Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

I don’t think it was a design choice. I think it was a design oversight. They wanted to avoid a hard trinity, which is great – I’m all for it. But they also want build diversity and content that benefits from a variety of strategic approaches.

You are arenanet developer?

Einlanzer.1627:

I refuse to believe that one build to rule them all was their design choice.

It was a player choice, duh.

Marthkus.4615:

wall-stack meta and other exploits

Ahahahahaha oh wow.

Einlanzer.1627:

Liz.1497:

Einlanzer.1627:

encounters and builds can be conceived that work with within the framework of a distinctive role structure – support, healing, control, or even tanking. Meta could be allowed to develop around these roles rather than just around the current single pure, direct DPS role.

This exactly right there is your problem. I’m sorry to break it to you OP but if you think zerker meta pve doesn’t involve massive amounts of control skills you’ve been carried hard. The problem is not that everyone just deals damage, the problem is that you can do all the support the party needs in damage gear. Playing any but the easiest dungeons without blinds, reflects, stealth, blocks ect in full zerker would be quite difficult, it’s not though because people actually push their buttons.

Seriously OP, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgZYr-yIxs (and then the video of whatever class it is you play) and tell me “the zerk meta” is nothing but 5 people button mash-dpsing their way through dungeons.

Yeah, I get that. My point is that it isn’t a very good design. When you can achieve optimal DPS without sacrificing much of the utility needed to be successful, and when you build around support/control/utility and sacrifice huge amounts of DPS for it, it’s a design problem.

The flaw in your analysis is that you assume the meta builds are the highest DPS builds achievable. They are not. They achieve optimal support without sacrificing much of the dps needed to be efficient. Basically the exact opposite of your situation.

This is just going nowhere, it feels like the anti zerk side are just listening to what they want to listen, any facts we present is instantly ignored until they find something that they can reply too and pretend they have an argument, its getting old. Its really not much of a discussion and more like both sides are talking thru a sound proof wall.

Capitol City.4856:

I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it. Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities). The post I quoted seems to believe that we’re choosing these builds, but there comes a point, as I said in my first post, where veteran players see the build that’ll work for dungeons, and from then on it’s over.

I’m very sorry to break it to you, but from one mesmer to another – you’re not a very good mesmer.
1) the stability mantra is useless 9.5/10 times, why would you run it permanently???
2) There are certain bosses where you really want to run null field, and one in particular where Arcane Thievery is quite useful. Likewise, there are some encounters where you really don’t need condition removal. Signet of midnight = aoe blind, great for groups of trash, in particularly if you don’t have a (or only have a bad) guardian/thief. I’ve even ran illusion of life before in groups where people kept dropping like flies. Veil/decoy/blink/mass invis are really quite nice for skipping mobs, a thiefless group will really appreciate it. Even portal really helps out in some dungeon situations.
3) You misinterpret the fact that you CAN get away with using unsuitable utility skills as ‘these are all I SHOULD run’. Dungeons have a really low skill cap, meaning that you can finish them successfully even if you don’t play your character to the fullest, in fact you can get away with messing up quite a bit. Heck I’ve played with full mantra build staff Mesmers that had a healing Sigil and Guardians that literally did nothing but spam staff 1-1-1-1-1-1 all for the entire duration of the run. The reason this is possible is because the game is (quite ingeniously I might add) designed so you can run pretty much whatever, which is exactly what their original design idea of “no trinity, never have to wait for a particularly set up character” exactly entailed.
4) You keep trying to not make this about zerker gear but the OP clearly talks about zerker gear in his first post. Your issue with the game (which is a non-issue btw, sorry bud, get gud) is not what this thread is about, so I suggest you make your own thread.

Kordash.2197:

And by the way, we already have soft roles. It’s the different class. What you guys are are describing IS dedicated roles.

No, it isn’t. We’re describing content that’s challenging on multiple levels instead of being just straight kill or die spam. We’re describing the ability to specialize and be highly effective in things other than direct damage, whether it be condition damage, healing, defensive utility, control. We’re not talking about anybody being pigeonholed into that through a hard trinity system.

Here’s a very quick & dirty example – say you have a boss that consists of something you’re trying to protect, and the boss periodically vanishes from the fight and summons a ton of minions. These minions die fast from any damage dealers but will attempt to swarm what you’re protecting for a certain period of time before clearing.

The game could be structured in a way that control and heal builds are beneficial (but not required) for the fight. In such a situation, you could hypothetically have an all DPS team, but it wouldn’t be the most efficient way to get through the fight. Diversity would be the most efficient way to get through the fight – the DPS folks beat down the boss, and the control and healing folks eliminate the threat from the minions.

One of the things I think they may have messed up on was making AoE so prevalent in DPS-optimal builds. In my mind, AoE should be seen as something of a control effect and there should be an attribute that increases the radius/range of AoEs. In other words, you should be able to build around AoE, and Berserker should emphasize single-target (including Cleave) specialization.

I see people QQ about “lack of diversity” then point blank refuse to change utils despite some being far more useful for certain fights. (probably also forcing their team mates to drop something else to cover/carry them). All because " it works without changing".

This simply proves the complaints about “everything is exactly the same” & berserker gear in general is born out of selfish laziness and ignorance.

Someone made an analogy about “is it better to be hit by a car and then heal, or avoid the car”. I propose we test this with people who’ve asked for unavoidable damage. That suggestion I consider as volunteering for being hit by the car. Good luck.

Lifestealer.4910:

This is just going nowhere, it feels like the anti zerk side are just listening to what they want to listen, any facts we present is instantly ignored until they find something that they can reply too and pretend they have an argument, its getting old. Its really not much of a discussion and more like both sides are talking thru a sound proof wall.

There is no anti-zerker side. This really illustrates the mentality of most of the posters here and the fact that most of you are either incapable or unwilling to think about this on a high enough level to contribute anything worthwhile, and are instead just continually derailing the conversation.

I dream about the day when players will give actual numbers and compare things.
Make tests, change your builds, your gear, your team setup and come back with facts about how differently you performed, from a time point of view, from a number of deaths in the group, from a “feeling” point of view.

The meta crowd has done this, they have tried, learned and then optimized the builds. And even if meta is barely violently shaken, it has evolved since the beginning of the game. These people actually question themselves often to be sure to sort out the most efficient build.

As for conditions, it is possible to play conditions in dungeons if you are the only one to apply them, that is where team organization is involved. It will never be meta because the ramp up time is too long compared to encounter length and things like torment require the team to play ping pong with the boss to make it efficient (but then melee become less efficient).
They will hopefully never be as strong as power damage because they give a huge advantage in mobility (during your dodge your condi ticks, if the boss moves out of melee for whatever reason, your condi ticks) and many condition builds and gear stats ( save dire and apothecary) don’t force you to loose all your power to make conditions tick strongly.

Capitol City.4856:

Tree.3916:

Capitol City.4856:

snip
Why would I switch abilities when our parties run through the dungeon fine without doing so? That doesn’t make any sense.

Because your parties could be running through the dungeon better, faster, stronger :P

Is that really what we’ve come to? :P Switching up our abilities every now and then so we’re feeling like we’re doing something different. You guys keep saying I CAN switch my abilities, but I don’t need to. I’m running level 40 fractals with the same three skills (yeah, I guess I switch up every now and then, blink and nullfield are good in some situations… that’s not a solution, that’s just you guys trying to squirm your way around the issue).

Also, I don’t want to quote the entire response someone just gave me, but if you read what I said, I don’t believe it’s a “zerker meta” problem. I don’t care about the stats, and I already clarified that “zerker meta” has much more to do with a lack of build diversity than stats.

ONCE AGAIN, the zerker meta is not a problem because of stats. Let’s get that out of the way. The zerker meta is a problem because we’re very restricted to a certain amount of skills/traits that would be intelligent to run. And we’re stuck running those same abilities/traits for all eternity. And that sucks. If you disagree, explain why, I’d love to hear why you think a condi build would be super cool in dungeons, I want to be convinced otherwise.

P.S. Yeah, I know mesmer zerker is support/control. It’s support/control/damage and everything else. And that’s why I can’t switch up my build. Because I can run everything I need in all my abilities with little need to change ever. And that’s boooooooring. Why do you think this thread keep reappearing? Because people are bored of running the same build in every dungeon. THAT’S what we’re trying to find a solution for. Not stats, build diversity.

I tried to explain why – did you read my post?

Einlanzer.1627:

Liz.1497:

Einlanzer.1627:

encounters and builds can be conceived that work with within the framework of a distinctive role structure – support, healing, control, or even tanking. Meta could be allowed to develop around these roles rather than just around the current single pure, direct DPS role.

This exactly right there is your problem. I’m sorry to break it to you OP but if you think zerker meta pve doesn’t involve massive amounts of control skills you’ve been carried hard. The problem is not that everyone just deals damage, the problem is that you can do all the support the party needs in damage gear. Playing any but the easiest dungeons without blinds, reflects, stealth, blocks ect in full zerker would be quite difficult, it’s not though because people actually push their buttons.

Seriously OP, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgZYr-yIxs (and then the video of whatever class it is you play) and tell me “the zerk meta” is nothing but 5 people button mash-dpsing their way through dungeons.

Yeah, I get that. My point is that it isn’t a very good design. When you can achieve optimal DPS without sacrificing much of the utility needed to be successful, and when you build around support/control/utility and sacrifice huge amounts of DPS for it, it’s a design problem.

I’m sorry but that’s simply not true – there are certain meta builds that make you trait down defensive paths, and utility options are 90% of the time about support and survival rather than direct damage.

It’s actually really brilliant design because you can pick your play-style and weapon get up, and then use the gear to adjust your personal difficulty setting. This way literally everyone in the game can play together and have a halfway successful dungeon run.

Capitol City.4856:

. I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it. Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities).

I understand that we CAN run these other builds. It’s possible to find a group that will run them. Yup. Cool. Unfortunately, you can feel the difference tremendously. Once you’re good enough, the zerker builds are the only builds worth running. .

Here you are saying that you can only use 1 build and that you shouldn’t use other build because they are bad and even if you want more buil diversity you don’t want to force yourself into bad build. You want other build to be good.

Capitol City.4856:

You guys keep saying I CAN switch my abilities, but I don’t need to. I’m running level 40 fractals with the same three skills.

Here you are saying that Ok there is better build that your current build, but why run them? I can complete everything with my current build.

You gonna have to explain the logic here.

You are using a general purpose build. Its a good build, but not the best. You don’t want to use other build are less good because they are less good, but you don’t want to use better build because you can complete everything with your current build?? I’m lost.

Einlanzer.1627:

Here’s a very quick & dirty example – say you have a boss that consists of something you’re trying to protect, and the boss periodically vanishes from the fight and summons a ton of minions. These minions die fast from any damage dealers but will attempt to swarm what you’re protecting for a certain period of time before clearing.

You could even call the thing you protect Hodgins ?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Capitol City.4856:

Every class has one, maybe two builds to run. And that’s boring. And that’s what we’re all trying to change.

Don’t know about you but at level 80 i have 20+ different gear stats, 15 minor and 65 major traits, lots of weapons and of utility skills.

:O Really?? Wow. Well that changes everything
Wait no. See, what you just said to me is that you have a lot of terrible books sitting on your bookshelf and a few good ones. Which ones are you going to read?
You have lots of not-so-good stat sets and one good one. Which one are you going to use?

“When I said that ppl using this term don’t really understand the concept behind it, that’s exactly what I mean. You play a tiny part of the Mesmer and you complain that there is only a tiny part of it? Mesmer, like most profession change between different trait, different utilities and weapons. Why use sword/focus when a fight don’t need a pull or reflect? Why don’t you change to Sw/Sw & Sw/Pistol against a boss. Why don’t you change your trait if your team need more reflect? Why don’t you take null field if you team need more condi removal? Why don’t you change you build depending if you are against a single boss or a bunch of mobs? Why don’t you change your utilities against bosses like the CoE Golem to remove its boons? If you want to play only one side of the Mesmer don’t complain that you can’t play other side because you should.”

Because I don’t need to. Like I said earlier, that’s not a solution, that’s a way to try to overlook the problem. I guess in a few choice situations, I could switch my weapons to the battle done 2 seconds faster, but why would I bother? Band-aid solutions are not cool, fundamental changes that will allow other builds such as condi is cool.

I really like what someone said on here earlier, the zerker meta wasn’t intentional. Anet didn’t want this. They wanted us to be able to choose how we wanted to play, but once you get good enough there’s only one way to play intelligently. The fact that we have the ability to be full damage and still run full support/control skills with no consequence doesn’t mean that we’re choosing which way we play, it means that we necessarily have to play all the roles at once to play to the best of our ability. That’s not choice, that’s just covering all our bases in a single build. Which in end equals no build diversity. Which is boring. Which is the problem. The meta makes dungeons/fractals/instances boring.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

. I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it. Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities).

I understand that we CAN run these other builds. It’s possible to find a group that will run them. Yup. Cool. Unfortunately, you can feel the difference tremendously. Once you’re good enough, the zerker builds are the only builds worth running. .

Here you are saying that you can only use 1 build and that you shouldn’t use other build because they are bad and even if you want more buil diversity you don’t want to force yourself into bad build. You want other build to be good.

Capitol City.4856:

You guys keep saying I CAN switch my abilities, but I don’t need to. I’m running level 40 fractals with the same three skills.

Here you are saying that Ok there is better build that your current build, but why run them? I can complete everything with my current build.

You gonna have to explain the logic here.

You are using a general purpose build. Its a good build, but not the best. You don’t want to use other build are less good because they are less good, but you don’t want to use better build because you can complete everything with your current build?? I’m lost.

Alright, this is a good point, I should clarify. I said in a later post that I actually do switch out every now and then, but the skills I posted are what I also fall back to. Yes, I do have other utility skills, but they’re situational. I’m not actually changing my build by switching to them, I’m just temporarily making a switch for a current situation. That’s not a build change people, the build remains the same. And that’s not a solution, as I’ve said earlier, that’s throwing a blanket over the problem.

Capitol City.4856:

Kordash.2197:

Capitol City.4856:

Now the other thing I see people saying for some reason is that “well, if they were to shift the meta, there would be a new best build and everyone would have to run that.” What you fail to understand is that we’re not asking for a shift in the meta, we’re asking for an expansion of the meta. Imagine if I said “Eh, I’m getting bored of my zerker mesmer, I think I’ll switch over to condi damage.” And then I dropped my sword and focus for a scepter and torch. If that were viable, that would be amazing! And then I get bored of condi so I switch over to control. And then from control I decide I want to play a support mesmer. That would be the final result of solving the zerker meta problem.

Basically asking for a trinity like model ? Or in other words, you want the game to REQUIRE a certain gameplay/build to complete content. I’ll say it again, the game is designed to AVOID that all together. ArenaNet stated it (especially Colin) many times. And nothing stops you to play this controll/support mesmer. NOTHING but yourself.

Not a trinity, just more options. And no, nothing is stopping me from doing that, but I’ll say it for a third time just for you, you can feel yourself doing considerably worse if you switch builds away from your zerker build.

Lifestealer.4910:

Mesmer also uses null field, arcane thievery, daze mantra, portal etc.. if you are just sticking to those skills, then it really tells what kind of player you are.

Why would I switch abilities when our parties run through the dungeon fine without doing so? That doesn’t make any sense.

With that logic, why run zerk if you can run pvt and get thru the dungeon fine then?.. i see some somebody simply use zerker because he was told too but didn’t actually bother to learn to play the class his playing in the dungeon.

You know what would stop people from complaining? If the devs just put max power on every build outside of zerker. The zerker could still do max damage because of Precision and Ferocity, but other builds would do more damage than they do now.

It’s a horrible suggestion. But people would stop complaining.

Liz.1497:

Capitol City.4856:

I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it. Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities). The post I quoted seems to believe that we’re choosing these builds, but there comes a point, as I said in my first post, where veteran players see the build that’ll work for dungeons, and from then on it’s over.

I’m very sorry to break it to you, but from one mesmer to another – you’re not a very good mesmer.
1) the stability mantra is useless 9.5/10 times, why would you run it permanently???
2) There are certain bosses where you really want to run null field, and one in particular where Arcane Thievery is quite useful. Likewise, there are some encounters where you really don’t need condition removal. Signet of midnight = aoe blind, great for groups of trash, in particularly if you don’t have a (or only have a bad) guardian/thief. I’ve even ran illusion of life before in groups where people kept dropping like flies. Veil/decoy/blink/mass invis are really quite nice for skipping mobs, a thiefless group will really appreciate it. Even portal really helps out in some dungeon situations.
3) You misinterpret the fact that you CAN get away with using unsuitable utility skills as ‘these are all I SHOULD run’. Dungeons have a really low skill cap, meaning that you can finish them successfully even if you don’t play your character to the fullest, in fact you can get away with messing up quite a bit. Heck I’ve played with full mantra build staff Mesmers that had a healing Sigil and Guardians that literally did nothing but spam staff 1-1-1-1-1-1 all for the entire duration of the run. The reason this is possible is because the game is (quite ingeniously I might add) designed so you can run pretty much whatever, which is exactly what their original design idea of “no trinity, never have to wait for a particularly set up character” exactly entailed.
4) You keep trying to not make this about zerker gear but the OP clearly talks about zerker gear in his first post. Your issue with the game (which is a non-issue btw, sorry bud, get gud) is not what this thread is about, so I suggest you make your own thread.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

The lack of build diversity comes from the fact that every class can cover every necessity with 3 utility skills, without sacrificing damage. Damage should be a build in and of itself, as soon as we give damage the ability to do everything else, every other build becomes pointless. Every class runs every role simultaneously, so only one build per class is optimal. We all run the same few utility skills, rarely switching, because shaving off a few seconds is hardly worth switching your skills for. And if it is worth it, then we switch to those skills for that single battle. And then we switch back. That’s not build diversity, that’s switching utility skills temporarily…

I´m just going to quote myself here…

Skoigoth.9238:

No one is forced to run a specific set of gear under any circumstances. As far as I can tell, you can complete everything in this game using whichever stat combination you like. Naturally, people have become better since launch, therefore more people started using purely offensive stats for better kill-times/faster completion of content.
You don´t like the “active playstyle” associated with offensive stat combinations, or simply can´t pull it off? Fine. Use something else and stop bothering other people

Can we PLEASE get a sticky/some kind of general discussion thread instead of a new “Zerker is bad QQ” thread every day? It is not like these “discussions” lead anywhere.

Capitol City.4856:

Alright, this is a good point, I should clarify. I said in a later post that I actually do switch out every now and then, but the skills I posted are what I also fall back to. Yes, I do have other utility skills, but they’re situational. I’m not actually changing my build by switching to them, I’m just temporarily making a switch for a current situation. That’s not a build change people, the build remains the same. And that’s not a solution, as I’ve said earlier, that’s throwing a blanket over the problem.

Then what change would be enough for you to consider that a change of build? Because for me there is a big difference between those two build.

Mesmer : Zerker gear + Scholar Runes + 6/4/0/0/4 traits + S/S & S/P weapons + 3 mantras against a single boss without need a reflect

or

Mesmer : Asssasin gear + Rangers Runes + 6/4/0/4/4 traits + S/S & S/F weapons + 2 mantras & feedback for a fight that need a lot of reflection.

That’s just two possibilities. And I still don’t understand. You don’t want to use other build that could help you go through a dungeon a bit faster. Why don’t you want to use other build that could run dungeon a little bit slower? Cause for only a couple second less you could have a GS build, you could use Staff as secondary (the phantasm is a hard hitter against some boss).You can create great build with about anything in the game. Hell I even help someone make a staff guardian build that is not that bad. You don’t use 100% optimized build so what does it change if you do it 95% of the speed or 90% of the speed? That open so much diversity, why don’t you want to use it? I understand that diversity is not that great if you want to be 100% optimized, but you already aren’t 100% optimized so what’s the big deal. There is sea of build that are super good even if they are not optimized.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

Alright, this is a good point, I should clarify. I said in a later post that I actually do switch out every now and then, but the skills I posted are what I also fall back to. Yes, I do have other utility skills, but they’re situational. I’m not actually changing my build by switching to them, I’m just temporarily making a switch for a current situation. That’s not a build change people, the build remains the same. And that’s not a solution, as I’ve said earlier, that’s throwing a blanket over the problem.

Then what change would be enough for you to consider that a change of build? Because for me there is a big difference between those two build.

Mesmer : Zerker gear + Scholar Runes + 6/4/0/0/4 traits + S/S & S/P weapons + 3 mantras against a single boss without need a reflect

or

Mesmer : Asssasin gear + Rangers Runes + 6/4/0/4/4 traits + S/S & S/F weapons + 2 mantras & feedback for a fight that need a lot of reflection.

That’s just two possibilities. And I still don’t understand. You don’t want to use other build that could help you go through a dungeon a bit faster. Why don’t you want to use other build that could run dungeon a little bit slower? Cause for only a couple second less you could have a GS build, you could use Staff as secondary (the phantasm is a hard hitter against some boss).You can create great build with about anything in the game. Hell I even help someone make a staff guardian build that is not that bad. You don’t use 100% optimized build so what does it change if you do it 95% of the speed or 90% of the speed? That open so much diversity, why don’t you want to use it? I understand that diversity is not that great if you want to be 100% optimized, but you already aren’t 100% optimized so what’s the big deal. There is sea of build that are super good even if they are not optimized.

Let’s make this quick. The two builds you just mentioned when asking how far we’d want to take build diversity are both damage builds. That’s the problem. Fin.

Capitol City.4856:

The lack of build diversity comes from the fact that every class can cover every necessity with 3 utility skills, without sacrificing damage. Damage should be a build in and of itself, as soon as we give damage the ability to do everything else, every other build becomes pointless. Every class runs every role simultaneously, so only one build per class is optimal. We all run the same few utility skills, rarely switching, because shaving off a few seconds is hardly worth switching your skills for. And if it is worth it, then we switch to those skills for that single battle. And then we switch back. That’s not build diversity, that’s switching utility skills temporarily…

This is the crux of the problem. You shouldn’t be able to completely min/max DPS and still do everything else very effectively. A soft role system created by a give and take approach with encounters designed to play off of that is the way PvE needs to be designed.

I envision a multitude of roles that can built into. All are effective at what they do, and you can heavily focus in one area or diversity. Just gives you plenty of options for how to play – DPS, AoE, condition, healing, tanking, support. Parties should be able to get by with pretty much any configuration, but which is the most efficient will differ depending on the encounter and on the strategies imagined by players.

Capitol City.4856:

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

OK NOW I understand your point. The thing is, its not build diversity the problem. The game was designed like this.

Everything is viable in the game so that you can complete all content with whatever build you have. You can complete it naked, in zerker full dps, in clerics full healing build, etc. That’s not a problem that’s a design choice that was made day 1 of the game. It a game that is casual friendly at its core. Maybe the design choice is not appealing to you, but that’s the game they decided to do. What you see as lacking build diversity is freedom in build. You can complete content with any build. With better build you will complete it faster, with less good build it will take longer.

The mods should just close this thread. It’s over.

Lets see:
People don’t want mobs to be able to evade AoEs – monsters stay static.
People don’t want toughness to play more important lore – DPS > everything else.
People don’t want healing power to play more important lore – DPS > everything else.
Hence Zerker stays the best option for PvE.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

OK NOW I understand your point. The thing is, its not build diversity the problem. The game was designed like this.

Everything is viable in the game so that you can complete all content with whatever build you have. You can complete it naked, in zerker full dps, in clerics full healing build, etc. That’s not a problem that’s a design choice that was made day 1 of the game. It a game that is casual friendly at its core. Maybe the design choice is not appealing to you, but that’s the game they decided to do. What you see as lacking build diversity is freedom in build. You can complete content with any build. With better build you will complete it faster, with less good build it will take longer.

No, it’s not their design choice. They envisioned playing the game however you want, meaning having a large variety of builds and play-styles that are all well supported by encounter design. I promise you it was not intended that only DPS builds are meta, which is why they have already nerfed Zerker to try to introduce more build diversity.

That was a sad attempt at a band-aid fix, though.

The problem is that non-DPS builds are not fleshed out well enough, that you can build for necessary utility without sacrificing DPS, and encounter designs err on the side of being too straightforward, making DPS more important than anything else.

Gaile, where are you in this darkest hour? =( Deliver us from the evil that is the Zerker QQ thread! ~.~

I’ve always defended that there’s no problem with offensive specs themselves and that the real problem is on how heavily scripted the content is, allowing extremely effective and not specially difficult to execute tactics to be developed and easily reproduced.
Since it seems quite obvious that we can’t have new content at the pace we can learn it and we also have the burden of the gold standard economy, the fix needs to come through a rework of how encounters are designed.
I will give an example of what I think could be an improved encounter:

Let’s imagine our group is advancing through some mordrem hive dungeon and we reach a point where the only way is downwards, jumping through a hole in the ground so there’s no way to go back.
We find ourselves on a medium sized room (smaller than those on vinewrath fights but larger than the breach ones) without LOS spots (2-3 destroyable columns could be interesting tough if properly developed). The only way out seems to be blocked by vines that might take a while to destroy.
An event indication which reads “repel the mordrem ambush” appears in our screen along with a progress bar and mordrem creatures strat coming out of the ground.

The fight would start with 3 mordrem waves, each mob of each wave spawning on a random location.
Some wave composition examples could be:

- Elite leeching thrasher (key monster) + Veteran tendril
- Elite teragriff (With an slightly improved AI that alternates between melee and ranged variants) + 2 regular menders
- Veteran ranged teragriff (key monster) + Veteran Melee teragriff
- Elite alpha wolf (with the AoE retaliation back, key monster) + Veteran troll
- Elite vile thrasher (key monster) + 2 regular wolves

Whenever the key monster from some wave is defeated, the progess bar is slightly filled and the next wave spawn is set on a 10 seconds timer.
Players succeed once they defeat 15 waves, with the 4th, 8th and 12th consisting on a single champion enemy (randomly selected from a pool of maybe 6-7 possibilities).

Is it possible to beat this fight with a usual offensive setup? Absolutely
Would that setup still be among the fastest ones on completing the event? Probably
Would that setup still be the meta setup for the content? Not necessarily

(Continues …)

Tree.3916:

The mods should just close this thread. It’s over.

Just because you can’t imagine a better system doesn’t mean the conversation should end.

Ranael.6423:

Einlanzer.1627:

Here’s a very quick & dirty example – say you have a boss that consists of something you’re trying to protect, and the boss periodically vanishes from the fight and summons a ton of minions. These minions die fast from any damage dealers but will attempt to swarm what you’re protecting for a certain period of time before clearing.

You could even call the thing you protect Hodgins ?

You could also call the boss “moundy the great”

Edit: Moundy the grave could work too.

Far more than efficiency is needed for some approach to become the norm: it needs to consist on easy enough tactics to be reproduced up to a high degree by evarage-ish skilled PUGs.
When this doesn’t happen, several metas usually appear, with dedicated guilds taking the optimal approach while PUGs resort on some suboptimal but easy to perform tactics.

For this kind of encounter it’s actually quite difficult to develop a fixed strategy. The fight is quite lengthy and the enemies we’re going to fight against are randomly selected, so there’s no way to tell how many of each defensive tool (condi clears, reflects, …) would be desirable and when should they be used.
On top of that, the fight involves several damage sources, making far more difficult to be aware of every threat we should avoid.

Control, something mordrem enemies are specially weak against, is probably the key to handle this fight confortably.
Control doesn’t depend on raw stats and most offensive specs can slot some amount of it without giving up too much damage. A group of experinced players on some kind of voice comm could beat this encounter by efficiently rotating their distributed control while on quite offensive specs.
When players are unable to play coordinatedly, however, controling tools can be wasted and damage spikes against piority targets can be lackluster. In this situation, more enemies can land their attacks, player active defenses might get exhausted and eventually damage happens.

I’ve no idea on how the playerbase would adapt to this fight.
Losing a player at the very beginning of the fight can easily snowball against the group so maybe being extremely squishy is not a good idea. On the other hand, being able to dispatch some enemies as fast as possible can be highly desirable (and finsihing the event faster always award a better reward/time ratio), so a high damage output is still a good thing. Maybe mixing some sturdy body that can pick up allies under heavy pressure isn’t a bad idea at all (as long as he can do something more, obviously, just being sturdy is not a great deal for a group).
A character heavily specced into control might also not be a bad idea, even if he gives up a good amount of damage for that. It would be clearly unefficient when compared to a good usage of distributed control, but it would lessen the need of coordination and that can be enough to make it worth.
Same goes for healing. If you expect things to get out of hand at some point, a bit of extra healing, even if it’s at the costs of damage, might not be a necessarily bad choice.

This could become even more true with the risk vs reward idea being properly handled, which in this case should AT LEAST force the group to restart the whole event on a wipe.

In short words, the fight is much more prone to mistakes and snowballing than most the current ones, and definitely much more about real time combat than about tactic execution.
We could move away from the current situation, where we know that some well executed tactic flawlessly works and including too much room for mistakes not only is uneeded but often goes against the tactic itself, to a completely different one where mistakes are much more likely to happen but far less punishing individually, so a larger amount of specs can be truly helpful on their own way.

Note: there would still be A LOT of plain BAD specs, doesn’t matter how much their users loves them, and a lot of complaints over the forums. There’s just no fix for the lack of common sense.

Capitol City.4856:

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

Alright, this is a good point, I should clarify. I said in a later post that I actually do switch out every now and then, but the skills I posted are what I also fall back to. Yes, I do have other utility skills, but they’re situational. I’m not actually changing my build by switching to them, I’m just temporarily making a switch for a current situation. That’s not a build change people, the build remains the same. And that’s not a solution, as I’ve said earlier, that’s throwing a blanket over the problem.

Then what change would be enough for you to consider that a change of build? Because for me there is a big difference between those two build.

Mesmer : Zerker gear + Scholar Runes + 6/4/0/0/4 traits + S/S & S/P weapons + 3 mantras against a single boss without need a reflect

or

Mesmer : Asssasin gear + Rangers Runes + 6/4/0/4/4 traits + S/S & S/F weapons + 2 mantras & feedback for a fight that need a lot of reflection.

That’s just two possibilities. And I still don’t understand. You don’t want to use other build that could help you go through a dungeon a bit faster. Why don’t you want to use other build that could run dungeon a little bit slower? Cause for only a couple second less you could have a GS build, you could use Staff as secondary (the phantasm is a hard hitter against some boss).You can create great build with about anything in the game. Hell I even help someone make a staff guardian build that is not that bad. You don’t use 100% optimized build so what does it change if you do it 95% of the speed or 90% of the speed? That open so much diversity, why don’t you want to use it? I understand that diversity is not that great if you want to be 100% optimized, but you already aren’t 100% optimized so what’s the big deal. There is sea of build that are super good even if they are not optimized.

Let’s make this quick. The two builds you just mentioned when asking how far we’d want to take build diversity are both damage builds. That’s the problem. Fin.

All builds in Guild Wars 2 are focused on dealing damage since CC and Support builds also deal damage.

There’s no “this build only supports and doesn’t deal damage” in GW2.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

OK NOW I understand your point. The thing is, its not build diversity the problem. The game was designed like this.

Everything is viable in the game so that you can complete all content with whatever build you have. You can complete it naked, in zerker full dps, in clerics full healing build, etc. That’s not a problem that’s a design choice that was made day 1 of the game. It a game that is casual friendly at its core. Maybe the design choice is not appealing to you, but that’s the game they decided to do. What you see as lacking build diversity is freedom in build. You can complete content with any build. With better build you will complete it faster, with less good build it will take longer.

Actually I partly agree with this. Build freedom is extremely prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because you can get away with so many builds. But what ends up happening is that for veteran players, we don’t want to run whatever muck build we can, we want to run efficiently. And that’s when damage becomes the only build. And as explained above, no other roles are needed once you’re good enough because your utility skills cover every other base.
You’re right though, it’s because it’s a casual game. If they did make it so that other builds were needed, people wouldn’t be able to run whatever they wanted because at the very least the few builds that are needed now are mandatory. The real problem is that mandatory roles conflicts with the whole Guild Wars 2 philosophy: play how you want.
So what really needs to happen is when Heart of Thorns comes out, new challenging content can be released for veteran players only, a hard mode for dungeons or maybe just new dungeons that are incredibly difficult, where more diverse builds are required. The casuals will of course still be given content for them to run, maybe an easy mode version of these difficult dungeons, and then both parties can be appeased. I suppose we can only hope.

Einlanzer.1627:

No, it’s not their design choice.

Are you arenanet developer?

Einlanzer.1627:

They envisioned playing the game however you want, meaning having a large variety of builds and play-styles that are all well supported by encounter design.

And that’s what you got.

Capitol City.4856:

Actually I partly agree with this. Build freedom is extremely prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because you can get away with so many builds. But what ends up happening is that for veteran players, we don’t want to run whatever muck build we can, we want to run efficiently. And that’s when damage becomes the only build. And as explained above, no other roles are needed once you’re good enough because your utility skills cover every other base.
You’re right though, it’s because it’s a casual game. If they did make it so that other builds were needed, people wouldn’t be able to run whatever they wanted because at the very least the few builds that are needed now are mandatory. The real problem is that mandatory roles conflicts with the whole Guild Wars 2 philosophy: play how you want.
So what really needs to happen is when Heart of Thorns comes out, new challenging content can be released for veteran players only, a hard mode for dungeons or maybe just new dungeons that are incredibly difficult, where more diverse builds are required. The casuals will of course still be given content for them to run, maybe an easy mode version of these difficult dungeons, and then both parties can be appeased. I suppose we can only hope.

See i have a problem with that sentence : ‘’But what ends up happening is that for veteran players, we don’t want to run whatever muck build we can, we want to run efficiently. And that’s when damage becomes the only build. ’’

You don’t sound like a vetaran player. Meta build (PLS STOP USING ZERKER BUILD, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. zerker isn’t even the best option is several situation and its a gear), are build that go for the fastest, more efficient run possible. DPS is a major component, but its not the only things. Lets make a little experiment. Which profession have the best dps? Elementalist. How many records run do you see with 5 elementalist? ZERO. (maybe 1, i saw that I think in a run of AC once). So why do we bring other profession in RECORD run if its only about DPS? Why Fractal Guardian build is a meta build? Its less dps than GS + Sw/F build. Why the warrior meta build is GS + Axe/Mace, GS only is better dps. Why a thief bring Shadow refuge or Smokecreen in dungeon, its not a dps skills same with dagger storm which is less dps than thieves guild. Why do mesmer bring feedback over a 3rd mantra, its a dps lost or why they bring portal in record runs, its less dps. Why so many ppl are using D/F elementalist in fractal, staff have more dps. Why the meta build of guardian don’t always have bane signet on, its more dps.

Can you tell me why all those choice made by ppl that go through dungeon twice as fast as you and make records runs? Could it be because support is a huge part of the meta build. No it can’t be, its all and only DPS right?

But sorry, I was mean for no reason and in the end we agree. We want the same as you with HoT. More difficult content that will push us farther. Most of us are either doing record run or solo dungeon to get that right now.

Capitol City.4856:

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

The lack of build diversity comes from the fact that every class can cover every necessity with 3 utility skills, without sacrificing damage. Damage should be a build in and of itself, as soon as we give damage the ability to do everything else, every other build becomes pointless. Every class runs every role simultaneously, so only one build per class is optimal. We all run the same few utility skills, rarely switching, because shaving off a few seconds is hardly worth switching your skills for. And if it is worth it, then we switch to those skills for that single battle. And then we switch back. That’s not build diversity, that’s switching utility skills temporarily…

You’re not asking for built diversity, you’re asking for the exact opposite. Right now any build, even sub-par ones can play the game easily – why? Because the skill floor for dungeons is really really low. There is a reason it was designed this way and that reason is to make the game accessible to everyone – including new people and casuals. Advanced players can play the content in a very efficient way by switching their get ups depending on situations (which you dont want to do because it’s not “needed” – this is where the “get gud” part comes in). This is a good thing as it makes all dungeon content all inclusive, and part of, if not THE core design philosophy of this game’s pve combat system.

You keep saying over and over how you’re aware that in certain situation different traits and utility may be better than what you usually use, yet you don’t switch because you don’t have to. So essentially you’re asking for encounters that are so hard that people HAVE to switch. So essentially you’re asking for less build diversity and you want to take the ability for people to play as they want and still have a decent result.

Last but not least, it is absolutely false that there is only one viable build per class, so please stop claiming that.