Guild Wars 2

I have never wanted a Power/Concentration/Ferocity 3-stat combo more than I do right now…

Well, you really don’t tell us what you’re doing so it’s hard to know what you’re doing wrong. However you are putting defensive gear on your war and then complaining it doesn’t kill as fast as your zerker fit alternatives, so… I’d start with that.

Go with full zerker power greatsword spec. Your health pool is giant by default, which basically IS your defense. Other classes have more active mitigation/dodges, war is pretty much just “kill it fast” before your health buffer runs out.

My go-to open world right now is strength 2-2-1, tactics 3-3-2, berserker 1-1-1. Healing signet, for great justice, shake it off, signet of fury, headbutt. Swap for great justice with other things as needed; outrage for more stun breaks, wild blow for more breakbar dmg, etc.

It’s basically the PS war banner build but with a swap of the banners for shouts and PS trait for vigorous shouts. Super easy to change back to standard PS/banner with just a few clicks when you come upon a world boss or group event of any kind. Banners suck for solo world since you are moving too much, plus the standard banner PS build has little stun break and no condi removal.

In the SFTA, when adding profession-specific combat enhancements to the “Adjust team” option, the label for Grace of the Land and Glyph of Empowerment in the Ranger menu are swapped. Selecting “Grace of the Land” (4th option) adds Glyph of Empowerment buff, and selecting “Glyph of Empowerment” (6th option) adds Grace of the Land buff.

In the Special Forces Training Area, the options to “Adjust environment” and “Adjust team” are only available to people who have a commander tag. Players who create a “leaderless” raid squad without tags for testing cannot set these options.

While this is not super relevant for “Adjust team”, it does mean that in a tagless squad there is no way to turn on the pulsing AoE damage in the SFTA.

Looks like Glyph of Elemental Harmony is also affected by this.

The Glyph of Elemental Power is not getting its cooldown reduced by the Air trait “Inscription”. Other glyphs seem to have CDs reduced properly. It should be reduced to a 36s CD but still shows and behaves as the base 45 second recharge instead.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJUQNAsZUnckCVegdeA+dAElilpA7YAGAedvn2W7tNpEMCaBA-TBCBABYp8DgjAQlq/I4+DnpEUf9BB8AAq4UAQKgX2CA-e

That is my current “poncing about in the jungle” Berzerker build. Rifle 5, Mace 5, and Headbutt combo is a solo break bar killer. You will self-stack might from 15 to 20 pretty easily, while retaining a ton of mobility, with range on demand when needed for all those stupid things you can’t ever get close to without proper group/party support.

When engaging in any kind of group/champion/event, quickly swap For Great Justice to the precision banner and Vigorous Shouts for Phalanx Strength, and you are a passable group support/PS warrior again. (You can, of course, swap more than just those two things, but it’s pretty marginal gain for way more effort considering it’s random jungle content).

It’s a great lazy, all-in-one, not-too-selfish build for the jungle. All I have to carry around extra for swapping to my PS raiding/dungeon build is a GS and shield to go with the mace.

It’s called speculation because it’s risky and sometimes you lose. I’m sorry you lost gold speculating on some BL skin pricing, but, as the old saying goes, markets are never wrong, opinions are.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Nausicca.6038:

Also, I think non HoT players can’t access guild arena.

Incorrect.

Did this change? Because when our guild built an arena, only HoT owners could use it.

Berry Pun Pup.6904:

Star Wars spoilers: it’ll be a bad to, at best, mediocre movie that nerds love way too much. George Lucas sucks.

You are posting in an MMORPG forum. If you think people who like Star Wars are nerds, I have some bad news for you…

Nate.3927:

Haleydawn.3764:

At least the WvW supply lines missions are bugged too. Tally for escorts doesn’t count at all.

Not quite. The WvW guild mission issue is that it doesn’t show up properly on the missions screen, but they do count. My guild completed all of our WvW missions already this week, at no point did any of the counter/progress track actually go up. But we got credit once we had enough dolyak escort, wvw rank points etc. So basically we stayed at 0/5, then suddenly we got “mission complete” and the favor and personal rewards.

Yep, same for us. Worked and got credit in the end but the UI did not show progress. Same with the 3 stronghold wins PvP mission.

Lady Elyssa.2469:

It is sad to see Mesmer being penalised so harshly on Echo of Memory, especially considering this is a skill from an Elite Specialisation and that their other block skills, namely:

Illusionary Counter is 2secs
Illusionary Reposte is 2.25 seconds.

Engineer
Static Shield 1.25s
Shock Shield 2s

Guardian
Shelter – 2s

Revenant
Warding Rift 2s
Duelist’s Preparation 2s
Crystal Hibernation 3s

Warrior
Shield Stance 3s

You get to use Echo of Memory twice, so it’s a total of 3s split into two halves that you can control, which in some ways is more effectively useful than a pure 3s block would be. Nevermind all the other utility/phantasm that comes with the block in comparison to the skills you highlight.

And in fact they ONLY mention Echo of Memory being reduced, so if Deja Vu has not been changed as well the second block will remain 2.25s for a 3.75s total.

Dejavu.2349:

I asked you the other day, but you didn’t reply… How much real money have you put in to get as far as you have? I was trying to make a point in this thread… Because that’s really what it would take for any small guild to be competitive… dollar bills…. lots of them.

I can’t say because I don’t account it separately. Over the 3-odd years off and on I’ve certainly put hundreds of $ into gems and gold in general. With HoT and the guild hall I definitely liquidated most of my long term investments and holdings; all my Black Lion skins and stored mats went into upgrades for sure. Several thousand gold at this point, certainly.

But we’re talking about a game where vets will spend 5000g on a single cosmetic weapon just to have shiny footprints. I am much happier to have invested my accumulated wealth into a hall that others, especially noobs, get to enjoy too. I think it was a brilliant way for ANet to suck the vets dry and level the wealth gap a bit between old and new players in a way that has communal benefit rather than simply pandering to vets’ personal vanity.

Dejavu.2349:

You’re right about me being a solo completionist. But it’s why I played this game to begin with. That’s my whole point. I can’t be that any more, so my primary reason for choosing this game over others is gone. GW2 is no longer my refuge. It’s just another MMO. It’s the fluff that matters. No fluff is why I quit Wildstar (other than rosterboss). Fluff is why I play games.

It was never possible to get all GW2 vanity items alone. Do you have all the fractal or dungeon skins? If yes, I guarantee you didn’t two-man all of those. If no, how is that inaccessible content (except by grouping) any different than the guild armorer/weaponsmith 2 content being inaccessible except by grouping?

I mean if all they added in HoT was guild halls and raids, you’d have a point. But they added a ton of solo content too; just look at the legendary collection stuff.

Dejavu.2349:

I don’t see the point at all in having a guild hall when I can’t have weapon/armor smiths 2. It’s not the hall itself I care about… It’s the benefits therein. The fact that I stand to put in 2000 times the mats (that’s a reasonable number, too, looking at everything) of any average big-guild person and have the same access (but way way down the line) is just stupid.

This is just… confusing. If you don’t care about the hall itself then you likewise don’t care about 90% of the upgrades, so why would you ever invest in any of that in the first place? The arena, the WvW upgrades, and all the support upgrades that go into getting those… they are all irrelevant to you.

I mean you are basically complaining that ANet added NEW guild skins that are only accessible to non-solo guilds, even though they didn’t TAKE anything away from you. But they added skins only accessible through raiding too, as well as a ton of new cosmetic stuff accessible to EVERYONE, on top of a game that already had skins gated behind some pretty exclusive group content (fractals) long before HoT. I’m just not seeing the paradigm shift you claim took place.

Dejavu.2349:

Effectively, I get to choose between playing the game as they’ve allowed and even encouraged me to for the last 3 1/2 years and not have a guild hall OR join a big guild.

I don’t get where you’re being forced to choose at all. You aren’t being forced to join anything to maintain access to your existing bank or weapon/armorer skins. Sure, they added NEW skins that are inaccessible to you, but it’s far from the only content in the game gated off by stuff you don’t want to do.

As for banners, level a scribe the same as everyone else is being forced to do; big guilds aren’t getting off any cheaper here. You know full well there is no chance people in the majority of large guilds are pooling their resources to level a single “guild scribe”, as logical as that might be. It’s just one dude spending all his money the same as it would be for any small guild.

I’m not thrilled about this change either but it doesn’t ding small guilds exclusively at all. All the banners you had access to before, you still have access to the patterns to build now; the upgrades for these patterns were grandfathered in to any existing guilds. You just need a high level scribe now, which is an equal opportunity suckage.

Lastly, buffs… join one faceless guild to get buffs, which was basically what everyone in solo guilds did before anyway with how they ran missions and whatnot. The only difference pre-HoT is you weren’t technically forced into the guild, but most people rode other guilds’ bounty/mission trains to achieve this. You only have to rep the faceless guild for all of like 5s to get the 24hr buff and then go back to anti-social mode

And your own guild hall would be upgraded to full buffs in less time than you think anyway. They are actually really accessible. You don’t need resto 2 in anything to unlock all of them, as far as I recall. Honestly the fact that they made it so only HoT owners can get the buffs is a WAY bigger issue to me than the minor gating behind some guild upgrades.

I agree that lvl 40 and resto 2 upgrades for a lot of things and, by extension, the level 2 armorer and weaponsmith, are quite inaccessible for small/solo guilds. But this other utility stuff; claiming the hall, getting all the buffs, getting the anvil/merchant… it’s all just as accessible and affordable as any of the crap that was ever gated behind fractal or dungeon content.

Dejavu.2349:

You know me… what do you think I’m gong to choose?! Can you see me joining a big guild when I won’t even join your guild (a person who I know and like (except when you come into my threads being mean))? I said this earlier in this thread somewhere… I will be the last one standing in any guild I’m in and it’s going to be my own or my husband’s guild so one of us has control over it when everyone else leaves.

Spend your mats and time slowly upgrading your own guild hall at whatever pace you want. Exploit a faceless guild to deal with the mechanics of getting buffs and skins until you have it unlocked yourself. I honestly cannot see how this is any different than the 50/50 harvesting circles in Wildstar that popped up to efficiently take advantage of those mechanics, or people doing their solo guild bounties/missions/races in GW2 on the backs of other organized guilds that were doing it at the same time. It’s just using the mechanics to your advantage…

Broom.2561:

Jaxom.7310:

Compass.9621:

Quote from Swift.1930: A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

ZachAttack.3957:

Ashen.2907:

Swift.1930:

A different size of guild hall for a different size of guild? With smaller services? That would make sense.

Totally agree.

I third the motion.

I fourth the motion.

i fifth the motion.

Can I sixth?

It already exists; it’s the guild initiative office in lion’s arch. You have your guild armorer and weaponsmith, your bank, and a private place to hang with one or two friends.

milo.7198:

I’m in a small family guild. We aren’t mad about not getting a hall. That’s no big deal. But all the amenities we worked so hard for, harder than a bigger guild, like banners and weaponsmith, have been taken away.

Nobody lost access to armorer/weaponsmith. Go to the guild initiative office in Lion’s Arch for your guild. The level 1 armorer and weaponsmith are right there waiting for you if you had them before HoT. As well as your existing bank upgrades.

For 150g more and some time in LFG, even the very smallest one-man guild can get an anvil, a merchant, and free, instant access to these services from anywhere in the world at any time with a free return port included.

As for the banners… well, the scribe recipes for the banners you had unlocked pre-HoT will remain accessible to you post HoT. Yes, you’ll need to level up a scribe now to actually make those banners but ALL GUILDS are in that boat now. It’s a change to banner acquisition that affects everyone equally, and leveling a scribe and crafting those banners isn’t any more (or less) expensive for someone in a larger guild than it is for you.

You don’t need to be in a “big” guild. 3 or 4 people can do it with some gold investment, 10 people just by playing. Itsy and I have pretty much duo’d our guild to 23 so far; yes some of the later upgrades will take months or even a year to reach at our current rate, but I see no issue with that. It gives us something to work toward and all the important stuff was easy to unlock.

80% of our progress has just been us two. We’ve had two other active contributors help with shovel farming and making some bloodstone bricks, but that’s about it.

But mostly you are just salty as a solo completionist. You can get a guild hall with repair + merchant to port to at any time trivially. It’s a one-time LFG run with a few strangers and like 150 gold. The only other thing you arguably need is convenient bank access which 2 people can easily get in short order with the first-tier workshop.

Beyond that every other thing is just fluff and you are just annoyed you can’t 100% it solo. Some skins and minis are inaccessible, but there are dozens of those that are equally out of reach. You don’t need an arena for 2 people. I guarantee a 2-person guild already wasn’t using WvW upgrades from the war room anyway. So what exactly do you feel you are missing out on?

The only thing you might be missing out on are the buffs, which with five guild slots you can easily mooch off from other people; which in fact I know you were already essentially doing pre-HoT anyway from a large faceless guild and which you can keep doing now.

I’ve completed the first pass of a new site I’m working on to provide tools for guilds working on their guild halls. The site is gw2hall.com

In this first pass I was just focused on getting the data scraped in from the game, so the current site is pretty light on features. It just lets you see all the guild upgrade info, basically.

However, now that I’ve got everything “digitized” I hope to quickly iterate on some useful tools, such as shopping list/cost estimates, customized upgrade planning, aetherium tracker/capacity notifications, and a variety of other bits and bobs.

Just double-click on one of the decorations you own but have none remaining to place. The box will be gray but it will still give you the placement/delete tools.

Xbon.9086:

well, considering the amount sprockets are used in recipes, and the number of people with watchwork pick bringing all the sprockets in, it’s also a good thing… It’s an investment of gold… you put 200 gold in, you get it back in a couple months of running ore gathering routes.

Exactly, and considering the last time it showed up was a month ago at half price, everyone who owns one has had plenty of time to take advantage of it.

That means now is a great time to fix the original problem by moving the sprocket gathering bonus to a neck utility infusion available to anyone with laurels and removing it from the pick entirely.

Xbon.9086:

some people enjoy skins, some people enjoy utility

And some people enjoy BOTH and are really frustrated with being forced to pick one or the other in a game that emphasizes cosmetic choices above all.

I love the new firefly mining flute. I would buy it in a heartbeat, except… I can’t give up the raw utility of the watchwork mining pick. A utility which ANet has already admitted was a mistake in retrospect.

ANet please fix this once and for all so I can be freed from the tyranny of the watchwork pick!

I have a simple suggested fix. Add a new laurel store utility infusion alongside the +magic find, +karma, and +xp ones that goes in the utility amulets. Have it provide the chance to get sprockets on mining bonus. Then remove this bonus from the watchwork pick and give everyone who owns one a copy of the new utility infusion without having to spend laurels.

I SO want to buy that mining flute!

MasterD.4790:

I’m the leader of a small mostly WvW/sPvP guild on AR….yes the shovels are a minor annoyance, but if you grab a party of 5 or so and just go run the events in circles for a bit you can easily farm enough shovels to get the first capacity upgrade and rate upgrades.

Have you actually run SW for shovels since last Nov’s shovel nerf, plus whatever additional changes might have arrived in HoT?

A party of 5 running the entire event chain from 0% to VW kill will get about 5 shovels total (not EACH, but TOTAL). Some will get a couple and some will get 0, which is particularly disheartening for those folks. That’s about 10 hours of inconsistent drops just to get the first level mine.

I mean, I dunno, maybe you’re fine with that, in which case there’s nothing more to argue about. Or maybe you just haven’t tried to farm shovels since last year.

Yep, agreed and in about the same position. I think it’s getting less awareness because people have significant shovel stock-piles from running SW before the drop-rate changes and haven’t really had to farm these yet.

As for me, I’d just be happy to see a more reliable/predictable way to get these. Ideally, spending Bandit Crests to get shovels. Doesn’t have to be cheap; 200 or 300 crests for a single shovel would be fine by me. Since earning Bandit Crests is a much more consistent activity, it would make for a far more relaxed and predictable shovel farming experience, and the occasional extra shovel from event drops would start feeling like a bonus instead of a slap in the face.

Knighthonor.4061:

I believe warrior elite specialization was made this bad because they wanted to stick to the no magic theme and realized that limitation limits the creativity of it.
hence why we simply got physicals by a different name as new skills.

Meh, there are lots of options. A rifle-focused sniper spec that trades mobility for stealth detection and range would make a very interesting, non-magical complement to core warrior.

Rabe.2456:

HoT will introduce Tryia-Masteries and you will be able to level them after 80. The XP bar will be replaced with a mastery-bar.

HoT is more than a month away, and masteries (to my understanding) will only be available to people who have purchased HoT.

I think it’s important to bring back some kind of small reward for leveling past 80. The current transition for a fresh player hitting 80 between EXP being their primary goal to it suddenly becoming completely useless is pretty harsh and demoralizing for them.

As an established player that’s been here since launch, I know that pretty much everything you do at 80 still has value. Unlocking hearts for unique skins/karma/cooking mats, exploring areas to work to 100% completion for getting that someday legendary, tomes/scrolls for spirit shards, etc…

Unfortunately, new players hitting 80 don’t know these things yet. Even if they are aware of them, 100% map completion or farming for a legendary is a pretty distant goal for most of them. They need time to transition to the “GW2 way”, and the sudden pointlessness of that EXP bar hits them hard and interferes with that transition. They’ve been so focused on EXP during their first journey to 80 that it suddenly becoming useless is a mental barrier that prevents them from appreciating the value of everything else you do at 80.

I think it’s really important to bring back some kind of small, immediate reward for leveling at 80. It doesn’t need to be much; maybe 3 silver for every bar past 80? Or 500 karma? Or one of those transmutation stones that can be converted 10 at a time into transmutation charges? There are a lot of reasonable options here that I believe wouldn’t kill the economy or eat into gemstore sales.

Some context; I’ve been playing (off and on) since launch, but I am recently playing with a group of 7 people who just got the game for the first time during the F2P conversion. They are all starting to hit 80 now and the shock of “what, my EXP bar is pointless now?” is hitting them pretty hard. I think giving the EXP bar some meaning again, however small, would be super helpful in keeping these folks engaged with the game long enough to get hooked on all the other benefits of doing things at 80. Right now that’s all a bit too big for them to take in at once so they tunnel vision into the futility of that yellow bar…

chemiclord.3978:

THAT’S the issue. At the core, this event we have now is a cause of entirely player-side problems. Our own behaviors have indirectly caused this mess of a event we have now. We’re the reason we can’t have nice things.

No, there are reasonable solutions to these behaviors that have been proposed for this event. The key to all of these is that an “all-or-nothing” approach is a stupid way to do game design.

The issue in Scarlet with event farming was champion loot being more valuable than the event rewards. Does that mean ALL loot drops and XP needs to be removed? No, normal/veteran/elite mobs could still keep dropping loot while removing loot drops or even XP from the champions. And in the Mordrem invasion you shouldn’t be wasting time killing champions anyway, since it distracts from actually taking down the vines efficiently.

Likewise with the AFK LA thing; the fix is not to go back to the ONLY reward mechanism being on personal stacks that promote completely selfish gameplay. Many people have made very good suggestions about combining your personal defender stack score with the overall map score to determine bloom payout. For instance, if the MAP kills 30 events then everyone has the potential for the full bloom payouts (15), and if your personal defender buff is within say 50% of the map score then you get 100% of the payout. This encourages map coordination and punishes going AFK.

Are these things perfect? No, maybe not. But they would represent a far BETTER approach at solving the issues from previous events, rather than just waffling between two extreme approaches that are both completely and obviously flawed.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Most melee cleaving weapons can hit it, pretty much no ranged weapon auto attack can utilize it, though certain ranged weapons like ele staff meteor storm can hit all 3 hit boxes with a single attack. I suspect ranger LB AOE can too.

Warrior rifle skills (including autoattack) can, provided you grab the rifle piercing trait. You just need to target the far hit box (e.g. the far leg) to make sure your shot passes through all the hit boxes. Actually pretty easy to hit all three hitboxes (incl. head) on dragon models.

I haven’t tried it since the boss rebalance so I’m not sure if it’ll also hit the secret crit spots.

cranos.5913:

Only you forget before ppl took PS warr, they already took a warrior for the banners and ele would still be top DPS (now even more needed because of kittenty dmg). I don’t see any lessening of the meta, we are used to killing stuff fast, making it slower will only push ppl to maximize more because we lack the patience (at least I do) of putting up with low DPS in 3 year old content.

Sure people took banner warriors, but they were not essential. There ARE other classes that can provide buff/utility roughly equivalent to banner builds. You could successfully DPS/zerker meta with other classes. Likewise, there are good DPS weapon/build choices that would be freed up for use if we didn’t have hard requirements of fire fields/blast finishers.

I’m not saying that zerker meta goes away, just that the zerker meta gets a lot more flexibility of class/build choice if you remove might stacking. It of course won’t instantly fix every the DPS/utility balance problem across all classes. That would be absurd.

Pretty much everyone in this thread has made the point for me already though, even those not realizing it. All the arguments that “might is too important to nerf” are accidentally proving my original point. Whether ANet likes it or not, might stacking has become a required portion of pretty much all group play. They ought to baseline it at this point as, like all “optional but not really” mechanics, it makes for an artificial illusion of choice in class builds and playstyle that does nothing except alienate people who didn’t read the right forum/reddit theorycrafting posts.

cranos.5913:

So it’s an added thing to build choices, the way wvw zergs move in and out of combat, the way certain classes play in pvp. “Skill free” huh? I’d agree in pve thanks to the PS warr, but it’s a lot different in the pvp modes where both buffing up and stripping boons are a big part of the actual tactics.

It’s not an added thing to build choices when the meta expectation is that you might stack in all situations, all the time. Sure, boon stripping matters, but that mostly boils down to “hey let’s put some stuff on top of might to make sure our might doesn’t get stripped immediately”. Removing might stacking doesn’t remove the tactics of buffing and removing boons; it just frees up the choice of boons you might actually use.

cranos.5913:

Buffing (primarily might) is a major tactic in all game modes, not only would this make current instanced content less interesting, but also wvw, spvp… I say less interesting because we beat the current content to death. If everything suddenly becomes a minute longer, that won’t make me like it more.

Something that is required, non-optional, and always optimal is not a tactic.

A tactic is a choice you make to do one thing instead of another thing. No one chooses to NOT might stack in favor of something else. It simply doesn’t happen. There’s no tactical decision around might stacking.

It also has no reflection on skill whatsoever. The “skill” of might stacking is “did I read the forum posts where it was clearly pointed out that might stacking is optimal in 100% of situations and then pick one of the limited builds that enables it?”. That’s a binary, skill-free checkmark.

Might stacking is too powerful. It is so powerful that it is pretty much a requirement for all content, all the time. This is the definition of something that should be baselined into core class builds.

SlyDevil.3952:

Imagine zergs colliding in wvw without being able to buff might first, they could tickle each other to death. Or pugs without a PS war in fractals/dungeons. And you’d get the random guy pop up saying how amazing necro is because ele and war are useless in the meta now. Could be a funny april fool’s joke to remove might for a day.

As I pointed out the most likely approach (and one that would be fine IMO) would be to baseline the effects of might stacking into DPS builds. Which is a driving concept behind HoT in general; things that are only nominally optional but aren’t really considered optional in practice should be made a core part of class builds. The illusion of choice is removed and people can focus on useful decisions.

The benefit of this is that there are lots of viable DPS builds/weapons that are currently excluded from the meta because they have no fire fields/blast finishers. They might acceptably tag along, but only once core composition of PS warrior + fire/blast builds is taken care of first. Get rid of that and the DPS picture broadens and flattens out a fair bit.

dlonie.6547:

What RandomGuy (edit, and Nike) said. How would removing might make people want less damage stats on their gear? O.o

Whether or not the meta considers it so, stacking might is optional. Groups can still easily clear all content in the game without a single stack of might — there is not a single encounter in the game where might makes the difference between success or failure. It just helps success happen faster.

“Faster” is the problem though. Everything you just said is ALREADY true for the entire zerker meta. The whole zerker/DPS meta is optional; you can clear dungeons with a totally different meta entirely with no problems whatsoever. But not as quickly.

By that argument there’s nothing at all to change/fix because zerker meta is also optional. Which is a valid viewpoint, no doubt, but my original post obviously presupposes the somewhat popular assumption that SOMEthing needs tweaking to the incentives that are driving people down this “optional but not really” path.

And in that vein, removing the need to might stack directly and instantly removes (or lessens) the incentives driving some of the more boring aspects of the zerker meta. It opens up the viable DPS build choices and lessens the restrictive class meta. No more PS warrior and ele fire field requirements means 40% of group composition is made more flexible in a single change.

I never said it would remove the zerker meta itself. The point is that the DPS focus becomes less boring once the might stacking portion of it is removed from the meta picture.

NikeEU.7690:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

nezroy.8492:

The pure-DPS zerker approaching being bar-none the most effective/efficient way to clear dungeons? Without might stacking it might not be nearly as viable, or at least not optimal for EVERY fight.

How is nerfing damage will make highest damage gear less effective?

He hasn’t considered that a Might stacking nerf would hurt the DPS of non-berserker sets more than berserker sets.

To be fair, it’s not just him. Pretty much every “I HAVE THE SOLUTION TO THE ZERKER PROBLEM” thread involves some convoluted “solution” that would almost always have the unintended consequence of making berserker even better relative to everything else.

Actually the point of this post was to clarify that the zerker meta is fine and NOT BORING.

The part that makes the zerker meta specifically boring is the might stacking. It ALONE is responsible for most of the boring parts of the zerker meta.

I never said removing might stacking would remove the zerker meta, nor would I even want it to. My point is that removing might stacking WOULD resolve many of the issues people have with the zerker meta. Namely, restrictive class choices/builds and everyone standing in one spot ALL the time.

If you remove the fixed need for a PS warrior and a dependence on fire fields/blast finishers, the number of viable classes/builds goes up quite a bit. Sure, they will still need to be DPS focused builds, but without the additional restrictions imposed by might stacking requirements, the list of valid DPS focused builds absolutely increases. EDIT: And the list gets even more expansive once HoT drops if they actually manage to fix condi build issues for PvE as they are trying to do.

Likewise, if you remove might stacking the hard requirement to all stand on each other is mostly removed. Sure, there are still lots of situations where that will be the optimal approach for other reasons, but without might stacking it’s not nearly so black and white.

Lastly, if they were to actually choose to nerf might stacking entirely rather than just baseline it, it’s quite possible the zerker meta itself would become non-optimal for at least some encounters owing to the overall reduction in maximum possible DPS even for a perfectly optimal group.

Might stacking is a huge DPS boost and without it the zerker meta itself may not be universally successful even with perfect groups. I’m pretty neutral on this last bit though; I don’t actually care which way they take it as the zerker meta itself is perfectly fine and not conceptually boring once might stacking is taken out of the picture.

On and off we see discussions about how the zerker meta has made for “shallow” dungeon content. By this we mean that the desire to run dungeons using pure-DPS builds rather than more utility approaches has made for a meta that some folks consider restricted to a small subset classes, builds, and playstyles.

I wanted to point out that it’s NOT the zerker meta responsible for most of this. It’s a very small piece of the zerker meta: might stacking.

Might is simply too powerful, and stacking might is too essential. It needs nerfing. If it weren’t for might stacking, most of the “boring” aspects of the zerker meta would go away. Class/utility composition? Well we wouldn’t be dependent on PS warriors, fire fields, and blast finishers, which would significantly open up class and build options.

Everyone standing in one spot? This won’t go away entirely, but without the dependence on might stacking the number of places where this is required/expected would definitely go down.

The pure-DPS zerker approaching being bar-none the most effective/efficient way to clear dungeons? Without might stacking it might not be nearly as viable, or at least not optimal for EVERY fight.

With HoT, ANet is making changes to put “essential” features of different classes into the core traits since they realize there’s no real choice when people are required to pick up certain traits to make their class useful. I hope ANet realizes this is currently the same issue facing might stacking.

It is WAY too powerful to be left in its current state as an optional mechanic, since it dominates all other combo field choices and clearly isn’t considered “optional” by the meta at all. Either the effects of might stacking need to be mostly baselined into class DPS or else it just needs a straight up nerf. Either way, let’s end the tyranny of the might stack!