Guild Wars 2

FrostDraco.8306:

petyr baelish.9675:

Still don’t understand what your reason is for preventing this. What does it have to do with you? What would you lose if this change went through? The one that’s being obnoxious and unreasonable is you and not the ‘crybaby’ op.

Wow, blatant strawman is blatant. No one is preventing it. What we are saying is it is not OWED to him. If it happens it happens. But saying “he should be able to upgrade them” is asinine.

“Anet, change the old ones to +7 AR…. or give us the possibility to upgrade them.” -OP

This is telling Anet to change it. This isn’t just a suggestion. And again, us saying that doesn’t make us obnoxious simply because you agree with the OP. He’s complaining about his AR when he could very clearly max it right now. He already spent a legendaries worth to get the infusions. He does not ‘need’ 7/5 to max his AR. Therefore Anet is in not way required to put them in. If they do, that would be nice, however again, he probably already know the problem ahead of time, he could easily remedy.

petyr baelish.9675:

Here is the reddit thread again: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fsee7/with_the_new_incentive_to_run_hightier_fractals
If you read all of the developer’s comments, it’s quite clear to me that they perceive the current state of the 5/5 stat infusions to be a problem. Now you’ll tell me that they never clearly state this. I’ll tell you to it’s in the subtext. Next you’ll claim it could mean anything and you’ll remain convinced that you’re correct.

For one, I never said that. Also Anet never stated that they would implement that particular thing. Or anything for that matter. They stated they tried to make changes. As to what changes those are, not even you know that. 5/5 infusions being a problem also doesn’t mean they will make them +7/5, nor does it mean they will even be salvagable, or upgradable. It’s dishonest to draw unconfirmed conclusions from vague writing.

petyr baelish.9675:

I understand it’s quite pointless to have an argument with people on the internet, aside from entertainment reasons. All I’m interested in is if there is a valid reason for why you’re being a kitten.

Then why are you here to begin with? Saying that it’s pointless doesn’t make it pointless. It just makes you look like a fool for engaging in the very thing which you say is pointless. Also, entertainment IS a point. So you just invalidated your own argument.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to demand that they fix something which was most likely an oversight. It IS quit odd you need to shell out extra gold in order to use infusions that are more expensive in the first place.
Why do I think this is an oversight? Look at ghostly infusions, they have +5 stats (which you can choose) and +5 ar. This is different from previous ‘cosmetic’ infusions. The team that designed them probably intended for them to be best in slot in any situation, so you wouldn’t have to ‘sacrifice’ anything just to look cool. Which is a problem for all other cosmetic infusions. But they probably didn’t know that in the upcoming fractal overhaul, you’d be ‘required’ to have +7 ar in those slots. They probably forgot to provide a means to upgrade the standard stat infusions for similar reasons.

Let me rephrase that then. It’s pointless to try and change the opinions of people on an online discussion forum, because they most likely won’t change them. It’s already quite an achievement if you can get people to be a little bit sympathetic to your cause. Or get them to show some empathy. Therefore, it’s almost always a waste of time if you’re participating in online discussions for these or similar reasons. However, if you like arguing it can be quite fun from time to time.

Still don’t understand what your reason is for preventing this. What does it have to do with you? What would you lose if this change went through? The one that’s being obnoxious and unreasonable is you and not the ‘crybaby’ op.

Here is the reddit thread again: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fsee7/with_the_new_incentive_to_run_hightier_fractals
If you read all of the developer’s comments, it’s quite clear to me that they perceive the current state of the 5/5 stat infusions to be a problem. Now you’ll tell me that they never clearly state this. I’ll tell you to it’s in the subtext. Next you’ll claim it could mean anything and you’ll remain convinced that you’re correct.

I understand it’s quite pointless to have an argument with people on the internet, aside from entertainment reasons. All I’m interested in is if there is a valid reason for why you’re being a kitten.

Ohoni.6057:

I think it’s clear that Ohoni’s are:

1. All content must be available at an easy skill level
2. All skins must be available at an easy skill level

It’s fine to hold these views. And Ohoni’s been consistent in their application. You’re unlikely to change his mind in these regards.

But guild wars 2 is not the game Ohoni imagines. There’s always been hard content. And there’s always been exclusive skins.

Eh, sort of. I mean you’re close, and I appreciate that you are least tried. It’s a bit more like:

1. All content must be available at a moderate skill level
2. All skins must be available to players of all skill levels

I mean, for 1, many of you seem to consider most content in the game “easy,” and by that measure, yeah, I want easy, but by a more realistic measure, the content average of GW2 would be moderate, some of it much easier than that, a very few things slightly harder. I think it’s ok to have some content that is only available if it’s harder, but the harder it is, the less you should miss out by not performing it. Ideally, all you’d miss out by not doing something very challenging is the experience of doing something very challenging.

2. makes an important distinction, because I’m often accused of wanting to be “handed” things, and that’s not my point at all. I value having to work towards goals, and have no problem with rewards that involve a long and complex process to unlock them, I just don’t agree that long and complex processes should lock you into a single specific game type, one which you might not enjoy or be talented at, for long periods of time. They also should not require that you be an above average player. I think that high level skill should provide a reasonable shortcut to the goal, and that specific activities can be more efficient than others if they want to encourage those options, but ultimately it should never become a hard barrier of “do this one specific thing OR never get the item.”

I think that since GW2 offers such a broad range of gameplay experiences, it’s cruel to block progress towards goals players might have behind content that they clearly might not enjoy.

You’re basically saying: ‘He put in time and effort to get a shiny, I want this shiny too but I don’t want to put in all that effort so they need to change the way I can get the shiny.’

No, that’s flawed reasoning. I’m willing to put in equivalent time and effort, I just don’t necessarily want to do it the same way. It’s like if someone puts in the time to go to law school, become a lawyer, works as a lawyer for a bit, and can afford to buy a $75K car, that’s fine. But then if someone else wants that same car, and works as a plumber for more years, not doing ANY lawyering at all, then he can buy that car too, and that’s also ok. Nobody is having anything taken from them just because that plumber is allowed to earn that car through means other than lawyering.

And let’s remember that the both of you start on an even playing ground from the moment you start playing the game, so don’t you dare claim it’s about equality.

That’s not true at all. Both player’s avatars may start at level 1, but there’s no reason to believe that both players start at a level ground. One might work a full time job while the other only works part time or not at all, so has more time to play. One might have family that needs attention while the other does not. One might have a physical or social disability that limits how well they can play, or maybe one just has better than average coordination and can play better. There are all sorts of factors that would lead one player to have an easier time doing certain activities than others.

I can understand how this analogy works from your point of view. Here is how i see it: a person wants a masters degree in chemistry, however he doesn’t want to study for it at the university. He’d rather do the professional chemistry option (which is much easier) but he still wants to get a master’s degree in the end. He doesn’t care if he has to spend double the amount of time in school compared to the uni student, as long as he gets the master’s degree. It’s pretty clear why it doesn’t work that way. You need more than just time to obtain a uni degree, not everybody can get it and that’s why it’s valuable.
Same thing for legendary armor, just putting in a buttload of time smashing your face on your keyboard is not enough to be qualified to get it imo.

sephiroth.4217:

RoRo.8270:

Raids were advertised as challenging content. Not sure why players feel they need to be catered and have access to everything

Maybe they feel they deserve access because they spent $50 on it? I dunno, just a theory.

Legendary armor has always been advertised as an exclusive reward to raids. You’re not really claiming people paid 50$ for the skin, now are you? They did, in part, pay $50 for raids, and they got them. And nobody is being excluded for participating in raids, if you want to do raids there is nobody stopping you, aside from you yourself.

Well all I can say to that is that I strongly disagree with your opinion regarding the accessibility of the legendary armor. I find it quite ironic that you claim to be fighting for the greater good while your opinion is morally flawed. You’re basically saying: ‘He put in time and effort to get a shiny, I want this shiny too but I don’t want to put in all that effort so they need to change the way I can get the shiny.’ All while diminishing the other person’s achievement in the process. And let’s remember that the both of you start on an even playing ground from the moment you start playing the game, so don’t you dare claim it’s about equality. Seems pretty immoral to me. Envy and laziness, that’s what this is and nothing else.

Ohoni.6057:

If you make legendary envoy armor accessible to everybody, you actually would be taking something away from raiders. Raids are enjoyable by themselves but if you take away the prestige of the legendary armor, you’d take away that warm fuzzy feeling people will get when they finally complete the armor.

Having a goal is good. Working towards that goal is good. But if that goal is an armor skin, then it should be open to anyone who likes that skin, not just to people who like to raid. If raiders want to work towards something that only raiders can have, it should come in the form of a title or a name-tag flair, or something like that, something they can show off to the people they imagine are impressed by such things, but without keeping armor out of the hands of players that would enjoy the armor for its OWN value, rather than just for the imagined “prestige” the item carries.

If that “takes away” anything from raiders then it’s only something they were never owed in the first place, and the loss to them is for the greater good.

I can see 1 reason for why somebody that clearly dislikes everything about raids is so interested in them: you want the rewards. If story was your main motivator you wouldn’t throw such a fuss and just read about it on the wiki or in a cleared instance.

But you’re wrong. The reason we play games is to EXPERIENCE them. To have the story happen around you, and to participate in that story. Otherwise why play games at all? You can just watch a let’s play of anything and get the story, but in most cases it’s a better experience to be a PART of that story.

And I haven’t gone into it a lot in this thread, but I genuinely do want to fight the bosses with their mechanics. I just don’t want the odds of failure to be so high. I want the bosses to make the same attacks, I just want the penalties for failing to deal with the attacks to be low enough that failure does not equal wipes.

I want to be able to have my team perform badly enough in a raid boss encounter that they would wipe 2-3 times over if in the current version, and yet they succeed anyway and move on to the next thing, hoping to come back the next time and do it slightly better, rather than to slam our heads against the wall for three hours because someone keeps dropping the ball at some point. But I want to experience those mechanics, I want to know that if I do my job 100%, that I’ll know that, even if other players on my team mess things up and it would have led to wipes and resets in the current version. I want to know that if I’m the one who screws up, it won’t lead to a fail state for the other players.

I want to play the raids, I would enjoy playing them, I just don’t want to play them with the current fail-state conditions.

At the very least you would be satisfied with a story mode that has a low reward, like 50 silver.

As I said, I would be at least partially satisfied with that.

It would be better than nothing, and I would play it exactly once. But I would see no reason to repeat it if the rewards were not at least adequate. And as ANet, I don’t think there would be a ton of value in making a story mode that each player would only complete once, when they could instead make an easy mode that players would complete once or more per week (depending on lock-outs).

And again, I do still want the rewards, I’ve made that abundantly clear, I only dispute your insistence that it is the only thing I care about. So if they made a story mode that didn’t include the rewards, then of course I would continue to press for the rewards to be made available through some alternative means.

This is why I’m convinced that many of the people that advocate for the raid story mode because they ‘want to experience the story’, aren’t being genuine and just want an easy way to get legendary armor.

Instead of assuming, why don’t you just ask?

You have personal story to enjoy story.

You have living world to enjoy story.

Those are different stories.

Gosh you’re so full of yourself. The greater good, really? I don’t see what’s wrong with some skins being exclusive. Gw2 already has some skins that are exlusive to some gamemodes or content. This one is exclusive to ‘skilled’ pve players. Just like how there are exclusive skins for ‘skilled’ pvp players. Boo Hoo.

Wanting to have an easy raid for story purposes is an opinion I can actually respect, wanting legendary armor as a reward for completing this story raid, is not. From what you’re saying, it seems to me like you care more about the rewards part than the ‘experiencing the story’ part. So much so that I suspect that while there may be some truth to wanting to experiencing the story, you mainly use it as an excuse for your true purpose: easy legendary armor. You’re going to say I’m just assuming and that I’m wrong again. I think you’re full of kitten and you’re lying.

@CaptainVanguard

If that is truly what you want, you can have it. But I doubt enough people will play it in order for it to be worth the effort. And that is the problem. Even the people that want to have a raid story mode, aren’t convinced enough players will play it for it to be worth the development time. That’s why they want a reward for completing the story raid. And not just 50s, the same reward you get for completing a story dungeon. No, they want to be rewarded with one of the most prestigious items in the game, the legendary armor. That way your ‘raid story mode’ will become the ‘mindlessly farm for legendary armor mode’. This is why I’m convinced that many of the people that advocate for the raid story mode because they ‘want to experience the story’, aren’t being genuine and just want an easy way to get legendary armor.

Ohoni.6057:

on your last sentiment what you believe is not necessarily the truth, I have only ever seen you and about 3 other people complain on the forums about this issue, if that is any indication of how you are trying the skew this vs the bigger number of people against such a change. Its really easy to talk about unnamed players that don’t speak up to validate your point, it’s like me saying I have so many people in all 5 of my guild slots that love the challenge it has been to work towards the Envoy Armor, and that if others haven’t put forth effort to the already released prerequisites to acquire then they don’t deserve to acquire it.

Blaquefyre, we are not debating relative numbers. That is something neither of us can prove with any degree of certainty, but ANet should be aware of without us telling them. If you’re right and more people love raiding than don’t, then they should do nothing. If I’m right and more people are dissatisfied with the current state of raiding than love it, then something should be done, and the discussion is around what should be done about that.

everyone can have the armor, the “quest & difficulty” is for everyone the same.
if you can’t beat the raid, you can’t get the armor.

I don’t know how you could think I didn’t already know that. Of course I know that, which is why I’m working so hard to change it.

did you ever complain about the glorious hero armor?
(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glorious_Hero's_armor)
if not i give you a quest. go on write 1000 texts in the pvp forum how unfair it is that this armorskin is only unlockable through high class pvp playing / tournaments.

I did, but it was years ago, and since Glorious Hero’s armor is not a significant improvement on Glorious armor, and I already have all that I want of that, it’s not a priority for me. If it’s someone else’s priority though then I would not try to shut them down.

Dungeons DO have more story to them than raids do. For example, you can see all the dialogue for the arah exp mode here https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ruined_City_of_Arah. Compare it to that of spirit vale https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/SpiritVale And you’ll see that there is about as much story and lore to experience in a single dungeon path as there is in an entire raid wing.

Again, “lines of dialog” != “story.”

Imo i’m not making that big of a stretch by comparing the difficulty of arah or aetherpath with that of a raid.

But you’re wrong, because it is. It’s possible that on a single player level, the skill expected of you is not that much higher on Raids than on certain dungeon encounters, but given the tuning and the bump to ten players, there’s a lot more than can go wrong and cause a wipe. The practical difficulty of the raid bosses is clearly higher, at least for most of them.

Sure, raids are harder, but I remain convinced a player that managed to complete said dungeons will be able to complete raids if he’s willing to try.

Again, that “willing to try” is a pretty broad category. I’ve “tried” VG and Gorseval. I have not beat either. What you mean to say is “willing to spend many hours running them over and over and over and eventually, if the rest of the group is decent, you might clear it.” Well I’m sorry, that sort of “train to git gud” mentality is just not something that will ever interest me. I am a better player than I was when HoT came out, and was then a better player than a year before, and the year before that, I do keep improving, but I do so at my own pace, by succeeding at content I enjoy over and over, not by failing at content that I hate over and over. I will never become capable of embracing the sort of mindset necessary for enjoying the “raiding experience” that so many of you seem to enjoy, it is just not a taste that is compatible with me.

So I’m not trying to take your raiding experience away from you, if that’s what you enjoy, then great, keep enjoying it, but I want something different, and will continue to push for that. I will NEVER want what you want from it, and no amount of convincing will ever move me closer to wanting that.

I’m not claiming more lines of dialog means more story either. What I’m saying is that the story for those paths is both deeper and more fleshed out than the story for raids. If you had actually clicked the links and read the story you may have understood that.

If you make legendary envoy armor accessible to everybody, you actually would be taking something away from raiders. Raids are enjoyable by themselves but if you take away the prestige of the legendary armor, you’d take away that warm fuzzy feeling people will get when they finally complete the armor.

I can see 1 reason for why somebody that clearly dislikes everything about raids is so interested in them: you want the rewards. If story was your main motivator you wouldn’t throw such a fuss and just read about it on the wiki or in a cleared instance. At the very least you would be satisfied with a story mode that has a low reward, like 50 silver.

Raids ARE quite accessible, there are already plenty of posts that cover this so I won’t elaborate. The perceived barrier of entry is much lower than the actual barrier for entering raids. If you’re patient enough, you can participate in training runs and low requirement kill runs for every boss, without ever having to speak a word or starting your own group. You can significantly speed up the process by taking some initiative and starting your own groups or joining a guild.

Edit: I love how you separate 2 sentences that immediately follow and complement each other and then address each of them out of context, just so you can make it seem like I’m saying something I’m not and you can make a point about it. Crafty.

@Ohoni:

Dungeons DO have more story to them than raids do. For example, you can see all the dialogue for the arah exp mode here https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ruined_City_of_Arah_. Compare it to that of spirit vale https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_Vale And you’ll see that there is about as much story and lore to experience in a single dungeon path as there is in an entire raid wing.

Imo i’m not making that big of a stretch by comparing the difficulty of arah or aetherpath with that of a raid. These paths even have some crude mechanics that require some coordination or awareness of your environment, similar (but simpler, I’m not saying they’re the same) to those of raids. Sure, raids are harder, but I remain convinced a player that managed to complete said dungeons will be able to complete raids if he’s willing to try.

You can only be envious when somebody has something that you don’t have.

You’re just saying whatever you want without providing any proper arguments and you dismiss other people’s arguments by stating they’re wrong or their opinion doesn’t matter. I cannot believe you’re this arrogant with seemingly nothing to back it up, aside from your ‘elaborate vocabulary’ and talent of typing walls of text with 0 substance.

Also, don’t try to prostrate yourself as the champion of the casuals or claim that the majority of the playerbase actually shares your opinion. I doubt the majority is as narrow minded as you or gives a kitten about anything tied to raids.

Now you’ll claim I resort to kittentalking because I can’t come up with anything else. The fact of the matter is that I tried to have a reasonable discussion, but you don’t want to have a discussion at all. Inb4 ‘no’, ’you’re wrong’ and ’that’s just your opinion’.

edit: There is nothing wrong with being proud of your accomplishments and wishing to display them, even if it’s ‘just’ a videogame. You almost make it seem like a crime. Envious indeed.

@Leezy:

What did you do in all these years before HoT powercreep made dungeons irrelevant? If you couldn’t complete the dungeons back then were you ok with not being able to ‘experience’ their story?

Astralporing.1957:

fishball.7204:

I’d like to see some of these guys try Arah p4 in 30 mins with just 1 wipe in a random LFG pug ayyy lmao

Actually any arah path. I’ll give u 500g if you make a video of you randomly pugging Ohoni, arah dungeon 30 minutes just 1 wipe in LFG.

Well, yeah, Arah would take a bit longer than 30 minutes. And likely a few wipes on the way. Still, if you’d just stick to it, you’d be sure to complete it on the first try (well, almost sure – there are still some nasty bugs left that might pose a problem). With no ts and overt organization.
And Arah is the very high end of the dungeon experience.

Actually, i have a good example. One of my guildies pugged Aetherpath yesterday. She’s a casual, new to gw2 (started a month ago), and to MMO’s in general, and was doing that path for the second time. As far as TA experience, she was the only one in group with any (due to our guild run the day before. Where we weren’t explaining things that much, and were generally ignoring most of the encounter mechanics). They still cleared the path with no sweat (again, ignoring lot of the encounter mechanics).

When players will be able to do that consistently with raids, you might start to compare them with dungeons. Until then, you really shouldn’t.

DutchRiders.2871:

So an alternative way to get you happily into raiding is actually increasing the rewards, which is something that IMO should happen.

Nope. One can accept some less enjoyment, or even participate in some tedious/unfun content, in exchange for satisfying rewards, but that works only to a certain level. Unless you’re a masochist, you won’t go beyond that level no matter the rewards, or, if you do, it will cause some permanent damage to your enjoyment with the game.
No game should ever try to push you beyond such a point.

You can’t clear aetherpath while ignoring the encounter mechanics. If you don’t clear the oil fields on slick and sparky or you don’t kill holograms on clockheart, your party will die. Before the HoT release, you weren’t guaranteed to finish aetherpath or arah with completely inexperienced players at all. Heck, before the lupi wall reflect trick became widely known, you pretty much had to be able to solo lupi if you wanted to clear with randoms.

All of you that claim clearing arah for the first time was ‘easy’ are either lying, got carried by their party or are good enough at the game to be able to clear raids with a bit of effort.
Just like how it’s possible to get carried in dungeons, it’s also possible to get carried in raids. I recommend playing revenant and just sword 1111111 with facet of nature and fury on. Swap to staff and use 5 for the breakbar. Nobody will notice that you’re dogkitten. You will be needed in every encounter. You won’t have to worry about any of the ‘special’ mechanics, since those are generally covered by other classes. All you have to do is stay alive and press 1.

Astralporing.1957:

petyr baelish.9675:

How do the people that are ‘missing out on the story’ feel about dungeons? While dungeons are easier to complete, they provide barriers that are similar to those encountered when raiding. A single dungeon provides more story than all of the raid wings combined do. I suppose this isn’t a problem because you can get all the dungeon rewards by playing pvp.

It’s because the “barriers” to access that content in dungeons isn’t really higher than the average difficulty level of the game. It’s in fact lower than difficulty in some of the LS instances. The sole exception to this is the aetherpath, but really, the less i’m reminded about Scarlet the better (also, with the exception of clusterkitten of the ooze running chamber, after the late power creep, it’s not even really that hard once you’ve been through there 2-3 times, just annoying)

Raids on the other hand do have visible barriers that do prevent most of the people from enjoying them.

petyr baelish.9675:

FYI: When I’m talking about dungeons, I’m mainly referring to the harder ones (arah) and not just AC explorable. I’ve seen pugs take several hours to complete arah, or just give up after hours of trying to kill lupi.

Yeah, it took me over 2 hours to do arah 3 the first time. It was still relatively easy except for one single hiccup at Lupi. And the fun part with lupi is we ran into trouble, because we heard so much about how hard it is and decided to read a guide first. We wiped thanks to it. Then we decided it isn’t working and we should just YOLO him, and it went just fine.

And that was before the nerfs and powercreep.

petyr baelish.9675:

Anyhow the point I’m trying to make is: ‘why weren’t all these super casual, story obsessed people complaining about dungeons?’

Obviously, because they were able to play dungeons just fine. I mean, the dungeon difficulty level is even being suggested as the basis for easy mode…

So, in short, you have no point at all.

When i talk about dungeons I’m referring to arah and maybe aetherpath.

I already mentioned the similar barriers in a previous post: need to form a group, 1 person that can take initiative, people must be willing to communicate and listen. And although there are no ‘hard’ requirements for dungeons, you can make the run a lot easier by adjusting your comp and bringing the right build.

If you can clear arah exp, you should be able to clear many of the raid bosses as well. Therefore, you have no need for the easymode raid in order to ‘experience the story’. If you can’t clear arah, why didn’t you complain about not being able to ‘experience the story’ before? My theory: you didn’t care about dungeon rewards but you do care about raid rewards and you’re lazy so you don’t want to put in the same amount of effort(=/=time) as other players.

Legendary envoy armor is a prestige item for dedicated raiders. Making it accessible to players that aren’t interested in the raiding experience (which includes the difficulty) is pretty absurd and diminishes the achievements of those that got it the ‘hard’ way. I’m not a fan of the ‘everybody is a winner’ ideology. People that put in time, effort and skill deserve to be rewarded for it. If you’re unwilling/unable to do all 3, you’re not entitled to the reward and raids are not the content for you.

Dungeons have a larger story line than raids, this is not a matter of opinion but a fact.

When you compare things to each other, you address the similarities between them, you’re not trying to prove that both are the same. In my opinion there are plenty of similarities between dungeons and raids worth mentioning, which I’ve already addressed.

Anyhow the point I’m trying to make is: ‘why weren’t all these super casual, story obsessed people complaining about dungeons?’ And I think the answer lies with the rewards and not with the quality of the story or the difficulty/barrier of entry of the content. Imo some people are using the story as an excuse in order to get easier, although more time consuming, access to the legendary envoy armor.
If you’re truly interested in the story, there are plenty of resources, both inside and outside of the game and there is no need to waste development time on a ‘story mode’ that players will play once.
If you’re interested in the legendary armor and the ‘prestige’ of the skin, just get good and do the raids in their current form. Nobody (aside from envious players that don’t want anybody else to accomplish what they can’t) will benefit from making legendary armor into another brainless farm achievement.

Also, telling me my opinion is just my opinion and doesn’t matter is NOT an argument.

Ohoni.6057:

How do the people that are ‘missing out on the story’ feel about dungeons? While dungeons are easier to complete, they provide barriers that are similar to those encountered when raiding. A single dungeon provides more story than all of the raid wings combined do. I suppose this isn’t a problem because you can get all the dungeon rewards by playing pvp.

I don’t think any of this is accurate information. The raid contains more information than the dungeons, And there really aren’t any barriers to entry, you can throw out an LFG, need half as many people to join you, they can be any class they want, not know the content at all, and you’ll still do just fine.

I hadn’t done much dungeoning lately because I’d burned out on them years ago, but when they added daily raids I’ve started doing a few of those. When CM was the dungeon of the day a month or so back, I queued up for path 1 with four other people who’d never done it before, and I totally forgot how to do it, and we still managed it in less than a half hour with only one wipe and a few downs. If you can manage the same with Vale Guardian then I’ll concede the point. To sum up, the challenge is:

• Clear Vale Guardian
• Using a completely random LFG party
• NONE of whom have any experience with the encounter
• with absolutely no gearchecks or class-checks, come as you are
• half hour total time limit, one wipe allowed.

Let’s see how you do. This is open to anyone, btw.

-I’d say each separate dungeon path has as much story as 1 raid wing.
-The barriers are similar, especially if you want to have a successful and pleasant run: you need to form a group; you need 1 assertive person that somewhat knows what’s going on and isn’t afraid to give directions; people need to be able to communicate and listen. Although you may be able to complete a dungeon with anything, having certain bases covered will significantly improve the run. I’d like to see a group of random noobs do ‘just fine’ in arah exp without any directions or a veteran soloing while they’re kittening around.
- Obviously there are some stricter requirements for raids compared to dungeons, some roles need to be covered but it isn’t nearly as strict as you make it out to be.
- The people that pug cleared wing 1 when it was first released did it exactly as you described, although some build/comp adjustments may have been needed.

FYI: When I’m talking about dungeons, I’m mainly referring to the harder ones (arah) and not just AC explorable. I’ve seen pugs take several hours to complete arah, or just give up after hours of trying to kill lupi.

In my opinion the players that claim they want a story mode/easier raid in order to ‘experience the story’ are not being genuine. I think they just want easier access to the rewards, which they don’t deserve. Pretty much every poster that asks for an easy mode/story mode wants to sneak in some rewards for completion.

The players that truly care about the story (which is next to nothing, it’s just barely enough to give the raid instances a reason to exist in Tyria) will have caught up on it by now. Either by reading the wiki, watching a youtube video or entering a completed instance and reading the letters themselves.

For those who still claim they want to ‘experience the story’ without having to put in effort, a ‘story mode’ with 0 rewards would be the only option I’d be able to agree with. However, providing this would be a huge wast of development time for something that nobody will complete more than once.

On a side note:
-I think that anyone that managed to complete all of the arah explorable modes is capable of killing most raid bosses.
-If you think lfg raid requirements are too strict you can always make your own group with like minded people.
-Just because some comps are superior or some classes/builds are better at something does’t mean it’s the only way to go. Using meta will most likely make things much easier, but if class/build variety is important to you, I’m sure you can make it work. After all, multiple groups managed to clear raids with a variety of comps before the raid meta was properly developed.

How do the people that are ‘missing out on the story’ feel about dungeons? While dungeons are easier to complete, they provide barriers that are similar to those encountered when raiding. A single dungeon provides more story than all of the raid wings combined do. I suppose this isn’t a problem because you can get all the dungeon rewards by playing pvp.

I really don’t understand why some people wish to prevent changes that would be advantageous for other players, while those changes would have 0 impact on themselves. The only answer that I can come up with is that they’re huge kittens.

Stat infusions that only provide +5 ar was clearly an oversight. I think the team that is responsible for the ‘special’ infusions is different from the fractal team and a lack of communication between both teams prior to the launch of HoT may have caused this oversight. I hope that they’ll provide a way to make them +7 ar eventually.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Ryn.6459:

Why dont you go and play a game based on trinity? I really like the fact if you have skill you dont need passive defenses.

Why, yeah really why? I do actually play other games, its not the point.

GW2 devs created a wide variety of stats, item suffixes and trait lines. Which of about 10% is used in 90% of the game. Now if they said at some point “it is working as intended and we meant the whole PvE to be about damage and dodge” it would be fine, or at least it would be another topic.

But they don’t. They did actually communicate on the fact that Zerk meta isn’t healthy for the game, and we still… have that.

Now about the skill factor. Stacking toughness or vitality will not make you any better at PvE, with or without skill. First, most big attack will kill you anyways, second, it is much safer to assume you will kill before you get killed, which at the end of the day isn’t involving any more skill.

Skill would eventually be knowing which attack you must dodge, and which you must take knowing your fellow team members will help you survive until the next one.

I am not saying the game does not involve any skill (tho it is mostly knowledge and habit, but heck, what is skill anyways?) but the presence of skill is not at all related to the fact healing sucks and all PvE is about DPS.

Defensive stats and healing work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0anv1XswfIc. There are plenty of other vids that show how brokenly easy pve can be when you run this kind of kitten. The ‘kill before you get killed’ and ‘you get one shot anyways’ arguments are incorrect.

Being ‘skilled’ involves more than just being able to stay alive in glass gear during an encounter. Keeping your party buffed, using defensive abilities correctly and executing your dps rotation properly are all part of skillful gameplay. Right now it may be quite easy to do these things, hopefully raids wil make all of these tasks more difficult. The rewards for skill? Faster clear times and for raids beating the enrage timer.

I’m currently playing tempest for the novelty of it but in my opinion running vanilla traits instead of tempest is better.

You often have to break off your overload channel in order to dodge attacks, which results in you not getting the 10% modifier and the extra damage the overload is supposed to provide. The increased cooldown on your overloaded attunement also sucks. If you have to swap out of fire after overloading because of the need of emergency reflects or heals, it will take even longer to return to your damage rotation. In comparison, you have water and arcane, which provide equally strong/stronger (not hard with guardian or revenant in the group) and more reliable damage modifiers and traits that offer better support.

I suppose you can make a decent build that focuses on healing and farting boons instead of doing damage. But, as already stated, there are plenty of other classes that can provide that without having to give up all of their damage. In my opinion you help your (kittenpug) group a lot more by properly playing a staff meta build instead of a build that hits like a wet noodle and helps party members that like to facetank survive 4 hits instead of the usual 2.

Personally, I hate stealth in every game I’ve played. I think it’s cheap and annoying, but I do understand why it’s there and why some people enjoy it. In my opinion stealth isn’t op in the current game. Preventing capture contribution is enough of a disadvantage and during a fight there are some ways to play around it.

However, I still have a problem with how stealth currently works for a different reason. I would like a team death match game mode (3v3 or 2v2). Sadly, because it’s incredibly easy for a team to maintain permanent stealth, it would never be balanced or even enjoyable since the team that drops stealth first loses. (This is exactly how it goes in courtyard, although courtyard itself is far from how I would picture tdm in this game.)

Also, not getting revealed when your attack is blocked or misses doesn’t make any sense and is kittening bullkitten.

Currently, elementalist is top tier in all gamemodes. It has already been confirmed that dd ele will recieve some nerfs because it’s too strong in pvp. What is getting nerfed and how hard is anybody’s guess, therefore we won’t know what the impact on other builds and in other gamemodes will be. My guess is that the impact on pve will be minor and i hope they won’t overdo the pvp nerfs.

As far as DPS goes, both ele and thief are top tier, although eles have a much stronger burst at the start of the fight. Both classes are highly desired in dungeon runs, but they each fulfill a different role. Ele is more capable of carrying the group through fights because of its utility and damage. Thief mainly makes skipping and certain puzzles easier.

basic ele responsibilities:
- maintaining party fury
- might (prestack before fights; you can also maintain a high amount of might with a df build if you lack a PS warrior)
- vulnerability
- blinds for trash fights
- icebow (for deep freezing bosses)
- ….

basic thief responsibilities:
- strip defiance for deep freeze (basilisk venom, steal, scorpion wire; don’t use headshot)
- blinds for trash fights
- stealth for skips (both blasting on darkness fields and shadow refuge)
- mobility skills like shadow step, shadow trap and infiltrator’s arrow can be used to make some puzzles easier and faster

This is by no means a complete list but it gives you a general idea of what your job is during a dungeon run while playing the respective class. Especially for the ele, there is so, so much more you can do to make the dungeon run easier for your party.

Detailed guides and builds for both classes can be found on dulfy, their respective class forum or you can check out the youtube videos made by DnT.

Making the core game free to play is to the benefit of gw2 and, ultimately, to ALL of it’s players. With the restrictions that are currently in place it will be incredibly hard to abuse the free accounts.

People that complain about it being free for new players, while they paid for it, are incredibly selfish and can’t see the bigger picture. Even if you’ve only bought the game half a year ago, you still should have gotten your money’s worth out of it. Unless you dropped the game right after you bought it.

For fotm try either staff (easiest and highest dps) or d/f (defensive utility and group might):
Here are build vids for both weapons, made by DEKeyz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsS5TwgbWBo&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzHYXe1Gaw&feature=youtu.be

In case you’re not that familiar with the fights yet, or if you think you’ll need more dodges, swap out water line for arcana line.

And here is a series of separate video guides for each fractals as an ele, also made by DEKeyz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_qzqNNdnQ&list=PLwQtsq8Rv5LUqwXRm3xOYnr1oYsitaiSi

I know what you were talking about and you are right. The point is that whether it is posible to use obsidian flesh or not is irrelevant because the overload is not worth casting under these conditions in the first place. My point is you have a knack for finding these kinds of ‘flaws’ and commenting on them. This doesn’t add much to the discussion and frustrates some people.

And yes I am aware of the irony.

Why waste your strongest defensive cooldown in order to channel a spell that’s not worth casting at all?

Also, way to nitpick at the details leo, you never let a chance to make a remark pass. Even if it’s trivial and besides the question. Keep it up! Glad to see you didn’t get bored of it after all this time.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Raif.9507:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Ascended for pvp…

I would post a Dave Mustaine .gif where he does that facepalm again but I cba…

He might be talking about WvW you know… there IS PvP there despite people claiming there isn’t.

He said PvP, and with PvP you mean sPvP.

Anyways, there’s no “best” armor cause it’s all about playstyle.

Going to the forums and ask what’s the “best” armor is … Well I’ll stop here, not in a mood of getting banned (again)

When somebody asks for build or gear choices on a forum it’s most likely they’re looking for a well rounded cookie cutter build they can just slap on (a.k.a. metabattle build). And while there may not be a ‘best’ armor there are definately stronger and weaker choices.

I can’t imagine why you would get banned on the forums. Mods be crazy.

fyi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_versus_player

berserker daggers, celestial armor

On a more serious note, staff is a strong choice for pve (and after the trait changes the only one worth considering). You’re basically casting fire 235 when off cd so it is pretty easy and pretty boring to play though.

The most important part is that you wear zerk gear. We currently have zerker meta because zerker gear is op. This game has no trinity so only dps matters, wearing zerker gear is safest way to play because dead enemy= no damage enemy. If you don’t wear zerk gear in zerker party it’s your fault if the party wipes because they won’t have enough dps to kill the boss before they die.
/s

How can something be challenging while it gives noobs ‘enough hp to learn’? It’s completely contradictory.

I’ll give you an example: Soloing lupi on ele is challenging because he literally one shots you. In order to give a noob the opportunity to learn he’d need enough hp to survive getting one shotted by lupi → kills part of the challenge for the soloing ele. And if you want to be nitpicky, the same can be applied to group a setting. It’s already easy enough to kill lupi with a group, your suggestion would make it a snoozefest.

Also notice that my concern is not the reduction in damage I’ll suffer.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Frostfire.7492:

To play meta means that you want to complete the dungeons as fast as possible, to be the most efficent.
The biggest problem here is that you have to kill certain bosses to go further, the longer you need to kill the monster, the inefficient the run.
To kill the mobs as fast as possible you take as much dmg as possible and lern how to survive with that low HP.
Why should I play Vallkyrie/rampager when I can survive in a fight against the enemy without dying with a full set of zerker? So why choose something that you don’t need just to be different?

You’re ignoring the point of the question so, like I said, I’ll ask again, and again, and again:

Why not replace ALL PvE gear with a single set that provides enough HP for noobs to learn and enough damage for veterans to speedrun, with some conditions included, while keeping WvW gear choices a matter of their own?

This means REPLACE all gear. You know English? Remove zerk, remove nomads, remove the choices FROM PVE. Keep one all-in-one set similar to a combination of valkyrie and rampagers so that everyone is happy, noobs can learn, veterans can speedrun. What is your problem with that?

It would make the game even easier and duller. Right now you have to choose: do you want damage or do you want to be safer? What you’re basically suggesting is to buff base stats so everybody can live after eating 3 lupi kicks on ele while still dealing tons of damage.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Wasted so much time writing walls of text for the likes of Harper and Farth Thungen that I’m not even gonna bother. It’s useless to play chess with a chicken, it will just knock down all the pieces and declare itself the winner.

All I have to say is this: regardless what concepts were originally in this game, the fact is there is a suggestion forum, the fact is Devs try to listen to players a minimum and the fact is that some things have changed since the start. This means that I am free to state my opinion about trinity being useful and I don’t need to go to another game to pursue having it set in place.

The fact is that there’s 25 armor sets in game and only one is prominently used. And before you say “PvP” again, I will remind you that this discussion is about PvE, stop trying to change the topic.

The fact is that while you like your no-trinity nonsense, even for a no-trinity this game is very poorly balanced when it comes to meta. The meta lacks diveristy (I do not care if you personally don’t like diversity, you can’t claim this game was advertised as anti-diversity when there’s all these armor stats and traits). I’m not a game dev so it’s not my job to figure out how, but I’m sure they can work out a way to balance this. If Nexon has managed to do so with Vindictus (by not having gear stat choice to begin with) then I’m sure Anet can figure something out as well.

And yeah if there’s a new meta, I will immediately jump into it and then flame whatever zerk tryhards still wouldn’t have switched, even if they were few, because I’m sure that not all of them will switch over immediately. I’m sure many of them would try to keep their thing going for as long as possible.

You must have been kicked out of a lot of dungeon parties to be this vindictive. You write walls of text but I’m pretty sure you only have one real problem. For some reason you are hindered from making your own group or from joining casual runs.

Tigaseye.2047:

Tea.7025:

“Here, you can pick between three effects that are equally minor and contribute very little to how you play your character because we didn’t want this guy to accidentally perform worse than that other guy, even if the former one is just drunk and picks talents at random while equipping intellect plate on his warrior.”

The ability to choose is good but making every choice an optimal one is bad. It ultimately makes the decision and thus the options themselves more or less irrelevant.

Well, I disagree.

I think the skill in a game should be in the way you, physically, play it.

Which will, obviously, gradually improve over time.

Not in the “skill” of googling optimal builds.

…and intellect plate will, obviously, seriously nerf warrior, whatever build they choose.

So, I have no idea what you’re even try to saying with that.

Other than to try to describe a new player and your, apparent, desire to make them perform even worse than they would already do, in that new situation, by providing them with red herrings.

I know you said “drunk”, but it doesn’t matter how drunk someone is; unless they’re a very new player, they won’t gear a warrior in intellect plate.

Just to reiterate – I think there should be choices, just that none of them should be considered bad/unusable.

Paradox.1380:

Meleeing something is not the same as stacking in a corner. I haven’t seen stacking in months. I’m sure more people will come around. Stacking in a corner is NOT meta. its pug tactics. True Meta is Melee though. And I agree with it because you share boons better and most often its melee range weapons that have the best damage rotations.

This could well be true.

But, there’s not really any argument over what is true, or not.

Truth just is.

The argument is over whether it should be true, or not.

In other words, should it be the case that meleeing is better than ranged, for example?

…and yes, I get why it was made that way – as a lazy attempt to make it worthwhile to melee, by giving it more damage.

But, that doesn’t mean it’s right (from a good design/fulfilling gameplay POV) that you can’t use ranged weaps, if you prefer; unless you make/join a special “do what you like” type group.

If you range you’ll be much safer compared to when you play in meelee range. The drawback is dealing less damage. Seems balanced to me. Please provide one argument in favour of making ranged damage equal to/better than meelee damage.

PS: Staff ele has the higest dps in the game, which is complete bullkitten. D/F master race!

Uh what is and is not an exploit/glitch is quite well defined. What you just described isn’t just ‘smart use of game mechanics’ but the acutal intended mechanic for the fight.

Dhorghar.5249:

Talyn.3295:

Dhorghar.5249:

Talyn.3295:

Dhorghar.5249:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Dhorghar.5249:

Nemesis explains really well what’s wrong with the berserker meta in his new video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js5ltIBr73s

LOLOLOLOL. Video made me laugh. If content takes longer than it already does… I’ll quit and Anet won’t get anymore of my money.

That guy just wants the Trinity in GW2 because he mains a Necro. He sounds really bitter.

He’s right on everything he says about the meta though.

No, he isn’t

Yes he is. Nemesis is a really good player if not the best necro. He always manages to stay alive when the berserkers are wiping the floor with their dead bodies so he knows his kitten really well.

LoL, you have got to be kidding. I am just gonna assume you are a troll like him.

Just because you have a Youtube channel doesn’t mean you are a good player. His entire video is just his opinion on things that he has no idea what he is talking about. You can defend him all you like. It doesn’t make him or you right.

Heads up, anytime someone with low damage joins an inexperienced zerker only group and isn’t bringing any kind of support they cause the zerkers to die. Which is why most inexperienced groups don’t like to carry people.

I could probably carry him through anything, but since he is on my block list, it would never happen.

You can talk all you want, your opinion doesn’t make your right either.

Except that in this case his opinion is pretty much a fact. If nemesis even knew what was going on in half the videos he discussed, i’d be surprised. Oh and you can be sure the videos where he does his ‘hero play’ and stays alive are rare occurances he specifically selected.

You do realise gear is used in wvw as well right? Besides, the damage gap is not as big as you all claim it is, if everybody plays properly your run will only take a few minutes longer compared to a run in berserker gear.

Some people like to be efficient. → They play meta builds.
Other people like showing off their gear, RP or want to watch tv while running dungeons. → these play a wide variety of builds

There is an anti ‘zerk’ meta post on the forums every day. Since only a minority posts on the forums we can assume there are enough people that don’t want to play the meta, while still wanting to run a dungeon, to form multiple 5 man parties. So maybe you should use the tools given to you in game or add the people that make these posts on the forums to your friends list and form a dungeon group with them. That way everybody will be happy.

Although it’s true that people can brute force the fights in lower level dungeons in berserker gear, this is harldy the case in arah and high lvl fotm. Playing in berserker gear in those dungeons is actually harder and does require some skill and knowledge about the game.

I have watched the nemesis video and it contains a bunch of misinformation.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

@Eurhetemec.9052
In the end it will lengthen the entire run by a few minutes, which is not as dramatic as the anti berserker crowd claims.

I just want to point out how hypocritical it is of you to claim that the anti-berzerker crowd is the one claiming there is a huge difference, when in game it’s the berzerker crowd that actively excludes every other build from their LFG as if it made a huge difference.

It’s the berzerker users who consider it big enough a difference to exclude others from their parties, not the other way around. I have never seen a LFG with “valkyrie only” or “knights only”.

As I have said before, it’s not the gear that matters (as much) but the mentality and play associated with players that run berserker gear. If a person runs berserker gear it is more likely he’ll run the proper weapons, traits and support, use the right skills and knows what he’s doing.
So they, or at least I and my friends, don’t exclude you for your sub optimal gear but because we assume it’s accompanied by sub optimal play.
edit: and utilities*

That’s a pretty poor assumption, because in reality berzerker gear seems to be the standard choice for most new players, as most people will tell them to go with that gear.

If someone is not going zerk then it’s most likely that he has some idea going there and has practiced with it.

Regardless, my point still stands that you’re being a hypocrite for saying that the non-zerk crowd considers it a big difference when it’s you who makes such a fuss about what is optimal or not in LFG. In fact, the idea that you associate gear choice with skill only makes it worse, you actively judge people’s skill based on how they chose to play.

To me it seems like the noob in zerk gear at least has tried to inform himself about dungeons while the other one just decided to roll with some random kitten. Anyhow, this is a matter of perspective and to be honest either situation is plausible. In my pugging experience few players that run berserker gear know how to play properly, however i have seen even fewer people that know how to play that don’t wear berserker gear.

Well the problem is that there is no other way to judge a player before the run starts aside from his gear choice. I suppose i could start questioning players about their builds or ask them to link me vids of them soloing lupi but then i’d never be able to start a run.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

@Eurhetemec.9052
In the end it will lengthen the entire run by a few minutes, which is not as dramatic as the anti berserker crowd claims.

I just want to point out how hypocritical it is of you to claim that the anti-berzerker crowd is the one claiming there is a huge difference, when in game it’s the berzerker crowd that actively excludes every other build from their LFG as if it made a huge difference.

It’s the berzerker users who consider it big enough a difference to exclude others from their parties, not the other way around. I have never seen a LFG with “valkyrie only” or “knights only”.

As I have said before, it’s not the gear that matters (as much) but the mentality and play associated with players that run berserker gear. If a person runs berserker gear it is more likely he’ll run the proper weapons, traits and support, use the right skills and knows what he’s doing.
So they, or at least I and my friends, don’t exclude you for your sub optimal gear but because we assume it’s accompanied by sub optimal play.
edit: and utilities*

Eurhetemec.9052:

Thaddeus.4891:

More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

You’d need to boost passive stuff like Tou/Vit/Heal to make it even possible with non-Zerker, though, I’d think.

You have it backwards. You have access to the same active defenses on defensive gear, passive defenses act as a crutch when you mess up so it’s easier to play in defensive gear. If you manage your kitten properly you can survive forever on active defenses.

If course blocks/dodge/invuln have way more value, you need to time when you use them and there is only a limited amount available. Passive stats, on the other hand are always there to cushion the blow when you kitten up. Toughness, healing and vitality are already strong enough in pve, people can already bypass game mechanics by stacking these stats.

@Eurhetemec.9052
Actually it isn’t a matter of opinion at all. The difference in time to kill stuff is a measurable unit and you can objectively compare these times, however how significant you find the time difference is indeed a matter of opinion. Wearing sub optimal gear in optimal conditions is going to add a few seconds, a minute at most to kill times. In the end it will lengthen the entire run by a few minutes, which is not as dramatic as the anti berserker crowd claims. My evidence isn’t the best to support this statement because it compares 2 extremes. But if i tell you that the difference in kill time for belka was 2 minutes, it takes just a little bit of imagination to realise that it won’t be that much if a difference if people weren’t trolling.
I understand where you’re coming from, when you mention that the stats on berserker gear scale with each other. However, capping vuln, capping might, damage multipliers from sigils, runes and traits, fury and banners and using the right rotations, boost your damage by a lot more than any stat choice does. These factors decide the majority of the damage you’ll be dealing, not the gear you’re wearing.
The stuff you mentioned about zerk being easy only applies for super easy content. You can’t brute force bosses in fotm 50 and arah.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

http://gw2dungeons.net/Records this page contains all the dungeon records for every path. The record for arah p2 is 9m 25s. In the video I linked earlier, which I link here again for your convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM rT finished arah p2 in 28m 51s while everybody is wearing cleric gear, which is one of the most tanky gearchoices in the game (healing power mainstat, power and toughness minor). So, the path took 3 times longer than the all time record, while everybody was wearing the (almost) tankiest gear in the game and with dodge keys unbound. And it’s not like they were trying to be fast either.

In case everybody runs some half decent gear it WILL actually take only a few minutes longer, compared to full berserker gear, while being a lot easier and safer. Unlike the 56 minutes you claim it will take if you don’t run berserker gear.

These are one time records, which will be fast no matter what. (28 minutes is still three times as long as 9… it’s a huge difference). What would be interesting to see would be averages.

I think a valkyrie set would be very close in speed to a zerk set. I run in valkyrie/exuberance and I’m fine with dungeon clearing speeds. But you have to understand that a large % of the community is not willing to acknowledge that, hence the “zerk meta” LFG requirement instead of “nuker meta”.

You didn’t read my post at all, and if you did, you didn’t understand it.
Oh. And you didn’t quote this importan part, which actually adresses your closing statement:
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Honestly, most people that ask for ‘zerk gear’ in their group don’t really care about the berserker gear. What they actually ask of you is that you:
1) know how to run the dungeon
2) have the right build = traits, weapons and utilities
3) know the proper damage rotations and provide the support that’s expected of your class.
4) (bonus) use the right food
These 3(4) things are far more important than wearing berserker/asassin gear. Unfortunately, gear ping is the only way they can filter. This way they still won’t know if you are up to their standards, but at least they’ll know they’re playing with like minded individuals, or they’re getting trolled by nomad warriors that keep a zerk set in their inventory to ping.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

If you join a zerk meta party, they ask you to ping and you show you have rampagers, it’s most likely you’ll get kicked. Yet rampagers is also a full DPS set.

WHOOSH. For the entirety of this thread you claim there is a mayor performance gap between gear choices and that berserker is the only viable set. I prove that this is not the case by providing factual evidence. You then even AGREE with me that the difference is not that big. And then you start about the discrimination by ‘7331’ zerk pugs that don’t understand the game any more than you do, which is another matter entirely.

Also to clarify: The all time record is, indeed, a tryhard record where they ran with a party setup optimised for that specific dungeon path, these players pushed to their limits and there whas a whole bunch of mesmer running ahead and portaling people trough. Not to mention all the resets they did because of slight kittenups or bad rng. The 28 minute run, on the other hand. Is a casual run with cleric gear and a crappy team comp (they had a necro for kitten sake) and it was only 20 minutes longer.

Teehee you deleted your post. Does that mean I win? Where is my prize? (incinerator plz)
Edit: Ah no, seems like I’m just stupid and still can’t use the forum.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

petyr baelish.9675:

http://gw2dungeons.net/Records this page contains all the dungeon records for every path. The record for arah p2 is 9m 25s. In the video I linked earlier, which I link here again for your convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM rT finished arah p2 in 28m 51s while everybody is wearing cleric gear, which is one of the most tanky gearchoices in the game (healing power mainstat, power and toughness minor). So, the path took 3 times longer than the all time record, while everybody was wearing the (almost) tankiest gear in the game and with dodge keys unbound. And it’s not like they were trying to be fast either.

In case everybody runs some half decent gear it WILL actually take only a few minutes longer, compared to full berserker gear, while being a lot easier and safer. Unlike the 56 minutes you claim it will take if you don’t run berserker gear.

These are one time records, which will be fast no matter what. (28 minutes is still three times as long as 9… it’s a huge difference). What would be interesting to see would be averages.

I think a valkyrie set would be very close in speed to a zerk set. I run in valkyrie/exuberance and I’m fine with dungeon clearing speeds. But you have to understand that a large % of the community is not willing to acknowledge that, hence the “zerk meta” LFG requirement instead of “nuker meta”.

You didn’t read my post at all, and if you did, you didn’t understand it.
Oh. And you didn’t quote this importan part, which actually adresses your closing statement:
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Honestly, most people that ask for ‘zerk gear’ in their group don’t really care about the berserker gear. What they actually ask of you is that you:
1) know how to run the dungeon
2) have the right build = traits, weapons and utilities
3) know the proper damage rotations and provide the support that’s expected of your class.
4) (bonus) use the right food
These 3(4) things are far more important than wearing berserker/asassin gear. Unfortunately, gear ping is the only way they can filter. This way they still won’t know if you are up to their standards, but at least they’ll know they’re playing with like minded individuals, or they’re getting trolled by nomad warriors that keep a zerk set in their inventory to ping.
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Actually, I find the action style combat, being completely self reliant and the fact that I have to pay attention to ‘all 3 parts of the trinity’ instead of 1 dedicated role a lot more entertaining than playing a trinity role.

http://gw2dungeons.net/Records this page contains all the dungeon records for every path. The record for arah p2 is 9m 25s. In the video I linked earlier, which I link here again for your convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM rT finished arah p2 in 28m 51s while everybody is wearing cleric gear, which is one of the most tanky gearchoices in the game (healing power mainstat, power and toughness minor). So, the path took 3 times longer than the all time record, while everybody was wearing the (almost) tankiest gear in the game and with dodge keys unbound. And it’s not like they were trying to be fast either.

In case everybody runs some half decent gear it WILL actually take only a few minutes longer, compared to full berserker gear, while being a lot easier and safer. Unlike the 56 minutes you claim it will take if you don’t run berserker gear.

Honestly, most people that ask for ‘zerk gear’ in their group don’t really care about the berserker gear. What they actually ask of you is that you:
1) know how to run the dungeon
2) have the right build = traits, weapons and utilities
3) know the proper damage rotations and provide the support that’s expected of your class.
4) (bonus) use the right food
These 3(4) things are far more important than wearing berserker/asassin gear. Unfortunately, gear ping is the only way they can filter. This way they still won’t know if you are up to their standards, but at least they’ll know they’re playing with like minded individuals, or they’re getting trolled by nomad warriors that keep a zerk set in their inventory to ping.

edit: wow you guys sure do post fast, anyhow my post is a response to this one:
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You have already been answered on this, and I will copy/paste the answer below:

Those who argue that off-zerker gearsets is “Not Optimal” but is “Still Viable” – this is a load of crock. The difference between a 6 min clear and a 56 min clear in a goal/reward-driven game is severe enough to classify the 56 min clear build as “not viable”. The difference between optimal and not optimal should be more in the ballpark of 6 mins vs 8~10 mins.
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Yes, I don’t know how to use the forum. :^)

Guest.8245:

We know there will always be a meta. We want a Balanced meta, where multiple roles or gears are equally viable. This is not the case in current GW2 PvE.

petyr baelish.9675:

Or you can accept the current system because it’s fine? Your gear decides what kind of damage you will deal (condition, direct or none because nomads) and the difficulty setting. Besides, everybody know half of the gear types were deliberately added to troll us when we get an ascended chest/ring drop.

Quite funny everybody calls the pve metagame ‘zerk meta’ while weapons, runes, sigils, traits and utilities are far more important choices than the stats on your gear, unless you wear nomads. Also, asassins is most optimal for some classes, sinister gear with givers weapons can be most optimal for some classes in solo situations and there are niche uses for knights gear.

I’ve tried three times to respond to this post while still being constructive, it’s really difficult.

1) Joking aside, it’s not fine when “Half the gear types are deliberately added to troll us”
2) Gear doesn’t affect difficulty setting because toughness/vit don’t really make for easier encounters (since they all last longer and because if you dodge you die anyway). +Heal and +Tough don’t make you survive if you keep making the same mistakes and taking damage in the first place.
3) We’re talking about zerk meta because sigils/runes/traits/utilities are much more appropriately balanced (Read: There is choice). With Zerk gear there is no choice, you run it or you’re behind.
4) I know there are situations where you don’t run zerks. 3/25 gear choices viable is a minuscule improvement on 1/25 gear choices viable. That those non-zerker gears make up 10% of PvE with the other 90% being zerk is still not okay.

1) Some geartypes are made just because they can be made or because they are requested by the community. For example, I’m pretty sure the devs never intended that people actually used magi stats when they designed it. A less extreme case would be to take pvt over nomad because pvt allows you to deal at least some damage. This is not because of bad design, but because some stat combinations are just bad.
2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zKXILTkQo
There is also a nomad lupi solo that has been linked by dlonie if i’m not mistaken.
Conclusion: tank gear is kittening op if you don’t care about speed and it’s easier if you play with tanky stats. Your argument is void. People can keep on soloing bosses forever in berserker gear if they play properly, however, it is a lot easier when you do it in pvt gear because you can afford to take a hit now and then instead of insta downing. Compared to that, the ‘extra risk of making mistakes’ because the fight lasts slightly longer is insignificant.
Inb4 ‘the vids you linked are special cases’: no it’s kittening not, there is an endless supply of such vids for multiple bosses I just assume 2(3) are enough to make my point.
3) What I’m saying is that the meta is not defined by gear but by a whole playstyle that includes a number of factors, of which the stat choice is a less significant one.
4) Every gear choice is VIABLE, which means you can complete the content on anything. 3 gear choices are part of the most EFFICIENT IF YOU KNOW THE PROPER STRATEGIES AND IF YOU ARE SKILLED ENOUGH. And I cannot stress this enough, FOR MORE THAN 50% OF THE PLAYERS, NOT RUNNING ONE OF THOSE 3 GEAR CHOICES IS MORE EFFICIENT BECAUSE THEY CAN’T STAY ALIVE IN GLASS GEAR.

edit: And as an answer to your last remark: the choice is pretty balanced. Do you want to have the fastest possible runs? ->pick berserker/asassin/etc.
On the other hand. Do you want to watch tv while you run dungeons?Do you suck? Do you want to RP an unkillable warrior or a ‘cool’ dual pistol wielding thief? -> nomad and any other gear you want.

+heal or + toughness are not appealing because you won’t take damage if you play properly. In parties with less experienced players both stats are valuable because being able to coplete the content at a slower pace is better than dying all the time.

If you think playing in berserker gear is too easy then i’ll gladly invite you to an arah or fotm 50 run because you and I both know you’re full of kitten. On the off chance you actually are able to run those dungeons in berserker gear, without finding it challenging I suggest you find yourself another game because I doubt anet will develop anything more challenging.

Or you can accept the current system because it’s fine? Your gear decides what kind of damage you will deal (condition, direct or none because nomads) and the difficulty setting. Besides, everybody knows half of the gear types were deliberately added to troll us when we get an ascended chest/ring drop.

Quite funny everybody calls the pve metagame ‘zerk meta’ while weapons, runes, sigils, traits and utilities are far more important choices than the stats on your gear, unless you wear nomads. Also, asassins is most optimal for some classes, sinister gear with givers weapons can be most optimal for some classes in solo situations and there are niche uses for knights gear.

So now you’re editing entire posts just so you won’t have to admit your mistakes? :p

Obtena.7952:

petyr baelish.9675:

1. You trait deeply into radience for radiant power, which is a 10% damage modifier. Since you already put in 5 points you might as well pick up the 6th. If you want to do proper rotations you’ll swap to sword/f to fill in the gaps between gs bursts so you’ll benefit from those traits.

Oh jeez … where to start:

1. You don’t DO rotations in OW PVE. You’re still thinking your in a dungeon. We are talking about mobs that die in 1-3 seconds … and your talking about swapping. There ARE no gaps to ‘fill in’. Funny stuff.
2. That 10% increase is not as awesome as you might think in OW. Give me something that will shave a hit or two off of killing a trash mob, then you have something to get excited about. Stacked damage effects do that. 10% damage is actually a secondary consideration.

petyr baelish.9675:

If you want to camp 1 weapon, camp gs, the higest dps build is still 4/6/4/2/0/2. But you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot if you do because you’ll pass up on 2 blinds, a block skill and a bit of extra damage.

Sigh … OP said he did NOT want to use GS OR Sword… and you’re accusing me of confusing the issue and not adding anything to the thread. Please.

petyr baelish.9675:

The only difference between open world and dungeons is that for dungeons you often pick more supportive builds according to the situation. In open world you just yolo max dps everything to death.

Yup, this is why you don’t understand what an optimized build for OW PVE is about … because you just YOLO everything with your dungeon meta build ><. GG

1: It doesn’t matter if you finish the rotation or not, you just follow it until the mobs are dead.
2: Out of everything you get from traits, damage modifiers have the greatest effect on your output dmg. I wonder what kind of ‘stacked damage effects’, or any other crap obtained in traits would be worth the tradeoff. The fact is that with 4/6/2/0/2 you will do more damage with gs+sw/f or just gs than with any other build. And gs does more damage than any other weapon except for scepter on medium sized hitbox mobs that are immobile.
3: the op said he did not want to change weapons during fight, I said he should camp gs. I think you misinterpreted what he said.
4: The only ‘extra’ thing that you took into consideration was mobility and you advised him to take speed sigil. I’m only discussing traits, not runes and sigils because there are a lot of choices and preferences. For what it’s worth you can maintain nearly permanent swiftness if you use staff as your secondary weapons set and retreat, gs 3 is also a leap.
5: It seems you don’t understand the difference between open world pve and dungeons, one of the 2 is harder and it isn’t open world.

I won’t be replying to you anymore since you started editing your posts to cover your tracks and I have proven you wrong plenty of times. You’re so fixed on winning your imaginary battle with the ‘toxic dungeon players that copy paste 1 generic build and YOLO max dps’. Now I’ll let you have the last word since I’m sure you’ll take it.