New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Vael.9076

Vael.9076

Hi there. I haven’t been playing very long, I almost have two 80s now, a Guardian and a 79 Warrior. I’ve looked at guides for damage and whathaveyou quite a lot, but they don’t really mesh with my gameplay experience very well and I was hoping I could get some clarification from other players.

The big, big one is gearing. I see a lot of people advocate using full berserker everything for virtually all classes, unless you’re doing a condition build. I understand the maximizing damage concept, but in my dungeon experiencing, virtually everyone who uses a build of that type just seems to die constantly. Especially Warriors and Thieves who are trying to melee with 0 defenses. (Guardians can take 5-6 seconds of being smacked at before they’re hit, so it’s a little different).

The guides say this is a skill issue. I don’t think it is frankly, too many enemies have some form of unavoidable damage and it seems to often one-shot glass cannon types. So what I’d like to understand, is where is this attitude coming from? Even if we assume high skill levels, if you need to back off constantly on a melee class your damage is going to drop a ton. That’s been reflected by my in game experience. Full DPS players either die or are running around so much their damage is compromised.

Am I missing something here? Do enemies in fractals hit so hard that defenses are pointless? Or is this really just people being internet tough guys? There’s a lot of kittening on people who advocate some survival traits/gear for PvE and I don’t really understand it.

I’d really like some responses on this, since I want to gear my warrior for 80 and I’m just really unsure how to feel about stats and whatnot.

Is the total disdain for survival/tankish builds in PvE sensible? And I should add I’m asking about melee classes, I can see it working for ranged as long as they know the content well.

New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Belzebu.3912

Belzebu.3912

The thing is, full zerker is used in open PvE and in some dungeons where it is very easy or the bosses 1 hit kill no matter how much defense you have.

Also if you want to use full zerker in dungeons like Arah and Fractals you need to be more skilled to dodge the damage and have better positioning, have a bit of survivability gives more opportunities for mistakes from the player.

You can add things like Valkyrie (power/vit/crit damage) and Cavalier (power/tou/crit damage) mixed in your set to give a touch of survival in the build, but you’ll need to get the precision from other places, like in food and banner and so on.

EDIT:

Am I missing something here? Do enemies in fractals hit so hard that defenses are pointless? Or is this really just people being internet tough guys? There’s a lot of kittening on people who advocate some survival traits/gear for PvE and I don’t really understand it.

Yes, at higher level fractals stuff hit so hard that defense is useless, doesn’t matter if you are a full zerker ele or a full tank guardian, you’ll be 1 hit or at best will die for sure trying to ress the other players.
That is one of the major problems in game that made Zerker the meta for PvE.

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(edited by Belzebu.3912)

New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Vael.9076

Vael.9076

Thanks for the response. This is sort of what I mean. As MMO’s go, I was a Heroic Raider in WoW for the last few years, finally quit and then decided to give GW2 a try. I’m used to some rough mechanics that blow you up if you mess up, but GW2 seems different in that respect.

To put it one way, suppose you’re playing a warrior and you’re in a group with other pure dps types, being one yourself. Since you’re a warrior, you will get aggro via proximity and if you know what you’re doing, damage. That being the case, I’m a little confused how you’re supposed to do damage if you’re full DPS gear. If another class is applying weakness and blinds and whathaveyou, you may not die immediately, but once something hits you, you’ll go down.

What I want to know, is does someone actually need to be a tank for a group to be successful? The general attitude I’ve found is extremely condescending and extremely dps oriented as far as guides go. Does someone need to be able to take a few hits for the group to be successful or does it really boil down to endless rolling and aggro trading?

I have a hard time seeing how warriors and thieves survive (And I’ve watched them die, a lot), if there’s no one who can keep the mobs from hitting them (which is to say someone with some toughness to get the aggro bonus from the stat).

New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

First of all, bezerker is going to have a change (or actually critical damage wich is an important element of bezerker). How big the change will be, only anet might know, but its still in development so it can still change. I do not think that bezerker will be rubbish after it, but I do think it will change it.

To me the following classes are for PvE/dungeons in most situations better of with bezerker:
Warrior
Ranger
Mesmer
Engineer
Thief

For guardian, necromancer and elementalist there also other possibility’s that are pretty good.

Also keep in mind that with bezerker it is a matter of win and die. There are situation where bezerker just doesnt work. This will happen earlier on a light armor mesmer then on a heahvy armor warrior, but it still will be.

My advice.
Get bezerker for your warrior, it is the class that goes best with that set
Make your guardian a (lil) bit more sturdywith some healing power and thoughness (bout 75% bezerker stats, and 25% touchness and healingpower). This will result in a bezerker hybrid that has still the most advantages of zerker, but combined with the natural defenses of the guardian you have a big survivabillity without overdoing it.

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New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Falunel.7645

Falunel.7645

As someone who has played a full PVT (tanky gear) ele, a Knight/Zerker (balanced) ele, and a full berserker ele, I will say that gear DOES make a difference. When running the Tower of Nightmares (open-world dungeon in a previous update), my PVT ele could laugh at enemies for the most part as long as I didn’t make stupid mistakes like sitting on a mine or not dodging guaranteed one-hit kills. This was very useful in that dungeon, since I spent most of it running alone or running a “rescue patrol” to rez other people. My Knight/Zerker ele, though, struggled more. I could definitely get through the tower with her, but I couldn’t take as many little hits and was pushed on the defensive more, which made both running through and running rescues more difficult.

I can also attest to the following- on average and assuming no boons, at scale 32 Fractals, a 10/0/0/30/30 knight/zerk elementalist will survive a direct hammer hit from the Legendary Archdiviner with about 20-30% health and be able to heal to full almost immediately. A 30/0/0/10/30 full zerk ele, however, will die right away. So yes, having some defenses does make a difference at that level and any equivalent/lower content.

The overall things I’ve observed:

-No matter what gear you have, you’ll ALWAYS want to dodge the big one-shot hits. Always. Even if you don’t get downed due to being tanky, it’s poor play and highly risky.

-When it comes to offensive power and survivability, your traits and skills matter more than your gear. A defensive gear/offensive traits character has more trouble surviving than a offensive gear/defensive traits character, assuming good play. This is because having active defenses/sustain (boons like vigor/protection/regen/swiftness, condition cleanses, counter-projectiles, blocks, invulns, etc) help much much more than stacking toughness or vitality. Defensive gear does make a difference, but if you really want to survive, you need something more than stats.

(Regarding the Legendary Archdiviner example I cited above, I do feel a full zerk ele can handle getting hit by the hammer and barely survive assuming the protection boon is up.)

-Survivability as a glassy character also depends on your party. This is twofold- it’s incredibly risky to rubrez someone as glass, since you’re pretty much completely vulnerable. In addition, you WILL need your party’s assistance in reflecting projectiles, applying boons, debuffing the enemy, etc. Thus, going glass (especially with running traits with little sustain) in an inexperienced group where people are likely to die or not use their skills to counter boss attacks is very, very risky. I personally never run full zerk or glassy builds for teaching runs. On the flip side, when I run with my static group, I know I can trust them to take care of themselves and coordinate defenses, so I’m a lot more comfortable being glassy.

-Don’t ever listen to anyone who says that the only way to survive as a zerker is to stack and cheese everything, lol. Again, it’s all in active defense, personal skill, and party coordination. (This is assuming full zerker gear and traits/skills with reasonable sustain, and a skilled, coordinated group- you’ll be pinched much harder if you have absolutely no sustain in your skill and traits and a bad group. At that point, it’s more a matter of luck.)

-Finally, realize that going glass is your personal choice. If it stresses you out, don’t feel obliged. Full zerk is the go-to for speedrunning and min/max groups, but there’s plenty of people out there who don’t give a skritt about optimization or speed. Find your people, run with them, do whatever you have fun with. At the end of the day, GW2 is a game.

Also, regarding your question about how warriors and thieves survive- as mentioned before, a lot of it is party coordination. I run regularly with a good friend who plays a warrior, and I keep enemies blinded or buff him with protection, which negates a lot of damage. A lot of it is also personal skill and awareness- there is a -shocking- number of warriors who will not dodge out of red circles of death, won’t strafe while fighting in melee (and strafing actually avoids a lot of damage), won’t get behind an enemy that’s aggroed on someone else, or won’t do anything to cleanse twenty stacks of bleed off themselves.

So ultimately, a tank is not needed assuming all players in the group are skilled- it should be also mentioned that traditional tanking does not exist in GW2, as there is no way to control mob aggro. In an inexperienced group, though, you can run an “anchor,” who will be oriented towards providing a lot of defensive support and helping people up when they go down. An anchor won’t be able to completely carry a group, but they can make it easier for an inexperienced group to learn. In more experienced groups, anchors are less important when everyone understands how to use and coordinate active defense.

Hope that helps!

Falunel – Sylvari Elementalist | Falche Graysong – Human Mesmer | Tarnished Coast
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(edited by Falunel.7645)

New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Carpboy.7145

Carpboy.7145

The thing is, most boss attacks in this game are one, long, hard hitting attack, instead of multiple fast attacks. That means even with full PTV, bosses will still 3 or 4 shot you. So you might as well do as much dmg as possible.

ALL damage in PVE can be avoided by blocks, reflects, blinds, dodges, weapon evades, and invulnerability. This is a skill thing, and those zerkers you see who are constantly going down are not skilled. Watch a dungeon speed clear video to get a better understanding of how to zerker.


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New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Phadde.7362

Phadde.7362

Just purchase Berserker-gear, and spend your Karma on defensive Soldiers-gear (Zerker isn’t available for Karma) and equip defensively/offensively by need.

Since Soldiers gear is also available as Trinkets (6 slots), you don’t have to worry so much about potential issues with Runes.

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New Player: Should I go full Berserker?

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Posted by: Charak.9761

Charak.9761

If you’re new to guardian wear knight’s armour and zerker trinket

then switch to zerker armour when you’re comfortable.

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Posted by: OldSomalia.6180

OldSomalia.6180

OP, your concerns can be summarily wrapped in the package of “dead DPS is no DPS.”

While that is true (but still fallacious; a Zerker may consistently deal more damage before going down than a Soldier who doesn’t go down), the counter-philosophy is that “dead enemies deal no damage.”

A group of coordinated zerkers will obliterate trash in a couple of seconds, leaving no time for enemies or their mechanics to make a meaningful impact. In this sense, it is also why many people regard zerker for not requiring any skill (top kek); you don’t need to obey a mechanic if the mechanic doesn’t have time to initiate, after all.