Guild Wars 2

It ain’t 2013 anymore! =(

“Nike said so”

We live stream dungeon tours 7 nights a week. People who want to use me as a reference should watch and see when and where we stack and when and where we don’t.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Omg…

#JadenSmithThoughts

What if we, by selling dungeons are actually contributing for bads not to improve their gameplay and always stay at a poor gameplay level? What if they were actually forced to do Arah for their dungeon master or dungeons for their legendaries, would they be better players?? Would they learn and the skill-level of the average players rise to more acceptable levels?

Are we causing all of this?

/The Deep.

Nope. They want their arah armor skins so they can be the big cheese of their wvw clan. That’s it.

hulmen.8713:

Purple Miku.7032:

I still wish scholar went back to being the all-purpose god-of-everything rune.

Nike is right though… once you try the best stuff you will be relieved of the burden of how much you’ve spent for it because it’s just that much better. I still remember back in April on that ferocity patch how much I cringed at the idea of replacing my [at the time] only ascended set’s scholar runes with strength. After giving it a test run… I was like… yeah, f—-ing worth it

I have zerker ascended gear with scholar runes. Should I change to strength, is it worth it (I do a bit of everything, mostly PUG dung/fracts & WwW)?

I recognize that scholar might be better in a organized group where there is another phalanx warrior or against multiple enemies (where you stack more might with your crits and don’t need the duration buff as much).

Just curious what you guys think is better overall.

After the Might nerf the gap between scholar and strength in solos is pretty small. In group play scholar is significantly better than strength, but in solos strength is only slightly better. If you already have ascended scholar I wouldnt recommend going out and buying strength unless your goal is to push for solo records.

Kodiak.3281:

Zention.1849:

I don’t know where I was going with that point but well – it obviously is up to you how to play, but the next time in a party, your super tricky disguise as non zerker elementalist won’t work.

Part of the disguise is actually knowing what you’re doing.

I suppose the logical question is…

1. If you know how to “play like a berserker”…
2. You know the boss mechanics…
3. You know the dungeons well enough to fake it…

Why wouldn’t you want to just wear berserker and ‘be all that you can be?’ Like, what enjoyment do you get from wearing tanky gear that you presumably don’t need and doing less damage than you could be? If you NEED tanky gear, by all means wear it, but if you DON’T need it, what satisfaction is it giving you?

Speaking of reddit, someone linked my video on there and now my youtube comments are full of quotes like, “how can you say gear doesnt affect playstyle? cleric in cleric role is better than berserker in cleric role!”

The original design for the warrior didn’t have burst skills, it had different stances you could swap between that would change how you performed in combat. I think it’s safe to say at this point that design would have been preferable, especially if you could make those stances have valuable meaning in PvE. Maybe they felt it was too close to attunements for elementalist? Who knows, but it would have given a lot more depth of play probably.

My new video describing the nuances of the PvE combat system and Guild Wars 2 Trinity as promised.

The way the chart works is you find your Ferocity. Then you find your Precision. The point where they meet gives a Power number. If that number is greater than your current Power, your build will get a better DPS result by adding additional Power. If the number is greater than your current Power, you would get better DPS results by adding either more Precision or more Ferocity (currently hard to do without Ferocity main stat gear).

Worth keeping in mind buffs from food, banners and Might when looking at the chart.

For example, fully buffed meta warrior build with Truffle Steaks has 91% crit chance, 1.28% crit damage and 3508 Power. Optimal Power is 3562. Therefore if you wanted to know what Infusions to put in your gear, the answer is 55 worth of Power infusions and 15 worth of Precision infusions.

The chart is slightly imperfect because it rounds crit chance to an even number and when we’re talking about less than 1% DPS differences the rounding of crit chance from an uneven Precision number is going to change the results. But for a casual min/maxer, it’s still pretty useful.

Sigil of strength with strength runes is a good bit worse than a 10% dps buff. It’s a good bit better than a 5% dps buff, presuming you need the Might. If you are already getting 20+ might without strength sigil it won’t be helping you greatly.

Ice Storm is only a DPS increase on a handful of bosses. Against human sized hit boxes it hits 6 or 7 on average which works out of be break even or a slight loss.

I’m glad you are aware of meta strategies. Doesn’t it sound fun? Sounds like skill intensive gameplay requiring a lot of coordination. A lot more fun than the headless chicken gameplay you seem to want.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

enough! time to kill the zerker meta where it stands! one bullet into the head and one in the heart!

- nerf Ice Bow INTO THE GROUND, ice storm now functions more closely to ranger longbow barrage and applies chill
- Earth Elemental now scales with player stats with lower innate armor and health
- Giganticus Lupicus projectiles are no longer reflectable
- Mobs now move as they attack just like players and can strafe as well as back pedal, dodge roll, and use stun breakers
-Mobs in dungeons now have a full set of skills (5 weapon attack skills, 1 healing skill, 3 utilities, and 1 elite skill) and use them based on their build archetype
-Mobs can now use finishers to kill downed players

and that’s just the tip of the ice cream

I think it’s cute that you think this would change anything. I also think it’s cute you think Ice Storm is the problem with Ice Bow. This has been a fascinating insight into the perceptions of someone who doesn’t understand what good groups are actually doing.

I have a video going up on this very topic tomorrow. Extremely in-depth regarding the pve meta and the guild wars 2 trinity of damage, support and control. If this topic is still going I’ll post it here.

It seems there are too complaints here and they don’t really interact with each other…

1. Damage has been nerfed too much. I agree, warrior went from the upper middle class to the lower middle class over the course of three patches. All the math for that has been explained and the justification is inexplicable.

2. the playstyle is boring. This is a totally different conversation and the solution is roll an engineer or ele if you want a higher pve APM playstyle. If you are playing warrior its presumably because you like the aesthetic and the extremely fluid DPS rotation. If you aren’t into the aesthetic and the DPS rotation the solution is to play another class and not radically change the warrior until it isn’t recognizable.

I haven’t had any of these NPC bug in several months. If its happening to you every day something weird is going on.

DeKeyz and I made an updated version of that old ratio chart. the big problem was it did crit chance by increments of 5% which is a huge gap and current theorycraft is about nailing builds down to less than 1% dps differences. So this new chart cuts out all the crit chances and ferocity levels that are irrelevant and expands the depth of the options for people wearing Berserker/Assassins gear.

Anyway, enjoy.

16/19

Missing mace, torch, spear. Besides that though I’ve had pretty great RNG. I got all the skins I wanted easily enough. A lot of other people always had a million harpoon guns and stuff. I was lucky enough that all my doubles were daggers and swords, which was awesome before the wardrobe patch.

Warrior was fairly garbage in pvp until Cleansing Ire and Berserkers Stance were made into OP anti-condi. Since then warriors have been nerfed in every way EXCEPT the two things that made them OP in the first place.

Anet 1: Buff Berserkers Power and Cleansing Ire and strength runes
Anet 2: Hmmm looks like hammer/longbow warriors are too OP now!
Anet 3: Clearly the solution here… is to nerf Hundred Blades.

…

Congrats guys, not a single anti-zerker, bring back the trinity thread on the first page of the general forum. How long can it last?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Seriously colesy, what happened to you?

Why does something have to “happen” to him? As if disagreeing with someone on some topic requires some sort of medical explanation; the presumption being that your opinion is so obviously correct that only colesy suffering brain trauma could possibly explain his divergence from the conclusion you arrived at.

Example: I am not against vaccines for children but I know of some fairly bright people who are. I don’t think its fair of me to ask what happened to them just because we disagree on something, even if that something is a particular something I care about strongly.

Marthkus.4615:

Purple Miku.7032:

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

Celestial is almost 30% worse dps than berserker in pve.

That is not too bad. It’ll be interesting to see if the new content rewards the additional tankyness better than the faster clear.

You don’t get it.

All of the content in this game – people struggled with at first because they didn’t know how to do it. It’s been over 2 years since and we know all of the attack patterns, all of the locations that mobs spawn, the exact behaviors of them. That is why we don’t need to run around with tank stats.

Good players learn, adapt and improve. If you remain in celestial gear, you’re not a good player. You’re stubborn and narrowminded for thinking that berserker suddenly won’t be the best set to use anymore. It’s by design the best set to use as long as the enemy can be crit.

The only possible way that berserker won’t be the best is if the enemy in question can’t be crit, and even then the best option would be soldiers, not celestial.

No matter what way you look at it, celestial is bad in PvE. There’s no use arguing otherwise.

I don’t see where poor game design is not something that could change in the new expansion.

Less predictable dump AI would kill zerker. That is why zerker is not the meta in PvP.

1. You say its bad game design, but thats an opinion rather than a statement of fact. I could easily argue that the current system which rewards skill and experience and punishes the opposite promotes exactly the correct things and is an example of good game design. Based on your posts you come across like one of the many people who are new to the game, don’t understand it, yet feel comfortable making sweeping statements and proposing grand redesigns. Have a little humility and understand that you’re no where near experienced enough to even offer educated guesses, let alone making definitive pronouncements.

2. Better AI is still AI. Every system can and will be mastered. New AI would catch good players off guard for a small period of time, but then through repetition we would solve it and defeat it with the same ease we do now. In the hands of good players berserkers will still be the best. As far as what’s meta in PvP that isn’t relevant and a few posts back I explained to you why celestial is meta in PvP. Either you ignored it or it contradicted your theories so you conveniently ignored it.

I doubt that would have an effect of dividing the community at all. It would be the same as now.

Marthkus.4615:

I recant. Pumping tons of vulnerability on the mobs while giving 25 stacks of might to allies makes it WAY easier to carry a party.

Now I am interested to see how the numbers look with celestial stats hmmmm.

These numbers are for Elementalist but the percentages should be about the same for any class.

http://dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/13496842-berserker-vs-celestial-in-pve

Celestial is almost 30% worse dps than berserker in pve.

I don’t see why they wouldn’t open up higher fotm levels unless they wanted to just abandon the idea of fractals, and I know for a fact that they don’t. It makes sense, all you have to do is come up with 30 new instabilities making sure none of them create game breaking / progress breaking bugs. this wouldn’t take a ton of resources/development time. Oh and you just have to make 3 new loot tables for the new tiers. Wouldn’t take long at all.

Sarahfull.4930:

Quick question, I know ele’s are great and everything although is it possible to do enough damage to like the legendary shaman and tom without the help of ele’s to have less shield phases and stuff?

It’s possible, mathematically speaking, with Chill on crit food, a PS warrior, 3x thief, and a ranger. I don’t encourage anyone to try this.

Kagamiku.9731:

Thaddeus.4891:

Kagamiku.9731:

@Thaddeus: You’re looking at celestial/zerker pve, not pvp. Celestial/zerker stats are different in pvp. Of course, marth is referring to pve as well, but I don’t know why anyone would use celestial in pve in the first place…
As far as tough bark goes, going rampager stats would be far better.

No he’s talking about celestial in PvE not PvP. Here :

Marthkus.4615:

I’ve been practicing it because I feel like the Mordrem’s AOE condi spam plus tough bark is going to break the zerker meta.

Mordrem’s AoE? That’s pretty much PvE.

That’s what I said. Only stating why celestial is so good in pvp, and yet so crappy in pve.

It’s good in PvP because the difference in Ferocity between Berserker Amulet and Celestial Amulet is small. And because thanks to intelligence sigils the lower precision is mostly irrelevant. You do lose a lot of power, but thanks to the Strength rune meta that isn’t a huge deal either. So you essentially trade away none of your direct damage abilities and gain lots of tankiness and condi pressure. In PvE the stat gap between full celestial and berserkers ferocity is a lot wider and the tanky stats and condi stats are wasted points.

Lindbur.2537:

I’m calling it. Next week will be all about gimmicky unstackable bosses that require PTV heroes and Nomad healers.

“They should redesign all bosses so they all have at least one attack you can’t interrupt or dodge that way teams would be rewarded for having someone to heal them and people could wear tanky gear to survive better. Oh and dodging shouldn’t give an evade from it would just move you instead and if you still get hit you get hit.”

I post the evidence of CC being hugely important and he says “those are isolated examples and prove nothing.” Alright dude. Continue to live in your fantasy world. Actually, continue to live in reality and keep crying about your fantasy world.

Trinity threads are this week’s Zerk Nerf threads. what will the anti-meta movement do next week?

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

Marthkus.4615:

I don’t run banners or zerker at the moment.
I join speedruns pug groups and we do just fine.
I don’t join groups that ask for zerker because I am not zerker.

I still run into mainly war groups for PvE.

You’re a real asset. You bring low personal dps and no party buffs. What does being carried feel like?

Oddly enough my shoulders get really tired from all the zerks who are so good at the game that they wall stack and can’t dodge.

If you’re good at dodging why do you want tanky gear? Just wondering what is the appeal of having passive stats that you aren’t using is? I’m sure you carry really hard. Please post a video of you solo’ing lupicus after the bad zerkers in your team die, I’d love to see it.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

By half each time until reaching a minimum value. If you use the same character, and that character does nothing but the dungeons in question, DR won’t reset until that character goes off and does other kinds of content. DR doesn’t reset with the Daily reset.

Try using another character, or doing other content with said character for awhile.

Good luck.

Since you didnt watch the video he linked you can clearly see that he is running that path for the first time of the day. There is a bug with some paths where you get 40+2 instead of 40+20 the first time you run it. Please stop talking about DR when this is not a DR related issue.

xDudisx.5914:

Some people will try to repeat the lie that we have “cc” dps and support but the reallity is that cc is reduced to icebow #4 and support most of the time is offensive support. Games with tank and dps also had cc and support….

But hey, don’t let any evidence to the contrary change your mind. Keep crying for 1997 trinity style gameplay.

tboneking.2531:

hybrid.5027:

tboneking.2531:

Because although these things are technically supporting your teammates, they are not support builds. They are ways to passively increase your party’s dps while maintaining maximum dps and raising your own dps. When every profession/class/whatever you want to call it/ dont nitpick me over terms, is required by efficiency to use one optimal build that promotes the highest team dps this is not build diversity. I am not simultaneously fulfilling every role at the same time, I am now fulfilling the only role gw2 pve has room for: the big numbers build.

Translation: I understand those things are actually support but since it destroys my argument I will choose to ignore it and pretend I don’t know. Also, I am a confused boy and don’t know that gear prefix doesn’t define a build.

Translation: Instead of offering valid counter arguments I will attempt to tarnish this guys reputation to discredit anything he’s trying to say. Also maybe if I start insulting people this thread will get locked too and we can start this whole process all over again.

You were already given the answer dude. You willfully chose to disregard it. When you willfully disregard the answer you should expect people to point that out. No one is insulting you or tarnishing your non-existent reputation. You made an ignorant statement and then got mad when that was explained. You can either grow up and accept it or you can make more QQ posts about it. Your choice.

tboneking.2531:

Because although these things are technically supporting your teammates, they are not support builds. They are ways to passively increase your party’s dps while maintaining maximum dps and raising your own dps. When every profession/class/whatever you want to call it/ dont nitpick me over terms, is required by efficiency to use one optimal build that promotes the highest team dps this is not build diversity. I am not simultaneously fulfilling every role at the same time, I am now fulfilling the only role gw2 pve has room for: the big numbers build.

Translation: I understand those things are actually support but since it destroys my argument I will choose to ignore it and pretend I don’t know. Also, I am a confused boy and don’t know that gear prefix doesn’t define a build.

bigmonto.4215:

Fully buffed, Guardian is higher, always been higher.

That’s not true now, and has never been true.

Marthkus.4615:

I don’t run banners or zerker at the moment.
I join speedruns pug groups and we do just fine.
I don’t join groups that ask for zerker because I am not zerker.

I still run into mainly war groups for PvE.

You’re a real asset. You bring low personal dps and no party buffs. What does being carried feel like?

I kinda have to agree with colesy on this one. The PS build has the same rotation PLUS it gets to arcing slice when the boss hits 50%, so the rotation is actually MORE fun.

What we need is anet to buff staff ele by like 10% more so there is no question that 2x staff and 1x PS is the best comp. And then buff Empowered back to 2% per boon or add another 5% dps modifier to Forceful GS or both.

It could be worse, we could be rangers who in PvE have better dps than warriors but worse buffs and have basically no place in the meta team comp.

I guess most of the people against this idea didn’t get the Bonus Mission Pack in GW1 that was, essentially, instanced content that gave unique (and awesome) skin rewards.

So we are talking about PvE celestial greatsword builds now. Sweet.

The best advice anyone will ever give you for PvE D/D ele is to equip a Focus.

This is pretty much a non-problem. I was pugging HOTW (the most hated dungeon) every day for dungeoneer all three paths and never had trouble filling a group from the LFG in seconds or minutes.

Every group for every dungeon fills fast unless you start putting childish requirements.

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

Make slashing power 15% then. I don’t care how you get there, but warriors need a 5% boost to their personal DPS.

Why?

It’s bad form to ask a question of someone before answering the question they asked you. But I will anyway, despite your rude behavior.

Warrior pve DPS was nerfed by about 2.5% in the September feature patch. If you count the change to Berserker’s Power / adrenaline decay the nerf was significantly bigger in short fights. Warrior DPS went from slightly above average to slightly below average. All the changes were based on PvP considerations, and thus the nerfs for PvE are undeserved. Heck, even the pvp nerfs were undeserved. Generally you nerf things that are too good and dont nerf things that aren’t good at all.

I main a war. We totally deserved a PvE nerf.

I love the adrenaline decay. It encourages actually using adrenaline and makes the “if X adrenaline get Y bonus” abilities less useful.

I also main a warrior, and I reckon I know quite a bit more about the game than you do. Right now, warrior personal DPS is only superior to Necromancer and Mesmer as the result of shaving the coefficients of 100b and WWA. These were shaved for PvP reasons, which make no logical sense as they were hardly good in PvP in the first place.

So they got a relatively large PvE nerf as the side effect result of an unnecessary of PvP nerf. Completely illogical and unjustified. I’m absolutely sure you’re one of those people who thinks warrior is the top DPS class in the game and nothing compares. Hard to debate with people who don’t know what a skill coefficient is or don’t understand the inherent advantage that classes who have Ferocity and Precision in the same traitline have from a design perspective.

Marthkus.4615:

hybrid.5027:

Make slashing power 15% then. I don’t care how you get there, but warriors need a 5% boost to their personal DPS.

Why?

It’s bad form to ask a question of someone before answering the question they asked you. But I will anyway, despite your rude behavior.

Warrior pve DPS was nerfed by about 2.5% in the September feature patch. If you count the change to Berserker’s Power / adrenaline decay the nerf was significantly bigger in short fights. Warrior DPS went from slightly above average to slightly below average. All the changes were based on PvP considerations, and thus the nerfs for PvE are undeserved. Heck, even the pvp nerfs were undeserved. Generally you nerf things that are too good and dont nerf things that aren’t good at all.

EcoRI.9273:

No more Gear Treadmill! So I got them power infusions!
http://imgur.com/bxQ4TI4

Welcome to the min/max club.

Lindbur.2537:

General forum has always been a madhouse. Sadly the recent anti-zerker threads have
been a lot less entertaining.

Nike, teach me your secret to surviving this epidemic.

Well its fairly easy PvF because their position is one of complete ignorance and misunderstanding. Unlike arguing with someone on a truly debatable topic, they are simply 100% wrong. So this makes it fun to point out their logical lapses since there is 0% chance they can turn the tables on you.

There is a subgame of player vs moderator where you try to demonstrate your complete disdain for them without getting infracted for “being disrespectful.” I find there are certain dismissive terms that infuriate the nerf-zerker-crowd but pass by the moderator. Since I don’t want the game to get ruined I’ll refrain from mentioning them specifically.

Marthkus.4615:

Why? It is already too good.

What’s too good about it?

Make slashing power 15% then. I don’t care how you get there, but warriors need a 5% boost to their personal DPS.

My god. The expac gets announced and all the creatures come crawling back out of the woodwork to make anti-zerker threads. The general forum has been 100% confirmed ebola outbreak this week.

Einlanzer.1627:

Liz.1497:

Einlanzer.1627:

encounters and builds can be conceived that work with within the framework of a distinctive role structure – support, healing, control, or even tanking. Meta could be allowed to develop around these roles rather than just around the current single pure, direct DPS role.

This exactly right there is your problem. I’m sorry to break it to you OP but if you think zerker meta pve doesn’t involve massive amounts of control skills you’ve been carried hard. The problem is not that everyone just deals damage, the problem is that you can do all the support the party needs in damage gear. Playing any but the easiest dungeons without blinds, reflects, stealth, blocks ect in full zerker would be quite difficult, it’s not though because people actually push their buttons.

Seriously OP, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgZYr-yIxs (and then the video of whatever class it is you play) and tell me “the zerk meta” is nothing but 5 people button mash-dpsing their way through dungeons.

Yeah, I get that. My point is that it isn’t a very good design. When you can achieve optimal DPS without sacrificing much of the utility needed to be successful, and when you build around support/control/utility and sacrifice huge amounts of DPS for it, it’s a design problem.

The flaw in your analysis is that you assume the meta builds are the highest DPS builds achievable. They are not. They achieve optimal support without sacrificing much of the dps needed to be efficient. Basically the exact opposite of your situation.

Capitol City.4856:

Tree.3916:

Capitol City.4856:

snip
Why would I switch abilities when our parties run through the dungeon fine without doing so? That doesn’t make any sense.

Because your parties could be running through the dungeon better, faster, stronger :P

Is that really what we’ve come to? :P Switching up our abilities every now and then so we’re feeling like we’re doing something different. You guys keep saying I CAN switch my abilities, but I don’t need to. I’m running level 40 fractals with the same three skills (yeah, I guess I switch up every now and then, blink and nullfield are good in some situations… that’s not a solution, that’s just you guys trying to squirm your way around the issue).

You do need to. Well, you do need to if you care about playing well. But your responses sound remarkably lazy so I’m guessing you don’t give a care about the quality of your game play.

The zerker meta is a problem because we’re very restricted to a certain amount of skills/traits that would be intelligent to run. And we’re stuck running those same abilities/traits for all eternity. And that sucks. If you disagree, explain why, I’d love to hear why you think a condi build would be super cool in dungeons, I want to be convinced otherwise.

Your skills are dictated by the dungeon genius. If the boss puts conditions on your, you bring utilities that cleanse conditions. If he has CC you bring stability. If you shoots projectiles you bring reflects. This isn’t rocket science dude. You can get away with using the same handful of skills in most dungeons because most PvE encounters have to do with bosses who melee, projectile, condition and/or CC. So you tend to use the same few skills that deal with these challenges most efficiently. What the heck does that have to do with build diversity? You’re seriously complaining that a boss uses CC skills and you’re forced to bring stability for it? My god.

P.S. Yeah, I know mesmer zerker is support/control. It’s support/control/damage and everything else. And that’s why I can’t switch up my build. Because I can run everything I need in all my abilities with little need to change ever. And that’s boooooooring. Why do you think this thread keep reappearing? Because people are bored of running the same build in every dungeon. THAT’S what we’re trying to find a solution for. Not stats, build diversity.

I already explained why. I’ll be even more direct this time: people want to roleplay as tanks/healers/“support.” Meaning they DON’T want to do ANY dps. They simply want to soak damage, spam heals, and cast buffs or debuffs without engaging in combat. This tradtitional, trinity gameplay fulfills their roleplaying desires. It fits the inner story they have crafted for their characters.

unfortunately, the game they are playing does not contain mechanics and systems that encourage the type of gameplay they desire to play. They are faced with a problem then.

1. Adapt to the game as it is.
2. Complain on the forums endlessly about wanting to play a trinity role in a non-trinity game.

Guess which they have chosen? Thanks for contributing.

Capitol City.4856:

Alright, I wanted to respond to a lot of these, but this is a good one to start on. This is an example of someone who doesn’t understand why this thread subject opens time and time again.

I understand why the topic opens, on the contrary. It opens due to the ignorant folks in the community who believe gear = build and the same crew who want to play a hard trinity game for roleplaying reasons.

Everything you just said is correct.

Omg one of them finally admitted it! Too bad you didn’t stop there!

For those of you who are saying “zerker isn’t a build, it’s just a stat set!” you are so incorrect. It’s named after the stat set, yes, but what the zerker meta actually means is that you go into a dungeon with all damage gear, all damage stats, and a SELECT FEW SKILLS THAT YOU’LL RUN EVERY DUNGEON WITH. I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it.

That means you’re not playing well. Not trying to be mean, but if you don’t know when and how to swap your utilities and weapon skills for each encounter its entirely probably you aren’t playing the game at a very high level.

Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities). The post I quoted seems to believe that we’re choosing these builds, but there comes a point, as I said in my first post, where veteran players see the build that’ll work for dungeons, and from then on it’s over.

So you’re complaining because mesmer mainhand sword is their best DPS weapon? So what? There will ALWAYS be a best weapon for a particular encounter or objective. What does this have to due with berserker gear? Absolutely nothing, you’re muddled.

Now the other thing I see people saying for some reason is that “well, if they were to shift the meta, there would be a new best build and everyone would have to run that.” What you fail to understand is that we’re not asking for a shift in the meta, we’re asking for an expansion of the meta. Imagine if I said “Eh, I’m getting bored of my zerker mesmer, I think I’ll switch over to condi damage.” And then I dropped my sword and focus for a scepter and torch. If that were viable, that would be amazing! And then I get bored of condi so I switch over to control. And then from control I decide I want to play a support mesmer. That would be the final result of solving the zerker meta problem.

No one is opposed to condition damage being fixed and becoming part of the meta. What you do not understand, is that the meta berserker mesmer is a support and control builds. You think people bring Mesmer to dungeons for their third tier DPS? Really? No, they bring them for their support and control skills. Since I have already proved, and you already agreed, that gear =/= playstyle then you automatically agree with this. Or do you think mesmer uses Focus in dungeons because it provides high DPS?

the zerker builds are the only builds worth running. And that’s what I kind of feel like this whole zerker complaint is coming from, us veteran players. The players who are sick of running the same old builds over and over again. I want to use my staff on my mesmer without feeling my dps drop like a sack of potatoes in PVE. And many others want that too. We want to be able to use other weapons and skills in dungeons without it taking twice as long. That’s literally it.

YOUR GEAR IS NOT YOUR BUILD? I can understand wanting to use different weapons, that makes sense to me. But why do you CARE about your gear prefix? Why do you WANT to wear tanky gear when you don’t need it. You claim to be a “veteran player.” Do “veteran players” need Soldiers gear to survive? No, they don’t. So why do they WANT to wear it? Why do they WANT it to function differently? this is the most absurd non-sense I ever read.

So no, the stat isn’t the problem, in fact let’s change the name of the zerker meta problem right now. Let’s call it the “lack of build diversity” problem. And instead of just complaining and making endless threads about this issue, let’s discuss possibilities so that one day, when you get bored of your zerker build, you can say “hey, I think I’ll switch my build over to condi or support” and that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do.

There is no lack of build diversity. Gear is not a build. A build is your weapon and traits. Gear is your tankiness vs your damage score. A mesmer in Nomads with a sword will play exactly like a mesmer in berserker with a sword.