Why full berserker and full offense?
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but the only unavoidable damage in this game is in lava and jade maw’s agony. Now assuming a player is skilled enough to avoid all decent sized damage, that renders defensive stats to be a complete waste. In a thief’s case, with the help of our monstrous arsenal of evades, black powder for trash mobs, signet of malice, and life steal food, surviving any encounter in full berserkers without ever going down is entirely possible and actually fairly easy to do. In fact it actually becomes easier to survive in berserkers when the content becomes progressively harder (fractals) because the mobs hit harder and will more then likely kill you nearly instantly whether your in full sentinels or full berserkers.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but the only unavoidable damage in this game is in lava and jade maw’s agony. Now assuming a player is skilled enough to avoid all decent sized damage, that renders defensive stats to be a complete waste. In a thief’s case, with the help of our monstrous arsenal of evades, black powder for trash mobs, signet of malice, and life steal food, surviving any encounter in full berserkers without ever going down is entirely possible and actually fairly easy to do. In fact it actually becomes easier to survive in berserkers when the content becomes progressively harder (fractals) because the mobs hit harder and will more then likely kill you nearly instantly whether your in full sentinels or full berserkers.
Maybe it’s me, but I from what I’ve experienced there are a lot of things (in high level fractals for example, but even some harder boss fights) that will drop you very low with something around 2500 armor and 15-17k hp while one-shotting you with anything less.
I’ve kept groups standing because I can survive those occasional hits and proceed to fully heal myself with the aid of stealth. Under perfect circumstances with perfect skills, I can see the argument for berserker. But that’s the thing about the more challenging content, it’s not organized, it’s chaotic and you WILL get hit.
(edited by Ivonbeton.6814)
I don’t run full zerk, but I find that full zerk is the way to go for some things like the Queen’s Gauntlet. The fights are timed , 2 minutes each so not using full zerk can be a disadvantage~!
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but the only unavoidable damage in this game is in lava and jade maw’s agony. Now assuming a player is skilled enough to avoid all decent sized damage, that renders defensive stats to be a complete waste. In a thief’s case, with the help of our monstrous arsenal of evades, black powder for trash mobs, signet of malice, and life steal food, surviving any encounter in full berserkers without ever going down is entirely possible and actually fairly easy to do. In fact it actually becomes easier to survive in berserkers when the content becomes progressively harder (fractals) because the mobs hit harder and will more then likely kill you nearly instantly whether your in full sentinels or full berserkers.
Maybe it’s me, but I from what I’ve experienced there are a lot of things (in high level fractals for example, but even some harder boss fights) that will drop you very low with something around 2500 toughness and 15-17k hp while one-shotting you with anything less.
I’ve kept groups standing because I can survive those occasional hits and proceed to fully heal myself with the aid of stealth. Under perfect circumstances with perfect skills, I can see the argument for berserker. But that’s the thing about the more challenging content, it’s not organized, it’s chaotic and you WILL get hit.
Actually the more challenging the content is (typically) the more organized and coordinated a party is because people are less willing to invest time in hard content if they’re unlikely to finish in a timely manner.
edit: I forgot to mention that if you run with pugs, especially on fotm 48, they’re going to run the most optimal classes they can because there isn’t a way to measure a players skill if you don’t know them.
(edited by Clumsy.6257)
Well 5 / 10 of your skills are offensive. And zerkers is effective because it boosts the effectiveness of at least 1/2 of your skill bar.
If you go defense, on the other hand, it’ll only help you with your healing skill and probably 1/2 utility skills. It doesn’t help that healing scales very poorly.
Actually the more challenging the content is (typically) the more organized and coordinated a party is because people are less willing to invest time in hard content if they’re unlikely to finish in a timely manner.
edit: I forgot to mention that if you run with pugs, especially on fotm 48, they’re going to run the most optimal classes they can because there isn’t a way to measure a players skill if you don’t know them.
I disagree with that. That’s called having something on farm. If you are struggling with difficult content, things are chaotic and you are trying to create order in that chaos.
I feel that at that point, it’s way more important to stay alive than to do 10-20% more damage. The bare minimum for me seems to be a lot of points in acrobatics and or SA at that point.
And I agree, there isn’t a way to measure a player his skill. But there will never be one, if there comes a DPS meter, people will just mistake DPS for skill like they do in WoW. But it’s really not that hard to gauge if a player is good or not imo. Usually becomes clear rather fast.
About optimal classes, that’s another thing I don’t buy. Optimal setups, sure, but the options are near limitless. I’ve been happily surprised by people I thought were going to be dead weight because of their builds.
Looks like I’m alone in this then. :p
Well 5 / 10 of your skills are offensive. And zerkers is effective because it boosts the effectiveness of at least 1/2 of your skill bar.
If you go defense, on the other hand, it’ll only help you with your healing skill and probably 1/2 utility skills. It doesn’t help that healing scales very poorly.
That’s some flawed reasoning though. Defense will always be more passive than offense in most games. It includes both passive and active mitigation while offense rarely is passive. On top of that you forget that a lot of thief traits latch on to skills like stealth and/or dodges.
I agree that +healing doesn’t scale too well. But when it comes to Divinity runes, the added toughness and vitality seems more than a fair deal to me.
(edited by Ivonbeton.6814)
Content gets hard via:
1. monsters take longer to kill (higher toughness, higher hp)
2. monsters hit harder
How stats get used:
1. offensive stats require you hit your target
2. defensive stats require you get hit
If you go defensive in any way (full, partial), the only time you are actually using those stats is when you are getting hit. The more difficult the content (say higher lv fractals) the harder the hits become (and the chances of getting 1shot increases).
At some point those hits will kill you no matter how high those defenses are (since your stats won’t scale with the difficulty and there is a cap to how much defensive stats you can have). At that point the goal is to avoid the hit entirely. At that point you may as well be naked, since 0% of your defensive stats are getting used when you are not getting hit.
If you go full def, 100% of your stats aren’t used (not really since at least 1 stat is offensive on all gear).
If you go half def, 50% of your stats aren’t used (not really since at least 1 stat is offensive on all gear).
So why aim for a stat that you actively won’t use (since the goal is to not get hit)?
Well, dungeons and such aren’t overly demanding. It’s always best to just go full offense to capitalize on your DPS potential. Spamming 20k+ Backstabs on Arah bosses is pretty fun. Thief has a pretty high skill floor in dungeons, however. Positional awareness is more important than on other classes and your HP pool is low enough that many big hits that a warrior could take 2-3 of, will kill you in one.
There’s just no reason to run anything other than full Berserker unless you need a crutch. I cry when I see thieves running around in PVT gear because it tells me they don’t know how to play the class/game. Sure, there are many many bad players running around in Berserker gear, but that at least shows that they could have the desire to become a good player, using good gear.
(edited by The Mexican Cookie.3690)
One of the reasons thieves die fast or often in dungeons PUG, is because the party has no teamwork / strategy.
How many times did you corner pull into blind field trash mobs just to have a guardian or mesmer knock them back as soon as they enter in it xD Or you drop SR to ress someone and the person attacked by boss runs straight into it to cancel the ress and get everyone cleaved etc.
I have no problem surviving in full zerker as long as the group is competent. On top of that you can’t make a solid defensive build with high toughness and HP, and good damage (like a condi engineer or necro for example) on a thief.
One of the reasons thieves die fast or often in dungeons PUG, is because the party has no teamwork / strategy.
How many times did you corner pull into blind field trash mobs just to have a guardian or mesmer knock them back as soon as they enter in it xD Or you drop SR to ress someone and the person attacked by boss runs straight into it to cancel the ress and get everyone cleaved etc.
I have no problem surviving in full zerker as long as the group is competent. On top of that you can’t make a solid defensive build with high toughness and HP, and good damage (like a condi engineer or necro for example) on a thief.
You make a good point. I guess zerker is better when playing with good players while some added survivability can be useful when playing with a bad PuG. Content automatically gets difficult when your team is bad.
I still feel like the trade-off with divinity runes and a few Valkyrie pieces can be very much worth it. You can get upwards of 16-17k health and somewhere around 2500 toughness in exchange for 10% crit chance and 100/200 power.
Im running full divinity runes on my zerker armor. Zerker stats on offsets, but with some vit on accessory set. The defensives (if needed) I just pick and adjust from traits, than from gear. This is a nice tradeoff as well If you only have 1 set and play WvW occasionally.
I used to be a power ranger, now not sure anymore
No is not really. 16-17k hp even with 2.5k toughness means nothing when you take a hit from a boss or several trash mobs (because of pug bad position / spreading out the mobs / not using abilities / skills etc).
Your survival as a thief is all about timing, position, awareness and reaction. That’s why we have so many evades on weapon sets, as well as on whitdraw, roll for initiative, so many stun breakers (and teleports) etc. Not to mention many boss hits knock you down for several seconds, which means even if you can survive the hit, you will still have to use a different skill to teleport to a safe location to not get OHK from next attack – meaning is best always to not get hit at all.
Example: when am doing dungeons on my engi, 18k hp, 2.7k armor, I always avoid getting hit because I have no stunbreakers and no teleports, so even if I theoretically could get a hit without flopping, I better make sure I don’t xD
No is not really. 16-17k hp even with 2.5k toughness means nothing when you take a hit from a boss or several trash mobs (because of pug bad position / spreading out the mobs / not using abilities / skills etc).
Your survival as a thief is all about timing, position, awareness and reaction. That’s why we have so many evades on weapon sets, as well as on whitdraw, roll for initiative, so many stun breakers (and teleports) etc. Not to mention many boss hits knock you down for several seconds, which means even if you can survive the hit, you will still have to use a different skill to teleport to a safe location to not get OHK from next attack – meaning is best always to not get hit at all.
Example: when am doing dungeons on my engi, 18k hp, 2.7k armor, I always avoid getting hit because I have no stunbreakers and no teleports, so even if I theoretically could get a hit without flopping, I better make sure I don’t xD
I’m not sure why, but I seem to have different experiences than you guys. I rarely ever go down in dungeons or fractals (if ever) unless my group whipes, but I can’t count the amount of times I got knocked to 1k or 2k health. Ofcourse dodging and stunbreaking is massively important, especially on a thief, but not every ability or attack is being telegraphed.
Defensive thief skills tend to avoid damage entirely. This could be smokescreen, blind, daze/stuns/venoms, evades, cripples, etc. It’s possible to burn through your defensive skills and kill your enemies with a high damage build before much damage needs to be soaked with vitality and toughness.
When you move onto dungeons and other content this theory can break down. Playing a zerker thief in a slow killing group can leave you exposed.
The thing is for a thief in order to achieve the stats to survive such a hit with 1-2k hp, you are giving up all of your offensive stats, which means pretty much you don’t justify your spot in the group.
There are very few fights where you need to outlast the content and wear it down.
For example let’s look at AC ghostbuster final boss. The difference between downing the boss with 3 or less traps and having to reload the traps several times is huge.
I also don’t recall (please correct me if I am wrong) any encounter where you must have a gear check regarding survival and ability to take that 1 hit which you can’t avoid (ie: scripted attacks which can’t be avoided, blocked, absorbed, interrupted etc).
I would love to have a viable build in pve with more survival as well as having more skill based encounters where different utilities matter and group synergy is more important than stacking X or Y and burning target down asap, but until this changes thief is pretty much limited to D/D for single target where backstab can be used reliable, P/P for ranged only fights, and S/P for any fights involving adds as part of encounter.
The thing is for a thief in order to achieve the stats to survive such a hit with 1-2k hp, you are giving up all of your offensive stats, which means pretty much you don’t justify your spot in the group.
There are very few fights where you need to outlast the content and wear it down.
For example let’s look at AC ghostbuster final boss. The difference between downing the boss with 3 or less traps and having to reload the traps several times is huge.
I also don’t recall (please correct me if I am wrong) any encounter where you must have a gear check regarding survival and ability to take that 1 hit which you can’t avoid (ie: scripted attacks which can’t be avoided, blocked, absorbed, interrupted etc).
I would love to have a viable build in pve with more survival as well as having more skill based encounters where different utilities matter and group synergy is more important than stacking X or Y and burning target down asap, but until this changes thief is pretty much limited to D/D for single target where backstab can be used reliable, P/P for ranged only fights, and S/P for any fights involving adds as part of encounter.
I think you are overstating it. With divinity runes and half or full valkyrie gear you give up roughly 100 power and 5-10% crit chance depending on the amount of valkyrie items. In return you get 2-3k health extra, 60 toughness and about 60+ healing. Especially with diminishing returns, isn’t this worth considering?
From what I’ve seen when I test it, the damage is close to the same.
The thing is for a thief in order to achieve the stats to survive such a hit with 1-2k hp, you are giving up all of your offensive stats, which means pretty much you don’t justify your spot in the group.
There are very few fights where you need to outlast the content and wear it down.
For example let’s look at AC ghostbuster final boss. The difference between downing the boss with 3 or less traps and having to reload the traps several times is huge.
I also don’t recall (please correct me if I am wrong) any encounter where you must have a gear check regarding survival and ability to take that 1 hit which you can’t avoid (ie: scripted attacks which can’t be avoided, blocked, absorbed, interrupted etc).
I would love to have a viable build in pve with more survival as well as having more skill based encounters where different utilities matter and group synergy is more important than stacking X or Y and burning target down asap, but until this changes thief is pretty much limited to D/D for single target where backstab can be used reliable, P/P for ranged only fights, and S/P for any fights involving adds as part of encounter.
I think you are overstating it. With divinity runes and half or full valkyrie gear you give up roughly 100 power and 5-10% crit chance depending on the amount of valkyrie items. In return you get 2-3k health extra, 60 toughness and about 60+ healing. Especially with diminishing returns, isn’t this worth considering?
From what I’ve seen when I test it, the damage is close to the same.
the differences may not be a lot but the fact is that your reducing your offensive stats to take defensive stats when they aren’t needed, so why would you take them at all?
I still don’t get it. There are rarely any timed fights in this game. The biggest challenges in the game come from fights where you have to sustain and survive through constant damage. Why would you go all out damage? For an acceptable decrease in damage (granted it’s noticable) you can get impressive survivability.
Going full zerker on jewelery makes sense, but I don’t see what beserker + scholar (or ruby orbs) has over a mix of beserker/valkyrie/knight with divinity runes. I feel like atleast 15 in SA (condi removal) is almost too good to pass up unless you are playing S/P or S/D.
Full berserker seems to be better when you want to get something downed fast while a mix is better when you want something downed (aka when you and your group are struggling). So basically you are gearing for the easier content instead of the more challenging content (which is lackluster, I admit).
Am I missing something? I want to be convinced, but when I’m doing harder content, with damage that can’t always be dodged or with a less experienced group of people, I tend to be too busy reviving the downed gc thief to be convinced.
Just because players are level 80 doesn’t mean they are high level players. What I mean is, every level 80 Thief is at different levels. Those who just reach level 80 typically use ranged weapons and survivability because dying is no fun. As they gain more experience and acquire higher level gears, they tend to push the envelop and take more offensive over defensive items. Of course, there are those who simply want to skip this leveling experience and fail (just like a lot of GC Thieves).
The way I see it, the level 80s are divided into 3 levels. The “rare” level, the “exotic” level and the “ascended” level. By having those items, I can gauge their base skill level, of course this is just my way to establishing a base line to give me an idea on what to expect.
So if the group is doing a dungeon speed run, as a level 80 Thief, you need to deal the most damage in the group thus expected that your gear is fine tuned to do as expected. Since the mind set in this type of group is “to kill as fast as possible of be killed”, so typically, the group will vote out non-Berserker, non-Ascended Thieves. For casual dungeon run, typically anything goes since nobody really cares if we wipe 100 times.
About Berserker vs Valkyrie, I personally like Valkyrie since to me, Vitality is more valuable than Precision since I am using S/D and not D/x. My reasoning is simple, better staying power = better prolonged DPS. Berserker brings a lot of burst damage that often causes problem in a group because it generates a lot of hate, especially from a boss, which typically the Thief will go down as a result. Unless the Thief is an ascended thief, he’ll know how to drop hate and not die. The problem with too much damage is that you’ll get aggro too often that a lot of times you’ll find yourself dodging and healing than actually dealing damage, but of course the high level thieves will not have this problem. Since sword attacks already deals a high amount of damage, it would be absurd to push it even further by gearing Berserker. I personally rather maintain a stable DPS with occasional burst damage on demand rather than burst-dodge-burst-dosge-heal, because in the end, the DPS for the whole fight is almost the same if the Berserker thief don’t go down; but if they did, there goes their DPS and the DPS of the one who is rezzing them.
The most balance pieces are the Valkyrie pieces with some Soldier. Someone posted a gear combination that I found to complement my playstyle, it’s a combination of Valkyrie (head+shoulder+hand+feet) and Soldier (chest + legs) pieces. I’m still trying out the runes though since each set brings different things to my playstyle. For condition, definitely Carrior over Rabid, again because Vit is better than Prec.
To summarize, I would never recommend Berseker items to anyone since it requires a high level of playstyle that only the player themselves can decide if they can handle it or not.
TL;DR:
Personal choice.
Instead of Berseker, take Valkyrie
Instead of Knight, take Soldier
Instead of Rabid, take Carrion
(you have to read the wall of text for reasons)
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Just because players are level 80 doesn’t mean they are high level players. What I mean is, every level 80 Thief is at different levels. Those who just reach level 80 typically use ranged weapons and survivability because dying is no fun.
…
About Berserker vs Valkyrie, I personally like Valkyrie since to me, Vitality is more valuable than Precision since I am using S/D and not D/x. My reasoning is simple, better staying power = better prolonged DPS. Berserker brings a lot of burst damage that often causes problem in a group because it generates a lot of hate, especially from a boss, which typically the Thief will go down as a result. Unless the Thief is an ascended thief, he’ll know how to drop hate and not die. The problem with too much damage is that you’ll get aggro too often that a lot of times you’ll find yourself dodging and healing than actually dealing damage, but of course the high level thieves will not have this problem. Since sword attacks already deals a high amount of damage, it would be absurd to push it even further by gearing Berserker. I personally rather maintain a stable DPS with occasional burst damage on demand rather than burst-dodge-burst-dosge-heal, because in the end, the DPS for the whole fight is almost the same if the Berserker thief don’t go down; but if they did, there goes their DPS and the DPS of the one who is rezzing them.
Don’t worry, I’ve read it all. I consider myself to be atleast a fairly good player., atleast at PvE When Fractals came out, I pretty much carried myself and a whole bunch of random players to level 30+. At one point I had over 50 people on my friends list and constantly whispers of people asking if I was starting a group. So I must be doing something right atleast.
The second point you made, is exactly one of the reasons why I value passive mitigation on a thief higher than (what seems to be) most people. I find that I can tank some more damage without needing to stop melee dps, heal up, or roll away. If this is the case, would my dps really be lower than with full zerker gear? At one point I was running signet of malice with a sigil of blood and even with my kitten precision I could heal up a lot of damage without the need to avoid it, thus increasing my dps. I’ve had many Boss fights where I felt a lot more useful because of this setup.
Perhaps there is no definite answer and different gear sets are better at different situations, but I think there are some real questions there about the current “zerker or go home” meta.
(edited by Ivonbeton.6814)
Funny thing, earlier today I actually made myself a valkyrie set since I changed the build to get fury.
Anyway, there is something that I don’t think anyone else mentioned, but I only skimmed so forgive me if I missed it:
Dead enemies deal no damage.
That is the main appeal of going with full zerker or full offense for any and every build. Though you can get more survivability with other gear, the fact is that the longer an enemy is alive, the more damage they do. So if you can choose between taking twice as many hits or killing an enemy twice as fast, killing an enemy twice as fast will give you roughly the same amount of survivability.
There are couple of fringe benefits, too. Killing things faster means you get more money and materials at a faster rate. You can also do more, since less of your time is occupied by hitting against a wall of HP. In contrast, when building for defense you aren’t accomplishing anything spectacular while doing so.
Probably the biggest advantage to zerker is that defensive stats aren’t needed for most content. I’ve been running a zerker thief for awhile in dungeons, and I can take on multiple silver mobs and champions alike. The better I get, the less defensive stats I need, and the more I can contribute because of it.
Don’t worry, I’ve read it all. I consider myself to be atleast a fairly good player., atleast at PvE When Fractals came out, I pretty much carried myself and a whole bunch of random players to level 30+. At one point I had over 50 people on my friends list and constantly whispers of people asking if I was starting a group. So I must be doing something right atleast.
I believe that if you go pass level 20 in fractal that it is a commendable achievement. I know a lot of people who simply don’t have the patience to go beyond level 14, that is including me. :/
I stopped running fractals because of that, it’s simply not for me.
The second point you made, is exactly one of the reasons why I value passive mitigation on a thief higher than (what seems to be) most people. I find that I can tank some more damage without needing to stop melee dps, heal up, or roll away. If this is the case, would my dps really be lower than with full zerker gear? At one point I was running signet of malice with a sigil of blood and even with my kitten precision I could heal up a lot of damage without the need to avoid it, thus increasing my dps. I’ve had many Boss fights where I felt a lot more useful because of this setup.
Perhaps there is no definite answer and different gear sets are better at different situations, but I think there are some real questions there about the current “zerker or go home” meta.
Yeah, I frequent the Thief Forum and I find a lot of different build that works well for them. I don’t run the typical build myself.
As for the meta, I’ve mentioned this already. The groups that demands it wants fast runs, which I simply don’t understand. If it takes 1hr to find a ‘zerker for a 5 minute run (exaggerated example) and you can find a non-zerker in 5 minutes for a 1hr run, to me, it doesn’t make any difference. Even if we didn’t finish the fractal, it still beats the dead wait time (main reason I don’t do raids in other game, but that’s another story) because I’m getting loots.
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Blood put it pretty well, that’s really all there is to it. That’s why there’s no need for a full support character (like a staff ele with full water and group utilities / buffs), because no matter how many boons and boons uptime he can provide for the group, he can’t make up for the lack of dps.
If you compare to WoW for example, where you had the trinity of tank healer dps, with a group of 5 having 3 spots for dps, I can assure you that the said DPS were not speccing / gearing for survival but to maximize dps – that was their sole contribution and role in the group, and the better they performed it, the better the run would be (less damage taken by everyone since stuff died fast, less healing to do, less time spent between pulls to recover resources etc).
Think of it this way: if I can PW (or backstab w/e) one mob to death taking no damage, why would I want to do 2 PW (or backstabs) to kill same mob, just to get a bit more toughness and vit?
Funny thing, earlier today I actually made myself a valkyrie set since I changed the build to get fury.
Anyway, there is something that I don’t think anyone else mentioned, but I only skimmed so forgive me if I missed it:
Dead enemies deal no damage.
That is the main appeal of going with full zerker or full offense for any and every build. Though you can get more survivability with other gear, the fact is that the longer an enemy is alive, the more damage they do. So if you can choose between taking twice as many hits or killing an enemy twice as fast, killing an enemy twice as fast will give you roughly the same amount of survivability.
There are couple of fringe benefits, too. Killing things faster means you get more money and materials at a faster rate. You can also do more, since less of your time is occupied by hitting against a wall of HP. In contrast, when building for defense you aren’t accomplishing anything spectacular while doing so.
Probably the biggest advantage to zerker is that defensive stats aren’t needed for most content. I’ve been running a zerker thief for awhile in dungeons, and I can take on multiple silver mobs and champions alike. The better I get, the less defensive stats I need, and the more I can contribute because of it.
For most content I guess you could call defensive stats indeed just lazy, but I’ve never felt like my damage gets so much worse when I take 3 zerker + 3 valk and divinity runes compared to going full zerker with e.g ruby orbs. At the same time I did feel like my survivability improved. Ofcourse I’m not advocating going full defensive, but I can’t see how taking a few pieces of defensive gear will hurt you.
Funny thing, earlier today I actually made myself a valkyrie set since I changed the build to get fury.
Anyway, there is something that I don’t think anyone else mentioned, but I only skimmed so forgive me if I missed it:
Dead enemies deal no damage.
That is the main appeal of going with full zerker or full offense for any and every build. Though you can get more survivability with other gear, the fact is that the longer an enemy is alive, the more damage they do. So if you can choose between taking twice as many hits or killing an enemy twice as fast, killing an enemy twice as fast will give you roughly the same amount of survivability.
Dead players also deal no damage. :/
Also when you go down, someone in your party has to heal you and that someone will neither deal damage or use any support skills. In the end you just became a liability.
Read my post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-full-berserker-and-full-offense/first#post2612791
I gave some reasons in there.
There are couple of fringe benefits, too. Killing things faster means you get more money and materials at a faster rate. You can also do more, since less of your time is occupied by hitting against a wall of HP. In contrast, when building for defense you aren’t accomplishing anything spectacular while doing so.
Probably the biggest advantage to zerker is that defensive stats aren’t needed for most content. I’ve been running a zerker thief for awhile in dungeons, and I can take on multiple silver mobs and champions alike. The better I get, the less defensive stats I need, and the more I can contribute because of it.
Yes, that’s one of my points in my post. Each level 80 thief IMO are tiered differently.
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.
Well, dungeons and such aren’t overly demanding. It’s always best to just go full offense to capitalize on your DPS potential. Spamming 20k+ Backstabs on Arah bosses is pretty fun. Thief has a pretty high skill floor in dungeons, however. Positional awareness is more important than on other classes and your HP pool is low enough that many big hits that a warrior could take 2-3 of, will kill you in one.
There’s just no reason to run anything other than full Berserker unless you need a crutch. I cry when I see thieves running around in PVT gear because it tells me they don’t know how to play the class/game. Sure, there are many many bad players running around in Berserker gear, but that at least shows that they could have the desire to become a good player, using good gear.
Funny thing, earlier today I actually made myself a valkyrie set since I changed the build to get fury.
Anyway, there is something that I don’t think anyone else mentioned, but I only skimmed so forgive me if I missed it:
Dead enemies deal no damage.
That is the main appeal of going with full zerker or full offense for any and every build. Though you can get more survivability with other gear, the fact is that the longer an enemy is alive, the more damage they do. So if you can choose between taking twice as many hits or killing an enemy twice as fast, killing an enemy twice as fast will give you roughly the same amount of survivability.
There are couple of fringe benefits, too. Killing things faster means you get more money and materials at a faster rate. You can also do more, since less of your time is occupied by hitting against a wall of HP. In contrast, when building for defense you aren’t accomplishing anything spectacular while doing so.
Probably the biggest advantage to zerker is that defensive stats aren’t needed for most content. I’ve been running a zerker thief for awhile in dungeons, and I can take on multiple silver mobs and champions alike. The better I get, the less defensive stats I need, and the more I can contribute because of it.
For most content I guess you could call defensive stats indeed just lazy, but I’ve never felt like my damage gets so much worse when I take 3 zerker + 3 valk and divinity runes compared to going full zerker with e.g ruby orbs. At the same time I did feel like my survivability improved. Ofcourse I’m not advocating going full defensive, but I can’t see how taking a few pieces of defensive gear will hurt you.
I wouldn’t call it lazy. For anyone new to the game or new to content, I would recommend defensive stats, since they provide some leeway in combat. You can only run zerker well when you are both experienced in combat, and have experienced teammates as well. I first discovered this by accident, when I noticed that I could run game content equally well in Magic Find gear as I could Knights gear.
Anyway, what you are describing is a perfectly fine fine tactic where you hybridize equipment to go mostly offensive, but not pure offensive. I do something similar on my Necromancer, where the weapons and trinkets are zerker, but the armor is knight. You take a minuscule hit to damage to get a comparatively bigger boost to durability.
EDIT: Part Two!
Dead players also deal no damage. :/
Also when you go down, someone in your party has to heal you and that someone will neither deal damage or use any support skills. In the end you just became a liability.
Read my post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Why-full-berserker-and-full-offense/first#post2612791
I gave some reasons in there.
There is a counter-point to this. There are many enemy groups and bosses in the game that deal so much damage that even in PVT gear, you’ll end up going down in a few attacks anyway. There is little distinction between offensive gear and defensive gear survivability here, where death is decided almost wholly by positioning and tactics.
The only time that you’ll lose out on damage from being downed in more conventional content is when you are downed for more time than you are up, or roughly 50% of the time. It is only here that you match the offensive power of full defensive gear, but only if defensive gear doesn’t go down, either. This is only an issue in dungeons and specific events, where otherwise a player almost never dies no matter what they wear.
(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)
That’s like saying a d/d thief goes SB on last boss in CoF p1, and he won’t die (unless afk and eats a channel or doesn’t have dodge bound), so his survival is extreme, while he plinks trick shots at boss. Meanwhile another thief backstab rotations on boss, and gets unlucky / lag spike w/e and gets downed at a point. Am pretty sure by that point the damage the melee thief put out on boss won’t be reached by the SB thief even if the boss would be there for another 5 mins.
Ressing is not a problem if your group knows what’s doing (the most hated person turns the boss to face away / kite him from the downed player, instead of running toward him ^^ etc).
^SB is a horrible range weapon for Thieves btw, even more so against bosses.
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
PvE – DD/CS/AC – If that didn’t work, roll a Reaper or Revenant.