Guild Wars 2

skill spam and poor choreographs.

when I watch league, everything is clearly laid out to me and massive plays and jukes stand out. in GW2 all I see is smashing of skills (not saying this is the case at all, but how it looks) and a bunch of tiny asura running around on points.

The use blocks and reflects is an active play, but there are enemy skills that you cannot block or reflect. I support the idea of skills that you can’t dodge.

you support the idea of removing active defense from an active combat system

well ok there buddy, what’s the alternative to these undodgeable hits? you can’t dodge mai trin teleport but you can block it, you can’t block champion spider AOE but you can dodge it, so you mean like that?

just stick an accent on somewhere

as long as you’re not taking ezio or tifa lockheart you’ll be fine just putting an accent in

flower hairs UNITE

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Skoigoth.9238:

warbignime.4610:

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

“Zerker” is NOT a build…

Since a build contains traits, skills, armor & weapon-stats, runes and sigills… Yes I’d call zerker a build. A build that coincidentally bears the same name as the stat-combination it’s built around.

Nope. You can change berserker gear pieces for whatever you want in a meta build depending on how comfortable you are surviving with less defenses, berserker itself isn’t integral to the builds at all.

conditions seem to be getting addressed in HoT, the meta being broken is simply a matter of perception. to people who want their zero damage builds to be not-terrible it’s broken, for people who enjoy playing glass cannons and surviving via active defense it’s fine.

nope, you can run a meta build with whatever gear stat you want.

why else do you think people suggest running meta with knights/soldiers pieces if new to it? because berserker is integral to the build? I think not.

TIL people are getting worse at concealing their desire for zero damage builds to be top tier for group content.

This is nothing to do with diversity, people just want their own builds to be wanted.

Mirta.5029:

maha.7902:

choice 3: the meta player who can dodge key tells and doesn’t die

and that person probably runs in professional premade groups, while the population tries to emulate the meta set by him and ultimately ends up less useful than that guy in PVT.

strange, I was able to do this just fine when I pugged

it may surprise you, but non-terrible players do actually exist while pugging.

choice 3: the meta player who can dodge key tells and doesn’t die

Perhaps because it’s an issue that is important to them, and just as, over the past three years— we saw post after post of people wishing for some sort of feedback/solution to the “condition problem,” (some) people would enjoy hearing and/or seeing something from Arena Net that clarifies their stance and/or activities regarding this subject.

The problem is, their solutions can be found in literally any other MMO in the market. GW2 is not “that other MMO”, so why shoehorn standard MMO combat principles in to GW2? Why are these people even playing this game if they want designated roles in a game specifically designed to not have them?

I got bored of this game, so guess what I did? I stopped playing and went off to play games I enjoy.

What I did not do, is constantly rant about how the game is boring/bad/dull/repetitive/etc. etc. and hope to the beings above that ANet would answer my pleas.

Heaven forbid people come to the forums to discuss what’s important to them. Oh! And I also forgot the part in the EULA where it’s stated that all player’s must read every single post, wether their interested in seeing it’s content or not.

But it’s not discussion. It’s two uncompromising vocal sides shouting past each other. Literally go and read every single thread in the past … year? about “build diversity”, “the meta”, and “zerker gear”. You will get the same culprits in every single thread spewing bile at each other. It’s tedious, it’s boring, and quite frankly I just don’t care for it, and I doubt many people on here enjoy posting or replying in them that much when the topic has been beaten to death.

Given that the OP began this discussion by talking about fractals and that I stated specifically that the Zerker stat was optimal in PvE, I assumed it was relatively clear that we were discussing this subject from a PvE standpoint. But then I suppose it is significantly easier to point at the other game modes and say “see, everything is just fine,” and pretend that those game types somehow impact PvE than it is to actually talk to people. ^.^

And here is the thing, people confuse optimal and viable. You can use anything in PvE, but like every single video game ever made in existence, there is always an optimal solution, or optimal solutions. In this case it’s offensive gear paired up with an offensive support build (if someone has the gall to tell me a guardian traiting for extra effects on virtue usage is “just DPS” I will honestly just cry).

And then in PvP, you have optimal builds. PvP just happens to instead involve celestial which the tiny PvP community incessantly moans about just as much as PvE’ers on here moan about berserker gear.

I thought this kind of complaining was exclusive to the GW2 community, but when I started playing league, and visited their boards, the reddit, etc. I noticed they had exactly the same complaints about stagnant metas. It’s like no matter where you go or what game you play, you will always have babies throwing their toys out of their pram wanting things to change and they will whine and complain either until it happens, or just whine and complain to infinity. And then when the LoL meta shifts, you get a whole new bunch of people complaining about the new meta. Do the same in GW2, and you will get exactly the same thing with people playing suboptimal builds which aren’t accepted and wanting to be accepted. It’s a never ending cycle, and if people would realise that the forums would be so much more pleasant.

It’s unfortunate that the “ZERK IS GREAT” mentality borders on religious fanaticism.

And on the other side of things, the extreme obsession people have with “changing the meta” (as in, to make the builds they like good) borders on religious fanaticism too, so why make a statement like that when it applies to both parties?

Difference is, people who follow the meta don’t incessantly post threads about it all the time whereas people on the other side are constantly ranting about it to the dismay of literally everyone who has to read the forum.

I’ve been thinking this a lot myself recently. In “the old days” we still had the zerker meta, but people were willing to talk about it, “troubleshoot” various and creative ways other stat combos might be brought up to par (not DPS wise, but desirability wise. Not that anyone seriously thought Anet was going to implement their think-tanks, but still).

Well, no. The meta now is more open than it’s ever been. After a few revelations, guilds became a lot more open and willing to test suggestions as long as either there seemed to be some sort of decent justification for why it’s good or if it’s backed by a known member of the community (it was actually a few of us in high-end guilds which even convinced people that phalanx strength was a good trait, you’re welcome).

They argue (quite aggressively) that Arena Net intended for everyone to eventually end up in Zerker gear, that all other stat combos were purposefully made to be subpar compared to Zerker,

Subpar in the sense of speed of clearing content, yes. If you strip your character down to the bare minimum of defensive stats, you should be rewarded accordingly. If we look at two extremes, there is no way a nomad character should be clearing content anywhere near as quickly as a berserker one, because otherwise risk = reward doesn’t exist.

perhaps most terrifying— that any attempts to make options/choice/diversity even a little more varied will somehow “destroy” the game irrevocably, regardless of what approach one might take (wether it’s character-side centric, or AI/Encounter design centric).

Suggestions generally consist of forced roles, and in a game where you are encouraged to play however you want and where content is meant to be achievable by any variation of classes and players of varying skill level, imposing forced roles runs completely counter to that, and yes it would destroy the very principles the game was founded on. Forced roles aren’t the answer. Different roles which can be performed by a number of different classes are. To take the simple example of the husks in the wurm event, engineers, necromancers and warriors, rangers even mesmers are the classes that can output a large amount of conditions. There you go, a role, and you weren’t forced in to running a specific class. Projectile defense is another role that isn’t class specific. Warriors, mesmers, guardians, elementalists, thieves, rangers, engineers all have varying amounts of projectile defense skills. The key thing to note about these two functions I’ve mentioned is that for most content they’re not even strictly necessary. You can clear fractals without projectile defense. it’ll be painful, but you can do it. it’s not like a tank where you basically have one or you can’t progress.

To acknowledge that builds which employ Zerker gear are the most “optimal” in the current PvE environment is one thing, but I find the fervid belief that Arena Net would create (and continue to create) all kinds of Stat Combos, Traits, and Utilities that are intentionally meant to serve no function (because they are non-zerk, or do not synergize with the zerk stat spread) genuinely bizarre.

or maybe, people here forget that PvP and WvW exist where a whole ton of stat combinations are used. the game doesn’t revolve entirely around PvE and people need to realise this.

what does pvp have anything to do with pve mesmer damage or lupicus phase 2 autoattacks

like

what

oh, did anet do another unfunny april fools?

I had to set my computer timer to april 2nd the last time they did that bull****, it’s the lamest **** going.

OP sounds like random forum poster #326230863 demanding forced diversity via trinity

move along folks, nothing to see here

well gl buddy, speedrun guilds nowadays are like “lol warriors hurrdurrr faceroll trial on another profession pls”

spoj.9672:

Its a vicious cycle. First fgs, next icebow and WoR. What after that? Glyph of storms? Meteor shower? Lava font? Definitely need to nerf 100b. :>

they could just shift icebow to the elite skill and increase its cd

so lets get this straight

to counter RMT, anet have decided to restrict gold transfer via mails so that RMT simply start to transfer items of equivalent value instead

wp anet you just annoyed the minority of people who transfer large gold sums legitimately and made no effect on gold sellers

why is using berserker gear with a greatsword and axe/mace brainless?

what makes, say, a soldier gear warrior with sword/warhorn intelligent?

necromancers have no place in high-end pve, engineers and rangers are niche, fringe, off-meta picks too.

warriors feature in high-end pve all the time, they’re the whole reason zergs are called hammer trains, are capable of roaming in wvw with burst builds, and are good point holders in pvp, along with probably some other stuff which I can’t think of because this game’s pvp is terrible.

a class which is featured in high end play in all three game modes isn’t one of the best classes?

do you now see why I find this subforum full of drama queens? it’s overreactions to nerfs by calling a very strong class bad which just makes it sad to read posts in here.

na pugs can at least speak english

Nikaido.3457:

Wethospu.6437:

Sometimes it means that they are looking for someone to carry them.

Probably more than half (experience on NA) of the groups who ask for “melee lupi” in LFG can’t handle it when there’s no mesmer. Didn’t run enough pug on EU to meaningfully compare, but I’d be surprised if it was different.

they just wallsploit now anyway so a team of five braindead chimps can clear lupi now

MHCerberus.1385:

I guess a big point to my question is: Why take this game so seriously? You are playing a video game, it should be relaxing. People seem to treat this like a job, not as a fun activity.

Why are you trying to dictate what is fun and what’s not?

Some people enjoy killing trash mobs, some people don’t.

some next level portal strats there

i liked the use of duelist’s discipline on abom too, though im surprised you didnt take daze mantra for lupicus because you still get the vuln from it even though he doesnt get interrupted

Doggie.3184:

Meditation Guardian destroys all the things. Extremely Offensive, Extremely Defensive, Extreme Praise the Sun.

and is also not a build used in pve, lets stay on topic here

is there some drama that i missed

the people saying warriors are terrible are just drama queens, they’re pretty fine for all game modes.

i suggest increasing damage on d/f since it actually takes decent skill to maintain rotation on that set

but then, gw2 class balance is based on their imaginary e$ports rather than pve so it’ll never happen lol

winterchillz.2564:

Been pugging, since I came back, the last couple of days, and I must admit that either pugs got to a decent level or I’ve been lucky. Friendly, skilled groups, just chit-chatting and joking all around, jeez I missed that.

Apart from that, stuck at Lupi group was in distress and it felt so good to explain them a bit about the path and help them finish it. I love how thankful and happy they are at the end, makes me love GW2 again.

stuck at lupi?

i’ve been told everyone just wallsploits it now because pugs are allergic to using brain cells.

i goofed around with defiant stance on lupicus a while ago and you honestly don’t really gain anything from it if you’re using proper rotations, even in phase 3. like for his aoe life drain you can whirlwind in to him, dodge out, switch to axe/sword, riposte the next two ticks, go back in with axe 2 + sw4, back to gs and you don’t even lose too much damage compared to if you were to just dodge + whirlwind out in which case you’d be doing no damage for a good few seconds.

or if you take phase two AOE for example, you can double dodge through him or dodge + ww through him as well and carry on doing your regular rotation (unless you get dumped by rng projectiles immediately afterwards).

if it didn’t have a cast time it would honestly have some use, but it does so you would have to interrupt something to get value out of it.

just go sword/warhorn + gs so you can have tons of swiftness, an extra leap and the gs mobility

when you fight just use gs when you run around switch between the two so you can move around quicker

Test.8734:

maha.7902:

Test.8734:

Meh, I hope ArenaNet will never waste resources with this, and rather use them for more worthwhile features.

like gem store items and kasjory living story content

:)

Ah, you meant you wanted the artists and the writers to program dueling, instead of the programmers? Well, it would be something fun to see, at least. It would not work, but would look pretty and have a huge lore backstory. Probably something with Scarlet, even.

personally I don’t care about dueling, was just making a joke about the content ANet usually bring out which doesn’t really interest me.

Test.8734:

Meh, I hope ArenaNet will never waste resources with this, and rather use them for more worthwhile features.

like gem store items and kasjory living story content

:)

no jerem or sanderinoa for mesmer is this even a serious list

I’m still not interested in forming an opinion until I see a video comparison of at the very least, meta vs anchor and then maybe defensive anchor versus offensive anchor to see if the heals would actually be relevant at all or not, or if it would just be better to stick knights on.

I don’t “think” so is the key word here.

This is why I’ve constantly been asking for tryhard boss trio videos in both standard meta setups and the two glass + one cleric guard and wanting to see the difference.

But people would rather froth at the mouth instead of trying to prove their side of the argument is right, and it’s just boring to read.

An open mind is all I’m asking, otherwise we’d still be back in the stone age of 4 warriors 1 mesmer, and thinking warrior axe was better DPS because “it just is” rather than people bothering to actually confirm it. Kind of blows my mind it took as long as it did for people to even do math on that.

This thread is literally just meta drones talking down people arguing against them and the other half trying to say “hey, doing this makes our runs a lot easier but we aren’t trying to say it’s more efficient”.

Can everyone just like

step back

chill

and for certain individuals to stop shoving their opinions down peoples’ throats when neither side will budge on the topic

also, wtb cleric and zergburger trio speed kill footage to put the issue to rest

considering the number of revelations i’ve had playing this game I don’t even see the point in dismissing things anymore, this just reminds me of when people dismissed phalanx strength, then a few rT guys tried it, dub told me to try it and then I told some people and said hey this is actually really good might stacking. and whaddaya know, when people stopped seeing red and actually thinking about what was being proposed to them (PS warrior builds) they realised “this isn’t actually that bad”.

EcoRI.9273:

xDudisx.5914:

EcoRI.9273:

is crit chance affected?

All stats are affected by the scaling.

Lemme rephrase has crit chance been lowered because of the march 16, 2015 patch?

if your precision stat has been affected by the scaling

then

1 + 1 = ?

????

I think if you activate the cluster bomb but keep your mouse on the interface it just self targets so you blast directly in to the field.

Lindbur.2537:

I’ve been playing Skyrim again lately… started a new stealth mage character to go with the Perkus Maximus mod. It’s fun and RealVision just makes it all the more sweeter.

im like ~45 hours in to my second DA:I playthrough

it’s amazing how on my first time round I was barely scraping through fights at like normal/hard and now i’m just blazing through it on nightmare simply because I actually understand which skills to take and how to use the combat system, lol.

shame it isn’t very moddable though, I’d love to see armours from the previous games imported in to inquisition such as my (may it rest in peace) massive plate armour in origins

:(

I take it you aren’t aware of the tagging power of guardian staff autoattack.

—

And yeah, CM speed run records are like 3 minutes, your “speed run” pug will take like 20. so no, pugs aren’t speed runners, stop pretending they are, whoever is.

TIL stat modifiers, might, fury, positioning and AOE revival aren’t group utility

of course a cleric guardian won’t be faster than five pre-nerf fiery greatswords, don’t be ridiculous.

I just want to see people try and do a fast kill of mossman/archdiviner and then try and do a fast kill with the cleric guy instead and see what the time difference is. i mean, at least if you don’t record it at least to get some feedback in the thread on the general difference in “feeling” – simple things like was it easier to maintain rotation, die less, completed in what felt to be similar time to usual runs, etc. etc.

mind you i haven’t played in forever and i barely did fractals so i have no idea of what general completion times are on average or any awareness of actual fractal meta comps, etc.

did you even watch any of the videos?

the cleric guardian basically just sits there and brain afk tanks bosses while the whole party does basic DPS rotations over and over again which are harder to do in standard parties because of less reliable aggro.

are we having another case of the dungeon community being close minded again?

Like, I actually want to see if the loss of one guy’s damage in a party while making it possible for the rest of the team to optimise their rotations is actually a worthy trade off in the case of fractals (not dungeons obviously, stack might and delete boss in two seconds is normally what happens there). Because in my opinion, to hell with DPS theory if it isn’t even manageable in an actual game situation.

and if it’s actually less efficient to take a cleric guard, then it’s just a matter of case closed, back to using standard compositions. it’s literally a win/win either way.

The biggest issue in usual organised fractal groups is everyone is made out of paper and you have to juggle aggro and mitigate damage – which basically makes your damage plummet from anywhere near your theoretical numbers since you’re jumping in and out of combat all the time.

This is something I’d try myself if I could actually be bothered to play the game, but it does seem like a really good answer to – while pugging – making some of the usual challenging fights in fractals a cakewalk by having a cleric guardian just afk tank the whole thing since the aggro was generally quite consistent on the mossman video. And then maybe if you’re just doing a casual run in guild you just set up the tank guardian and everyone else can chill behind the boss and spam their rotations to infinity.

is it an actual dps increase over 5 glass players? idk, maybe someone can run the dps meter on a usual comp and a 4 glass + cleric guard.

and if it’s higher, maybe it’ll allow the general discussion forum to calm down a bit since there would be a place they could roleplay healers and actually be useful.

It is as fun as Courtyard. I promise.

so about as fun as having my eyeballs extracted

So if you want to get challenging PvE content you would need advanced and intelligent content that changes – that is unpredictable. Content that takes A LONG TIME to find out the right way to be even successfull.

and if MMO developers knew how to do this they would already be doing it since it would cut their workload post-release down a lot since people will still be enjoying it and figuring it out rather than having to rush new content out

Iris Ng.9845:

If they can give the boss the ability to:

• Dodge out of the AoE once in a while
• Dish out CC like a pro, then
• Put a condi carpet (Poison, Burning, Bleeding, Chill, Cripple) on you or
• Immobilize you and deal a big hit attack
• Have more unblockable CC/attack
• Have a block-retaliation type of attack – for example, if the boss successfully blocks your attack he then successively deal multiple quick hits on you.
• Have more projectile-hate skills and melee-denying reflex, for example the clockwork nightmare tree in TAA.
• Have partners in crime
• Have weapon swapping, mobility

addendum: you will have absolutely no fun fighting this encounter

the only person with good music on their solos is notrigger

nvm i just watched it and that was actually pretty good

+1

did you miss the massive gold mine of drama yesterday?