Guild Wars 2

newb questions but just wondering why people always want full berserker on gear for stuff like dungeons?

just wondering cause i got a necromancer and mesmer around 80 in knight/soldier which find little better to deal with mobs and world junk. since defensive due to cloth class. and basically wondering if would have to go after set for dungeon diving cause only did one once in story anyways only for unlock of paths for pvp thing.

Because ideally if you run with a good party fully decked out in berserker gear, you kill stuff faster than it kills you. It’s definitely a bit more difficult than running soldier/knight, but the idea is that once you get good you should be able to not take much, or any, damage thanks to dodging, buffs, stuff like blinding the enemy… and again, killing things real fast.

What jack said, though the “kill things faster than they kill you” mentality only holds up in the lower level dungeons.

It’s really more that once you learn the dungeons and become experienced with the whole game and it’s concepts you learn to avoid almost all damage. And if you’re not being hit, then what do you need defensive stats for?

It’s still a question of killing this as quickly as possible. Zerker offers three stats that help with that

• Power (which scales well with nearly all damage).
• Precision, which increases the chance to critically hit
• Ferocity, which increases the bonus damage for critical hits

Every other stat combination contributes less. So if you (and your group) are good enough to avoid damage without boosting other stats (vitality, toughness, etc), it’s “more efficient” to go with zerker. (Things like condition damage, boon duration, etc don’t scale as well.)

idk my dodge ability is not always the best, and still feel like maybe if i did have a character that was for dungeons it be better fitted to something not in cloth which usually has lowest defense anyways. maybe i get my charr warrior finished leveling i will go full zerker and use him for dungeons.

For the beginning its completely okay not to be good with dodging – it’s a matter of training.
For easy Berserker-Gear once you get better with dodging I recommend you running CoF (Citadel of Flames) or CoE (Crucible of Eternity) since there you can get lvl 80 exotic gear with the dungeon marks.

I find the difference is very minimal between the speed you can clear with berserker versus something like knights – but the ability to withstand bad timing or too big of a stack is significant.

My warrior uses body armor split between knights (power, precision, tough) and soldier (power, tough, vital). Berserker for weapons (axe/shield and longbow), and the trinkets are half berserker half knights with a cavalier’s back (power, tough, ferocity), and a rampager’s amulet (I don’t know why that ended up there actually. This is one of my older 80s and that might be a mistake).

4/2/4/4/0 – signet build.

With a critical at 71.52% and power at 2342, but armor at 3,007 and health at 23,156…

…I find I have an ability to near facetank dungeon and world bosses, and less need to dodge – the increased ‘uptime’ I have on DPSing comes closes if not matches the DPS I’d have in berserker and spending about 1/3 of my time dodging and getting back in place.

And my traits are such that I often heal back from any heavy hits faster than my team-mates will get back from the smaller hits.

You can go all zerk, but then consider that you will have no room for slight mistakes, and should factor in that time spent dodging or kiting instead of attacking.

My Ranger, Engineer, and Guardian play about the same, for their own different reasons. I’m still working on perfecting this strategy with my Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer, and Elementalist – they used to be able to do it but I took a near 2-year break from GW2 and their builds and my skill both got reset…

When I used the LFG tool, I just skip past the entries that say they require full zerk. I go for the ones that say either experienced or newbie friendly. Experienced because those players understand the “meta” is not as narrow as some think, and can vary with playstyle. newbie friendly because I like helping new players – guiding them through content. And also because if someone else is guiding, I can play it ‘low ego’ which is more relaxing.

And I find ‘newbie’ groups can clear content just as fast as experienced ones when you factor out the ‘newbie mistakes’ like running off cliffs or not knowing which direction to go…
- But they tend to be more social.

Using full Knight will give you 72% of the dps of full beserker. Using knight armor with beserker trinket and weapons will give you 92% of the dps of a full beserker.

That’s not too bad by itself. The problem is that usually people using that kind of gear don’t really worry about optimizing other stuff. Not using good food and potion will drop full knigth from 72% to 62%. Not have the right sigils will drop your dps to 54%. Not have a good build, weapons and rotation will drop it even more.

In older games back in the olden days we often had a stat named dexterity. This stat usually handled evasion and hitratio. The higher your dex, in most games, the higher your evasion.

Back then we didn’t have 3D models, calculations were simple and graphics were sprites. You’d go stand next to a mob and attack and there would be rolls for evasion, rolls for damage, etc. We’d have vitality for health and armor for defense. Whatever hits got through evasion we “ate” or “tanked” with vit and armor.

We are in 2015 now and instead of having a make-believe, use-your-imagination evasion roll, we have a literal evasion dodge roll. The old dexterity stat has been moved out of the game and into the spot between keyboard and chair. Basically you are the dexterity stat. You determine whether you get hit or not.

If you’re pro or just really used to fighting in GW2, you can avoid pretty much all damage or most damage. Since vit/armor only matters after the dexterity roll and you are the equivalent of high dex, you don’t need high vit/armor any more.

If you’re not pro, so your dex equivalent is low, you need way more vit and armor to make up for that. Your damage will be lower too.

The problem with this last situation is that the damage output from mobs gets so high that having high vit or armor means you can take 1 or 2 more hits than a zerker can. So even if you do go the “tanky” way, you’ll have to fight like a zerker.

Might as well go full zerker anywhere on everything.

The exception is wvw. Small scale fights still allow for zerkers which is why roaming builds tend to be zerker. But Zerg vs zerg fights mean you get way more hits coming in, requiring a lot of vit and toughness to make up for the lack of dodging you can do. It’s also why wvw zerg players have stamina and energy sigils for the extra dodges.

I just wanted to mention that with mesmer, you may not want full zerker, but assassin gear mixed in to get crit to 100% for reflects if that’s your main role. In general though, for most PvE content, full zerker or close to it is meta.

Don Zardeone.8730:

In older games back in the olden days we often had a stat named dexterity. This stat usually handled evasion and hitratio. The higher your dex, in most games, the higher your evasion.

Back then we didn’t have 3D models, calculations were simple and graphics were sprites. You’d go stand next to a mob and attack and there would be rolls for evasion, rolls for damage, etc. We’d have vitality for health and armor for defense. Whatever hits got through evasion we “ate” or “tanked” with vit and armor.

We are in 2015 now and instead of having a make-believe, use-your-imagination evasion roll, we have a literal evasion dodge roll. The old dexterity stat has been moved out of the game and into the spot between keyboard and chair. Basically you are the dexterity stat. You determine whether you get hit or not.

If you’re pro or just really used to fighting in GW2, you can avoid pretty much all damage or most damage. Since vit/armor only matters after the dexterity roll and you are the equivalent of high dex, you don’t need high vit/armor any more.

If you’re not pro, so your dex equivalent is low, you need way more vit and armor to make up for that. Your damage will be lower too.

The problem with this last situation is that the damage output from mobs gets so high that having high vit or armor means you can take 1 or 2 more hits than a zerker can. So even if you do go the “tanky” way, you’ll have to fight like a zerker.

Might as well go full zerker anywhere on everything.

The exception is wvw. Small scale fights still allow for zerkers which is why roaming builds tend to be zerker. But Zerg vs zerg fights mean you get way more hits coming in, requiring a lot of vit and toughness to make up for the lack of dodging you can do. It’s also why wvw zerg players have stamina and energy sigils for the extra dodges.

This is the most well written response on this subject I’ve ever seen.

Thaddeus.4891:

Using full Knight will give you 72% of the dps of full beserker. Using knight armor with beserker trinket and weapons will give you 92% of the dps of a full beserker.

That’s not too bad by itself. The problem is that usually people using that kind of gear don’t really worry about optimizing other stuff. Not using good food and potion will drop full knigth from 72% to 62%. Not have the right sigils will drop your dps to 54%. Not have a good build, weapons and rotation will drop it even more.

Not using good food and potion will drop full Berserker of course also from 100% to 90%.

In the end the gear itself is much less of a factor than people always make it sound
in the forums. The correct traits and stacking of might vuln and so on are much
more important.
A group that kills a mob in 10s with full bersi will mostly kill the same mob in
13s in full knights, soldier or celestial.

Just using berseker gear don’t make you kill anything 10 times faster.

Zerker is just the most efficient means to kill enemies in the shortest period of time (by having high DPS via direct and crit damage). Dungeon runners want to finish the dungeon ASAP to get end reward for least time spent. Zerker equipped players are much more likely to do a dungeon path faster (if they know the path and how to run it).

This mentality has “leaked” over into other aspects of the game where “killing faster” is not really needed (tho it is indisputable that dead enemies cannot harm you).

TL;DR: Sans speed running dungeons, play what you want but keep in mind that Zerker gear is more likely to kill enemies faster. How well you can survive in full Zerker is another story (and depends on how well you can avoid incoming damage).

Beldin.5498:

Not using good food and potion will drop full Berserker of course also from 100% to 90%.

In the end the gear itself is much less of a factor than people always make it sound
in the forums. The correct traits and stacking of might vuln and so on are much
more important. .

I know. That’s why I said that Knight or celestial gear isn’t a big deal, but you need to put more attention to the other stuff because you already put yourself behind other in term of dps. Usually, people that play full knight or stuff like don’t have a good range of potions and foods, don’t really try to max their might, fury, vulnerability, etc. and tend to use defensive build. It’s a lot of little factor that put together make a big difference.

its not really full knight just the armor i am using on my mesmer and necro, they are using soldier weapons (except necro which has different focus the eternal sands which use as alt). but then as said no idea which class feel going be dungeon farmer.