needs to be refined and iterated. Support builds need to be made more viable by building greater synergy between boon stacking and healing.

support =/= healing

and support builds are the meta anyway.

and just to clarify, support does not equal defensive stats, it equals a build which aids the team either offensively, defensively or both. the meta builds are on the whole, support builds designed around maximising the efficiency of the party.

also, let’s make it so stacking healing power lets you 100% burst heal your entire party with zero cooldown. we don’t need that healing so we won’t use it.

Guardians come somewhat close to achieving decent support builds, but not quite, and no other profession really does. Offensive builds should not typically specialize in boons. In other words – the soft trinity should really be a.) offense (damage and/or control), defense (healing and/or boons), and c.) tanking, with viability to hybridization, in particular with tanks (i.e. an offensive tank focused on damage and control, or a defensive tank focused on healing and boons).

offensive builds should not specialise in boons? why? because you said so? well here’s what I say. they should be able to. why? because I said so.

the first two pieces of the soft trinity already exist, they’re just not restricted by builds or classes, and the third part exists to an extent in fractals where a guardian can maintain a block rotation and dump some knights gear on against certain bosses to mitigate the damage dealt to the party since the boss will be facing the guardian.

tl;dr can we stop making these threads

I love how simple people can’t comprehend nuances and throw-out knee jerk arguments using false dichotomies, black-and-white reasoning, and strawman tactics just to deny there’s a problem with the game when there clearly is one.

A note for the less savvy – the suggestions I made above are almost exactly how PvP works. Precision would only have a subtle influence on the hit rate for monsters, and they would go down in roughly the same amount of time as they do currently due to the reduced health pool.