Guild Wars 2

mahariel.4981:

All that shows is that WvW players are too dumb to slot in stability.

Is this a surprise? The biggest reason for the ele nerfs were that “competitive” players were too stupid to pack CC skills.

On topic: A real way to deal with the zerker issue would be to remove defiant from anything but the largest meta-bosses, and give all creatures large and small actual player skills and reasonably thought out builds. Scaling should be through the number of opponents, not through randomly increasing the HP of the sponges.

GW1 did this far better than GW2.

Tim.6450:

fadeaway.2807:

I’m just going to leave a topic about zerkers here.
You all know the discussion points.

Most people agree that the fastest and easiest way to clear pve is to go all out dps.
Is it a “meta” we want?
Should non zerkers be buffed? How?
Should zerkers be nerfed? How?

Etc.

What we need is not nerfs or buffs. The first thing must happen is dealing with the condition cap it will open room for more condition type players. On top of that do you need to increase the dificulty of pve so that different type of builds are promoted. I think fractals could be an example of that.

Condition cap shouldn’t be just flat out removed though, or it would trivialize the living crap out of some fights. I think a series of soft caps would be better. Create caps at say…. every 25 stacks, and each grants some diminished returns that gets harsher and harsher the higher you stack. Maybe all stacks over 25 lasts a bit less, or it deals a bit less damage, and the reduction gets harsher on stacks over 50, etc etc.

JonPeters.5630:

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

That’s great, maybe you should post this response in the dungeon forums. I think many people there should be made aware of this change.

“mindless dps”? Does rolling PVT and camping bow make someone the next einstein or something?

Since you clearly don’t roll in organised groups, I can’t imagine you’d understand how rolling meta builds is actually far more challenging and complex than your average pug group, I mean what pug is going to maintain optimal dps rotations, cast skills at appropriate times, have appropriate skills on their tab in the first place and know to mitigate damage through dodging and use of the correct weapon in a fight?

Im happy to see you are trying to change things. Im just worried about how it turns out. I dont want to be forced into relying on defensive stats to get by. Because I can see that ruining solo’ers and small group dungeon runners fun(2-3man). As long as we can still survive with skill im happy for you to change things.

What I want you to implement is a way to survive in dungeons without stacking or die.

Actually done alot of dungeons with my guild just to check the “normal” (normal as in refusing to stack in a corner not seeing anything and just press 1) way its supposed to work. Biggest problem there are all the inst kill manouvers bosses have no matter your spec, gear or dodge (yes you can only dodge so many times).

Actually built a few classes around weapons not comonly used and with gear people actually kick you for using in PUGs. As I see it the game is catered to high DPS only atm.

mahariel.4981:

“mindless dps”? Does rolling PVT and camping bow make someone the next einstein or something?

Since you clearly don’t roll in organised groups, I can’t imagine you’d understand how rolling meta builds is actually far more challenging and complex than your average pug group, I mean what pug is going to maintain optimal dps rotations, cast skills at appropriate times, have appropriate skills on their tab in the first place and know to mitigate damage through dodging and use of the correct weapon in a fight?

You mention using optimal skills/weapons for various situations like it won’t happen in the new system. If enemies were less on the HP sponge side, then more cc weapons/utilities might be chosen. It would still require thought.

Exp. Rather than going axe/mace+GS, maybe warriors will swap to axe/mace+hammer for a few fights. Rotations would still be there but instead of gs2/3, it would be hammer 2,F1 for more cc. It would be dps loss but if enemies had less heath, then less dps wouldn’t be so bad. Alternatively, axe/warhorn+GS for aoe weakness. 5% less dmg on axe auto but an average of 25% less dmg taken for your group. It can still be a zerker warhorn.

There is no reason to take this to an extreme and invoke pvt/bearbow or gs mesmer logic. Good players will adapt as you say they currently do. Hopefully, the new system will reward other play styles while still keeping full zerker melee the best but only for the truly skilled.

I look forward to these changes.

mahariel.4981:

“mindless dps”? Does rolling PVT and camping bow make someone the next einstein or something?

Since you clearly don’t roll in organised groups, I can’t imagine you’d understand how rolling meta builds is actually far more challenging and complex than your average pug group, I mean what pug is going to maintain optimal dps rotations, cast skills at appropriate times, have appropriate skills on their tab in the first place and know to mitigate damage through dodging and use of the correct weapon in a fight?

With respect to Jon Peters’s comment, I’ll try not to argue, but I will respond.

You made quite a lot of accusations on very limited information. Your Sherlockian deductive powers are almost commendable. However, I do not use PVT nor do I “camp a bow,” and I usually do “roll in organized groups” with my guildmates—which, in most dungeons, means going from boss to boss, stacking in a corner, and spamming DPS until the boss is dead. There is no strategy involved beyond “stack here,” and making sure everyone stacks in said location.

Rolling meta builds and having “optimal DPS rotations” is not a particularly excellent showcase of individual talent. While it is true that some people are more gifted at playing popular builds than others, builds usually become popular by offering the greatest payoff for the least amount of work, and playing with a meta build only requires you to copy it from someone else running the exact same thing.

Having and using the appropriate skills, using the appropriate weapon, and dodging might be challenging for some players, especially inexperienced ones, and if you find those concepts difficult that is understandable. But after familiarizing yourself with the game content, most of those concepts become a habit. In some situations, they could even be considered common sense. I’ve had random players perform all of those functions admirably on multiple occasions—partly because, due to the DPS meta, the gap between having “an optimized group” and playing with pick-ups is not so large as it could be.

I don’t think you quite understand.

ANet don’t have a dungeon team. They ignore the dungeon community for an entire year. They **** on their progress with Fractured! and now, Jon has declared the zerker meta as a “problem”.

They aren’t going to just say, make condi specs more viable through say, removing the cap. They’re going to throw ultra high-toughness mobs at us, mobs that invert our damage back to us, change the dodge mechanic to mitigate X amount of damage (hurrrr cant skip deadeyes now! ha you have to kill them now!), change blocks to mitigate X amount and somehow throw in a soft trinity.

And guess what will happen? All of us in dungeon guilds will either ragequit at the idiocy of it all, or we’ll just adapt, run whatever the new meta is, and bads will still complain.

It’s not fair because groups are now just 4 power 1 condi. It’s not fair, it’s just 4 dps 1 tank. It’s jsut 3 dps, 1 tank, 1 healer. I can’t get a healer.

Nothing will change, enemies will just die slower, and pugs will still be bad.

JonPeters.5630:

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

May I ask if people who’re crafting ascended zerker armors should be worried? It does cost a lot to craft it.

First of all, I have not yet read through all the posts made in this thread, so keep that in mind. I agree that something has to change with berseker gear. However i do not think that nerfing it is the right way to approach this solution. Why? Because anet would then have to adjust values for wvw and pve and spvp completly different, since i do feel that berserker armor is generally well rounded in wvw and one often sees build that focus around berseker trinkets but tankier armor I think that the gear itself is not the issue

Now where are the current problems? As the thread title suggests, the armor is broken in pve. This does not mean, that it is too strong in theory, the game, repectively dungeons just allow the players to bring it to great effect.
I suggest that instead of nerfing berserker armor, anet should focus around tweaking other armor types aswell as dungeons, dungeon bosses and world bosses.
First, lets talk about the other armor types: Of course there are lots of variations, but for simplicity I will talk about pure builds:

-Condition Builds: As already mentioned in other post in this thread aswell as other forums, the main issue with condition damage is the cap. This is an issue when fighting world bosses, but it can slo be anoying in dungeons. Another problem is the lack of stacking conditions. Since i do not think this was been brought up to often, I’ll go a little bit indepth about this: Bleed is probably the only stacking condition that has any use in pve. Confusion and torment, as the two other stackable conditions, are either hard to apply or just not as usefull in pve as they are in wvw. Poision and burning have great damage/utility, but since they are not stackable, there is really no urge for a party to be sure to have someone that keeps thos conditions running.
Possible solutions were surely discussed a lot on the forums, however it is apparent that finding a balanced solution, making builds more viable in pve aswell as keeping up the balance in wvw is unbelievably hard. Addaing torment as a condition was surely nice, but maybe offring a calss, lets say thives, to apply it instead of bleeds(pistol) may increase the utility and demend for condition thieves. Raising the condition cap is an easy solution, but hard to balance aswell. If something like this gets done, I think that it should only apply to world bosses and maybe some champions. To increase that usefullnes of conditions in dungeons could be further increased by making some bosses more susceptible for conditions, respectively increasing their resistance(thougness) , while lowring their health a bit. This could lead the meta away from full berserker groups to clear dungeons the fastest.

-Tanky/Support builds: Those have something in common: They are just not needed in a dungeon at the moment. Let me explain: In wvw tankyness and even healing power can be usefull stats depening on the setup of the character. In dungeons however, there is no need for tankyness, because it slows down the group, it is easy to dodge attack from boss mobs, and many attacks are killshots anyways, so why bother with defenses if they dont make you survive? Support builds have a similar problem. Since there is no(clear) trinity in the game, a player is in no need to get healed or resurected faster(Ill talk about that later). Even as a thief, I can sustain myself with shadow rejuvination and strong healing skills.
All this is not that big a deal in my opinion. Why? Beacause those builds mentions above will or would become used if there were 10 or 15 player dungeons. In big groups like those, a persion that resurects faster or has a healing layout will be way more appreciated without breaking the non-trinity mindset to pieces.

Now that the armor part is done, lets talk about dungeons and their bosses. I already mentioned something about this in the condition chapter. The question we have to ask ourself is “why can a group of full berserker geared people cleare dungeons fast, without exploding?”. The answers are partly “stacking” and “bosses and events in the dungeons”.
Stacking: This is one of the things everyone does, that wants to complete a dungeon fast and professional. Everytime I stack (of course I want my rewards quick =)) it just doesnt feel right. It makes bosses easier, if its done right, but also incredible boring. As an example Id like to talk about he spiderqueen from any ascalon path. With this example lets take a look at stacking. The pros of standing close to each other are obvious: Everyone profits from boons and combo fields. Furthermore downed players can be resurected in seconds aswell. Those are all smart and strategic decision, however, stacking is not made in the middle of the spider room, but right around the corner. This has nothing to do with teamplay. It is much rather an successfull atempt to avoid many of the boss mechanics that are usually used from afar. What this does is a) It makes the fight easy and boring, predictable.
b) It does not let the boss fight at full strengh, which of course seems nice, but it also puts so many possibly awesome boss fights from anet to shame. Some of you might remember fighting the spider without stacking a long time ago and it was lots of fun and took lots of skill and no less teamwork than stacking.
Possible solutions would be that ALL bosses deal incresed damage when people are stakced or something like that(Its hard to explain and find a solution when you have no clue of programing).
This would surely decrease the amoun of berserker gear used since survivng would be harder.

-I mentioned dungeon events earlier: Bosses and events(like the acolyte event cofp1) are promoting small defenses. This may be due to onehit mecanics, no matter the armor or simply an ability to avoid damage(again, acolyte part cofp1). Lets take this as an example: What if one could not wait out the time for new acolytes to spawn in a safe spot? Doding, taking damage and even killing non even monsters would be needed and further promoted tankier groups. Keep in mind that this is just a specific example.

With that being said about dungeons, I know that this would make dungeon harder, and not only more interesting. Therefore an increase in rewards would be needed.

I will not go into more detail about world bosses, since anet has shown that they are updating and thinking about how to improve open world experiences.
Furthermore I’d like to apologize for my poor display of the english language.
I will follow this thread in the forum and hope that anet reads this post. I’m happy for any feedback or opposed ideas.

Neol…. TL:DR?

Actually, I did read one part about the Spider Queen in AC. Uh, no. That fight wasn’t entertaining and fun ever. Not to mention the ranged mechanics of the SQ aren’t used by the SQ when the player is in melee range…

As far as a lot of your suggestions I do not like them. I think they are bad. They ruin the way I like to play because I like stacking and not taking many hours to complete a dungeon that shouldn’t take more than 30 mins on a bad run.

The main problem is basically: If bosses do insane amount of damage that will kill you anyway if they hit, why even bother with bringing toughness?

If there is any issue with Zerkers in PvE I think a lot of it is linked to 3 things

Skill changes in PvE bc’s of WvW.
Defiance – ruins CC builds limiting options.
Condition damage party limitations.

A perfect example of this was the hammer nerf last patch. If i want to use hammer i now am forced to use hambow or atleast zerker in a dungeon after the last patch to get any real damage out of it.

I use to run shouts heal on my war but because of this i no longer do. No point i just run zerker now.

Defiance limits and CC in a dungeon. Most groups walk over or skip trash mobs so the real fights are the bosses that have unshakeable/ defiance

Condition dmg is almost pointless after you have 1 person in your party running a condition build. It makes lttile sense to have a warrior running lots of conditions with a necro or ranger in your party. They will only stack so high and the necro and ranger are likely specked for more condi then the war.

What’s left? Just run Zerker.

WvW keeps limiting our options in PvE so that’s what we are stuck with.

The problem with Crowd Control builds is most trash mobs die too quick for it to matter and most bosses are immune to it anyway. Short of severely nerfing Defiance while upping the damage output of bosses I don’t see a way around this, either.

JonPeters.5630:

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

I seriously hope this means bringing up the other stats and not bringing down the effectiveness of beserker gear. All my characters are in beserker gear solely because the combat system you’ve had for over a year allowed it. Ascended gear isn’t exactly cheap.

Here is my take on Zerker.
The DPS right now is completely fine, but the risk of running Zerker is also very low, to the point where people dont even feel squishy.

1. Improve monster damage
If monsters start 1-hitting people unless they time their dodge perfectly, the risk of being Zerker is increased. Yet the risk does not become very high because of highly telegraphed attacks. This should not affect any Zerkers who already dodges perfectly as they would never take the hit in the first place, but for those who are less skilled might have to consider other gear options to survive. A Zerker Warrior can already survive 3 hits from the large AoE attack of CoF P1’s final boss. The boss is already dead before it can even charge 3 of those attacks.

2. Monsters should have more Immobilize and Weakness
If there is one thing that Zerkers have issues dealing with, it is Immobilize. The fact that you cannot dodge and you are forced to take the hit(and likely get downed from that hit) makes playing Zerker risky. Weakness is also there to reduce a Zerker’s DPS and make them possibly run out of Endurance, increasing the chance of them making mistakes, thus increasing the risk of being Zerker. This will make Zerkers have to carry condition removal skills(or have a party member carrying condition removal), thus increasing the need for Support skills and/or Support party members.

3. Improve Toughness
The first boss of Arah P3 1-hits anyone no matter how much Toughness they have. To a lesser extent, CoE’s Alpha also does it(depending on how many circles were created). Same for anything inside Queen’s Gauntlet. What’s the point of having Toughness stats if you are going to be 1-hitted anyway? This goes together with increased monster damage, if Toughness is not increased as well, there is no point having that stat anymore. Toughness should be a buffer to allow for more mistakes. Not asking for Toughness to become a face-tank mechanic, but 1-hit mechanics are just bad.

Jon, please be careful not to shift zerker-only meta to PVT-only meta. I’ve always felt a class-gear synergy with the group was lacking, maybe this is where your fixing hammer should mostly hit on. Also, note that Fractals of the Mists (high levels) is currently the only PvE content I’m aware of that requires at least more caution with positioning and organization, but again high levels do demand more resistance so most people are likely to run PVT gear (I wish I could see gear usage statistics heh).

I sincerely appreciate a lot that you take your time to look deeper into this issue, since a few months after release zerker has stablished as the most successful gear meta and changing it will likely revamp how groups should work and coordinate.

Furthermore, as of now we also have another “meta-related” issue: stacking. If you ask people how to complete a dungeon or a specific content they’ll tell you: simply stack around this corner, this way all mobs will come at you and with little defense we can smash them to ashes because of high damage output. I’d appreciate if you took the time to look into that too!

The basis of this game was to eliminate the tradition DPS, Tank, healing parties and now you’re nerfing the people who choose to play zerker? Anet please explain your contradictory logic to me.

Currently, Berserker’s armor is the armor which has no defensive or utility stats (Well, precision is kinda a utility stat, but that’s a different problem) It is the armor which can be utilized to kill things the fastest. (Enemies, or yourself for that matter)

Given the nature of this game, If you are very skilled at playing this game, you should be able to avoid most damage, and heal what damage you do take via your heal skill/traits. Being able to keep yourself at near-full health throughout any given fight through skilled gameplay should be a thing that fights are designed for. (Other fights in other games are balanced as such, and whilst they use “The Trinity” for player roles, there’s nothing saying we can’t steal their balance goals for combat, even if we’re not stealing their numbers/mechanics.)

Given these two assumptions, Berserkers is going to be the natural choice for players whom are the most skilled at this game, as it allows them to clear content as quickly as possible.

I do not believe this should change. Having an armor set for skilled players such that they can showcase their skill and be rewarded for it (by means of faster runs) Is good. It is a method of rewarding skilled players that does not alienate unskilled players from being able to do content. If a poor player takes an hour to do a CoF 1 path, but he/she CAN complete that path, then the player is going to feel good/happy. That player can play the game, and get the rewards that everyone else has. This is a good outcome.

HOWEVER, while the idea of having berserker gear being “Best in Slot” For murdering things as quickly as possible is sound, I do not believe our game is properly modeled correctly to have it reward skilled play. I believe the current boss/encounter design leads to rewards based on high DPS, allowing for sloppy/bad players to be rewarded even when they wear berserkers gear.

The Champion Slave Driver of CoF P1 fame is probably the best example of this. Unskilled groups of players will often get downed during this fight, but because their damage is high enough, they can just DPS through it, rallying the downed through the bosses death. You do not have to be skilled to pass this boss, even if you’re wearing paper gear. So long as you can do damage, you’re set.

Let us look at a better example: Lupicus. All of lupicus attacks are dodgeable. Lupicus cannot be bursted down to death instantly (Well, he can due to reflects, and some other shenangins, but that takes a fairly large amount of skill to do, so I’m okay with it. God knows my party has never managed a <2 minute kill on him.) This creates a fairly long fight. Lupicus also hits like a truck, making those in zerkers gear SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to die than people in tankier armor. This makes Soldier gear actually GOOD for the lupicius fight for people who are not as good at the game. I’ve read several walkthroughs for lupicus outright stating that he was impossible without an alternate set of soldiers gear. (they’re old walkthroughs, and it’s most certainly not true, but people believed it was true at one point, which is amazing considering how currently soldiers gear is thought of as “It’s for WvW players and that’s it.”)

I think the best way to make Berseker’s gear less prominant as the “end all be-all” Is to rework the major encounters that people would want to be wearing the gear for. It’s not an easy solution. But by revamping the fights that exist, and making skilled positioning/dodging/etc. a larger requirement, we can reduce the Dominance of berserkers gear as a requirement for completing content.

JonPeters.5630:

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

Reason #1 why ascended weapons and armor need to have stat switching.

Player spends 600g + worth of mats to get his Ascended Zerk set for PvE.
ANet decides to shift the meta.

There will be much kicking and screaming. I Hope you have a plan.

The problem with the zerker meta, is that zerkers have too much survival. There’s no need for support or control builds to exist to mitigate damage. There’s no need for defensive stats to mitigate damage. And condition damage gets indirectly useless this way, because zerkers never have to spend time kiting, escaping, weakened, blocked, etc.

To fix this problem, PvE needs to learn a bit from PvP:

• Enemies need to have auto-attacks.
• Enemies need to apply more boons and more conditions on a regular basis.
• Enemies need to have some sort of self-defense skills.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with the zerker meta, is that zerkers have too much survival. There’s no need for support or control builds to exist to mitigate damage. There’s no need for defensive stats to mitigate damage. And condition damage gets indirectly useless this way, because zerkers never have to spend time kiting, escaping, weakened, blocked, etc.

To fix this problem, PvE needs to learn a bit from PvP:

• Enemies need to have auto-attacks.
• Enemies need to apply more boons and more conditions on a regular basis.
• Enemies need to have some sort of self-defense skills.

Dredge already have self-defense skills and apply AoE boons regularly (actually some of them will always apply boons on every encounter). However this shouldn’t be a rule to balance difficulty for beginners and don’t stress too much the content as a whole, i.e. boon application, healing, etc every time. These changes should affect a selective group of mobs to add spice when necessary/convenient or when it fits better along with the content’s design itself.

Valento.9852:

Dredge already have self-defense skills and apply AoE boons regularly (actually some of them will always apply boons on every encounter). However this shouldn’t be a rule to balance difficulty for beginners and don’t stress too much the content as a whole, i.e. boon application, healing, etc every time. These changes should affect a selective group of mobs to add spice when necessary/convenient or when it fits better along with the content itself’s design.

The “problem” here is that GW2 is a game where several weapon’s skillsets are balanced around the assumption that the enemy will always have boons on themselves and you will always have conditions on yourself. They are balanced this way, because that’s exactly how it happens in pvp, where most of the balancing revolves around. Boons and conditions are one of the most important gameplay mechanics in pvp, by far and away.

GW2’s combat with boons and conditions on both sides has a completely different playing depth than without them. If pve can’t offer enemies that can apply conditions or boons consistently, as it happens in pvp, then balancing both at the same time will be a lot harder, and build diversity will suffer.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Valento.9852:

Dredge already have self-defense skills and apply AoE boons regularly (actually some of them will always apply boons on every encounter). However this shouldn’t be a rule to balance difficulty for beginners and don’t stress too much the content as a whole, i.e. boon application, healing, etc every time. These changes should affect a selective group of mobs to add spice when necessary/convenient or when it fits better along with the content itself’s design.

The “problem” here is tha GW2 is a game where several weapon’s skillsets are balanced around the assumption that the enemy will always have boons on themselves and you will always have conditions on yourself. They are balanced this way, because that’s exactly how it happens in pvp, where most of the balancing revolves around. Boons and conditions are one of the most important gameplay mechanics in pvp, by far and away.

GW2’s combat with boons and conditions on both sides has a completely different playing depth than without them. If pve can’t offer enemies that can apply conditions or boons consistently, as it happens in pvp, then balancing both at the same time will be a lot harder, and build diversity will suffer.

In PvE the amount of toughness/vitality or whatever kind of different resistance other than boons make up for that unfortunately… I agree with you, but right now their “resistance” comes in shape of raw numbers completely ignoring boons system.

However I still believe they could balance the game to have both – toughness/vit + boons whenever fitting. Another idea that struck here is to add Critical Resistance, completely wiping the zerker meta and opening space for more varied builds.

The problem with adding critical resistance, is that it’ll make zerker gear worthless, for the frustration of all players who have invested for zerker ascended gear, while the real design problems will remain unfixed. So players will simply mitigate to the best dps gear that doesn’t relies on criticals: power + condition damage + X.

Hopefully they are not shifting the best gear set to something different but rewarding parties for running a variety of stat distributions instead of just one

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with adding critical resistance, is that it’ll make zerker gear worthless, for the frustration of all players who have invested for zerker ascended gear, while the real design problems will remain unfixed. So players will simply mitigate to the best dps gear that doesn’t relies on criticals: power + condition damage + X.

Yeah you’re right. But it isn’t that easy to simply copycat how PvP works, in PvP we have real skilled players that has the ability to mitigate damage by outplaying unskilled ones, PvE challenge is ruled by AI so more toughness/vitality is a must, unless it refers to Mai Trin or Liadri… man, did I sweat in these ones! :P

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with the zerker meta, is that zerkers have too much survival. There’s no need for support or control builds to exist to mitigate damage. There’s no need for defensive stats to mitigate damage. And condition damage gets indirectly useless this way, because zerkers never have to spend time kiting, escaping, weakened, blocked, etc.

To fix this problem, PvE needs to learn a bit from PvP:

• Enemies need to have auto-attacks.
• Enemies need to apply more boons and more conditions on a regular basis.
• Enemies need to have some sort of self-defense skills.

Play a zerker ele without guardians/mesmers in your party and then revisit your points. Zerker survivability is mostly high because of reflects and blinds.

I don’t understand why there should be changes that make zerker gear only suitable for the most “elilte” players. Why not make changes that make condition or toughness gear much more rewarding to those “elite” players and attract them to it rather than sticking the rest of the players who invested in zerker gear with stuff that is worthless to them. That way you shift the meta to make more stuff viable and do less harm to the population. And, you avoid giving the “elite” players who generate more income because of their skill additional bonus income from a mechanical speed advantage in tearing through content.

If the zerkers get nerfed in some way (gearwise), thief damage (skillwise) should be doubled to be a viable alternative to the allmighty warriors dominating PvE.

Mintiest Core.5140:

I don’t understand why there should be changes that make zerker gear only suitable for the most “elilte” players. Why not make changes that make condition or toughness gear much more rewarding to those “elite” players and attract them to it rather than sticking the rest of the players who invested in zerker gear with stuff that is worthless to them. That way you shift the meta to make more stuff viable and do less harm to the population. And, you avoid giving the “elite” players who generate more income because of their skill additional bonus income from a mechanical speed advantage in tearing through content.

By “Elite” players (as like to put it into quotation mark) you mean champ trains participants? Very good pve players are rather poor since they spend time on pointless things like soloing since there’s nothing hard in this game for them.

I hope they don’t over nerf zerker i was just finished my ascendant armore.

darkace.8925:

The problem with Crowd Control builds is most trash mobs die too quick for it to matter and most bosses are immune to it anyway. Short of severely nerfing Defiance while upping the damage output of bosses I don’t see a way around this, either.

Meh, GW2 CC is CC in name only. They are fighting game combo breakers with a little dash of CC on top to make them look like classic MMORPG CC. They are single target, long cooldown, short duration effects. Their main use is to mess with a opponents spike combo, not control a bunch of adds.

If you want to see real CC go check out the amount of AOE daze, stun and similar that a control wizard in Neverwinter packs.

Face it, the whole game is rigged for SPVP. And PVE mobs are hacked together in the worst possible way. They ignore (CC) or make useless (boon steal, conversion, removal) all to many game effects.

mahariel.4981:

I don’t think you quite understand.

ANet don’t have a dungeon team. They ignore the dungeon community for an entire year. They **** on their progress with Fractured! and now, Jon has declared the zerker meta as a “problem”.

They aren’t going to just say, make condi specs more viable through say, removing the cap. They’re going to throw ultra high-toughness mobs at us, mobs that invert our damage back to us, change the dodge mechanic to mitigate X amount of damage (hurrrr cant skip deadeyes now! ha you have to kill them now!), change blocks to mitigate X amount and somehow throw in a soft trinity.

And guess what will happen? All of us in dungeon guilds will either ragequit at the idiocy of it all, or we’ll just adapt, run whatever the new meta is, and bads will still complain.

It’s not fair because groups are now just 4 power 1 condi. It’s not fair, it’s just 4 dps 1 tank. It’s jsut 3 dps, 1 tank, 1 healer. I can’t get a healer.

Nothing will change, enemies will just die slower, and pugs will still be bad.

I don’t think YOU understand why the zerker meta is a problem (because yes, it is indeed a problem). It’s not because the ‘bads’ QQ about not being able to run it. It’s not because ‘play how I want BHBs’ don’t like you kicking them just because they don’t satisfy your picky LFG requirements.

It’s because having one be-all end-all spec essentially kills any sort of build variety in the game, which kills any sort of gameplay variety. One of the drawing points to this game was that nobody would be forced into a defined role, and people could be effective no matter how they choose to build themselves. With the current zerker meta, this is false, because 5 zerkers can currently do everything a party without 5 zerkers can, but faster. Because of this, everything in the game is either mindlessly dull or unreasonably difficult based on whether or not you built your character ‘the correct way’. It has nothing to do with player skill, strategy and planning, min/maxing, or even the zerker gear itself. If PVT was the most dominant setup by this much of a landslide, we would have the same problem.

And no, I’m not a PVT bearbow player. I’ve played the game long enough and run enough dungeons throughout various specs, both zerker and non-zerker, to be able to speak my thoughts on the issue, so please try not to resort to petty ad hominem arguments.

Honestly, the entire idea of ruining the time/efforts/enjoyment of all your players who are “doing it right” makes no sense…especially as an appeasement for those players who just need to learn to dodge. Why would you ruin the most enjoyable gear set in the game because a portion of your players are too afraid to try beserker gear?

PVT is clearly a choice for those who are afraid they are going to miss a dodge and die…or for those who are too lazy to even try to dodge. Clerics is entirely useless as healing power does not scale enough to compensate for incoming damage…and at the same time fails to contribute anything else meaningful to goal completion. The ineffectiveness of clerics has absolutely nothing to do with beserker gear…it would be just as ineffective if beserker gear did not exist. Celestial is sub par for obvious reasons…everything you can do is at half efficiency because all of your stats are diminished to allow for more stat types on the same gear.

This whole issue boils down to players having zero confidence in their ability to dodge/use correct abilities at the correct times/know the encounters. They want to compensate by wearing extra survival gear. Otherwise, why not gear to kill stuff quicker? Killing stuff is the objective of this game right? Defeat the enemy, get rewards. That’s the core of a MMO. None of this has anything to do with beserker gear. This has everything to do with players not wanting to let go of their safety nets (toughness, vitality, healing power). Again, if beserker gear did not exist…these safety nets would still serve the same less than efficient purpose…to compensate for mistakes. Berserker gear is there for players who have confidence in their ability to avoid the majority of mistakes…advanced/skilled players. How is this bad?

Why would you punish those who are actually skilled at the game’s core survival mechanic because others’ lack this skill? Let me make an analogy that sums up how this is not logical. Would it be okay for high schools to remove advanced placement classes because some of the students are not smart/skilled enough to participate in them? Wouldn’t the correct solution be to let those who are not up to that level of performance take a less demanding class? In this analogy, the ability to survive and complete content efficiently in beserker gear, is the smart/skilled option…due to needing to be able to dodge and use key abilities on demand to avoid the instant deaths/downs that a zerk geared/traited player faces upon a mistake. The zerk geared/traited player needs to know the encounters to be able to accomplish this. The contrast to the zerk player is the pvt/clerics/celestial players who are openly acknowledging their lack of confidence in their skills by intentionally foregoing damage output to compensate for their impending failures to dodge/use the correct abilities at key times/know the encounters. The implication of building around survival stats is that they will be trying to face tank incoming damage, versus using the game’s dodge mechanic/abilities to avoid the damage.

I think the solution should be similar to what was done with magic find. Magic find was a selfish stat that was detrimental to the performance/contribution of party members. The solution was to remove it from gear and make it available separate from gear. This would give those incapable of dodging/using the correct abilities/knowing the encounters their safety net, while allowing them to focus on efficient and productive stats.

What everyone seems to be talking about here boils down to balance – whether to a system that does not seem to even out among PUGs in dungeons, or in PvE (the original post and some responses). The rest seem to be zealously communicating their desire to not have zerker nerfed. It makes sense that “the ideal” DPS build (whatever that winds up being) will always be the meta – that’s what meta is about. I’m going to recommend something which probably won’t be popular, but would actually lend to balance.

The solution, I believe, lies in viewing this problem on it’s side – zerker shouldn’t be nerfed, but it should be used to measure the amount of balance. Let’s break down the two topics being discussed:

1) Regarding PUGs in dungeons, it would seem that since this is intended to be a group dynamic, the final boss should be scaled in difficulty based on the group total effectiveness dynamic. In other words, take the sum of all five players for their potential effectiveness: (Power * Precision * (100% + Crit Damage)) – since this IS the meta, and set it to determine the difficulty of the main boss (and you can set that total to equal the difficulty of what the final boss is now for five zerkers – so it scales DOWN for those that aren’t zerkers; this will still take time to complete a path, but will make other builds MUCH more viable). Whatever it is, I know there’s an equation that can be worked out by the devs to calculate that in virtually no time upon starting the path in any given dungeon, and then the scaling of the final boss is based on that. Furthermore, to make everything dynamic (for programming purposes on future adjustments) you could then make the lesser minions a fraction of the boss’s difficulty.

a) True group accountability requires making it harder on fewer than five players in a dungeon. If people are skilled enough to do a path with fewer than five players, then that needs scaling – just put in a simple “player count < 5 = ridiculously OP’d final boss” bit of code and the fractional minion part of the code takes care of the rest. The scale based on player count would effectively render a solo run impossible while at the same time increasing the difficulty for those that want it.

b) This also means that even if a fifth player isn’t zerker and joins an all zerker group, they don’t really cause drag on the entire group. But it also means that “any group” can truly run “any path”, which is what I think you guys are shooting for anyway. Yes, more work on the front end, but MUCH more manageable on the back end, and that’s really what good coding is about.

c) As for implementation, all you need to do to test this out is CoF P1 initially. Get the code right on that path (the most-run path) and once you have it tweaked to your satisfaction, take the model to other dungeon paths. This will, rather than nerf zerker, effectively balance the non-zerker CoF P1 run – which I’ve read endless replies in other posts about it needing to be done anyway.

d) And if you REALLY want to go crazy, allow up to 10 players in a dungeon. And here’s how you scale it: INVERSE of the < 5 player calcuation. So a team of 6 has the same scale of difficulty as a team of 4. And a team of 7 has the same scale as a team of 3. And 8 the same as 2 and 9 the same as 1. Then a team of 10 could simply be super hard mode for crazy elitists (of which I’ll never have interest to run…ever – but I’m not THAT hard core anyway).

2) Regarding PvE, I believe you’ve done as much as any group of devs could do and still make it manageable for non-zerker players to still get through almost the entire world map AND still be fun at the same time (I suppose the areas of Orr are still not as easily solo’d by non-zerkers). People seem to be underestimating the fun factor in PvE. There are a lot of Guilds and PUGs that now specifically run PvE – I’m in one that runs a full area (minus Hearts) every Wednesday at 9pm EST. It still takes about 90 minutes, but it’s because we have people bailing all the time, and new players jumping in all the time. But it’s FUN.

a) If you try to do anything about PvE to make it somehow tougher (especially on the zerker build which, let’s face it, affects all players negatively in PvE), no one will want to clear the world map as much. It just won’t be fun – which is what I think you guys were shooting for in PvE anyway.

1) Regarding PUGs in dungeons, it would seem that since this is intended to be a group dynamic, the final boss should be scaled in difficulty based on the group total effectiveness dynamic. In other words, take the sum of all five players for their potential effectiveness: (Power * Precision * (100% + Crit Damage)) – since this IS the meta, and set it to determine the difficulty of the main boss (and you can set that total to equal the difficulty of what the final boss is now for five zerkers – so it scales DOWN for those that aren’t zerkers; this will still take time to complete a path, but will make other builds MUCH more viable). Whatever it is, I know there’s an equation that can be worked out by the devs to calculate that in virtually no time upon starting the path in any given dungeon, and then the scaling of the final boss is based on that. Furthermore, to make everything dynamic (for programming purposes on future adjustments) you could then make the lesser minions a fraction of the boss’s difficulty.

First it sounded like a great idea, but the more times I read it the more problems I seem to find.

If dungeons (first problem: it fixes only dungeons) and their bosses get tuned to the party to give them a challange that is challanging for that particular party’s way of playing, players will find different dungeon running builds. This is the second problem:

• You can’t make a boss harder to kill a full zerker party. It’s against all logic to deal higher damage and because of that, takes more time to get something down.

• While it sounds good to be as effective as tanking / supporting / utility / survival based party as a full dps party, it completely takes away the reason to go dps at all. Or even worse, leads to the first (star) point.

• Players will, I say again definitly will find the balance of classes that is the most optimal for runs. For example, 3 supportive guardians lowering the health of the dungeon boss, while 2 dps heavy classes burn it to ashes. The system can be easily exploited, as a party like this will propably do better than a full dps or a full tanky party. But this creates 2 more problems: “play the way you want” is no longer true. Even if technically possible, you can’t play the way you want because noone will want a (random example) 3rd dps in that party. Or another supportive guard. Just check the elitists in the LFG tool with their “zerker warriors only” tags. It is elitism for now. If your suggested changes would happen, it would be more than that and became a matematically needed meta, which nobody will profit from as it will make the playerbase diveded. Which wouldn’t be a problem, if the game would work with the holy trinity idea. But it does not.

I’m curious about your last bullet…it seems you almost agree in that scaling should occur based on group build. Is that not right?

The main point is that whatever the meta is, that’s what the scaling should be based on. I also put that the way it is now (in CoF P1 for example) should stay the same for a zerker build, but be down-scaled for non-zerker builds, thereby lowering their completion time (not necessarily to full zerker times, but significantly).

MastaNeenja.1537:

Zerkers are the product that the rules of the game have created, if the stat combo didn’t exist we would use the next best stats or combination of stats.

Are we talking gear only or traiting for damage too? Because this then becomes a discussion of playstyle which is play the way you want. People can and should play how they want but if the way they want to play isn’t popular then what? The player chose to play the way they wanted to, when a person makes a choice they take responsibility for the choice they made, unless they have been given bad information.

I won’t say I’m pro damage, but I will say I’m for the method that ends the fight the quickest which is usually damage, especially in GW2.

You gotta admit, however, that even though players are responsible for their own choices, no one should be belittled for not going for what’s more popular. It’s not “stupid”/“noob”/“casual”/“carebear”, just what those players like (nor are they being “selfish” for choosing a playstyle that suits them.) Some people ARE “special snowflakes” (another inappropriate insult usually aimed at them), like it or not-that doesn’t make them better or worse than you, just different.

(Note that I believe that you should play how you want too; if that’s DPS, and it’s “meta”, that’s fine too. But there’s a strong bias on these forums against so-called “play how you want”-which is actually a nice and appropriate phrase to use for this game-players.)

I dont think an all zerker meta is a bad thing, but it has lasted way too long. the whole point of the the “meta” is that it changes.

normally you would do this by buffing/nerfing, but I believe the problem lies mostly in the mechanics of gw2 encounters.

In dungeons you are often fighting a single mob with defiant and 1hit attacks with big tells making both cc and heal useless because well defiant and 1hits so you never have a chance to heal up.

It’s nice if a boss has one big attack, but it should have many smaller attacks and effects too, making it very hard to dodge everything and defiant… perhaps you could reduce all cc duration by 50% or something to make it a bit harder but I think its just a bad idea in general. it’d probably be better if you give bosses some stabiity/stunbreaker mechanics.

Conditions arent that useless but only up to 1 player… which means you will still need 80% zerkers.

Now this is all about dungeons for me I havent thought much about open world content with loads of players which does make things a little different, but for dungeons what I think you should do it change up a lot of dungeons/paths and give each a flavor.

Make some where cc is very strong bcause the only thing that can kill the monsters is the magic weapon that takes a while to charge so you have to hold them up
make another dungeon where there’s loads of continuous damage, mayeb many creatures with small attacks or just effects in the room, but make it so that if your team has that bit of extra healing it becomes that much easier to do

then leave some dungeons as they are

that way you wont have one meta in the game but instead have each dungeon have its own meta, which you could change independedly in the future.

this does ofcourse require to change builds all the time which is very difficult in gw2 because(when you’re new at least) changing builds is expensieve because of the armors and weapons you need and its a lot of fuzz because there are no templates. Wouldn’t it just be awesome if you could ask a trainer to write like a guide of youyr current build, make them a bit like a banker keeping track of the builds you worked out “together” so you can instantly buy them from him again

This is the problem with not having soft trinity (like gw1) or having a full trinity (like wow). Without a trinity its just a dps race. You can change it up all you want but in the end the best players will be running with the gear that puts out the most damage.

Black Box.9312:

mahariel.4981:

I don’t think you quite understand.

ANet don’t have a dungeon team. They ignore the dungeon community for an entire year. They **** on their progress with Fractured! and now, Jon has declared the zerker meta as a “problem”.

They aren’t going to just say, make condi specs more viable through say, removing the cap. They’re going to throw ultra high-toughness mobs at us, mobs that invert our damage back to us, change the dodge mechanic to mitigate X amount of damage (hurrrr cant skip deadeyes now! ha you have to kill them now!), change blocks to mitigate X amount and somehow throw in a soft trinity.

And guess what will happen? All of us in dungeon guilds will either ragequit at the idiocy of it all, or we’ll just adapt, run whatever the new meta is, and bads will still complain.

It’s not fair because groups are now just 4 power 1 condi. It’s not fair, it’s just 4 dps 1 tank. It’s jsut 3 dps, 1 tank, 1 healer. I can’t get a healer.

Nothing will change, enemies will just die slower, and pugs will still be bad.

I don’t think YOU understand why the zerker meta is a problem (because yes, it is indeed a problem). It’s not because the ‘bads’ QQ about not being able to run it. It’s not because ‘play how I want BHBs’ don’t like you kicking them just because they don’t satisfy your picky LFG requirements.

It’s because having one be-all end-all spec essentially kills any sort of build variety in the game, which kills any sort of gameplay variety. One of the drawing points to this game was that nobody would be forced into a defined role, and people could be effective no matter how they choose to build themselves. With the current zerker meta, this is false, because 5 zerkers can currently do everything a party without 5 zerkers can, but faster. Because of this, everything in the game is either mindlessly dull or unreasonably difficult based on whether or not you built your character ‘the correct way’. It has nothing to do with player skill, strategy and planning, min/maxing, or even the zerker gear itself. If PVT was the most dominant setup by this much of a landslide, we would have the same problem.

And no, I’m not a PVT bearbow player. I’ve played the game long enough and run enough dungeons throughout various specs, both zerker and non-zerker, to be able to speak my thoughts on the issue, so please try not to resort to petty ad hominem arguments.

There is always a meta in games. It’s no fair, MTG standard is just cawblade/delver/jund, QQQQQQQQQQQQ. Funnily enough, different decks have actually existed while one has dominated, note how recently before bloodbraid elf was banned in modern you still had things like storm combo, tron, W/B tokens, mono red aggro/burn too.

Now the analogy doesn’t entirely work because we’re not all killing each other in PvE … but … there will always be a “best” in games, and unlike MTG where players honestly felt forced to pick up four mind sculptors to be competetive in the Zendikar/Scars of Mirrodin standard, you don’t have to do that in GW2. Run whatever the hell you want. Set up that lfg – “anyone welcome”, “all builds welcome”, “no zerkers”, “casual run”, rock your knight/cleric setup and have fun with it.

The problem here is that people keep making berserker gear a problem for themselves even if they don’t run it or don’t run in zerk groups, because we just have to be concerned with other peoples’ builds.

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

mahariel.4981:

Good to know you’re actively taking steps to punish good players.

In what way is shifting a meta away from a mindless DPS race “punishing good players”?

I suggest not arguing, because it just creates the impression that you want to get involved in a mindless discussion. Rather, just post your own thoughts on why the current Berserker heavy meta is in fact not rewarding for good players. That would be more constructive for this forum and for solving the problem. That being said, I appreciate your response. We are here reading and I am happy to read any and all criticism if it is actually concise, constructive, and courteous.

Totally did not mean to start all 3 words with c, but oh well.

Jon

i just hope that what ever changes happens regarding this matter, does not affect WvW and PvP

Juba.8406:

JonPeters.5630:

Imagi.4561:

mahariel.4981:

Good to know you’re actively taking steps to punish good players.

In what way is shifting a meta away from a mindless DPS race “punishing good players”?

I suggest not arguing, because it just creates the impression that you want to get involved in a mindless discussion. Rather, just post your own thoughts on why the current Berserker heavy meta is in fact not rewarding for good players. That would be more constructive for this forum and for solving the problem. That being said, I appreciate your response. We are here reading and I am happy to read any and all criticism if it is actually concise, constructive, and courteous.

Totally did not mean to start all 3 words with c, but oh well.

Jon

i just hope that what ever changes happens regarding this matter,
does not affect WvW and PvP

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

i just hope that what ever changes happens regarding this matter,
does not affect WvW and PvP

i just hope that what ever changes happens regarding this matter,
does not affect WvW, PvP and PvE

Its just beyond belief that this is even a consideration by the devs. I mean just think about it. A full team of PVT/clerics/celestial care bears are unlikely to even be able to kill a high level fractal/dungeon boss by themselves…as they aren’t doing enough damage to counter its base regeneration + any boons it may have. This is regardless of the amount of time they survive during the encounter. Its clear, just by that one issue, that they need beserkers to carry them. Nerfing berserkers because of care bear tears seems counter intuitive. The opposite action of buffing “support” builds also would be a detriment to the game. I purchased and stayed with this game primarily because there was no hint of the MMO trinity here. No primadonna tanks demanding special privilege and trying to tell everyone else what to do. No healers griping. No one expecting you to heal them so they can faceroll to victory. No one constantly harrassing you to buff them or use a certain buff. I do miss the dps meters though…but that would require more fine tuning of profession balance..so I can see why we don’t have that. In short, I don’t want to go back to the trinity and I have no intention of putting any time/effort into a game that decides to revisit that game model. I like being independent of healers and tanks. This is a superior MMO format, don’t revert back over a decade of progress because of players who are too lazy/incapable of dodging. Players who cry for nerfs instead of adapting to game mechanics…that is never a winning formula for a good MMO to nerf the good things.

If you really want to improve the experience…reduce the one shot mechanics in pve. This is what really drives the stacking mentality. It is only common sense to stack so that people don’t have to run a country mile to get to you and rez downed players. Stacking does serve multiple purposes though: easier to pick up downs, more dps up time regardless of zerk or not, compensates for the inverted logic of needing to get mobs/players to stand in a circle (looking at you symbols/consecrations), line of sighting groups so they can’t one shot you from a distance..and setting them up for group cleaves/aoe once they stack around the corner. Adding more fight mechanics to bosses, that require moving out of melee periodically would break up some of the stacking too. I am personally not too fond of the constant stacking…as I also like to see the whole fight versus only seeing through the clipped models of my own and teammates characters due to terrible camera angles. I also prefer to avoid getting downed at all…even if the stacked group picks me right back up…as that means I have lost my entire bloodlust stack. Having a 25 stack of bloodlust is like a point of pride as a beserker when you make it to a boss…means you haven’t been downed recently.