Guild Wars 2

I haven’t gotten very far into HoT yet (pretty much just started the second map). I am running full zerkers gear and that seems to work just fine for me as it has always done. I know with some of the buffs to conditions and with the addition of other new abilities like taunt, slow, alacrity a lot of people were hopeful that other gearsets would become viable. I was just curious if anyone has found this to be true? Success stories? Failures?

As a thief, I’ve done well with zerk gear, but I also run sinister/rampager and it performs well. There have been a couple of things that zerk didn’t handle well (probably because I’m a thief), and I swapped to dire to avoid getting melted. I think I could make soldiers or valk work. Zerk is definitely still very good though.

Edit: to elaborate, there’s a certain HP in AB with a vet mob that was near impossible on zerk (solo). I ran dire and did better, but it was still a challenge. Honestly that vet was harder than some champs.

Anything is good, just like before-you just gotta be more careful with whatever you use.

Though this is not aimed at OP, I find it a bit unnecessary trying to “prove” ANet wrong about the “Berseker meta” (which is really a non-“passive” stats meta, which are seen by some as somehow bad or for “beginners”). ANet has never stated that Berserker’s gear would be a bad idea moving forwards-their idea is to validate gear other than DPS-oriented ones, rather than require everybody using Soldier’s and the like.

Lastly, for HoT, since there are no raids yet, the “meta” is whatever works for the Fractals. I’ve never seen the term “meta” applied that successfully to the overworld map as far as GW2 is concerned, even though HoT is harder.

If a player “has no problem with HoT” completing everything in Berserker’s/Sinister’s, he/she is probably good/experienced-or exaggerating-but it doesn’t mean that the other stat combos are useless. Healing and toughness/vitality have a place in the game, and they are more relevant now, even without raids. As a said, things are “the same” (EVERYTHING has always worked for the maps, and to be fair, for everything else where efficiency is not a concern), but at least now the supposedly “bad” stats are more evidently good than they used to.

Though I myself never used Nomad’s, I never understood the need to belittle players for using that or any other gear that ANet themselves put into the game. It’s not my business to criticize others for the way they choose to play. The developers are just working on making “passive” stats more desirable for players, and it’s doing fine in this regard-that never meant you were not necessarily going to be able to use Berserker’s stats in HoT maps.

When you say “meta” i assume you mean the dungeon/Fractal meta, and yeah, most players are still running Berserker/Assassin/Sinister in those areas. Not much has changed in that content, aside from new builds being available since everyone has an elite specialization by now. There’s certainly no new reason to add vitality/toughness/healing power to your build.

Open-world Heart of Thorns doesn’t really seem like it will have a clear stat meta, though. Glassy stat combos seem to work fine for me, but I’m a pretty good player and I’m still having to work quite hard to stay alive at times. Plus, speed-running doesn’t really apply, and the player cap is much higher, so I doubt anyone cares if you’re running Knight’s gear or whatever.

However, damage absorption has never really been a viable strategy in this game and I don’t expect that to change. There are still things out there that will still nearly one-shot you no matter what you’re wearing, so don’t expect you can ignore fight mechanics or dodging just because you’re in Nomad’s gear or whatever.

I personally favour partial cavaliers for overworld content. 2800-3200 toughness will make a lot of things feel significantly less punishing.

I’ll keep wearing zerker for direct damage builds until the day I run into problems that I cannot mitigate through other means than soak. So far that hasn’t changed even in HoT (even if they’ve upped the difficulty a bit) so I keep running my zerker gear. I don’t like change if I can avoid it. :P

my thief is in magi’s. i have better luck with that than i did zerker (the other thief in my guild swapped to it recently and is astonished by its resilience)

I run zerker on all my characters (I have one of everything), and haven’t really found it to be a problem. Have to be a little more wary, yes, but I suspect I’d have to do that regardless of gear. You just have to run with what feels best to you.

I run Soldier’s armour on a lot of my characters because I tend to do a bit of WvW, but the rest of it is Berserker.

The damage drop from full berserker really isn’t noticeable, in my opinion. The enemy health bar still drops from full to 0, so I don’t care if its not the top 1% of damage.

I’m still running full berserker on all of my characters in and out of HoT zones.

I’m still full berserker on all my characters, except my condition Necromancer. I don’t like to call myself a good or great player, but I feel comfortable stating I’m above the average. HoT open world isn’t more difficult than, for instance, a level 50 Fractal, and since I run those with berserker stats I see no reason to change it for the HoT maps. Once you know the enemy encounters you can adjust your strategy to them, and since it’s reasonable to assume you already know the class(es) you’re playing it shouldn’t be a problem. The only difference for me is that I use more ranged attacks in HoT maps for some enemies, but always in combination with a melee weapon set since I still prefer melee whenever possible. Personally I use the new maps to improve my solo skills as well. It’s a refreshing change that I actually have to keep my wits about when I’m roaming the open world.