Guild Wars 2

Never seen anyone playing as support, condition… in dungeons, also everyone in gw2lfg asks for berserker gear, so it means that cond,support… builds arent viable?

Excluding WvW where Zerker is just as effective as a Bunker.

Yes.

The only ones asking for zerker builds are trying to do speed runs. If you want to do speed runs then by all means zerker is the way to go (assuming you are a decent player, otherwise you are a liability for when the content starts to become difficult).

If you want to do dungeons for the fun of it, then it makes absolutely no difference what your build is and any intelligent player knows that.

It’s hard to argue with the efficiency of a zerker build when doing speed runs.

I just hate playing games like work so I just ignore those groups. Consequently the zerker build people tend to want to stick together. I would just steer clear of them since they don’t want to play with anyone that doesn’t have a cookie cutter build like them anyway.

Honestly, just join an active guild and do guild runs or just make sure you aren’t joining a group that is looking for speed running. Leave the speed runs for speedrunners. That way everyone wins.

I play a condition thief most days, a support heal mantra mesmer, and a DPS/Condi longbow warrior. I have all 8 classes, but that’s just an example of my main 3. Berserker gear isn’t the only viable option, especially when you step outside the realm of PvE.

Dead mobs don’t attack.

Yes, under the current meta bezerker gear is the “best” option for PvE content.

In general, raw damage trumps anything else.

Trash mobs are easily dispatched so there is no reason to CC them. Although I’ve had decent success with a S/D thief’s stuns on silver mobs. Bosses generally have defiant, so you practically speaking cannot CC them.

And condition damage is pretty bad. At the maximum 25 stacks of bleeds do about 110 pts / bleed / second, or 2750 per second. Most zerker builds can double that against most opponents (although i don’t have the timing and haven’t stopwatched it.) You would need to stack a massive amount of conditions in order to match the damage output of a zerker.

One way ANet would adjust for this is to increase the armor of some monsters (since condition damage bypasses armor) but so far it’s all zerker all the time.

I asked a similar question last night in the Guardian forums about Support being viable, respected, and welcomed in groups.

All you see on that site are the elitists.

Even if I managed to join a group that didn’t care what my class/build was…are these support/healing builds even worth it? Are they more a detriment than suppliment? I know a nicely built guardian can keep a group up with some well timed heals, sure. But all in all, would the group have been better off with the guardian running a greatsword or something? The majority of dungeons rarely pose any challenge. The whole notion that explorables were supposed to be insanely difficult was nothing more than a company line that every mmo developer feeds its players to think that “Wow, a game dev finally created dungeon content that is actually difficult!!” Only, the paths are weak, there are only a handful of run paths(being fixed with future patches), etc.

Is it worth it to go more DPS, with some of your own survivability…vs pure support with little dps? Im not sure I see the need given the current difficulty of the majority of the dungeons.

Its sad. I wouldn’t mind building my guardian for support, or an ele(if I lvl her) to be heals/support.. or mesmer for condition/confusion/support.

The DPS builds ARE getting boring but it is truely all you need with self heals and a little bit of brain activity.

Azure Prower.8701:

Excluding WvW where Zerker is just as effective as a Bunker.

Yes.

I believe he was asking if other builds are viable. The answer would be yes. Every build is viable in GW2 to complete content. If I can finish FoTM 10 on my level 25 toon that has no zerker gear, then I’d say that any build is viable.

Zerker is just the fastest at killing things. All other builds are still viable.

condition builds don’t really work well in PVE because mobs and bosses have massive health pools. Support is given from traits and utility skills so they can still wear berserker gear. Unless you are talking about heal builds? Don’t bother imo, healing coefficients in this game simply isn’t worth it.

Flatbutter.8593:

Never seen anyone playing as support, condition… in dungeons, also everyone in gw2lfg asks for berserker gear, so it means that cond,support… builds arent viable?

Anything is viable, as far as PvE is concerned.

The way GW2 PvE works, control is almost useless (there is next to nothing worth interrupting) and support often isn’t as useful as just killing the enemy. In other words, DPS is king.

Berzeker is useful in areas in which most damage can be dodged, and with players who can time dodge well. An area with a lot of enemies doing small attacks and areas with many enemies using Immobilize aren’t good for Berzeker, but since most people use it to farm CoF…

Draknar.5748:

The only ones asking for zerker builds are trying to do speed runs. If you want to do speed runs then by all means zerker is the way to go (assuming you are a decent player, otherwise you are a liability for when the content starts to become difficult).

If you want to do dungeons for the fun of it, then it makes absolutely no difference what your build is and any intelligent player knows that.

It’s hard to argue with the efficiency of a zerker build when doing speed runs.

I just hate playing games like work so I just ignore those groups. Consequently the zerker build people tend to want to stick together. I would just steer clear of them since they don’t want to play with anyone that doesn’t have a cookie cutter build like them anyway.

Honestly, just join an active guild and do guild runs or just make sure you aren’t joining a group that is looking for speed running. Leave the speed runs for speedrunners. That way everyone wins.

I play zerk warrior, im happy to group with anyone, thou that said if i group with say someone in magic find etc i get huge agro as they don’t have the damage to share it, then i have to play 200% better whilst others have an easy time, i don’t complain it’s my choice of play after all.

I think this is perhaps another reason zerks do not like to play with anyone other than zerk, well that and speed runs.

All I can say is that a large portion of this game’s ‘health status’ hinges on their ability to improve and revamp the dungeon and dungeon reward system.

-Make fights difficult so that these types of builds ARE useful.
-Make dungeons so that you cannot speed run past every mob and glitch everything you see.
-Make dungeons worth completing to 100%
-Make trash mobs worth killing
-Make all paths “worth it” to run.

I know they are addressing some of these points. The solution rests in the reward system(how rewards are given out and the quality of said rewards), along with the actual dungeon mechanics themselves.

An ideal situation would be: A boss where if you aren’t in full zerker and some top-dawgg player…you will likely die. And by full zerker and top dog, I mean..you don’t get hit by ANYTHING. If you cannot pull off full zerker, then you NEED to build in some survivability into your build. So a mix of builds would be viable. Some condition removal from necro wells, or well timed heals from guardian/ele…things like that. Mo

You can complete every pve content with almost every gear. At first you may expect soldier gear to be easier because of more survivability. But you’ll find it hard in higher level content because you just don’t have the power to melt down mobs. And some fight it’s almost impossible to complete without a high dps. In cof p2, protecting Magg. Protecting you may think it’s best to have high armor gear. NO, it’s 10 times easier in zerker.

Everyone runs zerker in dungeons because it’s the fastest and most efficient if the players are skilled enough to stay alive. It’s not so much a problem with the gear being OP. It’s more a problem of the content being 95% tank/spank. They need to add more fight mechanics a la Lupicus, Imbued Shaman, Dredge Powersuit, etc. The Aetherblade dungeon was a step in the right direction (although it wasn’t perfect, imo).

Looking at the prefixes this game grants us, looking at the worth of offensive and defensive stats and looking at the supportive abilities this game brings us:

Zerker is the only real build in this game. All others are just a mix of damage and x.

Draknar.5748:

Azure Prower.8701:

Excluding WvW where Zerker is just as effective as a Bunker.

Yes.

I believe he was asking if other builds are viable. The answer would be yes. Every build is viable in GW2 to complete content. If I can finish FoTM 10 on my level 25 toon that has no zerker gear, then I’d say that any build is viable.

Zerker is just the fastest at killing things. All other builds are still viable.

In a world where every one wants only the best. Sub-par is not viable.

Draknar.5748:

The only ones asking for zerker builds are trying to do speed runs. If you want to do speed runs then by all means zerker is the way to go (assuming you are a decent player, otherwise you are a liability for when the content starts to become difficult).

That’s true. But even when they don’t ask for anything particular. Most of them are using zerker especially warriors. When you are dealing with mobs with over 60k hp everything else feel like a chore.

I would rather just be useful to my group. If Zerker is the only way to do that..it is unfortunate.

9/10 dungeon bosses fail Cesmode’s test of unique and interesting mechanics. I do think they rushed this part of the game because the molton dungeon, and it sounds like the aetherblade dungeon, were marvels compared to the launch-dungeons.

If they are CAPABLE of providing us things like the molten and aetherblade dungeons, but gave us what we currently have…they are either:

A) Lazy and have better things to do with their time than give us quality when the game launched
B) Incompetent in terms of skill set when the game launched
C) Forced to pump out sub-par dungeons due to time or resource constraints.
D) Actually really thought their dungeon set was good and unique. Take some notes from WoW dungeons and raids. True, still face roll but not nearly as tank and spank. They are unique fights, mostly…but the difficulty is still weak.

cesmode.4257:

An ideal situation would be: A boss where if you aren’t in full zerker and some top-dawgg player…you will likely die. And by full zerker and top dog, I mean..you don’t get hit by ANYTHING. If you cannot pull off full zerker, then you NEED to build in some survivability into your build. So a mix of builds would be viable. Some condition removal from necro wells, or well timed heals from guardian/ele…things like that. Mo

I would rather have something more extreme than that. I wrote about it here, but I would love to see a situation in which Berzeker is literally useless.

TooBz.3065:

Trash mobs are easily dispatched so there is no reason to CC them.

Please note also that a Zerk Warrior can as well CC mobs than a Soldier of Rabid Warrior. So why not have someone that can CC and still deal heavy DPS?

Thanks for replies.
Also i aggree with xenon, anet should add more fights like lupicus etc… where other non-popular builds would be viable as zerker pure damage builds.

Erasculio.2914:

cesmode.4257:

An ideal situation would be: A boss where if you aren’t in full zerker and some top-dawgg player…you will likely die. And by full zerker and top dog, I mean..you don’t get hit by ANYTHING. If you cannot pull off full zerker, then you NEED to build in some survivability into your build. So a mix of builds would be viable. Some condition removal from necro wells, or well timed heals from guardian/ele…things like that. Mo

I would rather have something more extreme than that. I wrote about it here, but I would love to see a situation in which Berzeker is literally useless.

Id prefer a situation where all builds are viable.

To add: More HP to mobs/bosses is not the answer. More armor to mobs/bosses is not the answer.

-Phases, whether at certain HP percentages or at random intervals, where the boss does a certain ability that we need to avoid, or do or activate something to mitigate damage…

-Kiting adds or the boss around the room
-Kiting the boss around the room so the boss steps on “debuff”/bad floors
-Condition removal…all classes have it. Its highly unlikely that youre entire group will not have one condition removal.
-The use of specific combo fields. My god the potential of this is insane. "Boss is more vulnerable to fire combo fields(blasts and projectiles)… Boss is more vulnerable to poison. Or, to make it easier for the group, stealth during a particular phase of the fight(Thief has two ways to do this for the entire group, mesmer has one).

Come on…Im a mere player and already these are better mechanics than most of your dungeons. I can go on and on about interesting things for fights. And if some of my ideas are used, I’ll be both pleased and upset(that I didnt rack in some royalities)

Theres no need for survivability when you have blinds, dodges and aegis while still using beserker gear. Support is somewhat needed but only in the form of a class which has access to various utility support like condition removal, aegis and projectile block/reflect. Healing the group isnt needed as everyone can self heal and group dmg mitigation like blinds and aegis keep people safe along with dodges. Condition damage is inferior to direct damage in pve for a number of reasons which I wont go into because im sure you’ve heard about them all. They are all over the forums.

So in short no matter whether you are speedrunning or playing casually with mixed classes or not, dps will always be the better option. Even tanky builds get overwhelmed if they cant kill the mobs fast enough. DPS builds are perfectly safe with proper use of damage mitigation mechanics. Ive seen more group wipes in pugs with terrible dps than pugs with bad players in beserker gear.

This is how it is with the current dungeon mechanics. Diversity could be increased with better mechanics and the problem would be pretty much avoided entirely.

stof.9341:

TooBz.3065:

Trash mobs are easily dispatched so there is no reason to CC them.

Please note also that a Zerk Warrior can as well CC mobs than a Soldier of Rabid Warrior. So why not have someone that can CC and still deal heavy DPS?

That wouldn’t be full zerker, but this is more in line with what Im saying. My warrior is in Knights gear, but utilizes the trait build and skill loadout of a zerker warrior. So my stats arent optimal, but I can take a few more punches.

My Thief, when running high lvl fractals, uses the highest DPS build I can muster via pistols. But I can dodge and dodge forever. I built in a bit of survivability.

Sad thing is, people just want DPS and little surv.

I’ve played as a tanky warrior (~2200 toughness and over 30K HP), I’ve played as a protection generating heal spamming Guardian and I’ve played as an immortal Mesmer with 2000+ toughness.

But ssssssh… Dont tell anyone. Only berserkers do dungeons. If they realize how many of us play other builds, they’re gonna get miffed. Dont want that. Let them live in their little imaginary world where everyone ping ruby gear that they have in the ba… I mean that they of course wear all the time.

cesmode.4257:

To add: More HP to mobs/bosses is not the answer. More armor to mobs/bosses is not the answer.

-Phases, whether at certain HP percentages or at random intervals, where the boss does a certain ability that we need to avoid, or do or activate something to mitigate damage…

-Kiting adds or the boss around the room
-Kiting the boss around the room so the boss steps on “debuff”/bad floors
-Condition removal…all classes have it. Its highly unlikely that youre entire group will not have one condition removal.
-The use of specific combo fields. My god the potential of this is insane. "Boss is more vulnerable to fire combo fields(blasts and projectiles)… Boss is more vulnerable to poison. Or, to make it easier for the group, stealth during a particular phase of the fight(Thief has two ways to do this for the entire group, mesmer has one).

Come on…Im a mere player and already these are better mechanics than most of your dungeons. I can go on and on about interesting things for fights. And if some of my ideas are used, I’ll be both pleased and upset(that I didnt rack in some royalities)

I think a-net are to busy putting out trash content atm an example would be the new mini dungeon thing, what a bore lol

Thou i agree with you on the mechanics the devs should put some time into it instead of /copy /paste jps.

On my guardian, I carry Soldier’s, Knight’s, and Berserker’s gear. I find I rarely need anything other than Berserker’s. If I want to run as “support,” I equip my hammer.

The biggest problem is that defensive and/or healing gear won’t get you through the big damage attacks. To survive those, you need to dodge, run away, get out of the red circle, etc. You can do all that in Berserker’s gear.

As was stated above, DPS is king in this game.

You can play support, just do it with knights or zero gear. See, in pvp that gear makes sense if you want to outlast your enemies. But in pve, there is no outlasting. Bosses hit too hard and have too much health.

Pve is practice for pvp and everyone should strive towards as much glass as they can take, of course, depending on the dungeon (Aretreat might be one), the group will be heavily penalized for not playing perfectly while in full zerker.

To me, zerk means high risk high reward.

mesme.5028:

Draknar.5748:

The only ones asking for zerker builds are trying to do speed runs. If you want to do speed runs then by all means zerker is the way to go (assuming you are a decent player, otherwise you are a liability for when the content starts to become difficult).

If you want to do dungeons for the fun of it, then it makes absolutely no difference what your build is and any intelligent player knows that.

It’s hard to argue with the efficiency of a zerker build when doing speed runs.

I just hate playing games like work so I just ignore those groups. Consequently the zerker build people tend to want to stick together. I would just steer clear of them since they don’t want to play with anyone that doesn’t have a cookie cutter build like them anyway.

Honestly, just join an active guild and do guild runs or just make sure you aren’t joining a group that is looking for speed running. Leave the speed runs for speedrunners. That way everyone wins.

I play zerk warrior, im happy to group with anyone, thou that said if i group with say someone in magic find etc i get huge agro as they don’t have the damage to share it, then i have to play 200% better whilst others have an easy time, i don’t complain it’s my choice of play after all.

I think this is perhaps another reason zerks do not like to play with anyone other than zerk, well that and speed runs.

Actually, i had a similar experience when I first got my warrior up to 80, but in a slightly different way. I was running a full set of knights gear with soldiers runes for WvW. I entered a dungeon with a bunch of zerkers and EVERYTHING zeroed in on me. I went down in about 3 seconds.

I would say its a symptom of the games design of not having real support, tank, or healing classes. Only thing that really mattes is burst DPS in most situations.

kelman.9451:

I would say its a symptom of the games design of not having real support, tank, or healing classes. Only thing that really mattes is burst DPS in most situations.

I agree with your first sentence that the absence of holy trinity and the ability to heal yourself/dodge, removes a lot of the need to bring someone that is less DPS and more support. Sad, but true. As much as I want this game to work without holy trinity, and I have gotten into it with people on this forum about the very subject, it just might not be feasable to design a game with dungeons that aren’t either reliant on burst DPS or some gimmick mechanic.

Even as berserker I can take one or two hits before I dodge out, and heal.

As many said, DPS is king. Sad and unfortunate. If you are decent enough of a group, you can do any content with pure dps and pure zerker. This is a huge drawback to the lack of trinity…

For the record, the current meta disagrees with most of this post. If you’re interested only in grouping with extremely good players or running dungeons as fast as possible, feel free to go with the meta builds.

For most dungeon groups there are other viable builds than pure damage. My non-meta runs are often smoother than my meta runs. If you’re DnT or LOD, or otherwise in a really hardcore group, go ahead and put everyone in full zerker gear – it works smoothly if the whole team is really good. If you’re doing more casual runs and aiming for smooth runs rather than fast runs, there are other good party builds. This becomes more the case the less perfect the rest of your group is.

This doesn’t mean every build is good, or that every armor type is good for every build – far from it (although I’m sure you could complete every dungeon with good players in random builds).

There are three main aspects to dungeon encounters:
– dealing damage as a group
– not dying as a group
– encounter-specific mechanics

The third aspect (things like bringing pulls/immobilize on the first boss in the grawl fractal) seems to mostly come from utility selection rather than build. If everyone is good enough, the second aspect can become irrelevant, which is why people claim DPS gear is always the best.

I think that long-term you’ll want to focus your build on one or both of the first two aspects. This means choosing group damage or group survivability over individual damage or individual damage. Choosing something like P/V/T in most situations isn’t a great long-term choice because it focuses only on your survivability, which is another reason a lot of players bash defensive gear. However, group survivability through boons such as protection/aegis, or heals through dodges/symbols/mace can be useful to the whole group especially if your group isn’t perfect.

I’d say start out playing dungeons how you’re comfortable playing them, and over time a lot of players gravitate towards berserker gear (more players have always preferred the DPS role in MMOs, so this wouldn’t be surprising even if there were a more optimal group setup). If/when you feel that, go for it; having multiple gear sets and knowing when to switch between them can be really useful.

@DelOnasi: You drank too much meta coolaid.

cesmode.4257:

@DelOnasi: You drank too much meta coolaid.

Haha yikes! I’m generally pretty anti-meta and I’m surprised the post didn’t come off that way. Well at least I might not get assaulted on the forums for it then.

I play as a support guardian pretty much everywhere. I make a few tweaks depending on what I’m doing or the fight that’s coming up but my build largely remains the same. It’s absolutely viable.

I’ve said this many times on this forum and tend to get bashed for it (apparently my 1500 hours as a guardian with 90% of that being support means nothing) but raw damage isn’t everything. There are multiple factors that come together that determine whether a group is good. And I think DelOnasi managed to sum those up fairly well.

I don’t think the word “gimmick” need be thrown around with mechanics so much. The way Imbued Shaman works, for example, is a great step in the right direction. You need some sort control/support abilities to reflect, block, or otherwise mitigate the adds projectiles. There should be more encounters where certain types of non-dps skills are important. But I don’t think it should be called a gimmick. It’s just a part of the encounter you have to contend with which breaks up the monotony of tank/spank.

Bottom line is, while you can be successful using any gear, beserker gear is ultimately the best.

As such, bringing anything other than zerker gear to a dungeon or party hinders your ability to help the party and you are being a leech. Therefore, when they finally do away with MF gear they should also do away with every other type of gear except beserker.

Bringing a less than optimal build to a party is not in the spirit of cooperativeness and not the type of gameplay that is encouraged in this game.

Beserker gear for everyone!

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic→ More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight→ More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks→ Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic-> More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight-> More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks-> Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

This. Especially the line I bolded, above.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Bottom line is, while you can be successful using any gear, beserker gear is ultimately the best.

Yes, berseker gear is ultimately the best…just for doing damage. It’s terrible for overall group survivability. I’m not saying it’s bad to have people in berserker gear. It’s great for group damage. But having everyone in that generally doesn’t work out too well.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic-> More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight-> More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks-> Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

Yes, killing stuff faster reduces the amount of damage the group takes. But guess what? Having a support character in the group can also reduce the amount of damage the group takes while actually increasing the amount of damage they do and how much they heal. There are very few situations where that wouldn’t be an advantage.

I’ve said this over and over again but DPS isn’t the only thing that matters in this game. Maybe that’s all that matters in the elite groups that are so kitten they never ever die. But for the majority of players out there (even many really good ones), it’s a limited and ultimately flawed viewpoint. More damage does not necessarily mean a group is more effective.

Zedd.8239:

I play as a support guardian pretty much everywhere. I make a few tweaks depending on what I’m doing or the fight that’s coming up but my build largely remains the same. It’s absolutely viable.

I’ve said this many times on this forum and tend to get bashed for it (apparently my 1500 hours as a guardian with 90% of that being support means nothing) but raw damage isn’t everything. There are multiple factors that come together that determine whether a group is good. And I think DelOnasi managed to sum those up fairly well.

Raw damage is everything. I have hundreds of hours on my guard, and if I go full glass I still have access to plenty of support for my team without having to use junk non-zerker gear.

I think the Lupi speed kills are pretty much evidence of damage being everything, to the point it even lets you skip phases of a fight in that case.

All gear is viable, but there’s not a compelling argument to use any other than Berserker in PvE. Viable is a pretty loose term. You can complete content with any gear, but no gear can compete with Berserker in terms of efficiency.

as a Mesmer i play zerker in every aspect in this game. I run zerker in:
-Pve
-Dungeons
-Spvp
-FOTm
-WVW

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic-> More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight-> More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks-> Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

+1. You hit the nail on the head.

I also think they should either remove the defiant mechanic or replace it with something else. It makes CC trivial.

CrossFire.8037:

+1. You hit the nail on the head.

I also think they should either remove the defiant mechanic or replace it with something else. It makes CC trivial.

And yet, it won’t make Zerk gear less desirable because as I said, you CC as well in Zerk gear than in Soldier or Knight or whatever else.

I fact, making it easier to CC bosses will make Zerk gear even more desirable because the survivability issues diminish.

colesy.8490:

Raw damage is everything. I have hundreds of hours on my guard, and if I go full glass I still have access to plenty of support for my team without having to use junk non-zerker gear.

Good for you. I have about 1500 hours on my guardian. That time has been spent in all aspects of the game (general PvE, dungeons, fractals, sPvp, WvW). I’m hardly some inexperienced noob that doesn’t know how to play the game.

If I go glass cannon I can definitely do more damage and still have access to many of my support skills. That isn’t exactly a profound observation. It’s how the class works.

I’m also significantly weaker in terms of the amount of damage I can take and how much I can heal my group. I’m still highly effective and beneficial to the group if I use that “junk non-zerker gear.”

I think the Lupi speed kills are pretty much evidence of damage being everything, to the point it even lets you skip phases of a fight in that case.

Using speed killing as an example of damage being everything is laughable. Of course damage is everything if you’re trying to kill something as fast as possible.

DelOnasi.6051:

cesmode.4257:

@DelOnasi: You drank too much meta coolaid.

Haha yikes! I’m generally pretty anti-meta and I’m surprised the post didn’t come off that way. Well at least I might not get assaulted on the forums for it then.

TBH, Ive sort of lost what the term ‘meta’ even means anymore. No offense to your post haha, but it is used in such a wide array of thought, I dont even know where to begin. Is it the “best things to do”, “theory crafting..”Im so lost lol.

I’m also significantly weaker in terms of the amount of damage I can take

Dodge. Aegis. Reflects.

and how much I can heal my group.

Or they can dodge, you can give them aegis, you or they can use reflects and they all have access to their own burst heal if they drop low enough. Healing power is bad.

I’m still highly effective and beneficial to the group if I use that “junk non-zerker gear.”

No, you’re not “highly effective”.

Using speed killing as an example of damage being everything is laughable. Of course damage is everything if you’re trying to kill something as fast as possible.

And why would you not try to kill something as fast as possible? Whether you’re in berserker or cleric, why would you not be trying to kill something as quickly as you can?

cesmode.4257:

TBH, Ive sort of lost what the term ‘meta’ even means anymore. No offense to your post haha, but it is used in such a wide array of thought, I dont even know where to begin. Is it the “best things to do”, “theory crafting..”Im so lost lol.

Let’s confuse things a little more.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meta?show=1&t=1374688627