Guild Wars 2

So zerker meta only exist becouse mobs/bosses are nothing less than high health bags if Anet “fixes” by giving more mechanics to mobs and a better AI(non rushable content also), this migh change to where full zerker party or mixed party will take the barelly the same time?

What is the point of making a dungeon where the content can be rushed anyways…

seriously if you people nerf zerk because some people whine they are “forced” to get them to join groups that dont suck kitten then i am switching to another game its a deal breaker.

OR MAKE ASCENDED ARMOR HAVE SELECTABLE STATS.

MarkoNS.3261:

Puls.5867:

Don’t nerf IT just… Make it so we don’t have to stack in a spot in a dungeon and spam 1 I hate how boring that style is then getting kicked from a group for wanting to do it a funner way xD

Well that is your opinion some of us do every dungeon every day and we speed run them we dont want to do them in a funnier way we just want to do them as fast as possible.

Umm… you aren’t speed running anything if you’re stacking and LoSing much. Learn to use your temporal curtain, binding blades or even Kit Refinement Magnet bomb to lump things up. The instant you make the decision to sit around a corner and wait for your enemy you’ve lost the right to call it a speed run.

What you want is to keep your tactics so you don’t have to learn how to play better.

You don’t want to have your gameplay shaken up and forced to advance your skills.

I think it was Nike who was saying they did their entire dungeon tour (16 paths iirc) and stacked only once, opting to use their tools or blow things up on the spot rather than waste time waiting for enemies to path to them.

Jerus.4350:

MarkoNS.3261:

Puls.5867:

Don’t nerf IT just… Make it so we don’t have to stack in a spot in a dungeon and spam 1 I hate how boring that style is then getting kicked from a group for wanting to do it a funner way xD

Well that is your opinion some of us do every dungeon every day and we speed run them we dont want to do them in a funnier way we just want to do them as fast as possible.

Umm… you aren’t speed running anything if you’re stacking and LoSing much. Learn to use your temporal curtain, binding blades or even Kit Refinement Magnet bomb to lump things up. The instant you make the decision to sit around a corner and wait for your enemy you’ve lost the right to call it a speed run.

What you want is to keep your tactics so you don’t have to learn how to play better.

You don’t want to have your gameplay shaken up and forced to advance your skills.

I think it was Nike who was saying they did their entire dungeon tour (16 paths iirc) and stacked only once, opting to use their tools or blow things up on the spot rather than waste time waiting for enemies to path to them.

you asume much about my skills in game without even playing with me once, when did i ever say i stack at all times and wait for mobs to come to me ? . also please dont respond with oooo lets play together then, i have no interest in proving you wrong just remember baseless asumptions are the mother of all kittenups.

The comments weren’t baseless. You responded to a comment asking for less stacking with a retort about speed running which implied that you utilize stacking in your runs.

If my assertions were incorrect, that’s fine, but I hardly see how design changes to disincentivize stacking would affect you at all if what you say is true.

ForeverAway.5948:

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

Fun is really not an objective thing, people have fun while earning IG gold. And really I wish to see once a group of people rushing and only pressing 11111 though an entire dungeon, even AC, and go till the end without dying.

MarkoNS.3261:

ForeverAway.5948:

MarkoNS.3261:

Puls.5867:

Don’t nerf IT just… Make it so we don’t have to stack in a spot in a dungeon and spam 1 I hate how boring that style is then getting kicked from a group for wanting to do it a funner way xD

Well that is your opinion some of us do every dungeon every day and we speed run them we dont want to do them in a funnier way we just want to do them as fast as possible.

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

what is this 11111 you talk about if you want to play properly you use rotations kitten , and i play dungeons because they are the best way to get gold unless you have inside information about tp stuff.

oh dont me started on flipprs and how their braking the econmy

rotation i dont see them

no one in dungons press n e thing but 1. elies break boss with ice bow then all go to slep, wkae up, get reward

you call that fun? how?

quote=5132932;Ranael.6423:]

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

Fun is really not an objective thing, people have fun while earning IG gold. And really I wish to see once a group of people rushing and only pressing 11111 though an entire dungeon, even AC, and go till the end without dying. [/quote]

join a pug with two elles youll see

dlonie.6547:

Morfedel.4165:

I’ve always imagined some bosses with unavoidable (other than some forms of invulnerability) attacks that do some appreciable damage, enough to be a serious threat to those with full aggressive stats, and a moderate threat to those with high defensive stats.

Like Mai Trinn? Some attacks you can’t block, some attacks you can’t dodge, and if you get it wrong it hurts.

Or possibly instead massive AOES that can be dodged, but do serious damage, and come out faster than endurance recharges, meaning you will almost certainly take some hits, etc.

Like Mai Trinn cannon phase, or Lupi p2 AoE barrage?

I have no problem with the idea of zerker, as long as they are threatened for that choice. Just as full bunkers are not contributing as much due to lower dps, zerkers should be threatened enough to make them at least pause and consider their choices.

We are. We’ve just done these same encounters for nearly three years at this point and have memorized the mechanics and timings. No AI can stand up to that.

We just need new content.

Yes, but your examples seem to be mostly exceptions and not the rule. Nevertheless though, I agree with the new content. Hopefully HoT provides that.

Puls.5867:

Don’t nerf IT just… Make it so we don’t have to stack in a spot in a dungeon and spam 1 I hate how boring that style is then getting kicked from a group for wanting to do it a funner way xD

Amen. I know stacking works, and it works beautifully. But god do I hate it. Seriously, this is one area where the devs really need to work on that – without nerfing melee characters in the process!

Ranael.6423:

ForeverAway.5948:

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

Fun is really not an objective thing, people have fun while earning IG gold. And really I wish to see once a group of people rushing and only pressing 11111 though an entire dungeon, even AC, and go till the end without dying.

join a pug with two elles youll see[/quote]

Have you played an ele recently ? Do you really think they don’t swap attunement and only auto attack? Have you ever tried to take an ele and stack might and fury for your group by just pressing 11111 ? I admit some path (especially low level dungeon) have bosses that melt too fast ( downscaling is meowed ) but if it is too easy for you then stick to HotW and Arah and try the 111 even with three ele. Watching a video on youtube doesn’t make you play, it just gives you the impression that everything is too easy.

Ranael.6423:

Have you played an ele recently ? Do you really think they don’t swap attunement and only auto attack? Have you ever tried to take an ele and stack might and fury for your group by just pressing 11111 ?

i sad elley not a warrior with phallax strength :P

I admit some path (especially low level dungeon) have bosses that melt too fast ( downscaling is meowed ) but if it is too easy for you then stick to HotW and Arah and try the 111 even with three ele. Watching a video on youtube doesn’t make you play, it just gives you the impression that everything is too easy.

ive seen arah and hotw too

arah is all stealth and run and breaking bosses or reflect abusing

hotw is 111111 you just get whet wile you do it :P

I hope they don’t nerf zerk meta, I’ve always been a dps class and i love dpsing, i dont want my ascended zerk gear to be useless

Leonhardt.8164:

I hope they don’t nerf zerk meta, I’ve always been a dps class and i love dpsing, i dont want my ascended zerk gear to be useless

no one wants it to be useless. We just want the other gear to be as viable a choice as zerker without, for example, getting booted from groups for having “non-meta” gear and all that garbage.

Morfedel.4165:

Leonhardt.8164:

I hope they don’t nerf zerk meta, I’ve always been a dps class and i love dpsing, i dont want my ascended zerk gear to be useless

no one wants it to be useless. We just want the other gear to be as viable a choice as zerker without, for example, getting booted from groups for having “non-meta” gear and all that garbage.

Actually it is a viable choice, Source : me who have almost no beserker dressed barbie and runs dungeons every day….
If you don’t want to get booted, first don’t join the group “lvl 80 exp zerk only” because you don’t fit the description. Instead start your group " everyone accepted, no need of any zerk or guard", wait a few seconds and say “hi” to your new team

Ranael.6423:

Have you played an ele recently ? Do you really think they don’t swap attunement and only auto attack? Have you ever tried to take an ele and stack might and fury for your group by just pressing 11111 ?

To be fair, staff ele in PvE is essentially camping fire and spamming 1 and 2, with the occasional 5 when it’s off cooldown. Might is stacked up beforehand.

Not exactly a complex rotation.

spoj.9672:

Exactly which means the problem isnt berserker. Its the difficulty level. Fractal bosses at scale 50 are much better balanced for 5 man groups.

Not exactly. It’s more because mastered zerk build is faster than mastered soldier build.

To break the “one build type” meta, it need mobs, boss, events, world boss where some statistics provide a faster way to complete the goal (kill the boss for example).

If we could find a way on PvE content to make conditions, vitality, or compassion accelerating the fight instead of slowing it down and by making theses mechanics shift to promote a different value each time, we would “break the zerk meta”.

- Turrets killing the boss that players can heal/protect to make them kill the boss (or during events)
- A trigger that make players inflict their HP amount as damages to the boss
- Promoting the Retaliation buff

Erm. If you want to kill things faster you build more damage. Its working as intended. Deal with it.

Kulvar.1239:

spoj.9672:

Exactly which means the problem isnt berserker. Its the difficulty level. Fractal bosses at scale 50 are much better balanced for 5 man groups.

Not exactly. It’s more because mastered zerk build is faster than mastered soldier build.

To break the “one build type” meta, it need mobs, boss, events, world boss where some statistics provide a faster way to complete the goal (kill the boss for example).

If we could find a way on PvE content to make conditions, vitality, or compassion accelerating the fight instead of slowing it down and by making theses mechanics shift to promote a different value each time, we would “break the zerk meta”.

- Turrets killing the boss that players can heal/protect to make them kill the boss (or during events)
- A trigger that make players inflict their HP amount as damages to the boss
- Promoting the Retaliation buff

No gear set can do better damage or be equal to zerk except against husks, and objects (teq,kitten,…), asking for soldier gear to out perform zerk in damage makes no sense. It should always be able to provide the best damage compared to other gear types because it sacrifices all defensive stats…. If all the new fights based damage on HP then everyone would stack as much HP as possible with a specific combination of damage stats and that would be the new meta.

Defensive stats shouldn’t reward you with more damage, they are there to help you survive. If you can survive without the passive cushion then run zerker, but if you want to play a tank you shouldn’t expect to do as much damage as zerker, you should expect to have some more sustainability.

Having different mechanics in a fight for dealing damage to a boss like protecting a turret is fine and it exists in some fights like Claw of Jormag with the golems, but zerker should still be dealing the most damage to the mobs you are protecting it from, unless they take the husk route, but in that case zerker still outperforms other power builds.

I think the best way to balance zerker builds against others is to have at least some high value battles have attacks that are exceptionally dangerous to builds that are very low in defensive stats, thus vastly increasing the risk that full offensive builds will go down while more defensive builds can stay on their feet and continue to fight.

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

Although then we might end up with everyone having two armor sets in their inventory, their zerker and their non-zerker to accomodate for those circumstances lol.

you know, honestly, I don’t think that zerker is all that awesomely great. I’ll admit I’ve rarely seen the use of making a full bunker build, but most of my builds usually have armor with at least one, if not two, defensive stats.

In other words, almost all my gear has at least one offensive and one defensive stat. Ironically my full offensive armors are mostly assassin rather than berserker, for various reasons (usually building off crit triggered effects, duh), and I really dont think that zerker is the only way to go, that its so good it has to be meta, and I’ve argued that before.

My ONLY gear complaints are for the full bunker ones. I think THOSE aren’t all that great except in very specific circumstances (I occasionally like to run a bunker in pvp or wvw for…. well, a couple different reasons that I won’t elaborate on here).

What, precisely, is the problem with gear prefixes or build choices that are more valued in one aspect of the game than the other? Other games even put a PvP label on certain gear and build choices. Is it because GW2 lacks that kind of labeling that some people seem to think that every available gear prefix ought to have equivalent value everywhere in the game?

i see the zerk gear as a double edge sword
1 side its very much wanted in dugeons for a ubber fast run
other side pll sell those gear for insane prices

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

While that sounds reasonable – it won’t work. You can make is so you need x amount of passive defense to live – and everyone will switch to that spec/stat. But you haven’t really solved any problem.

Why? Because the game will play the same. Maybe some sets of gear become useless because even the most skilled players can’t use them. But the game will play exactly the same. It’s just now that everyone will use soldiers and such..

Let’s say that instead the buff defensive gear such that it provides more defense. Well that DOES change gameplay – but not in a good way. It makes it such that facerolling dungeons and standing in fire will allow for mindless dungeon running.

Open world content even if FULL Beserker is already mindlessly easy with regards to survival. So now dungeons would be that easy as well. So we can rule out this change as stupid as well.

The solution is not so simple without a trinity in PVE. Think about other MMOs – the only reason they had diversity was because they had different roles. The tank would stack all kinds of defensive stats and the healer would stack stats that help healing – but everyone else – the DPS would stack pure DPS stats.

In GW2 we essentially only have DPS – so everyone stacks offensive stats. This is the necessary outcome. You can raise the ‘white’ damage so to speak so that everyone is forced to stack some defensive stats – but why bother if the game will play identically.

The Zerk Meta must be changed crowd is just not thinking logically about game design. Woe be to arenanet if they take their input seriously. They do not understand gaming mechanics at all..

hazenvirus.8154:

No gear set can do better damage or be equal to zerk except against husks, and objects (teq,kitten,…), asking for soldier gear to out perform zerk in damage makes no sense. It should always be able to provide the best damage compared to other gear types because it sacrifices all defensive stats…. If all the new fights based damage on HP then everyone would stack as much HP as possible with a specific combination of damage stats and that would be the new meta.

Defensive stats shouldn’t reward you with more damage, they are there to help you survive. If you can survive without the passive cushion then run zerker, but if you want to play a tank you shouldn’t expect to do as much damage as zerker, you should expect to have some more sustainability.

Having different mechanics in a fight for dealing damage to a boss like protecting a turret is fine and it exists in some fights like Claw of Jormag with the golems, but zerker should still be dealing the most damage to the mobs you are protecting it from, unless they take the husk route, but in that case zerker still outperforms other power builds.

Conditions are there for damaging too.
Also, it’s not a question of “life became damage”.
It’s more a way to let people promote defense over offense without making the game easier/boring.

Imagine a dungeon where you can choose to activate a damaging cloud to surround the area. Zerk would die too fast of the acidest level, but defensive build could resist it and use it to bring foes down.

Zerk group => toxic rank I
=> kill all of the foes by themselves with few damages from the sparse cloud

Mix group => toxic rank II
=> kill the foes with the help of the toxic cloud while taking care of their life

Soldier/Healer group => toxic rank III
=> let the acid cloud kill most of the foes with some help while dealing with surviving to it and the foes.

“Zerk” sucks. I’d like to see it get cut back some more. I hate being 1 shot killed by thieves and slinking rangers.

Problem with zerk is similar to the problem with celestial gear, in that it has more benefits for certain classes given their class mechanics. Thieves benefit a lot from zerk as they have evasion, stealth, good heals that also dodge or activate stealth, coupled with numerous teleports, stun breaks, and the ability to reset a fight if it goes wrongly, thus making it unnecessary to have any type of stats outside of damage stats. Other classes, like the necro, do not have this luxury and get blasted as they have only two dodges and a dmg shield, and limited stun breaks, etc. This class also does not benefit from celestial as it has only one real heal as siphons suck and don’t scale well, and the class doesn’t benifit from mid range condi dmg as their ability to stack condis is seriously limited. In addition medium defensive stats on a class with crap defense is laughable at best.

I state the above not to call for a nerf of zerk, or cele, but to make other sets more useful, and meaningful, especially for classes that do not benefit as much from either set in comparrison to others. When the overwhelming majority of players run zerk, that should tell you that there must be reasons, among which includes the idea that the other sets simply are junk compared to zerk, and definitely less effective. Stacking toughness is useless as the dmg from a zerker opponent is not really reduced that much thus making it less effective. Toughness is also useless vs condi’s making vitality more important because if you can’t soak dmg with toughness might as well just stack health. Healing pwr is also only useful to certain classes as well, which concequently also benefit the most from cele.

dmg from conditions in the present meta is almost null as the amount of condi clears in the wvw and pvp realm is ridiculous, thus again forcing all classes to run zerk or cele, at higher tiers of play. It’s boring, stale, and leads to an invariable situation, or at least a decrease in variability in the composition of team makeup. Right now we see the same classes with the same builds in pvp, which concequently are the same classes and builds which benefit the most from zerker and cele amulets. Furthermore, the class builds are also the builds that bring the combination of the most dmg coupled with the most team utility, as in teams typically select classes based on how many condi clears and heals the can bring to the team coupled with high damage, aside from the thief, who typically operates outside of the team fights to decap points or drop roamers. Consequently the classes that are described above are also the most mobile classes except for the guardian.

The meta is stale in my opinion because only zerk or cele builds are viable, while condi builds or builds more defensively focused have gone the way of the dodo, which seems to be ok in a game with a high turnover of pvp players, as players try it out, get bored, decide it won’t change, move on, and are refreshed with new players that ultimately reach the same conclusion and bounce. High turnover benefits anet.

Tbh the real equal thing ( not balanced, equal) would be a scaling based on team statistics.
So the more power the team has (power*crit*feroctiy for each char added together) the more HP the boss has, and the more defense the team has the stronger the attacks of the boss.

In the end you get an encounter that is equally long for every setup and then the gear choice of each of the members doesn’t matter anymore. On the paper it should be a nice idea but :
-there is no more progression for anyone, no easier setup to learn and no harder setup to perform. The results are binary, either you go through the dungeon or you fail but once it is cleared it will be always the same
-if the skill level is a bit to high to begin, casual players won’t spend time in dungeon more than twice because it is too hard (remember the game launch!)
-hardcore players won’t be able to improve their playstyle and time completion so they will leave the dungeon areas (and maybe the game) sooner than later

So in the end I wouldn’t wish too much for a new paradigm. Just wait for HoT and see : the not-downscaled content will be harder than AC and select those who are good enough to play with Meta builds and zerker gear.
I mean I’ve seen so many people playing Meta “because it is meta” and don’t understand any SW bosses (and open world content is easier by far than dungeons!) and die constantly without improving over time and only blame “AOE on red” to explain their bad performance.

As things stand now, anything other than zerker is a suboptimal way of dealing with almost any situation, the only exceptions being enemies that were designed to either exclude or highly dampen the efficiency of some stats. Good players have basically no reason to use different gears, and a ton of stat combinations just sit there unused. That’s a waste.
Imho, defensive stats should be less passive and more tied to active mechanics/skills. So that they don’t act as a “safety net”, but rather empower defensive playstyles for whoever is interested in those. Same for support (imho, healing power should be reworked into some sort of “support power”, so that we can have more uses of said statistic; as now you can only stack healing, but it ends up being useless cause the game is balanced over having no proper healers, thus nothing will ever need such high amounts of healings; and that’s fine, but it cheapens the value of the stat).

Likewise, encounters should tailor other playstyles as well. Whereas an highly offensive party could try beating a boss in a direct confrontation, a defensive party may have other opportunities to showcase their inclination (like, pass in the middle of an horde of enemies and take the item X, very effective versus said boss). It wouldn’t be easier, but rather, just a different approach.
Unlike now, different types of gear would just provide with different ways to accomplish the same goal – beating a dungeon, event, or whatever. They would all be efficient, in their own way, in the hands of good players.

Ranael.6423:

Tbh the real equal thing ( not balanced, equal) would be a scaling based on team statistics.
So the more power the team has (power*crit*feroctiy for each char added together) the more HP the boss has, and the more defense the team has the stronger the attacks of the boss.

In the end you get an encounter that is equally long for every setup and then the gear choice of each of the members doesn’t matter anymore. On the paper it should be a nice idea but :
-there is no more progression for anyone, no easier setup to learn and no harder setup to perform. The results are binary, either you go through the dungeon or you fail but once it is cleared it will be always the same
-if the skill level is a bit to high to begin, casual players won’t spend time in dungeon more than twice because it is too hard (remember the game launch!)
-hardcore players won’t be able to improve their playstyle and time completion so they will leave the dungeon areas (and maybe the game) sooner than later

So in the end I wouldn’t wish too much for a new paradigm. Just wait for HoT and see : the not-downscaled content will be harder than AC and select those who are good enough to play with Meta builds and zerker gear.
I mean I’ve seen so many people playing Meta “because it is meta” and don’t understand any SW bosses (and open world content is easier by far than dungeons!) and die constantly without improving over time and only blame “AOE on red” to explain their bad performance.

So basically we don’t need gear with stats anymore with this approach. ANet might as well just remove stats from gear and balance them internally.

Kulvar.1239:

Conditions are there for damaging too.
Also, it’s not a question of “life became damage”.
It’s more a way to let people promote defense over offense without making the game easier/boring.

Imagine a dungeon where you can choose to activate a damaging cloud to surround the area. Zerk would die too fast of the acidest level, but defensive build could resist it and use it to bring foes down.

Zerk group => toxic rank I
=> kill all of the foes by themselves with few damages from the sparse cloud

Mix group => toxic rank II
=> kill the foes with the help of the toxic cloud while taking care of their life

Soldier/Healer group => toxic rank III
=> let the acid cloud kill most of the foes with some help while dealing with surviving to it and the foes.

I mentioned conditions, husks.

Based on what you are saying you want to require a certain amount of defensive stat to survive in the poison cloud… This changes nothing though. Players shift to taking just enough defense to survive and then kill everything as fast as possible. This approach also makes some gear combinations useless because you cannot survive without X and Y defense stats. You have just created less diversity, and the new meta is max damage with just enough of X and Y to survive. It is also more complicated than zerker being best for damage and will probably alienate more players than the “zerker meta” ever did. Your defensive gear is fine and so is zerker gear.

Making content that requires a certain amount of a passive defensive stat changes nothing, but reduces the amount of viable stat combinations. Adding agony effects to normal dungeons and open world would have the same effect without reducing diversity and I doubt people want to have to do fractals to get enough Agony resist just to do open world or dungeon content, just like we don’t want to have to change our gear stats all the time for content.

Ithilwen.1529:

“Zerk” sucks. I’d like to see it get cut back some more. I hate being 1 shot killed by thieves and slinking rangers.

I’ve never been one-shotted, but I’ve been hammered down fast. I’ve also beaten (or driven off, as thieves for instance can usually just IA and get away) zerker thieves before, without using zerker builds myself, but admittedly it isnt easy.

Making content that requires a certain amount of a passive defensive stat changes nothing, but reduces the amount of viable stat combinations. Adding agony effects to normal dungeons and open world would have the same effect without reducing diversity and I doubt people want to have to do fractals to get enough Agony resist just to do open world or dungeon content, just like we don’t want to have to change our gear stats all the time for content.

This. Honestly for me its relatively trivial to switch all my guys to orange gear that’s more defensive. But people who have put in the time to get ascended Zerkers are going to be ticked.

From a gameplay perspective changes like this do almost nothing. BEST CASE – you have people that will bring different gear to different dungeons. Okay everyone put your soldiers on for this boss. BFD..

The game will not PLAY any different. The gear you wear is just stat packages. GW2 should concentrate on improving gameplay. I’d start with increasing the range of boon auras so you don’t have to stack in one spot..and then add new dungeons where we wouldn’t be encouraged to stack in one spot..

Hume.2876:

From a gameplay perspective changes like this do almost nothing. BEST CASE – you have people that will bring different gear to different dungeons. Okay everyone put your soldiers on for this boss. BFD…

So don’t make that sort of change. That should really go without saying by now.

But the fact that that’s a crappy way to change the zerk meta does not mean that the zerk meta is a good thing or that there cannot be better.

Gear could have an economic dimension. Maybe every gear piece could have power, precision, and ferocity; but while soldier’s gear complements that with vitality and toughness, zerker gear might have an economic benefit — perhaps used zerker weapons could be turned in to NPCs for unique rewards, for example, while ‘used’ zerk armour could yield much better salvage (turning certain pieces of used armour in to an NPC would be a bit weird).

Or gear could perform essentially the same and the prefixes could determine something else that it does.

MarkoNS.3261:

TheSwede.9512:

They’re not gonna directly Nerf Zerker gear in any way, I’d wager. The only way they could directly nerf it would be through nerfs to Power, Precision or Ferocity which will hurt more than just the PvE Dungeon meta.

They might, however, design encounters that are more difficult to deal with using Zerker gear, or simply more efficient to deal with through use of other gear. We can only speculate on this but it’s safe to assume that anything ANet throws out will probably be completely doable in Zerker gear still.

yes but the way you put it in order for us to do it optimally we are forced to change gear.

So ?

Why should the whole rest of us that can’t stand zerker playstyle be forced to change into zerker builds for optimal performance ? Zerker is a stupid meta and needs to go the way of the proverbial do-do bird.

It limits gameplay options for so many people in so many situations its not funny. Time for a long overdue change.

please nerf zerker out of existance.

kktnxbye

Tongku.5326:

So ?

Why should the whole rest of us that can’t stand zerker playstyle be forced to change into zerker builds for optimal performance ? Zerker is a stupid meta and needs to go the way of the proverbial do-do bird.

To be replaced by what? How do you propose to nerf it? If you’re literally telling us that zerker gear should like cause instant death when equipped or something, what the hell do you hope to accomplish with this?

Gear could have an economic dimension. Maybe every gear piece could have power, precision, and ferocity; but while soldier’s gear complements that with vitality and toughness, zerker gear might have an economic benefit — perhaps used zerker weapons could be turned in to NPCs for unique rewards, for example, while ‘used’ zerk armour could yield much better salvage (turning certain pieces of used armour in to an NPC would be a bit weird).

Like I said I am not worried about the ‘costs’ of switching armor types to the ‘new’ Meta. I just don’t see the point of it. Making everyone where something like Celestial doesn’t accomplish anything either.

You are not thinking this through..

There TWO proposed ‘fixes’ to the Zerk meta.

1) Add in additional unavoidable damage such that you will not able to wear Zerker gear.

2) Make the other armor sets relatively ‘stronger’.

Neither approach has shown even the tiniest bit of merit. With the first approach you end up with everyone switching to the new meta – which is the new minimum viable defense level. So it might soldiers or knights etc.

But the game play does not change one iota. All it does is alienate the players who acquired ascended Beserker gear. What good is that to Arenanet?

With the second approach – make the defensive armors better – sure you can get some people out of Zerk gear. But this time it HURTS gameplay. Instead of having your most skilled players using all the tools in their toolbox to speed through content.. You end up with people ignoring mechanics. If say Clerics were boosted such that it did 90% of Zerker damage and you could live through three boss attacks instead of 1 with zerkers then you would indeed have a lot of people switching to Clerics.

But this sucks for arenanet too. You want your game to play like Bloodborne not baseball simulator 2000..

The THIRD fix – that no one is really talking about is the Holy Trinity. That provides a natural reason to use alternate gear sets in PvE. And the lack of that is the reason why everyone intelligent specs their character like the DPSer they are..

Hume.2876:

But this sucks for arenanet too. You want your game to play like Bloodborne not baseball simulator 2000..
..

You sound like a guy with a good grasp on game mechanics and well reasoned arguments.

The third fix that’s been actually been talked about — and we’re starting to see happen — is to reduce the base functionality of skills/abilities and increase the contribution from the relevant attribute. We just saw a Zerker “nerf” announced today~ conditions are going to do less damage if you have less than (currently proposed) 700 condition damage. If your Zerker build does any damage at all via conditions, like say the occasional burns all Guardians generate, then your damage is going down. The fight lasts a little longer, and you are exposed to greater risk.

Do that same sort of pass for healing skills and healing power and Zerk will be the right choice for the very, very skillful… and a death sentence for the sloppy .

Hume.2876:

This. Honestly for me its relatively trivial to switch all my guys to orange gear that’s more defensive. But people who have put in the time to get ascended Zerkers are going to be ticked.

It happens. There have been other changes to gear that has caused people to be unhappy, but the devs did it anway. And I’ve heard an upcoming nerf for celestial gear is on its way… people who worked kitten their celestial gear are going to be ticked, but it isn’t stopping the devs that way either.

Hume.2876:

Gear could have an economic dimension. Maybe every gear piece could have power, precision, and ferocity; but while soldier’s gear complements that with vitality and toughness, zerker gear might have an economic benefit — perhaps used zerker weapons could be turned in to NPCs for unique rewards, for example, while ‘used’ zerk armour could yield much better salvage (turning certain pieces of used armour in to an NPC would be a bit weird).

Like I said I am not worried about the ‘costs’ of switching armor types to the ‘new’ Meta. I just don’t see the point of it. Making everyone where something like Celestial doesn’t accomplish anything either.

You are not thinking this through..

There TWO proposed ‘fixes’ to the Zerk meta.

1) Add in additional unavoidable damage such that you will not able to wear Zerker gear.

2) Make the other armor sets relatively ‘stronger’.

Neither approach has shown even the tiniest bit of merit. With the first approach you end up with everyone switching to the new meta – which is the new minimum viable defense level. So it might soldiers or knights etc.

But the game play does not change one iota. All it does is alienate the players who acquired ascended Beserker gear. What good is that to Arenanet?

With the second approach – make the defensive armors better – sure you can get some people out of Zerk gear. But this time it HURTS gameplay. Instead of having your most skilled players using all the tools in their toolbox to speed through content.. You end up with people ignoring mechanics. If say Clerics were boosted such that it did 90% of Zerker damage and you could live through three boss attacks instead of 1 with zerkers then you would indeed have a lot of people switching to Clerics.

But this sucks for arenanet too. You want your game to play like Bloodborne not baseball simulator 2000..

The THIRD fix – that no one is really talking about is the Holy Trinity. That provides a natural reason to use alternate gear sets in PvE. And the lack of that is the reason why everyone intelligent specs their character like the DPSer they are..

The idea of unavoidable damage wasnt to kill zerkers in one hit, just make them take some pain, along with everyone else, but with their lower stats it would hurt more.

But never meant for it to be a one shot kill. I foresee things like unavoidable damage that doesnt one shot anyone, but does bring on some pain… the moreso to those with low defensive measures… or say DoT effects that will buzzsaw the vitality of the zerker lower, but still not “one shotting them.”

This would have effect of having the zerker race to DPS the target before they fall themselves, and perhaps a few really good dodges and some skill use at opportune times would survive, but not as safely as someone with more defensive stats, who would have the opposite problem of extending the fight because of lack of dps but would be less likely to fall quickly.

something like that would make a good tradeoff, I think.

Nike.2631:

The third fix that’s been actually been talked about — and we’re starting to see happen — is to reduce the base functionality of skills/abilities and increase the contribution from the relevant attribute. We just saw a Zerker “nerf” announced today~ conditions are going to do less damage if you have less than (currently proposed) 700 condition damage. If your Zerker build does any damage at all via conditions, like say the occasional burns all Guardians generate, then your damage is going down. The fight lasts a little longer, and you are exposed to greater risk.

Do that same sort of pass for healing skills and healing power and Zerk will be the right choice for the very, very skillful… and a death sentence for the sloppy .

That might well be an ideal way, still rewarding zerkers if you are one of the top notch players, while encouraging those less skilled to use less fully focused aggressive sets.

I’m a bit clumsy at the keyboard, so I’d probably go with a set that had one defensive stat

hazenvirus.8154:

Based on what you are saying you want to require a certain amount of defensive stat to survive in the poison cloud… This changes nothing though. Players shift to taking just enough defense to survive and then kill everything as fast as possible.

You missed the “choice” part… People vote for the toxic cloud intensity according to their party type at the beginning (offensive, balanced, defensive).

hazenvirus.8154:

Ranael.6423:

Tbh the real equal thing (not balanced, equal) would be a scaling based on team statistics.
So the more power the team has (power*crit* feroctiy for each char added together) the more HP the boss has, and the more defense the team has the stronger the attacks of the boss.

In the end you get an encounter that is equally long for every setup and then the gear choice of each of the members doesn’t matter anymore.

So basically we don’t need gear with stats anymore with this approach. ANet might as well just remove stats from gear and balance them internally.

Actually not at all ! It would make the balance of gear matter.

On a side, if bosses have a strict balancing policy, party with four Zerk, and a Soldier will make the Soldier super extra uselessly tanky and it’s damages worth nothing because of the extremly extended lifepool of the boss in “anti-Zerk” mode.
And the Zerk will have way less difficulties to survive seeing the boss will hit weaker and extra life will be useless.
It’ll promote the lack of diversity in a party.

Second case: boss is weaker when he can’t be in “anti-X” mode.
Then, mixed gear type in a group make the boss weaker, allowing everyone to team up.
Full zerker party will face a sooooo high life pool that it make the extra damages not worth the time it take to kill the boss.
On an opposite side, full tanky boss will hit so few that it’ll make fight looooooooong.
But then, everyone will go Celestial, and we would end in the same trouble as currently with Zerk.

Hume.2876:

There TWO proposed ‘fixes’ to the Zerk meta.

1) Add in additional unavoidable damage such that you will not able to wear Zerker gear.

2) Make the other armor sets relatively ‘stronger’.

Or take a third option, because again, those two ideas being crap doesn’t mean that the ‘zerk meta’ is a good thing. I’ve already pointed out one — have fewer stat spreads, and make different prefixes actually do things rather than affecting stats.

It’s a big change that might not be practical right away — and until it’s practical, the status quo is better than any of the easy alternatives (for the simple reason that there’s no easy fix to the problem). But that doesn’t mean that there’s no problem.

I am tired of this there is no “zerk” problem if you dont want to be forced to wear zerk then post in lfg that you dont mind other armors, or make ascended armor have selectable stats then modify whatever you want and it wont mater the main issue for me is the price of getting full asc zerk characters and i have 4 of them.

Fourth option:

No more last stand, if you’re dead, you’re dead
Think about it and laugh of 75% of the zerker Meta
So many wipe… that could be awesome

(In pvp too)

MarkoNS.3261:

I am tired of this there is no “zerk” problem if you dont want to be forced to wear zerk then post in lfg that you dont mind other armors, or make ascended armor have selectable stats then modify whatever you want and it wont mater the main issue for me is the price of getting full asc zerk characters and i have 4 of them.

That’s not the issue, that’s a social matter that just boils down to playstyle conflicts and it is completely irrelevant to the discussion because it’s not really about zerker gear.

The issue is that 66% of the gear prefixes in the game have little value to a whole game mode. It’s not the end of the world, but there’s clearly a lot of room for improvement.

Morfedel.4165:

I think the best way to balance zerker builds against others is to have at least some high value battles have attacks that are exceptionally dangerous to builds that are very low in defensive stats, thus vastly increasing the risk that full offensive builds will go down while more defensive builds can stay on their feet and continue to fight.

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

Although then we might end up with everyone having two armor sets in their inventory, their zerker and their non-zerker to accomodate for those circumstances lol.

You mean something like the current fights such as Tazza/CoE golems? Those are so much fun that I often lfg “heavies only” just so my zerker ele can tank the whole fight for them.
/s

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Morfedel.4165:

I think the best way to balance zerker builds against others is to have at least some high value battles have attacks that are exceptionally dangerous to builds that are very low in defensive stats, thus vastly increasing the risk that full offensive builds will go down while more defensive builds can stay on their feet and continue to fight.

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

Although then we might end up with everyone having two armor sets in their inventory, their zerker and their non-zerker to accomodate for those circumstances lol.

You mean something like the current fights such as Tazza/CoE golems? Those are so much fun that I often lfg “heavies only” just so my zerker ele can tank the whole fight for them.
/s

No, thats not what I mean at all. What I mean is what everyone else is saying, we think the game should have most if not all armor sets have pretty much equal value across the game, even if maybe some gear is better in one instance than another.

And I’d bet you that the Devs never intended for one armor set to dominate. After all, they already did a small nerf to zerker and other armor set by changing crit damage to ferocity. Not much, but it sure seemed like a shot across the bow to me.

evilunderling.9265:

The issue is that 66% of the gear prefixes in the game have little value to a whole game mode. It’s not the end of the world, but there’s clearly a lot of room for improvement.

No, it’s not the end of the world. However, why exactly is it a problem at all? Other games put out gear that has stats that apply only to PvP. No one complains about that stuff making the gear sub-optimal in PvE. The existence of a given stat prefix is justified if it is useful in one mode, or is used by a partial demographic in any mode. PvE is not the whole game. Heck, optimized PvE is not the whole of PvE.

Further, players who set requirements for playing with them in an LFG tool should not be considered as the sole arbiters of what’s worthwhile. That should be the province of individual players. Apparently, ANet accepts that. Why else have they added stat prefixes that “enough” players asked for? Why add Nomads, for instance?

Morfedel.4165:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Morfedel.4165:

I think the best way to balance zerker builds against others is to have at least some high value battles have attacks that are exceptionally dangerous to builds that are very low in defensive stats, thus vastly increasing the risk that full offensive builds will go down while more defensive builds can stay on their feet and continue to fight.

That way we dont get into silly games where we are looking to nerf what zerker was intended for, high dps output, and allow the high defensive builds to do precisely what they are intended for, surviving where others might not.

Although then we might end up with everyone having two armor sets in their inventory, their zerker and their non-zerker to accomodate for those circumstances lol.

You mean something like the current fights such as Tazza/CoE golems? Those are so much fun that I often lfg “heavies only” just so my zerker ele can tank the whole fight for them.
/s

No, thats not what I mean at all. What I mean is what everyone else is saying, we think the game should have most if not all armor sets have pretty much equal value across the game, even if maybe some gear is better in one instance than another.

And I’d bet you that the Devs never intended for one armor set to dominate. After all, they already did a small nerf to zerker and other armor set by changing crit damage to ferocity. Not much, but it sure seemed like a shot across the bow to me.

Well, your suggestion how to improve viability of other sets doesn’t sound good at all to me because I get the taste of similar (intended or not) effect where the lowest armour character gets all the agro. Those fights are really frustrating, especially Tazza, her aa alone hurts like truck.

The fact that zerker gear already gives less protection than defensive gear means a zerker takes more dmg from attacks, basically the same thing as what you propossed.

Why not do it the other way around – bosses would attack characters with higher defence stats, that way they would make some use of them, instead of watching a zerker eat the dirt.