Guild Wars 2

With all that ANET is doing to try and kill the berserker meta in HoT one thing is clear: The berserker meta will remain for core PvE because all the berserker killing changes are in the new content. ANET isn’t doing anything that might kill it for the core game.

Which means that I’ll need at least two sets of gear, the berserker set for core content and the non-berserker set for HoT. While I can ignore the cost of acquiring the gear, I can’t ignore the cost of holding onto two complete sets of gear. That cost is 6 inventory slots to carry the armor set I’m not using right now, 6 more for trinkets. 1-4 slots for weapons if the same weapon sets can be used for everything, more if you need to swap to other weapons.

Having to zone over to WvW to swap equipment with my bank will be a serious annoyance, even if I had room to store it there (I don’t). Which means carrying it with me, taking up nearly a fifth of my inventory space.

Taking up so much inventory space has the cost of players needing to stop and empty their inventory more often. Making everyone in the party wait for them, especially when the trading post decides that they are selling stuff too fast.

Really? I didn’t notice raids would be different and need anything else than zerker gear on most people. Obviously you’ll have some sinister and maybe some healing stats, but from what we’ve seen zerker will still be dominant due to quite short timers on bosses.

Well, let me play devils advocate for you here… you want bag space? Buy an expansion with gems! Show your support haha.

No, really, did you see the amount of space we had in beta? How can you possibly run out?

Do you really need to swap ALL your equipment, though? Or will swapping out just some of it, focused on the right stats, be enough to get you where you need to be?

Snoring, I hear you about running out of inventory space. I usually have two sets of exotic armor on my characters (one Berserker’s, one Soldier’s). Trinkets and weapons are all Berserker’s. I recently started acquiring condition armor on my most-played characters. Then there’s consumables, tonics, event-related items, fun weapons with oddball sigils or pretty skins for changing up my wardrobe, etc. etc. etc.

So I salvage a lot of drops. All my characters routinely carry 2-3 crude salvage kits and one master’s kit. I also have a copper-fed salvage kit that gets passed around to the active character.

With all eight bag slots unlocked, it’s been manageable so far, but I am tempted to drop even partial optimization and outfit everyone with celestial gear. :P

from what i could see:

-berserker for core game
-non berserker dmg and/or condition dmg for HoT and raids
-wvw
- healing power gear for raid (if you are druid or ventari reve)

Better buy some gems to buy those bag slots! /Anet

It’s much more likely that players will insist that you carry multiple sets than that ANet will. To be "complete, you’d need whatever the optimal condition DPS, survival and heals set would be judged to be. It’s not like there won’t be room for glass cannons in raids. However, depending on profession you may be asked to swap out gear to play a different role depending on what those you’re playing with see as the demands of the encounter.

I know it seems like there are two types of people. Those of us with no space problems (it is usual for me to have 70 open slots for drops and unpacking, that is WITH carrying every conceivable weapon) and those packed to the gills.

Snoring: if you are having space issues maybe you can post what you are carrying so we could offer specific suggestions? It also helps a great deal to expand your bank and/or have a personal guild bank as many things can just be left there until a need is coming up then just hit up that bank when you can. Investing in bank tabs rather than bag expansions is preferable since all characters have access to the banked items and you do not have to buy slots AND bags.

Pompeia.5483:

Well, let me play devils advocate for you here… you want bag space? Buy an expansion with gems! Show your support haha.

No, really, did you see the amount of space we had in beta? How can you possibly run out?

I would if they were Account bound (as in you buy a bag slot and it applies to all your chars). As it is now, the bag slot expansions are on a per character basis which is kinda backwards imo.

Zerk and sinister all u need, bruh.

Let the druid(s) worry about healing

I agree with Menadena: this is more of a hoarding problem rather than a storage issue. There are all sorts of ways to manage inventory so you have the things you really need, plus some stuff you have for fun or whatever, and still plenty of room for avoiding trips to vendor/bank for long periods.

I’ve helped a lot of folks with this 1:1 and there are other folks that I’ve never been able to help, because they aren’t ready to give up any of their shinies. They save too-valuable-to-use, might-need-it-someday, might-be-valuable-eventually, I-just-like-the-icon, etc and that leaves little room for the stuff they really want.

tl;dr when you’re ready to let go, ask for help in the Players Helping Others forum and you’ll get all sorts of valuable tips and tricks.

Legendary weapons are made easier.

They said a full set of legendary armor would take as much effort as a single legendary weapon.

So really? Just as many weapons as you’re not using but can use is all Anet intends for you to carry. And trinkets/aquabreather, perhaps.

On a different note: Zerker may be meta in core content, but that doesn’t mean you have to run it. So whatever build works for you in HoT content will more than likely work for you in core content. Problem solved.

The only need for multiple sets is if you want to be able to fulfill multiple roles on a single character.

If I might suggest something I use to avoid having to carry multiple armor sets on one toon; multiple toons. One toon slot costs 800gems far less than expanding bank tabs or bag slots on each toon. set up individual toons of specific things such a raids/dungeons, PvE content and WvW. It’s just a suggestion. I know people will say it takes time and such, but it can make things simpler.

ElijahFitzroy has the right idea. I have one character slot for each class. And each class gets the armor to fill the role they are best at filling:
zerker + str runes on war
zerker + scholar on ele
sinister + nightmare on engi

Maybe cleric on ranger? idk. The point is, rather than trying to stretch your main to fill every role, it is more efficient to play classes to their strengths. Of course, within a single instance, this won’t work unless your team has no problem with people char swapping.

Palador.2170:

Do you really need to swap ALL your equipment, though? Or will swapping out just some of it, focused on the right stats, be enough to get you where you need to be?

Wouldn’t that make those changes too minuscule to make a difference?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

With all that ANET is doing to try and kill the berserker meta in HoT

They aren’t. Raids for example enforce that meta to a much, much greater degree than anything that has happened before.

symke.3105:

Palador.2170:

Do you really need to swap ALL your equipment, though? Or will swapping out just some of it, focused on the right stats, be enough to get you where you need to be?

Wouldn’t that make those changes too minuscule to make a difference?

It depends on what you’re changing out, and what you’re switching between.

Change out your gloves and shoulders for something that’s only slightly different stats? Yeah, you won’t really feel a change. But if you’re a zerker, and you swap out your trinkets (amulet, rings, ect) for something that’s primary defensive stats, then I think it may be enough to make a difference. Basically, swap out just the high-impact parts.

The whole end product of raids is legendary armour, so they are making it possible to not have any extra sets in your inventory.
As a side note from the little I played the raid it looks like if you take more than 3 or 4 pure zerk players you will be limiting how effective the raid runs.

Currently I have a full set of ascended gear and that only takes up so much space. When I get my legend set that gear can easily go to one of my alts.

Palador.2170:

symke.3105:

Palador.2170:

Do you really need to swap ALL your equipment, though? Or will swapping out just some of it, focused on the right stats, be enough to get you where you need to be?

Wouldn’t that make those changes too minuscule to make a difference?

It depends on what you’re changing out, and what you’re switching between.

Change out your gloves and shoulders for something that’s only slightly different stats? Yeah, you won’t really feel a change. But if you’re a zerker, and you swap out your trinkets (amulet, rings, ect) for something that’s primary defensive stats, then I think it may be enough to make a difference. Basically, swap out just the high-impact parts.

I am actually hoping I will be able to do raids in my Berserker armor and weapons, and only change trinkets for more sustainable build. I am waiting to see what stat (toughness/vitality/healing) will be the norm for raids.
I just finished crafting my Ascended armor and have no desire to either repeat that or change my current set to something else.

In PVE you only need two stats: Berserker’s and Sinister’s.

Lévis.5489:

In PVE central tyria you only need two stats: Berserker’s and Sinister’s.

Fixed that for ya !

Also @OP : remember that ascended Equipment is account bound. So you can share it between your toons.

Yargesh.4965:

The whole end product of raids is legendary armour, so they are making it possible to not have any extra sets in your inventory.
As a side note from the little I played the raid it looks like if you take more than 3 or 4 pure zerk players you will be limiting how effective the raid runs.

And then you realize the cost of swapping runes on that legendary armor… it won’t help at all if your different builds depend on varying sets of runes. Legendary weapons have the same issue right now.

Time for Anet to add the often suggested rune/sigil libraries to legendary armor and weapons.

Anet dosen’t want to kill zerker, they want to kill the meta, this means they are mostly aiming towards the game being not played exclusively with zerk.
You wouldn’t need 2 full sets, from what I understand, simply changing a few trinkets might suffice.

Drazerg.8956:

Anet dosen’t want to kill zerker, they want to kill the meta, this means they are mostly aiming towards the game being not played exclusively with zerk.

Rejoice then. In raids, while the current meta is not exclusively zerk/sinister (there’s that one person that needs to run a bit more toughness), it is way more enforced than before. In dungeons you could run any build you wanted to, and still have hope of finishing the content (it might take longer, and often be more difficult, but it is possible). In raids, enrage timers basically eliminate majority of stat sets from the group composition. Going pure dps is not only still the best idea, but there’s now an actual mechanic that supports that.

Basically, Anet failed (big time) in what they claimed they wanted to accomplish. Which is not surprising, because it wasn’t the first time they made the same claim, and in the end dps superiority over all other stats was always only strengthened.

We have to wait for the complete first wing of the raid. If the devs introduce a great variety of encounters you will need four sets in the worst case: high direct DPS; high condition DPS; high toughness and high healing power. Be prepared to shuffle your equipment before each new encounter for highest efficiency.

There is a reason they give out legendary armor as reward. This type of armor could be recommended for future raids.

You could also just have different toons for different “jobs”.

You don’t need Zerker for core game… Most classes I play are non-zerkers and I have compleated almost everything in the coregame with them all, that I havent compleated is’nt becouse I don’t run zerker.

On the other hand, I allready have two sets of gear for most of my classes becouse I like to change my playstyle depend on what content I do and I do not have any problems with inventory space.

Isn’t that why they are introducing Legendary armor?
You know, so you only need one set and can change stats outside of combat

Valgar.9576:

Isn’t that why they are introducing Legendary armor?
You know, so you only need one set and can change stats outside of combat

Doesn’t work that way, different builds require different runes.

Astralporing.1957:

Valgar.9576:

Isn’t that why they are introducing Legendary armor?
You know, so you only need one set and can change stats outside of combat

Doesn’t work that way, different builds require different runes.

Oh right the runes…forgot about those

No problem! Just buy some new character slots, use all those left over tomes of knowledge on new level 80s and gear them with a different armor stat.

Now you can have a zerker warrior, a condi warrior and a tanky warrior each with totally empty bags since they dont need weapon swaps. Need to swap specs in a dungeon/raid? NP Just swap characters!