Guild Wars 2

As cookie said, all time records are meant to be an example of what was possible even if that is no longer possible. If the rules change and its no longer restricted that doesn’t particularly matter because it was restricted when it was legal. If something is changed and the all time record can’t be beaten… that’s what all time record is about.

Karma.1498:

I’d love to trust you, really, but you’re basically telling me that you have no evidence or will provide no evidence that an optimized zerker build does more damage OVER TIME than an optimized sinister/rampager build. (I’m not arguing that a zerker cleaves their way through a trash mob slower than a sinister/rampager does.)

I have plenty of evidence, actually.

Have you done any standardized test to compare damage output over time outside of a party?

Yes.

Have you recorded solo battles against the same exact level 80 champion using optimized zerker vs. condi builds?

That is only tangentially related to DPS.

Do you have any spreadsheets with the formulas and the damage calculations?

Yes.

Have you calculated the average in-game time and damage output to complete a rotation for zerker vs. condi builds? I mean, how do you KNOW you’re being accurate?

Yes, we know how to do DPS rotations. And how do we know we are accurate? Video evidence. The game’s damage formula isn’t a secret. When you record a DPS rotation it is relatively easy to review the recording and plug in the skill coefficients you see into a damage formula. Calculating condition damage is bit more complicated, but we have proprietary tools for that which are rather advanced.

I’m doubting the validity of your testing methodology (because I don’t know what that methodology is).

http://dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewforum/4280860

Take the time to read up on the state of theorycraft in GW2. Some of our things are private simply because we aren’t ready to release preliminary information.

but I think the ones that do are closing the damage gap, especially against heavily armored foes.

Engineer is close. As NoTrigger told you, Condition Engineer in a full group makes 15k dps over long (30 second) fights. Berserker makes 17k. That is the closest gap between condi and direct of any class. The gap is so close that in duos and trios Condi engineer is superior to direct damage, mostly due to greater self-sufficiency. No other class is close enough for that to be true except, perhaps warrior.

MattyP.6954:

Running glass should be difficult, and, in PvE, it isn’t. Where’s the Risk/Reward calculus?

The formula isn’t Risk = Reward.

It’s:

(Skill/Risk) * Experience = Reward

Once your skill and experience are high enough, even massive risks are mitigated.

You’re welcome.

From what Cookie has said, in GW1 all-time records remained all-time records even after metas shifted, skills were nerfed and exploits patched. The idea was to preserve them for posterity even if the times aren’t achievable anymore. If something is Approved and goes on the board, even if a tactic is banned two weeks later it should stay as the all-time record.

spoj.9672:

So it makes more sense to have a single unified ruleset now that the community has shifted dont you think?

Yeah, abolish unrestricted and everyone can just use the restricted ruleset.

Karma.1498:

As of two weeks ago, DnT had nothing comparing condi builds directly to zerker builds under the same circumstances. If they’ve posted something since, I’d love to see it.

The only condi build that is close to optimal in groups is Engineer. The rest are distinctly suboptimal in reference to the direct damage counterparts. You can either trust me, or not based on my past history of being pretty accurate in my statements. But before you accuse me of being part of some anti-condi conspiracy just be aware that having condi builds be meta would be the best thing possible for me as a youtube content creator. So the fact that I’m saying it’s not optimal despite it being greatly in my interests for it to be optimal should help you figure out if I’m tell you the truth or not.

Ideas, just throwing it out to save everyone some time.

1. Keep the rules as they exist today.
2. Stop the weekly voting/tweaking/clarifying minute non-issues and reserve voting for new issues of severe importance where there is actual controversy and the community opinion seems to be actually divided and/or meta resets.
3. Have a meeting once a year to discuss larger ruleset changes.
4. Everyone kitten for a while and play the game.

Karma.1498:

However, I would guess that good condi builds have better damage over time than zerker builds.

They don’t, sorry to burst your bubble on the topic.

Wethospu.6437:

Just because you find a new way to stretch rules doesn’t mean it should be automatically allowed.

Technically, if it doesn’t violate existing rules it should be allowed first pass. It can be settled later (votes, meetings, magic 8 ball etc) whether that tactic is something people want allowable.

Bohantopa.5729:

Rag.3258:

…

All those tests look like gw2 is intelligently kicking stacks, which is exactly what it looked like in my previous test. Honestly I think you didn’t check your facts at all, which would be pretty annoying, but please tell me if and how you did.

Some time ago (a year or so) on my last test newer buffs overwrote (longer) older ones. They might have changed it but never said so in the patch notes. A test which would prove it conclusively would be:
- get 2 staff eles, 2 instant blasters (warriors with wh ie), 1 guard (staff).
- no traits, naked (except necessary weapons, preferably white ones)
- have the eles + blasters blast to 25 in <2s.
- guard empower
- check in 10s if might drops of

New might with a shorter duration than old Might won’t overwrite. Have eles prestack to 25 and then have a PS warrior do 100b. Your might wont drop off after 6 seconds.

10 years gaming experience.

Apparently never encountered gamers before.

doddbox.8153:

How is using Centaur Runes and Mantra for swiftness a bug again?

Yeah, an unintended bug would be the runes saying “use a heal get swiftness” but you get 25 Might instead.

Don’t join groups that are screening for meta builds and gear. If you can’t find an “anyone welcome” group on the LFG, start your own.

Ballads.2509:

The use of the bugged interaction of Centaur rune and Mantra heal seems unintended.

How is that unintended? Secondly, it has been used in records for years so you’re a bit late to have issue with it now.

Combat is over. Everyone is at 75% hp.

Both berserker staff eles place down an Eruption. Swap to water. Drop a water field. Team is now at full health.

What were you trying to accomplish again?

DonQuack.9025:

Though have a feeling im the extreme minority. I mean talk all you want but people can barely dodge.

And 55% of the GW2 player base who are hardcore enough to read the reddit and respond to a survey which says nothing about the casuals who don’t keep up with reddit/forums don’t even have one character fully ascended.

The same people who are cheering “woohoo berserker will be dead in HoT challenging content!” are the same people who haven’t even gotten fully ascended on a single toon and can’t dodge the most basic tells with consistency.

The anti-zerker crowd need to look at the big picture: if the content is truly that challenging, there is no way they are going to do it. What tiny percentage of GW1 players ever did a full clear of Domain of Anguish or Slaver’s Exile? Probably single digits. Though I am fairly convinced Berserker/Sinister gear will still be meta for challenging content, even supposing it isn’t for a second: what does that mean to open world living story casuals?

Let’s say in the hardest new instanced content of the game, a single pure healer/tank is meta. What sort of victory is that for the casual crowd who will never enter the instance? So Snow Crows use a healer to clear Domain of Mordremoth, what does that mean to the average casual who does open world event farming? Doesn’t amount to much. When I did GW1 PvE casually, I was well aware that speed clear guild were using Shadow Form to speed clear content and it was meta. I never used shadow form when I did my casual hero-hench normal mode clears of Fissure of Woe or hard mode dungeons. The speed clear meta wasn’t relevant to me as a casual pve player. If the need for a “pure healer” only applies to the utmost challenging content that isn’t going to amount to anything for the pure healer revenant who gets kicked from his fractal 50 group.

Jerus.4350:

NikeEU.7690:

Sinister engineer is slightly better than berserker engineer when solo. In a normal group the berserker engineer is about 19% better DPS.

Curious, what is the Engi build you’re using the for the figures I’ve seen?

We used the meta beserker engie build and the condition damage build Element used in his lupi solo.

Sinister engineer is slightly better than berserker engineer when solo. In a normal group the berserker engineer is about 19% better DPS.

dlonie.6547:

Puzzles and gimmicks aside, some of the boss mechanics aren’t horrible, in my opinion. I’d take Slick and Sparki or Foreman Spur over Howling King or Rumbly any day, for instance. There was a step up in mechanics there, IMO.

Take the Howling King, Rumblus and Ghost Eater mechanics and combine them into one boss. Now give that boss enough HP so that it takes 90 seconds to kill with full DPS Ice Bow Glyph of Storms panoply.

You instantly have the best boss in guild wars 2.

The mechanics for a good boss exist within those, but no one put the pieces together to make it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

It does gray out when you lack the energy on Revenant too, but it’s not a very distinct transition. In the middle of combat it is very hard to see when you don’t or do have the energy for a given skill, and I agree with Nike that it’s an issue.

Yeah it definitely grays out, my biggest thing was saying “I really want to use _ utility skill now, oh its greyed out.” And there was really no way to gauge how much longer I’d have to wait. With Thief, it feels different to me because, mostly, attack skills are different than utility skills in terms of when you want to use them and how they are applied.

I still recommend they use the gw1 adrenaline style skill light up so as you gain energy your skills light up from the bottom up. It would help a ton.

One issue I had with energy was that it wasn’t clear from looking at my tool bar how much energy I would need to use to cast a skill just by looking at it. And it wasn’t super clear how long I needed to regen energy for before my elite skill could turn on again.

They should go back to the gw1 warrior adrenaline thing where as you gained adrenaline the skills on your skill bar lit up letting you know when you could cast them. That would be a good way for the rev players to glance at their skill bar and manage their “cool downs” so to speak.

deSade.9437:

“Omg this is too hard!”?

I wonder.

That’s exactly what it will be. If you actually have to coordinate multiple things at the same time at a high level, no pug will be able to do it. and thats a GOOD thing, we need content that isn’t balanced around what bad pugs can do.

The other feeling is there is all this gloating from the tanky healer casual crowd. They think, for some dumb reason, like this will suddenly make like the hardcore experienced players bad or whatever and scrubs good. That puzzles me. Lets say by some crazy scenario 1 pure healer per team became meta. What would stop any organized dungeon guild from having someone respec to healer and continue to clear content? They act like its going to level the playing field and bads will suddenly be good at the game which I don’t get at all.

Laulajatar.4253:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-want-nerf-to-waterfield-blast-finishers

Evil zerkers can heal. Witchcraft. Stop it.

It’s funny, I’ve been repeating this on reddit and Wooden Potatoes comment section for a while: if super hard content comes out that requires party healing due to ambient damage effects Berserker will still be the meta because with a coordinated set of blasts you can heal back to full and go back to DPS. A lot of people (same people I see commenting on Nemesis videos or anti-meta reddit threads) seem to think that if party healing becomes a mandatory thing that suddenly a role in your team for a clerics ele/guard/rev becomes optimal. It’s really hard to convince these people that berserker builds have tons of defensive tools already at our disposal we just don’t often have occasion to use them.

The other mind blowing thing for them is that if there are new challenging bosses who have “interrupt or wipe” mechanics that doesn’t mean we will have a dedicated control bot, it just means that each player will have to make a slight adjustment to bring some CC to get that interrupt done when needed. There won’t be a hammer warrior just spamming CC despite their fevered dreams.

deSade.9437:

Panda and then he started playing lol, kitten him lul

And look at what my boy Jatt is up to these days!

Thorwyn.8469:

NikeEU.7690:

No European team ever won a GvG tournament that mattered in GW1.

Europe kinda started late with the PvP in GW1. Dont really remember any active team, when the big tournaments were a thing.
But then when they started, Favor of the Gods or how it was called, mainly EU and most of the top GvG guilds were EU as well afair. But then, there was one NA guild dominating, Rebel Rising [rawr].

Early in the game, the best EU GvG guild was Patient Relaxed People [pRp].

You’re right, there were more high end EU gvg guilds than on NA at the peak of popularity, but the Rawr was a higher quality. Then again, Panda and Torsen were both european so 33% of the core of Rawr was EU too haha.

Speaking of Revenant in a non-gameplay mode for a second… does anyone else feel like the staff melee attacks have no weight to them? I play with camera shake off so maybe thats it, but in addition to the low damage numbers the animations just don’t feel weighty. Even Thief/Necro daggers “feel” like they hit hard. The staff hits like a wet noodle and it feels like it too.

No European team ever won a GvG tournament that mattered in GW1.

Full Sinister Engineer: 15k dps
Full Sinister Warrior: 11k DPS
Full Sinister Mallyx Revenant: 6k DPS

This is a problem. It’s not a Shiro problem. The fact is that their “condi spec” is bad… even for a condi spec. Shiro isn’t going to make that condi build catch up to the other PvE condi specs.

As far as PvE direct damage builds go, right now the only good direct damage line is the Invocation line. If Shiro lives up to what it should be, and the Elite Specialization (Glint?) has something worthwhile for direct damage builds the class could easily be saved for PvE. If truly hard content comes out its easy to see a Shiro/Ventari build that does good DPS, provides reflects and party sustain being useful. We’ll see!

I love everyone echoing comments like “its an L2P issue we dont have enough experience yet.”

No. Just no.

As it stands today without Shiro or Power traits the revenent is a low DPS class. Even in full berserker with scholar runes the damage is abysmal. None of the weapons have high damage coefficients. None of the weapons are able to stack significant conditions to support a full condi build. The class cannot do direct damage yet and cannot even do condi damage.

It did not take me 6 months to figure that out. I looked at the traits. I looked at the weapon skill coefficients and cast times. That’s all you need to know to figure out if something has good damage.

I would say that I have faith things will improve when the Power line, 1hs and shiro legend come out, but being that a revenant is currently doing like 5k DPS fully buffed they would need those things to increase their DPS by 300% to consider them baseline viable.

Since when did kicking bads qualify as toxic behavior?

Wethospu.6437:

How can it be pointless if it leads to a rule change? How can community be “more or less OK with it” when they decide to ban it?

Because you pick the agenda. You word the questions. The topic wasn’t even something that should have been voted on. The result of the vote is completely irrelevant. An unnecessary vote got the wrong result based on lazy voting. Congrats on creating a system that leads to that outcome.

Why would we have to wait an outcry (when things are seriously kittened) before dealing with any issues?

Because outcries are how you gauge whether something is worth voting on or whether you are just wasting peoples’ time.

Why do you refer yourself as “the community”?

I talk with many of the guilds in our community. When I say “the community” I am not referring to myself. I am referring to the half dozen or so guilds that think this state of affairs is intolerable. Perhaps instead of figuring out never clever word games to insult me you should take what I say seriously and think about what’s going on here.

Wethospu.6437:

Could you then explain why I disagree with most decisions?

Honestly, if I have so huge influence why the rule set isn’t what I want?

I don’t particularly care if the outcomes of the votes are how you would vote yourself. The fact is that we have been voting on more or less unnecessary, pointless issues for weeks with no end in sight. You set the agenda, you propose what is or isn’t voted on.

For example, we don’t need a vote on Immobilizing bosses before they reach some scripted area they are trying to get to: that has always been legal and never been an issue before and there was no community outcry about it even after the hotw record that used the tactic on a new boss. The community as a whole was more or less OK with it. No vote was needed, no vote should have been proposed, time is wasted and polemic is being issued unnecessarily. Any record approver who can’t figure out whether its legal or not should resign because they are clearly not cut out for the job.

For record approvers: your job is to approve records. Make sure that none of the explicit rules are violated. If some new amazing tactic like Immobilizing Fimbul is used for the first time, it isn’t your job to question it unless it very clearly violates one of the already extant rules. If the community sees it and freaks out that it shouldn’t be allowed, then the community will decide it as a matter of a vote. If people look at it and say “cool tactic” and it doesn’t violate any pre-existing rules and no one is in an uproar about then… we don’t have anything to vote on.

How about:

GW2dungeons.net curates the records

The community curates the rules as it has always done

Why is this so hard? Why, specifically, does the website where records are posted and maintained ALSO set the agenda for re-drafting the rules? It doesn’t have to be this way. And before you say “I don’t vote ,the community votes” you must understand that it is completely your personal choice about which issues are voted on in the first place and how the voting options are presented. That is a lot of influence.

Also, if an approver cannot watch records and determine whether its Restricted or not, please feel free to resign your position and allow someone else to take over.

Wethospu.6437:

Thanks Nike. I was getting bit worried whether we could stay on-topic a whole week.

I’m a bit more worried about whether the community can continue to survive with your ambitious mismanagement of the ruleset.

Like I said, it makes no sense to ban Immobs so long as the Immob doesn’t permanently disable the boss even after the Immob ends.

I feel (and have felt) like the amount of tinkering with the rules that has gone on in the last two months is ridiculous and way over the top. Almost none of it was at all imperative. I figure in the last two or three months of this voting the amount of actual issues that required real attention has been maybe two? The rest of this is just “cleaning” up the rules which has resulted in banning things that have never been banned before or unbanning things that have never been allowed before. It is a legitimate and fair point for us as a community to ask Weth to stop creating uncertainty where there has never been any before.

Have Immob chains ever been banned in any previous iterations of the restricted rule set? No. Was there a big community outcry for banning them? No. So where is the impetus to banning them coming from? Near as I can tell it’s coming from Wethospu’s desire to have rules that are 100% internally and externally consistent. Frankly, your OCD about this is killing us.

Purple Miku.7032:

Well I did a full Arah run tonight after the patch and his bubbles were still going behind me like they have been for the past few months.

Did a duo last night bubble never even came close to hitting me, doubt anything has changed.

Actually, what I think you did was take your pre-existing WvW build, right build down to the sigils, and slapped a “pve” label on it and try to pass it off as some new pve build with zero thought or effort put into it.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

NikeEU.7690:

serenke.4806:

People shouldn’t have even started selling dungeons. If someone is unable to complete a certain dungeon, they should just not get the rewards from it.

You sorta just explained exactly why people DO sell dungeons.

You mean why people do BUY dungeons?

Economic incentives have to exist for both parties in order for a market to properly function.

Oh come on. He is free to suggest whatever build he wants, sure, and since he put it in a public forum I presume he is looking to solicit feedback. The simple fact is the build is really bad and hopefully no one is fooled into spending hard earned gold on it for PvE.

This is really sad. Warrior is one of the easiest classes to survive on in full berserker in PvE, if not the easiest. shame on you for suggesting people waste money on unnecessary gear.

serenke.4806:

People shouldn’t have even started selling dungeons. If someone is unable to complete a certain dungeon, they should just not get the rewards from it.

You sorta just explained exactly why people DO sell dungeons.

All time records never get reset.

This is crazy. It should only be illegal if the immob breaks the AI and the boss goes inactive permanently.

Living Story started off with pretty good promise. The FLame and Frost dungeon was good. The Aetherblade Retreat dungeon was not well received due to length vs reward, but in retrospect it was a pretty good since the fractals are pretty well received. The big criticism was that they were just temporary and I think in retrospect they would have left those are permanent additions if they could go back in time. It would certainly be nicer to say that “since launch they added 3 new long dungeon paths and fractals of the mists” than saying what we actually got.

The wheels clearly came off when Twilight Arbor aetherpath came out and the community did not respond well to it. I’m sure they got a lot of statistics and research that showed a large portion of the community never tried and many who did only did it once and never returned. Combined with the backlash of removing TAFU from this subforum in particular that was probably the end of any development attention going to dungeons.

I would love to know the real story behind the following two items…

1. What were the meetings like when they decided F&F dungeon and Aetherblade Retreat would be temporary content? I’m 100% sure Hrouda was in favor, and probably argued it quite hard, of it being permanent content. I’m guessing things got heated and I would love to know the people who overruled him, what their idea was and what the envisioned the results would be.

2. I want to know the true story behind the Fractured patch. It was a “revamp” that fixed a few bugs, changed the dredge fractal to make it less suicide inducing, but it substantially nerfed rewards and failed to deliver almost all of the promised changes. At some point they must have known they were shipping that update before it was ready to go, and they decided to ship it anyway. Did they plan on revisiting it a few months later only to divert the resources to HoT which is what I suspect, or did they decide it was a sinking ship and bail on it? My guess, if I had to wager, is that a lot of the promised features (and a bunch more stuff) with appear in HoT. My thought is they started developing the expac after that and their plan was to roll a complete and robust fractal revamp in the expac rather than living story. However, you KNOW there were some “interesting” meetings going on when they saw internally what an ugly mess that Fractured patch was shaping up to be, and they tried their best to come up with a plan. Unfortunately the plan was “ignore it and ignore the dungeon community pretend it never happened.” But still I would love to know how those meetings went.

Offerande.5240:

NikeEU.7690:

Offerande.5240:

I do not share this opinion. Have in previous posts, wrote that I use sword / sword. Second, choices between Focus or Pistol. Greatsword for some fractals. That mesmer build is Meta PvE build, with a few very small changes and full Berserker. The DPS is normal high, not Warrior or Ele DPS. Between Necro and ele. max 5% lower than Ele staff

Oh look, made up numbers! If you ask for advice, and really good players give it to you, don’t argue with them. The biggest impediment to your improvement as a player is discarding your ego and accepting the lessons of more experienced and knowledgeable players. You can continue to think you know best (you don’t) and continue to think you play at a high level (you dont) or you can decide today to embark on your path to improvement. With any luck, you will look back on this thread in 3-6 months as a turning point where you ditched the scrub mentality and began to strive for better.

I’m not selfish, those are your words. I accept and I am grateful for the comments. However, I say what I think and give my opinion. That can you accept it or not.

Only one who is doing selfish, is you.

I’m not being selfish because I don’t derive any benefit whether you take my advice or not. I’m sincerely trying to help you develop as a player, and you can take my advice or not as you see fit. But whether you do or not will not change the facts that you are handicapping yourself by ignoring and challenging the advice of players far more experienced than yourself.

Again, if you want to improve the way to do it is to surround yourself with players who can push you to be better and soak up the knowledge and advice they give like a sponge. The way to stay bad forever is to think you know better and refuse to learn anything because it would damage your ego to admit the convenient lies you tell yourself (“greatsword is good for fractals!”) are completely wrong.

Offerande.5240:

I do not share this opinion. Have in previous posts, wrote that I use sword / sword. Second, choices between Focus or Pistol. Greatsword for some fractals. That mesmer build is Meta PvE build, with a few very small changes and full Berserker. The DPS is normal high, not Warrior or Ele DPS. Between Necro and ele. max 5% lower than Ele staff

Oh look, made up numbers! If you ask for advice, and really good players give it to you, don’t argue with them. The biggest impediment to your improvement as a player is discarding your ego and accepting the lessons of more experienced and knowledgeable players. You can continue to think you know best (you don’t) and continue to think you play at a high level (you dont) or you can decide today to embark on your path to improvement. With any luck, you will look back on this thread in 3-6 months as a turning point where you ditched the scrub mentality and began to strive for better.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Nike, if a team pre-stacks might before the boss, isnt Scholar superior?

For a record run I would use Scholar so long as the encounters favored pre-stacking just since the fights end less than 15 seconds.. If the path you’re doing starts with the bosses hostile there isnt much reason to prestack so Strength would be a good idea for that.

But yeah, it just really matters whether or not you expect fights to be over in under 15 seconds consistently.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

In terms of Warrior, what’s the difference between using Strength Runes or Scholar? In terms of DPS now.

Assuming 100% scholar uptime it’s like 10%.

In terms of average Might generated by PS… approximate figures…

Scholar + DPS food: 9
Scholar + Dumpling: 13
Strength + DPS food: 16
Strength + Dumpling: 22

Orcinus Orca.8627:

Those were days when players just played what they liked because they had no idea what was the most efficient way to play

There was a “meta” as early as October 2012. Unless you want to go back to launch when doing the simplest dungeon took an hour…

Valik Shin.9027:

If people wanna run condi warrior then that fine but don’t get mad if u get kicked from a party. A lot of people wanna get this stuff done and move on. If ur running condi warrior then u are either not giving might to ur party or u are taking away a spot for someone who will do more damage. I have had this discussion with many pro dungeon runners and they all say the same thing

No one can see the difference between 77k dps and 75k dps. The only thing they will notice is lower Might really, and since good groups pre-stack Might whenever possible even with a PS warrior, it’s likely that “pro dungeon runners” wouldn’t notice it at all.