Guild Wars 2

Hmm, is there really not a mini Baron von Scrufflebutt in the game? That’s a kitten shame.

The real question is: Did you run zerk before it was so frikkin’ mainstream and cool?

/flips scarf over shoulder

Most of the forum regulars, from what I’ve gathered, don’t consider it an exploit in the “you-should-get-banned-for-using-it” sense, though it is certainly exploiting (in the dictionary sense) an unintended interaction between mechanics. However, the mechanics are valid and it’s not a bug, so I suppose that’s where I draw the line.

That said, a lot of us don’t like it. It’s cheesy, and takes the fun out of what is one of the few interesting fights in the game, so we avoid groups that plan to use it. But to each their own — After three years, Lupi really isn’t that interesting anymore, so if some folks want to blow him up and move on with their farming, so be it.

I am sad that a lot of new folks joining for HoT hype won’t get to experience the “fun” of mastering the Lupi fight, since most PUGs seems to go for the cheese. Oh well. Hopefully they’ll nerf it soon, but this is ANet and dungeons — it’s not a priority and won’t be done anytime soon.

deSade.9437:

dlonie.6547:

Jerus.4350:

If not, to further explain, you end up just spamming 1 and actively defending yourself with “out of rotation” skills. 11111 dodge, 11111, dodge, 11111, toolkit block, 11111, bomb smokefield, 11111 etc.

idgi, this is what I do anyway as a pro zerk elitist (>._.)> Do you even GW2 brah?

As long as you also stack in, close to, in proximity of, or around a corner.

ofc, tho i cant get these newb eles to drop an fgs ne more. were did all tha gud players go :-(

Jerus.4350:

If not, to further explain, you end up just spamming 1 and actively defending yourself with “out of rotation” skills. 11111 dodge, 11111, dodge, 11111, toolkit block, 11111, bomb smokefield, 11111 etc.

idgi, this is what I do anyway as a pro zerk elitist (>._.)> Do you even GW2 brah?

Dromar.1027:

Were talking about full teams doing full runs, not soloing lupi and berserker gear = stand in corner and pew pew #noskillreq

They can make the stats do more than what they already do like influence those static boons.

Yeah, that’s true for a lot of the lower level content now, though AC was a very different place before the NPE and ferocity changes. These days it’s unbelievably trivial for any decent group, regardless of gear choice.

But in higher level content I still notice a decent boost to survivability between, say, zerk gear and knights, especially on e.g. thief. Things are trivialized there by familiarity and, tbh, Deep Freeze.

Let’s hope for something worthwhile in HoT.

Jerus.4350:

I’m stilly a filthy PHIW and almost never run perfect meta compositions. Engi is too kitten fun. Though I will drop it when I’m in a situation where I think I can have more fun playing a profession I’m less experienced on, or just don’t want to deal with a Fractal without guardian (that reflect uptime, so nice).

TBH I hate the current meta comp. The few times I’ve done dungeons in the last few months, if I join and see two eles I just want to drop. Ice Bow meta does nothing for me.

I’d rather run with a crazy awesome engi any day

Dromar.1027:

That’s the thing about the rest of the stats, they don’t do hardly anything compared to what berserker offers.

Sure they do. Watch that video I posted a page back of the Clerics warrior soloing Lupi. Clerics offers healing power and toughness, and it’s very clear that his survivability was increased, along with defensive traiting. Considering how hard some of those hits land, I’d call that build OP in a sense.

Of course, that solo is 58 minutes long, compared with comparable zerk solos that are in the 5-6 minute range. But he hardly needed to dodge the entire fight — the stats did what they said on the tin quite well. Berserkers gear deals huge damage with little-to-no tolerance for mistakes, as it should.

Namely toughness and combing it with Vit is just a kick in the balls to dps.

Shouldn’kitten though? Should a character that in Soldiers do similar DPS as a Berserker? Of course it’s going to be less.

wauwi.9162:

Oh boy, you should’ve seen me back in the days.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/LFM-Berzerker-Wars-ONLY/first

ctrl+f: “wauwi”

It actually is my third most rated post to this day.
Not really proud of that, i can tell you that for a fact.

You may now laugh.

Bahahaha, I was with you for most of it. I mean, you wanted to “experience” the dungeon and make it more than a quick cash grab. I think most of us have been there, even if we’ve now forgotten what it was like to go into an encounter without knowing every. single. move. the boss will make.

But then that last paragraph…. :-P

But it’s cool. What matters is that you’re a filthy elitist jerk now.

fishball.7204:

My friend used to run golemancer runes in dungeons but eventually swapped it out when the golem kept CC’ing random stuff and knocking it back lol.

mfw I decide it will be a brilliant move to bring Thieves Guild to Arah p2 abomination.

Strip defiance.

Pop thieves guild.

Clone headshots just before enrage.

>.<

These are from that article:

Robert Hrouda

We’re looking into the dungeon instance owner problems, and developing solutions. It will take time to get right, and I can’t answer anything about dates and tech for that – it goes a bit above my head.

^ March 3, 2013 xD

Robert Hrouda

I would LOVE to add more content to dungeons. Random events, bonus events, awesome puzzles – you name it, I want more in it. There’s only so many hours in a day that two people can devote though, and right now we’re doing some pretty substantial work that our next content patch will have. When we get time though, you bet I want to add more.

Was the dungeon team seriously a team of two? They cut dungeons to save on two salaries? O.o

Man, I forgot that krall was whiteknighting like a mofo back then, too.

wauwi.9162:

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/guild-wars-insider-interviews-dungeon-designer-robert-hrouda/

(source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/81157-interview-with-gw2-dungeon-designer-robert-hrouda-by-guild-wars-insider/)

Great, site’s down – that might have been the one i was looking for.

Haven’t read yet, but found it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140828003540/http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/guild-wars-insider-interviews-dungeon-designer-robert-hrouda/

Mr. Hrouda cared.

Now i’m depressed. -_-’

Yup.

A hipster.

Arcadio.6875:

Jerus.4350:

But they didn’t, dungeon forum brothers, someone please summon the dev quote saying they were fully aware that well run groups would glass up.

Thing is at this point we’re well past the point that “well run” means much more than “has been playing dungeons for a few weeks and learned exactly what to do.”

I do find your comment about getting rid of swiftness quite interesting. “the game would feel slower”, yup, exactly, same goes for if they made zerker bad.

Got it!

I miss that guy =(

Dromar.1027:

Because I am someone who likes farming and complex team composition. However I also like efficiency and all of it is more than possible to accomplish with whats in GW2 atm. If things change to the point a dungeon is slower than all that is needed is a reward tweak to compensate.

The problem with zerker isnt that it exists, its that the game unintentionally favors it. In fact Anet never saw this coming because they underestimated the resourcefulness of the players base along with bad mob AI and design.

More complex gameplay and challenging party mechanics would certainly be nice. Foolish as it is, I do still have a shred of hope that we’ll see some sort of instanced small-group content with more “second generation” combat mechanics in HoT. dreams

I just don’t see what gear stats have to do with it. As it is, if you want a tankier build, you retrait more defensively. If you need personal DPS, you trait for it — another retrait for party support. All can be done in berserker gear and alter your character’s role.

Why should it be more than that? What advantage would changing all of your gear to X spec really add? As it is, changing traits really does change gameplay; it alters the actual mechanics at your disposal. Changing gear just gives you stats and clutter.

Next week in the Gem Store:

- 1kAP for 2800 gems

Seriously though, that sucks. Good luck finding a group, someone will probably offer you a run on here soon.

Nah, it’s just the halfway point. They’ll lock’em @100.

Unless ArenaNet bought Gaile a better laptop

Dromar.1027:

When did you ever get the notion I was a RPer? Turns out I zerk farm.

dlonie.6547:

(I’m using the term “RP” very loosely here — I mean anyone who wants to run a homemade build and “experience” the dungeon instead of just farm it…not just full-time RP’rs.)

Should have edited instead of making a new post.

If you zerk farm, then I missed the point of your post:

Dromar.1027:

The meta is flawed as a game that is supposed to be enjoyable for a demographic much larger then those that only care about their virtual wallet. When a large part of the player base is forced to kitten themselves heavily with armor that is supposed to be top tier just so they can have fun its a huge failure on the part of the development team.

(emphasis mine)
I took this to mean “Why do I need to have zerk gear to have fun running dungeons?”, but if you enjoy farming dungeons, zerk is your best friend. Perhaps you can clarify for me?

Dromar.1027:

EcoRI.9273:

Wait why is it that when I suggest a solution to something that is clearly broken, I am trolling? But not when you suggest something to fix berserker? I am supporting my claim with what other games did to solve mobility issues just like how everyone else is supporting trinity with other games as well.

First, they are two completely different games and Second, giving swiftness a chance to knock down would be a drastic punishment on players. The game would feel so slow that I would feel faster sitting in my computer chair.

But what about my “Whistle” idea? I think you’ll find it satisfactorily resolves any outstanding concerns once a counter is introduced.

And I should add, you’re outnumbered because no one in their right mind wants to RP the same dungeon for three years. Which brings me back to my original point: It’s stale. So it’s hard to find RP groups that will still want to do it. (I’m using the term “RP” very loosely here — I mean anyone who wants to run a homemade build and “experience” the dungeon instead of just farm it…not just full-time RP’rs.)

Farmers, on the other hand, still get the gold, so they keep on a-runnin’.

So you have to look a little harder to find suitable groups, that’s all. Sucks, but trying to take away the farmers fun isn’t the answer. It won’t make it easier to find groups you like, it’d just finally kill off dungeons completely in this game.

Dromar.1027:

Harper.4173:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

This is both wrong and false.
The core premise of GW2 is that any party composition in any gear should be able to complete content without much trouble.

The core concept of the “no trinity-gw2” is that you absolutely do not need someone in X gear for a certain piece of content.

This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

Nobody cares about that. People are playing for efficiency – they are FARMING the dungeons not role playing in them.

Of course they’ll use the gear set that’s the most effective.
But this does not mean that other gear sets are unable to complete the content so where’s the problem then?

Diversity is lacking because people don’t care about diversity – they care about their gold. I know I do.
If I cared about diversity there is nothing stopping me from doing any dungeon in any gear and enjoying it.

Just because people don’t enjoy what you enjoy doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Why not care about both…

The meta is flawed as a game that is supposed to be enjoyable for a demographic much larger then those that only care about their virtual wallet. When a large part of the player base is forced to kitten themselves heavily with armor that is supposed to be top tier just so they can have fun its a huge failure on the part of the development team.

Why can’t you just put in an LFG:

“Anyone welcome, RP run”
“No farmers, casual run, non-zerk welcome”
“Full clear, relaxed run. No skipping please”

or something similar and have a good time with like minded players? Harper has made an excellent point — the zerk groups are farmers. You are not farming — why would you want to join them anyway? It’s not going to be fun.

Find non-farmers to run with. Join a guild. Post clear LFGs.

That isn’t a build diversity problem, you’re just outnumbered.

Usually this means that you did the same dungeon already since reset. The boss chests will appear on your minimap, but will not be in-game when this happens. They’re only lootable once per reset cycle.

PAGE 50 HYPE // 15 CHARS HYPE

EcoRI.9273:

Dromar.1027:

EcoRI.9273:

care to elaborate?

GW2 in a nutshell is actually a trinity system compressed into each class. This trinity comes in the form of Control, Support and Damage and unfortunately Damage takes all the glory because it is the only one that is needed; especially zerker. The reason for this is because Control is useless with defiance and a few niche support skills are all that is needed to ward off incoming damage while the party nukes everything down; the main culprits being reflection based skills and aegis. I also dislike the condition and boon system kitten much more could be done with it.

I’ve already stated how bad boss design is so I’ll leave it at that.

For your mobility issue I feel its not really a direct problem but another indirect. In most MMOs dungeon mobs will follow you until either they die or you do and I see too many people exploiting stealth.

Well at least there is a counter to berserker which is you die easier if you mess up and then you have to restart, but look at mobility! There is no counter play, its all pros and no cons. I think they should introduce a chance to slip while running with swiftness or using a movement skill like the warrior rush attack. I mean they did that in smash brothers when wave dashing too much! So it must be good!

This is interesting…I think they’d need to include some counter-play, though.

Remember that Southsun Racing mini-game? That always made me think of Mario Cart. Since this game is like Mario Cart and Mario Cart had the “Banana Peel” power-up, but they gave players “Whistle” abilities so that skilled play still allowed sufficiently experienced players the ability to maintain control after encountering the slippery object.

Maybe they could tie “Whistle” into the healing skill? If you notice the tell for a slip coming up, you could pop your heal to “Whistle” and maintain control of your character. It would add a disincentive to skipping, since there would be a chance to roll a “Slip”, requiring to player to either:

a) aggro nearby mobs. Slipping should drastically increase aggro radius, obviously, or
b) “Whistle”, leaving the player without a heal for any upcoming fighting.

This way, zerk groups wouldn’t skip all of the mobs in the dungeons.

Oh god, now you’re just being mean xD

If the first two pages are any indication, they’ll say: “But you’re still not using a trinity, so it’s broken!”.

Like seriously, that guy really seems to just want to carry around 150 pieces of armor since each encounter should require shamans, or clerics, or nomads…..

Hey, you’re the one who comes and rages:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Who the kitten cares, sorry why make extra a thread for such a minor thing? This forum is so ridiculous when it comes to such things. Same with this ridiculous view of the ‘bugged’ mossman.

at some guy who just wanted to know if something was considered an exploit or not. Take a couple deep breaths there, buddy.

EcoRI.9273:

oh you know what else would be sick?! when you cast black powder, you drop rings whenever you move and as long as your teammates touch it, every1 gains 1second of stealth. You get to play snake and sonic at the same time!! Lets be real way more immersive than blasting stealth.

Cool idea, but it needs some in-dungeon crafting to really start making sense.

And dear god I’d forgotten about a t s e. Please no.

I wouldn’t read too much into that.

First rule of dealing with ArenaNet — if they aren’t explicit, don’t assume

She’s probably keeping tabs on dozens of bugs, so it could very easily mean any of the others. From the rest of the post, I don’t think we’ll be seeing this issue resolved anytime soon — the teams are ignoring us, Gaile, and the QA lead apparently.

Talyn.3295:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Solution-to-the-Berserker-Meta

Why? I thought only Anti meta people started these threads

Well that was fun. I need to remember to not bother trying to be helpful in the general discussion sub.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

I’ll stick around for direct questions, too

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Why do you hate the trinity gameplay?

I don’t. I can just appreciate the combat system that is here, without getting hung up on the fact that its different.

And how do you know where this game is going after HoT? More than once have I heard that they are trying to bring changes to the current zerk problem. If they balance classes and make glasscanon runs impossible, and if several builds are viable and required for dungeons, it will inevitably lead to the trinity setup.

If they make glass cannons completely non-viable, that would go against the core design of the game. That isn’t going to happen.

There’s no other alternative. It’s either you can run dungeons with 5 people using the same build, or you can’t and are forced to rely on several builds. If you see any grey zone there then feel free to point it out, because I myself am not seeing it at all.

What you’re missing is that a build is more than gear stats. All zerks aren’t running the same build, there are multiple “meta” trait and skill configurations used for different PvE encounters. Just because they aren’t changing their gear doesn’t mean they’re all playing the same way.

What is according to you the core design of this game?

The principle that “all builds are viable” is something that ArenaNet has worked to maintain since launch. To suddenly make certain content inaccessible to certain builds would be a significant departure from the groundwork they’ve laid.

The burst heals, active defenses, and focus on utility support are there intentionally. They don’t want the trinity, everyone should be doing a little bit of each role.

But, at this point, you’ve explicitly said:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

The point being that other games are doing it right, and GW2 isn’t. Proof? Other games have several viable builds, in GW2 you can run the entire game with 1 build.

which doesn’t really makes sense. Just because everything can be completed with one gearset doesn’t render all others non-viable. They just aren’t “optimal”, if optimizing for speed. But more than that, you’ve said that other games are “right” because they use the trinity, while GW2 is wrong because it doesn’t.

On top of that, I’ve given detailed, constructive feedback to each of your posts so far, and haven’t heard anything back from you other than “But it doesn’t have a trinity!”.

Kinda makes continuing this discussion feel pointless. Have a nice day

Cyninja.2954:

As a not very devote person, I’ll still leave you with this quote of the Serenity Prayer hoping it might part on some wisdom to you:

"
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
"
Serenity Prayer

It also applies quite well to the conversation in this thread

I’ll stick around for direct questions, too

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Why do you hate the trinity gameplay?

I don’t. I can just appreciate the combat system that is here, without getting hung up on the fact that its different.

And how do you know where this game is going after HoT? More than once have I heard that they are trying to bring changes to the current zerk problem. If they balance classes and make glasscanon runs impossible, and if several builds are viable and required for dungeons, it will inevitably lead to the trinity setup.

If they make glass cannons completely non-viable, that would go against the core design of the game. That isn’t going to happen.

There’s no other alternative. It’s either you can run dungeons with 5 people using the same build, or you can’t and are forced to rely on several builds. If you see any grey zone there then feel free to point it out, because I myself am not seeing it at all.

What you’re missing is that a build is more than gear stats. All zerks aren’t running the same build, there are multiple “meta” trait and skill configurations used for different PvE encounters. Just because they aren’t changing their gear doesn’t mean they’re all playing the same way.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

I know I said I’d go, but I wanted to share this first:

And that’s with clerics — more power and less defense than nomads. I think this certainly qualifies as:

unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

By “0 damage from autoattacks,” “unkillable tanks” “nukers going down in 1 shot”, I obviously meant these as hyperboles, exagerations.

When you’ve read these forums as much as I have, you learn not to assume people are exaggerating when they say such thing

As is, nomads/clerics builds are OP defensively. Look around on youtube — there are AFK spider queen solos by cleric eles, nomad warriors solo facetanking Lupi, cleric guardians steamrolling Arah without their dodge keys unbound, etc etc.

The rest of what you said, well, you just made a list there of everything that is wrong with this game – healers not being needed due to each class having too much heal burst, full supportive classes not being useful due to warriors being able to both support and do damage, and so on and so forth.

In the end it just proves that the trinity concept really isn’t something you can escape from if you want a balanced game. It doesn’t have to be a trinity, with enough creativity you can probably get at least 5 or more essential roles. Ideally, there would be 25 “essential”, playable roles with each gear set (that’s never going to happen, but one can only dream of). There should be more than just one setup that allowed extremely fast dungeon clearing. Finishing a dungeon with 5 of the same builds should be impossible, especially with glasscannon builds.

It sounds like you really like the trinity and want it back. We’ll never see eye-to-eye on this, so I’ll leave you be.

But since ArenaNet will not be introducing a trinity or hard-role system, it does sound like this really isn’t the game for you. Food for thought.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Arcadio.6875:

The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

I disagree entirely. First, seeing how much some people play the game, any new content is bound to get “old” very fast. Secondly, glasscannon runs don’t need to be the ultimate solution everytime.

With your logic, any new dungeon will be hard for the first week, and then we’ll be stuck with the zerk meta again for another year.

It was about a year after launch before zerk started becoming dominantly pushed on players. If we were getting regular instanced PvE challenges added to the game, the collective experience level would be knocked down regularly to reset the learning curve.

It seems Anet clearly designed this game in such a way that all gameplay styles should come to shine at some point. If you are chosing to build Shaman gear, you should in theory have an area in PvE where your Shaman setup is the ultimate best (this is in theory only, not in practice at the moment). There should be a dungeon or other instance where people put a party in LFG and say “we need someone using Shaman gear for this”. I can’t see any other reason for why there are 25 sets.

I’d love to see a source on this. They designed all gearsets to be viable, not optimal. Again, if this was how the game worked, it’d be dreadful — you’d need to carry each of the 25 sets around so that you could actually do all of the content.

Instead, you get gear with passive defenses that match your experience level, and as you gain experience, you swap in more powerful stats. Your utility comes from your traits, skills, and weapon choices. Would you honestly prefer having one encounter that required one gear set over another?

The way it is now is the stagnating, boring way you described: there’s a few sets there to learn dungeons with, and ultimately all playstyles converge to zerk if they want efficiency. This is bad for diversity in game and it discourages creativity and progress.

How would strapping on tank/healing/boon sharing/magic find/etc gear encourage creativity? It’d just fill up your inventory.

The boredom arises from stale content, poor AI, and HP-sponge bosses with trivial mechanics. Not lack of gear diversity.

Arcadio.6875:

dlonie.6547:

5 players going into a dungeon for the first time in full zerk would be a nightmare. Ofc, a new player or two accompanied by 3-4 experienced party members can certainly get by in zerk.

But a full party of inexperienced players? Not so much.

Yep. I bring new people into dungeons regularly since I am a guild leader. 3-4 experienced people can carry 1-2 inexperienced people giving the impression that dungeons are easy even if inexperienced. Once the number of inexperienced people outnumbers the experienced people though, the run becomes very difficult. I cannot imagine a full group of level 35 inexperienced players could complete AC explorable paths in any acceptable amount of time.

Dungeons are easy for us because we are level 80, geared, have full access to traits and skills, and have done the paths so many times that each encounter is memorized.

A glass cannon meta is the best meta we can have for pve. If content is meant to be completed no matter what stat combo our gear has, then purely offensive gear should be viable. And since they are harder to use than gear with defensive stats, the payoff should be faster kill times (assuming you can survive without defensive stats). The problem isn’t berserker gear. The problem is the lack of new content to challenge people. If new challenging content is released, players would have a hard time surviving in zerker gear until they learn the encounters.

Well put. I’m an officer in [ARES], and back before the 90% of dungeon fans left the game out of sheer boredom, we were one of the more popular NA dungeon guilds. We have explicit mentors roles for people who would teach dungeons, and made it an explicit point to not push meta builds/strats on players. “Play what you want, come along, learn a bit, and have fun” is how we roll. So I’ve seen my share of inexperience players and non-meta builds.

Believe me — a party of non-zerks is non-optimal, but if they lack experience, I’d much prefer to run with them in a more defensive set. They are certainly viable, but most will struggle greatly in full zerk.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Some people are saying that this game doesn’t have a hard trinity. It doesn’t, but there’s 25 gear sets in game. There clearly are mechanics in this game that allow condition builds, tank builds, healing builds, nuker builds, CC builds, etc etc.

They have uses in other game modes, and serve as training wheels for while you’re learning and need more survivability. Other builds besides direct damage are still viable, just not optimal.

Keep in mind that the “dungeons are stale” argument has two prongs:

1) We’ve memorized the encounter so that we can use active defenses to avoid damage.
2) We’ve run the godkitten things so many times that most players don’t want to spend time with just “viable” builds. They want to get through the content as quickly as possible, get their reward, and move on — because we’re bored.

A non-zerk party is fully capable of clearing any content in the game — just not as fast as zerks will. Since the dungeons just aren’t as interesting during the 500th time through, most PUGs ask for speedy groups — enter zerk meta.

- Condition damage isn’t significant enough. A condition build should be doing 0 damage with autoattacks, and tons of damage with conditions, in order to snowball and defeat anything that allows the battle to go on for too long.

I think you’re a bit extreme (0 damage with autoattacks…that’ll go over well…). But I agree on premise that conditions are horribly broken in the current state of PvE. Looks like HoT should address some of that, but we’ll see…..

- HP stacking isn’t significant enough. A full Nomad set should make you unable to kill anything and unable to be killed at all by a single player or NPC. Instead, it makes you unable to kill anything and able to be killed by anything.

Again, a bit extreme. I’m not sure how well the whole “unkillable” thing would work out in practice.

- Nukers have way too much survivability. People in Berzerker gear should be going down in 1 shot to champions unless buffed by guardians or other healers.
- Healers/buffers should provide tons more healing, along with party buffs that increase damage and armor. Having 1 support in a team should be more useful than having a damage dealer. If for example a support class is giving a 30% damage increase to everyone in the party, he’s actually creating more damage than a nuker alone would.

Lumped these together because they’re related. It really sounds like you want a trinity, which will not happen.

Healers aren’t needed — each player is his own healer, and has a strong burst heal, and usually a few heal-over-time traits hidden within their tree (and then there’s food…).

We have strong support. A banner-wielding warrior with Empower Allies or Phalanx Strength will increase party DPS by a very significant amount. A thief with offhand pistol will provide tons of support against trash autoattacks. A guardian with WoR or mesmer with feedback provide an amazing level of defensive support against projectiles. A mesmer with timewarp boosts party DPS quite a bit for a period of time.

The difference is that these support mechanisms are tied to traits, utility skills, and profession mechanics, not gear. Which as I mentioned earlier, is a good thing IMO. Much less hassle.

Tolmos.8395:

carabidus.6214:

dlonie.6547:

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

An excellent point that I have not yet encountered during these zerker meta discussions. This game is sorely overdue for new content and unique encounters.

The only problem with this point is it doesn’t explain why zerker is the best gear setup for a group of players doing the dungeon for the first time, with no experience. The age of the dungeon is irrelevant if the users have never experienced it.

Whether the first time in a dungeon, or the 100th time in a dungeon, Zerker is hands down the only way to go. Familiarity with the dungeon seems to be wholly irrelevant to that.

I’m guessing you weren’t playing around launch.

Back when the dungeons were new, zerk didn’t reign supreme. Knights and Soldiers gear was popular, as were AH guardians, shout-heal warrior, etc etc.

5 players going into a dungeon for the first time in full zerk would be a nightmare. Ofc, a new player or two accompanied by 3-4 experienced party members can certainly get by in zerk.

But a full party of inexperienced players? Not so much.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

cthaeh.2168:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

dlonie.6547:

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

That’s a terrible point actually.

WoW has existed for more than 10 years and it has always had tanks, healers and nukers in every dungeon, even the ones that are old.

LoL/DoTa, just to mention an example that isn’t a MMORPG, have been going for a long time as well, and it is unthinkable to have a full nuker party. Suggesting so would get you ridiculed.

The zerk meta exists because of poor gear balancing. If tanks were a lot tankier and had a taunt (while doing much less damage), and if monsters did much more damage, it would force team setups to have tanks and nukers.

Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.

You just didn’t understand. You are saying that the reason the glasscanon meta exists in GW2 is because people know the game too well. I’m saying that your statement is false. To prove that it’s false, I’m mentionning WoW and LoL as examples, where people know the dungeons/maps/gameplay by perfection and still use standard nuker/tank/healer setups.

If your logic that knowing the game by perfection led to glasscannon builds held any ground, then by now all MMOs that are older than GW2 should have glasscannon only metas, but we both know that is wrong.

Unlike those other games, GW2 was explicitly designed to not use the trinity/hard-roles. For GW2 to require specific roles in their dungeons to force a measure of build variety goes against what the game was intended to be. That’s why the “variety” exists in those other games — because you have to have each party member pigeonholed into a role, which ultimately has an ideal/meta build that best suites that role.

Here, the focus is more on profession utility and traits. Rather than asking “Should I bring healing gear?” the question is “Do I swap to this trait?” or “Should we bring X class for its ability to [blind|aegis|condiclear|etc]?”.

I honestly don’t get the big complaint about PvE converging on zerk gear. I mean, yeah — it makes the other gearsets useless, but do people really want to be lugging around 5 sets of gear? I strongly prefer just swapping a trait or utility skill instead.

Guest.8245:

What reasons did I miss for zerker only being fine?

Short answer:

Stale content is the problem, not that we’ve figured out how to do it without passive defenses after doing the exact same fights for going-on 3 years.

EcoRI.9273:

serenke.4806:

The OP did not really go with skills that trivialize encounters. Because banner of discipline sure is not doing that.

Well can’t think of anything else on a warrior’s kit that is more OP than disc banner.

It’s too defensive to have a place in the meta, but that double Endure Pain is pretty OP.

Or we could go all 2012 and say “HB OP anet pls nref T_T”.

Heh, Hyenas thread turned interesting at the end.

Who here would like to see Deadeyes in open-world?

I would, but I’m pretty sure the internet would run out of "Q"s.

Altair.8402:

They should replace the hyenas with the sniper zombies in Arah P2. No more cripples. Happy?

Oh god, yes please. A smattering of Open-world deadeyes would be a definite step in the right direction for this game.

Srs. No sarcasm.

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

Also yes, reading and responding on the forums is not actually part of my job. I got to a point where I just really didn’t like how you guys felt ignored in this forum and I’m trying to do something about it. I tend to only post positively and I won’t respond to all threads.

tl;dr I will keep fighting the good fight on your behalf.

You have no idea how nice it is to hear that. You sound as frustrated as we are about the situation, but know that we appreciate your efforts. Thank you so much <3

Hope we can hear something solid in the near future, but for now it’s just nice to know that someone is actually listening and understands our frustration. Even though your post didn’t really say a lot about the bug, having an actual human response helps quite a bit — I think there would be a marked improvement in player tone and attitude towards ArenaNet if we saw more of this sort of communication. I hope you don’t get in any trouble over it…

FYI:

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

Actually I didn’t mean that sarcastically, well the “dot dot dot” part is but that’s more me stuck working in the system and not directed to anyone on the forums.

I have been poking about this fix for a month now or so internally now. Been asking to get someone in here to talk to everyone about this bug and what’s up with it but as of yet no dice. I am doing everything I can to get this resolved or some explanations for you guys.

But yeah, I have some extremely tied hands and poking with my poking stick is about all I can do because I don’t control development or production schedules or design decisions. I do take screenshots of comments and paste them into some internal emails though… And the # of live reports, and the forum links, etc. I can make a huge ruckus when it’s needed, but in general everything I do is behind the scenes and I don’t take credit or spill the beans on what occurred to get it to that point.

While I have all the answers, really I am the next thing to a walking encyclopedia of the GW2 bug DB at any time, I can’t really go around shouting what is happening one way or the other because it can change daily… and letting some things I know be known would probably result in my not working for ArenaNet anymore. That’s something that would be kinda poopy and I would like that not to happen, so I avoid it and instead just say slightly nebulous things like “soon” when I see a fix coming for the next release. One day that “soon” will have some real intent behind it. Today actually seems like a good day to “soon” some threads so…

Also yes, reading and responding on the forums is not actually part of my job. I got to a point where I just really didn’t like how you guys felt ignored in this forum and I’m trying to do something about it. I tend to only post positively and I won’t respond to all threads.

tl;dr I will keep fighting the good fight on your behalf.

(emphasis mine)

This is the most genuine post I’ve seen from an ArenaNet employee in years.

Honestly, the only way I’d describe Arah as “easy” to a first-timer is if they’re buying or getting carried Most people posting in this thread have probably run each path a few hundred times since launch, so their opinions are from a very different perspective.

Might also want to say if you’re NA or EU — someone may offer to take you on some runs and show you the ropes, as teaching Arah is one of the ways bored GW2 dungeoneers keep things interesting.

There’re also a couple dungeon mentoring stickies in this forum that you may be interested in.

And yes. Arah armor is sexy! (>^_^<)

squish

heartless.6803:

Because of the lack of healer they skip trash

Can you explain your reasoning here? I’m having a hard time getting from A to B on this one.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Or you KaizerGr, and your friends, and the regulars as well can join my guild and we make or own groups all-the-while helping new players that buy the game and be the shining jewel GW 2 deserves, but no one wants right now.

I’m accepting everyone non-toxic and non-meta I also need advisors (officers) and guards (sub-officers)

This sounds familiar…hope something comes of it this time around.

Everyone complaining about “ermagerd their r zerkbergurs n ma LFG”, please join this guild. Then you can play how you want with like-minded individuals.

Yumiko, post something in here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor and I’ll refer folks from the dungeon forum to your guild.

Solid suggestions, oxtred.