So many obvious bads in threads like this, rejoicing that the players who have the ability to keep themselves alive in zerker gear are going to have the rewards for doing so taken away from them. I’d be embarrassed if I were cheering this change for such a reason.
I disagree Einlanzer, as do many others.
Sacrificing defense for offense is a perfectly acceptable choice. The fact that a large amount of people are good enough to use dodges and active abilities to avoid enough damage to make the tradeoff irrelevant is a fault of the content and not the gear. The gear is doing exactly what it says on the tin.
What we’re seeing here is a lot of bad players cheering because with their bad builds and tanky gear which allows them to make plenty of mistakes, they will be on a level footing again with the better players. This will not be the case – people will still use whatever gives the highest dps while retaining the ability to stay alive.
Please enlighten us with your opinions then. If you have nothing constructive to add, I will assume you don’t know what you’re talking about & are purely trolling.
My point about the swap allowance is that ascended weapons and armor cost people several hundred gold. That is a lot in a game described as non grindy. A lot of people were unhappy at being told to grind the first time, and now they’re being told to do it again? A lot of people will give up.
I sacrifice defense for offense. I still don’t die.
This is either because I am very good at active defense or the content is poorly designed.
Zerker doing high damage and having low effective hp means the gear is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. There’s nothing wrong with zerker gear, it’s the environment which allows it to flourish.
Please consider it from a PvE and WvW point of view, in how many 100’s of hours and resources in gold, laurels, possibly real money via gems players have spent getting there berserker gear.
A lot will quit, rather than be forced to make new armour sets/weapons/trinkets and redo there appearance.
Please consider it from a PvE and WvW point of view, in how many 100’s of hours and resources in gold, laurels, possibly real money via gems players have spent getting there berserker gear.
A lot will quit, rather than be forced to make new armour sets/weapons/trinkets and redo there appearance.
If the critical strike damage change renders the gear I’ve been grinding towards (in a game advertised as non grindy) pointless and means I need to redo all the grinding, I will quit.
I’ll readily admit to that. I rarely fight alphard to be honest.
Besides, shield being the most useful spirit weapon, extended duration for a very reflect intensive fight doesn’t mean spirit weapons and their traits don’t need a large rethink.
I originally posted this thread at a time I knew Jon to be browsing the forums, so hopefully someone has seen it.
We do get a severe lack of dev presence on the guardian subforum, this is commonly thought to be because the devs think guardians are decently well balanced – which I’ll admit they are, but that doesn’t mean you can’t improve and make better diversity.
The decision to ignore defensive stats and load up on offensive stats SHOULD mean you deal a lot of damage and die easily.
That is exactly what zerker gear does. You have low hp, no mitigation, and massive dps.
The gear is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It’s the content which isn’t providing the threat to your life.
In any other PvE game, once content becomes less threatening to your life… you begin swapping healers for dpsers.
15/15/0/20/20 hammer great for fractals
15/25/0/20/10 hammer great for fractals
10/30/0/5/25 sword+greatsword sustained, good scepter backup
20/25/0/0/25 mostly greatsword, lacks vigor, ideal for dungeons
All in zerker gear, scholar runes, force/night/bloodlust sigils.
This build, 30/30/0/5/5, works fine for quick pug dungeon runs but the dps is not a huge amount higher than the above, and loses a lot of utility and possible dps if you can keep unscathed defender up.
Negative, not if you make encounters around heavy AoE and condi pressure where survival rather than DPS wins the encounter.
So.. 4 zerkers and a perma prot guardian then?
The new meta will be whatever gives the highest dps while keeping you alive – just like now. You sacrifice as much defense as you are comfortable with for offense. If you need more mitigation, people will turn to protection before they turn to mitigation stats.
This was my advice on large events as soon as the first karka events hit.
Limit maps to certain amounts of people, much smaller amounts.. but have lots more instances of it. You could balance it much easier that way as well.
The last time my fotm49 group had trouble with Mai Trin – I respecced to 0/0/20/30/20 on my guardian, equipped my mace/shield/staff cleric gear and we all stood there facetanking with almost 1,000 hp per second aoe heals excluding the 3k empower, 3k virtue and 10k healing breeze burst healing. The fight became super easy mode compared to the zerker setup where it’s either dodge the shadowsteps or die.
I understand that it can be hard to estimate 20% cooldown reduction. But I would say it’s about 10% damage increase in DPS overall
Less than that.
I mourn the loss of spammable aoe blind and vulnerability which gives your group 3 stacks if might.
However the title of this thread is aimed at the gear rather than the spec.
This spec, problems though it has, would be better in zerker gear for pve. Plain and simple.
If mitigation becomes important, the new meta will be 4 zerkers (or rampagers or whatever gear setup is the new king) and a boon duration guardian or similar for perma protection. Even then that boon duration guard is likely to put the rest of his stats and build towards dps.
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?
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.
Here are the numbers again showing the 30% quote was a mistake.
Forgive the formatting. I’m not allowed to talk about it but my first post providing this information has been deleted. Pretty cool forums.
The only way I can see a 30% gain is if you accidentally forgot that exotic trinkets don’t come with an upgrade and didn’t give them one (frans stated earlier that this is the mistake he made).
Here are the effective power numbers for my 10/30/0/5/25 guardian in my standard group:
exotic no upgrade
14836
exotic with ruby orbs in trinkets
16956
full ascended armor/trinkets
17955
full ascended armor/trinkets/weapon
18894
So yeah, it’s not a 30% gap. More like somewhere between 5-15% depending on whether you class trinkets as hard to acquire ascended gear.
There obviously has been a stat creep from ascended gear and I’d wager it has affected the zerker meta more than other types of gameplay.
Similar to the magic find swaps. Select a new stat combo for free.
Some of us can’t afford to regear. I/We’ve just about finished grinding for our ascended zerker weapons/armor (in this non grindy game).
The tradeoff people based the “should I craft zerker or pvt etc” decision is not the same tradeoff any longer. Many people would not make the same decision again.
Oh, and thank you for you constructive contributions, it’s been a real pleasure and I am so looking forward to future discussions with you. both of you.
Glad you got something useful out of it. I’m usually around the guardian forums telling people why zerker gear rocks if you ever want to come and post a celestial build or something. We can further discuss how much dps you gain and lose each way.
Oh, I didn’t actually report you. It was a joke poking fun at how readily you report people. Don’t worry about it.
I also did the numbers myself, the only way I can see a 30% gain is if you accidentally forgot that exotic trinkets don’t come with an upgrade and didn’t give them one.
Here are the effective power numbers for my 10/30/0/5/25 guardian in my standard group:
exotic no upgrade
14836
exotic with ruby orbs in trinkets
16956
full ascended armor/trinkets
17955
full ascended armor/trinkets/weapon
18894
I trust you can figure out the percentage differences by yourself?
Why did this need another new thread when as you said, we already have many?
I get that everyone wants their opinion heard and thinks it is the best, but if everyone created a thread (looks like they are doing this) then we end up making a mess of this new balance subforum.
Does the MIGHT boon need to be adjusted to be stackable only up to.. say.. 5.. but the amount of power given doubled? This makes stacking might less of a ‘meta’ thing to do and easier for the common group to achieve, but lowers the max group dps.
So many infractions flying out because people are making valid points.
Reminds me of the many many zerker threads in the class forums when you tell people zerkers are the best in pve (which they obviously are or we wouldn’t have these threads so active and with anet devs posting). People don’t like to be told that a) there is an optimal way of playing and b) it requires skill which they sometimes don’t have. That is the biggest problem right there with zerker meta really… to pull it off you need to be half decent.. in a game which was advertised as casual and play-how-you-like people don’t want to be told they need to be reasonably skilled to join the best groups. That lack of skill is what is causing people to complain and say skilled zerkers should not be so great.
Why do I need to block those special attacks if I’ve just loaded up on defensive stats?
Are they enough to one-shot me still?
Sounds like zerkers with perma-protection are the new meta.
Special attacks would be those that employ control effects and/or inflict conditions. Defensive stats will not save you from getting knocked down and such.
Think of it this way:
Passive mitigation goes against “passive” damage (mob autoattacks)
Active mitigation goes against “active” damage (special attacks and one-shots)
Barely worth it then. I’ll just facetank that big hit that gives me some lame knockdown or condition and then cleanse it, while keeping up the dps.
In the scenario you are describing, a group of zerkers with protection will far outperform a bunch of people with mitigation stats. This wouldn’t change the meta, and it has rendered dodge mechanic useless. Dodge mechanic needs to allow you to avoid near death attacks, things which you are either going to die from, or be in a situation which is incredibly difficult to recover from. Otherwise people won’t bother.
I mentioned this in another thread, but I’ll throw it here, since it fits.
- make toughness far more important. IE: make damage mitigation important. What we have is encounters where the bulk of the enemies do almost no damage, and bosses operate on 1-shot mechanics.
What we need are encounters where the “trash” mobs deal upwards of 1k damage on cleave attacks, others give retaliation to themselves and their allies, and more are de-buffing the players. Seriously – a change to mob design would change the entire meta. If debuffing mobs, clearing conditions and controlling mob movement became as important as dealing damage to the enemies, well, the “dps dps dps dps 111111” meta would just die.
What’s the point of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc if mobs hit frequently and mitigation (aka passive play) is required?
You’ve just removed a core mechanism of gw2, removed skill play, and promoted passive play.
pm pls!