Guild Wars 2

Zerker not that good?.. what?

Are we playing the same game?

Lifestealer.4910:

Zerker not that good?.. what?

Are we playing the same game?

yup. Just in different parties and preffering different types of content.

Lately, I’ve been participating in the Tequatl event a lot more, and it’s caused me to think about why I’m bringing Berserker gear to this boss, and most other world bosses. A lot of world bosses can’t be critically hit at all, which means two thirds of my stats are literally dead weight. Precision means nothing, as the crit chance is a flat 0%. Ferocity means nothing, as without crits there is no damage boost. And in the case of Tequatl, unless I’m dodging everything perfectly I’ll probably wind up on the ground a lot more than I should be.

So I’ve been taking Power, Toughness, and Vitality on the bulk of my gear for such events. Power still works as intended. The Toughness and Vitality just keep me alive more often, while others flounder around on the dirt. And instead of “on crit” sigils on my weapons, I switch over to an alternate piece that has Sigil of Force (flat 5% damage increase), or an on-hit mechanic of some kind. MUCH better results.

Then I thought: “wait a minute, what if I took some modified version of this into a dungeon?” Well, I played around a bit with it, keeping the PVT armor but switching my traits and weapons to adjust for the fact that critical hits are still functional. I queued for CoF1, the typical lazy player’s “fast” dungeon — and there was no real change in efficiency or completion time compared to my old zerker build. Its was basically the same as with a lot of PUGs: a few people screw up and die, but we get through it in 10-15 minutes or so. It’s CoF. It’s no big deal. The stakes are low, and we muscle through it. Except, rather than be the glass cannon guy who winds up on the floor when things get hairy, now I’m the one who survives and completes the room while others are fallen.

I can’t stress this enough: “speed runs” are what organized pre-made groups perform as a cooperative team, with voice communication and coordinated efforts. They all know the workings of the dungeon — and each other’s classes/builds — perfectly. That means they can afford to go “glass cannon” and put out a perfect performance, completing the content in record time, as a kind of sport. LFG is not an appropriate environment for that. I’ve been through the typical “CoF Path 1” run countless times, and I know darn well that a successful, speedy run is more about people surviving and adapting to problems than maximizing their own personal DPS. Even if the failure is not your fault, it’s far better to be able to bear the brunt of the blows as a result and try to power though a tough situation, than to wipe and start screaming at the “noobs” for not dodging at the right moment. You have to make your choices: do you want to yell at strangers on the internet, or do you want to complete the dungeon and get on with your life?

Berserker gear is fine, for situations that are completely optimal and organized, or for low-level no-brainer situations where you’re compeltely comfortable and there is zero risk. Anything beyond that, and you are taking a serious risk. Always keep in mind that many world bosses cannot be critically hit at all, so more often than not Berserkers are more of a liability than a benefit. Plus, doing PvP or WvW as zerk will lead to serious problems unless you really know what you’re doing and are incredibly lucky.

I used to be caught up in the romance of the “zerker meta,” and how expediently it seemed to get things done. Well, that’s fine for farming open-world, non-boss events and killing random easy mobs — but when things get serious, a zerker build will drop you like a ton of bricks, and may not even increase your damage for all the trouble.

I still take berserker to teq because it still has POWER as the main stat so it does as much damage as PvT and everything is easy as kitten to dodge anyways, no reason for me to waste money on other gear just for a fight when something else works just as well. Also people forget to mention that the battery sections where you defend is better to have beserkers, so i would say fighting teq is like doing a dungen, do as much damage while dodge stuff. Again no need to bring pvt at all.

Oh Mirta, I almost don’t know where to begin, but let’s do our best here.

Mirta.5029:

meta is easy to follow, that’s about it, not to mention it does change from time to time. For example, 8 months ago Phallanx wasn’t set in stone as a requirement and greatsword was the warrior’s weapon of choice.

Oh dear.

1) Phalanx Strength is not a requirement now, it only makes sense in parties that can’t maintain 25 might without it. Usually that means the party doesn’t have a S/F LH Ele.
2) Of course it wasn’t a requirement 8 months ago, the trait was introduced in April 2014, so it’s only 10 months old. It takes a bit for people to learn the new meta. Also, it’s not a requirement now, so you’re doubly wrong.
3) Before PS, Greatsword was one weapon of choice, with Axe/Mace being the other set for vuln stacking. There was also an Axe camping build which was roughly comparable, I think? In Phalanx Strength builds, you tend to camp GS even more thanks to Forceful Greatsword. You seem to imply the opposite.

You do not seem to understand Phalanx Strength builds or the current Warrior meta.

Mirta.5029:

While 100 blades is indeed the most damaging single ability in game

Not even remotely true. The number might be high, but only because it’s a long channel. Ice Storm still probably wins if we don’t worry about the “per second” part of “DPS” though.

Mirta.5029:

however you do better DPS by chaining many abilities rather than just spamming that one.

The only class in this game that can spam abilities is Thief. Everybody else has cooldowns. So yes, DPS suffers if you only use a single ability combined with autoattacks. That’s beyond silly to mention. It’s worth saying, though, that some abilities are a DPS loss compared to autoattacks, something the VAST majority of the playerbase misses.

Mirta.5029:

barely anyone takes time to look at it and build their own as they’re told to just run zerker. Rather barely anyone from the PVE crowd takes a look there. Spvp is pretty varied and WvW has its own standards.

If PvE players understood the game better, I’d be more supportive of them coming up with builds. Sadly, in your post, you’ve illustrated the exact reason why meta builds are important. Players, in general, have a very poor grasp of how the game mechanics work. There’s nothing wrong with looking at the best of the best and attempting to mimic their ideas.

To make healing power more useful, I propose a solution.

Nerf ressing, buff healing power gear. Don’t hit the reply button yet.

The first resser on a downed player will see no change. The second resser, however, will see change. The second resser will receive a nerf of 50% ressing through heals. The third resser will get a 50% more nerf after the second, and the fourth recieve a 50% more nerf.

So first resser have 100% effectiveness.
So second resser have 50% effectiveness.
So third resser have 25% effectiveness.
So fourth resser have 12.5% effectiveness.

In order to get better res effectiveness, you need healing power. This would be buffed more.

This won’t make zerker groups useless because they are centered around killing the boss before anyone gets down. But it lets healing power be useful as a stat to less skilled pugs. Toughness or vit may not be useful, but in order to res someone up under heavy pressure, toughness and/or vitality is needed.

Well…

Regarding stats I think everything has been said now… The classic battle between “zerk = meta” and “anything is viable in PvE” has been here and chewed to a pulp and been spat out just to be rechewed again… a few dozen times.

Problem is though some organized play makes zerk preferable. But people forget we also have solo play, and while you can probably do anything solo with your zerk ele I must say I had some rough times using my ele solo in LS s2 with it’s full zerk build. Okay if you cast your MS and do not get interrupted you melt everything…. But… Some things just do not work well on a staff ele. So I used D/D for some.

Changing from staff to D/D is a change of builds. Even adding a ranged weapon to a warrior is a change of builds.. As all meta builds are melee only, even to an eextent where a ranger carries a LB with 1200 or even 1500 potential range into melee for vulnerability stack.

While Meta is nice I sometimes change builds, 6/5/0/0/3 for basic warrior dps can be replaced by 6/4/0/0/4 if you have more focus on axe… or 4/4/0/6/0 or 0/5/0/6/3 for Phalanx builds, but I play shout heal hammer sometimes in EXP dungeons just for fun which is a 0/0/5/6/3 or other hammer variants (4/0/6/0/4) hammer&axe/mace just because it’s possible.

Elementalist is also more ten just 6/2/2/2/2 or 6/2/0/2/4 for DPS or 0/2/0/6/6 support.

Stats are a choice for a build:
weapons, with certain weapons come certain stats.

S/S warrior could run 6/5/0/0/3 np. It can also run 2/6/0/4/2 (bit more utility) or 0/6/5/0/3(bit tanky adrenal health, cleansing ire) it’s all completely non meta, and it honestly doesn’t matter. If you’ve done AC 600+ full runs you will know good ol’ zerk is fastest, I run dungeon build zerk-meta 95% of the time, but I have ran it with all my characters with so many different builds, with condition setups in zerk groups with healing builds

(Yes, full glass healing is possible….now with even more healing to allies, (+25% from aquatic benevolence, sigil of benevolenceo or life (well if you’re mad enough, i still prefer bloodlust), runes of the monk and rice balls…. for a 1.25*1.1*1.1*1.125 max addition to your “healing build zealot monk 0/2/0/6/6 staff ele” for a whopping 70% added to your staff healing or nomads/cleric’s “commnader” guard mace shield build (0/0/6/6/2) with a nice 1.1*1.1*1.125 for 36% healing gain….) Well trust me your friends will not die on you…. And no it’s no max dmg build, not by far, but it allows others to do whatever the -bleep- they think of…. as long as they do not fan out.) I do not think you will come close to the contents speed record (nomads/clericsmace shield does about 15% of the dps of a zerk meta guard and staff healer ele will be about 40% of a full zerk ele, but they are nice to faceroll EVERYthing with a beer and some laughs… As long as you’re not in a hurry)

We had a evening in one of my former guilds where we rolled old armors and builds (1st year) and we had clerics warriors, knights builds, cavalier/zerk builds and so on. This was nice, showing all builds are perfectly viable, just when you enter a zerk party just make sure you are glass (which means no TOUGHNESS!)

Thaddeus.4891:

Test.8734:

Which is proof of how the vast majority of the game is way too easy.

And who is arguing that the game is too hard? We all know that the game is too easy and we all want harder content.

Then don’t argue about build variety, since the hard the content gets the less builds
will be viable. In the end it will even lead to the point where not only builds but
also classes are set in stone .. like for example EQ2 raids where you have no chance
to succeed without a brigand.

The more you want to min-max stuff, the less options are left.

runeblade.7514:

To make healing power more useful, I propose a solution.

Nerf ressing, buff healing power gear. Don’t hit the reply button yet.

The first resser on a downed player will see no change. The second resser, however, will see change. The second resser will receive a nerf of 50% ressing through heals. The third resser will get a 50% more nerf after the second, and the fourth recieve a 50% more nerf.

So first resser have 100% effectiveness.
So second resser have 50% effectiveness.
So third resser have 25% effectiveness.
So fourth resser have 12.5% effectiveness.

In order to get better res effectiveness, you need healing power. This would be buffed more.

This won’t make zerker groups useless because they are centered around killing the boss before anyone gets down. But it lets healing power be useful as a stat to less skilled pugs. Toughness or vit may not be useful, but in order to res someone up under heavy pressure, toughness and/or vitality is needed.

And make that change in pvp as well, I’m tired of everyone getting up in seconds.

timmyf.1490:

1) Phalanx Strength is not a requirement now, it only makes sense in parties that can’t maintain 25 might without it. Usually that means the party doesn’t have a S/F LH Ele.
2) Of course it wasn’t a requirement 8 months ago, the trait was introduced in April 2014, so it’s only 10 months old. It takes a bit for people to learn the new meta. Also, it’s not a requirement now, so you’re doubly wrong.

All the zerker dungeons that I’ve seen recently, ALL of them had one phalanx warrior. It made its way into the meta and is staying there. And the only place that I’ve seen people even mention an ele was level 40+ fractals and ascalon. Ele is not the meta in EU.

timmyf.1490:

3) Before PS, Greatsword was one weapon of choice, with Axe/Mace being the other set for vuln stacking. There was also an Axe camping build which was roughly comparable, I think? In Phalanx Strength builds, you tend to camp GS even more thanks to Forceful Greatsword. You seem to imply the opposite.

but you only take one Phalanx. Any more damages your DPS. Before Phalanx greatsword was the weapon of choice of every warrior. It was the meta.

timmyf.1490:

The only class in this game that can spam abilities is Thief. Everybody else has cooldowns. So yes, DPS suffers if you only use a single ability combined with autoattacks.

Staff or scepter ele (having a choice of 20 different buttons you’re pretty much working without CDs as you’re just rotating trough your strongest abilities) and bomb engi (place a bomb when you dodge, place a bomb when you crit, place a big bomb when it’s off cooldown, you’re just rotating trough stupid amount of bombs) would be only a few examples of spammy builds.

timmyf.1490:

If PvE players understood the game better, I’d be more supportive of them coming up with builds. Sadly, in your post, you’ve illustrated the exact reason why meta builds are important. Players, in general, have a very poor grasp of how the game mechanics work. There’s nothing wrong with looking at the best of the best and attempting to mimic their ideas.

They don’t mimic it well, meaning that with a no brain power needed meta majority of players are performing worse than without it.

I agree, there a not enough viable builds for most classes when it comes to pve and dungeons. Other games have more viable specs per class which all feel different. Since the devs forgot about this part of the game and focused mostly on PVP and “play once and forget content” aka LS my workaround has been to play most gamemodes GW2 has to offer. That way there are much more viable and fun builds to explore.

Mirta.5029:

timmyf.1490:

1) Phalanx Strength is not a requirement now, it only makes sense in parties that can’t maintain 25 might without it. Usually that means the party doesn’t have a S/F LH Ele.
2) Of course it wasn’t a requirement 8 months ago, the trait was introduced in April 2014, so it’s only 10 months old. It takes a bit for people to learn the new meta. Also, it’s not a requirement now, so you’re doubly wrong.

All the zerker dungeons that I’ve seen recently, ALL of them had one phalanx warrior. It made its way into the meta and is staying there. And the only place that I’ve seen people even mention an ele was level 40+ fractals and ascalon. Ele is not the meta in EU.

timmyf.1490:

3) Before PS, Greatsword was one weapon of choice, with Axe/Mace being the other set for vuln stacking. There was also an Axe camping build which was roughly comparable, I think? In Phalanx Strength builds, you tend to camp GS even more thanks to Forceful Greatsword. You seem to imply the opposite.

but you only take one Phalanx. Any more damages your DPS. Before Phalanx greatsword was the weapon of choice of every warrior. It was the meta.

timmyf.1490:

The only class in this game that can spam abilities is Thief. Everybody else has cooldowns. So yes, DPS suffers if you only use a single ability combined with autoattacks.

Staff or scepter ele (having a choice of 20 different buttons you’re pretty much working without CDs as you’re just rotating trough your strongest abilities) and bomb engi (place a bomb when you dodge, place a bomb when you crit, place a big bomb when it’s off cooldown, you’re just rotating trough stupid amount of bombs) would be only a few examples of spammy builds.

timmyf.1490:

If PvE players understood the game better, I’d be more supportive of them coming up with builds. Sadly, in your post, you’ve illustrated the exact reason why meta builds are important. Players, in general, have a very poor grasp of how the game mechanics work. There’s nothing wrong with looking at the best of the best and attempting to mimic their ideas.

They don’t mimic it well, meaning that with a no brain power needed meta majority of players are performing worse than without it.

The only reason phalanx warrior made into meta now is because of the dps nerf to warriors gs skills. They do pitiful damage no matter which build they use so the meta switched for them into a banner + alternate might bot.

Mirta.5029:

All the zerker dungeons that I’ve seen recently, ALL of them had one phalanx warrior. It made its way into the meta and is staying there. And the only place that I’ve seen people even mention an ele was level 40+ fractals and ascalon. Ele is not the meta in EU.

I haven’t met any phalanx warrior for 3 months now and every of my dungeon runs have an ele. Or two. Who are you to tell me what’s the meta in EU?

Mirta.5029:

but you only take one Phalanx. Any more damages your DPS. Before Phalanx greatsword was the weapon of choice of every warrior. It was the meta.

No. Before the phalanx there was axe/mace + gs build where you switched to gs only for 100b and then went back to axe/mace. There was one pure gs build but after testing it was quickly scrapped from the board.

Mirta.5029:

Staff or scepter ele (having a choice of 20 different buttons you’re pretty much working without CDs as you’re just rotating trough your strongest abilities) and bomb engi (place a bomb when you dodge, place a bomb when you crit, place a big bomb when it’s off cooldown, you’re just rotating trough stupid amount of bombs) would be only a few examples of spammy builds.

Those are hardly spam examples.

Mirta.5029:

They don’t mimic it well, meaning that with a no brain power needed meta majority of players are performing worse than without it.

This is exactly the point. People don’t think, don’t learn the gameplay, they see a guy on YouTube and try to play the same. But they don’t care how to rotate, what to evade, when to cast aegis etc. This is why we have meta players and wannabe meta pugs that play zerker but don’t know why.

Now go and count all the scrubs still corner stacking even though fgs was nerfed. Pugs don’t think.

Mirta.5029:

How about, there are other builds besides Zerker and people that are Elite, but not Elitists, tend to run those?

Are you seriously calling yourself “Elite”?

Mirta.5029:

where are you getting stats from? I know quite a few MMOs that died for catering only to PVE and leaving PvP broken. PvP is just as big of a part of this game as PVE is.

So are you saying that PvP has as many players as PvE? To which I ask, “where are you getting stats from”?

segman.3560:

I haven’t met any phalanx warrior for 3 months now and every of my dungeon runs have an ele. Or two. Who are you to tell me what’s the meta in EU?

and I haven’t seen a single LFG asking for an ele outside of high level fractals and ascalon. So who are you to tell me what’s the meta in the EU?

segman.3560:

No. Before the phalanx there was axe/mace + gs build where you switched to gs only for 100b and then went back to axe/mace. There was one pure gs build but after testing it was quickly scrapped from the board.

Yet all the pugs I’ve seen ran GS only. Making it the meta.

segman.3560:

Those are hardly spam examples.

how so? You never resort to auto attacks. According to you everyone has CDs and therefore resorts to auto attacking. Many builds never do.

segman.3560:

Now go and count all the scrubs still corner stacking even though fgs was nerfed. Pugs don’t think.

depends on the dungeon. Stacking in CoE for example servers the purpose of getting people out of crystals. Stacking against a million of adds allows people in melee range to hit all at once instead of running around like headless chickens.

Test.8734:

So are you saying that PvP has as many players as PvE? To which I ask, “where are you getting stats from”?

No. I’ve said that I’ve seen MMOs die for not catering or caring about their PvP at all and that both parts of the game are therefore equally important. You still didn’t provide your stats as to why you think PVE players outnumber PVXers and sole PVPers.

Test.8734:

Are you seriously calling yourself “Elite”?

Now where did I ever say that?

The combat system is fundamentally imbalanced.

Power VS condition damage blance is never there. Power damage has 3 damage stats that scale off each other multiplicatively, they have all the % based damage boosts and vuln as vell. Conditions have one stat (and precision condition procs are not a thing despite what anet think), are unaffected by % boosts or vuln and are capped as well.

Tevesh.1265:

The combat system is fundamentally imbalanced.

Power VS condition damage blance is never there. Power damage has 3 damage stats that scale off each other multiplicatively, they have all the % based damage boosts and vuln as vell. Conditions have one stat (and precision condition procs are not a thing despite what anet think), are unaffected by % boosts or vuln and are capped as well.

Tell me why conditions work in pvp then.

Mirta.5029:

Test.8734:

So are you saying that PvP has as many players as PvE? To which I ask, “where are you getting stats from”?

No. I’ve said that I’ve seen MMOs die for not catering or caring about their PvP at all and that both parts of the game are therefore equally important.

Yeah, that’s completely nonsensical.

It’s obvious that PvE is more important than PvP.

Don’t believe me? So say: what do you think cost more money? PvP with its couple maps and little else? Or PvE, with dozen maps, all the voice acting, the storyline that required a team to be mantained, all the writing, and so on?

Mirta.5029:

Test.8734:

Are you seriously calling yourself “Elite”?

Now where did I ever say that?

You forgot your own post, didn’t you?

rotten.9753:

Tevesh.1265:

The combat system is fundamentally imbalanced.

Power VS condition damage blance is never there. Power damage has 3 damage stats that scale off each other multiplicatively, they have all the % based damage boosts and vuln as vell. Conditions have one stat (and precision condition procs are not a thing despite what anet think), are unaffected by % boosts or vuln and are capped as well.

Tell me why conditions work in pvp then.

We are not fighting one single hp sponge player. They are multiple of them capable of taking care of their own and are not all alike. What current pve has multiple bosses and not 1 boss+9 million trash mobs??

Test.8734:

Yeah, that’s completely nonsensical.

It’s obvious that PvE is more important than PvP.

Don’t believe me? So say: what do you think cost more money? PvP with its couple maps and little else? Or PvE, with dozen maps, all the voice acting, the storyline that required a team to be mantained, all the writing, and so on?

PVE needs more maintaining, however imbalanced PVP is how you drive your customers away. When Wildstar started having problems PVP side, their PVE population plummeted into oblivion too. Hence pretty much all the drops up until the next year are straining to get the PvP population back in shape. However can they recover or will they shut down is the question. And yes, it also had people like you claiming that oh PvP population sums up to nothing! Well majority of people tend to play PvX. Simply because no matter how many computer generated enemies you’re going to fill the game with, it will be cleared sooner or later. When said content is cleared PvP tends to keep the players staying as it’s an environment completely dependent on your and other player skill.

And now once again, do you have the statistics of what people play or not? Or do you simply deny the need for a whole section of the game because of a personal bias?

Test.8734:

You forgot your own post, didn’t you?

nope. Quote me where I say that I’m talking about me.

1)In spvp basically all stats (stats, not stat combinations) are usefull.

2)In wvw zerg condition dmg is almost useless due to -40% condi food+hoelbrak (-20%) + purging flames+shouts+ warhorn converting/removing conditions. Healing power is also not very effective because blasting water field scales with the healing power from the one blasting. If you get hit by a blob you healing won’t save you.

3) WvW roaming everything is pretty much used. From condi perplexity to full zerk.

4)In duneons condi dmg is useless because 25 stacks cap. Healing, thougness and vitality are all bad. Why would you try to heal if it is just easier to kill the mob before it does enough dmg to kill you? Why would you use healing power if ressing players doens’t scale with healing power? Why would you even bother ressing it you can just kill a trash mob and rally? In some bosses you don’t even have to dodge if you have a guard rotating blocks. Ac final bosses for example let you just walk to the side and avoid all the dmg….

rotten.9753:

Tell me why conditions work in pvp then.

The original combat system was designed with small scale conquest mode spvp in mind.
Also simply put the characters do not deal well with enough condition pressure as they saw after launch raw hit points (the only non cleanse defense against conditions) was the general design strategy applied to warrior. It did not work, queue up months of whining and you get things like Cleasnsing Ire and Dodged March.

Bran.7425:

rotten.9753:

Tell me why conditions work in pvp then.

The original combat system was designed with small scale conquest mode spvp in mind.
Also simply put the characters do not deal well with enough condition pressure as they saw after launch raw hit points (the only non cleanse defense against conditions) was the general design strategy applied to warrior. It did not work, queue up months of whining and you get things like Cleasnsing Ire and Dodged March.

Also in spvp there are not players running around with -40% condi duration food.

xDudisx.5914:

4)In duneons condi dmg is useless because 25 stacks cap. Healing, thougness and vitality are all bad. Why would you try to heal if it is just easier to kill the mob before it does enough dmg to kill you? Why would you use healing power if ressing players doens’t scale with healing power? Why would you even bother ressing it you can just kill a trash mob and rally? In some bosses you don’t even have to dodge if you have a guard rotating blocks. Ac final bosses for example let you just walk to the side and avoid all the dmg….

How useful/ useless it is will depend on the group. Then there are runes that increase rezzing speed. But other than that, true, the content is too easy in most cases to require complex group composition and build diversity.

Mirta.5029

yadda yadda yadda

Your whole argument can be summed up with

“it’s meta because I experienced it”

I’m not telling you to believe or play the way I do but don’t spread misinformation or wrong assumptions about gameplay.

xDudisx.5914:

Also in spvp there are not players running around with -40% condi duration food.

You can buy +50% condition duration food/potions.

Shiyo.3578:

xDudisx.5914:

Also in spvp there are not players running around with -40% condi duration food.

You can buy +50% condition duration food/potions.

You cannot use consumables in sPvP…

Mirta.5029:

Well majority of people tend to play PvX.

And do you have anything even remotely substancial to prove this applies to GW2? Or is that just “personal bias”?

Test.8734:

And do you have anything even remotely substancial to prove this applies to GW2? Or is that just “personal bias”?

personal bias that applies that all parts of the game are important and that people are enjoying them? How does that work? You made the claim that majority of players play PVE. Still waiting statistics on that one.

Since you consider meta as popular but not the most efficient build in PvP. Then you should post video about your build and the result you get in dungeon no? You could be the next big star in GW2 community, ppl quoting you and your build as an expert.

With all your knowledge you should take that opportunity.

Mirta.5029:

You made the claim that majority of players play PVE. Still waiting statistics on that one.

You made the claim that majority of players play PvX. Still waiting statistics on that one.

Test.8734:

You made the claim that majority of players play PvX. Still waiting statistics on that one.

stop being a troll. Point is. Both parts of the game are important.

Sagat.3285:

We are not fighting one single hp sponge player. They are multiple of them capable of taking care of their own and are not all alike. What current pve has multiple bosses and not 1 boss+9 million trash mobs??

You misunderstood. The guy I was responding to was claiming conditions are fundamentally imbalanced because power damage has 3 stats while condition damage only 1. I find this conclusion wrong because conditions work in pvp and there’s no difference in stats in there, you still have 3 stats for power damage and 1 stat for condition damage.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Lately, I’ve been participating in the Tequatl event a lot more, and it’s caused me to think about why I’m bringing Berserker gear to this boss, and most other world bosses. A lot of world bosses can’t be critically hit at all, which means two thirds of my stats are literally dead weight. Precision means nothing, as the crit chance is a flat 0%. Ferocity means nothing, as without crits there is no damage boost. And in the case of Tequatl, unless I’m dodging everything perfectly I’ll probably wind up on the ground a lot more than I should be.

So I’ve been taking Power, Toughness, and Vitality on the bulk of my gear for such events. Power still works as intended. The Toughness and Vitality just keep me alive more often, while others flounder around on the dirt. And instead of “on crit” sigils on my weapons, I switch over to an alternate piece that has Sigil of Force (flat 5% damage increase), or an on-hit mechanic of some kind. MUCH better results.

Then I thought: “wait a minute, what if I took some modified version of this into a dungeon?” Well, I played around a bit with it, keeping the PVT armor but switching my traits and weapons to adjust for the fact that critical hits are still functional. I queued for CoF1, the typical lazy player’s “fast” dungeon — and there was no real change in efficiency or completion time compared to my old zerker build. Its was basically the same as with a lot of PUGs: a few people screw up and die, but we get through it in 10-15 minutes or so. It’s CoF. It’s no big deal. The stakes are low, and we muscle through it. Except, rather than be the glass cannon guy who winds up on the floor when things get hairy, now I’m the one who survives and completes the room while others are fallen.

I can’t stress this enough: “speed runs” are what organized pre-made groups perform as a cooperative team, with voice communication and coordinated efforts. They all know the workings of the dungeon — and each other’s classes/builds — perfectly. That means they can afford to go “glass cannon” and put out a perfect performance, completing the content in record time, as a kind of sport. LFG is not an appropriate environment for that. I’ve been through the typical “CoF Path 1” run countless times, and I know darn well that a successful, speedy run is more about people surviving and adapting to problems than maximizing their own personal DPS. Even if the failure is not your fault, it’s far better to be able to bear the brunt of the blows as a result and try to power though a tough situation, than to wipe and start screaming at the “noobs” for not dodging at the right moment. You have to make your choices: do you want to yell at strangers on the internet, or do you want to complete the dungeon and get on with your life?

Berserker gear is fine, for situations that are completely optimal and organized, or for low-level no-brainer situations where you’re compeltely comfortable and there is zero risk. Anything beyond that, and you are taking a serious risk. Always keep in mind that many world bosses cannot be critically hit at all, so more often than not Berserkers are more of a liability than a benefit. Plus, doing PvP or WvW as zerk will lead to serious problems unless you really know what you’re doing and are incredibly lucky.

I used to be caught up in the romance of the “zerker meta,” and how expediently it seemed to get things done. Well, that’s fine for farming open-world, non-boss events and killing random easy mobs — but when things get serious, a zerker build will drop you like a ton of bricks, and may not even increase your damage for all the trouble.

Quite possibly the best post I’ve read on this forum.

fireflyry.7023:

Fyrebrand.4859:

Lately, I’ve been participating in the Tequatl event a lot more, and it’s caused me to think about why I’m bringing Berserker gear to this boss, and most other world bosses. A lot of world bosses can’t be critically hit at all, which means two thirds of my stats are literally dead weight. Precision means nothing, as the crit chance is a flat 0%. Ferocity means nothing, as without crits there is no damage boost. And in the case of Tequatl, unless I’m dodging everything perfectly I’ll probably wind up on the ground a lot more than I should be.

So I’ve been taking Power, Toughness, and Vitality on the bulk of my gear for such events. Power still works as intended. The Toughness and Vitality just keep me alive more often, while others flounder around on the dirt. And instead of “on crit” sigils on my weapons, I switch over to an alternate piece that has Sigil of Force (flat 5% damage increase), or an on-hit mechanic of some kind. MUCH better results.

Then I thought: “wait a minute, what if I took some modified version of this into a dungeon?” Well, I played around a bit with it, keeping the PVT armor but switching my traits and weapons to adjust for the fact that critical hits are still functional. I queued for CoF1, the typical lazy player’s “fast” dungeon — and there was no real change in efficiency or completion time compared to my old zerker build. Its was basically the same as with a lot of PUGs: a few people screw up and die, but we get through it in 10-15 minutes or so. It’s CoF. It’s no big deal. The stakes are low, and we muscle through it. Except, rather than be the glass cannon guy who winds up on the floor when things get hairy, now I’m the one who survives and completes the room while others are fallen.

I can’t stress this enough: “speed runs” are what organized pre-made groups perform as a cooperative team, with voice communication and coordinated efforts. They all know the workings of the dungeon — and each other’s classes/builds — perfectly. That means they can afford to go “glass cannon” and put out a perfect performance, completing the content in record time, as a kind of sport. LFG is not an appropriate environment for that. I’ve been through the typical “CoF Path 1” run countless times, and I know darn well that a successful, speedy run is more about people surviving and adapting to problems than maximizing their own personal DPS. Even if the failure is not your fault, it’s far better to be able to bear the brunt of the blows as a result and try to power though a tough situation, than to wipe and start screaming at the “noobs” for not dodging at the right moment. You have to make your choices: do you want to yell at strangers on the internet, or do you want to complete the dungeon and get on with your life?

Berserker gear is fine, for situations that are completely optimal and organized, or for low-level no-brainer situations where you’re compeltely comfortable and there is zero risk. Anything beyond that, and you are taking a serious risk. Always keep in mind that many world bosses cannot be critically hit at all, so more often than not Berserkers are more of a liability than a benefit. Plus, doing PvP or WvW as zerk will lead to serious problems unless you really know what you’re doing and are incredibly lucky.

I used to be caught up in the romance of the “zerker meta,” and how expediently it seemed to get things done. Well, that’s fine for farming open-world, non-boss events and killing random easy mobs — but when things get serious, a zerker build will drop you like a ton of bricks, and may not even increase your damage for all the trouble.

Quite possibly the best post I’ve read on this forum.

CoF1 WOULD be the dungeon where you could completely mess with your build and not notice a thing. It has the LEAST amount of combat of any dungeon. The reason people USED to care about doing it lightning fast and shaving those 12 minute runs down to 10 minutes was that they were planning on spending all day running it. If you had an hour to farm CoF1, you would rather farm it 6 than 5 times. Before the dungeon reward was almost all transferred to the daily account bound chest, people used to do this for hours on end. If you had a group that could do it in 10 minutes, you got really impatient if you pugged and that group spent 15 minutes on it, that’s 50% slower, so they’d be making 50% less gold.

Point being, using CoF1 as a single run and saying you don’t really notice any difference in time with your Nerf build is not a good example of it being comparable to meta. You are 1/5th of the group. You nerfed your damage in the shortest dungeon where damage matters the least.

Your ignoring the point in place of semantics.

There’s a difference between viable and optimal.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/viable
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/optimal

All builds are viable as the game was designed in such a way to make that possible. I can complete almost all PvE content (except high level fractals) in random greens with no traits assigned. Since almost all PvE content can completed like this, and adding gear doesn’t negatively impact the player, all gear and upgrades are viable as well.

Optimal is where you go with the best build and gear for a given situation. In PvE, berserker gear and full DPS builds are optimal for the most part. Assassins, or a mix of assassins, may be better for certain classes.

Please understand that meta builds tend to shift towards what you’d consider optimal builds and these are not the only way that you can play the game.

Deleted post minus calling out on Mirta’s antics:

A.net did a complete rune revamp a while back, dumbing down rune choice even further by heavily discouraging mixing and maxing by moving the majority of the power to the end of a set’s bonus. This was done so runes would be easier to balance since they don’t have to consider how synergistic combined rune effects would be. One look at the prices on runes on the auction house will show you a plethora of these runes are not used (they are sold at just above npc price).

We need runes 3.0. Whoever thought that giving runes of strength a 7% damage buff (previously and currently 5%) AND huge boost to might duration wouldn’t shove out nearly every other rune set should not be included on the team that rebalances this. How would you make all those unused rune sets become used without just giving them all power/precision/ferocity stats and a useful flavor effect?

The only reason strength rune wasn’t used for so long was because the 5% damage bonus was BUGGED and didn’t work. No idea why they decided to buff it from 5% to 7% as well, 100% unneeded.

Rune choices are a lot better now imo, there was barely and good runes before and so many were bugged. Would be nice if they’d fix some of the weaker runes and nerf some of the extremely strong ones though!

I’m not on EU, but if you guys aren’t running eles in dungeons over there, you’re missing out.

timmyf.1490:

I’m not on EU, but if you guys aren’t running eles in dungeons over there, you’re missing out.

Plz don’t make assumptions about EU players because of Mirta’s misinformation.

rotten.9753:

Sagat.3285:

We are not fighting one single hp sponge player. They are multiple of them capable of taking care of their own and are not all alike. What current pve has multiple bosses and not 1 boss+9 million trash mobs??

You misunderstood. The guy I was responding to was claiming conditions are fundamentally imbalanced because power damage has 3 stats while condition damage only 1. I find this conclusion wrong because conditions work in pvp and there’s no difference in stats in there, you still have 3 stats for power damage and 1 stat for condition damage.

My response is still valid. Only way of making conditions useful in pve is either creating pvp like encounters or fixing the cap or gut down crit chance/damage. Does 3 stats for power and 1 for EVERYTHING else sounds good to you? At least players are responsive and not brain dead. No full tank,heal or condition but we have to create a full dps .

Crit % and crit damage should be 1 stat, so you can have precision/power/condition damage gear or precision/power/healing gear in PVE.

Just a random idea.

Mirta.5029:

and I haven’t seen a single LFG asking for an ele outside of high level fractals and ascalon. So who are you to tell me what’s the meta in the EU?

If you are basing your assessment of what’s meta on the LFG tool requirements then there’s your problem. You should run with hardcore PvE guilds to see what’s the current meta. This usually trickles down to the more casual players to some degree (guides, youtube, reddit, forums) but the LFG tool will never be an accurate representation of the group compositions favored by hardcore guilds in casual daily runs.
These runs almost always use Berserker gear (+ Assassins) and the standard meta builds with a few slight variations. For example, the Guardian “meta” 45005 will often be altered a bit to 46202, 46400, 46004 etc. (not a full list of Guardian builds)

Think about how often do we get balance updates for pvp. Sometimes it takes MONTHS for them to fix important bugs affecting game balance. Do you still think that devs responsible for balance in this game deserve their money? I don’t. But it is just my personal opinion.

Speaking mostly for PvE, the issue with build variety is that many gear options, traits, weapons, and skills are not competitive and do not change the encounter or add anything meaningful to the fight in comparison to your “better” options.

And while there will always be a “meta” with one setup being deemed superior in a particular area, this is not the issue. The problem is with the large gap in effectiveness between the meta and alternatives and the lack of meta variety, with one build setup being the top option across too much of the game.

There are two issues which I would attribute this to above all else, and those would be:

The objective is predominantly to kill something.

When most of PvE is just killing enemies, and even objectives that tell you to defend something really mean “kill X waves of enemies as fast as possible”, it’s no wonder we have the DPS meta. What the limited objectives in this game create is a meta where the best way to approach almost all content is to just wipe out the enemies as quickly as possible.

What we need is more variety in how we handle objectives, where the focus isn’t killing the enemy but rather on survival and control. Think of sPvP control points, molten facility test room, the cannon phase on Mai Trin, and things of that nature.

Additionally, more than just active defenses need to be required to complete these objectives effectively. After all, what’s the point in using anything but pure offense when you can easily survive the content with just dodges and a projectile reflects? There needs to be a reason to bring more healing, condition removal, damage reduction, and things of that nature.

The ineffectiveness of conditions.

Between their limited stacks and lack of damage boosts on conditions compared to physical damage, conditions are inferior. Since so many weapons, traits, and skills are based around conditions, this dramatically cuts build variety.

Addressing this would require a major revamp to conditions, which I’m not sure if we will ever see. They would have to not only fundamentally rework how conditions stack up or deal damage, but also the boosts on their damage, and possibly rework enemy design to give more reason to use conditions, in order to make conditions competitive.

fireflyry.7023:

Fyrebrand.4859:

Lately, I’ve been participating in the Tequatl event a lot more, and it’s caused me to think about why I’m bringing Berserker gear to this boss, and most other world bosses. A lot of world bosses can’t be critically hit at all, which means two thirds of my stats are literally dead weight. Precision means nothing, as the crit chance is a flat 0%. Ferocity means nothing, as without crits there is no damage boost. And in the case of Tequatl, unless I’m dodging everything perfectly I’ll probably wind up on the ground a lot more than I should be.

So I’ve been taking Power, Toughness, and Vitality on the bulk of my gear for such events. Power still works as intended. The Toughness and Vitality just keep me alive more often, while others flounder around on the dirt. And instead of “on crit” sigils on my weapons, I switch over to an alternate piece that has Sigil of Force (flat 5% damage increase), or an on-hit mechanic of some kind. MUCH better results.

Then I thought: “wait a minute, what if I took some modified version of this into a dungeon?” Well, I played around a bit with it, keeping the PVT armor but switching my traits and weapons to adjust for the fact that critical hits are still functional. I queued for CoF1, the typical lazy player’s “fast” dungeon — and there was no real change in efficiency or completion time compared to my old zerker build. Its was basically the same as with a lot of PUGs: a few people screw up and die, but we get through it in 10-15 minutes or so. It’s CoF. It’s no big deal. The stakes are low, and we muscle through it. Except, rather than be the glass cannon guy who winds up on the floor when things get hairy, now I’m the one who survives and completes the room while others are fallen.

I can’t stress this enough: “speed runs” are what organized pre-made groups perform as a cooperative team, with voice communication and coordinated efforts. They all know the workings of the dungeon — and each other’s classes/builds — perfectly. That means they can afford to go “glass cannon” and put out a perfect performance, completing the content in record time, as a kind of sport. LFG is not an appropriate environment for that. I’ve been through the typical “CoF Path 1” run countless times, and I know darn well that a successful, speedy run is more about people surviving and adapting to problems than maximizing their own personal DPS. Even if the failure is not your fault, it’s far better to be able to bear the brunt of the blows as a result and try to power though a tough situation, than to wipe and start screaming at the “noobs” for not dodging at the right moment. You have to make your choices: do you want to yell at strangers on the internet, or do you want to complete the dungeon and get on with your life?

Berserker gear is fine, for situations that are completely optimal and organized, or for low-level no-brainer situations where you’re compeltely comfortable and there is zero risk. Anything beyond that, and you are taking a serious risk. Always keep in mind that many world bosses cannot be critically hit at all, so more often than not Berserkers are more of a liability than a benefit. Plus, doing PvP or WvW as zerk will lead to serious problems unless you really know what you’re doing and are incredibly lucky.

I used to be caught up in the romance of the “zerker meta,” and how expediently it seemed to get things done. Well, that’s fine for farming open-world, non-boss events and killing random easy mobs — but when things get serious, a zerker build will drop you like a ton of bricks, and may not even increase your damage for all the trouble.

Quite possibly the best post I’ve read on this forum.

I don’t know, as long as your group follows dungeon etiquette you shouldn’t be having this problem. Heck, dungeons like CoF are so easy you can duo it without much issue, even on a berserker build.

And this is coming from someone who primarily uses the LFG tool for groups, plays a ranger main, and runs a full on offense sword build which is one of the more difficult “good” builds to survive on.

fireflyry’s post appears heavily biased to me and I wouldn’t be taking any truth out of it.

rotten.9753:

Tell me why conditions work in pvp then.

Becaus in pvp compared to pve:

a) In pvp, you have smaller windows of opportunity to do damage, since your opponent dodges, uses active and passive defenses, CCs and actively tries to kill you. In pve, the mobs are mostly passive, have very small attack rate, mostly dont CC and/or that CC is irrelevant. You can whack away at the mob all day long.

b) In pvp, the players’ health pools are extremely limited compared to their damage output. In pve, mobs have tens of millions health, while the damage is at most 2-3 times higher than what you would have done to a player.

c) In pvp, your opponents have limited condition cleanse, but much less limited defense meahcnisms against direct damage. Heck, there is a whole defensive stat in toughness/armor that helps with that, and many classes naturally have a lot of it. In pve, there is usually no difference in mobs’ defense against physical and condition damage, and the mobs largely have no/very little toughness. Pvp survivability is skewed in favor of countering direct damage. Pve is not.

You can easily make a good build. But it takes some time to make a great build, still i like it a lot because you are regarded for strategising and not time spend playing.