Do I really need all-Berserkers?

Do I really need all-Berserkers?

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Posted by: Irensaga.6935

Irensaga.6935

Hi, my main is Elementalist. My other level 80 characters are a Mesmer and a Thief.

Every guide I run into online it’s always Berserkers gear for everything. I just went along with that and outfitted my Elementalist in full exotic Berserkers gear, with full “Superior Rune of the Flame Legion” (because I can’t really afford to go full Runes of the Scholar).

But running the final boss fight solo in Lake Doric made me doubt this choice. I got slaughtered, repeatedly. Even sniper mobs were one-shotting me. Part of the problem was I didn’t have the right masteries unlocked. But I also think a lot of my weakness to getting one-shot was due to my Berserker’s gear.

It seems like Berserkers is basically a thing for min-maxers. People who are experienced at all the game mechanics, are good at dodging, know how to use all their abilities to squeeze survivability out of their character… People who want to speed-clear dungeons and fractales – where everyone knows the mechanics and the only thing an Elementalist should be worrying about is pumping out maximum DPS.

But that’s not exactly me. I’m purely a casual player. I’ve played about a year as a Free-to-Play account, and only bought HoT last November (2016). I haven’t even run through the story-modes of the dungeons yet. I think I’m not terrible at the game mechanics, dodging, not standing in red circles, and so on. But I’m not the sort of player that cares about speed-clear farming runs at this point.

And even if I ran Fractales, it seems to me that I’m going to need more of a safety margin than Berserkers gives while I learn the mechanics and get used to the whole thing.

I also have a pretty understanding guild full of mature people I can run group content with who won’t care if I’m not min-maxxing.

Also, I’ve heard that if you take Berserkers into PvP content, you’re just going to get murdered.

What do you guys think? Should I give up on the Berserkers idea for now, and run Knights instead or something else? Do you carry more than one set of armor for different stuff?

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Posted by: DirtyDan.4759

DirtyDan.4759

The main problem of this boss fight is not your gear. It’s the fight itself. Small room, a lot of AoE, a lot of knockbacks.
I completed this boss with the following setup
Gear: berzerk
Traits:
Earth 3,2,1
Air 1,2,2
Tempest 3,3,1

Dagger, Warhorn

Heal: Glyph on Water
Utility: Glyph of storms, arcane shield, feel the burn

Use fresh air to spam air overload, gaining stabilty
Thanks to the third tempest trait you have double the sand squall -> magnetic aura for the pop up

Always stay on air, switch to fire to pull of 2,3,5 and switch back. Water 5+3 for heal.
The stabilty and -40% dmg from protection helped me alot

Im not the best guide writer.

You can contact me ingame for further help. I am going to be online in 12 hours.

(edited by DirtyDan.4759)

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Posted by: AliamRationem.5172

AliamRationem.5172

Why not find out for yourself? Honestly, some players are always going to claim that berserker is simply better for everything and for every player. It isn’t true, but you aren’t going to convince them.

Keep your berserker set. It IS good for plenty of content and you will want to have it for raids especially. And build a more defensive set or mix and match some more defensive pieces with your berserker gear and see how it goes.

It’s difficult to build a full set, but I really enjoy my celestial set on my elementalist. It takes a squishy class and makes it very tanky. It feels totally different than when I play with my berserker set. But marauder would probably be a nice in-between with high health and higher damage than celestial. As well as much easier to craft.

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Posted by: Third Degree Ember.6430

Third Degree Ember.6430

Many people use full zerkers in PvE because if you kill mobs before they’re able to hit you more than once or twice, then you don’t take much damage. You’ll save overall time completing hearts and events, etc. and probably improve on your dodging/position faster. That’s the philosophy anyway. Having a bit more defense/health for these smaller fights can buy you some time to respond to incoming damage if your dodging/blocking/invuls aren’t enough to mitigate the damage.

With big bosses though, even if you mix and match, you’ll typically take the same number of hits to go down—the safety margin of toughness and vitality isn’t that high (if it is, you probably won’t kill anything in a reasonable time frame). That’s partially why people like to rely on active defenses like utilities + weapon skills. Rarely do you do bosses solo (unless you like that kind of content!) so people will be around to res you too. In raids in particular, this is true but also in non-speed runs, there’s typically at least one healer druid to make sure you’re topped off to get your scholar rune bonus. There’s also sometimes a tank to ensure that you can be toward the back of the boss, so you take even less damage.

That being said, you should experiment anyway! Keep your zerker’s armor (it’s not cheap), but obtain a few other pieces to swap in to test out. Try some toughness, try some vitality; see if it helps. I ran with some PPT and PVT trinkets on my mesmer until just recently in fractals. And even if zerker armor isn’t you for yet, it might be in the future.

In PvP, there’s an amulet system so your gear doesn’t really matter anyway. In WvW though, a full glass build is definitely really difficult to survive with.

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Posted by: ArchonWing.9480

ArchonWing.9480

There’s nothing wrong with having redundant armor/trinkets/weapons on swap if you feel the need.

You can also swap a damage oriented trait for a defensive one.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.

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Posted by: Khisanth.2948

Khisanth.2948

One issue with toughness as defense is that it is useless against conditions. In some situations it can also cause you to get all the aggro which would make it counterproductive.

As for vitality there is the issue of agony in fractals which does percent based damage. This means you end up taking more damage if you have more HP but unfortunately your healing is generally not percent based.

Then there is the other annoyance. For the truly hard hitting attacks even with 3000 isn’t worth much. For example if something hits an ele wearing berserker for 20,000 damage it will still hit you for around 12,000 damage. You might be thinking “but that is 8,000 less!” but it doesn’t matter if you have 11,000 HP.

For experimenting it is much cheaper to experiment with trinkets if you have LS3 episodes unlocked especially the blood ruby trinkets since it only cost 100 unbound magic to reset the stats on those.

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Posted by: Sigfodr.9576

Sigfodr.9576

For open world, and when playing with guildys use whatever you want. Full berserker or full soldier or any mix of whatever. Main thing here is that you ENJOY it, If you are having fun then THAT is what is importent.

For dungeons/fractals with pugs, use something meta or close to meta. They dont know you and no reason to carry you. So be nice to them and bring your best

Raids, even with guildys I’d recommend bringing good stats to raids, since you will need the extra dmg.

All this said, the thing that really will keep you alive are understanding the game and your class. Using reflect, protection, blind etc will let you stay alive alot better and longer then any gear change. But that will (hopefully) come with time spand in game

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Posted by: Irensaga.6935

Irensaga.6935

Well, I still have a lot of HoT maps to complete for the first time. I’ve noticed I’m a bit squishier on those events than I’d like. Maybe I’ll get myself an open world roaming set and save my Berserkers stuff for when my guildmates want to have an evening Fractale run (where I haven’t found Berserkers too problematic).

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Posted by: Danikat.8537

Danikat.8537

I feel the same way as the OP. I understand why people say Beserkers is the best choice for everyone and I agree that in the right circumstances it can be, but when I’m playing in solo-PvE (which is what I spend the vast majority of my time doing) it’s not the right circumstances.

I want to use a condition build because I find it more fun, so right away I can’t kill things that fast anyway and I don’t want to have to be at my best in every single fight. If I’m against a champion (or hard hitting veteran) sure I’ll pull out all the stops, kiting and dodging and switching weapons and all the rest of it. But if I’m fighting some random I want to keep one eye on chat to see what my guild is saying and relax a bit, which means letting some damage get through and in that case some toughness comes in very useful. (I picked toughness over vitality because I can clear conditions easily.)

So I picked rabid gear instead (condition damage, precision and toughness). I’ve since “upgraded” to a mix of rabid and sinister but there’s still a decent chunk of toughness in there, enough that I can survive a red circle or several hits from an enemy even if I’m not doing anything.

And since I don’t play with the min-maxers except at big group events where it doesn’t matter I don’t need to worry about what they expect me to be using.

Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).

“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”

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Posted by: Khailyn.6248

Khailyn.6248

Take guides with a grain of salt. While a good baseline most of the time, you should chose your gear for yourself once you have a good understanding of how you want to play. As an elementalist instead of using berserkers why not use assassins? or celestial? or even viper could be interesting if built for it. When I started verdant brink for the first time i had a rabid necromancer and soldier warrior. You arent going to be penalized by most people for going against the popular opinion.

‘Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.’

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

Honestly, some players are always going to claim that berserker is simply better for everything and for every player. It isn’t true, but you aren’t going to convince them.

It’s true that berserker’s stats are mathematically better, all things being equal. So people aren’t wrong to argue that everyone should use them all the time for power builds.

At the same time, you’re correct in the sense that all things are never equal for all players. Some folks have more trouble with certain mechanics, some folks can’t be bothered to worry about it, and some folks simply have a play style that is better suited for hybrid builds that are still effective in most situations (even if they aren’t as fast at killing stuff).

A more correct statement is that that hybrid builds/gear work just about anywhere (except Raids and the occasional fractal), even if they are less efficient. It’s worth it for a lot of players to learn damage mitigation so they can survive using glassier builds; it’s not necessary for soloing story instances.

edit: major typo

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)

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Posted by: Coinhead.7591

Coinhead.7591

I made a quick video where I play on guardian and do the first boss of level one fractal on both Full Berserker gear and my tanky wvw gear. Jeah sure its not elementalist, but you can see some difference of being tanky and being full glass:

https://youtu.be/iWmRIg1Wtus

Looking through it the video isn’t 100% fair comparison, for example the sigils on tanky hammer build are completely useless in this situation and I should have just used the same hammer, and on Berserker gear I start the fight a bit worse ect. But maybe the video is helpful to someone who is thinking should they use full berserker or not.

As for me I still prefer the full berserker, it is just more my style.

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Posted by: AliamRationem.5172

AliamRationem.5172

Honestly, some players are always going to claim that berserker is simply better for everything and for every player. It isn’t true, but you aren’t going to convince them.

It’s true that berserker’s stats are mathematically better, all things being equal. So people aren’t wrong to argue that everyone should use them all the time for power builds.

At the same time, you’re correct in the sense that all things are never equal for all players. Some folks have more trouble with certain mechanics, some folks can’t be bothered to worry about it, and some folks simply have a play style that is better suited for hybrid builds that are still effective in most situations (even if they aren’t as fast at killing stuff).

A more correct statement is that that hybrid builds/gear work just about anywhere (except Raids and the occasional fractal), even if they are less efficient. It’s worth it for a lot of players to learn damage mitigation so they can survive using glassier builds; it’s not necessary for soloing story instances.

edit: major typo

They are mathematically better for dealing damage. They cannot possibly be “mathematically better” for every player in every situation because, as you can see, some players feel “squishy” when they play their elementalist in open world. Further, in open world playing solo it doesn’t matter how fast you kill anything only that you survive.

So, again to the OP and others expressing difficulty in open world HoT, I recommend building an open world set with some defensive stats. I swear by my celestial elementalist for open world because I’m nearly impossible to kill and still deal enough damage to take down enemies quickly (especially since I can easily stack 25 might off of overload fire!). The fire 3, 4, 5 burst is still strong enough without might to take down many non-veterans, too. It’s not THAT slow, it just isn’t raid-worthy.

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Posted by: Wasabi Kitty.8247

Wasabi Kitty.8247

The thing about relying on defensive gear is that it can lead to you not learning important lessons about your class, and gw2 combat in general. Things like dodging important attacks, stacking with your group for heals/boons, and utilizing your damage mitigation tools.

I would take some time to look over all your weapon skills, utility skills, and traits and just pay attention to the damage mitigation tools you have available. A huge one that can sometimes be overlooked is elemental storm. If you’re in earth attunement when you use it, it drops a large sandstorm that continuously applies blind. So if you’re stacking and pull a large group of mobs, if you drop that on top of the group they won’t be able to deal any damage to you or your group.

Anet make Rev great again.

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Posted by: AliamRationem.5172

AliamRationem.5172

The thing about relying on defensive gear is that it can lead to you not learning important lessons about your class, and gw2 combat in general. Things like dodging important attacks, stacking with your group for heals/boons, and utilizing your damage mitigation tools.

I would take some time to look over all your weapon skills, utility skills, and traits and just pay attention to the damage mitigation tools you have available. A huge one that can sometimes be overlooked is elemental storm. If you’re in earth attunement when you use it, it drops a large sandstorm that continuously applies blind. So if you’re stacking and pull a large group of mobs, if you drop that on top of the group they won’t be able to deal any damage to you or your group.

Yeah, or maybe I just want to play my non-meta dagger/dagger celestial ele for solo open world and put a couple of extra blasts on my bar to stack 25 might off of overload fire instead of wasting slots on area blinds that I don’t need with my setup?

Now consider this. You’re playing solo, right? So you don’t have a PS warrior granting you might stacks. If you go full glass staff meta and use your utilities on active mitigation, you’re only going to pull off 11 stacks of might off of overload fire and your single blast in earth 2, and you can’t maintain it.

With my non-meta dagger/dagger celestial build using strength runes, concentration and strength sigil I can stack 25 might off of overload fire and maintain it. And I don’t need extra damage mitigation. I’m practically impossible to kill as it is without any defensive traits.

I’m not saying I’m better or faster at killing things than a glass raid build. But it just might be that in solo play the damage loss from using a non-meta build like mine might not be as much as it appears when comparing base power. And the survivability is far better in most open world scenarios, even if it isn’t strictly necessary when you know your stuff.

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Posted by: bearshaman.3421

bearshaman.3421

I’ve heard the argument about not using defensive stats so that you get better at active defenses like dodging, kiting, general positioning, blocks, blinds, dazes, interrupts, etc. I will say this…

Using Berserker is no guarantee someone will learn how to do all of those things. Using stat sets with some defensive stats is no guarantee that a person WON’T learn those things either.

On the flip side:

If someone wants to do competitive or highend content (pvp, wvw, raids, high level fractals), they will likely learn these things or not get very far, and in the case of group content, find themselves dumped from the group.

Likewise, if you play everything else, no one is gonna care really (maybe on low level fractals and dungeons, but you have to be really really bad to kitten off people in those enough to drop you).

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Posted by: zoomborg.9462

zoomborg.9462

I did the same as someone said above, dagger/warhorn FA with air, tempest and earth instead of fire, the healing signet along with protection from auras and dmg reduction was so much mitigation that it was easy, just dont use staff in that fight, the long animations can get you killed.

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Posted by: nagr.1593

nagr.1593

It took me a long time to understand the reasoning behind some of the meta builds as well.

For longest time after I came back to game where it left off in hot, it was kinda an awkward period for me bc I had no clue which was the optimal build to run for anything. A lot has changed about consensus on which stats on gear are best for what purpose, but for the most part it’s also the same underlying idea. You want to kill things faster than they can kill you, whether dealing with mobs in open world or in instances it’s same concept. For these reasons it’s not exclusively a concern of minimizing time needed to complete a set task, it’s also that u want to focus on rotations and focus on sustainability as well and this gives u lot more room for error as it’s usually an admissible ‘faceroll’ mechanic that u are aiming for as well. What this mean is, if you’re sitting on a bunker ele stacking as much toughness and healing power as u can find, sure u can survive more fights than glass ele but fight will also take longer, if u are careless on rotations or you aren’t able to outheal the incoming dmg, then u will still die. A glass build however can pull off meta rotation for their class and kill the mob with seconds to spare, or in bad situations they can even be worse than bunker option. So it’s all subjective rely in these cases, it depends not only on profession and build u are running but for also what content u are gearing it towards.

For instance, the pve build used nowadays was very similar to dungeon builds years ago. Since dungeons died, I would think their builds for that type of instanced content got generalized and paired with similar sub-content for pve, such as fotm and open world solo/living world.

Example here, I came back and see the meta for warrior pve is switch to OH mace/shield set for power build. I didn’t have any ascended version of either, didn’t see necessity for it either. I used to run t4 fractals with OH axe/x where x was usually warhorn for the swiftness in navigating thru running parts in fractals. I used to explore open world with this set too. It took me a month or so to realise the potential of the meta offhand set currently on the table.

It’s really same thing statwise with gear concerns as well. Look at some particular meta builds like for the condi ps build I was checking out yesterday, as I still have to gear my ps for condi build. The reqs are a bit particular, in that X armor piece and X ring have to be sinister stats. What’s the need, why not just go full vipers? To dwell into this further you have to use a gw2 build site, as well as examining the traits at play here. Basically you come up with a 67% flat condi duration increase all things considered, when in theory u want to achieve 100%. The reasoning is that with whole build into consideration, the complementary 33% duration increase is achieved through traits. This is something you’ll have to figure out with some meta builds in particular – as in, what exactly makes that particular amalgamation of stats correspondent to meta.

In truth, there’s nothing wrong with extra or double sets for pve. It makes more sense for group based content like raids, but less sense for a purely separate open world build. I’d still recommend going full or mostly zerk (or the condition equivalent statwise) but that’s just me.

The most cost effective solution though, is to have spare sets of trinkets at a minimum, if such is required. Having a wep of legendary quality is purely beneficial here as you can swap out stats whenever. The reasoning for this stems from fact that statwise u receive highest bonuses to trinkets and weps, stats on armor don’t really matter unless you are minmaxing in regards to meta or you purely want the seperate set for diff rune options. However trinkets as baseline is good practice, in fact I do have some on my chrono for some pve content where I need to lower or buff my toughness and other (primary) related stats to my build. Suggest you can do the same

Arun Kar

(edited by nagr.1593)

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Posted by: nagr.1593

nagr.1593

PS ill play the devil’s advocate with myself here purely for sake of argument and say that I see no reasonable or conceivable need to swap stats or sets within sub contents of the particular game mode in question (pve), at the least one that doesn’t have an L2P-centric issue seated at the heart of it.

So ill preface this by saying that yes I suppose class and (armor) class does matter. For instance, full zerk as ps is still inherently more tankier than full zerk any (or most any) other class. This does mean u can have a one-size-fits-all gearwise/statwise model that traverses all pve content in such cases. But still in such cases, you’ll have to be smart and figure out how to play. What are optimal wep sets for exploring open world content (yes they can be different from meta). Additionally, the utilities and skill slots taken into consideration. For roaming/open world you generally want to select selfish utilities to use, designate at least one as a panic button in difficult cases (invuln, stun break etc.) Swap out group support utilities such as warrior banners to signets and stances to help with fury/might generation or stunbreaks. Don’t care that building selfish for open world content strictly breaks against meta rules and standards: meta isn’t always right in every case.

For instance, the meta war heal skill is meta in the sense it is geared only toward one purpose in mind. In term of survivability, that is by no means considered as best or most reliable heal skill for the class. But it exist only for one purpose, and there will be times when your purpose does not align with the touted one.

In such cases the ball (perceptibly) is in your court.

Arun Kar

(edited by nagr.1593)

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Posted by: Irensaga.6935

Irensaga.6935

I appreciate all the good input on this thread.

Here’s a report on some stuff I tried out since I wrote the OP.

First I tried acquiring some exotic Soldier’s armor fitted with Superior Runes of the Elementalist (because they were cheap and I’m not going Strength or Scholar runes on a test build). About three of my guildies announced on Discord that they were going to do a farm run on Silverwastes, so I felt like that would be a good place to test the build out. Still running a basic staff ele setup that I’d been running all along.

Things went alright, and I didn’t see marked performance issues, though I’m sure my DPS was lower. At the southeast fort we dropped down the pit and tried to kill Mordrem boss that runs in a circle around the tunnel plowing people down. The particular group I was with, I guess we didn’t destroy the poison pods, so we all wiped.

Eventually, we managed to get the final meta-event for Silverwastes triggered with the three paths. We took middle path and managed to push it to that boss where you have to stand behind him when he does his special attack or get stunned. We had a lot of trouble with this mechanic as a group, and the event failed. Died repeatedly.

My takeaway lesson from the experience is that my armor might have been giving me some buffer against minions and trash mobs in the Silverwastes, but when it came to big boss mechanics, Soldiers is essentially just as squishy as Berserkers. There’s little noticeable difference between the two in boss fights. You just have to learn the mechanics, or die – end of story.

Or get carried by your group, I guess…

Another thing I decided to try out after the Silverwastes run was switch from staff to dagger/warhorn for a “fresh air” build. I’ve been playing staff for a long time now, and I realized I was doing that mainly because it’s a simple skill rotation. You basically camp fire until you want the occasional skill from another skillset – like air for travel speed, or earth for the elemental guardian. Basically, I was being lazy and the gameplay had gotten stale anyway.

I also realized that even with dodges and burning retreat(which I use all the time), staff might not be the most damage-mitigation focused build out there. It kind of thrives off you just standing there and doing your DPS rotation against enemies that also don’t move much.

So, I looked up some Fresh Air builds and I’m currently trying those out, farming extra mastery points in Dredgehaunt Cliffs and other zones. So far, it’s kind of fun (“Lightning Orb – where have you BEEN all my life?”). I’m also finally able to use the Tempest skills that I didn’t have available as a free-to-player.

I suspect that utilizing damage mitigation skills in the dagger builds might tap me into more survivability than just slapping Soldiers gear on a staff ele did. I’m going to experiment with it, take the build into Tangled Depths (next stop on my personal story), and see if I get kicked around by the mobs down there.

Trial and error I guess. Staff might have been a problem because it was preventing that testing.

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Posted by: AliamRationem.5172

AliamRationem.5172

I appreciate all the good input on this thread.

Here’s a report on some stuff I tried out since I wrote the OP.

Defensive gear isn’t going to allow you to ignore critical boss mechanics, for the most part. However, I can tell you that particular boss can’t take down my celestial elementalist. I found myself last man standing the other day with a group that didn’t understand the mechanics. I was able to continue fighting on my own and keep my health up until I ran out of time.

Is that useful? Not particularly. But it might be if you’re the sort who enjoys the playstyle of elementalist, but considers them too squishy for enjoyable solo open world play. I mean, the very fact that people call elementalist “squishy” has all to do with the berserker meta, because it isn’t an inherent limitation of the class. In fact, they have strong mitigation and healing options, and vitality can turn a low health class into a high health class.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Berserker gear will allow most players to survive adequately and deal far more damage than a set like celestial. And it’s pretty much a must for high end group play like raids and non-PUG fractals. So for most it is the better option. But for those who think ele is too “squishy”, there may be a better way for solo play.

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Posted by: Feral.3609

Feral.3609

Short answer, no you don’t need all berserkers.

I will tell you what worked for me though. I started back when the game was first released – people said to go all soldiers back then. There was an advantage to learning in that way. Sure dungeons took longer (pre-hot the game was very different back then), but it allowed me to experiment with stats and find the perfect fit for my playstyle. Slowly I removed one piece of soldiers at a time and replaced it with berserker – until I was full zerk. Getting that slow feel and experimenting allowed me to create some pretty awesome builds in WvW catered specifically to my playstyle.

As for fractals and open world – unless you’re doing T4 fracs, sacrificing some zerk pieces for a bit of extra resilience will be almost unnoticeable with how this game is power creeped. I currently do T3’s on my mesmer in my WvW gear and my own, non-meta build and if you ran with me would not see any difference from a speed run.

Last bit of advice I should mention, most of the guides out now are outdated – zerker is great on some classes like guardian, but other classes benefit more from condi or hybrid to output max DPS such as necromancer.

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Posted by: rdfaye.4368

rdfaye.4368

Short answer, no you don’t need all berserkers.

I will tell you what worked for me though. I started back when the game was first released – people said to go all soldiers back then. There was an advantage to learning in that way. Sure dungeons took longer (pre-hot the game was very different back then), but it allowed me to experiment with stats and find the perfect fit for my playstyle. Slowly I removed one piece of soldiers at a time and replaced it with berserker – until I was full zerk. Getting that slow feel and experimenting allowed me to create some pretty awesome builds in WvW catered specifically to my playstyle.

That is some great advice! Wish I had thought of doing it.

As a casual who does try to learn mechanics, berserker is not needed for open world. I had lag issues when leveling, and also have joint issues which can slow my reflexes. The argument for berserkers is it forces you to learn your abilities; my counter argument is for a new player, if they are killed within moments of entering a fight, they will NEVER learn their abilities.

That last fight in LD was tough. Doable, but tough. Unless I was a top tier player, and I am not, I would not/did not run a full glass build for it. So, yeah, two sets would be the way to go.

Really, that last post, great advice.