Guild Wars 2

Thaddeus.4891:

But that build diversity (which could be improve) don’t translate into gear diversity because the gear don’t improve what is good in this game. Direct Damage is the only thing worth it right now from gear. Condition damage should be another one.

We agree 100% on this… That being said just because zerker is optimal doesn’t mean that other gears aren’t viable. You can still run all the content, as I said, in any gear you want… you’re just gonna take longer to do it or have a bad time. But, whatever, they can play how they want.

Bubi.7942:

thefantasticg.3984:

You’re not getting it. You can’t apply WVW and PVP challenges to PVE. Why? PVE goals have healthbars and because of this the only goal will be to drain that healthbar as fast as possible regardless of what the “challenge” is. You can’t introduce build/gear diversity without changing the goal of PVE, which literally means changing the goal from killing things to not killing things because as long as there is a healthbar the ultimate goal will be to kill it as fast as possible. This literally means you have to make PVE exactly like WVW or PVP with the same goals as WVW and PVP.

Of course, when I say zerker meta I’m referring specifically to dungeons/fractals… beacuse open world, who cares what people run? It’s just going to get zerged down anyway. I really don’t understand why people think there’s a zerker meta in open world pve. There’s not. And if we had a gear check you’d see that… or if Anet would release those stastics we could see that most people run non-zerker build/gears. The only people I know that run true zerker gear/builds are the hardcore dungeon/fractal people.

*If a boss kills you, and you are downed/dead, you are not doing significant damage. Thus your damage output is not optimal if you died because of your gear. *

It would be better if you used PVT, or maybe you can use Knights, or some Condie gear, or maybe the guards in your party could go with some Boon duration runes and Healing Power gear etc..

Depending on boss/encounter mechnics different builds could be better for those (like husks taking more condie damage etc.).

Currently in PvE the only go to build is zerker.

Active Defense > Passive Defense

It would not be better to use PTV. What would be better is if you learned to time your dodges and use active defenses so you could run zerker gear. Like Thaddeus said, we don’t need PTV because we have aegis, blinds, etc. There’s no need to bring the other gears like PTV because we have active defenses and we need to kill it before it kills us. Also like Thaddeus I really wish they’d bring Condi specs to the same DPS level direct damage is, but it’s impossible with condi caps (because of hardware limits as Anet says) and the fact that conditions are suppose to be damage-over-time… which is a problem when we need to down things fast because the condis don’t have time to do the damage direct damage does.

Maybe they need to make every enemy in the game take more damage from condis, that way we could make use of one condi spammer in a group… but I don’t see that happeneing… but that’ll make the zerker meta in dungeons/fractals that much stronger because it’s not like we don’t put on any condis.

I don’t know why you’re so Hell-bent on making other people run other builds/gears. Can’t you play your way and they play theirs?

thefantasticg.3984:

You’re not getting it. You can’t apply WVW and PVP challenges to PVE. Why? PVE goals have healthbars and because of this the only goal will be to drain that healthbar as fast as possible regardless of what the “challenge” is.

So does PvP/WvW. Notice that Courtyard, which literally has no goal but “kill things” still doesn’t have a Zerker meta.

You can’t introduce build/gear diversity without changing the goal of PVE, which literally means changing the goal from killing things to not killing things because as long as there is a healthbar the ultimate goal will be to kill it as fast as possible. This literally means you have to make PVE exactly like WVW or PVP with the same goals as WVW and PVP.

No, it doesn’t. It just means diversity in how encounters are set up. Players use a number of abilities that NPC’s just don’t, such as condition cleansing, boon rip, stun breaks, dodges, and Retaliation. There is quite a bit more to this list, but you get the jist of it.

Of course, when I say zerker meta I’m referring specifically to dungeons/fractals… beacuse open world, who cares what people run? It’s just going to get zerged down anyway. I really don’t understand why people think there’s a zerker meta in open world pve. There’s not. And if we had a gear check you’d see that… or if Anet would release those stastics we could see that most people run non-zerker build/gears. The only people I know that run true zerker gear/builds are the hardcore dungeon/fractal people.

EDIT:
And like Thaddeus says, the majority don’t like content that is really hard. That’s why Orr mobs got nerfed 2+ years ago and that’s why AC got nerfed.

This is completely true. I’m still irked that Mordrem Wolves traded Retaliation for Swiftness. I understand the unstrippable Retaliation on mobs going away (which, by the way, it didn’t), but the howl should have been left alone. I never found mobs in Orr hard, either. Tougher than icebrood in Frostgorge Sound, perhaps, but not difficult.

That said, AC they did re-buff a couple of the bosses. Namely the ghost eater being a more difficult encounter now than at launch.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So does PvP/WvW. Notice that Courtyard, which literally has no goal but “kill things” still doesn’t have a Zerker meta.

True, but human are unpredictable. Both for their build, the skills they will use, the order in which they will use it, the frequency they will use it and how they will work as a team.

In 10-20 years, when we can reach that level of unpredictability and intelligence for AI we can talk about it again. (or we may be all slave of the machine by then ). But for now, we always know what skills mobs are able to do in each part of each dungeons. We can learn what are the animation of each of their skill and we can apply active defense to most of those attack. Limiting to role of passive defensive stats to a learning/casual role.

That’s also a design choice from Anet. They decided to make mobs do slow big attack that we can see coming and dodge/block, etc. They didn’t want them to make fast, medium dmg attack like player can do, but that can’t be dodge as easily. And it’s a choice that I prefer. I like fight like Lupi where you need to be alert, manage your endurance, don’t waste dodge, but still don’t miss one or you will be at 5% hp.

Wish there was more of those.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

thefantasticg.3984:

You’re not getting it. You can’t apply WVW and PVP challenges to PVE. Why? PVE goals have healthbars and because of this the only goal will be to drain that healthbar as fast as possible regardless of what the “challenge” is.

So does PvP/WvW. Notice that Courtyard, which literally has no goal but “kill things” still doesn’t have a Zerker meta.

You can’t introduce build/gear diversity without changing the goal of PVE, which literally means changing the goal from killing things to not killing things because as long as there is a healthbar the ultimate goal will be to kill it as fast as possible. This literally means you have to make PVE exactly like WVW or PVP with the same goals as WVW and PVP.

No, it doesn’t. It just means diversity in how encounters are set up. Players use a number of abilities that NPC’s just don’t, such as condition cleansing, boon rip, stun breaks, dodges, and Retaliation. There is quite a bit more to this list, but you get the jist of it.

Is courtyard that deathmatch PVP map? That was the one map I liked but didn’t get it enough either through rng map choice or being veto’d that it wasn’t worth going back to PVP for after I got my glorious armor I was after.

Even if they did program the AI to use all the tools that are at the disposal of the player and make them attack as fast as the player, those who can would still use zerker and those who can’t still wouldn’t use zerker… Just like it is now. Build diversity is already there. There’s nothing that says anyone HAS to run zerker or you can’t do this content. The zerker meta is player A imposed on other player B because player A wants to get content finished as fast as possible. Player B doesn’t like this because he is kicked from party for not running zerker meta and whines to Dev A to change it so player A cannot run zerker meta. That to me is fundamentally wrong. There’s no rules in this game that says that player B can’t cleric guard his way through content, just like there’s no rules that player A has to have player B in his dungeon/fractal team. To me, this whole “kill the zerker meta” is flawed from the start because I don’t see anyone chomping at the bit to “kill the no-dodge cleric” meta. It really boils down to: Play how I want you to play so I can play with you whether you like it or not… which that parentalism needs to die.

I disagree on your conclusion. Some players would switch over to other gear sets simply because to keep going in Zerker would be too difficult for them. Some others would temporarily switch to other gear sets to learn the increased difficulty before eventually returning. Others still will be stubborn and die repeatedly before calling for nerfs to NPC’s.

Overall, how many continue to run Zerker successfully would decrease, though exact numbers vary with what changes are made. There would still be some that do run it successfully, of course, just a lower (possibly in the sense that 499<500) number.

Even just introducing Retaliation on mobs in a dungeon path would be a significant step up in difficulty for most groups. The most organized groups would likely also have to re-evaluate their approach, even if it’s just something like “engineer brings throw mine instead of Elixir Gun”"

My example in my last paragraph is from in game experience…

“Some players would switch over to other gear sets simply because to keep going in Zerker would be too difficult for them. Some others would temporarily switch to other gear sets to learn the increased difficulty before eventually returning.” <— this just reinforces my point that those who can run zerker will and those who can’t won’t.

“Overall, how many continue to run Zerker successfully would decrease, though exact numbers vary with what changes are made. " <— completely unfounded assumption. If they can’t run zerker now they probably won’t be able to run zerker later… this is again talking dungeon/fractals because in open world PVE, people are running whatever they want right now anyway which is no way verifiable because we don’t have gear/build checking capabilities.

“Even just introducing Retaliation on mobs in a dungeon path would be a significant step up in difficulty for most groups.” <—- no, it won’t. Most effective/fastest way would be just to avoid them altogether. Mobs in dungeons/fractals have HORRID loot tables. Don’t understand why anyone WANTS to kill more mobs than they have to… unless wasting as much time as possible for as little reward possible is there goal, but then I won’t be running in those groups.

Sadly without a gear check your words about “some players” switching and mine that say majority (i.e. more than 50%) run non-zerk build/gears in open PVE is unverifyable … and I doubt Anet would release stastics on what gear/builds people are running. That being said, it’s easy to tell if the group is bringing enough DPS or not… I know when my Wife and I are running dungeons/fractals we can see when the DPS isn’t there and it’s taking longer than usual to take a particular boss/mob down.

If the difficulty on enemies went up, some people would switch away from Zerker. Statistically speaking, they may be an insignificant portion, but it would still be a drop. I never said that some who can’t run zerker now would run zerker later. I said some who can run zerker now could not run zerker later.

And not all mobs in dungeons are skippable, so it’s quite possible adding Retaliation would make a difference. The impact of any change depends greatly on where the change is made as well as what the change is.

Here’s the problem: if the difficulty goes up too much, people would just stop doing the content. That happened in Orr before the mob nerf. I remember how much more difficult it was before the nerf.

I still don’t understand why you want to change the way people play. Why does it hurt your play that other people play zerker? Why must you insist that they not play zerker? Why do you insist that the Devs make it more difficult for people that want to play zerker?

Would it be fair for people playing zerker demand that people playing clerics have it so easy? Would it be fair for people player zerker demand that enemies be more difficult so it takes people in clerics LONGER to defeat the same bosses? Would it be fair for people playing zerker demand more ONE SHOT mechanics that insta-down clerics forcing them to change their playstyle? Short answer: no.

I honestly do not understand stand this line of thinking that it’s ok to demand from Devs to change the way the game operates to INTENTIONALLY make the game more difficult for a subset of people simply because… well, reasons.

Bubi.7942:

Past experience proves otherwise.

Remember people crying about the mordrem wolves retaliatin which killed “the zerker” crowd? Sadly the solution was not letting them figure out – " oh man, we actually have boonrips skills and other gear!" but instead removing retaliation alltogether.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want everyone running PTV or Nomad, no. But it would be nice, if not everyone and their pet parrot would run zerker, cause there is no risk involved. Again, raising difficulty (which they promised to do), will hopefully make the “not so skilled” people think about gear choice.

If people are not reasonable, yes, they will switch their gear to something more defensive. But it’s much more effective, cheaper and faster to change your build than your gear. Most meta builds pick as many +dmg modifiers as possible and they do not exactly change the way you play. Just remove few points here and there, put into defensive traits, swap some utilities and tadam, you are much more survivable. A person in a defensive gear with defensive traits is really tanky, no content ever requires that sort of commitment.

So the problem that remains is to decide which is better, to stay with similar build and change your gear or vice versa. For me it’s trivial.

thefantasticg.3984:

Here’s the problem: if the difficulty goes up too much, people would just stop doing the content. That happened in Orr before the mob nerf. I remember how much more difficult it was before the nerf.

It depend the reward balance.

Harder content that give more reward will be popular for a portion of the population
Easy content that give a correct reward will be popular for the majority of the population. Those are good balance.

Harder content that give less reward than easy content will be unpopular.
Easy content that give higher reward will ruin part of the game. Those are bad balance.

That why Aetherpath is not that popular, or that fractal once at 50 is less popular than other PvE stuff. And that’s why everybody is doing silverwaste these days.

This thread, as is the way, is decaying to ‘dungeon culture people defending the status quo they’re comfortable with and defending the validity of their style of play’

I always feel like PvE’ers have a compensation syndrome in compared to PvP, and feel the need to prove it’s as challenging, complex, and deserves the props that PvP gets.

I could make a case that it’s in the speedrun/dungeon culture’s benefit if they mix up the meta some and make things a bit less burn-friendly. PvE in this game is so monstrously easy right now, it almost gives the giggles to see people trying to compare it to the other game modes (excepting people who blob WvW, but that if anything is comparable to PvE in it’s successful optimization of rewards/time).

I always hear people saying they’d like the content to be harder, but any move in that direction will inevitably be at the cost of the speedrun style as it currently stands, because that style being possible makes the runs too easy (and let’s not kid ourselves, most of these runs are absurdly easy no matter what you run).

~~~

This isn’t (shouldn’t be) about validation or denigration of a particular playstyle, it’s in the short term about how improvements to the game in HoT will effect that playstyle, and in the long term about improving the game mode in (this case PvE).

Well then you obviously dont understand what people are saying. We are not argueing against improvements to complexity. We are argueing against the need for alternative gear stats to become optimal. Because doing that creates barriers for entry. It doesnt make sense to ask for that. Making us change traits, utilities and weapons and encouraging (not forcing) us to use defensive stats is fine. A forced approach is a bad idea and it goes against anets philosophies. I really dont understand why people dont understand this.

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

spoj.9672:

Making us change traits, utilities and weapons and encouraging us to use defensive stats is fine. But forcing is not. I really dont understand why people dont understand this..

I’m confused as well to why it’s a hard concept to grasp for some.

Windsagio.1340:

PvE in this game is so monstrously easy right now, it almost gives the giggles to see people trying to compare it to the other game modes (excepting people who blob WvW, but that if anything is comparable to PvE in it’s successful optimization of rewards/time)..

It’s not black or white. Yes PvE is easy, but we gonna defend ourself when someone is saying that PvE is corner stacking and pressing 1. That’s a stupid and false comment, and we gonna respond to it. PvE itself is easy. Doing a record run or soloing a dungeon, that’s not easy. It take practice and preparation that the vast majority of players can’t achieve. But that just show how PvE is easy. We have to push ourselves to the limit in term of speed or by giving ourself handicap (solo run) to get some challenge out of it.

Windsagio.1340:

I always hear people saying they’d like the content to be harder, but any move in that direction will inevitably be at the cost of the speedrun style as it currently stands, because that style being possible makes the runs too easy (and let’s not kid ourselves, most of these runs are absurdly easy no matter what you run).

Like I said, most ppl in the ‘’speed run’’ community force challenge on themselve now because normal PvE content is too easy. You just show a complete ignorance of the topic. We are now doing solo record of story mode, we don’t know where to find new challenge anymore.

Harder content won’t be at the cost of "speed run’’ style. We want it, we demand it for so long, we try to squeeze all the challenge we can out of the current content. We want to have a hard time figuring what is the best way to tackle new hard content. We want to wipe in zerker gear, over and over again as we learn every aspect and animation of a new hard boss. We want to use more and more support build. We want solo to be almost impossible, so that the first one doing it will be a celebration. We want to talk hours between us to figure out what would be the best strategy. Harder content won’t cost ‘’speed run’’ style. We CRAVE for it.

Thaddeus.4891:

It’s not black or white. Yes PvE is easy, but we gonna defend ourself

Really nothing else to say. This attitude is why this discussion is always an impossible wreck.

spoj.9672:

Well then you obviously dont understand what people are saying. We are not argueing against improvements to complexity. We are argueing against the need for alternative gear stats to become optimal. Because doing that creates barriers for entry. It doesnt make sense to ask for that. Making us change traits, utilities and weapons and encouraging (not forcing) us to use defensive stats is fine. A forced approach is a bad idea and it goes against anets philosophies. I really dont understand why people dont understand this.

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

It comes down to “defending the style” (as Thaddeus said) and arguing against specific changes to the status quo.

My argument is that to get your stated goals, the status quo has got to (and is) shift(ing). The way the game currently works, the style in question is so optimal that it trivializes most content.

My further argument would be that there’s always a risk of emphasizing optimization at the cost of fun. If we take this improper emphasis away, the entire argument disappears. People emphasizing optimization over fun and pushing that culture out into the game is why we have these pro-zerk and anti-zerk conflicts in the first place.

There are people of all opinions that buy into this and make problems, but in GW2 the main thrust of it comes to “If someone doesn’t play like me they’re bads” vs “I’m hurt that you called me a ‘bad’ just because I don’t care to use your style. I’m going to come back at you and say you’re also bad, and lazy, and a jerk.”

Windsagio.1340:

Really nothing else to say. This attitude is why this discussion is always an impossible wreck.

Ok so we should say : It’s black and white. PvE is easy in all situation and we can’t really defend any position because PvE = corner stack + pressing 1.

If we are saying otherwise WE are making the discussion impossible?

Thaddeus.4891:

Windsagio.1340:

Really nothing else to say. This attitude is why this discussion is always an impossible wreck.

Ok so we should say : It’s black and white. PvE is easy in all situation and we can’t really defend any position because PvE = corner stack + pressing 1.

If we are saying otherwise WE are making the discussion impossible?

no, you correct the misapprehension and avoid the attitude of ‘we have to defend ourselves’.

You’re reiterating the fight. At worst, who cares if that guy thinks its easy?

More relevantly, think how this became such a tribal fight where tribe zerker and tribe everyone else that cares hate each other and want to destroy each other?

It’s an attitudinal thing. The defensive mindset makes valuable discussion almost impossible — And I want to reiterate, we’re all guilty of this. The people who are so mad at zerker meta pushers are in the exact same position. They feel the need to defend themselves from a perceived attack.

Windsagio.1340:

My argument is that to get your stated goals, the status quo has got to (and is) shift(ing). The way the game currently works, the style in question is so optimal that it trivializes most content.

Problem is your argument is seriously flawed. It’s not the “style” a.ka. zerker that traivializes content. It’s the human ability to LEARN that trivializes content. If we didnt’ have the ability to LEARN the content we wouldn’t be able to LEARN to optmize the best gear/build to defeat it quickly. I’m sorry… wait, no, I’m not… you aren’t going to be able to change/nerf the ability to LEARN content. Because we have this ability there will always be a best gear/build to run if you want to get through content quickly.

Like I’ve said: other gear/builds are completely viable. They’re just not optimal.

THERE IS NO CONTENT THAT YOU HAVE TO RUN A CERTAIN GEAR/BUILD TO COMPLETE.

I hope that caps lock got the point across that you don’t have to run zerker if you don’t want to. You don’t have to run cleric if you don’t want to. If you have the ability you can complete content either way…. Why not live-and-let-live? Why not form your own non-zerk lfg post to run dungeons/fractals on? The concept of forcing my way of playing on others is so alien to me. I couldn’t possibly ask the Dev’s to make content specifically make it harder to run clerics or nomads gear. That’s just insane. Who am I to ask the Dev’s to add more difficult for those people running cleric and nomads? Why? What gives me the right to demand such a selfish thing? Maybe those people anti-zerker people should be asking themselves those questions.

And, what I said earlier, Winds, you agreed with when I said the “zerker meta” was created and enforced by Player A onto Player B because Player B doesn’t want to run zerker meta and gets kicked from group goes and cries to Dev A… Well, you can scroll up and reread it.

Edit: This is also @Thaddeus

That ties into issues of crypto-elitism of course, but I’ve come around to the position that there are a few bad apples poisoning the culture (generally you can tell them because they talk a lot about the depersonalized, dehumanized ‘bads’), and that it’s best to try to let these people have as little impact on the discussion as possible.

I see your point Windsagio, but I don’t see your goal here? Why shift the discussion toward this aspect. Was it a problem in the last couple of posts?

spoj.9672:

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

Kind of what I’ve been doing. There are some things that could be done to create new optimal compositions and builds without making it impossible on anyone. Spread out, ranged enemies in an appropriately designed area negate the “pull in for stack & smack” strategy, but in no way make it impossible for any given composition to complete. However, the need to deal with pressure as you take them all on may alter things a fair bit. Reflects aren’t a be-all-end-all on this, since there are a number of non-projectile ranged attacks in the game and, if reflects were expected to make an encounter trivial, those could be used instead.

Enemies that have high armor and low health pools will have optimal group comps using condition builds (and thus gear), which are currently entirely absent from the dungeon meta. Again, not forcing anything, but the optimal route is different than what we currently have.

NPC escorts, if done well, could emphasize any number of different strategies, depending on how it was set up. The one thing I would have to request, if this were done, though, is that the NPC never stops moving along his path in order to prevent backtracking and getting caught on terrain to bug out. Trying to protect a dolyak in WvW from enemy players can be quite challenging, and it could be fun to see something similar in a dungeon.

Another method (and by far my least favorite) is to have uncrittable foes. I don’t like this one at all, but it would work without forcing anything. Would hate to see ANet implement this when there are vastly superior ideas, though.

Thaddeus.4891:

I see your point Windsagio, but I don’t see your goal here? Why shift the discussion toward this aspect. Was it a problem in the last couple of posts?

Hah you got me there, let me look back and try to remember what I was thinking. I’m very much a ‘go with the flow’ kind of poster. Once I find out what got me no the track I’ll post again, sorry ><

Windsagio.1340:

Thaddeus.4891:

I see your point Windsagio, but I don’t see your goal here? Why shift the discussion toward this aspect. Was it a problem in the last couple of posts?

Hah you got me there, let me look back and try to remember what I was thinking. I’m very much a ‘go with the flow’ kind of poster. Once I find out what got me no the track I’ll post again, sorry ><

It’s ok. Happen to me too

I remember!

The discussion seems to pretty consistently breaking down to “Attacking Zerk” and “Defending Zerk from attack”. There’s a very doctrinaire feel to the whole thing, and it gets in the way of discussion.

A lot of the posters end up reading like it’s "DON"T TOUCH OUR ZERK GEAR!" and everything circles back to that motivation. On the other side it’s “ZERK GEAR IS A POX DESTROY IT!” with some “YAY MAKE TRINITY” slipped in.

There are legitimate issues with the game balance in pve, but the defrensive/tribal tone of the discussion makes actually talking about it impossible, because people are more interested in attacking or defending these preset positions.

It’s like the post from Notrigger a bit back (since deleted), it’s pretty aggressive, but more to the point it falls back into a habitual assignment of agruments to the 2 traditional sides of the ‘zerk discussion’ assigning opposition to one side, and reiterating the other side aggressively.

I’d love it to move past that point, but the defensive “don’t touch what’s mine” (or at least perceived as such) attitude makes it so hard to get there.

thefantasticg.3984:

Why? PVE goals have healthbars and because of this the only goal will be to drain that healthbar as fast as possible regardless of what the “challenge” is.

There are plenty of other goals to PvE besides killing things, and even the killing is really itself in service to a goal, rather than being a goal unto itself. It is a flaw of existing content that the goal of killing things quickly never comes into conflict with your other goals, not an inevitability. I’ve already given examples of elements that could be added to fights to create more conflict between different player goals.

Like I said, in open world PVE there is no zerker meta. Sure, you have a timer on world bosses but I highly doubt everyone in the WBT is wearing full zerker gear/builds. The only zerker meta that exists is in dungeons and fractals. So in dungeons and fractals, yeah, the goal is to kill things as far as possible. The goal is to get through the dungeon/fractal as fast as possible and since we have a hard limit on how fast we move (33% hard cap) where we can pick up ground at is how fast we kill things. So, when someone says “I don’t like zerker meta. We need to make it harder for them. Devs! NERF THEM!” They are literally hating on a small subset of players because they can complete content faster. Let me put it this way: you are telling the Dev to FORCE ME to run things differently by changing the encounter than I do now because you don’t like that I can do it in zerker gear/build and you can’t.

Windsagio.1340:

I remember!

The discussion seems to pretty consistently breaking down to “Attacking Zerk” and “Defending Zerk from attack”. There’s a very doctrinaire feel to the whole thing, and it gets in the way of discussion.

A lot of the posters end up reading like it’s "DON"T TOUCH OUR ZERK GEAR!" and everything circles back to that motivation. On the other side it’s “ZERK GEAR IS A POX DESTROY IT!” with some “YAY MAKE TRINITY” slipped in.

There are legitimate issues with the game balance in pve, but the defrensive/tribal tone of the discussion makes actually talking about it impossible, because people are more interested in attacking or defending these preset positions.

I try to don’t pay too much attention to those extreme. It’s fun to argue with them, but I don’t really count them as pertinent to the discussion.

If you only take rational point on both side, the situation as I see it is :

Both group want harder content and making condition damage good in PvE. The divergence of opinion come later. And I will generalize grossly.

One side want more diversity in PvE, with an emphasizes on gear diversity. They talk about different solution so that zerker won’t be the only optimized choice anymore.

The other side look at the ideas of the first group but think that either these solutions won’t change the situation (ppl will still play zerker in harder content) or that it will force specific gear (holy trinity). They think that there isn’t a gear diversity problem (outside of condition) and trying to force a ’’solution’’ will only break the game. They prefer that we focus on build diversity (trait, runes, weapons, utilities, etc), harder content and fixing condition in PvE.

I’m 100% bias in that description, but that’s how I view the current situation.

It’s risky to generalize personal goals. “The goal for me and my friends” is easy to but really shouldn’t be conflated with “The goal for everyone”.

Divergent goals and impressing one goal on another (in any direction) are (as I mentioned above) part of the reason we have conflict over this.

EDIT: Thadd, got to run off to a GDC talk, I’ll read and get a good response to your post tonight. From the look at it you have a pretty good summary

thefantasticg.3984:

Let me put it this way: you are telling the Dev to FORCE ME to run things differently by changing the encounter than I do now because you don’t like that I can do it in zerker gear/build and you can’t.

OK, seriously, what? I couldn’t care less about your dungeon farming, it’s your time, what you do with it is completely up to you. It doesn’t affect me in any way except when you start trying to bring a farming mentality to the design of future content.

evilunderling.9265:

thefantasticg.3984:

Let me put it this way: you are telling the Dev to FORCE ME to run things differently by changing the encounter than I do now because you don’t like that I can do it in zerker gear/build and you can’t.

What either of us can or can’t do is completely irrelevant to this discussion. As is your CoF p1 farming.

kitten are you talking about? COF p1 farming? That died long ago when they nerfed alts in dungeons. Just for your information, cause I’m a nice guy, I run through the quick paths and then do my fractal reward tiers… But hey, you can assume whatever you want and be wrong if that’s what you want to do… but…. Guess what a lot of what I said just went right over your head. Either you don’t understand the concept of not forcing other players to play a certain way through lobbying the Devs to take action against them through making content specifically more difficult for a gear/build or something… I don’t know. Regardless, HOT won’t stop me from running zerker gear unless another set comes along that does more DPS in the things I like to do.

thefantasticg.3984:

kitten are you talking about? COF p1 farming? That died long ago when they nerfed alts in dungeons. Just for your information, cause I’m a nice guy, I run through the quick paths and then do my fractal reward tiers… But hey, you can assume whatever you want and be wrong if that’s what you want to do… but….

Hmm, that’s interesting,..

thefantasticg.3984:

…after the 1000th COF p1 run I’m not there for the story or “fun” because I got the “fun” part 100% squeezed out by the 500th run… Now I’m just there for the loots/golds…

Wonder where I got the impression that you were farming CoF p1?

Even more interesting is the question of why it matters specifically what dungeons you farm.

Guess what a lot of what I said just went right over your head. Either you don’t understand the concept of not forcing other players to play a certain way through lobbying the Devs to take action against them through making content specifically more difficult for a gear/build or something… I don’t know.

I’m not talking about forcing anyone to play anything a certain way. And I’m certainly not lobbying the devs to take action against other players whose activities don’t affect me in the slightest.

And I’m not talking about making content hard for certain builds, I’m talking about making content hard in general. Part of that is putting different player goals in opposition to each other.

Nice jumping to conclusions there. Since, you know, you didn’t ask for a time frame on when I ran all those COF p1s… Because I’m a nice guy I’ll let you know that I farmed COF p1 long ago… when it was profitable.. Stopped when they nerfed alts. At 6-8 minutes a run it’s not hard to rack them runs up.

Not seeing how the part you quoted was a strawman argument, but you’re free to think as you wish. Doesn’t hurt me in the slightest.

Regardless, instead of punishing zerker meta in dungeons/fractals (which is the only place the meta actually exists) let’s have a discussion on bringing condis up to the direct damage standard… Of course, going to be hard to do with that pesky 25 stack cap in place.

People fail to realise one simple thing IllegalChocolate mentioned : There will always be the most effective way.

I don’t care personnaly, have all classes and enough gold to rebuild their stat allocation for “new meta”.

thefantasticg.3984:

Not seeing how the part you quoted was a strawman argument, but you’re free to think as you wish. Doesn’t hurt me in the slightest.

You’re attacking a completely fabricated version of my position instead of addressing things that I’ve actually said. That’s the very definition of a strawman argument.

Were you not referring to the zerker meta in dungeon/fractals? Which is what I’ve been speaking to this whole time. If you were referring to specifically Open World PVE then we were, indeed, talking about two different subjects because there is no zerker meta there to even discuss… But, to your strawman acusation… “making content hard in general” (pssst, that includes the dungeons and fractals) is exactly what I was speaking to. That is literally asking the Devs to make content more difficult for me to run my zerker gear specifically because I run zerker gear and not clerics. You think it’ll be more difficult for cleric guards LOLOLOL. No.

In the end it doesn’t matter about Open World PVE. It really doesn’t. It’s silly to me to speak of zerker meta outside of dungeons/fractals because in open world pve everything just gets zerged down regardless of builds. Yes, either big zergs or little zergs, either way it doesn’t matter because in open world PVE so very very few one-shot mechanics exist to make what gear/build you run irrelevant. As long as you’re beating whatever timer is in the upper left hand corner what does it matter?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

spoj.9672:

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

Kind of what I’ve been doing. There are some things that could be done to create new optimal compositions and builds without making it impossible on anyone. Spread out, ranged enemies in an appropriately designed area negate the “pull in for stack & smack” strategy, but in no way make it impossible for any given composition to complete. However, the need to deal with pressure as you take them all on may alter things a fair bit. Reflects aren’t a be-all-end-all on this, since there are a number of non-projectile ranged attacks in the game and, if reflects were expected to make an encounter trivial, those could be used instead.

Enemies that have high armor and low health pools will have optimal group comps using condition builds (and thus gear), which are currently entirely absent from the dungeon meta. Again, not forcing anything, but the optimal route is different than what we currently have.

NPC escorts, if done well, could emphasize any number of different strategies, depending on how it was set up. The one thing I would have to request, if this were done, though, is that the NPC never stops moving along his path in order to prevent backtracking and getting caught on terrain to bug out. Trying to protect a dolyak in WvW from enemy players can be quite challenging, and it could be fun to see something similar in a dungeon.

Another method (and by far my least favorite) is to have uncrittable foes. I don’t like this one at all, but it would work without forcing anything. Would hate to see ANet implement this when there are vastly superior ideas, though.

All of these suggestions are fine except for the last one. Negating an entire gearset is poor design.

However these suggestions do not make other gear stats optimal. The optimal way would still be with your glass gear assuming you arent forcing roles. The optimal way would be to utilise support and traits to do the same role without building defensive stats etc. The only exception is the condi suggestion. However due to the way conditions work you would only want one condi user so only one person might switch gear. But its still a damage role where glass is best.

Obviously these suggestions might encourage some players to use different stat combos. But the optimal method would be unlikely to change. Because after all if its possible on any gear stat then it stands to reason that the highest DPS set is best assuming you dont lose time (really dont see how you would lose time unless you fail). It might just be harder. If the events are completely timegated then there is no optimal way because all successful methods yield the exact same result. Time gates are considered poor design and very unpopular with most players (AC p3 burrows event).

The only way i can see a way to make a non DPS set optimal in a certain situation is to create an event where you have to heal an NPC. The faster you do it the faster you complete the event. But lets be honest thats a pretty boring encounter to implement.

tl;dr
So you might create variations to what is optimal for individual encounters in terms of weapons, utilities and traits. But its unlikely to be the gear that changes.

Fortunately anet seems to understand this and is going in this direction for HoT as far as i can tell. I mean it would be pretty terrible of anet to claim “we dont want to invalidate your stuff” and then go ahead and invalidate our ascended gear through forced roles which require gearstat changes.

As far as gear goes. I feel like people are forgetting what gear choices ARE. There not meant to be a skill gauge. But a way of speciailizing your character towards a specific role. The biggest flaw I see with peoples arguments is the assumption that gear type and skill level are related. People often say (If there not running zerker its because there not good enough to do so) when thats probably only true in a very minor sense. The rest of the time. its most likely becuase people are matching gear types to there playstyle.

My playstyle on my necro for example often involves me fighting 7-8 mobs at a time. Gathering up large quantaties of enemies and killing the group with Unyielding Blast and life transfer as well as staff skills. I generally run a bit tankier. Usually a mix of cav and valk. Assuming that when Im fighting that many mobs at a time. Something somewhere is going to hit me. Its not that im bad at my necro. Im fighting 7-8 sometimes up to 10-12 things at any given time. Its that in order to support my playstyle I specialized my character in a way that enabled it.

Lets take the thief for example. A thief is able to gain a large number of evades,stealths, or blinds depending on there trait choice (which often decides our fighting style). If there build makes use of and enhances these abilities then there beast bet is to make sure they can kill there target before they run out of those defenses. Making zerker or assassin’s a better choice.

Each build and playstyle is complomented by a different combination of gear. The idea is to balance the risk of the gear vs teh risk of the playstyle. My necro has a very risky playstyle. I balance that out with a tankier gear set that still enhances my overall potential. My thief and ranger have safer playstyles (one target at a time Nuke the target before the safeties I put in place are exhausted). This is the way most players I know act in game.

The only exception is in dungeons. Which I feel. Frankly isn’t challenging enough for people to develop there own playstyles in. There largely just copying the playstyles of the people around them. Because its EASY enough that there isn’t a NEED to develop as a player. In dungeons ill usually see atleast 2-3 people in each group that use damage stats with damage gear and damage utilities. And yet very few of those players actually fight in a manner befitting those choices. Which tells me that they simply accepted the choices from around them without developing as a player into that direction. Which is kind of terrifying.

thefantasticg.3984:

Were you not referring to the zerker meta in dungeon/fractals? Which is what I’ve been speaking to this whole time.

I’m talking about future content being harder in general, part of which is introducing conflict. Not about making future content harder on zerk players specifically.

Dungeons and fractals are where the existing zerk meta can be found, but this thread is mainly about how the zerk meta will apply to the upcoming raid content.

evilunderling.9265:

thefantasticg.3984:

Were you not referring to the zerker meta in dungeon/fractals? Which is what I’ve been speaking to this whole time.

I’m talking about future content being harder in general, part of which is introducing conflict. Not about making future content harder on zerk players specifically.

Dungeons and fractals are where the existing zerk meta can be found, but this thread is mainly about how the zerk meta will apply to the upcoming raid content.

No… Go back and read the OP. He brought up blinds… nothing about raids. We don’t even know if raids are going to be IN this expansion or not. We do know will be in this expansion is the new boss Wyvern fights which, apparently, is all about getting the CC timing right then bursting down during triple damage phase which makes the zerker and DPS in general all the more important.

spoj.9672:

The only way i can see a way to make a non DPS set optimal in a certain situation is to create an event where you have to heal an NPC. The faster you do it the faster you complete the event. But lets be honest thats a pretty boring encounter to implement.

This can be easily done by allowing players to trade health/survivability for damage.
Some things that can be done are:

-Attacks/zones that boost the stats of the people hit.
-Attacks with recoil depending on the damage dealt.
-phase where you get bonus damage while he is attacking .
-Some “cursed” weapon/turret/transformation/… .
-…

They do require a good “health to damage function” in order to make a role shift optimal. They can be forced to be used or not without invalidating glass setups. And they can be used without making gameplay dull .

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If the difficulty on enemies went up, some people would switch away from Zerker. Statistically speaking, they may be an insignificant portion, but it would still be a drop. I never said that some who can’t run zerker now would run zerker later. I said some who can run zerker now could not run zerker later.

And not all mobs in dungeons are skippable, so it’s quite possible adding Retaliation would make a difference. The impact of any change depends greatly on where the change is made as well as what the change is.

Not meaning to offend but are you new to MMOs or something?

Making content harder is not going to make people switch over to zerker. It’s going to make zerker even more important. It will make elitism go through the roof and gear checks the norm. Unless you specifically change content to nerf zerker somehow, which just means the next best thing become the new meta and few months later you end up back here complaining about that meta build. It’s an needless and endless cycle.

Any kind of elevation of difficulty naturally leads to these types of results. I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ original and this is the one trend that is consistent in all MMOS that raise difficulty in that way and it’s corrosive to the player community and discourages pugs.

You either have not thought out the consequences of your ideas or your analysis is flawed as many people in this post as well as myself have demonstrated.

Nike.2631:

Wow. If you’d read the first post responding to the thread you’d see that someone already asked that.

Wow. If you’d read the current defiance’s tooltip you’d see that you wrote a long post about a highly controversial topic for no reason.

thefantasticg.3984:

Nice jumping to conclusions there. Since, you know, you didn’t ask for a time frame on when I ran all those COF p1s… Because I’m a nice guy I’ll let you know that I farmed COF p1 long ago… when it was profitable.. Stopped when they nerfed alts. At 6-8 minutes a run it’s not hard to rack them runs up.

Not seeing how the part you quoted was a strawman argument, but you’re free to think as you wish. Doesn’t hurt me in the slightest.

Regardless, instead of punishing zerker meta in dungeons/fractals (which is the only place the meta actually exists) let’s have a discussion on bringing condis up to the direct damage standard… Of course, going to be hard to do with that pesky 25 stack cap in place.

I think the main issue condi doesn’t work that well is because it’s balanced towards pvp. 25 stacks of bleed on a boss is trivial while it is lethal on a player.

What they really need to do is either raise the cap for pve mobs or separate the instances of damaging conditions such that each player inflicting conditions on a boss has their own stack of up to 25 bleeds for example. Limit this to only damaging conditions of course so that people won’t stack 1000 stacks of vulnerability and kill bosses in seconds. This is just a rough estimate of what might be a solution to boost condition in pve. Obviously it can be tweaked to be more balanced. Either way since condition builds are very good in WVW and PVP it’s not as if it doesn’t have it’s place even if it were never to be an optimal pve build.

It doesn’t really matter anyway since in pve dungeons people don’t really care even if you use a condition build. Maybe 1% of all groups in dungeon runs demand “full zerk build”.

DeathPanel.8362:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If the difficulty on enemies went up, some people would switch away from Zerker. Statistically speaking, they may be an insignificant portion, but it would still be a drop. I never said that some who can’t run zerker now would run zerker later. I said some who can run zerker now could not run zerker later.

And not all mobs in dungeons are skippable, so it’s quite possible adding Retaliation would make a difference. The impact of any change depends greatly on where the change is made as well as what the change is.

Not meaning to offend but are you new to MMOs or something?

Making content harder is not going to make people switch over to zerker. It’s going to make zerker even more important. It will make elitism go through the roof and gear checks the norm. Unless you specifically change content to nerf zerker somehow, which just means the next best thing become the new meta and few months later you end up back here complaining about that meta build. It’s an needless and endless cycle.

Any kind of elevation of difficulty naturally leads to these types of results. I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ original and this is the one trend that is consistent in all MMOS that raise difficulty in that way and it’s corrosive to the player community and discourages pugs.

You either have not thought out the consequences of your ideas or your analysis is flawed as many people in this post as well as myself have demonstrated.

What games like UO or EQ did to raise difficulty was simply increase mob health and damage by 1000%, which led to content 1 hit killing and players taking too long to kill stuff before dieing without optimal DPS/ganking. Those Devs at the time didn’t have much choice due to the technical limitations in 95-2000. So the meta was kill it asap before it killed you (at least in UO which is what I played). That’s when just going pure DPS thrives and that isn’t what anyone is really arguing for who want to open up the meta.

This isn’t the 90s anymore and there’s plenty of ways to increase difficulty without designing content that favours one playstyle over another.

My last post a page or two back shows an example of exactly how just increasing health and damage of mobs for difficulty begins to widen completion times depending on how much damage you do, not how skillful you are. So much so that non-DPS teams (well even the difference between balanced and glass cannon), in say a fractals setting, become less viable as the % health increases to a point where its not worth ever running lower DPS. Again that has nothing to do with player skill if damage/pressure is easily avoidable, just widening time gaps.

Giving mobs better AI, changing up encounters to require more than just DPS, lowering mob health, giving them more active/passive defense in replacement, and increasing overall damage over time on players, all promotes build diversity because defensive stats become more effective in encounters and less detrimental to completion time.

If increasing difficulty and pressure on players still led to glass cannon builds being the most optimal, then the places where there’s the most pressure on players would reflect this (wvw/pvp) and they would be full of zerker teams. They’re not and zerker doesn’t always win, because the combination of player active/passive defense and damage over time burns out the glass cannon’s poor defenses. You can make a bunker build in which zerker DPS power builds bounce off it, but a condi build with some boon strip destroys it.

The trick with future GW2 content is to design it in such a way that full glass cannon teams really feel the heat and have to rely on timing active defenses and manipulation almost perfectly to make up for the lack of passive defense, or die. However, with enough player skill they should still be running optimal times compared to other team makeups.

On the flip side, running a member or two as something a bit tankier, or with support/counters, or plain running a balanced team of whatever should be just as viable if not more so. Especially when the players are just as skilled. Of course, it should take longer for them to complete the content (which naturally takes care of itself since they’re not magically getting more DPS unless a glass cannon team keeps dieing).

Basically, you want to get rid of gear/DPS impacting completion times too much. Instead you want skill usage and player skill governing that instead.

Easier said than done.

One thing is for sure though. Trying to design new PvE content along the same lines as older GW2 content, isn’t going to solve anything or keep the interest of the player base too long.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

People fail to realise one simple thing IllegalChocolate mentioned : There will always be the most effective way.

I don’t care personnaly, have all classes and enough gold to rebuild their stat allocation for “new meta”.

Excepting the many many many people on all sides of the discussion who have said and acknowledged exactly that.

Yes there will be a meta that people come up with, there would be even if all play styles were actually even (an impossibility), because that’s how people work. There’s a fairly difficult design question here about expanding the range of styles in an encounter. There are people who are locked into the efficiency trip that both complain the dungeons are boring and also run them the same rote way every time, over and over. Right now it’s a somewhat self-inflicted issue, but it becomes serious if one way is TOO much more efficient, or even considered too much more efficient than the others.

Balekai.6083:

DeathPanel.8362:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If the difficulty on enemies went up, some people would switch away from Zerker. Statistically speaking, they may be an insignificant portion, but it would still be a drop. I never said that some who can’t run zerker now would run zerker later. I said some who can run zerker now could not run zerker later.

And not all mobs in dungeons are skippable, so it’s quite possible adding Retaliation would make a difference. The impact of any change depends greatly on where the change is made as well as what the change is.

Not meaning to offend but are you new to MMOs or something?

Making content harder is not going to make people switch over to zerker. It’s going to make zerker even more important. It will make elitism go through the roof and gear checks the norm. Unless you specifically change content to nerf zerker somehow, which just means the next best thing become the new meta and few months later you end up back here complaining about that meta build. It’s an needless and endless cycle.

Any kind of elevation of difficulty naturally leads to these types of results. I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ original and this is the one trend that is consistent in all MMOS that raise difficulty in that way and it’s corrosive to the player community and discourages pugs.

You either have not thought out the consequences of your ideas or your analysis is flawed as many people in this post as well as myself have demonstrated.

What games like UO or EQ did to raise difficulty was simply increase mob health and damage by 1000%, which led to content 1 hit killing and players taking too long to kill stuff before dieing without optimal DPS/ganking. Those Devs at the time didn’t have much choice due to the technical limitations in 95-2000. So the meta was kill it asap before it killed you (at least in UO which is what I played). That’s when just going pure DPS thrives and that isn’t what anyone is really arguing for who want to open up the meta.

Actually in EQ it was all about the trinity system taken to the extreme. You needed a tank, puller, slower/mezzer/debuffer, healer, dpser(main assist), secondary tank/secondary assist or else it’s a no go. It would take 30-60 minutes+ sometimes just to get a team together and sometimes not at all. This is obviously not the right way to go but that is the ultimate result once you start pushing content requiring different builds in a party for the sake of diversity since the only way to incentivize/force people to have different builds is to make them absolutely crucial to success of a party and that’s guaranteed to turn off a majority of the people.

Thaddeus.4891:

Windsagio.1340:

I remember!

The discussion seems to pretty consistently breaking down to “Attacking Zerk” and “Defending Zerk from attack”. There’s a very doctrinaire feel to the whole thing, and it gets in the way of discussion.

A lot of the posters end up reading like it’s "DON"T TOUCH OUR ZERK GEAR!" and everything circles back to that motivation. On the other side it’s “ZERK GEAR IS A POX DESTROY IT!” with some “YAY MAKE TRINITY” slipped in.

There are legitimate issues with the game balance in pve, but the defrensive/tribal tone of the discussion makes actually talking about it impossible, because people are more interested in attacking or defending these preset positions.

I try to don’t pay too much attention to those extreme. It’s fun to argue with them, but I don’t really count them as pertinent to the discussion.

If you only take rational point on both side, the situation as I see it is :

Both group want harder content and making condition damage good in PvE. The divergence of opinion come later. And I will generalize grossly.

One side want more diversity in PvE, with an emphasizes on gear diversity. They talk about different solution so that zerker won’t be the only optimized choice anymore.

The other side look at the ideas of the first group but think that either these solutions won’t change the situation (ppl will still play zerker in harder content) or that it will force specific gear (holy trinity). They think that there isn’t a gear diversity problem (outside of condition) and trying to force a ’’solution’’ will only break the game. They prefer that we focus on build diversity (trait, runes, weapons, utilities, etc), harder content and fixing condition in PvE.

I’m 100% bias in that description, but that’s how I view the current situation.

That’s not even bias, it’s just being able to articulate the side you understand better, better

My own biased version woudl be that the sides are (And I hate to be going to a binary, but as you said we’re generalizing for simplicity).

People that want to see more variety of play encouraged either through social means, or in the extreme through bold gameplay changes. They feel that the prevalence of one style of play leads to boring encounters and play. There’s a small, vocal group that want to have a style of play that includes extremely limited/repeated roles, but a lot of variety between roles.

~~~

People who either don’t want the style of play changed (they’re happy with their current learning, don’t want their farms slowed down, enjoy the thrill of rapid burns) or are cynical about the prospect of the change and think there is no viable solution, beyond replacing one problem with another.

~~~~

I am really in the first group. I think there’s a lot of potential for improvement, and I think the hints we’ve seen from HoT are HUGE steps in that direction.

Its one thing to be biased towards one side. Its another to completely misunderstand the other side….

Windsagio.1340:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

People fail to realise one simple thing IllegalChocolate mentioned : There will always be the most effective way.

I don’t care personnaly, have all classes and enough gold to rebuild their stat allocation for “new meta”.

Excepting the many many many people on all sides of the discussion who have said and acknowledged exactly that.

Yes there will be a meta that people come up with, there would be even if all play styles were actually even (an impossibility), because that’s how people work. There’s a fairly difficult design question here about expanding the range of styles in an encounter. There are people who are locked into the efficiency trip that both complain the dungeons are boring and also run them the same rote way every time, over and over. Right now it’s a somewhat self-inflicted issue, but it becomes serious if one way is TOO much more efficient, or even considered too much more efficient than the others.

The most efficient approach to complete some content and the player dirven meta are related, but still far from being the same thing.
There’s no way for the optimal strategy to become meta if most players can’t handle it.