Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

Missing a few dodges does kill them. Have you actually played berserker in arah/fractals when not being carried by a guardian?

…your method just unfairly punishes them and unfairly rewards other gear. The better solution is just to create more varied and challenging content.

PS. Before suggesting solutions try looking at it from the perspective of an average berserker player. You are far too biased towards other builds.

1) I have played berserker in arah/fractals, but I have my oh **** buttons that keep me alive. I have died plenty of times, but missing a single dodge usually didn’t kill me out-right. Instead I typically was able to recover and be just fine.

2) I fail to see how your statement “The better solution is just to create more varied and challenging content” differs from what i’m saying? I’m providing the challenge through the gear modifiers – and it rewards (not punishes) them IF they can master it. Also you must keep in mind that each bolded term in my post is a single idea. Picking the first and third options is just as valid as picking all 4 options.

3) I’m not biased in the slightest – i’m advocating to allow other builds to become part of the Meta. I’m not specifying which ones should or how they should so bias is not an available tag for me. I’m strictly saying that varying the gear or the monsters in some way can provide a more unique experience.

At this point using anything, but zerker, just makes you a bad player.

You take longer to kill things, so you get less stuff.
You can take a hit or two, so you don’t research the fights.
You can take a hit or two, so you don’t learn to pay attention and dodge.

Some of the future is looking bright; the dragon hunter’s traps look like they could wreck a zerker. 3k burning ticks, alone, may bring the zerker meta to an end.

Let’s just hope Anet does something, otherwise all the other gear sets are just a cruel joke on new players.

Ezeriel.9574:

Some of the future is looking bright; the dragon hunter’s traps look like they could wreck a zerker. 3k burning ticks, alone, may bring the zerker meta to an end.

Let’s just hope Anet does something, otherwise all the other gear sets are just a cruel joke on new players.

I want to agree, but you have to also realize that those traps will likely scale off Power and have the ability to Crit. To make the most devastating traps we’ll likely see zerkers using them.

Burning could be a powerful condition, but i’m sure anet will put restrictions on that because currently it’s possible to hit around 5k burning (using the stacking concept) or more if we played guardian and considered each source at near 1k each – which is for almost any player without condi removal death in less than 4 seconds. That’s not even accounting for other players and their burning.

The fact you will no longer get stats from traits will shake the meta hard. Full zerk will be much glassier compared to now, but the damage will not raise by much due to diminished returns on power. Also the changes to armor stats sets will be much more noticeable. Max dps builds would benefit from minmax with assassin stats to be at 80% crit chance. So lets let A.net work, I predict much more build diversity in terms stats sets.

LughLongArm.5460:

The fact you will no longer get stats from traits will shake the meta hard. Full zerk will be much glassier compared to now, but the damage will not raise by much due to diminished returns on power. Also the changes to armor stats sets will be much more noticeable. Max dps builds would benefit from minmax with assassin stats to be at 80% crit chance. So lets let A.net work, I predict much more build diversity in terms stats sets.

Source: http://dulfy.net/2015/04/23/gw2-specializations-part-one-a-primer/

Where Did My Trait-Line Stats Go?
We feel that separating build choices from stat decisions provides greater build flexibility, so you’ll no longer gain attribute points through a given line. Where will these stats go? Here’s a quick summary:

1) Base player stats will be increased from 926 to 1000.

2) Base attribute points on equipment will be increased so that all the gear in the game will give higher stats than it did before. This should account for most of the missing points.

3)Each profession’s attributes will be updated to have half of their functionality be part of a specialization and half of their functionality will be a baseline for that profession. For example, elementalists now have a base attunement recharge of 10 seconds, which is reduced to 8.7 seconds when the arcane specialization is equipped.

These changes should keep the total stat numbers roughly the same as they were before, even though you’ll get them from different places. In addition to these changes, the need to unlock skills and traits will be removed from Player vs. Player entirely, and you’ll automatically have all the specializations available to you whenever you’re in PvP.

/Quote

This indicates that some of the stats are still tied to the specialization line chosen. :/

Another bingo … When will you guys kittening understand that there will ALWAYS be ONE AND ONLY ONE OPTIMAL way of doing things ?

Here it’s Berserker, could be anything else for what it matters, but you are trying to “solve” doesn’t need to be fixed, since everything you can use in this game is already VIABLE (it’s a fact, you can complete any content in a reasonnable time frame in full nomad’s if you know the encounters).

Don’t wan’t to play Zerk ? Don’t do it. Want to join that Zerk Meta party in the LFG ? Meet their requirements, and you’re fine. Want to be a kitten by not metting them and still join anyway ? Get the kick you deserve. Want to be a kitten and force meta plays on a party not asking for it ? Get kicked the same way.

At least, if you want to “fix” something, try to think how we could get a better condi system, to make it on par with direct damages builds. We all agree that condi builds needs a revamp in PvE.

But the meta is fine. Active defense > Passive defense. This is not a trinity game, we don’t need this to be mandatory here (though you can have it, it’s already in game).

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

2) I fail to see how your statement “The better solution is just to create more varied and challenging content” differs from what i’m saying? I’m providing the challenge through the gear modifiers – and it rewards (not punishes) them IF they can master it. Also you must keep in mind that each bolded term in my post is a single idea. Picking the first and third options is just as valid as picking all 4 options.

Ok ill point it out. What you are doing is creating challenge by making the game more punishing. Basically increasing the frequency of being 1 shot and having no ability to recover. The alternative is by creating more challenging encounters which can become difficult without creating annoying 1 shots and overly punishing encounters which you cant recover from.

Noone enjoys missing one dodge and getting instantly downed. Thats a really poor method of adding challenge. Its the old artificial difficulty that fractal scale 50+ had before they reset and removed them. It sure was challenging but it was also very lazy design and incredibly punishing.

If you can sit through the entire presentation of “Building a Better Centaur”, it showcases the new AI development in ways how it will impact both the players and the developers. The AI is being worked on by competent and experienced individuals.

Just to touch up a bit on the suggestions:

1) Lazy and bad gameplay design. You started out with the least popular one for sure. HP sponges does not make compelling encounters. Shame on you for even listing it to begin with. :P

2) You lost (my) favor when penalizing a certain gear set and these passive bonuses are already present through armor Runes which are more subtle and flexible. Would be wiser to approach altering the other, lesser valuable and under utilized rune sets and improving them to be further incorporated to different game modes through popular builds rather than add in a new mechanic.

3) Check the video link above. As to more random and harder to read attacks – no. Attacks that are predictable and allow players to read the telegraphs of incoming attacks is great game design as it allows players to feel a personal progression learning an encounter.

By making attacks more random and harder to read, you strip that sense of progression away from player types of all skill levels and further isolate those with low skill caps and new players.

It’s always a mixed bag when reading these threads suggesting to ‘correct’ a certain meta. A majority of the time, the intentions seem to come from a good place, and you have placed some thought and collaborated with others to put forth your suggestion.

Even if you disagree with my response, at least we can agree on disagreeing, and I hope you take a bit of your time to watch the video link (if you have yet) to see how AI is being approached for the future. Kudos and peace to you.

Why trying to fix something that inst broken? You dont have to join zerk groups if you dont want to.

First of all, there is nothing to ’’fix’’ here. The system isn’t broken, but some people don’t like it. I don’t like McDonald, that doesn’t mean that it need to be fixed. I’m not saying that the game is perfect, but it doesn’t need a big deep modification of its core system.

Your ‘’Gear Set Modifiers’’ is terrible and totally bias. All gear have a positive bonus, except bezerker which have both a positive AND a negative bonus, get out of here you are not serious. That’s just another nerf zerker crying tread, you just tried to disguise it.

Making monsters tougher.
I kind of agree, but only partially. There is a lot of mobs that are just right. Lupi, Mossman or Archdiviner don’t need higher hp or higher hitting attack (unless they give us higher level fractal). But on the other end, the vast majority of bosses in dungeon and in open world are pathetically easy. The final bosses of AC is the perfect exemple of that.

Random Attack Patterns, ( + )Monster Attack Speed, ( – )Monster Damage
I also kind of agree on that one. Again, some bosses are interesting to fight. Lupi have a wide range of different attack, some are quick and deadly and make for a really nice fight. But again the vast majority of mobs are just boring or not challenging enough. But there is a danger. If random attack patterns and quick attack is nice, it should never be possible to be killed by random unblockable, undodgable attack, or attack without any sign that tell the player that an attack is coming. That attack need to be dodgable and not force you to take it in the face otherwise that doesn’t make the fight more engaging.

Kordash.2197:

Another bingo … When will you guys kittening understand that there will ALWAYS be ONE AND ONLY ONE OPTIMAL way of doing things ?

Here it’s Berserker, could be anything else for what it matters, but you are trying to “solve” doesn’t need to be fixed, since everything you can use in this game is already VIABLE (it’s a fact, you can complete any content in a reasonnable time frame in full nomad’s if you know the encounters).

Don’t wan’t to play Zerk ? Don’t do it. Want to join that Zerk Meta party in the LFG ? Meet their requirements, and you’re fine. Want to be a kitten by not metting them and still join anyway ? Get the kick you deserve. Want to be a kitten and force meta plays on a party not asking for it ? Get kicked the same way.

At least, if you want to “fix” something, try to think how we could get a better condi system, to make it on par with direct damages builds. We all agree that condi builds needs a revamp in PvE.

But the meta is fine. Active defense > Passive defense. This is not a trinity game, we don’t need this to be mandatory here (though you can have it, it’s already in game).

1) You’re getting flagged for being rude.

2) By definition “Optimal: best or most favorable; optimum” which can be misleading. If two you can complete a dungeon using two different methods of equal effort within the same time you have effectively destroyed your statement. If gear and monsters resulted in this possibility then players would be able to see there ARE choices that CAN be made and reach the SAME results. So “ONE AND ONLY ONE” is horridly wrong, friend.

3) “since everything you can use in this game is already VIABLE (it’s a fact, you can complete any content in a reasonnable time frame in full nomad’s if you know the encounters).” By definition “Viable: capable of working successfully; feasible.” The fact that you can do anything in this game with whatever gear is entirely not true. Try completing AC P3 alone in Nomad’s gear. Post a video of someone doing it alone and I’ll eat my words, but so far I can’t see how you could kill everything within the required time and defend both generators – yet a Zerk build can. This means some things are more viable than others currently – which is what is forcing the Meta – the thing that many players seem to be so polarized on when it comes to change.

4) Why should players have to subject themselves to meeting gear requirements? If they were viable in their own way with whatever gear they choose then they won’t get kicked mid-run after the party realizes they aren’t Zerk. Am I saying this is going to stop the Elitist Meta Jerks in LFG? No! I’m saying that if we were dealing with players who were actually able to contribute in a noticeable way regardless of priming up in full Zerk gear then more players would be happy about the Meta’s.

5) They are working on the condi-system just look at the Bleed stacks post that’s pinned above all these threads….

6) You are entitled to your opinion, but this thread is about seeing if the ideas presented are good and how to tweak them to make them better – not for you to tell me something that has been ranted about by all the other Elite Meta Enthusiasts in every other Meta altering thread.

spoj.9672:

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

2) I fail to see how your statement “The better solution is just to create more varied and challenging content” differs from what i’m saying? I’m providing the challenge through the gear modifiers – and it rewards (not punishes) them IF they can master it. Also you must keep in mind that each bolded term in my post is a single idea. Picking the first and third options is just as valid as picking all 4 options.

Ok ill point it out. What you are doing is creating challenge by making the game more punishing. Basically increasing the frequency of being 1 shot and having no ability to recover. The alternative is by creating more challenging encounters which can become difficult without creating annoying 1 shots and overly punishing encounters which you cant recover from.

My only qualm with that is that if we create more challenging encounters without modifying various things like I was mentioning we are essentially sticking with my first statement “Make monsters tougher”, no? This punishes everyone because everything is now harder. I’d rather enhance some of the things that are already in place – including a balance of power system – so that everything has its ups and downs. I realize that Zerk gear has a downfall by not adding toughness or vitality, but this can be compensated by the traits and class you choose.

In addition, as i’ve already mentioned, the Zerk system as it is has a bit too much freedom. Yes, miss a few dodges in a row and you die, but miss a few dodges non-consecutively and you can still recover. This means that after you memorize the attack patterns or how to do a run you hold an advantage in terms of what you can accomplish vs what others can accomplish. By suggesting randomized attack patterns I was trying to eliminate the ability of people to just memorize a run and to actually challenge them by making it a true test of skill rather than memory.

He asked what the problem was, and you described a healthy active combat system. Sounds like the problem is your desire in terms of what you want the game to be.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

but this thread is about seeing if the ideas presented are good..

No they are not good (nor is a need for a “fix” to the zerk meta) for exactly the same reasons that have been presented a thousand times before.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Just to touch up a bit on the suggestions:

2) You lost (my) favor when penalizing a certain gear set and these passive bonuses are already present through armor Runes which are more subtle and flexible. Would be wiser to approach altering the other, lesser valuable and under utilized rune sets and improving them to be further incorporated to different game modes through popular builds rather than add in a new mechanic.

3) Check the video link above. As to more random and harder to read attacks – no. Attacks that are predictable and allow players to read the telegraphs of incoming attacks is great game design as it allows players to feel a personal progression learning an encounter.

It’s always a mixed bag when reading these threads suggesting to ‘correct’ a certain meta. A majority of the time, the intentions seem to come from a good place, and you have placed some thought and collaborated with others to put forth your suggestion.

Even if you disagree with my response, at least we can agree on disagreeing, and I hope you take a bit of your time to watch the video link (if you have yet) to see how AI is being approached for the future. Kudos and peace to you.

1) In regards to your 2nd point: I assumed the penalty because of the bonus. An example would be that if you wanted to wield a 1-hit kill weapon the penalty is you are also a 1-hit kill to your foe. This balances the power by providing the player with a sense of risk you make the game more engaging in my opinion. My suggest may have been off numerically (as my note at the top suggested could be the case), but the concept of increasing their already huge power, but also penalizing the acquisition of it to a higher degree.

2) In regards to your 3rd point: I’m not saying make the actions impossible to read, i’m saying to make them faster, but weaker (which may have been hard to gather from what I wrote, apologies). This makes it harder for a power player to stay alive until they get skillful enough to do so, but it also makes the other players stay on their toes more too. Combine this with randomization and you have a more interesting combat experience which differs each time. I, personally enjoy games lacking in repetition more than those that are pure repetition.

3) I thank you for being kind in your phrasing and being understandable . You, madam/sir, have a wonderful time as well!

Meta is optimal. Break the current one and a new one will rise. Then soon we’ll just see posts like “How to fix the <newest> Meta”. People are so dense. There is nothing to fix.

I bet I could make a fortune setting up a confectionary stand in these threads.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Tldr:

Remove gear diversity, punish good players, reward bad players and make success depend on random rolls instead of skill and strategy.

I’m gunna have to go with no on this one.

1) Never said remove gear diversity. In fact I was increasing available options for gearing up. See point #3 as well.

2) Never said “punish” – There is a thread mocking the difficulty level of HoT already. Therefore I’m providing the “challenge” that all these good players want – while giving them a greater reward IF they can master it.

3) Not rewarding bad players. I’m providing them more options to make something they like with the play style they want.

4) Success is not to depend on randomness. The randomness is to increase the difficulty for the Zerk players while simply making things more interesting for other players (not as much repetition). Please see point #2.

1. your gear set modifiers would force gear sets, thus reducing viability of things that aren’t the “optimum” bonus configuration.

2. I agree you never said punish, you just implied it with your suggestions.

3. You are rewarding bad players. You are rewarding players who don’t know how to use fields, active defense and dodge by making their builds better and faster while attempting to punish players who do know how to use those things.

4. Random never increases difficulty, it just makes it more random, hence the definition of the word. If the encounter is tuned to the correct difficulty then random elements will make you fail one time and succeed the next. If it doesn’t do that then the encounter isn’t balanced very well and the randomness is not needed since it is then just an added annoyance.

It boils down to the fact that there is nothing to fix. Zerker is not the meta in open world, WvW or PvP, it is only the best gear set in instanced PvE and only if you are good enough to actually use it. You are rewarded for playing well, exactly like you should be.

Don’t Punish Berzerker gear, but it would be good to make other sets more interesting.

Similar to the lines of the Gear Set Modifications (which I do think would be redundant with runes and punish mixed gear sets), I think that it would be interesting to have a 4th attribute on level 80 gear that could make more gear sets more interesting.

The idea is to give each stat combination (for armor, at least) additional utility that still ties in to the “feel” of the prefix. Zealot’s Armor, as an example, is a higher dps stat combo that provides some sustain, so it fits that it would get a stat such as “Steal x% of damage dealt as life” to give a sustain mechanic that is dependent on damage. Dire is a very high-sustain condition set, so it would make sense to give it “+x% Condition Duration” to allow Dire armor wearers to further benefit from long fights.

Other examples include giving Berzerker’s Armor a chance to apply vuln on hit, Knight’s Armor a chance to gain retaliation when struck, Cleric’s armor increased Boon duration, etc.

ANet could even get really creative with the effects like giving Apothocary’s a chance to convert a boon to a condition on hit, Settler’s a chance to convert a condition to a boon on being hit.

The difficulty would be finding the right values to add on these, particularly where “Chance to apply” is involved so that they are attractive but not unbalanced, but it does give us the chance to recoup some of the effects we are set to lose with the new trait system.

This, along with restructuring fights, would bring real diversity into the game without gimping zerker.

The “Zerker Problem” isn’t with the Zerker gear and playstyle, it’s the end product of two very different issues – that the vast majority of content is designed so that “kill it faster” IS the optimal solution if you have sufficient skill to stay alive and that the other stats either scale horribly or are outright meaningless.

If the content had (more) battles that required extended survival for effects that ticked often enough they couldn’t be blocked/evaded into insignificance or mechanics like ‘no crits’ you’d see (more) people carrying multiple sets of gear and swapping to the appropriate tools as needed.

If (for example) the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scaled with your toughness (making it an active stat instead of an entirely passive one), you’d see people considering where and how much Toughness they can squeeze into their build without sacrificing too much damage. There would still be a sweet spot, but it might vary more from player to player depending on how much they rely on that particular defense.

Increasing the diversity of challenges is always going to be desirable for the game’s health and longevity. Adjusting mechanics so players consider more stats to be desirable is a trickier undertaking and has a lot of blind alleys that don’t represent progress.

Dinks.2478:

Meta is optimal. Break the current one and a new one will rise. Then soon we’ll just see posts like “How to fix the <newest> Meta”. People are so dense. There is nothing to fix.

Not true!

Think of Gw1 (if you played it). There were common “Meta” builds, but team compositions could change as variations were accepted more readily. In PvE the class you played dictated the “Meta” you’d have to follow if running a full Hero Team. This meant that there were “Meta Builds”, but this left choices for the player! As long as they were using the “Meta” or variations of the “Meta” they would typically be fine – the main difference is that they got to choose how to play and what to play while still being a part of the “Meta”.

No thanks, a bunch of unavoidable damage. Yup, lets take this system and remove skill and make it simply about wearing the right gear…

MattyP.6954:

Don’t Punish Berzerker gear, but it would be good to make other sets more interesting.

Similar to the lines of the Gear Set Modifications (which I do think would be redundant with runes and punish mixed gear sets), I think that it would be interesting to have a 4th attribute on level 80 gear that could make more gear sets more interesting.

The idea is to give each stat combination (for armor, at least) additional utility that still ties in to the “feel” of the prefix. Zealot’s Armor, as an example, is a higher dps stat combo that provides some sustain, so it fits that it would get a stat such as “Steal x% of damage dealt as life” to give a sustain mechanic that is dependent on damage. Dire is a very high-sustain condition set, so it would make sense to give it “+x% Condition Duration” to allow Dire armor wearers to further benefit from long fights.

Other examples include giving Berzerker’s Armor a chance to apply vuln on hit, Knight’s Armor a chance to gain retaliation when struck, Cleric’s armor increased Boon duration, etc.

ANet could even get really creative with the effects like giving Apothocary’s a chance to convert a boon to a condition on hit, Settler’s a chance to convert a condition to a boon on being hit.

The difficulty would be finding the right values to add on these, particularly where “Chance to apply” is involved so that they are attractive but not unbalanced, but it does give us the chance to recoup some of the effects we are set to lose with the new trait system.

This, along with restructuring fights, would bring real diversity into the game without gimping zerker.

I like your thoughts here, but I thought I’d point out that you penalized Zerk gear, just in a less extreme way ^^;

“Don’t Punish Berzerker gear, but it would be good to make other sets more interesting….Other examples include giving Berzerker’s Armor a chance to apply vuln on hit, Knight’s Armor a chance to gain retaliation when struck, Cleric’s armor increased Boon duration, etc.”

I do think even minor bonuses to the armor would be nice. A 4th stat may complicate things though when thinking of how it would need to be implemented and then all of the new stat combos that may arise from there on. This is why I leaned more toward what you had slightly mentioned which was some effect tied to the gear itself.

I like a certain amount of planning over pure twitch. It’s a spectrum. There are more skills in the worlds of gaming than just reflexes and reading an attack telegraph animation.

Nike.2631:

If (for example) the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scaled with your toughness (making it an active stat instead of an entirely passive one), you’d see people considering where and how much Toughness they can squeeze into their build without sacrificing too much damage. There would still be a sweet spot, but it might vary more from player to player depending on how much they rely on that particular defense.

Aegis block next incoming attack, it never absorbed any damage. Protection, however, could work with active toughness.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Aegis block next incoming attack, it never absorbed any damage. Protection, however, could work with active toughness.

100% is still a percentage. And it could scale .

But yes, stat-based variable effectiveness Protection might be easier for people to wrap their heads around at this point.

Nike.2631:

If (for example) the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scaled with your toughness (making it an active stat instead of an entirely passive one), you’d see people considering where and how much Toughness they can squeeze into their build without sacrificing too much damage.

Or even better make the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scale with the thoughness of the person who gave it to you.

They also have to find a way to make condition better.
For example add some sort of scaling effect with condition damage that increases the vulnerability . So instead of 1 you can get it up to ~2% with a lot of condition damage stats. Meaning having one person with a lot of condition damage and vulnerabitly means a massive damage increase.

With stuff like that there wouldn’t be ONE perfect stat combination for EVERYBODY but rather it would add important “roles” (that aren’t forced) and you would end up with players with multiple stat combinations.

Nike.2631:

I like a certain amount of planning over pure twitch. It’s a spectrum. There are more skills in the worlds of gaming than just reflexes and reading an attack telegraph animation.

Planning like choice of utilities, weapons and traits? Yes please. Forcing me to carry multiple sets of gear? No thanks.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Dinks.2478:

Meta is optimal. Break the current one and a new one will rise. Then soon we’ll just see posts like “How to fix the <newest> Meta”. People are so dense. There is nothing to fix.

Not true!

Think of Gw1 (if you played it). There were common “Meta” builds, but team compositions could change as variations were accepted more readily. In PvE the class you played dictated the “Meta” you’d have to follow if running a full Hero Team. This meant that there were “Meta Builds”, but this left choices for the player! As long as they were using the “Meta” or variations of the “Meta” they would typically be fine – the main difference is that they got to choose how to play and what to play while still being a part of the “Meta”.

What are you talking about? In GW1 you either ran Meta or you ran your own build. You can do the same thing in GW2, you just won’t be optimal. I’m tired of this lazy complaint. You don’t want to run zerker? You don’t think you can survive? You want to play another way? Do all of those things, its all viable, its just not optimal. Leave people who want to do things optimally alone. It is getting tired.

Nike.2631:

I like a certain amount of planning over pure twitch. It’s a spectrum. There are more skills in the worlds of gaming than just reflexes and reading an attack telegraph animation.

Mhm, that’s why I adjust my build for different fights. Like I don’t go into a Lupi Solo using EG/FT/Nades with 66002 S/D and Rifle. Naw I load up on my defensives with Toolkit/Nades/Bombs with 64022 perma vigor build, and Pistol/shield. With all that I can always have something to answer any attack.

Planning exists It’s just not done passively through gear stats you actually have to do stuff still.

It even goes as simple as bringing your WoR/SotA on guard, or traiting reflects on Mesmer. Phalanx Strenght on War if the party lacks might. Having blasts ready for black powder stealthing with a thief…

But, hey, I’ve been playing Wildstar lately, and seems like it’s done what the anti-zerk people want. Passive damage and active defenses aren’t 100% effective other than just good positioning. And, it’s Trinity!

Aegis has no threshold. It just blocks 1 attack and disappears. Be it 1 or 1 million damage. Changing core idea of a boon (block only one next attack of any kind and go away) just to shoehorn some “diversity” is not ok. Well… it is ok if threshold based aegis is added to specialization.

Another problem is that Arenanet has designed trinity-encounters for a non-trinity system. All encounters are centered around damage and kill of a boss target. This is fine for a trinity system where damage dealers can only deal damage.

In a non-trinity system where all classes can fill all roles trinity encounters lead to monotony and metas. GW2 needs non-trinity encounters with multiple tasks that favor different approaches to reach the goal. There could even be a decent fraction of encounters where DPS has no/low relevance and a full zerk groups would finish the encounter much later than a full giver or nomad group.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

I like your thoughts here, but I thought I’d point out that you penalized Zerk gear, just in a less extreme way ^^;

“Don’t Punish Berzerker gear, but it would be good to make other sets more interesting….Other examples include giving Berzerker’s Armor a chance to apply vuln on hit, Knight’s Armor a chance to gain retaliation when struck, Cleric’s armor increased Boon duration, etc.”

I do think even minor bonuses to the armor would be nice. A 4th stat may complicate things though when thinking of how it would need to be implemented and then all of the new stat combos that may arise from there on. This is why I leaned more toward what you had slightly mentioned which was some effect tied to the gear itself.

What I’m taking your thoughts as (forgive me if I misrepresent) is essentially Zerker stays as it is, but if you wear 6 pieces of zerker armor, you get (as an example) 12% chance to apply vuln on hit. What I’m thinking of, instead, is each piece of zerker armor provides 2% chance to apply vuln on hit.

The primary reason I’m leaning towards the latter is that your idea removes any incentive to mix your gear stats. With the examples I gave, it would be viable to wear a zerker/zealot armor mix so that you get the damage from the extra vuln stacks and additional lifesteal (I’m thinking the lifesteal would be really low, like .5% per piece, to keep it from being overpowered), but less lifesteal than full zealots and less damage from additional vuln stacks than full zerker. You could even see really funky sets that nobody would think of now like Dire/Zerker if people want to add some longevity to their vuln stacks (assuming Dire gets condi duration).

As for increased complexity, I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing. They already have to balance a lot of these mechanics as far as trait stats and runes go, and I think that it would be less difficult to implement than set bonuses from a programming perspective. As for complicating future stat set releases, I don’t think it would be any different than a set bonus—either way they would have to come up with a new bonus for each stat set. It would just be a matter of dividing that bonus by 6.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Kordash.2197:

Another bingo … When will you guys kittening understand that there will ALWAYS be ONE AND ONLY ONE OPTIMAL way of doing things ?

Here it’s Berserker, could be anything else for what it matters, but you are trying to “solve” doesn’t need to be fixed, since everything you can use in this game is already VIABLE (it’s a fact, you can complete any content in a reasonnable time frame in full nomad’s if you know the encounters).

Don’t wan’t to play Zerk ? Don’t do it. Want to join that Zerk Meta party in the LFG ? Meet their requirements, and you’re fine. Want to be a kitten by not metting them and still join anyway ? Get the kick you deserve. Want to be a kitten and force meta plays on a party not asking for it ? Get kicked the same way.

At least, if you want to “fix” something, try to think how we could get a better condi system, to make it on par with direct damages builds. We all agree that condi builds needs a revamp in PvE.

But the meta is fine. Active defense > Passive defense. This is not a trinity game, we don’t need this to be mandatory here (though you can have it, it’s already in game).

1) You’re getting flagged for being rude.

2) By definition “Optimal: best or most favorable; optimum” which can be misleading. If two you can complete a dungeon using two different methods of equal effort within the same time you have effectively destroyed your statement. If gear and monsters resulted in this possibility then players would be able to see there ARE choices that CAN be made and reach the SAME results. So “ONE AND ONLY ONE” is horridly wrong, friend.

3) “since everything you can use in this game is already VIABLE (it’s a fact, you can complete any content in a reasonnable time frame in full nomad’s if you know the encounters).” By definition “Viable: capable of working successfully; feasible.” The fact that you can do anything in this game with whatever gear is entirely not true. Try completing AC P3 alone in Nomad’s gear. Post a video of someone doing it alone and I’ll eat my words, but so far I can’t see how you could kill everything within the required time and defend both generators – yet a Zerk build can. This means some things are more viable than others currently – which is what is forcing the Meta – the thing that many players seem to be so polarized on when it comes to change.

4) Why should players have to subject themselves to meeting gear requirements? If they were viable in their own way with whatever gear they choose then they won’t get kicked mid-run after the party realizes they aren’t Zerk. Am I saying this is going to stop the Elitist Meta Jerks in LFG? No! I’m saying that if we were dealing with players who were actually able to contribute in a noticeable way regardless of priming up in full Zerk gear then more players would be happy about the Meta’s.

5) They are working on the condi-system just look at the Bleed stacks post that’s pinned above all these threads….

6) You are entitled to your opinion, but this thread is about seeing if the ideas presented are good and how to tweak them to make them better – not for you to tell me something that has been ranted about by all the other Elite Meta Enthusiasts in every other Meta altering thread.

1) Won’t even comment.

2) Aiming : Fastest way to finish a path/raid/content.
Solution : Bring a setup with the minimal defense required to complete the content, with the minimal DPS loss, since the game is basically about killing things (won’t talk about the movement, since it’s the same as defense).

Whatever you do, for a given content, there will be only one optimal solution, but many ways to get near that solution.

3) With a solo setup in a Group Designed Content ? Can’t do CoF P1 solo, yeah, and ? We talk about the meta here, not about soloing group designed content.
The only example in game that can’t be done in full nomad’s is triple trouble event. It’s designed this way.
But if you care about finishing this content, you’ll do what’s required.

4) Would you go to a company and say : “i’m now working with you in the way it fits me rather than the company way of doing things” ? No. It’s exactly the same thing.
Asking for someone to do the things in a certain way is fine, forcing them is not. An LFG requiring something only force you to play that way IF you join it.
And so what ? If the requirements changes, do you really think they will be happy ? No, they’ll still join with their own setup, and end up being (rightfully) kicked.

5) I know that, i’m up to date with HoT and what they’ve shared with us about it. But it’s a better thing to discuss this matter, than trying to fix something that is NOT a problem.

6) My opinion is that your ideas on this subject are wrong, and are based on something that doesn’t even need to be disccussed since it’s a non-issue.

Belenwyn.8674:

Another problem is that Arenanet has designed trinity-encounters for a non-trinity system. All encounters are centered around damage and kill of a boss target. This is fine for a trinity system where damage dealers can only deal damage.

In a non-trinity system where all classes can fill all roles trinity encounters lead to monotony and metas. GW2 needs non-trinity encounters with multiple tasks that favor different approaches to reach the goal. There could even be a decent fraction of encounters where DPS has no/low relevance and a full zerk groups would finish the encounter much later than a full giver or nomad group.

I remember the WoW boss that you had to heal to death. It really threw my guild for a loop when we first ran it.

Belenwyn.8674:

In a non-trinity system where all classes can fill all roles trinity encounters lead to monotony and metas.

Monotony and meta is part of all games after people figured out how to put content on farm. Lack of any updates to the dungeons just made it a bit more noticeable in gw2.

I’m going to wait for the changes in HoT, and I don’t want to change what Zerker is but, I don’t see a problem with randomized attacks as long as they come with proper tells. I’m not talking dramatic 3sec long tells, but tells “skillful” players can recognize rather than pattern. I think it should be implemented for all AI, not just bosses. IRL, you are rewarded(and punished) by picking up on tells just as much as memorizing patterns and tendencies. I think they can carefully and successfully install a bit a of randomness OR varying patterns for “challenging content”. Another poster brought proper balance and randomness, and though randomness may lead to varying, results, isn’t that what the propositions of randomness is about in the first place. Changing the experience.
-_- went into more detail but riginal post died in Timeout

Neox.3497:

Nike.2631:

If (for example) the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scaled with your toughness (making it an active stat instead of an entirely passive one), you’d see people considering where and how much Toughness they can squeeze into their build without sacrificing too much damage.

Or even better make the amount of damage absorbed by Aegis scale with the thoughness of the person who gave it to you.

I don’t get why ppl want to force guardian in a pure support role. The fun of GW2 is that everyone can DPS and has their unique class abilities to provide support/control to the fight. Get rid of aegis sure, why not scale the amount of condi removal on healing power? Cleric guardian meta… oh wait no people would just swap to mesmer.

You want guardians to stop “carrying” their group with blocks? Add more than 3 attacks on a boss. Problem solved without having to destroy a class in the process.

MattyP.6954:

Belenwyn.8674:

Another problem is that Arenanet has designed trinity-encounters for a non-trinity system. All encounters are centered around damage and kill of a boss target. This is fine for a trinity system where damage dealers can only deal damage.

In a non-trinity system where all classes can fill all roles trinity encounters lead to monotony and metas. GW2 needs non-trinity encounters with multiple tasks that favor different approaches to reach the goal. There could even be a decent fraction of encounters where DPS has no/low relevance and a full zerk groups would finish the encounter much later than a full giver or nomad group.

I remember the WoW boss that you had to heal to death. It really threw my guild for a loop when we first ran it.

Had plenty of stuff like that in EQ as well (had that exact thing on at least one raid).

Thing is those are gimmicks. They aren’t intuitive and certainly not part of the core mechanics.

Now, they could certainly use some of that kind of stuff to make things more interesting, but it’s not like they’re throwing out content at any kind of regular pace.

Nothing quite so elaborate is needed. All that needs to be done is for enemies to

A. Hit more frequently and have higher total dps, so you can’t use active defenses to avoid most of all damage (though still require active defenses to avoid a large part of it depending on profession)

B. Put party wide relatively unavoidable pressure damage, so some amount of party support and healing is necesary.

C. Not rally downed players on death. Rally on kill in pve has always been bad design and should be a pvp thing, it lets players go all out knowing they’ll rally anyway if they burst something down.

Edit: Also more enemies need cleave attacks so corner stacking dies horribly.

Jelle.2807:

Nothing quite so elaborate is needed. All that needs to be done is for enemies to

A. Hit more frequently and have higher total dps, so you can’t use active defenses to avoid most of all damage (though still require active defenses to avoid a large part of it depending on profession)

B. Put party wide relatively unavoidable pressure damage, so some amount of party support and healing is necesary.

C. Not rally downed players on death. Rally on kill in pve has always been bad design and should be a pvp thing, it lets players go all out knowing they’ll rally anyway if they burst something down.

Edit: Also more enemies need cleave attacks to corner stacking dies horribly.

I generally agree with everything but C. With consistent pressure damage, it will be harder to sit in the fire to res an ally, and downed players will die faster. Removing the rally on kill mechanic kind of kills all of the play involved with downstate.

spoj.9672:

Nike.2631:

I like a certain amount of planning over pure twitch. It’s a spectrum. There are more skills in the worlds of gaming than just reflexes and reading an attack telegraph animation.

Planning like choice of utilities, weapons and traits? Yes please. Forcing me to carry multiple sets of gear? No thanks.

The essence of this thread is a complaint that one set of gear “does it all” for a lot of content categories (chiefly Dungeons).

The choices are~

1. Make some other stat cluster the new go-to choice for a run. Possibly all runs.
2. Make optimal play of a single run take more that one set of gear.
3. Make fine adjustments until several stat combos are considered roughly equally valuable.

The second takes longer to prepare for as a player, but at least it’s not just swapping one devil for another equally tedious devil.

The third one is equal parts “good design” and “magic”. And achieving it is not a trivial undertaking.

And both of those choices are bad. :P

The complaint that it “does it all” is completely unjustified. Anet intended for players to be able to do everything regardless of how they built their characters.

The real reason for the complaint is that people dont like the idea of a single optimum and because they cant turn a blind eye to it because of LFG descriptions. But news flash there is always a single optimum in any game. And thats something you are just going to have to accept and ignore if you dont like it.

@Dragon Ruler X

Could you please explain to me why you feel this urgent need to “fix the zerker meta” in a concise and comprehensive manner?
Even after dozens of threads similar to this one, I still fail to see any valid reason justifying the bulk of the proposals presented here to “fix the meta”. Whatever that means…

MattyP.6954:

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

I like your thoughts here, but I thought I’d point out that you penalized Zerk gear, just in a less extreme way ^^;

“Don’t Punish Berzerker gear, but it would be good to make other sets more interesting….Other examples include giving Berzerker’s Armor a chance to apply vuln on hit, Knight’s Armor a chance to gain retaliation when struck, Cleric’s armor increased Boon duration, etc.”

I do think even minor bonuses to the armor would be nice. A 4th stat may complicate things though when thinking of how it would need to be implemented and then all of the new stat combos that may arise from there on. This is why I leaned more toward what you had slightly mentioned which was some effect tied to the gear itself.

What I’m taking your thoughts as (forgive me if I misrepresent) is essentially Zerker stays as it is, but if you wear 6 pieces of zerker armor, you get (as an example) 12% chance to apply vuln on hit. What I’m thinking of, instead, is each piece of zerker armor provides 2% chance to apply vuln on hit.

The primary reason I’m leaning towards the latter is that your idea removes any incentive to mix your gear stats. With the examples I gave, it would be viable to wear a zerker/zealot armor mix so that you get the damage from the extra vuln stacks and additional lifesteal (I’m thinking the lifesteal would be really low, like .5% per piece, to keep it from being overpowered), but less lifesteal than full zealots and less damage from additional vuln stacks than full zerker. You could even see really funky sets that nobody would think of now like Dire/Zerker if people want to add some longevity to their vuln stacks (assuming Dire gets condi duration).

As for increased complexity, I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing. They already have to balance a lot of these mechanics as far as trait stats and runes go, and I think that it would be less difficult to implement than set bonuses from a programming perspective. As for complicating future stat set releases, I don’t think it would be any different than a set bonus—either way they would have to come up with a new bonus for each stat set. It would just be a matter of dividing that bonus by 6.

I still like your ideas, but I do think there would be a bit of a complexity increase if we allowed 4 stat choices. We have 7 main stats (8 if you include giver’s type with the +boon duration). Allowing any 4 of those 8 to be mixed together results in up to 70
{ n!/[(n-r)! * r!] ; n=8, r=4 -> 70 } different combinations – now this may be me, but I feel that’s a lot.

My only issue with your ideas so far is that they feel like they still lack the balance of power concept. “With great power comes great responsibility” is the type of mentality i’m aiming for. We can amplify the Zerk gear in terms of how powerful it is, but hinder it (in some way) in terms of how survivable it is so that even skilled players get challenged this way. We could take your concept of allowing the gear to apply a +X% chance to inflict vuln on hit (which is a power increase) and couple it with a "you receive +Y% damage per piece you wear. This way you have given the gear an upgrade, but compensated for its advantage by applying a slight risk factor too.

Jelle.2807:

Nothing quite so elaborate is needed. All that needs to be done is for enemies to

A. Hit more frequently and have higher total dps, so you can’t use active defenses to avoid most of all damage (though still require active defenses to avoid a large part of it depending on profession)

B. Put party wide relatively unavoidable pressure damage, so some amount of party support and healing is necesary.

C. Not rally downed players on death. Rally on kill in pve has always been bad design and should be a pvp thing, it lets players go all out knowing they’ll rally anyway if they burst something down.

Edit: Also more enemies need cleave attacks so corner stacking dies horribly.

I fully agree with point C.

If they remove rallying they might as well remove the downed state.

I feel like a lot of the anti-zerker people really want to be playing a different game with different combat mechanics. Which begs the question, Why are you here? There are tons of games out there with combat mechanics the way you want them.

I’d go as far as to say that GW2 combat system has crushed every other game because it is more dynamic. You don’t have to hide behind a tank, you can dodge, block, blind, evade, and reflect attacks if you time your skills and cooldowns correctly. The solution to a non-issue like zerker isn’t to destroy what makes the game the game.

cranos.5913:

I don’t get why ppl want to force guardian in a pure support role.

Making a support-focused character of any profession equally desirable to a 5th DPS lone wolf isn’t going to take away from the value of a DPS guardian spec’d, gear’d and run by a skilled player. And if someone tells you “You’re on a Guard, you have to be our support guy” I’ll be right here with you in spirit flipping them the bird.

The fun of GW2 is that everyone can DPS and has their unique class abilities to provide support/control to the fight.

No… That’s the fun for players who like to DPS. Believe it or not, all those players in other MMOs who run tanks, healers and CC masters…? Some of them actually enjoy THAT and GW2 basically takes a big dump on those customers at every turn.

You will probably never understand the sheer glee I’ve had in Stronghold spending the first 1/3-1/2 of the match pushing hard into the enemy camp and then falling back and using heals and support skills to make our Lord unbeatable against 3 and sometimes even 4 players while the rest of my team keeps the pressure on. A Lord fully healed and ready to laugh at them again by the time they pick their buttocks up and come back for a second (and third, and fourth…) try. Hallelujah! Only 3 years to get a mode where healing doesn’t get you spit on by competitive players.

Skoigoth.9238:

@Dragon Ruler X

Could you please explain to me why you feel this urgent need to “fix the zerker meta” in a concise and comprehensive manner?
Even after dozens of threads similar to this one, I still fail to see any valid reason justifying the bulk of the proposals presented here to “fix the meta”. Whatever that means…

Urgent? Not so much, but an opportune time? A bit more so.

With there being changes coming in HoT I figured now is a more opportune time to make a suggestion as the suggestion is less likely to be tabled and forgotten. If it raises an eyebrow and catches a dev’s attention then it has a better chance of being discussed among them and then possibly implemented. That is all.

As for a reason to fix the Meta? None, really. But it seems like such a waste for them to put in all these things into the game that no one ever uses. Creativity is dead in build design. I mean, who uses Magi gear atm? There are gear types omitted from play because they have little purpose or reason to exist since other gear types outshine them. So why have the gear at all then? New players come in and “research” builds only to find Zerk tactics. It just makes the game feel like there shouldn’t be other build choices, but rather only Zerk gear and it is your job to master that gear – which isn’t the feel that Anet wanted. Providing a reason to diversify the styles of viable and generally accepted play styles shouldn’t be such a big deal in my opinion.

It is time that Areanet introduces free stat swaps ooc. This is the feature needed to introduce a higher variety in the game experience. Maybe a way to upgrade the stat pool of ascended gear would solve the problem. Would also add a new layer of horizontal progression.