Guild Wars 2

So far it looks like zerker stats are the only thing ANet will make content for, seen mostly with the Queens Gauntlet, tagging mobs during Invasion events, and the Raced to the Rescue achievement.

Should I just throw away all of my current gear and rebuild as a pure zerker for all of my characters? Or do you think Anet will actually make more temporary content that uses a different stat?

Yeah, I’m getting pretty annoyed by it too. I had to join a group to rescue Faren in Scarlet’s dungeon in time; there was just no way I could do it quickly enough as my necromancer. And because the item to access scarlet’s dungeon is soulbound, I couldn’t switch to one of my other characters to do the thing..

1. It’s Focused on Zerker Builds: Seeing the damage that some zerker builds do against Liadri (and all enemies) is just ridiculous; why is it that my vitality/toughness/healing power all mean nothing against her? Seriously, I might as well have worn magic find/boon duration level 1 armor.

2. Lazy Design/Nearly Untested: The Liadri fight is the laziest design I’ve ever seen in my life; instead of making something challenging, they make her kill you in one hit if you don’t dodge; her one hit kills make it so that so many of my stats are just pointless and make me feel terrible for having chosen them (my Vitality/Toughness). The only necromancers that can beat her ones that use Sigils of Energy; I’m almost certain it’s impossible without them or at least Runes of the Adventurer (50% endurance regen on Heal)… or both.

3. No Clarity: In addition, it’s nearly impossible for me to see her AoE circles on that floor (some of them literally just don’t show up), those orbs pull me and my necromancer doesn’t have stability or evade abilities to stop it and many of my ranged attacks can’t hit it; how is a necromancer supposed to dodge that many things? It’s just impossible. Dodge everything – literally impossible without runes/sigils that give energy. When people are below, it makes it laggy. And one more thing is that she causes a screen flare that hurts my eyes; I had to turn off post processing to make it go away.

4. It’s Punishing: On top of that, they punish you way too much if you die against her; repair cost, waypoint cost, you have to walk back to ring from the waypoint and you have to use a guantlet ticket to try beating her in the first place. If it wasn’t for the punishing part, I’d try the fight over and over until I could get it… But I’m not going to pay tons of gold in waypoint/repair costs and walk back over and over just to fight against a badly designed boss.

5. A Solution: Liadri should have been with Spvp armor (no repairs, no waypoint costs, no walking back, no worrying about stats since that can be changed on a whim with no gold in Spvp). The only cost should have been gauntlet tickets. Seriously, what kind of queen murders her citizens and foreign guests with her guard robots?

So I finally decided to try out my barely-used Warrior with full zerker armor. Being able to kill mobs from every wave with literally just one keypress is pretty overwhelming, especially compared to the amount of effort I was pouring into on my Mesmer.
Having achievements tied to a DPS race in temporary content doesn’t really seem like a smart idea in the slightest. Unless, like mentioned above, everyone can have access to what they think will be the desired setup for the temporary content; and not need to farm/buy an entirely new armor set every time an update rolls around that makes their current set useless for the goal.

Of course it would be fine if it was permanent, but that doesn’t happen.

Xalugami.2096:

So far it looks like zerker stats are the only thing ANet will make content for, seen mostly with the Queens Gauntlet, tagging mobs during Invasion events, and the Raced to the Rescue achievement.

Should I just throw away all of my current gear and rebuild as a pure zerker for all of my characters? Or do you think Anet will actually make more temporary content that uses a different stat?

Me and my friends did race to the rescue with me in clerics armor, our engi was in a knights/soldiers mix, our 2 thieves were both in knights/valk gear, and our other engi was in full invaders(soldiers) we had NO issue getting to it, so stop your zerker is necessary nonsense.

Ontop of that the gauntlet fight ONLY needs zerker if you’re a ranger on Liadri because she guts 40% of your DPS due to poor balancing. Everyone else is fine (I know several guardians who went at her with clerics gear and warriors and eles who went at her with soldiers).

That being said, I hate zerker gear and if I’m ever forced into using it I’m going to raise hell.

He didn’t say it exclusively required zerker gear, just that it was made for it. It’s the case more the majority of PvE. Crit damage is broken, it’s why it’s used by speed clear groups. Content becomes trivial when you can kill things in seconds.

I would say that allowing us to pile a crit chance in the high 90s is the real culprit, as it makes crits the new normal hit. This turning into a double whammy when runes, traits and foods have all kinds of “on crit” mechanics. Before they put in the internal timer, a zerker warrior could outperform a vampiric traited necromancer by munching on “heal on crit” foods.

Honestly, this is a massive issue with the game in general. Why are the traits supposedly the defining element of our professions, when gear and foods greatly outperform them? A full stack of armor mods provide 2-3x the amount of stat gain that a trait line does, and various consumables outperform traits that are supposed to define a profession.

I honestly believe that the gear and trait mechanics were balanced solely on SPVP, aiming to produce a MOBA, and that the PVE bits to turn it into a MMO was bolted on because someone at NCSoft raised a stink. Various parts of PVE seems to carry the markings of designers running rampant for arts sake, with no consideration for long term playability.

I retrained zerker so I could get the Gambit achievements, and bought a lot of zerker gear, about 20g worth of it. Of course, I made all that money back and earned a lot more by farming Deadeye, before they nerfed him for warrior farming.

It made me sad that I had to do that to get the 5 gambit achievements.

I hate being a zerker. Oh, and I still don’t have the two Liadri chievs and don’t intend to do them until the difficulty is normalized. And I did all LS achievements since the start of the game.

I don’t want to be a zerker and I don’t like being a zerker. Sadly it’s the only thing that works….

Shiren.9532:

He didn’t say it exclusively required zerker gear, just that it was made for it. It’s the case more the majority of PvE. Crit damage is broken, it’s why it’s used by speed clear groups. Content becomes trivial when you can kill things in seconds.

only in pve? isnt WvW arround it to?, i have being almost insta killed on guardian with 25khealth+ 3.6k amor + protection, sometimes sill get critical backstabs over 12k or killshots ~19k.

I stil make more contribuition to nearby allies with zerker or valkyr sets than trying to bunker, becouse bunker are easy to kill dispites player saying and think,and with zerker it end with target trying to reset combat.

Ya I feel this way too. The only “zerker” character out of my five is my necromancer because I don’t want to play the same type all the time (as in my ele is geared and traited heavily for group support whereas my Mesmer is traited/geared for toughness). Don’t get me wrong I enjoy playing group support builds like my Ele, but I often feel that I would just be better off going for builds that do the most damage since many encounters are basically DPS races. Just look at the bosses within Honor of the Waves for example. If you aren’t traited/geared for pure damage then they take an eternity to defeat.

There are plenty of other examples as well.

I’ve noticed the next update is about Super Adventure Box, and I had a sigh of relief.

This is what I was hoping most instanced Living Story content would be; puts every player in the same position at the start of it, and lets your skill/effort determine the outcome. SAB makes everyone’s health and damage identical, skills are up to the player to use and aren’t needed (but makes things heaps easier). No one has a distinct advantage over another person, and you don’t need to buy new items with coin you may or may not have in order to finish a DPS race.

Of course I’m not saying they should strip us of everything for each living story update, but if they plan on making achievements for how fast you complete a DPS race (rather than say, a small puzzle, riddle, use of bundle) then they should allow everyone to be on equal ground.

I’m sure this round of SAB will include hard mode, and most likely an achievement or title tied to it. But it’s definitely more fair since (what we’ve seen of World 1) it all comes down to player skill (and amazingly no camera issues to boot!).

So pretty much what I’m poking at is no achievement should be purely DPS based. Even if it doesn’t require full zerker gear entirely, the simple premise of passing a DPS race quickly enough is pretty bad (unless its like the first 11 Gauntlet bosses where the mechanics are more skill-based and less zerker-based with a fair time limit for those not-wearing zerker gear.