Guild Wars 2

Silferas.3841:

I think we can all agree that increasing the difficulty of PVE content (generally, not selectively) is the answer.

We don’t all agree, because your statement is only half a proposal.

If you increase the difficulty, then increase the rewards too. Because right now, the only “reward” of using meta builds is a few extra minutes. Time is worth something, granted, but it’s hardly an embarrassment of riches.

But honestly, the real problem with this thread and this entire discussion is the faulty premise that there is a problem with the meta. At the risk of hyperbole, I haven’t seen one cogent explanation of why there is a problem. Change for the sake of change is stupid.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Suggestion1: Add more Immobilize and Weakness to monsters
The one line of defense that all zerkers use: Dodge. If you stop them from doing that to avoid every single attack and more and force them to take damage and be killed, then they will learn to avoid zerker and add more survival gear.

Translation: Remove the availability of active (high-skill) defenses and increase dependance on passive (low-skill) defenses, thereby lowering the skill cap.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Suggestion2: Improve Toughness
What is the point of ever taking the Toughness stats if the boss is going to 1-hit me anyway?

Translation: Make passive (low-skill) defenses more effective, thereby raising the skill floor.

We get it … you want the game to be easier, for you.

Terrasque.8735:

You seem to be stating for a fact that the zerk meta fix will lower the needed skillcap, while most suggestions I’ve seen are based around increasing the skill needed to play zerker well.

Let me do a simple mechanic example. What if some bosses had a reflection shield, that would reflect a certain percent of the damage done back to whoever did the attack, and the shield would be down for a period if the boss was successfully interrupted.

You’d either have to take pauses to avoid lethal damage, gear/spec for handling more incoming damage, have support to keep you alive, or use CC properly. Now my question is, in that example, how would it make things easier than it is now?

All this would do is slow down the amount of time it takes a skillful group of DPS-geared players to complete the content. Consequently, what you’re really doing is nerfing the rewards of skillful play, because the only reward for skillful play in GW2 is the ability to complete content quickly and efficiently.

Moreover, requiring players to have CC skills in order to efficiently complete content is little more than an attempt to brute force the meta in a direction that suits your playstyle.

These suggestions don’t address any problem, because there is no problem to begin with. Some people just wish the meta was different. At least be honest about it.

Aza.2105:

For the most part they have created a self imposed hierarchy in regards to what gear a person has. With zerker being the good player and most skillful and all else being bad players. But like I said, this is self imposed.

You don’t make the meta. The meta makes you.

Aza.2105:

While I can understand the element of skill you are trying to illustrate, its hard to justify that as being skill when the enemies can not adequately fight back. If they could then zerkers would find themselves downed often, just like they do in pvp and wvw.

Why? Why should skillful play be punished? Why should smart and timely execution of the players skills not result in more rewarding gameplay?

Lowering a game’s skillcap — especially one that is already relatively low to begin with — is bad design. Until people take this into consideration, they are just arguing around the issue.

Aza.2105:

So how is it possible to have a higher skill cap when in most cases mobs do not have a chance to fully carry out their attacks against zerker builds?

The mobs do carry out their attacks, but they can be mitigated by skillful play. Dodges, aegis, blinds, blocks, invulns, and reflections don’t stop the mobs from attacking. And to be effective, the player has to choose the right skill for the right situation and deploy it at the right time. These are high-skill defenses (at least as high as the GW2 skillcap goes).

Further, your post illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the “zerker” meta. The meta isn’t about 100% damage. Every meta build for every class calls for team support elements, even at the cost of personal damage output.

What meta excludes is passive defensive traits. Passive, as in “does not require the player to execute a skill to be effective.” Toughness, vitality, regeneration, auto-proc’ing defenses: these are low-skill defensive traits. Not an insult; a fact.

A well-reasoned analysis, but I disagree that player skill has no part of this discussion. Objectively, the “zerker” playstyle has a higher skillcap because the active defenses must be deployed correctly (type, timing, placement) to gain the benefits of front-loaded DPS. Failure to correctly use the active defense in a highly skillful manner typically results in the defeat of the player and/or team (and corresponding loss of money and time).

By contrast, more defensive playstyles have a lower skill requirement because there is greater room for error in the execution of the available active defenses. This is not an elitist statement, or an insult to lower skilled players. It is an objective fact, and frankly a positive testament to the game’s design that all content can be completed by players of varying skill levels.

But it is a basic tenant of game design that higher skill should be rewarded. Lowering the skillcap — or raising the skill floor — eliminates the fun of getting better at the game.

This is why I disagree with your premise that there is a problem with the Berserker meta. Nerfing Berserker gear or raising the effectiveness of defensive playstyles lowers the skillcap, making the game less rewarding for skillful play. Currently there is positive correlation between higher skilled play and player reward (measured in any number of metrics, including gold/hr and time to complete content). To reduce or eliminate that correlation by lowering the skillcap would be a significant mistake, in my opinion.

CptAurellian.9537:

Wrong. Knight does yield more damage than PVT.

Comparing the Effective Power of a 10/25/0/10/25 build between Knights and Soldiers, you are correct that Knights does more damage — about 7%. The point about crits is worth noting as well. By contrast, Soldiers gives a lot more room for error, both from direct and condition damage. So it really depends on how big you want/need your training wheels to be.

By the way, Valkyrie gear has about 14% better EP than Knights in the same build. So if all you really need is the smallest set of training wheels possible, Valks would be the way to go.

CptAurellian.9537:

As for the rest, who cares for gear in an open world zerg? Tequatl is the only one where you’d notice some usefulness of PVT and even that can be done easily in zerker.

Anything can be done in Zerk. Anything can be done in Soldiers. Anything can be done in Clerics too. But if you’re going to spend the money/tokens on training-wheel armor, Soldiers gear has the most usefulness outside dungeons.

Someone made a solid analytical comparison in the Guardian forums, and the basic conclusion was that Soldiers (PVT) and Knights are essentially equivalent from a damage standpoint. See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/visualized-dps-difference-between-specs/3202862. There were some critiques of the methodology, but its the best comparison I’ve seen.

For better or worse, this data doesn’t support the long-held theory that Knights is the better “training wheels” armor. They are about equal. By corollary, both PVT and Knights are equally bad as compared to full Berserker. However, old misconceptions die hard, and people cling tightly to the notion that Knights is somehow better than PVT.

Ironically, between the two (Knights and Soldiers), PVT is far and away the more useful set. For the world bosses against who you cannot crit (e.g., Teq, Shatt, Golem, SB, etc.) PVT is the optimal armor selection. So when you do graduate to Zerk (and you absolutely should, as quickly as possible) the old PVT set still has a decent amount of value. Knights — not so much.

Finnway.2183:

If you’re playing in a group with fury you can swap to Unscathed Contender and Scholar Runes.

So if you get lucky enough to have even one Warrior, Elementalist, or even Engineer, in your group, then he says to ignore his video and run a different build.

Check. Will do.

Calls it a build for PUG groups, but as far I can see it’s more likely to get you kicked from PUG groups.

Recommends that Guardian play at 1200 range? Kick.

DPS weapon is a slow, single-target weapon? Kick.

Missing: no Wall of Reflection, no Purging Flames, no Master of Consecrations, no Inspired Virtues, no might generation, no Renewed Focus, no Absolute Resolution. Kick.

Remember, our best damage mitigation skills are blinds and blocks.

Number of on-demand blinds:
meta = 5
Nemisis = 2

Number of on-demand blocks:
meta = 6 (3 party-wide)
Nemisis = 1

I’m not even going to go into the precision over-stacking (making both Fury and banners worthless), the weird trait selections (Kindled Zeal? Valorous Defense?), the bad sigil selections, and the questionable math.

tl;dr Nemisis says at the beginning of the video that he doesn’t know the Guardian class. Is there anything more that needs to be said?

ComeAndGetThem.3152:

Can someone explain what is the difference between group and dungeon creator?

I thought that both are the same and it is the one that creates the new group on LFG.

Further, there is no such thing as the group creator, group owner, or group leader. No special imprimatur is given to any particular member of the party, other than the person who opens the dungeon. People who might claim any rights to “my group” or “my LFG” are making things up.

Agony.3542:

Uhm full zerker never was the “most optimal way” to gear your warrior. A mix of Zerk/Assasins was better anyway if you were able to maintain 25 stacks of might. That however is still often times refered to as “Zerker” since assasins wont provide any defense either. So basically full Zerk or better full damage is still the best warrior, even with ascended gear.

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Flissy.4093:

Zerker isn’t the only way to PvE, but it is objectively the best if you’re skilled enough

December 9th called and wants it’s meta back. Full zerker isn’t the objectively best warrior armor since ascended gear came out.

Skritt! I’m Hit!

Anicetus.1253:

Three people are capable of messing two others up pretty often. Alphard, Lupicus, Wraithlord, Rumblus, Howling King, Mage Crusher, Hunter, Spider Queen, etc.

I get that there are fights where the actions of others in the group can doom the attempt, but Howling King seems like a extremely poor example. That you wiped eight times in a row almost makes it sound like you were being intentionally trolled, rather than having anything to do with builds or skill.

JMar.3254:

There are many situations like this. Spider queen. If only 2 people know to stay stacked in the corner, those 3 will kill the group. If it’s just two people, it may take longer, but will not wipe.

You seemed to have missed the point. Unlike the Spider Queen poison pools, the graveling adds in the Howling King fight are spawned regardless of whether the group fights in a melee stack. Consequently, the key to consistently defeating the boss is where in the room to stage the fight in order to maximize the likelihood of a fire ring appearing between the graveling spawn location (east side) and the fight.

So to reiterate, I don’t see how someone capable of duo’ing the fight would have additional difficulty killing the boss with other players in the group, even if those players are “bad.” Perhaps there is a mechanic of the fight of which I am unaware.

JMar.3254:

Two people who know to kite the gravelings to the fire quickly, will hold the aggro, and easily kill them off.

If there are more people, they can’t control the aggro. The gravelings will now pile up, not die in the fire, and by the time the 3 pugs are dead you will now have 20 gravelings instead of 4/5

Sounds more like a issue of not knowing where to stand, rather than anything to do with builds or skill. If you fight the boss along the western wall (particularly in the NW corner) there is essentially zero chance of that many gravelings making it to the spot of the fight. I don’t think I’ve had a single group wipe on AC1 since I started to tell my party to fight in that corner and ping the spot on the minimap. Seems crazy to hear that someone wiped eight times in a row.

Anicetus.1253:

In AC p1, we (a pug team) failed on howling king like 5 times. Someone left, i invited a guildie. Three more attempts, all failing. I’m telling the three pugs to stay out of fight and they leave the dungeon. Duo’ing the boss first attempt.

If you could duo the boss, why couldn’t you defeat it with the three pugs in the fight? I’m not sure how their inclusion (and apparent deaths) would make it harder for you and your guildmate.

Kelnis.1829:

snip

Again, I humbly request that folks include Knight’s in these charts. I’m honestly curious to see how it stacks up.

fadeaway.2807:

Essentially all I’m trying to do here is prove the rather large gap between builds focusing on the damage percentage traits vs builds focusing on honor or valor.

Your chart says more about the effect of taking Radiance deep, rather than saying a whole lot about Honor or Valor.

There’s a named human in there sometimes. Petra from the personal story, if I remember correctly.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

I think he just wants to see the common armor type compared to the other two. That chart includes Soldier vs Zerker. Though I’d be interested too, in seeing if the training wheel version of the meta is decent or not.(since we all knew soldier would be trash, even so its nice to see the number difference).

Exactly. We all know the DPS in Knights is going to be lower. But it would be interesting to see exactly how much lower it actually is across the spectrum of trait builds.

Would like to see Knights armor included in this chart, for comparison purposes.

Anet has neither the time nor inclination to deal with these situations. Kicking is almost always a “he said-she said” debacle, and there is simply no viable way for Anet to adjudicate these disputes in a fair and predictable manner. Consequently they have taken (and likely will continue to take) the path of least resistance: do nothing.

Not that it’ll help tremendously, but I have no issue with raising the kick vote to 3, assuming a full party. For parties of 4 or less, it should stay at 2.

Anicetus.1253:

Aswell as Flashing Blade isn’t a PBAoE

It most certainly is a PBAoE blind. 100% guar-an-teed. Just tested again. Will affect up to 5 mobs, as with all AoE spells. Try it yourself.

Anicetus.1253:

Sword #2 isn’t worth using. Try to use 2435 on greatsword to have vuln for highest amplifiers.

Is this a joke? Even putting aside the teleport/gap closer, Sword #2 is an instant-cast PBOE blind. Why wouldn’t you use an instant-cast AOE blind, especially when VOJ is on cooldown?

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Wow, the only change to Guardians that I actually agreed with, and now they’re reconsidering it….

This is really depressing.

Despite hundreds of well-reasoned posts by Guardians, it appears none of our suggestions are going to change the vast problems inherent in the proposed patch changes. This apparently includes no revert to the ill-conceived changes to Symbol of Swiftness.

Once again, it appears that Guardian simply have no seat at the table when it comes to class traits or balance. Either no one at Anet is willing to speak up for our class, or (worse yet) they just don’t care.

Tongku.5326:

You mean use save yourselves or retreat! for swifness ? Please enlighten me how exactly and precisely do i “think outside the box” as a front runner ? You know, where your utility slots are already being taken up by group buffs and stabilities and combos such as sword#2 arent really an option.

Again, not mid liner, not back side text chat plinker, but as a front runner often with my tag up.

You either didn’t read my post, or it wasn’t clear. I’ll try again:

Staff skill #3 should (a) apply an AoE swiftness buff on the Guardian and allies (duration chosen by the Dev’s, but probably in the 8-12s range), AND (b) cast a ground symbol that damages foes and acts as a light field.

The real problem is that they’te trying to balance the swiftness duration and stick to the clumsy limitations of a pulsing ground symbol. The solution is pretty clear: just make the swiftness boon an AoE, while keeping the ground symbol for the damage and the light field. Then the Dev’s can just pick the swiftness duration that they feel is appropriate.

I realize this means a change from the time-honored ground application that has existed since launch. So what? Just make it work. And its not like Staff doesn’t have other AoE boons (e.g., Empower).

tl;dr: Think outside the box Anet. Let Staff #3 give AoE swiftness without standing in the symbol.

Guardians – New Runes

The answer to every Guardian balancing problem can’t be: “There’s a rune for that.” We can only run one runeset at a time. If you see an underwhelming skillset (and there are plenty on Guardian) please just fix the core skills.

Guardians – Balancing

I don’t agree with using boon duration Guardians as the baseline for balancing skill duration. While I understand that you have to take boon duration into account, my skills should not be sub-par just because I don’t run boon duration.

Guardians – Symbol of Swiftness

In order to run fast, we’re supposed to stop and stand still periodically for extended periods? Don’t you see how frustrating this will be? Counter-intuitive? Harmful to quality of life? Confusing to new players?

If you really want to “normalize” this skill to make it like other symbols then (a) make the swiftness buff from staff #3 a simple AoE (like Empower), and (b) keep the damage (and light field) as a pulsing symbol.

And why doesn’t this symbol add cripple to enemies? It’s the most intuitive thing for a ground-targeted symbol.

Painbow.6059:

to put this straight and people who don’t use AH will agree with me here.

YOU CANNOT BE A DPS AND USE AH

I don’t use AH, and I don’t agree with you. Stop yelling, and stop assuming.

Anet is going to make the final instance 5v5 sPvP, except the hallucination debuff will make your opponents appear to be Nightmare Court, or Bandits, or Molten Alliance, etc. We’ll be tricked into playing sPvP and we won’t even know it.

I could be right … the foreshadowing was in the opening ToN instance.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

What you don’t seem to get is that we could play slow and defensively and use ranged strats and exploits to have “clean” runs where no one goes down. But that would still be slower and less efficient than a run where we go balls out and a person goes down. So yes, despite a run being “messy” here or there they are “consistently successful” in that they are easier and faster than the alternative.

Yeah, you missed the point entirely. When DnT members fail a couple of trash runs, the remainder of the party will maybe laugh and make forum posts while they wait. When PUG players fail a couple of trash runs they often get a vote-kick and a loading screen.

Under the current dungeon system, you can hardly fault the average player for choosing a build with better sustain. A balance of damage, sustain, and support will get the average PUG players to the reward screen of dungeons more consistently than maxing two of the three.

hybrid.5027:

Player ability is more important than player build; but there comes a point where a build will cap a players potential.

And finally the light bulb goes on. Full glass cannon builds are highly susceptible to hard cc and stacked conditions — something rarely seen in boss encounters, but often faced in trash runs. Strengths and weaknesses. Pros and cons.

hybrid.5027:

So before you try to belittle DnT members for failing something on stream, I’d like you to reflect on yourself and think: “Do I play perfectly every run?”

I merely pointed out that a certain build (glass cannon) has a fundamental weakness, even if played by a talented player. Choosing a build that has a weakness doesn’t make someone a poor player, because it’s innate to the game. I wouldn’t call someone a “bad” or belittle anyone for that. No one should. And that’s my point, in a nutshell.

swiftpaw.6397:

let me know when you beat our run speed times in your super awesome pvt stun breaker builds.

Don’t get mad; it was an honest question. I don’t think anyone argues that a full DPS party will have a fast run under perfect conditions and good RNG. Your guild’s videos prove that.

But your livestreams shows a very different story because you can’t edit out all the failed trash runs.

Is the goal “speed” records, or consistently successful dungeon runs? I think a lot of people would say the latter.

swiftpaw.6397:

If you want to hate anyone for the fact that GC is the best build and all other builds are useless in dungeons.. Hate A-Net for designing the game that way.

Watching your guild streams, I’m struck by how many times members of your party are downed or defeated during trash runs because they carry no stun breaks or condition removal, and have no toughness or vitality. I wonder what’s worse for the average pug group? A balanced build that takes a little longer on the bosses, or a GC that can’t get to the boss encounter without dying?

God.3542:

I am not getting a skill point gained from krait obelisk shard, got it yesterday though. I think what caused the bug was charging 25 quarts into 1 charged quartz crystal instead of forcing you to take a skill point first. For now until bug is fix i think it’s best to either not carry any quarts or charge it first at the skill point somewhere else.

Skill point gain once per day according to:
http://dulfy.net/2013/10/30/gw2-tower-of-nightmares-achievement-guide/

Charging quartz has nothing to do with it. The skill point is one-time, per character.

Dulfy is not definitive, nor are the poorly worded patch notes. I strongly suspect its working as intended, but I would be happy to hear otherwise.

Nilkemia.8507:

Isn’t it also per day? I read somewhere that you can get a skill point once per day from it.

The skill point did not reset after the server reset, or after 24 hours. It would appear safe to assume it is one-time only, per character.

One skill point, per character. 10 alts = 10 skill points.

There was no ToN daily the day the ToN was released because the dailies were already issued earlier that day.

In any event, the skill point is one time, per character. It does not reset. So you can get as many skill points as you have characters.

Kincaidia.3192:

Every single other one is a one-time deal.

This will be the same.

Sheesh, use your noodle.

Yes, because this is exactly like all the other dynamic skill points created in your home instance since launch. Also, Anet has been much more liberal about dishing out skill points as a spendable currency.

Bottom line, it’s probably one-time, but no one will know until reset. Certainly not you.

Charming Rogue.8071:

You get 1 SP, after that you can make a Quartz thingy once a day. Basically it works like the other skillpoints spread across the world.

We’ll see after reset this evening. Today is the earliest you could get the shard, and yes it appears to be a normal skill point (one use). But it might reset daily; it might not. We’ll find out in 6 hours.

Redenaz.8631:

Karka are people, too.

If you agree with me, vote The Karka Queen for Lion’s Arch Captain’s Council next time a seat election comes up.

If you really agree with me, meet me in Hooligan’s Route to discuss how we can make a difference. Bring weapons.

This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.

Its all pretty random. Fire Shaman had it, as did no less than three of the vet embers between stages. That was nice. Champion Giant on the Arah steps had it. Foulbear champ had it. All in all, I got the last 12 just by running my daily meta chain.

From what I’ve seen, patch notes are wrong and AFIAK the event does not spawn in Metrica. If you read the description for the Toxic Global Gardener achievement, you will see that Metrica is not listed as a suggested zone.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

25 SP’s is approximately equivalent to 5g… you’d think Anet would have considered that when making the prices.

Who in their right mind would spend 5g plus all those spores when they can just use SP’s.

Closer to 10g, if you use them wisely. So 10g versus 5g + 250 freely farmable widgets. Not looking so obvious now ….