Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m struggling with coming up with a warrior Knight’s/Valkyrie centric build that focuses on nice defense while pulling off crits and maintaining damage. If anyone could set me on the right track I’d appreciate it very much!

Knights armor with scholar rune and zerker trinkets? You can wear a fedora to feel more like a hipster.

I have not played Zerker yet, but I will most likely some time in the future. I do play Celestial though. I like the added defense and HP. One thing to consider, that seems apparent to me, is that boss fights that perform high damage AoE attacks can wipe a crowd of players that have low toughness and HP. I would recomend a test to determine the damage output of such attacks. I usually run into these attacks at shrines. Then determine the rate of attack and probability that you may not be able to dodge it. Apply those points of damage to your build. In addition, consider the DPS to that boss that you perform. Optimize around maximum time alive and maximum damage to the boss, with equal weight to each factor. This should give you a new build with decent DPS that has low risk to survival.

cooperjer.6180:

I usually run into these attacks at shrines.

For open world it really doesn’t matter. But for dungeons zerker becomes more optimal, so your teammates don’t have to carry a buff bot around the dungeon.(Considering you are bringing banner and not a shout warrior…)

Someone else on this forum was asking about a non-zerker build and I put mine out to see…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Looking-for-a-build-PvE/first#post3609552

See if you think it fits for you.

I’m assuming this is for PvE? Because there is no “zerker meta” in PvP… Much the opposite.

If so….. Why? Seriously, what’s the point?

The whole “breaking the meta” thing came up in games where people simply stubbornly stuck to a handful of builds because that’s what’s being done ignoring equally valid options simply because they’re not as commonly used.

… This isn’t the issue in the “PvE Zerker Meta”. The berserker PvE meta didn’t come up because someone tried it, posted it, and everyone just followed along, or because a couple famous players used it. The current PvE meta exists because, simply put: there is no reason to use anything else.

Conditions suck balls in PvE. They’re hard capped so even having more than one in a party significantly reduces the utility of at least one of them (something that doesn’t happen to power builds), and they’re simply not as good at bursting down/sustain DPSing things as power builds… Conditions are designed for wars of attrition, as can be frequently seen on PvP, something that simply does not happen in PvE.

That leaves power builds. However, there’s also no reason to take defensive stats because of the way monsters in this game work. Small trash mobs are insignificant enough that they’re simply plowed through, so you don’t need any defense either ways, and bigger mobs, like champions, hit too hard to be “tanked” any ways. This is because you’re supposed to dodge the big hits, not tank them… However, dodging is something you can do equally with all stats, rendering defensive stats useless in their entirety.

Alas, all that’s left is full offensive power damage: Berserker.

See, this is the problem with “breaking the meta” crap. Unfortunately more often than not “breaking the meta” is just hipsters trying to be different for the sake of being different, without any understanding of why the meta is the way it is in the first place. More often than not the meta is the way it is for a reason.

Before you think of breaking the meta you need to understand the meta. Sometimes there’s no reason to “break the meta” because the meta is the way it is because it’s simply the most best way to do something. QED.

So, to go back to your initial post: there’s no reason to do it. You can complete the PvE content naked, it’s possibly and plenty of people have done it. Berserker is still the best. For a reason.