Guild Wars 2

@runeblade: I think out of all classes Necromancer is certainly the one most entitled to buffs

Here are the biggest issues I have with the proposed changes…

Yes, they didn´t exactly destroyed the class completely and lot of minor things seemed improved, but just compare that to what they are doing to Engineer for example (new F5 skill, Med- and Grenade-kit rework and completely new elite kit, are you kidding me??!). The proposed changes to Necro seem either good, but totally uninspired, or meaningless to right up nonsensical to me.

If these changes go through as is, I will have serious problems picking a third line as power Necro (Spite/Soul Reaping/???), because Curses will be an absolutely terribad choice and neither Death Magic nor Blood Magic got something compelling to offer for power builds either.
So I might as well shelf power Necro again until HoT comes out, right?

As for condi specs… well, idk.
During the live-stream they made it sound like you´d now have to make meaningful, build defining choices with the Curses GM traits, but I don´t think this is the case at all. Basically they cramped two (possible three, not sure) very good condi traits into one slot, but we will absolutely have to take Terror over Lingering Curse if we want to preserve the current “condi-burst” style of playing condi Necro. I think even after the buff Parasitic Contagion is not an option when competing with Terror and LC for a slot. Basically the only thing that changed is Terror and PoC swapping tiers, nothing more.
Then there is Dhuumfire. While I think it fits the Soul Reaping line much better then Spite, but it is still a pretty bad trait and can´t compete with FitG in the GM slot. The trait really should give us unconditional burns on critical hits (or something like that) or just should be deleted completely and replaced with something worthwhile.

Overall I´m really disappointed (high hopes = bad idea). Half of our traits will still be kitten. The two currently existing power builds (66002 and 62006) will be effectively reduced to one kitten version (RIP Target the Weak) without a good third line to invest in. Condi builds will still be pigeonholed into Terror. Vampiric and MM builds will still be kitten, because Blood Magic is still kitten and minions are still kitten y. (Edit: that’s a lot of kitten, I know :>)

And of course, still no improvements to our non-existent group support (really ANYTHING done here would have been an improvement) besides vulnerability stacking.

So yeah, my Necro will most probably just return to the shelf (once I can´t even cheese-nuke people with super op down state anymore; sadly that’s the only thing I enjoy doing with Necro right now).

I already forgot a lot of specifics about the changes (it was a really, really looong stream), but here are my thoughts.

• Spite looked pretty clean as a pure power line now. However, I think most of the trait choices are no-brainers (except for Reaper´s Might vs. Bitter Chill maybe).

• Curses got a lot messier imo. It´s basically a no-go for power builds, because it lacks good power-based Adept and GM traits and we would have to choose between Banshee´s Weil and Reaper´s Precision in the Master slot. I guess one of the GM traits could be swapped out with a more general-purpose GM trait though, which in turn would also help to spread out some very important traits for condi builds a bit more.

• Death Magic… well, nothing of interest to me happened there unfortunately, meh.

• Blood Magic seems still weird and underwhelming to me. I was really hoping for more merging among siphon traits and possibly the addition of some new, more useful traits, but the dream died =C

• Soul Reaping looks good. Merging Path of Midnight/Vital Persistence is sweet and the reworked Dhuumfire fits the line much better than Spite imo.

Biggest downer: Still no reliable source of blast finishers and group support/buffs

#believeinkarl
Make it happen please, kitten it!! >.>

Geez… reading through that “conversation” was beyond painful >.>

My guess is that they will increase the health threshold to 50% and thus bring it in line with other very similar GM traits (Thief: Executioner, Necro: Close to Death).

Oh wow, that sucks =/ thanks for the quick answer though.

Correct me if I´m wrong, but with Axe Training it does give you a marginal DPS increase over Dagger AA if you cast it before and after DS Life Blast spamming, right?

But yeah, it´s a “underwhelmingly weak burst” at best (Edit: nope) (at least the animation looks cool though =P).

Uuhm, no, Axe is a terrible weapon to be stuck on for more then ~3 seconds aka the time it takes to cast Ghastly Claws.

The vulnerability stacking seems nice on paper (vuln is important, you are right about that for sure), but just compare it to what Engis, Eles or Warriors can do without having to resort to a low-damage, single target auto-attack. Besides that, Necros have still decent vulnerability application without Axe through Well of Suffering, Reaper´s Touch and Life Blast (if traited).

I would only use Axe in DS builds for a quick burst and (Edit: see posts below) some LF generation. Kinda like an Ele uses Scepter in LH builds, but much worse of course (no blasts QQ). Other than that I genuinely think it is crap =(

Might actually be a pretty fun build for solo play actually (it´s still not good in groups of course, because… Necro :C).

However, I would make the following adjustments.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNBIh36kGRapxGbw6G4wxE4CysJbC9iAti7DA-TBSBABFp8riTCAlq/EhSwr2fAF9CIY+DgHAAA-e

• D/W x/F should do, Axe is a terrible weapon if you don´t play a DS build
• Signet of Spite for Well of Corruption (most mobs don´t have boons to convert)
• All Berserker´s gear and Runes of the Scholar (the 6th buff should be pretty easy to maintain with this build)

And for traits…

• 1 point out of Blood Magic into Curses for Fury on DS flashes (you quickly go in-and-out of Death Shroud)
• Adept Spite: Signet Mastery for Spiteful Removal (more might is always good)
• Adept Curses: Weakening Shroud for Focused Rituals (you want to be in Dagger range as much as possible anyways and additional damage on DS flashes)

I might try something like that later if I feel like it.

Algreg.3629:

the most important question in my opinion hasn´t been answered in any of these threads: Why exactly?

+1 That´s what I´m curious about every time a new “nerf zerker QQ”-thread comes up and nobody was able to give me a concise and convincing answer yet.

Fyi, “I don´t like it” is not a valid answer.

Bubi.7942:

Well.. too much posts to catch up with, so I’ll just pop in again without reading what has been said since, risking that this might already have been said:

Yes it has been said about a hundred times by now (not only in this thread, but also in many of the countless threads before), but that doesn´t make it necessarily true.

Bubi.7942:

There seems to be a popular misconception of people surviving in zerker because they are highly skilled. Most are surviving because the encounters are so predictable, slow, and easy.

It IS a misconception if you ask me. AC Spider Queen? I still see unskilled players getting shrekt by it regularly if they are not carried by Ice Bow #5. Same holds true for Kholer, there are A LOT of people out there that have no idea when to dodge his spinning attack.
And these are relatively easy encounters, lets not even talk about certain fractal bosses or Arah
Edit: So, if anything, I´d say unskilled players are often able to survive most encounters when they shouldn´t because they get carried by competent players and not because the encounters are too easy.

Bubi.7942:

No on is arguing about (at least from what I read) about highly skilled players shouldn’t survive with zerker stats. It’s more about everyone and their mother can survive in zerker (again, back to my old posts, not talking about solo/speedruns).

Sadly, sometimes people do argue exactly that, basically they want glassy stats being removed from the game entirely (see this abomination of a thread e.g.).

Bubi.7942:

90% (made up number) of the players shouldn’t be able to complete the supposed to be hardest content in the game waering full glass armor. If they are able to, something is definetly broken.

That is an opinion, not a fact =) I would leave it to anet to make such decisions.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

@Jerus, your idea is really interesting, It’d be fascinating as a test to see if people would actually play hardmode or not, beyond the challenge-seeking crowd.

Presuming the rewards were enough greater to justify the risk, how would you suggest dealing with the risk of increased toxicity? I can definitely see a scenario where someone screws up and dies and everyone gets really mad at them and freaks out over it for the ‘wasted time’.

You simply sit there while people calm the kitten down and get back to it or reform the group whatever becomes the status quo. Fractals are much tougher and can easily run over an hour with screw ups. However, like most dungeons fractals are soloable, meaning I doubt most groups would simply stop after one death, the guy could leave and do whatever, but the rest of the group could easily keep trudging along in most dungeons. Eventually an ethical system will emerge on how people deal with it, and like now most people will do it and if they fail /shrug well we tried.

<snip>

I still remember my very first try to run Arah p1 back when the game was still fresh and nobody had a clue about anything basically (I was playing Condi Necro at that time =P). It was one of the most engaging and fun experiences I ever had with random people on the internet.

We died a lot of course, like A LOT, but we managed to all gather on some obscure ts-server and tried our best to make something happen. After ~3 hours of struggling and getting wiped at Lupi we decided to call it quits, but nobody raged or hurled insults at the others (we were kinda sad we didn´t managed to complete the dungeon though :,().

So no, I don´t think harder content automatically breeds bad behavior. It´s all about the people you play with after all.

What´s your favorite way of playing the game IllegalChocolate?

Maybe I should start making threads about how much it sucks/op/faceroll/bad for the game/boring/too hard/unbalanced etc. etc. it is. A new one every single day, for the next two years (or so), in which I repeat the same arguments over and over and over again, without making any meaningful observations at all. It´ll mostly be just demands for nonsensical changes and uninformed and opinionated kitten-talking in order to get what you enjoy about this game removed.

Maybe then you´ll understand why some people have had enough of all this crap =)

Artemis Thuras.8795:

maha.7902:

im actually so fed up of these threads

look at literally any game ever. there is always a meta, either static or fluid, you can’t escape it.

GET

OVER

IT

It’s about time the mods locked them on sight.

Yes. please.

Why don´t we have some sort of merged “general zerker QQ”-thread anyways? Y´know, the ones that get created every time people whine to much about literally anything else they don´t like in this game…

I wouldn´t worry about that to much actually. There will always be a place for glassy gear in this game if you put enough effort in to learn it.
The new content might be more difficult for glass canons in the beginning, but some people will figure it out, teach others and slowly everyone gets used to it – just like we did with all of the content currently in the game.

Yeah, discussions on the Necro subforums tend to be pretty civil, knowledgeable and informative usually.
I really hope anet addresses some of the issues the base profession has for HoT and that the specialization doesn´t turn out to be garbage in PvE as well T_T

A nice quote from said thread.

VenomBlades.9432:

Im not sure if to laugh or not actually, none of these will resolve anything :P

The thing that needs to be resolved is Necro, <snip>

This guy has figured it all out :> fix Necro = fix zerker-meta
#necrometa2016

@Windsagio
The thing is, if we´d have encounters in this game which are designed to be beaten by making use of some form of defensive gear, chances are high most players wouldn´t be able to complete it at all when using more offensive gear.
This wouldn´t exactly be an improvement from the status quo (use whatever you feel comfortable with = win, loot and all the good stuff).

So yeah… can we call it a day for now and wait for the next “zerker must go”-thread? The last 4 pages or so were really painful for me to digest >.>

phys.7689:

Skoigoth.9238:

<snip>

first of all in either system, stats effect skills, or stats cease to exist, people will be able to roleplay healers or tanks

If you are role playing a healer, why do you need stats? In a no stat system, role playing a healer would be about traits, runes, and skill selection.

Bad choice of words on my side, forgive me. I wasn´t talking about actual role playing (the term is often used sarcastically for people with PHIW-mentality). What I was trying to say is that a system as you suggested it wouldn´t add to that really, because you can already play such builds and be successful at doing stuff in this game. Removing or normalizing stats now, even if it probably would have been the right thing to do back when the game was in beta, would most certainly just take options away from these players and not add any (which would lead to even more QQ).

phys.7689:

If stats effect skills, you would be able to more interesting things with healing and support.

You can already do “interesting” stuff with healing (interesting is a rather subjective category if you ask me) and there is a reason pretty much ALL of the meta builds are support oriented.
So no, tieing the effectiveness of skills to stats wouldn´t make the game more interesting, if anything it would probably only make defensive builds even more defensive and vice versa with offensive builds.

phys.7689:

yes, my solutions are unrealistic, <snip>

Then it is pointless to argue about them any further, don´t you think?

phys.7689:

<snip>

I am not saying the game must have stat diversity, i am saying they already put stat diversity in the game, its just a really crappy execution.
so either, make stat diversity actually matter
or
remove stat diversity.

OR
you leave it as is, so that people can role-play as healers or tanks if they feel like and are still able to complete any kind of content they wish to complete, hmm?

Again: Optimal =/= viable

There is nothing wrong with that at all.

phys.7689:

<snip>

but, there is something to be said for very well balanced difficulties, and lower investment to achieve best case scenarios, like you might see in a fighting game/action game.
<snip>

Except that GW2 is not like a fighting or FPS game. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Seriously, why do try so desperately to justify such a MAJOR and unrealistic overhaul of the game´s stat system phys? Based on what we know about the upcoming stuff in HoT (Specializations, Mastery system etc.) the devs already try to make the gameplay more diversified (more traits, more weapons, more skills).

Then all we really need is some new instanced content with improved encounter design in the vein of Lupi, Mai or the Marionette and there you have your “challenging group content”, without having to break the current system by making changes for the sake of it.

Making healing power more potent would be very bad for PvP balance imo. Cele builds such as DD Ele and Shout Warrior would be OP as hell and they are hard to kill already.

The reasons I see as to why healing builds are not a thing in PvE (generally speaking oc, you can use whatever gear you want and complete any content currently in the game) are…
a) it is simply not needed (every class has a self heal and lots of different ways of damage mitigation)
b) it often wont save you anyways in sticky situations (if you want passive defense, toughness with its flat damage reduction is a way superior choice)
c) it doesn´t affect res speed or something along those lines (if you go down, rallying by killing something is safer and faster in most situations)
d) it scales horribly

However, if you REALLY want to run a healing build and still contribute to a fight by dealing meaningful amounts of damage, I´d recommend you craft yourself some Zealot´s gear (+power, +precision, +healing power).

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Necromancer is a great class for PvP.

There are two builds that are commonly used in sPvP atm; Power Necro and Terrormancer.

Power necro is a very useful build for beginners because there are lots of traits and skills you can choose from to “fine-tune” the build to your playstyle.

You are pretty squishy, but depending on how well you are doing you can add/remove aspects of the build to make you more resilient or do more damage.

Search Power Necro or Terrormancer in google and you will probably find builds.

Necromancers are also great in WvW.

Agreed, Necro is pretty good and fun to play in sPvP solo queue (not so much if you are up against organized teams though =P), decent at WvW roaming and vital in zerg fighting, if you are into that.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

As far as pve goes, the Necromancer is great at applying conditions, …

Hmm sadly, not really. Warriors, Engineers and probably even Rangers are far better at applying conditions fast, while simultaneously doing OKish direct damage and bringing utility etc..
The only unique thing condi Necros have is chain-fears, which do more harm then good most of the times and Epidemic, which is rather useless in a lot of situations because trash mobs die very quickly anyways.

DS Necro is pretty fun for general PvE though and also decent in PuG dungeon runs, assuming you don´t get kicked on sight
However, if you really want to run Necro in dungeons/fractals regularly my advise would be to find a group/guild of people to play with that doesn´t mind you play Necro and can adapt to it a bit if needed.

As far as HoT, Necro GS and the specialization go, we still don´t know anything about these things for sure unfortunately. People are speculating that GS will be a cleaving melee weapon, possibly with chill on auto attack (which would be great imo), but we´ll have to wait and see I guess.

EDIT: Oh and you should definitely check out the Necromancer subforum if you have more specific questions about the class McPanda =)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-fix-this-thief-PVE-exploit
8/8 would read again

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If it really gives 50% MORE crit then there is really no point is rolling any class other than revenant. Might as well just remove them at that point.

Not gonna lie, that comment made me giggle a bit.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Valento.9852:

I find it funny how many meta-mentality players think zerker stacking is the ultimate playstyle for dungeons, and other equipments are just a ladder until you get “pro”. This is completely wrong, how come you trash all other gear in a game that has no treadmill? Cleric should have its place, it should be wrong to have a full zerker party. It simply trashes all itemization, which is a core fundamental part of RPGs.

clerics gear does have its place.

Why should it be wrong to have a full berserker party?

^ Exactly

optimal (“zerker”) =/= viable (EVERYTHING else)

Why is this so hard of a concept to grasp?

Zenith.7301:

There is a way to make defensive stats used. Mechanics like pulsing damage auras that are defense checks. That go through aegis.

<snip>

Nobody currently needs to support besides rotating aegis and maybe blasting a water field. All those traits with rezzing bonuses, traits that increase group damage mitigation, boons like regen and swiftness are virtually worthless in a combat environment because the way most encounters function in this game is you do outrageous DPS to an HP sack and hope to kill it before you run out of aegis/endurance.

<snip>

Basically, split people up with tasks and critical execution checks during an encounter. More encounters that don’t just trivially allow a group to sit behind a reflection wall rotating aegis.

You make it sound like rotating aegis´ and utilizing reflects at the right times is easy, but believe me when I tell you that there are A LOT of really, really bad Guardians out there who have no idea how to do these things properly. I had the pleasure of having to explain to some Guards what Wall of Reflection is and does a couple of times already.
And then there are probably even more people out there who have no idea of how to use combo fields and blast finishers, like absolutely no idea at all. I´m so sad every time I drop a smoke field when PuGing with my Thief and nobody helps me blasting. And when you ask them blast your fields they either don´t reply to you at all or yell at you “use the stealth house thingy!!” or something like that =P

Keeping that in mind, I think asking for more “puzzle-like” encounters that require good coordination and exact knowledge of what needs to be done would be terrible for PuGs (not so much for organized groups of course). You can easily observe that when you try to pug TA aetherpath for example. If you are unlucky and end up in a group with only one or two competent players you´ll most certainly have a pretty bad time running that path.

So even if it sounds hackneyed and/or arrogant, I genuinely think it´s the l2p issues of players who get carried by good teammates (and fail hard if they don´t get carried) that will keep anet from introducing more difficult/harder content to the game. GW2 has a rather casual playerbase after all and this has to be and will be acknowledged by the devs when they design future content.

Zenith.7301:

More bosses with adds that corrupt boons so 25 might stacks isn’t easy to maintain and can make you vulnerable, more adds who can daze/interrupt skills.

That being said, I´d really welcome some changes like that personally. I think the, lets call it, “one-dimensionality” of dungeons/fractals and probably PvE in general is solely a matter of encounter design and (maybe) they way conditions are handled, both for you as player as well as mobs (how fast/often they can be applied and how easily they can be cleansed etc.).

But yeah as I said, I do not really expect instanced PvE content for small groups to get significantly harder anyways (if we get new dungeons/fractals at all T_T), so I guess the best thing to do is calm our jimmies, sit tight and see what HoT will bring to the table.

phys.7689:

rotten.9753:

Jerus.4350:

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

Exactly this, gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity is pretty much bothersome when you actually want to use that diversity and change your entire build.

if they didnt want gear diversity for the sake of diversity, what was the point of making 24 stat combinations.
IE if we are supposed to be playing one or two stat sets, why create 22 more to trap people in bad stats, which then you have to design content assuming people have some of these stats.

i mean what it boils down to, is you are saying, most stat spreads need to be useless, so that i dont have to get a lot gear.
which is a valid point, but then shouldnt they cease to exist?

I think people often forget that dungeons and fractals only make up like ~1/9 of GW2´s content overall. What about sPvP, WvW, open world PvE, solo content like PS and LS etc.? We have a pretty good stat and build variety in the game as a whole if we look at all the different game modes and their niches respectively.

I e.g. carry at least two different sets of gear around on all of my characters I regularly use for WvW roaming, soloing and for kittens-and-giggles stuff (and trust me, not all of it is Berserker´s/Assassin`s).

It would be kind of irritating to me if I had to carry even more gear sets around just to be properly geared for the content I just happen to be in the right mood for. I think it is much more convenient and user friendly to maybe just swap out weapons, change some key traits, key utility skills and be good to go, as opposed to having to carry around a bazillion different sets of gear.

Without build templates and easier access to BiS gear, I think a system in which you are required to use multiple sets of gear to successfully complete certain content would be a major pain in the butt and not desirable at all for the majority of the playerbase.

phys.7689:

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats

At the risk of sounding like a complete jerk: This ^ is exactly the kind of comment I had in mind when I wrote this…

On top of that, I have the impression that a large portion of the Bobs out there, complaining about “the meta”, don´t know what they are talking about anyways, so can we please leave the job of balancing the game to the devs, yes?

Reflect damage is not affected by your own weapon strength and power, but it is indeed affected by your crit chance, crit damage and % damage modifiers, which e.g. is the reason why Mesmers often choose to go a bit overboard with their precision (aka they use a mix of Assassin´s/Berserker´s gear instead of using full Berserker´s for optimal results).

Exun.7825:

Skoigoth.9238:

Exun.7825:

I do not want to set the bar myself and tell people that what I say is the truth, i’m just watching and what I see is that dodging glass canon strategy is played by the overwhelming majority (In my mind). for me it’s a fact, and I don’t like it. What I would like is more diversity. <snip>

Well, I don´t like a lot of things people do in this game either, but do you see me opening a new topic about how much Staff Guardians suck in dungeons every godkitten week?

Why can´t we all accept that different people have different opinions and different preferences (even if you think they are stupid), mind our own business (!), respect each others LFGs and let the devs decide whether or not something needs to be changed in this game huh?

Ok so because I give my own opinion does it necessary mean that I don’t respect other’s opinions? I actually don’t agree with that, but please, take it easy, no offence.

The second part of my post wasn´t specifically directed at you, sorry that it came across that way (the following isn´t specifically directed at you either, fyi^^).

As for the tone of my post, to me it is just annoying as hell to see threads like this one pop up every week, with the same old arguments being rehashed again and again and again until the end of all times, without any progress made in the “discussion” whatsoever.

I couldn´t care less what gear people use in their groups for dungeon runs, or how easy/difficult they think dungeons are in this game. I have no problem with people running healer builds or whatever in their own groups. If it works for you, great! Be my guest.

What I DO have a problem with is this:
Once upon a time, there was a PHIW-player named Bob. Bob was taking a look at how fast you can get your shiny-shiny if you do (close-to-)meta runs and got frustrated because he didn´t enjoy it and/or couldn´t pull it off himself. Then he comes to the forums and demands that my and that many other players preferred way of running dungeons must be nerfed into oblivion, just because he doesn´t like it and/or his preferred way of playing isn´t the optimal way of running dungeons.

On top of that, I have the impression that a large portion of the Bobs out there, complaining about “the meta”, don´t know what they are talking about anyways, so can we please leave the job of balancing the game to the devs, yes?

PLEASE, Bobs of Tyria, just create your own LFGs, respect mine and leave me alone doing what I enjoy the most in this game

~To live and to let live~

Exun.7825:

I do not want to set the bar myself and tell people that what I say is the truth, i’m just watching and what I see is that dodging glass canon strategy is played by the overwhelming majority (In my mind). for me it’s a fact, and I don’t like it. What I would like is more diversity. <snip>

Well, I don´t like a lot of things people do in this game either, but do you see me opening a new topic about how much Staff Guardians suck in dungeons every godkitten week?

Why can´t we all accept that different people have different opinions and different preferences (even if you think they are stupid), mind our own business (!), respect each others LFGs and let the devs decide whether or not something needs to be changed in this game huh?

Belenwyn.8674:

But berserker builds are optimised for applying damage not boons or conditions. <snip> Take your favorite class and put the main focus on maximal boon duration and strength and maximal variety of boons. Compare this build with your berserker build. How different would it be?

1. Wrong, almost all of the current meta builds for dungeons sacrifice some personal DPS in favor of more utility, boon or condition up-time (might, fury, vulnerability, blind, protection, …)
2. It wouldn´t look much different. Take e.g. a PS Warrior or a Hammer Guardian build for high level fractals, or a Thief build using off-hand pistol. Builds like these do pretty much exactly what according to you “berserker builds” don´t do. They ensure that the desired boons/condition have (near) 100% up-time, or are available when desired.

Valento.9852:

it: STACKING IS A BAD BEHAVIOR BECAUSE IT DUMBS DOWN THE GAME. #kthxbai

There is a difference between mindless stacking on every occasion which, as I said in my previous post, is a remnant of the old FGS fiery rush meta and smartly manipulating enemy AI to increase the effectiveness of your AoE and cleave damage when it is appropriate.

Besides, all of this discussion about stacking has nothing to do with “zerker builds”. Bunching up trash mobs you can´t or don´t want to skip, in general, (doesn´t matter HOW exactly it is done) will always be beneficial, regardless of what gear and what build you are using (max. target AoE/cleave damage, easy AoE CC, easy AoE blinds, easy boon application, …).

I´ve been using these for quite a while now when I go PuGing with my PS Warrior. They are rather expensive to craft but I personally prefer having +100 ferocity instead of 20% boon duration.

MaXi.3642:

the way how to reduce the corner zerker meta is to add more mechanics and fix bugs…
<snip>

“Corner zerker meta” seriously? I´d say ~70-80% of the corner stacking spots people frequently use in PuGs are remnants from the old FGS-burst days and not worth using anymore since FGS was fixed, which happend like a year (!) ago if I remember correctly.

For some reason this hasn´t gotten through to a lot of people it seems. My guess would be that these people are either too lazy to learn new strategies or they never even understood why stacking in corners became a go-to strategy in the first place.

maha.7902:

Are you implying that, generally speaking, Warriors do more damage than Eles? Or even worse, that Warrior is harder to play than Ele? =P

don’t kid yourself in to thinking camping fire attunement and pressing 2 and 5 off of cooldown is any more challenging than a warrior rotation.

Yes, certainly. By “harder” I wasn´t necessarily referring to complexity of skill rotations, but rather to the fact that Ele is naturally less forgiving than Warrior, because it comes with less inbuilt defensive capability (aka you can´t take a kick to the face and walk away with ~50% health).

Surbrus.6942:

Stats as they exist now should just be removed entirely

^ This would be great imo, but sadly I also think that it is very unlikely that something along those lines will ever happen in GW2.
And I´m pretty sure all the people crying and kittening about the way things are now would find something else to cry and kitten about rather quickly, so it wouldn´t solve my biggest concern in this matter anyways

CutePicsHunter.7430:

I played both elementalist and warrior (I also played engineer, necromancer, ranger, thief, and guardian), and yes, it actually is harder generally to play elementalist. My experience in dungeon runs confirm this – eles fall much more than warriors. Where as warrior you can eat 2-3 boss attacks as ele you will sometimes go down even from one. If you do think that warrior is harder than ele – well, i think you have some problems here.

Eeehm, I´m not sure if we understand each other correctly tbh. You basically just said the opposite of what you said in the post I was originally referring to and now repeated what I was trying to convey with my post. So I think either you got something mixed up in your other post, or I misunderstood something about it

CutePicsHunter.7430:

<snip> then again, why should I play class that is a lot harder and is unforgiving and doesn’t deal that much damage at the same time? <snip>

Are you implying that, generally speaking, Warriors do more damage than Eles? Or even worse, that Warrior is harder to play than Ele? =P

Anyways, on topic: The fact that some people don´t like what a large portion of the community currently considers being the most efficient way to get things done in PvE doesn´t mean the game-mode as a whole is broken, don´t be ridiculous.

Oh and just in case you didn´t know, I´ll type it out for y´all once more:
YOU CAN POST YOUR OWN GROUP, WITH YOUR OWN REQUIREMENTS ON THE LFG-TOOL! YOU ARE NOT FORCED TO USE META BUILDS AND/OR BERSERKER´S/ASSASSIN´S GEAR; SAID GEAR/BUILDS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO COMPLETE ANYTHING IN THIS GAME!

Purple Miku.7032:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31seuk/gear_for_condition_dmg_burn_guardian/

Found this on that thread

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVIQJARSl0ApUotCxZIktNB9QlVXUdAcAJK2JxS8oA-TFiAABfq+zsKBB4SA8g5vnU+pz+DsoLYgnAApAgZNA-w

I feel so filthy now

That must be the build Brazil had in mind when he wrote this song ( ¬?¬)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSvM0ZqjTrw

warbignime.4610:

[…] , everyone run zerker because it’s the most efficient build , […]

“Zerker” is NOT a build…

MHCerberus.1385:

I am ashamed to see how many people see skill in this type of gameplay.

Maybe because it takes some skill to execute certain trash runs clean and effectively? That is, having specific knowledge of where to stand, where to go, when to skip with/without stealth, when to blast stealth, how to blast stealth, what utility skills/weapons to swap in for the run etc. and be able to put that knowledge to good use.

MHCerberus.1385:

Ask any good fighter/martial artist how they get better at combat, which is indeed a massive part of GW2. They will tell you train hard and practice often, not “only practice on required days”.

Lel, what if I told you that skipping actually takes practice? I´ve been predominantly running dungeons and fractals with PUGs for more then 2 years now. So the quality of players I play with on a daily basis varies a lot and to me it is very apparent, that the less experienced i.e. less skilled players are typically the ones screwing up more difficult trash runs. Why do you think this is huh?

1.) I was PUGing TA fw yesterday and there was this warrior… +21k AP, didn´t manage to do A SINGLE skip without dying, not even with serious handholding by our thief, let alone on her own. She just kept running straight through blossoms and mobs, auto-attacking and spinning like a champ. Took us +30 min. to complete the path, but it was ridiculously funny.
Think about that next time you are about to put your “20k AP exp zerker” – lfg up =P

2.) I R CONFUSE!!!11

3.) PUG fun in bugged CoF p1 and droppin my mad dungeon sub-forum knowledge saving the day <3

Laraley.7695:

There are so many people thinking of the germanwings crash when seeing this april joke. I do not think ANet did this on purpose, however I can see why some people find it insensitive. They didn’t think it through much.

^this

I don´t find the joke itself to be very offensive/insensitive, even though it immediately reminded me of the germanwings crash. It´s mostly the people in map chat making inappropriate comments that bothers me, which istn´t exactly anet´s fault… but it kinda is xD
They really should´ve thought about this more before releasing it.

Also, it is annoying and not funny, regardless of the circumstances.

Killface.1896:

There is no skill stuff die that fast you dont need to dodge at all if all are using meta builds and you have aegis and blind up anyways,if you do it in low damage party it can get hard as you need to dodge and stuff and big hits will 1-2hit you just like they do with zerg gear.

I´ve said myself so many times that I shouldn´t waste time and energy on these threads anymore, but I just can´t do it =(

xKole.9175:

However… DPS, DPS, DPS. I get not having the holy trinity (feels like I’m swearing by saying “holy trinity” here) but seriously, everyone is just DPS, that’s it. It feels like there is zero versatility in PvE that can be taken seriously. Yes, you CAN do support builds, and yup, “control” builds too, I just wish that other builds besides “ZERKER ONLY” could be as rewarding as DPS. When I say rewarding I also mean having equal and/or reliable impact.

Why do think that “specing for DPS”, which is a rather loose concept anyways, rules out things like support and control?

I play mostly Ele in dungeons, sometimes also Warrior, Guardian or Thief, if it benefits the group and Guardian exclusively in FotM. For each of these classes I use at least 2-3 different builds (that is, different weapons/skills/traits) of which all of them can be considered being “meta”.
These builds range from very support oriented (e.g. PS Warrior, FotM Hammer Guard) to max personal DPS (e.g. Staff Ele), but ALL OF THEM bring some kind of group support in form of utility (stealth, reflects, blinds, blocks, might stacking, perma fury/protection etc.) and/or control (frostbow #5, pistol whip, headshot, ring of warding etc.) to a varying degree.

The fact that I use Berserker´s/Assassin´s gear in all of these builds changes nothing about that. Choice of weapons, utility skills and traits impacts the way I play and what I bring to my party much more than the gear I use.

Gear/stats are more like a “difficulty slider” in PvE. More defense makes combat more forgiving most of the times (!), but comes at cost of increased time to kill things. Less defense rewards you with faster content completion (again, most of the times), but requires you to pay more attention to things such as positioning, dodging, block/evade/invuln timings etc..

The only meaningful thing about play-style that is determined by your choice of gear/stats right now, is the type of damage you deal: Direct damage vs. Conditions.
The fact that condis are almost always an inferior choice to power builds in PvE (aside from e.g. dungeon solos and most open world stuff) is the only imbalance regarding stats I see in this game. Anet already seems to acknowledge that and I think/hope that by the time HoT comes out this wont be as big of an issue anymore.

tl;dr: Screw you, read all of it! Do it now!!

I used to roam a lot on Warrior, Necro and nowadays a bit on my Ele (fresh air and D/D) as well.

From personal experience I can say that if people are not interested in a fight and you are not able to catch up to them immediately, it is best to just leave them be.
The best/most exciting fights typically take place with people that actually WANT to fight you and not with people that HAVE TO fight you because you chased them down

1. Great CoF lfg I found yesterday. Sadly he/she apparently didn´t find anyone matching the requirements for at least 45 min. =(

2. Somehow, these guys (green & red) made me giggle #justfrenchthings

Bhawb.7408:

DS enter/exit doesn’t interrupt res/stomping I thought

I´m pretty sure it does.

Since lacking group utility/support is one of our biggest weaknesses at the moment, why not make it a “shout”-type of effect?

e.g.

• 3 stacks of stability for 7 seconds
• 5 targets
• radius 600

Tsuki Hitotsu.2097:

So, this just happened!

http://i.imgur.com/KEDoGcj.jpg

I’m red, grey was the last one remaining and white were the ones who just left!

LFG’s for gear check on guard, gets a perfect full zerk one and then they instantly all leave. Either I’m too perfect for their LFG, or I have some enemies I never heard about XD

Maybe they expected you to have full clerics gear or something =P Happened to me in fractals the other day.

The lfg description read something like “lvl 10 daily run – NEED SUPPORT GUARD”, four warriors already in the group (which should have been telling enough tbh).
I joined them for kittens and giggles and asked what exactly they meant with “support guard” to which one guy simply replied “healing”.
I was about to explain to them why you shouldn´t ever need a guard speced for healing in lvl 10 fractals, but then I just left with the remark that I´m not the kind of guard they were looking for.

Sometimes I´m just too tired for puglife =(

Legend of Faroukk.1307:

<snip> with the dungeon scaling we can’t even 5-man the dungeon without running meta, we couldn’t finish CM path 1 last boss with running just zerker. <snip>

I don´t want to be rude, but what a statement like this tells me is that you are either not very experienced and/or skilled when it comes to dungeons.

Moreover, it seems like the changed down scaling wasn´t fully working as intended (if intended at all) and apparently has been reverted.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Anyway, I think I’ll make a special report to ANet and see if I can learn more.

You, Sir, are awesome <3

This change really screwed me over in my daily dungeon tour. Well, at least I now know why everything felt so off today…

It´s called Revenant^^ and I don´t think we have enough information about the class and the changes/specialization coming to Necro yet to make valid assumptions about possible synergies.