Guild Wars 2

Im really hoping with the new conditions and boons that there will be a reasonable fix to condition stacking on large PvE mobs encounters.

Discuss!

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

confusion was buffed for PvE.

Creating a skill disparity between PvE and PvP that Arenanet has repeatedly stated they want to avoid if possible.

I’d rather they stop trying to make ye olde MMO epic boss encounters in a combat system that doesn’t support them, and rather aim for encounters that are more PvP-like in nature, so the balancing makes sense.

Naqaj.6219:

Creating a skill disparity between PvE and PvP that Arenanet has repeatedly stated they want to avoid if possible.

I’d rather they stop trying to make ye olde MMO epic boss encounters in a combat system that doesn’t support them, and rather aim for encounters that are more PvP-like in nature, so the balancing makes sense.

Guild wars 1 taught us that what you want is a pipe dream. The ai in GW1 functioned far similar to players then it does in GW2. And it just wasn’t possible there. the Ai and a player in GW2 are as different as night and day.

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

Condition stacking is more of a PvE only issue since it is very impropable to reach 25 stacks now.

Tim.6450:

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

Condition stacking is more of a PvE only issue since it is very impropable to reach 25 stacks now.

Correct. That is part of my point.

Geikamir.6329:

Tim.6450:

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

Condition stacking is more of a PvE only issue since it is very impropable to reach 25 stacks now.

Correct. That is part of my point.

I think I will have to refine my point: in pvp the chance that someone will exceed the 25 stacks in a condition is very smal, in pve the cap is reached in a lot of champion fights. So how does conditions being balanced for pvp hinders increasing the cap some way affect pvp, since in pvp you can barely reach the cap at all?

If condition builds will ever get a chance, stacks need to be based on the character, not condition type. Even in 5 man groups you have to look and see if anyone else plans on stacking similar condis to you and adjust. That’s stupid and breaks condi build viability.

Stack limits are an hardware issue. Imagine two WvW blobs running into each other, you’ve got easily a hundred people duking it out, potentially hundreds of conditions being stacked up. The hardware simply couldn’t handle all that computation (or rather not efficiently), so they limited conditions stacks.
If ANet got more processing capacity, or found a cheaper way of doing the math we could see an increase in condition stacks. However I don’t see it happening soon though.

i think conditions in PvP are fine as it.

the prob is ALL the ebilities and PASSIVES that removes it left and right allot of the times with 0 effort from the player. and allot of the times its AOE remove.

and this gets worse the more player are in 1 place.

Just make it so Defiant divides bleed/burn/poison/torment duration by the max number of stacks (which scales with number of players already) and multiplies damage per tick by the same number. Easy fix.

Anet literally doesn’t care though.

Tim.6450:

Geikamir.6329:

Tim.6450:

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

Condition stacking is more of a PvE only issue since it is very impropable to reach 25 stacks now.

Correct. That is part of my point.

I think I will have to refine my point: in pvp the chance that someone will exceed the 25 stacks in a condition is very smal, in pve the cap is reached in a lot of champion fights. So how does conditions being balanced for pvp hinders increasing the cap some way affect pvp, since in pvp you can barely reach the cap at all?

I believe that what’s geikamir is trying to tell you is that, since skill balance is done with primarily PvP in mind, the chances of getting a sensible fix for conditions in PvE are close to nil.

Lily.1935:

Geikamir.6329:

Doubtful. Conditions are being balanced for PvP as far as I can tell and there is no sign of that changing.

confusion was buffed for PvE.

Yes, it was buffed for PvE, but if you look you will see, that this buff didn’t in fact address the real problem with confusion/ret (that the mobs and players attack at a different rate). It was a fix done from purely PvP point of view.

Lily.1935:

Naqaj.6219:

Creating a skill disparity between PvE and PvP that Arenanet has repeatedly stated they want to avoid if possible.

I’d rather they stop trying to make ye olde MMO epic boss encounters in a combat system that doesn’t support them, and rather aim for encounters that are more PvP-like in nature, so the balancing makes sense.

Guild wars 1 taught us that what you want is a pipe dream. The ai in GW1 functioned far similar to players then it does in GW2. And it just wasn’t possible there. the Ai and a player in GW2 are as different as night and day.

I agree Naqaj, I wish they’d do that too. (If I’m understanding what you’re saying.)

Lily, why do you say GW1 taught us its a pipe dream?

I enjoyed the PvE fights much more in GW1. (I don’t play PvE in GW2 for the reason that I don’t find it fun.)

Rather than one giant mega boss with a huge health pool, there were numerous strong enemies. And waves of enemies that would come in.

I’m not sure if that’s what you all are talking about but that’s the way I would want it.

CureForLiving.5360:

Stack limits are an hardware issue. Imagine two WvW blobs running into each other, you’ve got easily a hundred people duking it out, potentially hundreds of conditions being stacked up. The hardware simply couldn’t handle all that computation (or rather not efficiently), so they limited conditions stacks.
If ANet got more processing capacity, or found a cheaper way of doing the math we could see an increase in condition stacks. However I don’t see it happening soon though.

Too bad. They need to strap on their big boy shoes and learn how to make it more efficient. No sense in having all these conditions if they aren’t worth using in large groups.

PvE stacking is NOT directly related to any PvP balancing….it is a load balancing issue in open world zones. It boils down to allowing for more stacking or stacks per player being too computationally intensive for the Engine in a zone where a hundred players could apply stacks. We don’t know the details, but Anet has made it clear that going beyond 25 stacks causes potential issues that would effect ALL players in the zone (not just the ones fighting the World Boss).

The option to make Conditions more powerful against World Bosses (maintaining the current 25 stack limit) is what would cause issues in PvP (assuming they can’t spit all the skills nor have Conditions effect certain PvE targets differently than PvP player targets).

To be honest, I feel they COULD do something about the issue, but feel that the complexity involved in doing so is WAY overkill as the actual problem is not really as huge as some players want everyone to believe it is (100% my opinion).

BTW, the answer to the OPs question is that we don’t know, but Anet has certainly not (to my knowledge) mentioned the Condition Stacking issue in quite a while (certainly not in any HoT info releases that I have seen or read). If I missed some Anet comment related to Condition stacking, please correct me (and supply a link to verify).

I think I would just like to see a redesign that fairly applies stack and also lies to players.

We’ll assume there is 25 stacks of bleed on a boss. I apply 3 stacks of bleed for six seconds. My condition damage is less than all the other 25 stacks of bleed . The result is, I get credit for dropping three stacks and I see damage ticking, but my stacks don’t contribute to the fight in any meaningful way. My stacks go into a queue based on condition damage. If a stack falls off and my condition damage is the next highest in line then my stacks add to the boss. If my stacks time out before they get onto the boss then I don’t actually do any damage to the boss, but mechanically the system claims I did and gives me credit as if I had, because barring all the other people involved I would have done.

I get to feel like I contributed, but I also am not impairing the fight by imposing my stacks on the boss when someone else’s stacks would be better.

On that same note, if I have better condition damage than a stack that’s currently on the boss, my stacks will push off those stacks, putting those stacks in the queue.

Johje Holan.4607:

Lily.1935:

Naqaj.6219:

Creating a skill disparity between PvE and PvP that Arenanet has repeatedly stated they want to avoid if possible.

I’d rather they stop trying to make ye olde MMO epic boss encounters in a combat system that doesn’t support them, and rather aim for encounters that are more PvP-like in nature, so the balancing makes sense.

Guild wars 1 taught us that what you want is a pipe dream. The ai in GW1 functioned far similar to players then it does in GW2. And it just wasn’t possible there. the Ai and a player in GW2 are as different as night and day.

I agree Naqaj, I wish they’d do that too. (If I’m understanding what you’re saying.)

Lily, why do you say GW1 taught us its a pipe dream?

I enjoyed the PvE fights much more in GW1. (I don’t play PvE in GW2 for the reason that I don’t find it fun.)

Rather than one giant mega boss with a huge health pool, there were numerous strong enemies. And waves of enemies that would come in.

I’m not sure if that’s what you all are talking about but that’s the way I would want it.

Enemy NPCs in GW1 were limited to the same mechanics as the player. They often were restricted to no more then 8 skills though a few bosses went as high as 10 skills. most had 6. But they use the same skill restrictions. They were so close to players that in War in Kryta and Winds of Change the devs actually gave player designed builds for PvP and PvE to the NPCs we fight. And even with how similar the NPCs and players were it still needed to be split. The game suffered way too much without the split and after it made both PvE and PvP very health.

With GW2 the enemies are nothing like the player. Not even like a ghost of the player like GW1 had. They don’t have adrenaline, Death shroud, Kits, they don’t strife, they don’t dodge, they don’t stunbreak, they hardly move. If GW1 needed I don’t see how its maintainable in GW2.

CureForLiving.5360:

Stack limits are an hardware issue. Imagine two WvW blobs running into each other, you’ve got easily a hundred people duking it out, potentially hundreds of conditions being stacked up. The hardware simply couldn’t handle all that computation (or rather not efficiently), so they limited conditions stacks.
If ANet got more processing capacity, or found a cheaper way of doing the math we could see an increase in condition stacks. However I don’t see it happening soon though.

IIRC condition computations are really complicated atm, but there are definitely a few ways they could streamline it. For example, they could have a “meta” condition, such as when you have 25 bleeding stacks, the average damage and duration is calculated out and put onto a “Meta” condition. Then you effectively have a cap of 650 bleeding in PvE (25^2 for the “Meta” condi and 25 bleeding).

Conditions are fine except in two areas of the game. In fact, they excellent in the others. The problem areas are zerg events where you have a ton of other allies and/or a timer which makes me wonder why you’d be running ‘damage over time’, when the sheer numbers makes attrition completely silly and nothing more than a roleplay. The other is dungeons where people want to clear things quickly and question you motives as a ‘team player’ who makes the conscious choice that they’d like to kill things slowly. Use conditions where they’re effective and use power where it is effective/needed. OK. Now that we’ve got past the psychological inistantce of PHIW and using the wrong builds for the wrong content, we can agree that conditions are fine.

Tman.6349:

Conditions are fine except in two areas of the game. In fact, they excellent in the others. The problem areas are zerg events where you have a ton of other allies and/or a timer which makes me wonder why you’d be running ‘damage over time’, when the sheer numbers makes attrition completely silly and nothing more than a roleplay. The other is dungeons where people want to clear things quickly and question you motives as a ‘team player’ who makes the conscious choice that they’d like to kill things slowly. Use conditions where they’re effective and use power where it is effective/needed. OK. Now that we’ve got past the psychological inistantce of PHIW and using the wrong builds for the wrong content, we can agree that conditions are fine.

No they aren’t fine. Just saying it doesn’t make it so. And believe it or not, some people play for fun and like a certain playstyle over efficiency. Is it really wrong that someone likes to play condi? Why is it an option if it’s frowned upon almost universally? Anet just needs to redesign conditions from scratch. They are horribly overcomplicated and restricted right now.

Seems like they are buffing conditions, if anything, with the nerf to stability.

Unless they address of how frequently conditions are applied and do something to buff removal tools, which are always on at least double and usually more like triple the CD, they will get more powerful relatively speaking.

Ralanost.8913:

Is it really wrong that someone likes to play condi?

Hello my name is CureForLiving and I… I play a condimancer cries I know I have a problem… I… I just don’t know how to stop!

Ralanost.8913:

Why is it an option if it’s frowned upon almost universally?

No burst damage, cannot inflict conditions on objects (bit of an issue in dungeons), stack limit can easily be reached by 2 condi-players in essence making all except those two obsolete, most classes have the ability to easily strip conditions off of them (more a pvp issue), overall damage output is lower compared to other builds (such as zerker).

Ralanost.8913:

Anet just needs to redesign conditions from scratch.

Well I do agree that ANet needs to sit down and figure this out. At the very least separate pvp and pve skills, balancing for both is going to be problematic.

petespri.6548:

Seems like they are buffing conditions, if anything, with the nerf to stability.

No, they are buffing CC. And only specifically against players, because mobs usually either don’t use stability at all, or go full Defiance/Unstoppable. Unless there are more changes in the works than we have heard, condition damage is not only getting no fixes, but also being nerfed due to introduction of Resistance.

arenanet says they don’t want to invalidate players time spend. But than they go ahead and do so with balance changes that force gear changes.
But this is only a problem for pve and wvw players, who cannot walk over to a vendor and get free runes, weapons, armor, everything.

But that’s not who the balance changes are for, oh no. It’s for pvp. And balance changes often make little to no sense in pve or wvw because these game modes are so radically different from pvp. So the players who are burdened most by the balance changes are the players least considered and least benefitting.

The logical solution is a split.

Than problems like conditions can be fixed more easily. Hardware limitation on stacking can be mitigated through other means. Most basicly by simply letting conditions scale better, so players with condition gear flat out deal more damage. That should help at least a bit, especially in smaller group content, just as an example.
But something that cannot be done as long as all game modes are tied together in balance.

First off, mobs on average attack 3-10 times slower than players. They should have added at least 300% duration to confusion in pve, not 30%. And 1000% for boss fights, or at least double the damage and make the stack last until the mob attacks (and takes damage from it).

However, the issue with condition caps is based in flawed server architecture and inefficient netcode, and these are the issues that are rooted deeply in game engine and thus are unlikely to be resolved until gw3.

Heck, anet repeatedly screwed pve/wvw players with balance, like when they introduced celestila runes ‘for fun’ and they turned out to be quite good on some classes for wvw, yet they are not removing the two months time gate to get a set of them which makes no sense.

Tman.6349:

Conditions are fine except in two areas of the game. In fact, they excellent in the others. The problem areas are zerg events where you have a ton of other allies and/or a timer which makes me wonder why you’d be running ‘damage over time’, when the sheer numbers makes attrition completely silly and nothing more than a roleplay.

See if you can wrap your head around this.

The game has abilities, traits, equipment and upgrades which all support a focus on conditions. And it works for solo or group PvE. It is therefore reasonable for some players to be equipped and traited accordingly.

It’s not their fault the game design has this rather significant flaw. And it is that. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The game has a sophisticated crafting system with a lot of variety in the stats you can apply to gear….. rendered largely meaningless in large part because of this problem.

ArenaNet could remove everything except zerker gear from the game tomorrow and a large proportion of the playerbase wouldn’t care.

Tman.6349:

The other is dungeons where people want to clear things quickly and question you motives as a ‘team player’ who makes the conscious choice that they’d like to kill things slowly. Use conditions where they’re effective and use power where it is effective/needed. OK. Now that we’ve got past the psychological inistantce of PHIW and using the wrong builds for the wrong content, we can agree that conditions are fine.

That’s terribly myopic and I’m quite certain not what ArenaNet intended. Condition damage can be perfectly effective in dungeons. Different kinds of conditions stack and dish out their damage at the same time as your also doing direct damage.

The minor hurdle is coordination. It’s precisely because condition damage can be so brutal that most stack in duration and not intensity. So it’s just a matter of players talking to each other and making sure they’re not all focused on eg. burning damage, before getting started.

And while there are a lot of impatient zerktards who would literally rather murder their own rather grandmother than gasp waste time talking to other players, they’re not the entire player population.

Makes me feel sorry for those poor necros and mesmers.

Tevesh.1265:

Heck, anet repeatedly screwed pve/wvw players with balance, like when they introduced celestila runes ‘for fun’ and they turned out to be quite good on some classes for wvw, yet they are not removing the two months time gate to get a set of them which makes no sense.

Please pardon my ignorance if I’ve missed something. I’ve googled and couldn’t find celestial runes. There are a few which add to all stats but they seem not to be player or account bound and easily purchased from the marketplace.

So I think you mean celestial equipment and the time gate refers to the 1 charged quartz crystal per day thing?

I agree it sucks a bit. I’ve only been an on and off player so have a stash of about 90 so far. I won’t even consider wasting them on exotic gear. Saving them for ascended.

It does make some sense though – just not from your perspective. One of ArenaNet’s challenges is keeping players logging in daily. This is one of their weapons in that kitten nal.

Unfair, sure (ele and guardian are two of my faves), annoying, definitely. But not completely irrational.

Lily.1935:

Naqaj.6219:

Creating a skill disparity between PvE and PvP that Arenanet has repeatedly stated they want to avoid if possible.

I’d rather they stop trying to make ye olde MMO epic boss encounters in a combat system that doesn’t support them, and rather aim for encounters that are more PvP-like in nature, so the balancing makes sense.

Guild wars 1 taught us that what you want is a pipe dream. The ai in GW1 functioned far similar to players then it does in GW2. And it just wasn’t possible there. the Ai and a player in GW2 are as different as night and day.

Bolded sentence was true only several years AFTER the launch of the game, where they started to copy popular builds from PvE/PvP and implemented the optimal uses in the AI. The AI didn’t get smarter, it was taught how to copy the actual meta.

Dragon.7682:

Im really hoping with the new conditions and boons that there will be a reasonable fix to condition stacking on large PvE mobs encounters.

Discuss!

If Anet were to do something as big as removing the condition cap, they would most likely write a blog post and announce it ahead of time—which also means that, chances are, it would be almost ready or completely ready. Removing the cap is huge as it will help make conditions more popular and that’s something I think we, the playerbase will have to wait and see because no concrete release date for HoT has been revealed yet.

VodCom.6924:

Bolded sentence was true only several years AFTER the launch of the game, where they started to copy popular builds from PvE/PvP and implemented the optimal uses in the AI. The AI didn’t get smarter, it was taught how to copy the actual meta.

It also doesn’t help that the z-axis in gw1 played far less a factor than in gw2.

The “horrific” state of CD in this game is WAY over-hyped and exaggerated by those players that want their CD builds to be as valued as Zerker builds in ALL modes of the game. I don’t recall where Anet ever announced this was a goal they were pursuing (or should pursue). WANTING the game to be as you like does not mean a solution to your perceived issue is being pursued.

That being said, I’ve never had an issue getting in enough damage to obtain WB rewards on my Condi Necro or Mesmer, but then again, I don’t sit there spamming 1 either. I can see where Condi players that want to do dungeons have a valid beef, but in terms of speed running, CD is not really a good choice there (even if stacking were higher).

Well, you’re getting what you asked for, though probably not what you wanted.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/The-New-Defiance-Article/first

ekarat.1085:

Well, you’re getting what you asked for, though probably not what you wanted.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/The-New-Defiance-Article/first

That has nothing to do with condition builds or damage. That is strictly based on CCs.

ekarat.1085:

Well, you’re getting what you asked for, though probably not what you wanted.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/The-New-Defiance-Article/first

I don’t see how that addresses the subject of the thread. There are what, 2 or 3 conditions that also count as control effects? No wait, the are four in the current iteration of defiance; blind, fear, immobilize, and weakness; and weakness never even made any sense as a control effect against mobs, it would just be ridiculously overpowered versus most bosses if it wasn’t reduced as if a control effect.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The “horrific” state of CD in this game is WAY over-hyped and exaggerated by those players that want their CD builds to be as valued as Zerker builds in ALL modes of the game. I don’t recall where Anet ever announced this was a goal they were pursuing (or should pursue). WANTING the game to be as you like does not mean a solution to your perceived issue is being pursued.

That being said, I’ve never had an issue getting in enough damage to obtain WB rewards on my Condi Necro or Mesmer, but then again, I don’t sit there spamming 1 either. I can see where Condi players that want to do dungeons have a valid beef, but in terms of speed running, CD is not really a good choice there (even if stacking were higher).

IIRC Nike stated once that conditions in speed running suffers from two problems, one is natural and expected and one is un-natural and unexpected :

• CD is backloaded, making it less optimal in very short fights (and speed runners want fights as short as possible)
• even in longer fights, CD has a lower DPS cap than direct damage in groups of 5, because of cap on the umber of stacks AND lack of trait that increase condition damage. This is completely broken and crazy.

The only fix I saw was proposed 2 weeks ago in a thread now buried, it was called “overflow damage” :
The principle : Once a mob has reached 25 stacks of bleeding, the next stack of bleed applied would be converted in direct damage instead without removing any of the current bleeding stacks.

And for those who doubt CD is an issue in PvE, I shall remind them that when you create a game with 15 different stats sets, it’s a bit of a shame if only 1 sees the light of the day. Having 2 diferent optimal stat sets (say berserker and sinister) would be much better for everyone (more choices and more replayability).

VodCom.6924:

And for those who doubt CD is an issue in PvE, I shall remind them that when you create a game with 15 different stats sets, it’s a bit of a shame if only 1 sees the light of the day. Having 2 diferent optimal stat sets (say berserker and sinister) would be much better for everyone (more choices and more replayability).

Exactly.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The “horrific” state of CD in this game is WAY over-hyped and exaggerated by those players that want their CD builds to be as valued as Zerker builds in ALL modes of the game. I don’t recall where Anet ever announced this was a goal they were pursuing (or should pursue).

I don’t recall Anet ever announcing they’d created more than a dozen stat sets for equipment but deliberately designed the game to make most of them useless.

It’s clearly unintended and qualifies as a problem. If nothing else it is a stain on their reputation as good game designers – which for the most part they are.

Wouldn’t they tell us or is it coming out randomly like the stability change??

The main reason they have not fixed conditions is because that the way they are now uses allot less bandwidth and server resources then any idea people have been able to come up with.

They said so themselves.

So unless people can come up with a way to not increase the price on their end short of instituting some sort of monthly charge it is unlikely to be changed.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

The main reason they have not fixed conditions is because that the way they are now uses allot less bandwidth and server resources then any idea people have been able to come up with.

No, the main reason why they didn’t fix it is because they created a system that can’t be fixed with just minor tweaks. It needs a bigger overhaul, and that would require far more effort that they are currently willing to spare on it.

VodCom.6924:

The only fix I saw was proposed 2 weeks ago in a thread now buried, it was called “overflow damage” :
The principle : Once a mob has reached 25 stacks of bleeding, the next stack of bleed applied would be converted in direct damage instead without removing any of the current bleeding stacks.

Overflow damage has been suggested many times but it still has an unaddressed problem, power damage is just (base+modifier*power), super simple calculation for the servers to do constantly for the hundreds of people in a single map. Condition damage on the other hand is (modifier*condition damage*duration), calculating that from duration to instant with every single hit is nothing to scoff at, especially when the server is required to do it for hundreds of players at once.

Conncept.7638:

VodCom.6924:

The only fix I saw was proposed 2 weeks ago in a thread now buried, it was called “overflow damage” :
The principle : Once a mob has reached 25 stacks of bleeding, the next stack of bleed applied would be converted in direct damage instead without removing any of the current bleeding stacks.

Overflow damage has been suggested many times but it still has an unaddressed problem, power damage is just (base+modifier*power), super simple calculation for the servers to do constantly for the hundreds of people in a single map. Condition damage on the other hand is (modifier*condition damage*duration), calculating that from duration to instant with every single hit is nothing to scoff at, especially when the server is required to do it for hundreds of players at once.

I fail to see how this will be harder to compute for servers. The damage formula is different but the number of operation to perform is the same.

I might have mised something though. Care to explain further ?

VodCom.6924:

And for those who doubt CD is an issue in PvE, I shall remind them that when you create a game with 15 different stats sets, it’s a bit of a shame if only 1 sees the light of the day. Having 2 diferent optimal stat sets (say berserker and sinister) would be much better for everyone (more choices and more replayability).

Well more gear choice is not equal to more build choice, since gear != build. What they should’ve done is remove stats from gear completely

The problem with the banwidth cost argument is the contradiction between these two scenarios:

1) Ten condi necros run around Queensdale, each keeping 10 bleed stacks up. The server has to calculate damage for 100 bleed stacks.

2) Ten condi necros go to fight Shadow Behemoth. Each of them keeps 10 bleed stacks up. The server has to calculate damage for 100 bleed stacks.

For some reason, currently scenario 1 is possible, but 2 is too hard to calculate. Why?

maddoctor.2738:

VodCom.6924:

And for those who doubt CD is an issue in PvE, I shall remind them that when you create a game with 15 different stats sets, it’s a bit of a shame if only 1 sees the light of the day. Having 2 diferent optimal stat sets (say berserker and sinister) would be much better for everyone (more choices and more replayability).

Well more gear choice is not equal to more build choice, since gear != build. What they should’ve done is remove stats from gear completely

Some builds (not all) require a specific gear in order to run properly. In fact all the meta builds rely on berserker gear especially in difficult content in order to function properly or simply survive.

While some builds can function regardless of what gear you wear (looking at you AH guardian), it is not the case for all of them.

Also, you understood what I said the wrong way : more builds => more gear types see the light of the day and not the other way around. The number of stats sets in the meta is a good indicator of the diversity in said meta.