Guild Wars 2

Ryn.6459:

Come on Jerus, do it for engis community! We need more vids with engis on them.

Vedeos?

Can’t do it, I play on a potato, though I really shouldn’t say that, it’s insulting to potatoes.

Ele has higher damage(not by much but it’s noticeable esp in burst damage) and can do better blasting (including more might).
Engi has better sustained vuln and can stealth.

That about sums up the differences, can do everything you listed though.

I understand your opinion Azhure. The game could be more complex with more customization at the gear level. Personally I kind of enjoy the fact that it’s a bit more simple though. I have full customization of my tools through weapon, utility and trait selection with a bit from runes/sigil as well. My gear simply acts as a basic offense/defense slider.

This leaves me with only needing one gear set in PVE, and all the things I may want to tweak for different situations are more or less things I can do so easily, the exception being weapons and runes/sigils but I don’t really see myself wanting more than a couple combinations there (maybe str and scholar setup for Ele, and maybe 2-3 of any type of weapon per char). The main focus though is traits and utilities which I can change at any time without any restrictions other than having to be out of combat. That’s beautiful to me.

Iris Ng.9845:

petyr baelish.9675:

The 04550 build Iris mentioned has the highest dps in theory but in practice it’s nearly impossible to maintain both of the 10% multipliers, which is what i was poking fun at. It’s a nice benchmark but i doubt it ever gets used for anything aside from dps tests on dummies.

For min-maxer, dodge is a loss of DPS and overrated. Example of which 04550 may be used in speedrun: http://youtu.be/jBQQM6aMaMo?t=2m35s

Miku, if being practical is a thing then only 66200 or 66002 counts in any situations. But as long as “absolute highest personal DPS” is taken seriously, 04550 is still the answer.

With the new IB tricks though aren’t you going to use your dodge to trigger that? just a thought.

Yeah NA.

Careful, I may hit you up on that if I start to play again. Kinda took a break from the game a month or so ago thanks to boredom and work going nuts, but after this weekend work will finally slow down a little again.

dlonie.6547:

lol high five Cookies FTW!

My favorite lately has been just joining the “p3” / “story” / “p2 at last boss” groups listed in “Open World Content”. Fun times.

I’ve also discovered that some of the most fun pugs are found by seeking out SEp2 PUGs. Always a laid back, easy-going group, if you’re into that sort of thing. Not terribly skilled, but motivated. Plus you usually get to be the hero, because nobody knows that path, lol.

Still never done that path been sitting with only that left for dungeon master for months.

Lindbur.2537:

I can’t be the only one who’s more interested in watching Nike and Zelyhn argue than the thread topic.

But, kudos. I find Belka to be cancerous, since she orbs me in the face and her stupid knockback doesn’t help my case. Maybe I’m just bad. shrug

Agree on both points, I logged in with the intention of playing last night, coulnd’t think what I actually wanted to do, thought “ohh hey i’ll go have some fun with my big ol’ friend Lupi” then I remembered I’d have to go through belka to get there and logged out

ChoChoBo.6503:

Question: Is wall-aiming with MS to target smaller area not consider glitching/exploiting?

According to ANet, /shrug who knows, if you get them to talk about anything tell me how please.

According to the community and GWSCR as of now I don’t believe so.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I wrote: Any dungeon. Any path. No skips. No Zerk. No stacking. All clear. No meta.
And I got a guy to join then he said, “You’re Stupid!” and left.

Seems no one wants a challenge or to do it old school anymore. I miss those days.

It’s not really a challenge, it’s just doing things the long way. With as many people on the forums that talk about it though, you’d think you’d have had some luck.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Jerus.4350:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Lol. I seriously wonder how they manage to do this time and time again. How is the fractal code related to anything in Wintersday at all? Any programmers have a better grasp of it than me?

Edit: I wonder if they tried to fix the tonic drop rate from 0 to something achievable.

Maybe some very poor coding and with the change to dailies in general it’s not registering fractal dailies correctly?

Yeah, just meandered into the bugs forum, this seems to be it. I almost joked that it’s not like you get good rewards from the chests anyway… but then I held off

Nice, honestly was just a guess but the only thing that made sense (possibly having a single function that determines what dailies you’re eligible for at any given time)

Iris Ng.9845:

Wolf Children was made by the same Director and Studio who made Summer Wars.

Ohh, nice, I need to find it. Happen to know where I should look?

EDIT: NM found it, couldn’t a few months ago when I was trying but found it when looking today

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

hybrid.5027:

Windsagio.1340:

In a perfect word they’d be as smart and act in a similar way to pvp opponents (and balanced appropriately). We’re not in a perfect world though, so we’re pretty limited in what our AI’s can do.

That would be a meta shift, but it would be an interesting one.

If only it were possible :p

I guess its time to explain how it would work…

1. Anet implements a radically new, realistic AI. Game gets 5x harder. Rewards are increased to compensate.
2. Elite dungeon guilds take a month or two to figure out optimal strategies. Begin speed running dungeons with relative ease again, and reap the increased rewards.
3. Pugs are unable to complete ACp1 in under an hour.
4. Rivers of tears flow.

Do you realize how insanely difficult it would be to do a truly reactive AI that matches the responsiveness of pvp players?

1) Is probably a compsci Ph.D at the very least.
2) If it were truly up to human reactions it would take more than a month. A new meta would emerge, I’d agree. It wouldnt’ be a speedrun meta though it would be a survival meta, similar to our current pvp with a greater emphasis on support (a major problem with the idea, even if it were possible, is that we’d go back to more groups demanding Guardians)
3) It depends on the target length. For it to work at all, enemies would not be able to have the kind of health numbers we’re used to.
4) No doubt. I agree on this, it would be a lot harder to loot-train them.

2) you realize the major reason PVP meta is bunkery is because it’s about holding nodes, IE “sit here and survive”. That’s not what dungeons are about in most cases, a few spots yes, but it’s generally about killing, not just not dying.

It’s more complex than that, specifically the WvW meta likes defense more too. In general survival is more valuable in unpredictable situations and where the enemy uses more control.

It would be more annoying for players at first, especially in the established game, but it’s all about setting expectations. That’s why it’s very risky to retroactively change the AI, players already have things they expect, and it’s all going to fall apart.

Ehh, kinda, a lot of the reason in general WvW you’re running beefier is arrow carts, pain and simple. The unavoidable damage that you simply have to withstand to make it through a choke point.

As you move to GvG type content you’ll find a lot more glass with mainly just your guard/wars bulking up as it’s their job to run into the other team and as you said more likely to catch that immob (control effects are much less of an issue if you run Meta with 2 guards rotating stab correctly). With that interesting thing… still a meta in WvW

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Lol. I seriously wonder how they manage to do this time and time again. How is the fractal code related to anything in Wintersday at all? Any programmers have a better grasp of it than me?

Edit: I wonder if they tried to fix the tonic drop rate from 0 to something achievable.

Maybe some very poor coding and with the change to dailies in general it’s not registering fractal dailies correctly?

Windsagio.1340:

hybrid.5027:

Windsagio.1340:

In a perfect word they’d be as smart and act in a similar way to pvp opponents (and balanced appropriately). We’re not in a perfect world though, so we’re pretty limited in what our AI’s can do.

That would be a meta shift, but it would be an interesting one.

If only it were possible :p

I guess its time to explain how it would work…

1. Anet implements a radically new, realistic AI. Game gets 5x harder. Rewards are increased to compensate.
2. Elite dungeon guilds take a month or two to figure out optimal strategies. Begin speed running dungeons with relative ease again, and reap the increased rewards.
3. Pugs are unable to complete ACp1 in under an hour.
4. Rivers of tears flow.

Do you realize how insanely difficult it would be to do a truly reactive AI that matches the responsiveness of pvp players?

1) Is probably a compsci Ph.D at the very least.
2) If it were truly up to human reactions it would take more than a month. A new meta would emerge, I’d agree. It wouldnt’ be a speedrun meta though it would be a survival meta, similar to our current pvp with a greater emphasis on support (a major problem with the idea, even if it were possible, is that we’d go back to more groups demanding Guardians)
3) It depends on the target length. For it to work at all, enemies would not be able to have the kind of health numbers we’re used to.
4) No doubt. I agree on this, it would be a lot harder to loot-train them.

2) you realize the major reason PVP meta is bunkery is because it’s about holding nodes, IE “sit here and survive”. That’s not what dungeons are about in most cases, a few spots yes, but it’s generally about killing, not just not dying.

I’ve heard of Wolf Children, haven’t been able to find it yet to watch it. (at least I think that’s what it was called, buddy showed me a trailer, reminded me of Miyazaki movies a bit)

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Lendruil.9061:

Whats the problem of field damage? It just would require to use well timed interrupts, maybe blasting some water fields or using invul-skills, but i don’t see how it would stop a skilled party from meleeing.

If you scroll up (it got cut out of the quote, oops) it was in response to an idea that bosses would run away if people tried to melee them. That would cause field damage (things like Lava Font, Acid Bomb, Smite, etc) to become much less effective.

Not sure what you’re thinking we’re talking about, are you thinking about players being in damage fields?… that’s not what it was about.

And no, a boss walking wouldn’t stop meleeing, it’d just have us cripple/chilling and moving with it, and likely avoiding weaponry that is reliant on a static enemy (Ele Staff, Guard Scepter, Engi EG, Maybe even Ele Scepter w/dragons tooth and what not?)

Worth repeating that in GW1 the enemies did run out of fields. We should get some GW1 purists in here about how that was better ><

Edit: last part is meant as a joke.

Some GW2 enemies run away too… and they’re more annoying than fun so… yeah…

Lendruil.9061:

Whats the problem of field damage? It just would require to use well timed interrupts, maybe blasting some water fields or using invul-skills, but i don’t see how it would stop a skilled party from meleeing.

If you scroll up (it got cut out of the quote, oops) it was in response to an idea that bosses would run away if people tried to melee them. That would cause field damage (things like Lava Font, Acid Bomb, Smite, etc) to become much less effective.

Not sure what you’re thinking we’re talking about, are you thinking about players being in damage fields?… that’s not what it was about.

And no, a boss walking wouldn’t stop meleeing, it’d just have us cripple/chilling and moving with it, and likely avoiding weaponry that is reliant on a static enemy (Ele Staff, Guard Scepter, Engi EG, Maybe even Ele Scepter w/dragons tooth and what not?)

Azhure.1857:

Harper.4173:

Carighan.6758:

Not only that, monsters just need to be smarter. If faced with 5 players with melee weapons always stacking, Monster will kite while continuously firing AE attacks at the players with a ranged weapon.

And bam, no more melee group stack.

And you think people would actually like this?

I would like it, actually.

So… field damage? You’re not a fan? Lava Font, Meteor Shower, Acid Bomb, Bombs in general, smite, Symbols, Barrage, Wells, etc… All doing partial damage at best if you try and melee? That sounds pretty sad to me.

Windsagio.1340:

Seera.5916:

Windsagio.1340:

DaveGan.8065:

Windsagio.1340:

Also, like I said, I don’t particularly have a community except the avoid people who make demands on me community. That means I won’t join a group that demands zerk, even if the character I’m on is in a zerker set.

We don’t make demands if you don’t join our groups.

We are also not responsible if you choose not to join or make your own community. It honestly feels like you see some of us as “tryhards” at this point.

So again.

• You can become a member of “our group” by equipping the “correct”/“meta”/“optimal” gear, traits, and utilities (which can vary by dungeon and specific encounter of course).
• You will not generally see anything beyond gear filters (i.e., skill filters) unless you want to join a speed/record run guild
• You can make or join your own group with zero or custom requirements
• You can make or join your own community with likeminded people

I don’t know how else to say it. It feels like I’m hearing “I just want to be lazy and you guys are making me feel bad by working hard”.

(bold mine)

You just had to slip that n there, didn’t you :p

If you seriously think gear filters are skill filters, we’re back at page 1 again.

More generally, I wouldn’t treat this as much more than a discussion. It doesn’t mean I"m making kitten up to mess with people, but I’m guessing most of us are able to go our own ways and do our own stuff in game, this is just a (if you’ll excuse the pun) meta discussion.

He said anything beyond gear filters.

And gave an example of a filter that would be beyond gear filters.

I don’t think he meant that gear choice is a definite sign that someone is a skilled player.

Hmm, you’re probably right.

Top speedrun guilds have trials and you have to pass a certain criteria… a skill filter basically. That’s what he was saying. Something along the lines of going through fractals quickly, meleeing everything and not dying, and soloing Lupi off wall is what I’ve heard.

cthaeh.2168:

So you want the Dungeoneer title, but you don’t want to actually earn it? What value does it hold at that point?

You say that like any of the titles really mean anything. There’s what Liadri title that you can get that’s actually something you can’t leach off others to get?

Just throwing it out there, might want to put NA/EU and normal play times. I’m sure you’ll get people hitting you up. People love regular dependable buyers

It is a big upgrade for burst though yeah? and that’s where we’re seeing it most of the time and the reason we’re seeing it as the new Meta. In everything like SE and below 1 round of IBs and the boss is gone.

Is IB with the dodge back trick really only a small increase in damage? I mean it looks pretty good to me /shrug.

Totally agree on sub 80 scaling.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Jerus.4350:

My only problem with it is that they’re so good it’s silly to do anything else if you’re going for speed

And I am sure this is what Colesy & Co have in mind as well. Very noble of you. Very human.

But also very wrong. There will always be one thing that is better than others. I know, I know, this is not a rocket science breakthrough. But apparently this is too hard to understand for many.

If you go after the “best thing” all the time then you end up with whack-a-mole balance like Anet is doing. It is boring, and it is inefficient.

The only thing that anybody here should be complaining about is the lack of addition of new mechanics. We need additions so that the meta changes forward, not backward. Think about this for one second: if we had asked Anet to make mobs able to move and attack at the same time then there would be no FGS controversy, no IB dilemma … and less fun reading posts from DnT

My point was to say that I don’t think ANet should be asked to play “whack-a-mole” instead we could create our own rulesets to play by. If FGS was ruining things, we could have had “no FGS” records, same with IB now. It wouldn’t be all that hard to have special rulesets on GWSCR if people wanted it. That’s all I was trying to say, I don’t want them nerfing anything, I think we have the option to limit ourselves if we want to see what is possible in alternate avenues.

Leo G.4501:

Jerus.4350:

“How dare you enforce your play style on me, you must play how I want!!!”

That’s all I’m reading here this last page or so.

Leo, give soloing Lupi in zerk gear a try and maybe you’ll understand why people are calling that video faceroll. Sure that’s an exaggeration but the point is there, it’s much easier and much more forgiving to the point that I’m honestly impressed by how well it worked.

You act like I’ve never faced Lupicus with glass gear before. I’ve just not solo’ed him in any attempt. All I was saying is, the person I quoted must have a different definition of ‘faceroll’ than most.

Again, go and do some solo attempts, faceroll is an exaggeration but it’s not that far off.

My thoughts on all those tricks is honestly they shouldn’t be part of records but should be fine in daily runs. They’re neat tricks. If enough didn’t want them though I’m sure the rules of the GWSCR could be changed to outlaw them, but it never has, so that shows how unpopular that option would be as far as I’m concerned. Seems like people like it so /shrug.

My only problem with it is that they’re so good it’s silly to do anything else if you’re going for speed which has left it as a “stack as many Ele’s as you can” thing for a long time. It’d be interesting to see what other combinations could do is all.

“How dare you enforce your play style on me, you must play how I want!!!”

That’s all I’m reading here this last page or so.

Leo, give soloing Lupi in zerk gear a try and maybe you’ll understand why people are calling that video faceroll. Sure that’s an exaggeration but the point is there, it’s much easier and much more forgiving to the point that I’m honestly impressed by how well it worked.

Windsagio.1340:

Gotta go back though; speed runners aren’t the issue, the issue is random pug advertisements.

In not-optimized-even-if-geared-zerk groups the whole meta discussion is silly, it simply doesn’t matter in a meaningful way.

The funny thing is that most of the people arguing so strong on behalf of the meta are people like Spoj, who I can’t imagine spends a ton of time doing random pugs anyways.

I think you’ll find that players like spoj and other people adamant about their enjoyment in the current system do often pug. It’s more enjoyable, and these people in my experience don’t usually ask for zerk.

Quite honestly I enjoy the random pug more than a perfect group with buddies. When I go into a dungeon expecting perfection as I do with a set group any hiccup annoys me. When I go in with a PUG expecting the worst it motivates me to play better and if things go wrong, ohh well I expected that.

That doesn’t mean that I want my premade groups to set up like pugs, that’d just take longer and the chaotic nature of PUGs wouldn’t be there, and that’s what spices PUG groups up, the miscommunications or lack of communication all together. So the fun doesn’t come from unoptimized setups but the nature of PUG groups themselves.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m not going to stick my nose in between Nemesis and his detractors.

That said, I have a question about the video links he shows with Kohler and Lupi quick kills. What are kill speeds like post FGS nerf?

IB is the big thing now, but even without it kohler can die in a few seconds with normal DPS rotations and no Ele. (read before or during his big attack he’s already dead)

Lupi the new thing is to utilize the wall to get your reflect above his chest so you reflect every projectile, guardians with consecrated grounds on the wall, and mesmers free targetting (no target chosen just aiming it right) feedback. Even without that though we’re probably talking like a minute at most for a high dps group I’d think.

Zerk gear isn’t something to brag about, it’s pretty standard, being happy that you can do it sure, but it’s nothing special. It is more of a challenge than other builds and more effective assuming you’re surviving fine, which is very doable. Using tanky gear you just increase the amount of mistakes you can make by boosting your passive defense. Condi builds simply don’t work in dungeon groups due to the issues with condi in general.

The Meta as most people define it is not counting ease of play. It was a problem I had with it initially entering the game. There are easier ways to play that are still very effective. Thing is that’s a subjective look at the idea of Meta. If you strip the ease of play out of the equation then you’re looking only at the time you spend, that’s what GW2’s PVE Meta is about.

Personally I think Ease of play is something to look at. To me taking an extra minute or two for a dungeon isn’t a big deal. And lowering your damage isn’t as big of an impact as many make it out to be, much of every dungeon is movement. Mesmers may be lower on the DPS but their portals make up for it in dungeons for example.

Me an my buddies were all about what we called “braindead meta” in that it took very little effort and lots of room for mistakes. One shots, yeah we were dead, but take a hammer guard in a dungeon and all the little things hit like you’re in PVT even if you’re in zerk basically. So we did Hammer Guard, PS warrior, then filled in the rest, ideally Ele for perma fury and such.

As we got better though we dropped the hammer and moved more towards the accepted Meta, as we got better we didn’t need as many defensive tools, certainly not passive defense from protection. It was fun to be a bit more risky as the dungeons got boring doing it the easier way and having that safety net.

In casual groups or PUGs playing a bit off meta is fine, you are still going to greatly benefit from zerker gear but making some trait, utility and weapon choices can make things much easier.

I still value ease of play but as I got better what I found easy had less and less defensive tools. The only problem with the current situation IMO is the lower level dungeons where zerker is arguably easier as you can kill things before they can react. I think that’s pretty lame. But that’s not a zerker problem, thats the content and scaling, I know SQ kills got a lot faster after April’s patch, at least my group saw a big jump in kill times, not that they were long before.

Combat mechanics are a huge draw for games to me, but I have to say the thing I like about GW2 the most is the lack of necessary grinding. I love that I can(or could) just play content for the fun of it without that gear treadmill acting as a monkey on my back. I’ve recently tried to go to an old game and I just don’t have the desire to grind out the gear I need in it to play it. I’m enjoying playing it but grinding it for weeks and weeks just to catch up, it’s put me off.

So for now I’m not playing anything. I got DA:O I need to finish, and I bought Dark Souls finally to try it out, but more than anything I wish GW2 would just give me some new stuff I’d find fun, the combat is great, the system is amazing, it’s just lacking more content…

Azhure.1857:

fishball.7204:

Well high risk is subjective I guess but there’s no arguing that zerker is HIGHER risk than say, Nomads or clerics facerolling.

Personally I only see the risk to zerkers/glass players in PvP/WvW environments. PvE and dungeons? Not so much. Oh so your dungeon took 2 minutes longer than you wanted? * sad face * Oh you died 3 times at this event? * pout * That’s just horrible.

There is certainly a limited risk level in the new age of PVE encounters. Long gone are the times of long corpse runs or having to restart content.

On one hand I miss it, it made you take things a little slower, made sure you had the plan together, and increased the tension during encounters. That was fun.

On the other hand, I don’t have the free time or desire to spend that time anymore, so I kind of enjoy it.

Way back when these changes were going on I think every MMO player knew and cried out that it’d change the genre. Once you have that convenience there’s no going back. It’s why when WoW first came out those oldschool players were calling it easymode, now WoW is considered one of the more difficult games because it still has a bit of that (last time I tried it at least).

I still wouldn’t call GW2 easy or no risk. Many encounters you can fail because you were .1s late or early on a dodge/block. While it doesn’t have a huge punishment (you just try again and all you lost is a minute or two usually) there is still that risk. I hate failing not because of lost time. I don’t care about my time when I’m having fun. I hate failing because I screwed up, and I don’t enjoy failing, but I take that as a lesson and try to improve for the next attempt.

GW2 lacks content though, and I can’t help but feel whatever they did to scaling in April should be reverted so that the lower level dungeons aren’t so easy to breeze through killing the bosses in a couple seconds before the fight really even begins. I do love the higher level dungeons, the ones that put pressure on me to do well and execute properly. The combat is enjoyable and to me more enjoyable in zerk because it is high risk/high reward. I could go tanky and just heal myself like you see in that hour long Lupi solo of warrior in nomads but that’s not the excitement I enjoy. When I first started I was soldier becuase I was still dying in that, as I got better that became too easy and I found zerk more enjoyable. At this point most encounters are simply either annoying (I hate enemies that are so small you can’t see the tells) or just boring because I’ve basically perfected the encounter.

I’d love some new difficult content. I’d love a new Lupi. But, I’m not holding my breath.

Azhure.1857:

Skoigoth.9238:

Threads like this one really amaze and annoy me. They pop up every week, rapidly explode, with a big portion of people talking past each other, throwing around the same old arguments again and again, and yet I still don´t understand why exactly some people think the established meta is supposedly bad for the game.

So, if any of those people could concisely and in a structured manner explain to me why purely offensive, high-risk/high-reward stat combinations being the core of optimized builds is wrong, it would be greatly appreciated.

Well I suppose I’m different than most of the Anti-Meta people in this thread. I’m not here for its effect on community and/or the LFG tool.

No I’m actually against the Zerk Meta because of what you have in bold. Its untrue and I think you and I know it. It is low-risk/high-reward and not the other way around. That is my gripe with it.

The only place this is true is lower level dungeons where the scaling allows you to kill things before they can even attack back. Get out into Arah and Fractals and you’ll see a big difference, or even COE, you’re not going to see Alpha going down in a single IB4.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

spoj.9672:

Its well established that meta in gaming has nothing to do with the actual definition. :P

In this environment, Full glass comps can still suffice and tanky people still require as much if not more active play to achieve their current objective.

And in this case full class comps would be the meta and all others wouldnt. So my original statement still stands.

You are more than welcome to provide a detailed analysis with proof that high glass setups are the most dominate in an organic environment.

Oh wait, you can’t.

I can prove to you otherwise.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-abjured-take-the-world-tournament-series-in-beijing-china/

go take a look at the setups everyone used.

… Organic environment = “who can sit in this spot the longest”… interesting…

@Coffie & Wind
I’ve caught myself cursing the low DPS before, but I never rage in group, just to myself and to my computer screen. I usually catch myself though, as it’s not the lack of DPS that is to blame for my death, I generally screwed up, “but the thing should be dead already!” is the only thing I can say, but it wasn’t and I don’t have the right to complain.

One that catches me often is COE p1. That burning + the teeth, if I don’t dodge correctly, condi cleanse, and heal at the right times then I’ll die eventually, however if I do all of those perfectly I can solo it without too much trouble on my Engi. The last time I played (like 2-3 weeks ago) I did just that. First encounter, screwed up died, cursed, calmed down and swore I’d do better. Second one dodged most things, ate one, healed, we were fine. Last boss, it was like 2 of us left up at half health on Alpha, we finished it off with ease

Zerkers often blame people because, well, yeah we can burn through HP bars so fast that it’s hard to screw up if you know the basics and can avoid the big hits. As DPS lowers those medium hits become something to be concerend with too. For instance Subject alpha, in a high DPS group you don’t really have to dodge in p1, you can eat the teeth and still kill it in time. In a normal PUG zerk group though you’ll want to dodge the teeth or you’ll eventualy go down. In a lower DPS PUG group though I’m going to have to dodge some of the burning or condi cleanse it as my heal alone won’t deal with the attrition especially if I miss 1 teeth dodge.

I type this out not as an excuse for zerkers to be a bunch of pricks, just in the hopes that you’ll understand why they can be frustrated, if you’re use to not having to concern yourself with some attacks it’s frustrating when you die to them is all. But a good player will kitten the situation and realize what he has to do.

SAB coming back.

MAYBE new dungeons? One can hope.

Am I playing the game though? Nope not for a few weeks now, eventually I’ll stop posting here, and maybe, just maybe they’ll email me with notice of SAB or new dungeons that could bring me back.

Sarahfull.4930:

A question, if you may:
Can you do this aoe trick with the engi grenade barrage?
or even with the 3-nade atuo attack?

Big difference between the two is that grenades show up as multiple red circles, each projectile an individual element, while IB/MS have one large area of possible hits, one circle. I imagine that would make a difference.

Coffietire:

Jerks are lame. They’re on both sides, zerks joining non zerk groups and trying to impose their play style. And non zerks joining zerk groups and trying to impose their views and play style.

It goes both ways. People are often jerks, and there’s not much to do about that.

spoj.9672:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

As for the zerker meta, it can remain unaffected at the end of the day. The goal would be to allow many metas to be seen in the same light so that the content becomes more attractive to more different types of people. I’m sure the OP would be just as happy.

You cant have many metas. That simply doesnt make sense. You just want there to be less exclusion and more balanced standards for pug groups. But that has nothing to do with the meta. Thats just a result of the games current difficulty combined with player behaviour.

Like we have said. It probably wont change even if the game gets much harder. So in the end you will just have to solve the problem for yourself by creating your own groups.

You can’t have many metas for a specific thing but you could have different metas for different things. I think that’s what he was trying to say. Like imagine all enemies in TA were made to be a lot tougher so condi was powerful throughout it. The Meta would likely be to create a team utilizing a lot of condi right?

I wouldn’t complain about that… however I do like that gear isn’t something we are looking to change constantly in the current situation. Gear doesn’t swap nearly as easy as weapons, traits, and utilities.

@WIndsagio:
Wearing zerk should be the goal. Just because you usually only see zerk parties advertising doesn’t mean that you have to in order to get a group. How many times does it need to be said? Start your own group! They fill fast honestly.

Windsagio.1340:

The interesting thing to me came up in the other thread; People arguing totally straightfaced that zerk is both the most skill-requiring and the most efficient play.

You can’t read that post and not think “Man this is so an ego thing”

I use to say similar things. To me the word efficient should include effort, and zerk gear certainly requires the most effort making it arguably not as efficient as some alternatives. What most people here mean when saying efficient is that it allows you to complete things faster. In that regard yes, it requires the most skill and you complete things the fastest.

It’s not an ego thing, it’s simply a fact that if you can manage in full zerk without dying constantly, you will complete things the fastest and if you’re looking at efficient use of time that will lead to the most rewards per time.

Now, there are plenty of egos going around but zerk gear being meta isn’t about that, it’s just cold hard facts.

hybrid.5027:

I’m not a white knight so I don’t know why you’re asking me to defend them. I think nobody here gives a kitten about The Crew really, nor is their business model at all comparable so all you’re doing is being gleeful about a new game no one cares about. No one cared about all the DAI posts, and no one cared about the Archeage posts. If you are enjoying some other game go post on their forums.

Someone is salty this morning.

I appreciated the DA talk as it introduced me to a new game. A game which has a story line I actually want to pay attention to. It’s been a while since I saw something like that.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

EDIT: I think a lot of people were excited to see sinister stats. If it becomes widely used and utilized in a group scenario and solo, or just a very publicly recognized stat type in conjunction with a trait setup, it is a step in accepting other archetypes into the competitive field, therefore a small victory for me. Keyword of course is IF.

Sinister is great, thing is, conditions in a group setting simply isn’t going to happen because of the extremely poor implementation ANet has for their conditions. No one playing condition builds we still cap out bleeds in many different group setups. That means someone tries to play a bleed heavy condi build… they’re wasting their time.

Sinister very well may take over as the top solo option for some professions though.

TPMN.1483:

They created an awesome aether path – love it. I love running this path with a good group, encourages teamwork.

I think one on fh the reasons it has not been a success (or seemed to have been yet)- is not everyone has worked out the tricks (eg skills/utilities) which can make this path a real doodle. The gw2dungeons.net is missing a few for sure

We recently discovered a few things which make the final two big bosses a doddle and it’s honestly a piece of cake now.

I love dungeons !
I loved GW1 dungeons – DoA, FoW, UW, Deep, Urgoz and all that jazz.

Would love to see more team work based items as a break away from the LS.

Aetherpath is just a bit too gimmicky for me. Not to say that is a bad thing, my favorite raids in EQ were both more gimmicky type raids. In GW2 though I find the combat very interesting. Aetherpath has some of that but in between are unskippable cutscenes and a lot of puzzles and what not that are kinda cool but I don’t enjoy repeating them like I enjoy repeating the combat mechanics. That’s why I enjoy Arah, it focuses more on that with some skips which can be fun in their own right.

Gimme a Lupi fight over a puzzle any day basically. If only every boss encounter were as well designed.

Leo G.4501:

Jerus.4350:

Those are FPS not RPGs. RPGs it’s pretty typical that the more defensive options have lower offensive capabilities but create a more forgiving play style.

I’d love a “hard mode” for dungeons like we have scaling fractals. In those senses yes the “hard mode” is more health and harder hitting. But that’s not what we’re talking here. We’re talking gear selection aren’t we? Being defensive is “easier” in that it’s more forgiving in general, but you lose offensive potential thus the time of a kill is increased. It’s pretty normal RPG setup.

Oh but gw2 isn’t an RPG!!!

Practically every evidence arguing meta gameplay, how the game was designed/meant to be played, what the game isn’t, all point to gw2 being an action game! We’re even contemplating removing stats from gear (I actually think we could make a while thread about that. Just think of all the good you could do for encounters and improvements to traits) putting it further from its RPG roots.

And most action games with difficulty settings, the mobs are easier to kill on easy mode. . .

True it’s very much more based on an action play style but it’s still inside an RPG system by the fact that you have gear in the first place. Those gear choices can make things easier but take longer, just like defensive gear in any RPG type system.

The one area where we do have a pretty legitimate “hard mode” is fractals with higher levels and that falls in pretty much exactly as you say.

Talyn.3295:

Sad to say to many people where more worried about losing progress if the leader left. In over two years of playing guild wars 2, It only happened to me twice.

I don’t think the change was really needed. But hey.. yeah.

In other games if the leader left it’d simply pick a new leader, EQ it was based on whoever was longest in the party then if people joined the party together it was alpha IIRC.

So that was never an issue. The leader would have to kill the instance specifically and not just leave for that to happen.

deSade.9437:

I’m still convinced that a rigid party leadership system like in gw1 would be less abusive, but that’s just me.

15 years of EQ, 3 of DCUO, and about 1 of this now. EQ was rigid group leader. DCUO was a bit of a mix and had some of the issues GW2 has. GW2 has been the worst system I’ve been in so far.

Sure some group leaders were kittens but you knew exactly who to call out when things happened, which generally kept people in line.

It is a great game, well worth the $50, however you will hit a point where you’re out of things to do that you find fun. So don’t rush it. Enjoy it while it lasts. The people here being salty are just people who see the potential in the game and loved the game, but are frustrated with the lack of additions to the game, don’t let them get to you, but realize you very well may become one of them eventually

Those are FPS not RPGs. RPGs it’s pretty typical that the more defensive options have lower offensive capabilities but create a more forgiving play style.

I’d love a “hard mode” for dungeons like we have scaling fractals. In those senses yes the “hard mode” is more health and harder hitting. But that’s not what we’re talking here. We’re talking gear selection aren’t we? Being defensive is “easier” in that it’s more forgiving in general, but you lose offensive potential thus the time of a kill is increased. It’s pretty normal RPG setup.

To create a classic trinity they’d need to rework the agro system to be more predictable.

I don’t see this happening.

What was shown earlier in this thread is that they’ve strengthened the ability to heal allies, which is something they originally put huge restrictions on. So they’re simply making that a bit more reasonable. Still far from optimal but it can be nice. A buddy of mine played a hammer guard with water sigils and monk runes, made things faceroll easy getting hit for 66% of the damage, getting heals throughout that were enough to keep all of us topped off for scholar bonuses, in the end it didn’t take much longer to finish things. Still, not optimal.

I’ve seen non meta things as being nice, they surely can make things easier, but at this point most people aren’t after easy as much as they’re after speed. Going for speed and being more risky inserts a bit of fun to those that have become bored with safer runs.

petyr baelish.9675:

It really depends. In high lvl fotm staff ele + hammer guard + PS warr for might is a popular alternative. The group has lower DPS but it’s a lot safer.

^^ EZ mode dungeons as well. Me and my buddies just called it the braindead meta easy might stacks, perma fury still, and perma protection makes it so you can miss a dodge or two and be fine.