Guild Wars 2

Tyops.5894:

I intend this to be a constructive comment.

Where is the rest of it?

Seriously. You have a newly launched balance subforum as well as 8 dedicated class subforums with laundry lists of suggestions, constructive discussions of balance issues, and extensive lists of bugs and other longstanding issues. How is this short list of minor patches even remotely acceptable? ANet I feel that you are not doing enough to address the concerns over balance expressed by your population.

As an aside to this. I understand that ANet is very concerned about power creep. One of the consequences of this is that ANet uses a “nerf first” approach to balance, hammering down the nail that sticks out to even out the balance of various classes. In general we very rarely see a set of buffs where nerfs would do.

Sadly, one of the main outcomes of that approach is that every balance patch I want to play a little less. Something is taken away almost every patch (a build, a gear set, a rune set, whatever). This is a destructive approach to patching with the hopes that players will make somethings out of the shattered remains. In the long term this isn’t good for the health of the game. You need to generate excitement for patches, not dread.

This list of patches is extremely underwhelming given the quantity and depth of the issues that need to be addressed for every class. Please stop addressing the low hanging fruit and start tackling the major issues with classes (i.e., dumbfounding trait lines, useless traits, deeply flawed class mechanics, poor weapon sets).

By the time this patch comes out you will have had almost a full quarter to address balance issues and this is just simply not enough.

All of this ^

Its clearly beyond the point of them not knowing about the problems. Anyone that has actually played the various classes (I would hope this includes developers) knows of their various bugs, glaring deficiencies, and inequities. Even if they haven’t played the classes (and various trait/gear sets) over the past year or so….the forums are full of of this information.

These issues are honestly not so complex that they can’t be fixed. It just requires actual allocation of resources to provide valid, logical, fair resolution to the issues. It requires willingness to acknowledge issues. It wouldn’t hurt to engage in honest communication with players on the forums and having the courage to say no to bad changes.

Examples:

Why is it so all important to nerf vigor in pve…when you have so many one shot mechanics and classes that have to dodge to survive (low hp classes like guards/thieves/eles)? The only answers to that I can think of are attempts to force zerk players to use survival gear, or pvp balancing that is not being split from pve. Both of those two possibilities are equally bad.

Bad trait lines like guardian: zeal. There is no way that you guys don’t know why guardians do not trait this. There is no way that you guys can think that it is okay to have unavoidable (minor) traits for symbols when at least half of our weapons don’t have a symbol. How easy would it be to reorganize that?

Over the top super classes like warriors that you can’t help but know about, but somehow can’t find a balance solution for. Bottom of the barrel classes like necromancers that are absolutely despised in any marginally challenging pve dungeon/fractal. All you would have to do to fix necros for dungeons is provide some valid melee/cleave/power options…maybe add in some mobility for the melee weapon sets for them.

Please stop targeting and nerfing things that are not broken…just to avoid fixing the things that are broken.

Gambit.8425:

KOPPER.1458:

“I always suggest baptism through fire though, learning the hard way is the best way”

I agree with you. If I had a steady group the learning would be easier. As it stands in Pugs, you get kicked. And I personally don’t learn much, other than I suck. lol

Got what I need for that hammer build, going to test it tonight. Was killing some champs with it and it was working rather well.

Stop beating yourself up. There’s good pugs and there’s a whole lot more bad pugs. A kitten load of people play selfish builds and have defensive or worse gear even at fractal 49. Bringing a zerk guardian in such a group is a nightmare since you don’t have the sustain to stand upright longer than the buffs you provide. Which isn’t long enough in those non-DPS pugs. Then they start pointing their ignorant fingers at you, the “tank”, as you’ve already experienced.

And sword in Fractals, ugh, just horrible. Unless you have a real zerk party, you’re better of using scepter/focus on a majority of Fractal bosses with a switch to melee when the opportunity arises. GS/hammer and staff (pull and #5) for trash.

I will definitely agree that you should stop beating yourself up over this. I also run pugs exclusively for fractals. I just like to hop on and get a daily run in real quick and do a bit of crafting. I haven’t actually completed the daily in 2 days now due to absolutely horrible pug groups. Either they are wearing gear with stats that I don’t even recognize the set name for …like power/healing/crit dmg or a mix of celestial and pvt or something equally low damage dealing….or they just don’t know the encounters or mechanics at all. I also seem to get a lot of groups that want to play range wars 2 or with guards using staff exclusively. I tried joining a group that advertised “zerk only” and ended up in a group with a guard camping staff, a warrior using long bow..and I’m pretty sure 3/5 of them were in pvt or worse. I usually give the groups a chance and see how the first fractal goes…its usually painfully slow due to very low team damage output and I just bail after the first chest. I’ll add that I generally look for a mid to high level fractal run..somewhere in the high 20’s or low 30’s because I’m only interested in the daily chest and some random gear to salvage for luck+mats to sell on the TP. I pick this level of fractals because one would assume that if you are at that level….you at least know the encounters and have some idea of effective tactics/gear…they keep proving me wrong.

These group compositions generally lead to me having very high aggro as the highest damage dealer, wearing heavy armor, and in melee range with most others camping range and throwing spit balls at the boss. These fights drag on long enough for me to occasionally get downed as the boss starts focusing me. This is in direct contrast to some excellent pug groups I have had in the past with mostly zerks using melee weapons and appropriate utilities. To be brief, its probably not your game play so much causing the issue or your build…it seems the pug population has degenerated to an overwhelming population of bads since the announcement of impending zerk nerfs.

I tend to run 10/30/0/10/20 with sw/foc + scepter/foc or hammer. I cycle through these weapons depending on the encounter. I generally break out the hammer when either the group is high dps or there are lots of combo fields generated.

kyubi.3620:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Lupicus-World-Record-7-033-seconds-by-rT/first#post3560931

Im bringing this topic to the profession balance topic so to make sure the dev see the abomination zerker builds have wrought upon the pve part of the game… how can they pretend the game is balanced when a well organised team can down lupicus in 7 second.

Again it just legitimise their choice to nerf zerker damage slightly but i think 10% damage loss is hardly punishing enought.

http://youtu.be/b2VhmwLwvrM?t=6m46s

The Great Al.2546:

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

It would be great if people could wrap their minds around the fact that guardian =/= pvt/clerics/bunker/staff camp. Yes, I agree that pvt/clerics/bunker/staff camp could stand to have a survivability nerf in some way….but every guard doesn’t build/gear that way. I’d love to see people making suggestions like the above play high level fractals while not geared/traited for toughness/hp and not need to dodge often. The Mai Trin fight being a prime example of needing to dodge correctly and often, while pvt just stands there.

Exactly how would party wide support be changed by lack of vigor btw? The pve berserker meta exists solely because of the lack of the tank/healer roles in this game. Without those two required roles, everything is about efficient killing and self survival accountability….that has nothing to do with vigor or berserker gear specifically. Whatever gear set produces the most damage would be the pve meta. That will never be pvt so long as 2/3 of its stats are not devoted to damage.

I’ll tell you what, I’d agree for vigor to be removed from the game if they remove toughness at the same time. Then they would actually need to re-balance incoming damage and eliminate the need to dodge/block/blind everything as a non-toughness/zerk guard.

It blows my mind how people continue to think that face tanking everything while not even needing to dodge/block/blind is okay….while simultaneously thinking that surviving by actually dodging/blocking/blinding is in need of a nerf. This is essentially saying that there should only be one way to play and that is face tanking. This is the opposite of what you guys have been saying all along. There has been constant QQ about wanting build diversity, but this is saying that there should not be any build diversity…pvt or go home. Make up your minds. What ever happened to “play how you want” ….you remember…the pvt slogan in dungeons when complaints arose about low damage output.

http://youtu.be/b2VhmwLwvrM?t=6m46s

The only people who would even suggest a nerf to vigor are those who want to force everyone into pvt gear. Crab mentality. Dodging is a core mechanic of GW2’s active combat design. Vigor/dodging is a primary justification in low base hp on certain classes. Dodging/vigor/endurance regen is available to every class in the game in some way or another. Why nerf the intended survival function of the game just because some fail at dodging? Would you really want pvt-facetank-wars2? How boring would that be to just buff everyone’s hp/toughness up so we can just stand in place and face tank everything? Equally boring and obnoxious to force everyone to trait toughness/hp and force everyone into pvt gear. At least there is excitement and accomplishment in learning to dodge properly to avoid damage. That leaves room for improvement in your gaming skill.

Obtena.7952:

ODB.6891:

Obtena.7952:

Manuelito.6081:

Hunter.4783:

im calling you all zerker drones because you are unwilling to look for other options which might open after this patch, zerker is best for running CoF p1 or for bragging about lupi solo kills.

Not so optimal when u do dredge fractal 49.

PS: I love your comeback about cleric gear. Shows your ignorance. There is more than just full zerker and cleric to this game

I am unwilling to look for suboptimal options. Once I will feel that my gear in full berserker is suboptimal, I will look for alternatives.
Using full berserker gear also requires experience and skill; it is not facerolling every boss.
If someone still is learning the ropes it is possible to find some mixed gear combinations which might give more survivability and forgive some mistakes. In the end though, if you know what to do and want to be more efficient: berserker gear.

Hopefully as Anet goes through this exercise of ‘meta-shifting’, they determine the most interesting approach is to not give players an optimized choice in gear.

How can there ever not be an optimized choice in gear? Whatever gear is most effective immediately becomes the optimized choice.

It’s easy to think of ways to minimize or prevent ‘optimal’ gear choices. Immediately is your qualifier there. I can imagine an encounter where different bosses are affected differently by direct and condition damage for instance. That would mean if I’m out to be ‘optimal’, I’m swapping gear and even traits during the encounter.

Even more extreme, I don’t even see why a ‘de-optimization scheme’ can’t be dynamic on a boss so you can’t even swapping won’t do you any good. Imagine a phased boss where in one phase, he’s immune to crits, another, he’s ONLY damaged by crits. Can be anything you can think of really.

Essentially this idea is to lengthen the boss fight so players take turns. This sounds equally frustrating to all. Having one of my primary stats suddenly become useless, for a period of time, does not sound fun. This immune to crit idea would also break on crit functionality. I equally do not enjoy puzzle encounters. Approaches like this are only a mask for the real problem though…lack of foresight in gear design at launch. Failure to fully analyze the gap in condition damage versus direct damage in pve encounters. Failure to acknowledge the gap in effective output of gear with 3 damage stats versus gear with one damage stat. I still think they need to reduce pve down to one gear set to solve this problem.

Mosharn.8357:

ODB.6891:

reikken.4961:

obviously the point is to tank.

I stopped right there. You do realize that this game was advertised and based around not having any tanks/healers right?

except ppl can do just that. They advertised it for many things but the trinity is still there. Just not as based towards one of the 3.

They advertised support, control, and damage I believe. None of that says tanking or healing. People need to open their eyes and realize that support =/= healing. Healing is included in support, but that doesn’t mean that healing is a stand alone job in this game. In addition, the aggro system does not support tanking, so no, people cannot do just that. I get more aggro on my zerk guard than a whole team of pvts. The aggro priority list is listed on the wiki. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

closest target to them
who is dealing damage
top damage dealers
who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
others (see Tanking tactics below)

This is just an excerpt from the wiki on the aggro priority. With that priority, the aggro door will swing constantly….often towards high damage dealers…which is the opposite of people typically building a “tank”.

Carighan.6758:

ODB.6891:

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve.

That’d make vitality a negative stat, btw.
The more vitality you have, the harder you get hit, the more compassion you’d need just to heal the same total compared to the mob hit.

• Unintuitive (which newcomer would expect +HP to make them more squishy?!)
• Unnecessarily complex (why not just rebalance HP, a much more straightforward change?)
• Prone to bugs (I get an effect giving me +200% vitality, mob starts a swing, my effect ends, hit supposedly hitting for 40% one-shots me)
• Doesn’t solve the underlying problem. HP differences are fine, delta is too large, given the context that it’s not balanced elsewhere.

Just to be sure about that last part:
Having different base HP is mighty fine. As is armour. But you’d think this gets balanced out with another inherent mechanic. As in, the lighter your armour the faster you regenerated endurance, and the lower your HP the higher your max endurance pool. Or something like that, just a random example.

To compare, in most RPGs, the tougher your armour the worse you become at dodging. You take the same total damage but in more reliable increments (making you better at tanking damage).

Vitality is already a negative stat in regards to having to heal back more than low vitality players. Yes, in this case, it would do more damage to a high vitality player. It would also leave that high vitality player with more remaining health than the same hit would to a low vitality player. I don’t think this would be counter intuitive at all. In fact, it would still give a survivability edge to high vitality players…depending on how they balance healing skills to compensate. I think that would be balanced. This just makes it more fair. One shots are not fun for anyone.

I think it can’t get anymore straight forward than attacks doing a percentage of hp. I don’t think that’s complicated at all.

The bugs issue is assuming that ANET would fail to implement scenarios like that correctly. I can’t say I blame you on that assumption though.

They just announced that they were nerfing vigor/dodge on multiple low hp classes…which seems counter intuitive to me. That pretty much says that they want the low hp classes to suffer.

Obtena.7952:

Manuelito.6081:

Hunter.4783:

im calling you all zerker drones because you are unwilling to look for other options which might open after this patch, zerker is best for running CoF p1 or for bragging about lupi solo kills.

Not so optimal when u do dredge fractal 49.

PS: I love your comeback about cleric gear. Shows your ignorance. There is more than just full zerker and cleric to this game

I am unwilling to look for suboptimal options. Once I will feel that my gear in full berserker is suboptimal, I will look for alternatives.
Using full berserker gear also requires experience and skill; it is not facerolling every boss.
If someone still is learning the ropes it is possible to find some mixed gear combinations which might give more survivability and forgive some mistakes. In the end though, if you know what to do and want to be more efficient: berserker gear.

Hopefully as Anet goes through this exercise of ‘meta-shifting’, they determine the most interesting approach is to not give players an optimized choice in gear.

How can there ever not be an optimized choice in gear? Whatever gear is most effective immediately becomes the optimized choice. The only possible way that can be avoided is if there is only one gear choice. That’s honestly how it should have been to begin with. If there are not supposed to be any tanks, then there should never have been gear suggesting tanking. The same with healing. The only way they can force players to be on semi equal terms (at least with gear) is to provide a “uniform” for pve play. Just like they had to force players to stop being magic find leeches in pve…they should do the same with other misleading gear/stats.

reikken.4961:

obviously the point is to tank.

I stopped right there. You do realize that this game was advertised and based around not having any tanks/healers right?

korelg.7862:

if the HP problem is about PvE, just make mobs hit a fixed % of your max health, problem solved

Best idea so far. This would allow them to back off the one-shots in pve. I assume the reason for all these one hit down attacks are because of high survivability of pvt/high hp players. Making the mobs hit a fixed % of max health would be perfect for solving this problem. High health/toughness players would still get some benefit, while low health/toughness players would not have to endure one-shots as much. The current system of having so many one shots just to counter high health/toughness is a bad system because it overly punishes low health/toughness players.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Bri.8354:

Distaste.4801:

Caps suck. They are band-aid fixes for poor stat formulas and balancing. GW2 has probably some of the worst stats/formulas that I’ve seen in any MMO. Why some stat systems are linear and others are exponential is mind boggling and it’s worse when they are systems that are supposed to balance the other(toughness+vitalty vs power*Crit*critdmg*% dmg). This is why we end up seeing some incredibly silly numbers damage wise.

I don’t like caps either, but if there’s a choice between cap on stats or lowering all levels of critical damage (even that which isn’t a problem) to stop the top amount from being too high, I’ll choose the cap.

And after doing some new calculations (now updated my OP with them) it really doesn’t seem like critical damage is a problem in comparison to other stats.

If anything is a problem, it is probably the damage disparity being too high for the design of PvE. If monsters aren’t designed around high damage then they die too quickly for high damage groups. If they are designed around high damage than they die too slowly for everyone but high damage groups.

If they want to address this a good solution might be to bring all the armor stats closer together. Lower the maximum damage AND maximum defense armor can provide. This way you address that issue without screwing over one stat type in places like WvW.

I suppose this is something they could do.

This is what I’ve been saying. There should never have been tank or healing or dps gear in pve. There should have been one set for pve. The illusion of choice is what has caused this big clusterkitten. The pve set should obviously have been geared towards damage as that is what actually accomplishes things in this game, but it should have been more like the celestial set (meaning a baseline of health and healing power on it). Toughness shouldn’t even have existed in pve since that only makes them have to make mobs hit ridiculously hard to compensate. One set for all pve would have actually allowed them to skip this whole nerf zerker lunacy and just focus on balancing the game.

Vargamonth.2047:

ODB.6891:

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

a) That could be a good aegis usage in my opinion. Someone was lacking endurance or any other active defense source, you saw the boss attack incoming and you used Aegis … the attack gets blocked and nobody wastes a evade.
If you’re popping just for it to block “something”, that’s not skillful play and shouldn’t e rewarded.

b) Vigorous Precision is currently out of the meta for most dungeons. If you still need vigor, pretty much everybody will meed it … something like a warrior using warhorn as offhand for that fight will be enough to solve the problem.

c) There are a lot of videos out there of bosses being exploded so fast that they hardly could attack 3 times before dying.
One of the best examples is probably a melee Lupicus first phase. It can be done perfectly without dodging any single kick, without timing aegis with kicks and without using every possible aegis activation.

(a) Either way, the duration is a non factor at that point.
(b) Expecting the “have somebody else hold your hand” argument to be okay, is not okay. That’s why warriors got their self sustain buffed so much.
© That is nowhere near the average group. Balance is never done based on extremes.

Manuhell.2759:

ODB.6891:

There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.

But there is in active defense, and it works exactly the same for either offensive or defensive geared chars (albeit worst for defensive ones, since their passive mitigation isn’t taken on account due to those active defenses being full negators).
And they don’t have different uses at the same skill level in your example – you are assuming the one using defensive gear will make mistakes, thus that he’s worse than the one using offensive gear.

Vargamonth.2047:

Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.

And i’m saying there is a problem right there: compared to offensive gear, there is a lack of a proper return on its investment at the same skill level.

If your skill level is beyond the need to invest in a stat who’s sole purpose is to negate mistakes or ignore fight mechanics, then why would you still invest in that stat as it gives you nothing useful at that point…versus stats that can give you something useful at that level?

haviz.1340:

ODB.6891:

Yes, I am annoyed by the assertion that somehow surviving via utilities/dodging is somehow worse than surviving via face tanking in pvt/clerics. I am also annoyed that you think that anyone not wearing pvt/clerics needs to be punished. I think pvt/clerics does more facerolling of content than zerk ever has. Zerk just does it faster.

The duration of aegis is around 20 seconds if I recall….if you don’t count the fact that one breath from an enemy removes it completely. This is regardless of if it was just applied or is at the 19th second. It doesn’t magically refresh because something looked in your direction sternly. This makes aegis potentially the shortest duration boon in the game. I see balance in that.

Why do you keep thinking I’m using some kind of defensive gear?

Berserker’s gear users need to be punished because they abandoned all of their passive defense in favour of offensive. I would like people to actually dodge instead of relying on aegis and projectiles defenses which is the case now. Let’s not fool each others, you could give meta dps builds to play-how-you-want crowd, explain basics and they would be almost as effective as you. That’s a horrible design, the skill ceiling is extremely low. If you want to abandon entire passive defense, you should be skilled enough.

The duration of aegis is exactly 20 seconds (excluding +boon duration), both from “Retreat!” and Virtue of Courage. It does exactly what I’m claiming it does, promotes rotations instead of timed usage. Decrease the duration tenfold and let’s find out how many “pro-zerkers” can survive with active defense.

I don’t think anyone in the game deserves to be punished for their choice of gear sets. Each one offers different pros and cons. I think that whole concept is elitist. While I personally don’t like to group with low damage dealers, I don’t think they need to be punished. I don’t think glass cannons need to be punished either. This is really not an elitist oriented game…the lack of gear inspects and dps meters + the devs willingness to nerf zerk in pve over forum cries of pvt/clerics proves that.

That being said, I can get behind a reduction in the duration of aegis, so long as the reduction is not as extreme as the 2 seconds you are talking about and there is a base line survival increase as we are also getting beat over the head with a vigor nerf soon. There also needs to be a significant CD reduction of aegis utilities. They could make it be more like blurred frenzy than just a one hit block.

Manuhell.2759:

ODB.6891:

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

Why should the dps gear be “more productive”? It should just be different.
And why should the defensive player’s investment go unused if he plays well?
There is rather a large disparity there – it means a player in defensive gear isn’t rewarded for his efforts.
And that is something that should be corrected – all gears should be equally good, just with different uses.

There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.

Vargamonth.2047:

We’re both probably running a full DPS build. We’re just pointing things that are clearly OP.

Aegis is fine, as I said, for PvP. It could block both the oneshot and the 1HP hit, probably the last one if the enemy is any good. That’s why you use it when the attack is incoming instead of precast it.
For PvE, however, boss moves are scripted and Aegis behaves A LOT of times as a fire and forget skill.
If a fight is short enough for, lets say 5 evades being enough to finsih it, a single Aegis application will last the whole fight and will cover one mistake for every party member. This goes clearly against the “risk vs reward” idea.
On a really short bossfight (or in one where the boss has a really slow attack rate), I could even cycle Aegis for the combat to be over without anyone having to use a single evade.

I’m not proposing getting rid of Aegis at all, just making its duration A LOT shorter (around 2 seconds) so I’ve to somewhat time it with boss moves, and probably compensate this with a CD reduction.

Not a lot to say about reflections, it’s clearly obvious that they trivialize many fights.
Solution should probably be more related to the encounters themselves than to the reflection sources.

I’m going to have to disagree with you on aegis being OP for multiple reasons. (a) aegis can potentially and often is removed immediately upon application…making it the shortest boon in duration. (b) the vigor nerf is going to significantly decrease evades. © your example of cycling aegis and the group not taking a single hit because of it is hyperbole/exaggeration at best.

The risk versus reward concept has been thrown out of the window a long time ago with the advent of pvt/clerics being able to face tank content with no risk.

That being said, I could get behind shortening the duration of aegis, if the CD is significantly reduced as well. This would also need to be accompanied by a base survival increase for zerk guards as well considering their survivability has been balanced off of boons including aegis and vigor…vigor currently being on the chopping block.

Manuhell.2759:

Fenrir.3609:

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

See, you’re fixated with the whole “facetanking” mentality. One can have defensive stats and still use active defenses properly – it doesn’t depend on gear.
Why do you expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move the same as you but has geared appropriately for a defensive role?
As those active defenses totally negate damage, the passive mitigation doesn’t even count most of the time – making said stats mostly useless.
If they had some influence toward defensive skills, this would change.

You just answered your own question. You indicated that the defensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in self preservation, while the offensive geared player has invested the majority of his resources in productivity. You also indicated that the defensive player’s investment largely goes unused if he actually uses his other resources. That is why the offensive player brings more to the table. More productivity versus more selfish survival benefits the group more…that is assuming the offensive player actually survives.

haviz.1340:

You seem to be somehow annoyed by my analysis. Are you aware that not everyone who doesn’t like the current state of instanced pve is a zerker hater? In fact it’s the opposite. But I’d like the content to be how it was advertised, requiring coordination and skillful gameplay, not this sad state we currently have .

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Rotating aegis is a basic skill any decent guardian should show. The result is literally facetanking a boss that would otherwise one shot you or at least force to into defense. The duration of aegis is too long that in turns allows a guardian to rotate without much of a thought. If you want to run full glass cannons, the game needs to punish you proportionally to your squishiness.

Reflects as well as aegis should promote proper timing. Their durations need to be severely decreased so you are actually punished for facerolling the content. Right now, it’s not the case.

Yes, I am annoyed by the assertion that somehow surviving via utilities/dodging is somehow worse than surviving via face tanking in pvt/clerics. I am also annoyed that you think that anyone not wearing pvt/clerics needs to be punished. Zerk already has a higher penalty rate than pvt for any single mistake…its called instant downed state. I think pvt/clerics does more facerolling of content than zerk ever has. Zerk just does it faster.

The duration of aegis is around 20 seconds if I recall….if you don’t count the fact that one breath from an enemy removes it completely. This is regardless of if it was just applied or is at the 19th second. It doesn’t magically refresh because something looked in your direction sternly. This makes aegis potentially the shortest duration boon in the game. I see balance in that.

Fenrir.3609:

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, the real problem is that defensive stats have no impact on active defensive skills.
Thus a char geared with offensive stats still gets the same active mitigation of a defensive-geared char. And this mitigation often consists of a full negation of the damage received, or in a consistent reduction, thus making the passive mitigation even less important.
Some people may think that any gear other than zerk should be “training wheel” gear, but i disagree. All gear should be equally important, just doing different things for different roles.

Active defense is about dodging and timing abilities, not about stacking toughness, hence the whole “active” bit. You can facetank in this game if you want, if you can’t be bothered to buy into the whole actively moving about part though, you shouldn’t expect to be able to bring as much to the table as someone who can actually move and thus can bring more dps to the fore.

Other gear and roles do have a massive part to play in this game outside of being “training wheels”. From spvp, through WvW to open world pve and boss fights. In fact when you consider the game in total, zerk is far, far, far away from being the optimal meta.

That zerk can dominate in one small niche of the pve side of the game (speed running dungeons) is really not an issue at all. And in that tiny subset of the game, why shouldn’t non zerk gear been seen as training wheels? Is everyone here moaning about zerk so focused on speed running dungeons and setting records or something? I highly doubt it.

Do people really know what they are asking for here?
Is spvp a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is WvW a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Is open world pve a full glass zerk driven meta? No.
Can you run dungeons in non zerk gear/groups? Yes.

So we have have the niche of dungeon speed runs seeing zerk as the optimal choice. And people are really crying about that, I mean really? Fine let’s nerf zerk and nerf people who dodge so full glass zerk isn’t a meta in any single aspect of the game anymore and everyone is running around in PVT or as condi/tank. Great diversity.

People really are blowing this completely out of proportion.

I’d love this to be perma-pinned to every nerf zerk thread

Vargamonth.2047:

haviz.1340:

There are 2 mitigations of damage that mostly responsible for the current state. The first one is aegis which guardian provides and the second are reflections. Decrease their abundance or uptime and it is much harder for glass cannons to play giving tanky gears more viability.

100% agree.

Aegis is fine, maybe even underpowered when looking at cooldowns, for PvP. For PvE, however, durations are insane and becomes completely OP on speedkill setups.
IMHO, Aegis durations should be decreased A LOT, probably on top of a CD reduction.
The biggest problem here is what to do with Unscatched Contender.

Reflections (even regular area projectile blocks) are situational, but where they work, they are completely out of control.

Why do the two of you think its okay to try to make others play the way you want? Crab mentality?!? How dare I deviate from your face tank gear! Everyone should be reduced to only wearing pvt/clerics right? The only way anyone should be allowed to survive should be face tank gear/trinity. Lets get rid of any strategic utility use as well…I mean who needs that when you can just face tank. Lets throw that silly play how you want design out of the window because zerk’s playing how they want somehow stops you from playing how you want!

Aegis blocks one single hit…on a significant CD. It doesn’t matter if this is a 1hp hit or a one shot. That is in no way deserving of a nerf. There are exactly two skills in a guardian’s kitten nal that do this…and neither is on a short CD. Aegis also does not stack…so multiple guardians will just over write each other’s aegis 99% of the time. Not quite seeing the problem here or understanding how this is single handedly the ruin of GW2.

Reflect is a very useful utility, but again…not the ruin of GW2. This is a situational utility, that I would be fine with them removing….so long as they also remove the mandatory situations where it is needed. I don’t like getting pigeon holed into having to use that specific utility at the expense of other’s that provide more universal appeal.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

And you seem to be under the mistaken assumption that gear dictates role. It really doesn’t. Roles are performed through skills – a DPS-geared Guardian with a Hammer is putting out damage through his damaging skills, support through healing, con removal, reflects, and other effects, and control through his Hammer’s knockback, immobilize, and wards. A PVT Guardian does the same thing, but with a different focus – he makes a smaller (but still very much considerable) contribution to his team’s damage while filling the other two roles in the same way.

All gear does is HIGHLIGHT the role(s) a player wishes to play. A Cleric’s Guardian is clearly leaning more towards the support side of the coin; his heals will, indeed, be slightly more effective. He is still, however, playing all of the roles at once; refusing to dps because he isn’t “geared” for it would involve doing nothing for extended periods of time.

And that’s precisely what the game is missing – the ability to (viably) highlight your character’s central role or roles in a way that is helpful (in PvE). There is no tanking, so tank gear is meaningless – you’re just a kitten dps with the same support and control opportunities at the same efficiency as the dps. There is little reason to go with healing power – you’ve just kitten your dps in exchange for a measly increase to healing output. Control doesn’t scale on toughness or vitality (or even on condition duration, with the exception of Immobilize and soft cc), making the control (traditionally “tank”) aspect of the game meaningless – and this is ignoring the fact that Defiant destroys control entirely.

Basically, no one is arguing that you need to be able to pick a role to exclusively play – because that does work against the game’s fundamental design – but part of the play-your-way philosophy that the game has so long advocated must involve utilizing your profession’s unique flavor of dps, support, and control and EMPHASIZING your preferred part of this soft-trinity while still contributing the other two parts (or, in the case of Celestial gear or Shaman’s gear, contributing everything in pretty much equal amounts).

And I must bring up the mere existence of other gear types as a supporting factor in this. Why would other nomenclatures be available if dps was intended to be the sole, central role that dominates the game with the other two soft-trinity roles as mere afterthoughts?

This another misread. I have made no assumption or statement that gear determines role. My statements indicate there are no roles. This game is about multi-tasking. Doing all three things at once. On that, we seem to agree. I also agree about the inability to do control due to defiant..that really needs to be changed.

I personally don’t think that there should be a pve gear set focused on healing, when one shots and classes with extremely low base hp exist. The only way a set focused on healing can be effective is if everyone has enough hp to not get downed in a single hit. Even then, that set needs to be able to output enough damage to make a meaningful contribution to the primary objective of the encounter..which is killing the boss. The way the game is designed, you are supposed to move out of the way of damaging effects in encounters or counter those effects. Otherwise, the damaging effects are rendered meaningless and the game really becomes mindless. If the way a healing set counters that is to output enough healing to render those effects meaningless…then we have a new required meta…worse than the original problem in my opinion. Imagine every group demanding a healer for optimum performance.

Maybe I’m not giving clerics a fair shake….it may be bias from all the staff guards I end up getting grouped with. Staff is such a low damage weapon that it makes the lower damage output on clerics gear even worse.

In the end, all I really care about is having everyone in the group make equal contributions and not extending the duration of the encounters unnecessarily. I don’t really think buffing healing power is the way to go, because I wouldn’t want to have to deal with every group demanding a healer…and certainly not having groups demand that one person switch to healing. Imagine groups booting someone to get a healer instead…no thanks on that.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Painbow.6059:

I don’t understand why people don’t like dps dominance? More dps = stuff dies quicker = gold quicker am I not right? people want to play healers not needed in gw2 people want to play tank not needed in gw2, defensive gear not needed in gw2, making these specific roles would damage the game as it would mean you need a tank and a healer and dps roles with no mid points, if a group just specs for max dps and brings 1 guard along with them using a 20,25,0,0,25 build that is enough support for anything outside fractals along with good damage

People don’t like dps dominance because it:

Invalidates the majority of gear sets (in PvE).
Reduces team composition variety.
Removes entire professions from the equation in many groups.
Removes the option to play roles other than dps – kills the “play your way” philosophy of the game.

Basically, I bolded every part of your statement that IS in fact, a problem with the current game design. Guild Wars 2 was not intended to not have any roles – it was designed to allow everyone to play every role effectively regardless of their class and for groups to not require any particular combination of roles to function. There’s a pretty distinct difference. The way things are intended to be would allow anyone to (theoretically) make more-or-less comparable contributions while playing the way they wish do. The way that the game currently is – the way which you blindly seem to support – makes every playstyle that isn’t dps entirely redundant (in PvE).

I’m sorry, but you are misreading the pre-release game description. There are not supposed to be any specific roles. Every class is supposed to be able to play all roles, but their description included the word “AND”, not “OR” when talking about what players would be able to do. They mentioned damage, support, and control…not picking one of the three and only doing that one thing.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

ODB.6891:

Hunter.4783:

fadeaway.2807:

Arenanet has said a lot of things in the past.
Nothing will change. They’ll probably do something stupid like increase mob hp because zerkers burn through it too fast. That or remove everyone’s easy access vigor and call it a day.

Whatever happens, the new meta will be whatever gives the highest dps.

Negative, not if you make encounters around heavy AoE and condi pressure where survival rather than DPS wins the encounter.

So its okay to make zerk players change to pvt style gear, but it wasn’t okay to expect pvt style players to change to zerk style gear? Double standard much?

On the contrary. With his change, the healing power from your Cleric, Shaman, or Celestial teammate would actually mean something in terms of keeping you, as the zerker, alive for that much longer. Failing that, you could always change your tactics, taking more condition removal or defensive utilities – you know, actually adapting your playstyle the way you should have to.

Exactly what failed assumption leads you to believe that no zerk stat players take defensive or condition removal utilities? The reason healing power fails in pve is not going to change because critical damage was nerfed. The reason healing power fails in pve is because of one hit mechanics and low base hp pools of certain classes. You can’t heal someone out of a downed state.

The premise of the post I responded to was that encounters should be built more around survival…which translates into require pvt style gear instead of zerk gear. This is the same thing pvt style players were up in arms about concerning not being wanted in pug dungeon/fractal runs. Its hypocritical for one faction to do it and also complain about the other having done it.

I think pvt needs to learn to adapt, which it currently does not have to.

Hunter.4783:

fadeaway.2807:

Arenanet has said a lot of things in the past.
Nothing will change. They’ll probably do something stupid like increase mob hp because zerkers burn through it too fast. That or remove everyone’s easy access vigor and call it a day.

Whatever happens, the new meta will be whatever gives the highest dps.

Negative, not if you make encounters around heavy AoE and condi pressure where survival rather than DPS wins the encounter.

So its okay to make zerk players change to pvt style gear, but it wasn’t okay to expect pvt style players to change to zerk style gear? Double standard much?

If anything, they should nerf toughness just like they did critical damage. High amounts of toughness accomplish the same thing as high damage….allows players to bypass encounter mechanics…just in a different way. Zerk stats allowed players to shorten encounters and chain active defenses in that shortened period to achieve success. PVT players can just stand there and ignore encounter mechanics and eventually win via attrition. I don’t see how that’s any less deserving of a nerf.

Godmodder.9571:

…10% reduction in crit damage =/= 10% loss in dps. Not unless you have 100% crit chance, which sure, some builds do, but most people sit around 60%. Even if you have fury taking you to 80% all the time; crit damage is not the entirety of your dps.

Though this is still the most idiotic change Anet have made to date, of that I’ve no doubt. xD

The summary of the live stream on dulfy says it will be a 10% overall nerf if in full zerker per player. This is disturbing when considering a full zerk group….10% per player = 50% damage nerf for a full group = double the fight durations. may as well carry a pvt strapped to your back while trying to clear a dungeon/fractal.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

A lot of people on these forums want that sadly…. They want to be “the healer” or “the tank”. Even though gw2 was suppose to be completely against that..

They want it because it was so easy to just stand around and spam 11111 with a tank targeted as a healer. Those trinity games didn’t even require them to know the encounter completely….just get told what to do by the tank, who would also stand in one or two spots and spam a couple of abilities until it was over.

What is killing me is that ANET is actually trying to make this into a trinity game…despite the entire premise on what this game was going to be about when I purchased it. Any steps to make tanking (pvt) more prominent/exist or make healing (clerics) required/necessary in pve…means trinity. They are doing this at the expense of everyone who did actually read the game’s description before purchasing.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mixchimmer.7230:

I like the idea of roles because it is my opinion that when every single role is DPS, it’s boring.

Every character in a dungeon is [DPS+ _. DPS+Banners. DPS+Reflects. DPS+Stealth.

Lets look at it like a math problem. If each side of the equation is dps, we can cancel it out and then you have the roles: Banners/Offensive support, Reflects, Stealth, Defensive Boons etc.

I’ve said it until I’m blue in the face: your traits, class and weapons determine your playstyle. Your gear is simply a reflection of how much damage you intend to have to soak up.

TL;DR: Everyone’s role is dps, regardless of gear. Everyone has to wack on the boss. The actual playstyle is determined by non-gear factors.

As an aside, not regarding your post directly… I see people saying “I don’t want dps to be my playstyle I want a more tanky playstyle.” Do you not understand what this means? This literally means, “I don’t want to contribute my 1/5th of the team dps, and I’d rather not be bothered to dodge most attacks.” When you realize that is what you’re saying, you can imagine a little bit why the reaction from some people is less than positive.

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

I agree with and have been agreeing with everything Nike has been saying. The absence of the trinity leaves only one primary role, but we still have secondary roles that everyone should be adhering to. Offensive support and defensive support. This support is via utilities, profession specific utilities like aegis, death shroud, attunements, etc and via weapon abilities. This game is not as one dimensional kitten many keep trying to make it out to be. People are just stuck in that trinity mindset and will not let themselves see the reality of how this game is designed. You are supposed to be multi-tasking, but people only want to do one thing. You are supposed to be contributing your 1/5 of the team’s dps while also supporting your party with your utilities, profession mechanics, and weapon abilities…while also managing your resources (cool downs, endurance, profession resources such as adrenaline). It is so frustrating when playing with pugs and you have 3 guardians in the group…got at least one camping staff like he/she is a dedicated healer. Got at least 2 of them that never use their virtues once.

Its only logical that in the absence of required tanks and healers…that dps is the primary role. You don’t heal enemies to death or kill them by soaking their damage up…you actually have to kill them with damage. This isn’t going to change by people crying about how zerker’s can clear content faster than them. Despite what ANET is saying and doing, they know this too. They didn’t think this “zerker dominance” was an issue until the forum crying reached critical mass…which says this isn’t about an “imbalance” between gear sets. They know this is at the core of their game design and they are just doing what every MMO in the past has done and eventually failed because of….“forum balancing”. They are appeasing what they see as the largest percentage of the player base at the expense of what appears to be the smallest percentage of their customers. It makes business sense to a degree…until they repeat this process enough that it keeps targeting more and more “smallest percentages” of their customers and they drive too many people away.

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m also worried. It’s very late in the game, especially with ascended armor the way it is, to be making enormous changes with how various stats work. If this coincides with ascended armor being able to assign stats like how legendaries work, that’s one thing. But ascended armor is a huge investment to have a full suit invalidated in a single patch.

I wouldn’t have even bothered with any ascended anything if all it was good for was useless pvt. I probably would have quit by now out of boredom. As it is, the only reason I log in is to work on crafting more zerk ascended pieces and do a fractal clear for the daily for a chance at a ascended weapon chest. If this goes through like I’m pretty sure it will…I guess I’ll have more free time on my hands since I won’t be wasting my time in GW2 anymore.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ODB
You’ve got it backwards. People aren’t against useless stats and they’re taking it out on the DPS meta, they’re against the DPS meta and they’re taking it out on useless stats. (Justifiably, as they’re one of the causes of it.)

Less build and role options is prettymuch the exact opposite of what an iteration should be aiming for.

I’ve been trying to see what you are saying in this post and I just can’t. This isn’t just a dps META…this is a dps game mode. The point of this game mode is dps. What other point could there be when the objective is to kill stuff? The trinity is purposely absent in this game to prevent anyone from being forced into following some “tank’s” orders or depending on some “healer” to keep you alive. This game is designed for individual accountability. There is no iteration that can or should correct this and have it be the same game that was advertised/sold/purchased. Re-read the pre-release description of this game. This game advertised that every class could fulfill all three roles…it specifically worded that phrase with AND instead of OR, which means that trying to make a dedicated tank or dedicated healer is doing it wrong. You should be doing all three at the same time. That’s why utilities are not affected by stats. That’s why dps is required to be efficient. That’s why there is no tank aggro system. That’s why healers are not required. Please stop trying to make this into a trinity game. There are no “roles” and there should not be any. Everyone should be fulfilling all three roles.

There is another frequent post I keep seeing about nerfing critical damage…all I can think about when I see that repeatedly mentioned is..

fadeaway.2807:

You play a sword focus reflect mesmer and don’t already consider yourself bringing the control and support you want so badly? To me that’s precisely what control and support is. You control the mobs into a corner/wall using focus, and you support your team with reflections. Why do you feel you need tank stats to be viable to accomplish this?

Because what he really means by “support” is “healer”. That is the only sense I can make out of what they are saying since all characters of every build offer support via baseline function of utilities and weapons.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

By doing this, bulkier builds can stay engaged longer (thus doing more damage) and draw enemy aggro for longer (thus letting others do more damage). Support builds that use heals will be more valuable since they recover the damage others have suffered, allowing them to stay engaged and do more damage. Protection is more important since the long-term mitigation actually mean something, weakness will be better for the same reason, regen will be better since the heal to damage ratio will be much higher, retaliation will worthwhile since enemies will suffer greater damage, confusion will also do more damage, and to help with disengage against melee enemies the soft CC from cripple/chill/immobilize will also be more useful.

I saw trinity written all over this excerpt…bulkier builds (tanks)…draw enemy aggro (tanks)…support builds that use heals (healers).

DHK.8406:

The problem is simple, it is not complicated, it does not take pages to explain. It can be summed up in once sentance.

In PvE if you learn to dodge, you can survive any encounter in the entire game regardless of gear and/or traits.

So if you dont need toughness, or vitality, or healing to survive they instantly become useless stats and you are left with only berserker.

Which is why I keep saying that non zerker gear sets should never have been a part of pve. The game/combat system simply wasn’t designed around them in pve. Pvp is an entirely different matter though. The simple solution…reduce pve to one gear set. Add training wheels for our current trinity huggers by increasing base survival stats as needed per class. Make all other gear sets only equippable in pvp. Problem solved.

Emanuel.9781:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

“Crab mentality, sometimes referred to as crabs in the bucket, is a phrase that describes a way of thinking best described by the phrase “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” The metaphor refers to a pot of crabs. Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the pot, but instead, they grab at each other in a useless “king of the hill” competition which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise.¹² The analogy in human behavior is that members of a group will attempt to “pull down” (negate or diminish the importance of) any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy,³ conspiracy or competitive feelings."

Copied from wikipedia. I’m not going to bother writing anything else, as this article pretty much reflects the mentality of everyone wanting zerk/sin gear nerfed so their brainless/subpar/playhowiwant playstyles aren’t worse than no defense, max offense builds.

This

kyubi.3620:

What you’re asking for is something that this game was NEVER designed to have: trinity(or in your case unity). No one is forcing you to run Berserker gear. If you don’t like it, don’t run it. If you don’t understand mechanics or can’t dodge attacks, then don’t run it. It isn’t something you should run RIGHT after hitting 80. Stop acting like everything should be a free ride. There has to be risk for reward.

They abolished the ‘’holy trinity’’ so that we stop the vicious cycle of the tank standing still while a healer damage the boss and the dps spam a rotation hoewer they wanted us to run balanced group not just based on damage but on a melting pot of actual build running different stuff and helping in their own way. I understand mechanics, i can dodge attacks, and i like an effective team but i think the role of support and control deserve as much praise as does DPS and that just because you got in over your head dealing big numbers you prety much forgot the value of a decent crowd control hammer warrior or of a minion master in a team having the mobs distract the boss or the adds while you guys smash it. Im not impossing my role on others but neither should DPS be more rewarding then playing support or control be. There is risk to playing dps? Stop lying to yourself for there to even be risk in the first place wed need to cut your damage in half and thats exactly what should be done about critical damage build, your just taking the easy way out rushing down the boss health before it even has a chance to deal you damage and its quite against the very principe of the game.

The difference here is that no one is screaming for nerfs to pvt/clerics/etc. You guys are and have been screaming for zerk nerfs for quite some time. This by definition is the non zerk community trying to impose themselves on the zerk play style community. You guys are more than welcome/capable of forming your own support/tank/healer lfg posts. Yet somehow it is unacceptable and requires a nerf when zerk players do it? You guys don’t want anyone to say anything about your play style, but it is okay to yell and scream to have our choice taken away from us? There is more than one lane on this highway….let me stay in mine…

Jure Simich.6154:

No one seems to be looking at the actual implication of the arguments:

“Defensive stats don’t matter. The real defense comes from skills and dodges.” Most see this. But hardly anyone sees the next step in the logic: the defensive stats actually have nothing to do with the actual effective defense.

So, instead, why not actually go solve the situation there:

Tie active, skill defense effectiveness to a stat. For example, let toughness assume the effect of both armor and HP amount, and make Vitality instead affect an initially low endurance regeneration rate.

Make the offensive characters ACTUALLY lose some of their defenses…

Why is it so important to bring others down to pvt level performance? PVT is not the standard…it is the crutch. Why would you want to break the functionality of every defensive utility unless people re-gear their characters? How is that fair to anyone? What would even be the point of that if the content is doable now without artificially trying to make defensive stats matter in pve.

Black Box.9312:

This. This, this, this. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear being high risk, high reward. The problem is that that risk ratio should be even with the percentage of damage gear substituted for defensive gear. Right now such a ratio only extends to a certain point, beyond which it actually becomes LESS risky for your party to spec more into damage and less into defense. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, and should be more than enough proof that zerker gear is (comparatively) too powerful.

Yes, this is incredibly counter intuitive. The reason being that tank gear exists in pve in the first place and this game is not meant or designed to have tanks. The same can be said for healing gear and healers. These gear types are very useful in pvp environments…that is where they should have been restricted to from day one. Now you have all of these players mad that their tanking gear and healing gear is not accepted in pve content.

Aza.2105:

ODB.6891:

Aza.2105:

ODB.6891:

Sirendor.1394:

The solution for PvE is;

• make bosses harder
• make armour useful
• make healing necessary

drum rolls

TADAAAA: we have a team game which requires skilled play

TADAAAA, you now have WoW.

Rubbish.

There is no active aggro management in game. And every class can heal themselves. No mechanics in wow work remotely similar to that.

If anything it would be more similar to the original gw.

A lot of, not all, in wow can heal themselves to some degree. That is a minor point of the issue. The major point is that healing is required by someone other that that individual to keep them alive. Don’t duplicate that here. That is step one of the trinity. Step two would be putting too much demand on that one “healer” and needing to be able to focus on one person to heal..then the “tank” becomes needed. I’ll pass on the gateway to the trinity…thanks.

Armor makes a minimal difference in this game for a reason. Changing that would also be a WoW-esque move. Having certain armor type, and by extension, certain classes (heavies) be significantly more resistant to damage leads to one thing…tanks. Again…I’ll pass on the trinity…thanks.

The only thing really different so far in WoW from what was just suggested is aggro mechanics. That’s still a grey area in GW2 as far as I can tell. I know when I get stuck with a group of pvts/clerics…I tend to get focused by mobs…and I make sure not to gear any toughness…so that means I’m getting aggro from doing too much damage apparently or being in too close proximity while everyone else plays range wars 2. I don’t want to tank!

No in wow, non healers can’t actively heal themselves. There would still be periods you have down time in places like solo pve. The only way to prevent that is to have a healing buddy. Gw in comparison is nothing like that. Every class is self sustaining in that regard.

I don’t want a dedicated healer class either, I don’t think many people here do. The way I see healing in this game is that it just covers the intervals of vulnerability one may have in combat. The rest of the mitigation comes from self reliance.

In regards to armor, it has never felt like their is a difference in mitigation between light, medium and heavy. At least I can’t tell the difference. Buffing heavy armor to provide more mitigation wouldn’t create a tank. A tank can only exist if there are skills to force monsters to target you. Of course in gw2, there is no such thing so no one needs to worry about that.

And yes there is a type of passive aggro system in place. But you have no direct control of it:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

Classes in wow that I remember being able to heal themselves to some degree.
all specs of druid, all specs of priest, warlock, death knight, all specs of paladin, all specs of shaman..I think that’s it. This was regardless if they were in damage specced or healing specced. This included some classes with zero healing specs like warlocks and death knights. I may be wrong about the warlock…that has been a long time ago, but I seem to remember some trait setup or ability to gain healthback through a life drain or pet sacrifice…too lazy and indifferent to look it up. I just remembered..it was health stones.

Its not just a dedicated healer class that I don’t want to see, but pressure from groups to have certain classes act as a healer as an expectation in the group. Example…I join a lfg pug on my zerk guard and get told to heal or I get booted…not cool.

As far as the tank thing…its a slippery slope. Once you have the set up to have a healer, and you have someone capable of soaking damage, its not a stretch to change the last piece of this trinity puzzle and change aggro mechanics.

Aza.2105:

ODB.6891:

Sirendor.1394:

The solution for PvE is;

• make bosses harder
• make armour useful
• make healing necessary

drum rolls

TADAAAA: we have a team game which requires skilled play

TADAAAA, you now have WoW.

Rubbish.

There is no active aggro management in game. And every class can heal themselves. No mechanics in wow work remotely similar to that.

If anything it would be more similar to the original gw.

A lot of, not all, in wow can heal themselves to some degree. That is a minor point of the issue. The major point is that healing is required by someone other than that individual to keep them alive. Don’t duplicate that here. That is step one of the trinity. Step two would be putting too much demand on that one “healer” and needing to be able to focus on one person to heal..then the “tank” becomes needed. I’ll pass on the gateway to the trinity…thanks.

Armor makes a minimal difference in this game for a reason. Changing that would also be a WoW-esque move. Having certain armor type, and by extension, certain classes (heavies) be significantly more resistant to damage leads to one thing…tanks. Again…I’ll pass on the trinity…thanks.

The only thing really different so far in WoW from what was just suggested is aggro mechanics. That’s still a grey area in GW2 as far as I can tell. I know when I get stuck with a group of pvts/clerics…I tend to get focused by mobs…and I make sure not to gear any toughness…so that means I’m getting aggro from doing too much damage apparently or being in too close proximity while everyone else plays range wars 2. I don’t want to tank!

jihm.2315:

ODB.6891:

jihm.2315:

P1 ONLY ZERKERS NO NOOBS 6k ach
this has to die

Why? Those groups play how they want apparently. They clearly don’t want anyone stopping them from playing how they want. You can’t have it both ways.

they play like this because of the profit and the benefit, nothing more.

Because you have personally polled each and every one of us for his/her honest answer to this issue? Even if those were the primary motivations…what of it? I’m sure pvt/clerics have their own motivations. Maybe less deaths…which are profits in a way, and also the benefit…less likely to look bad by dying frequently?

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

You have absolutely no way of knowing what they will actually do any more than we actually know. What we do know is their track record of “fixing” things…and its not a pretty picture. That leans in favor of them making a bad decision…so yes…we are speaking up.

On a side note, we are in this situation now because pvt/clerics/etc are upset that they are not wanted in dungeons/fractals. They are upset that speed runs exist and they are not optimal/useful in a speed run. They are upset and it is affecting their “fun/enjoyment” of this aspect of the game. They respond by crying for nerfs to those who do not share their perspective. What about the “fun/enjoyment” of those who like speed runs. Those who like zerk gear. Those who get excitement off of living on the edge…knowing full well that taking one hit is going to down you, so you better be on your A-game? Those who take it as a personal challenge to see how flawless and fast of a performance you can squeeze out of your build/character/gear. Is the need to force yourself and your gear/play style choice onto an opposite minded group so intense that this opposite minded group needs to have their “fun/enjoyment” taken away or diminished?

jihm.2315:

P1 ONLY ZERKERS NO NOOBS 6k ach
this has to die

Why? Those groups play how they want apparently. They clearly don’t want anyone stopping them from playing how they want. You can’t have it both ways.

Sirendor.1394:

The solution for PvE is;

• make bosses harder
• make armour useful
• make healing necessary

drum rolls

TADAAAA: we have a team game which requires skilled play

TADAAAA, you now have WoW.

Belenwyn.8674:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

How To Make Berserker Gear Less Effective (ANET STYLE):
make everything immune to crits (tequatl)

also, look at all this resentment coming people who hate the DPS meta and want zerker to be nerfed. here’s some news: DPS will still be meta after any “balancing” anet does. all anet will succeed at doing is making dungeon runs slower. people will still run glass builds with minimal defensive utility.

You can still run glass builds. But if Arenanet hits the right spot during the coming process the glass build will not longer the fastest way to complete the majority of the dungeons.

The only way that’s even possible is if they make every or the majority of encounters into some kitten puzzle…which will be super annoying. The fact is that stuff does not die from toughness/vitality/healing power. Stuff dies from having damage dealt to it. Until that somehow changes, then dps will always be the meta…and the highest dps will always be glass by definition…since glass foregoes survival in favor of dps. They may find some way to make us compromise more in terms of retaining more survival, but that goes against the same thing “play as you wants” hate.

JoxerNL.3752:

All the posts crying how all of a sudden Ascended becomes unusable are ridiculous, forgot already what happened to MF gear?
If they end up nerfing it you will likely get the option to change your stats around, Do I think they will? nah, they will be coming with something that “levels the playing field” which is a good thing.

The only thing they can do that really levels the playing field, without introducing the trinity or punishing zerk players, would be to remove player choice in gear stats in pve. Make a one size fits all set that retains zerk stats but also have a baseline of toughness/vitality/healing power. Remove all other existing sets from pve. This prevents them from having to redesign encounters, reduces the need to stack due to an increase in baseline survival, removes all excuses for being bad/not contributing equally, lets people play how they want, eliminates all gear ping demands.

Honestly, all the other gear sets did was mislead players and provide the illusion of choice anyway.

I have an excellent idea to solve all of this…instead of nerfing zerk gear, ANET buffs zerk gear by adding a baseline amount of toughness and vitality to zerk gear. While they are at it they remove pvt/clerics/celestial/valkrie/etc from pve…replacing it with the new and improved zerk gear. This new baseline amount would be below the current hoard our current zero dps bretheren are sporting, but enough to provide a minimal safety net for them to learn to play without attempting to face tanking everything. This would be making there only one pve stat combination. This would force equal ground with gear. This would eliminate people trying to play like there is a trinity in this game, when there clearly is not. They wouldn’t even have to put the extra baseline stats on the gear..do it just like magic find. This eliminates non contributors in pve dungeons/fractals. You have no excuse for poor performance anymore and getting booted is your own fault…can no longer blame it on zerkers or elitists. You still have a minimal safety net and all of your functionality.

AntiGw.9367:

mahariel.4981:

Which is entirely correct. Bad players can’t actively mitigate so they rely on passive mitigation, good players can rely on their own skill. However we aren’t asking for PVT to be removed, we just want PVT users to read our lfgs and not join them.

It’s entirely wrong. People don’t play pvt because they “can’t actively mitigate”.

Why else would you choose to wear gear in pve that makes everything get accomplished slower? Active mitigation includes dodging/blind/snares/weakness/aegis, etc. If you are doing all of those things and not taking damage as a result…then why would you wear gear with stats that do nothing for you…instead of wearing gear that will do something for you?

This does not mean that bad’s are limited to pvt/clerics…being bad is equal opportunity…zerks can be worse than pvts/clerics.

Miss Sugarific.8471:

I’m hoping for a bit of balancing both for zerkers and PvE content.

I have a friend who pretty much makes all his characters with zerker stats, and does oodles of damage all the time. Playing with him makes all my characters pretty much useless since he one hit kills almost everything. Sometimes I don’t get my loot/ach/heart done because he just roflstomps over everything. Of course I let him know that he needs to back off a bit, but that’s just my point.

He has no reason to change because it’s so effective, and for me it’s no fun at all.

Even if this isn’t exaggeration, your friend cannot possibly stop you from completing hearts or getting your loot. Even if he one hit kills almost everything…all you have to do is land one hit to get your credit. Even if he kills mobs you need for your heart/achievement, there are more than one of the same mob and they respawn. At the very least if he really is one shotting mobs you need, he is being a jerk if he knows this and is intentionally making it hard for you.

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure you know they did not come out and say that specifically. They gave a general statement saying they are looking into addressing the zerker meta. Obviously a poor implementation of this would be beating zerkers over the head with a nerf bat. Based on previous nerfs/patches…this isn’t too far fetched of a possibility. Especially so with a significant portion of the player base screaming for it every day.

The only way I can see berserker stats being nerfed is reducing the crit damage bonus they give. And even that would not result in condition builds being desired for PvE. Anet has done some decisions I don’t agree with, but I think even they now better than to just reduce the effectiveness of the power stat. Even a reduction in the effectiveness of precision wouldn’t push people away from zerkers.

My issues with a nerf to berserkers at all, are:
1. The reason for the nerf
2. The fact that the nerf will still not accomplish what some think it will

Berserkers are only really prevalent in pve. Pvp actually makes good use of those other gear combinations. That makes this nerf specifically targeted at pve dungeons/fractals…since you can do open world stuff in masterwork. Plenty of groups fail at dungeons/fractals…even wearing zerker gear. This clearly indicates it is more about positioning/teamwork/utilities/avoidance/timing. This leads me to believe that the reason for the possible nerf really is excessive cries of those wearing ineffective gear stat combinations of getting booted/excluded from pugs. That being said, I pug all the time. I can tell you that there is rarely a group I get that does not have one or more “play how they want” running around in pvt/clerics with an ineffective weapon choice that they never switch from during the entire run. Those runs generally succeed with minimal issues. To get booted, it really requires some serious screwing up…which has nothing to do with the zerker meta. There are always those groups that want gear to be pinged…but guess what…don’t join those groups as they are probably going to be rude and boot you on the first mistake if you are zerk anyway.

It has been covered already why #2 is a bad reason by multiple posters in the two threads I see about this.

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure you know they did not come out and say that specifically. They gave a general statement saying they are looking into addressing the zerker meta. Obviously a poor implementation of this would be beating zerkers over the head with a nerf bat. Based on previous nerfs/patches…this isn’t too far fetched of a possibility. Especially so with a significant portion of the player base screaming for it every day.