Guild Wars 2

I have people saying everyone should be foucsing on dps in groups and that just doesnt sound right to me, cant you do more support stuff if you want?

what they really mean is “bring the (offensive) supporty things that your class does really well and then throw every other optional thing towards doing more dps” which essentially means that you will need zerk/assassin or viper/sinister gear, something with all dps stats. because the only supporty things that are forced into less-than-maximal dps gear are a couple raid builds like your tank and healer (need toughness, healing power, and boon duration).

content aside from raids is not designed to require healers and tanks, so learning mechanics enough to avoid death without sacrificing dps is the most time efficient way to play.

really people just don’t want you to run around in selfish tanky gear that doesn’t do much damage and lets you never learn how to play skillfully and makes killing trash monsters take forever and makes you not contribute to a group as much as you could. There are other ways to contribute a lot, or even more, to a group, but it takes more knowledge of the game.

Using berserker gear forces you to learn how to avoid damage and mostly ensures that you’re contributing if you’re alive. Also usually people can just revive you if drop, so dying usually isn’t a big problem in a group. And even if you full die halfway through, if you were doing damage while you were alive, someone in berserker’s gear alive half the time does as much damage as someone in soldier’s gear alive the entire time.

tl;dr it’s the simplest way to kinda ensure that people are pulling their weight

Outside of tanks and healers, support is more determined by what skills and traits you equip rather than your gear stats. Toughness/vitality are personal survival stats and don’t “support” the group. Healing power isn’t useful unless you’re the healer. Concentration is interesting but doesn’t seem powerful enough.

That, plus how powerful active defenses are (i.e. dodge/blocks/blinds mitigate 100% damage) means offensive stats will be what you want to run as you get better.

That said, you can run anything you want in open world, it’s only in small group content where your individual contribution makes any noticeable difference.

That sounds kind of silly, its either more optimal or its not because there would be no point in using gear at all, there has to be different types of gear for a reason.

What is optimal depends on the player’s skills or sometimes just preferences. Most of my characters use berserker but my guardian is using cleric+berserker+vakyrie. My thief also has a healing set but that rarely gets used. :P

This thread makes me feel nostalgic, it’s so… 2012/13.

To sum up what was already writen over and over the past years again:
- support in GW2 comes mainly from traits and skills, not from gear
- talking about PvE, thanks to active combat defensive stats are simply not needed; consider them training-wheels or the lazy man’s choice (exclusion: raids if you’re the tank or healer)
- WvW is a total different cup of tea. there’s definetly room and good use for all kind of gear choices

And on a side note- did it really take you 8 (!) months to figure this out, OP?

Nash.2681:

This thread makes me feel nostalgic, it’s so… 2012/13.

To sum up what was already writen over and over the past years again:
- support in GW2 comes mainly from traits and skills, not from gear
- talking about PvE, thanks to active combat defensive stats are simply not needed; consider them training-wheels or the lazy man’s choice (exclusion: raids if you’re the tank or healer)
- WvW is a total different cup of tea. there’s definetly room and good use for all kind of gear choices

And on a side note- did it really take you 8 (!) months to figure this out, OP?

Well thats good pvp has more room for different gear, and of course not I tried to get into this long ago and didnt play long, just recently ive been playing and really got into it and buy hot, why are you looking up my stuff anyways? Thanks for the information, I think……

Ryou.2398:

I have people saying everyone should be foucsing on dps in groups and that just doesnt sound right to me, cant you do more support stuff if you want?

The game just kinda throws level 80 exotics at your feet once you start getting into endgame content. Having a set of Berserker gear isn’t that hard to do. It is one of the staple stats and even temple armor comes in Berserker stats (temple armor is purchased with karma). I do not run Berserker gear. I have a set of it, I never use it, but then again I do not care much about speed clearing dungeons and fractals, and that is really what people mean when they say you should be wearing that, or that it is meta. I play most of my content solo, my gear reflects that. It is nice to be powerful, but if you are dead you aren’t very powerful.

I am a Reaper, so I am going to invest in a good set of condition armor for group content, but my ascended set is Valkyrie. I use Berserker trinkets and scholar runes. Once you get a set of Berserker exotics, find another set that has more survivable stats and then compare them. Do you die a lot in Berserker? Maybe you might want to have gear for doing open world content, and another set for group play.

The purpose of gear stats in this game was twofold, now it’s three.

• Before: Certain stat combos, specifically heavy survival oriented stats, were useful either: (1) for people who don’t have the perception and reactions to use the twitch active defenses the game offers to its fullest; and/or (2) for the PvP modes in which a combination for high defense and sustain produces a bunker build that is especially useful for roaming in World v. World or point holding in Conquest. Remember, all stat combos do not need to be relevant all through the game by everyone to have their existence justified.
• Now, a third purpose has been introduced in raids, as noted by onevstheworld.

The meta reason to have stats on gear is also twofold: (1) it’s more familiar to MMO addicts; and (2) it provides a (shallow but time consuming or expensive) pursuit to get the best stats (for those who like that sort of thing) and it helps drive the economy by creating the demand for crafting materials.

Ryou.2398:

Nash.2681:

This thread makes me feel nostalgic, it’s so… 2012/13.

To sum up what was already writen over and over the past years again:
- support in GW2 comes mainly from traits and skills, not from gear
- talking about PvE, thanks to active combat defensive stats are simply not needed; consider them training-wheels or the lazy man’s choice (exclusion: raids if you’re the tank or healer)
- WvW is a total different cup of tea. there’s definetly room and good use for all kind of gear choices

And on a side note- did it really take you 8 (!) months to figure this out, OP?

Well thats good pvp has more room for different gear, and of course not I tried to get into this long ago and didnt play long, just recently ive been playing and really got into it and buy hot, why are you looking up my stuff anyways? Thanks for the information, I think……

No offense, but since this is such an ooooooold topic that got discussed a gazillion times already, I simply wasn’t sure if it’s just another troll post of someone that is already playing for years and thinks it’s funny to bring up issues that we’ve been over and over (and over…) again. A look in the post history can be quite enlightening in such cases

I do not run zurker gear on all my characters. If I’m playing a condition class, you want gear that ups your condition damage. For example, I use carrion armor on my Berserker warrior, as he’s set up for condition damage, and he melts things. Now I’ve tryed the same set up on a warrior with zurker gear, and the carrion kills faster. I’m thinking about getting some sinister gear and seeing how that works.

I don’t use berserker gear on any of my characters ‘cept one and it’s only for specific areas in some dungeons.

I have a hipster-ish aversion to berserker gear…. and I like build experimentation.

My personal tastes fall into the category of ‘I don’t care how long it takes to kill something so long as I survive.’ If some people think it means I’m choosing the ‘lazy-mans’ approach so be it, I don’t have to stop and rez everyone who becomes champ splattered.

~EW

Have to do that discussion about once a week. Most of the phrases already got mentioned above. The line I read the most: “If you want to support you group, go zerk/meta. The more damage your party does, the faster the mob/boss dies and then you need neither a tank nor a healer.” – Berzerker 101.

There are countless of situations out there, especially in PvE where this strategy leads to a wipe and in many cases in several wipes as people refuse to change combat-strategy. Boring, exhausting, annoying. But this is a free place. People can play whatever they like. And if most people want to go meta, then most people go meta.

If you, for what reason ever, decide to leave the path of strength you sooner or later face a situation where most of your group is downed or dead. According to berzerker 101, you should die as well. If your gear and skills prevent you from that you have to decide wether you help your allies or not. If you help your allies, you will be blamed for ruining the dps, and if you cannot prevent the wipe you are the only reason for that.

If you decide to leave the dead ones dead, as they are mostly gc-builds and would die again quickly. You are blamed for elitism, arrogance and selfishness. As you may have noticed, you can only lose. If you succeed where others fail, they only have the chance to blame you. Meta/zerk is by definition foolproof.

The biggest problem people have with, e. g. toughness stats, it increases aggro. Mechanics say the bosses go for the guys which have the highest toughness. So the majority tries to avoid skilling toughness. Most go for vitality instead. The big problem with this strategy is, if all people in the group spend 0 points for toughness, the boss will choose one of them as target. And when endurance and active-defenses are depleted, this guy is dead. The berzerkers are aware of this and hope, the boss is dead before that happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. That is life.

There are people out there, me included, who give a kitten about berzerker/meta configurations (I wrote k-i-t-t-e-n to troll the stuipd filter). If you want do walk that path as well, you may gather more new enemies than friends. You have to withstand a lot of criticism and you are blamed for failures more often than other people. Where we have to prove our worth in a party by actions and skill, other just have to link their gear.

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

The big problem with this strategy is, if all people in the group spend 0 points for toughness, the boss will choose one of them as target. And when endurance and active-defenses are depleted, this guy is dead.

Actually, it usually allows you to rotate aggro. I know when I’m at 0 toughness and taking too much heat, it’s pretty easy to lose aggro.

reikken.4961:

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

The big problem with this strategy is, if all people in the group spend 0 points for toughness, the boss will choose one of them as target. And when endurance and active-defenses are depleted, this guy is dead.

Actually, it usually allows you to rotate aggro. I know when I’m at 0 toughness and taking too much heat, it’s pretty easy to lose aggro.

Does aggro exist outside of raids?

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

The short version is this:

#1: Running in berserker gear isn’t much harder than other gear sets. There are technically more efficient stat distributions (soldier, marauder come to mind), but in the end this simple fact remains: the ratios of damage to durability in this game are close, and each class is designed to be sufficiently survivable with no additional stat investments. When you get defensive stats, you loose offensive capability, and so the enemy lives longer and deals more damage in response. This means that the more durable gearsets aren’t actually easier, they just take longer.

#2: Active defenses are king. The ability to dodge, block, reflect, evade, blind, cripple, blur, and break bars makes it so there are countless ways to avoid damage that don’t involve getting hit. Even if you do get hit, there are heal skills to wash away the damage.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

bearshaman.3421:

Does aggro exist outside of raids?

Yes, but it’s unreliable. There is a lot of variable to give you agro and toughness is only 1 of those. You can have a big amount of toughness and still lose agro from time to time. That’s why true tank don’t really exist as a popular strategy outside of 2 raid bosses. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work, but it won’t work 100% of the time.

I suppose I should add this as an addendum: While they say “go berserker or go home”, in reality there are many glass cannon sets that are acceptable.

Berserker: Most common. Usually the best.

Assassin: Nearly the same as berserker (usually off by only a few percentage points). Some classes are better with full assassin, and some players will hybrid berserker and assassin gear.

Sinister: Also a good set. It’s a condi set, so in the overworld the ramp-up time will mean you kill things slower, but against tougher enemies you’ll occasionally match berserker in damage output. Due to the frequency at which condi attacks are ranged attacks, this is sometimes “safer” set over the all-melee berserker set.

Viper: Also a good condi set. In the short term (sub 10 seconds) it is worse than sinister, but against longer fights it is better than sinister. However, if your primary damaging condition has its duration over 100%, swap out viper pieces for sinister pieces until it reaches 100%.

Stay away from rampagers. It’s an inferior version of sinister.

Nash.2681:

Ryou.2398:

Nash.2681:

This thread makes me feel nostalgic, it’s so… 2012/13.

To sum up what was already writen over and over the past years again:
- support in GW2 comes mainly from traits and skills, not from gear
- talking about PvE, thanks to active combat defensive stats are simply not needed; consider them training-wheels or the lazy man’s choice (exclusion: raids if you’re the tank or healer)
- WvW is a total different cup of tea. there’s definetly room and good use for all kind of gear choices

And on a side note- did it really take you 8 (!) months to figure this out, OP?

Well thats good pvp has more room for different gear, and of course not I tried to get into this long ago and didnt play long, just recently ive been playing and really got into it and buy hot, why are you looking up my stuff anyways? Thanks for the information, I think……

No offense, but since this is such an ooooooold topic that got discussed a gazillion times already, I simply wasn’t sure if it’s just another troll post of someone that is already playing for years and thinks it’s funny to bring up issues that we’ve been over and over (and over…) again. A look in the post history can be quite enlightening in such cases

None taken:) But is that wink sarcasm lol? I dont troll and thats an odd topic for trolling if you ask me.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

The short version is this:

#1: Running in berserker gear isn’t much harder than other gear sets. There are technically more efficient stat distributions (soldier, marauder come to mind), but in the end this simple fact remains: the ratios of damage to durability in this game are close, and each class is designed to be sufficiently survivable with no additional stat investments. When you get defensive stats, you loose offensive capability, and so the enemy lives longer and deals more damage in response. This means that the more durable gearsets aren’t actually easier, they just take longer.

#2: Active defenses are king. The ability to dodge, block, reflect, evade, blind, cripple, blur, and break bars makes it so there are countless ways to avoid damage that don’t involve getting hit. Even if you do get hit, there are heal skills to wash away the damage.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

Ok but ive played many mmorpgs, and every class using pure dps gear was far from meta, regardless of the enemies living longer, now maybe thats the case in this mmorpg but im stating just because something lives longer doesnt mean it decreases chances of survivability with the right support/classes.

But the drop thing makes sense I guess, im a little dissapointed since every class is using nearly the same kind of gear but I guess thats just the way it is, atleast for now hopefully it will change. But it doesnt seem likely since as you said drops are better the faster the enemies drop.

Ryou.2398:

I have people saying everyone should be foucsing on dps in groups and that just doesnt sound right to me, cant you do more support stuff if you want?

Yes, it’s mostly dps around these parts. Other roles are very loosely defined so it’s better to go dps.

HnRkLnXqZ.1870:

Have to do that discussion about once a week. Most of the phrases already got mentioned above. The line I read the most: “If you want to support you group, go zerk/meta. The more damage your party does, the faster the mob/boss dies and then you need neither a tank nor a healer.” – Berzerker 101.

There are countless of situations out there, especially in PvE where this strategy leads to a wipe and in many cases in several wipes as people refuse to change combat-strategy. Boring, exhausting, annoying. But this is a free place. People can play whatever they like. And if most people want to go meta, then most people go meta.

If you, for what reason ever, decide to leave the path of strength you sooner or later face a situation where most of your group is downed or dead. According to berzerker 101, you should die as well. If your gear and skills prevent you from that you have to decide wether you help your allies or not. If you help your allies, you will be blamed for ruining the dps, and if you cannot prevent the wipe you are the only reason for that.

If you decide to leave the dead ones dead, as they are mostly gc-builds and would die again quickly. You are blamed for elitism, arrogance and selfishness. As you may have noticed, you can only lose. If you succeed where others fail, they only have the chance to blame you. Meta/zerk is by definition foolproof.

The biggest problem people have with, e. g. toughness stats, it increases aggro. Mechanics say the bosses go for the guys which have the highest toughness. So the majority tries to avoid skilling toughness. Most go for vitality instead. The big problem with this strategy is, if all people in the group spend 0 points for toughness, the boss will choose one of them as target. And when endurance and active-defenses are depleted, this guy is dead. The berzerkers are aware of this and hope, the boss is dead before that happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. That is life.

There are people out there, me included, who give a kitten about berzerker/meta configurations (I wrote k-i-t-t-e-n to troll the stuipd filter). If you want do walk that path as well, you may gather more new enemies than friends. You have to withstand a lot of criticism and you are blamed for failures more often than other people. Where we have to prove our worth in a party by actions and skill, other just have to link their gear.

Im confused thats the opposite of elitism, elitism is only accepting certain builds, by doing something else that isnt meta isnt an elitism attitude, but if you know it doesnt help your group yes that is selfish.

Ryou.2398:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

The short version is this:

#1: Running in berserker gear isn’t much harder than other gear sets. There are technically more efficient stat distributions (soldier, marauder come to mind), but in the end this simple fact remains: the ratios of damage to durability in this game are close, and each class is designed to be sufficiently survivable with no additional stat investments. When you get defensive stats, you loose offensive capability, and so the enemy lives longer and deals more damage in response. This means that the more durable gearsets aren’t actually easier, they just take longer.

#2: Active defenses are king. The ability to dodge, block, reflect, evade, blind, cripple, blur, and break bars makes it so there are countless ways to avoid damage that don’t involve getting hit. Even if you do get hit, there are heal skills to wash away the damage.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

Ok but ive played many mmorpgs, and every class using pure dps gear was far from meta, regardless of the enemies living longer, now maybe thats the case in this mmorpg but im stating just because something lives longer doesnt mean it decreases chances of survivability with the right support/classes.

But the drop thing makes sense I guess, im a little dissapointed since every class is using nearly the same kind of gear but I guess thats just the way it is, atleast for now hopefully it will change. But it doesnt seem likely since as you said drops are better the faster the enemies drop.

Other MMORPGs have large ratios between durability and damage. In other games, the tank is 20 times more durable than the other classes. Here, it is only 2 times.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Other MMORPGs have large ratios between durability and damage. In other games, the tank is 20 times more durable than the other classes. Here, it is only 2 times.

Also, most MMOs don’t give all their classes a large number of damage mitigation skills, so even the glass-iest (is that even a word?) build can take 2 or 3 big hits when timed correctly.

glassiest, sure

lots of hits in google, too. though most of them are dictionaries

Ryou.2398:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

The short version is this:

#1: Running in berserker gear isn’t much harder than other gear sets. There are technically more efficient stat distributions (soldier, marauder come to mind), but in the end this simple fact remains: the ratios of damage to durability in this game are close, and each class is designed to be sufficiently survivable with no additional stat investments. When you get defensive stats, you loose offensive capability, and so the enemy lives longer and deals more damage in response. This means that the more durable gearsets aren’t actually easier, they just take longer.

#2: Active defenses are king. The ability to dodge, block, reflect, evade, blind, cripple, blur, and break bars makes it so there are countless ways to avoid damage that don’t involve getting hit. Even if you do get hit, there are heal skills to wash away the damage.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

Ok but ive played many mmorpgs, and every class using pure dps gear was far from meta, regardless of the enemies living longer, now maybe thats the case in this mmorpg but im stating just because something lives longer doesnt mean it decreases chances of survivability with the right support/classes.

But the drop thing makes sense I guess, im a little dissapointed since every class is using nearly the same kind of gear but I guess thats just the way it is, atleast for now hopefully it will change. But it doesnt seem likely since as you said drops are better the faster the enemies drop.

Roles are defined by skill choices and traits not but stats. In some cases the optimal setup for certain builds will still require specific stats like a PS warrior but there is only one thing that is absolutely required there.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

I have worn Berserker armor on all of my characters. I get two sets of armor for each one, always one meta, the other to support their class in open world roaming. There is only one I would roam in Berserkers with, and that is my ranger. She doesn’t encounter too much hand to hand combat, and even when she does I use a pet with lots of aggro to take the heat off me. You can only dodge so much, you can only kite for so long, and if you get into a fight with multiple large AOEs, etc, you die if you are a glass cannon. I don’t even like Berserkers on my Reaper, and she has the toughest skin of any of my characters.

I just have to say, after using Berserkers on multiple characters on lots of different content, the fights do not end 50% faster. They end probably about 5% quicker, and I guess you might get an accumulative effect with 5 man content of 20% faster. But if everyone dies then you have to restart the content. I suppose that doesn’t happen when everyone knows the mechanics of the fight for all of the content, but if a person pugs the content, they aren’t necessarily running with people that can hold up their end of the canoe, and it takes a lot more effort to survive.

Ryou.2398:

I have people saying everyone should be foucsing on dps in groups and that just doesnt sound right to me, cant you do more support stuff if you want?

You can, you can do anything you want. Its your game, you bought it do what you want. People can’t start bossing you around, unless they buy the game for you imo.

I’ve been using Knight gear since forever and I must say, Berserker is the worst thing for someone who can’t handle it. The amount of squishy Zerkers who get downed on HoT maps and in Fractals is too freaking high. Of course I am the only person who stays alive and has to revive their sorry butts… Berserker might be awesome in good hands but let’s face it, 9 out of 10 people are too clumsy to handle Zerk gear, they get downed all the time which ends up as a DPS loss in the end. A huge squad in a HoT meta would actually kill things faster if they used some defensive stats. Seriously, go to Dragon’s Stand. People get downed in one hit and then they just lie there until revived.

Ryou.2398:

Nash.2681:

Ryou.2398:

Nash.2681:

This thread makes me feel nostalgic, it’s so… 2012/13.

To sum up what was already writen over and over the past years again:
- support in GW2 comes mainly from traits and skills, not from gear
- talking about PvE, thanks to active combat defensive stats are simply not needed; consider them training-wheels or the lazy man’s choice (exclusion: raids if you’re the tank or healer)
- WvW is a total different cup of tea. there’s definetly room and good use for all kind of gear choices

And on a side note- did it really take you 8 (!) months to figure this out, OP?

Well thats good pvp has more room for different gear, and of course not I tried to get into this long ago and didnt play long, just recently ive been playing and really got into it and buy hot, why are you looking up my stuff anyways? Thanks for the information, I think……

No offense, but since this is such an ooooooold topic that got discussed a gazillion times already, I simply wasn’t sure if it’s just another troll post of someone that is already playing for years and thinks it’s funny to bring up issues that we’ve been over and over (and over…) again. A look in the post history can be quite enlightening in such cases

None taken:) But is that wink sarcasm lol? I dont troll and thats an odd topic for trolling if you ask me.

No sarcasm intended at all, just tried to be friendly. And yes, it is indeed an odd topic for trolling, but then again there has been a lot of weird troll posts in the past. Maybe I start getting paranoid or something, but if I respond to a question, I try to give as much info as possible which takes a certain amount of time (esp. since english ain’t my native language), so I rather double check before typing. No smileys this time to prevent confusion.

I just have to say, after using Berserkers on multiple characters on lots of different content, the fights do not end 50% faster. They end probably about 5% quicker, and I guess you might get an accumulative effect with 5 man content of 20% faster. But if everyone dies then you have to restart the content. I suppose that doesn’t happen when everyone knows the mechanics of the fight for all of the content, but if a person pugs the content, they aren’t necessarily running with people that can hold up their end of the canoe, and it takes a lot more effort to survive.

Interesting experience and totally opposed to my own. When I started playing back in 2012, I didn’t care much about theorycrafting n stuff and simply enjoyed the world, chosing gear and stats the way I thought it would suit my characters. After a couple of months when I had my first few 80s, world completion and story were done, I started to get bored with the open world, so I began to try out dungeons. And even though I managed to get one path after another done, it often was a hard struggle to do so. Ofc the main reason was inexperiencedness, but even on repeating paths I knew, I often felt like hitting like a wet noodle.
That was the point when I started to gather more information about game mechanics n stuff. So I started to gear and trait more offensivly and to my surprise, everything went smoother and that not only in dungeons but also in the open world. Veterans that proofed some kind of challenge before just melted. Having them fall in one burst instead of fighting them for half a minute or minute was a very noticeable difference.
The thing is- the harder the mob, the more noticeable the difference between offensive gear+traits and defensive ones becomes.
But to take a real advantage out of it, you need everyone to join that boat or have to skill to solo the content and carry the rest, since the correct maths would be “party of 5, everyone increases his personal dps by 5% = the fight ends 5% faster”. If only one of those five pushes his dps by 5%, the party dps is only increased by 5%*1/5 = 1%. That doesn’t sound much, but in my experience the difference between defensive/balanced gear coupled with a similar trait choice and offensive gear + offensive traits is more like twice or trice dps. And all that without sticking to “meta builds” inch by inch (though an efficient build will always include parts of the meta builds, since, well, they’re meta for a reason).

tl;dr: the difference between offensive and defensive/balanced gear/builds in PvE is very noticeable, just make sure to play with mindlike people since one outlier doesn’t have that much of an impact in group content

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose I should add this as an addendum: While they say “go berserker or go home”, in reality there are many glass cannon sets that are acceptable.

Berserker: Most common. Usually the best.

Assassin: Nearly the same as berserker (usually off by only a few percentage points). Some classes are better with full assassin, and some players will hybrid berserker and assassin gear.

Sinister: Also a good set. It’s a condi set, so in the overworld the ramp-up time will mean you kill things slower, but against tougher enemies you’ll occasionally match berserker in damage output. Due to the frequency at which condi attacks are ranged attacks, this is sometimes “safer” set over the all-melee berserker set.

Viper: Also a good condi set. In the short term (sub 10 seconds) it is worse than sinister, but against longer fights it is better than sinister. However, if your primary damaging condition has its duration over 100%, swap out viper pieces for sinister pieces until it reaches 100%.

Stay away from rampagers. It’s an inferior version of sinister.

Warning: I’m gonna be a little nitpicky. Apologies.

Viper and Sinister are hybrid stat sets. Any stat set that gives boosts to both direct damage and condi damage is a hybrid set. They are the preferred sets in most condi builds because it allows you to deal with objects effectively, and provides more of boost to hybrid weapons (Like MH axe for ranger or dagger for thief that’s been traited), among other reasons.

The only pure condi sets are trailblazer, dire, and rabid (off the top of my head). All fun sets, particularly if you do feel squishy.

Leaving the topic of stat sets behind…

I hate that people refer to sets with defensive stats as training wheels until you get better with active defenses, but there is sadly some truth to it. SOME. If you want to play such a set, play it. They are fun, and while they may drag a fight out a bit, it does mean that you can afford to mess up on defense and not immediately die for it. It means you don’t have to be 100% focused and can relax a bit more while playing the game. I played a mesmer with dire gear, and it was pleasant knowing that I could play without having imminent death looming over me if I goofed too many times.

That said, this game doesn’t do tank/healer/dps roles, and everyone has ways of doing all three. Active defenses (as someone has already listed above) are something that you have to practice and get better at that is different from other mmos (my only other experience is WoW, but I’ve had many tell me this is a huge difference from most MMOs). So there is a learning curve (I’m still working on it myself), and the sets with defensive stats does make it a less frustrating learning curve. I can also see the argument for just jumping into the deep end (no defensive stats at all), but each person has to gauge which method of learning this works for them.

So best I can say on this to everyone is this: yes people need to learn active defenses in this game, but let’s not bash someone who uses defensive stats while learning, ok? Different people, different learning styles. Respect their choices (training wheels is a patronizing term guys). Same mountain, different paths applies to this too, you know?

Ryou.2398:

Ok but ive played many mmorpgs, and every class using pure dps gear was far from meta, regardless of the enemies living longer, now maybe thats the case in this mmorpg but im stating just because something lives longer doesnt mean it decreases chances of survivability with the right support/classes.

But the drop thing makes sense I guess, im a little dissapointed since every class is using nearly the same kind of gear but I guess thats just the way it is, atleast for now hopefully it will change. But it doesnt seem likely since as you said drops are better the faster the enemies drop.

Well, in GW2 the duration of the fight can impact a lot of things. In this game, we have a good quantity of active defence, but most of them are on a cooldown. We also have 2 dodges, after that we need to wait for the recharge of endurance. That mean, that we have 2 choices. Either we spread out our active defense, so we keep them up for a long period of time with some down time evenly distributed along a long fight. Or we burst our active defence at the beginning of the fight, basically becoming invulnerable while we burst the boss down. So for short fight, the survivability isn’t a problem for pretty much anybody in this game that have a basic knowledge of the game.

For longer fight, it’s another story. You need to balance your active defense depending on your fight. You usually wan to bring enough of it to keep your party alive, but not more than that.

As for the gear thing. You are not the fight to complain about the gear situation. But the thing is, it’s awesome for a lot of us. The focus of a build is around your weapons, skills and trait. Thing that actually influence how you play your character and how it feel to play. I don’t play my Staff Tempest differently depending on if I have marauder, berserker or soldier. If anything, I don’t need to pay as much attention to what I do in soldier because I’m less likely to die. But if I swap to a Dagger/Warhorn Auramancer build, then it have suddenly a different role and play totally differently even if it have the same gear.

The other advantage is that you can play different thing with the same gear and don’t need to put 3 or 4 gear on your character. I can play staff Tempest dps against Gorseval, I can play D/W dps in fractal, I can play Auramancer when I lead a DS, I can play Dagger/Focus against Slothazor, I can play scepter/focus when the pug don’t have a PS Warrior and I never swapped gear set. I never had to pay 500 gold 3 times on 1 characters to play different build. With the same amount of gold I was able to gear up my tempest, my guardian and my druid, each with several build for different situation.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t have a Soldier gear set on my guardian for when I WvW, or when I feel lazy in Open World. It doens’t mean that I can’t have a Viper and a Magi set on my Druid depending on my raid group. But it mean that I don’t need different gear set to play different role.

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I wrote about a long time ago.

#3: Dead deal no DPS, and they give great rewards too. The faster something dies, the faster you get its drops, the faster you can go do something else that gives more rewards. Make no mistake, when berserker gear tears through content 50% faster than other gear types, it also gets 50% more rewards. It also means your teammates get more rewards, too. If you have a limited window of playtime, this also means that you get to do more in that window.

I have worn Berserker armor on all of my characters. I get two sets of armor for each one, always one meta, the other to support their class in open world roaming. There is only one I would roam in Berserkers with, and that is my ranger. She doesn’t encounter too much hand to hand combat, and even when she does I use a pet with lots of aggro to take the heat off me. You can only dodge so much, you can only kite for so long, and if you get into a fight with multiple large AOEs, etc, you die if you are a glass cannon. I don’t even like Berserkers on my Reaper, and she has the toughest skin of any of my characters.

I just have to say, after using Berserkers on multiple characters on lots of different content, the fights do not end 50% faster. They end probably about 5% quicker, and I guess you might get an accumulative effect with 5 man content of 20% faster. But if everyone dies then you have to restart the content. I suppose that doesn’t happen when everyone knows the mechanics of the fight for all of the content, but if a person pugs the content, they aren’t necessarily running with people that can hold up their end of the canoe, and it takes a lot more effort to survive.

The thing is, I’ve done the math. Given equivalent builds, the difference between berserker and other gear sets (knight and soldiers, for example), is that berserker has 50% more effective power, both baseline and after buffs. It changes a bit from class to class, but swapping out all of your defensive stats for offensive stats does far more than a Sigil of Force.

You’re probably mistaken here on two accounts.

1. is that your primary zerker character is a ranger, and from how you’ve described it you basically hang back with one of the bows while your pet handles the enemy. In this situation, you’ll see little gain: your pet is doing most of the damage, so even if you do 1.5x damage you didn’t have that much to begin with.
2. is that you’re judging by absolute magnitude of the individual enemy, instead of relative magnitude or overall contribution of multiple enemies. Most enemies, even in HoT, are pretty glass. Even without berserker gear they die fairly quickly. Yes, berserker gear is killing them 50% faster, but because that amounts to a few seconds, it gets dismissed in your mind as “barely anything at all”. You have to consider the summation of saved time: yes you’ve bought yourself 2 seconds, but 1000 enemies later that’s a full half hour of time.

Likewise, your analysis on group content is incorrect. The total time gained by offensive gear isn’t a net, it is the average. If one player is doing 50% more damage, then that means the entire group will move through the content 10% faster: (1.5 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1) / 5 = 1.1. If you get everyone together, then you move 50% faster.

I think people tend to foget how long players are down in a fight as well and if everyone wipes that even takes more time, lets not forget its not fun to be down allot, its frustrating and gear that might help your survivability might make a more fun and smooth experience.

Reagardles how anyone feel about this topic, in the end there is no real issue. Because if you want to do your own thing and have your own stats, doing no dps and only cast empower through a whole dungeon, you can. But for that to happen you have to make your own group, were you tell them that this is what the group is all about. This way you can do it in any way you want and issue is solved.

The players asking for speedruns and zerker gear have as much right as you do to make their own groups and state what they want with it. If you join it you are expected to havve what it asks for or you will get kicked out. Just as you would kick someone out if they complaint about your no gear and only empower dungeon-run. It is all about respecting all players right to decide how they want to make their groups for what ever reason they fins is important to them.

As for your statement about smother dungeons, i don’t really agree. The dungeons are made for 5 people to manage without tank, healer or need of dying. Therfor there really are no need or support in the dungeon. And if there was, then most classes can share hp, regen, block or what not for that short period of time.

As much as I’d like to say that there isn’t an issue… there kind of is one. Because when you take away peer pressure, any sense of selfishness or selflessness, a “meta” of some sort, even if you decide not to do raids which would require such a gear by design, an issue still exist: Profit.

You instantly heal between fights, so long term survivability isn’t a thing. It is all about how fast you can kill an enemy in each individual engagement. Death isn’t punishing, so failure is at most a minor inconvenience. It isn’t particularly difficult to go full glass in this game, and many times enemy offenses are so high that they tear right through defensive stats. Once you have the knowledge on how to run in berserker gear, a very clear operational difference emerges between gear prefixes. Full glass gets the gold faster.

Leaa.2943:

Reagardles how anyone feel about this topic, in the end there is no real issue. Because if you want to do your own thing and have your own stats, doing no dps and only cast empower through a whole dungeon, you can. But for that to happen you have to make your own group, were you tell them that this is what the group is all about. This way you can do it in any way you want and issue is solved.

The players asking for speedruns and zerker gear have as much right as you do to make their own groups and state what they want with it. If you join it you are expected to havve what it asks for or you will get kicked out. Just as you would kick someone out if they complaint about your no gear and only empower dungeon-run. It is all about respecting all players right to decide how they want to make their groups for what ever reason they fins is important to them.

As for your statement about smother dungeons, i don’t really agree. The dungeons are made for 5 people to manage without tank, healer or need of dying. Therfor there really are no need or support in the dungeon. And if there was, then most classes can share hp, regen, block or what not for that short period of time.

When did I say they didnt have a right? In fact no one said that. Thats fine you do not have to agree but I do know people who disagree with you on these things, and no one said sacrifice all of their dps for support either. And your last statement does not make sense, there is a reason why a guardian has more blocks, heals, and that kind of support then other classes while a mesmer has more utility and so on.

Also we arent only discussing dungeons here and ive heard higher level fractuals take a different approach then beserker.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Full glass gets the gold faster.

Not necessarily. Better sacrifice personnal dps for more offensive boons like a Druids, PS Warrior or Chronomancer. Better sacrifice some personnal dps for some CC to break bosses. For some fight better sacrifice some dps to bring some support like Reflect, block, etc. In high level fractal, brining a healer instead of a 5th glass canon is actually faster for a good portion of the population. Of course not if you are a very high skill group, but for the majority of the players a Healer in T4 will make your fight faster since less people will down. In pugs I often like to take Valor instead of Zeal and take 2 meditation skill at Mai Trin. Boost my survivability by a lot and that’s allow me to rez people when needed.

There is a lot of situation when you need to bring something else than dps. That said, this isn’t really true of gear. But that’s a design choice. Active Defense (Trait, Skill, weapons) are made more powerful than passive defense (Gear, stats) in this game on purpose. There is plenty of support, utility, buff coming from trait, skills and weapons. But all that people see is the gear that stay dps, so obviously, only dps count in this game.

Thaddeus.4891:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Full glass gets the gold faster.

Not necessarily. Better sacrifice personnal dps for more offensive boons like a Druids, PS Warrior or Chronomancer. Better sacrifice some personnal dps for some CC to break bosses. For some fight better sacrifice some dps to bring some support like Reflect, block, etc. In high level fractal, brining a healer instead of a 5th glass canon is actually faster for a good portion of the population. Of course not if you are a very high skill group, but for the majority of the players a Healer in T4 will make your fight faster since less people will down. In pugs I often like to take Valor instead of Zeal and take 2 meditation skill at Mai Trin. Boost my survivability by a lot and that’s allow me to rez people when needed.

There is a lot of situation when you need to bring something else than dps. That said, this isn’t really true of gear. But that’s a design choice. Active Defense (Trait, Skill, weapons) are made more powerful than passive defense (Gear, stats) in this game on purpose. There is plenty of support, utility, buff coming from trait, skills and weapons. But all that people see is the gear that stay dps, so obviously, only dps count in this game.

It should be plainly obvious that I’m talking about gear here.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It should be plainly obvious that I’m talking about gear here.

Ya and that’s the problem. People just latch on the gear as if it was the biggest portion of a build, but in reality it’s one of the least important part. It’s like the tree blocking players from seeing the forest.

Thaddeus.4891:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It should be plainly obvious that I’m talking about gear here.

Ya and that’s the problem. People just latch on the gear as if it was the biggest portion of a build, but in reality it’s one of the least important part. It’s like the tree blocking players from seeing the forest.

No, it’s a pretty important part. Gear provides the substrate on which the rest of your build stands on. It is the body of stats you always have and bring to every fight, and acts as the upper limit for how potent your build can be. It is much easier to add active defenses than it is to increase offense, so it is better to go with glass gear and change utilities/traits accordingly.

Thaddeus.4891:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Full glass gets the gold faster.

Not necessarily. Better sacrifice personnal dps for more offensive boons like a Druids, PS Warrior or Chronomancer. Better sacrifice some personnal dps for some CC to break bosses. For some fight better sacrifice some dps to bring some support like Reflect, block, etc. In high level fractal, brining a healer instead of a 5th glass canon is actually faster for a good portion of the population. Of course not if you are a very high skill group, but for the majority of the players a Healer in T4 will make your fight faster since less people will down. In pugs I often like to take Valor instead of Zeal and take 2 meditation skill at Mai Trin. Boost my survivability by a lot and that’s allow me to rez people when needed.

There is a lot of situation when you need to bring something else than dps. That said, this isn’t really true of gear. But that’s a design choice. Active Defense (Trait, Skill, weapons) are made more powerful than passive defense (Gear, stats) in this game on purpose. There is plenty of support, utility, buff coming from trait, skills and weapons. But all that people see is the gear that stay dps, so obviously, only dps count in this game.

in t4 fractals, take a (glass) necro as your 5th instead of a healer. they do the same job of mitigating the damage for the group and bring 3x the dps, so your fractals will go even faster than they would with a healer.

how does a necro mitigate damage?

by using rise to bodyblock and facetank.