Everyday there’s a new thread about the meta. Is that a thing now?
You know, every time a mount thread is written a small quaggan dies, every time a “zerkmeta” thread is written… * add *
But on serious note, there is too many of these threads lately. I’m just afraid that anet might actually listen and tamper with dem stats instead making better encounters.
Thats what im afraid of aswell. They did it for spider queen and they changed ferocity and nerfed other things because of whining.
They also made malrona unblockable. Is she more fun now? Nope. It was only changed because people complained about using smart use of mechanics to 1 shot her. Most people cant even pull that off anyway. It only stopped a small minority.
Its pretty simple. If you advertised zerker and you see evidence that someone isnt zerker. You are well within your rights to remove them from the group. Some people are more tolerant some arent. Respecting LFG descriptions would prevent this from happening in the first place. :P
Its more of a suggestion to show that gear isnt as important as people make it out to be when it comes to speed. I think it would be fun to demonstrate just how fast you can go by using speedrun tactics and composition but with defensive armour instead. So you would still stack might and buffs but you wouldnt have the baseline berserker stats. I suppose you could even demonstrate it naked. That would be more challenging but the damage would still be on same level as a nomads party.
It would show that it really doesnt matter what gear you bring to a group in a pug as long as you use proper tactics and stack might. Then maybe we would get less picky pugs and less QQ. Wishful thinking.
You have always been one of the more objective posters and I really respect that. So its a shame but I completely understand.
I know exactly how you feel regarding forum quality. Theres very little interesting topics these days. Most of them you just end up repeating the same stuff over and over and it never gets through. It can be incredibly frustrating in some cases.
Fortunately im a major masochist so I will probably still stick around for a while. x)
Maybe thats because you are trying to burst them rather than playing how you are built?
If you are using a strategy which relies on bursting then you are obviously going to fail when not using high damage gear. But that doesnt mean its harder. It just means you should stop being stupid and play with a different strategy and one which works with your gear and build. Duh :P
But considering you are talking about thief. Spam pistol whip and blind powder and you should never have a problem no matter the gear.
My tips for this is to always finish off the elementals from range or with conditions (you can use 2 to dart away and finish them off at the same time). And save your stealth for when he is vulnerable and just shadowstab him. This way you avoid all whirlpools near him and from elementals. And you only have to focus on dodging walls. Also when killing elementals try and lead them to the edges of the map and kill them there. So you dont completely cramp up the map.
I agree this fight should of included a reset button though. So irritating going through all that bs again just because of one mistake.
I think at this point we need a demonstration to show that it isnt berserker that is the problem. Its player skill and coordination.
My suggestion is for someone to do a speedrun using all nomads gear but doing it as fast as possible. I expect the path to only take a few extra mins to complete.
Theres nothing stopping you from running defensive stats if you want to. You run them because you dont care about the meta. That doesnt mean you have the right to destroy other peoples playstyles.
Really? Thats news to me. I havent seen anything which we cant complete using the meta.
We are already using support and control to survive in the meta.
Can’t is where you got caught up there. GW is designed sot here’s very little a particular build can’t complete.
Much of the mordrem content is harder for zerkers than for other builds:
More Chain CC,
More Chain Condition application,
Special defense and resistance (husk’s high toughness, front armor on threshers)
more rapid attacks to eat things like aegis
content that’s extremely inefficient for groups.
High yield enemy healers
Very stack-unfriendly attack patterns (root attacks from tetragryphs and the healing threshers, spin/ground AE passthrough from the other threshers, the bug swarms from mordrem trolls, the mass retal howl before they nerfed it)
Again, it’s not impossible for them, but it’s just a touch harder… and an oldfashioned stack is idiocy for a multitude of reasons.
Which means that your previous statement was incorrect. They are not designing encounters that the meta doesnt work with. They are just upping the difficulty slightly. Although people are seriously overestimating the danger of mordrem and the new bosses. They are barely any different to what we are used to. The only difference is some condition attacks and high damage attacks on trash mobs which have huge tells. In some ways its even easier because we can see the attacks coming. This is difficult to do when dealing with a large group of molten alliance in the molten fractal. And stacking is still perfectly safe to do. You just have to treat them like you would treat fractal mob groups (CC and blinds).
Mordrem are only hard for people who dont read tells and dont dodge or CC correctly. So it seems people who already run and understand the meta arent really seeing much of a difference in difficulty. But other more casual players are.
No, you see, it doesn’t not work with the ‘meta builds’, it doesn’t work with the ‘meta’.
In the new content zerk/stack isn’t superior, stacking was obviously heavily targeted in the design, it’s almost always a bad idea now. Zerk is kind of bad for some enemies, okay for others (ie hounds are fine now. 2 months ago it was fun watching zerkers killt hemselves on them though).
There is no zerk meta for the newer content
There is in the case of the old content (for people who claim to care about that 5m/run), but there isn’t in the new content.
~~~
Also, I didn’t exactly say that mordrem are hard, I said that they negate the advantages of the zerker meta. And it certainly does. You can still pew pew big numbers if you want, but it isn’t clearly superior or even a time saver.
The meta isnt just about stacking. Stacking is a strategy heavily used within the meta. You cannot define the meta with such a broad and unfair generalisation. The “zerk meta” as you describe is literally just the builds and an efficient approach. It may involve stacking, it may not. It entirely depends on the situation and what is the fastest approach.
Do you understand why people stack? They do it to share buffs or to group up trash mobs so they can AOE them down. This still works on the new content. It might be difficult for bad players but it is still the most efficient way to deal with large groups of enemies quickly. The only difference in the meta now is that the meta doesnt involve wall stacking bosses because fgs was nerfed. But we still stack for buffs and go melee. And we still wall stack some groups of trash mobs to LoS pull them together.
Thats why its good in GW2. It doesnt take loads of time to assemble a meta group in GW2. Or atleast close to. Everything works and everyone can find a group quickly. Theres no exclusion other than personal preferences.
Fair enough. I was a very casual player when i played GW1 so i dont really know much about the speedrun tactics used. So ill give you the benefit of the doubt. But that philosophy still holds true for pretty much every other game and it would hold true even in GW1 if it werent possible to have too much damage. And I would of thought in a record you would still only take the minimum defence needed and the rest goes into utility and damage. Because even with being able to spike with a small pool of skills surely you can spike faster with more? You obviously wouldnt take more healers than you need for example. That would be wasteful.
I believe the difference would be in the cost. I didn’t play GW1 but I know that skills cost energy to use and animation to cast. At some point, adding more skills that do damage probably isn’t particularly as useful as, say, adding a skill that helps manage your energy stores or some other type of utility.
In that respect, there is a parallel between CoH and GW1 in that, there is a point where you can have too much damage. Not only do you have limited energy to power these attacks but you also have limited enhancement slots to boost those attacks so it was definitely beneficial to only take the attacks you ~need~ and spread your enhancement slots across your powers in a way that suites your playstyle (more slots on defensive/control skills to keep yourself alive, slots in buff/debuff to support and if you were offensive focused, max slots on the damage skills).
And if GW1 is as close to CoH as I’d imagine, it probably was much more advantageous to make your skills come up faster vs having more of them.
Yeah but its about maximising your damage without hindering yourself via resource management and still being able to survive. The core concept is still there. After all the idea behind speedruns and the meta is to go as fast as possible.
You can go safer and less optimal in casual runs. Which is what people do in both GW1 and GW2 and other games. But the meta always follows that efficiency theory otherwise it wouldnt be the meta.
Fair enough. I was a very casual player when i played GW1 so i dont really know much about the speedrun tactics used. So ill give you the benefit of the doubt. But that philosophy still holds true for pretty much every other game and it would hold true even in GW1 if it werent possible to have too much damage. And I would of thought in a record you would still only take the minimum defence needed and the rest goes into utility and damage. Because even with being able to spike with a small pool of skills surely you can spike faster with more? You obviously wouldnt take more healers than you need for example. That would be wasteful.
Content requires damage to complete so if you want to be as fast and efficient as possible you are obviously going to take as much damage as possible/needed while still being able to survive. Which is how the meta is formed in every game. And no matter what changes are made that will still be the concept in which a new meta is formed from. This is what the OP was getting at. No idea why some people cant grasp this concept.
@spoj: Your comments about GW1 being about least defense required are completely wrong. The game was the exact opposite bring as much defense as you can and still be able to score kills via spikes.
TLDR: Bars were built defense to survive perfectly first then left over into a few powerful damage skills. This is how the majority of builds operated. Proof is below.
All variants of triple necro heroes use half the the bar for defense quarter for minions and 1 or 2 strong spike skills. One of the most popular vanquishing builds.
Spiritway second most common build uses ritualists and spirits for high energy management often coupled with necromancers all hybrid builds with only a couple of damage skills.
The difference between speed clear and regular builds was your defense was super broken strong skills and synergies that an entire map or area of it could be agroed and cleared by 1-4 players. A skill that could could scale its damage to the number of enemies agroed like smites, punishment curses, or sliver armor cleaned everything. For areas where that failed ppl used super strong synergies like 100b MoP + FoC spike or something of similar style to clear the area.
How is that any different to what i said? Take the defence you need and then the rest goes into damage. For a speedrun you obviously dont take more defence than you need. That would be counterproductive.
Really? Thats news to me. I havent seen anything which we cant complete using the meta.
We are already using support and control to survive in the meta.
Can’t is where you got caught up there. GW is designed sot here’s very little a particular build can’t complete.
Much of the mordrem content is harder for zerkers than for other builds:
More Chain CC,
More Chain Condition application,
Special defense and resistance (husk’s high toughness, front armor on threshers)
more rapid attacks to eat things like aegis
content that’s extremely inefficient for groups.
High yield enemy healers
Very stack-unfriendly attack patterns (root attacks from tetragryphs and the healing threshers, spin/ground AE passthrough from the other threshers, the bug swarms from mordrem trolls, the mass retal howl before they nerfed it)
Again, it’s not impossible for them, but it’s just a touch harder… and an oldfashioned stack is idiocy for a multitude of reasons.
Which means that your previous statement was incorrect. They are not designing encounters that the meta doesnt work with. They are just upping the difficulty slightly. Although people are seriously overestimating the danger of mordrem and the new bosses. They are barely any different to what we are used to. The only difference is some condition attacks and high damage attacks on trash mobs which have huge tells. In some ways its even easier because we can see the attacks coming. This is difficult to do when dealing with a large group of molten alliance in the molten fractal. And stacking is still perfectly safe to do. You just have to treat them like you would treat fractal mob groups (CC and blinds).
Mordrem are only hard for people who dont read tells and dont dodge or CC correctly. So it seems people who already run and understand the meta arent really seeing much of a difference in difficulty. But other more casual players are.
I dont know if it still works this way. But before if someone afk’d in a duo and got auto kicked because of a dc it would kick both players out. So you would always ask them to leave before they went afk.
Actually they are all completely viable. They just arent all optimal. Both tanking and healing is op in PvE. Its just not fast so its not part of the meta. Condi is the only thing which is genuinely weak in GROUP pve. Because it has low max damage and high ramp up time. However condi is at least fairly decent or often superior when soloing.
Berserker isnt too good. Its been nerfed several times but its still the meta because meta is about being as fast and efficient as possible. You wont change the meta no matter what you do unless you want to completely break the game.
I was just giving an extreme example of what happens when you join a group with no lfg requirements and comparing it to the time it takes to fill a meta group. I wasnt saying anything about how effective filtering is. Some of the meta groups i joined definately had some questionable members but we still got through things in a bearable pace. Im not one to care too much as it is a PUG.
Basically what im getting at is. No matter what type of group you want they all fill pretty fast. So there is no reason not to use and respect peoples requirements on the LFG. Players that want to run the meta get faster runs and it doesnt take long to fill groups (as long as you dont get trolls and liars too often). Players that dont care still fill the group fast and they dont need to worry about pressure from other players.
GW1 is a trinity game but it still had the same concept of bringing the minimum defence needed and as much damage as possible. Just like every other game when it comes to the meta. GW2 is no different except it has no forced roles and it is not a trinity game. This means noone is excluded in casual groups and you dont have to wait for a specific role to join your party. This is a vastly superior concept to your standard forced roles MMO’s.
Sometimes its just frustrating having a run go slowly. Sometimes when you dont filter people a pug can go so horribly wrong that you are forced to abandon ship.
I pugged CM p2 with no requirements the other week. Noone said anything about being new or anything. So i assumed they had at least done the path once. That was a mistake on my part because when we got to the barrels they had no clue, things went horribly wrong and then the last guy alive hid inside a house and didnt understand that he was stuck in combat. So we couldnt res ourselves and he was just waiting there doing nothing. Instead of going and getting himself killed like I told him, he decided to wait until his healing signet fully healed him. I lost my patience and left the party after this and still no movement from him or acknowledgement. From that point on I only pugged CM with people who advertised the meta or I ran with my friends. Some were ok, some were good. And the parties actually filled pretty fast. Even if we had to wait a few mins for people and even if the group failed a bit it still saved me much more time than if id gone and risked another group like that CM p2 group.
GW1 had the problem of waiting for healers etc. So no I would rather not have a game with forced roles. GW1 was good. But gw2 combat is completely different. And its good in its own way.
Yeah the sustains manageable 1v1 providing you have lifeforce to start off the fight. But you cant bunker with that sustain. I also think you are overestimating the prevalence of burst healing in sPvP. :P
The necros DS was completely reworked right before release. So it was kind of rushed in the end. They have also been afraid of bringing back the immortal necro that was in one of the beta’s. Which has hindered balance over the last 2 years.
That’s not about lack of understanding what “meta” means. It’s just that in this game it’s DPS first. Spam your chain with max DPS stats…period.
That’s not even remotely true. I can assure that when a Thief is using Black Powder or a mesmer casts Phantasmal Warden they aren’t doing it to increase DPS.
Thats the GW2 meta. Zerk.
Not really. Meta is the 2xele, 1xwarrior, 1x thief, 1x guardian team comp. The gear they wear isn’t nearly as important as the different weapon skills they have, using them in proper coordination and the judicious use of their utility kills.
Fact: the meta team comp with 5 skilled players wearing Soldier gear is superior to a group of the same 5 players using berserker gear and playing a bad comp of 4 mesmers 1 necro. Or even something lame like 3 warriors 2 rangers. Synergy of skills trumps secondary considerations like gearing.
In other games there is allowance for variation and diversity of skills, gear, classes, within that “meta”. That’s what it should be about. Allowing such diversity. To say it’s not and can never be a thing states absolute ignorance in regards to gaming history.
Actually you’re being ignorant since you clearly don’t understand the diversity as it exists in this game currently. The meta Ele build is 66200 S/F. Would you like me to explain all the different variations of this and why and how people change it to suit the situation or the group?
By and large “meta” is commonly recognised as a Greek prefix for “to go beyond” or more loosely to push boundaries or create and embrace diversity.
I don’t think anyone in gaming uses the term “meta” to mean what you’re doing. But hey, if you want to play pretend and make up whatever fake definition suits your needs go for it, but its an intellectually bankrupt maneuver.
I dig this post. Great response but your wrong. I don’t state such as personal opinion, just that the game and community directly states such. Have fun feeling superior or whatever though
Can you explain why hes wrong? Because hes not. The only thing hes slightly off about is the meta comp. The meta comp changes depending on dungeon path. But the example he gave is basically the balanced cover it all comp for casual meta runs or the baseline composition.
To be able to turtle and full heal in deathshroud while being attacked would require some serious water field blast spam. Necro really doesnt have that much sustain on its own especially when outnumbered.
It would however finally make necro a possible bunker.
First time solos dont get recorded because they are sloppy and can take hours. After that they may record a run to show they’ve done it. But the player will have a strategy in mind. So there really is no reason to use defensive gear. And most people know that it doesnt look impressive soloing a dungeon in PVT and taking half an hour to kill a single boss.
And there are some old lupi solos that did take about 20-30 mins (the first wave of lupi solos). Not sure what gear was used, but they were using ranged weapons and stuff like that. I know the first necro kill took like 20 mins and used rabid gear with an absolutely atrocious build. But it was the first necro solo so it was still quite an achievement.
“soloing a dungeon in soldiers takes more skill“ – Are you serious ?
Have you ever soloed a dungeon, have you ever compared berserker to soldiers !? I don’t know what you see as skilled but being able to facetank more hits isn’t skill for me.
Honestly, this one is a candidate for the statement of the year!
Do it and tell me if it is even possible to solo a dungeon in soldier’s.
You can solo in pretty much any gear as long as the bosses don’t have too high regeneration or you don’t fail your evades.
Others have already answered you, I have “discussed” this in several posts. Not really sure what there is left to say.
I have never seen a dungeon solo run in tanky gear and would love to see it – I don’t buy that those doing it have no options to make videos of it. If you know any videos give me the link.
Those who manage to solo a dungeon in none zerker’s gear have more skills in my opinion – I have pointed out why, others have pointed out why. So, again, give me a link so I can be proven wrong.
Not a whole dungeon but shows very well how tankier gear trivialises the content.
Alright, but I still mean a whole dungeon, not just one part of it =) Thanks though.
Is like this video, just takes longer.
Do you think that dodging/evading takes less skill than simply dpsing ?
So giving up passive defense to do more dmg is less skilled ?
Also, do you think soloing in rabids (f.e.) takes also more skill than in berserker ?
Allow me a question; did you ever solo a dungeon?
I love how people just think that zerkers just autoattack in their solos. Get deeper in the materia and then we can continue discussing.
Have you ever soloed a dungeon or soloed a dungeon in soldiers?
You do’t seem to read what I write, here again: If you don’t dish out max damage you’ll likely get in troubles with your cooldown or with tiny mistakes or things you can’t avoid. So to me everybody who’s able to solo an entire dungeon in soldier’s is more skilled than someone who does that in zerker’s – just read the stuff I wrote, maybe you’ll get my poiint of view and where I’m coming from.
Btw: If soldier’s were easier there would be more soldier’s videos than zerkers and I always see zerker’s.
Thats simply not true. Think about why people record videos of them playing. And then look at your last comment again.
People solo in berserkers because they have already learnt to solo. Most people learn to solo after they already accept the meta. Noone is going to solo a dungeon with gear that takes twice as long when they can do it in berserker. And people who record solos tend to only upload the runs they are proud of. So obviously they arent going to upload their first solo where they tried various things and wiped several times. With that in mind its fairly obvious why most videos demonstrate smooth runs with the most efficient builds and gear for solos.
Like I said before. Defensive gear is easier. But the endurance of maintaining your active defence is the hardest part of learning to solo. Once you have that down the gear makes no difference other than kill time. But if you arent consistant then defensive gear is obviously going to be easier. Cool downs dont come into play at all. Most bosses cannot be solo’d that fast even in berserker gear. So repeatable management of active defence is important no matter what gear you use.
These days its the norm for groups to have LFG requirements. So its completey understandable if the OP doesnt want to deal with the trouble of having a class which wont be welcomed in a large amount of groups.
I mean if it were me pugging, I would want to join berserker groups and follow relatively organised tactics myself. But i know im going to have to play one of the better classes if I want to join those groups.
If you dont mind that much. Then you can create your own LFG’s with no requirements etc. But chances are for some paths you will have absolutely terrible party members and it will put you off from pugging in the future.
I dont know what to think. Ive been suckered into buying some pretty pointless things in the past (purely for collection purposes). But even I wouldnt fall for that one. :P
The OP doesn’t seem to be complaining about balance at all. We all know you can complete the PvE in this game by training a hamster to faceroll 1111111..
It’s about the zerg meta and it’s subsequent side-effects.
How is it out of context? I assume you were just trying to be a smart kitten . But its people like you that cause so many people to create pointless threads like these based on ignorance.
And I wasnt being sarcastic for once (rare for me). I did genuinely want to see someone suceed at fractal 50 by spamming 1.
Im still a little confused that they put resources into making mail carriers. I dont remember anyone suggesting such a thing on the forums. The popularity of that must be pretty low compared to their other gem store ventures so why did they waste resources on it?
I wonder sometimes if we are just looking at things in the wrong way when we go on about “solutions” to these type things.
Maybe the armor stat varieties are fine and it’s just the combat AI of the mobs that need some changing.
DPS is king, we all know that, and let it remain king, but let’s not forget there’s a whole bloody royal court of other primary attributes that should matter.
Simply put, if people are choosing DPS over survival stats then that tells me the mobs aren’t supplying enough pressure in the right ways, meaning the mobs needs to have some varied methods of dealing out damage.
If Toughness and Vitality doesn’t matter enough, it’s not because “Zerk Gear” is wrong, it’s that those two stats have no real value in combat.
Perhaps it’s a case of the player that attempts to gear with Toughness/Vitality is being penalized too severely in the DPS department.
Or, maybe the Zerk-geared Player is getting a little more survivability than is justified?
If the player chooses to focus on survival, it should really count as something meaningful and not preclude the player from progressing in combat at a reasonable pace.
By all means, allow Zerkers to reign supreme on damage. Sometimes the absolute best survival (other than outright damage avoidance) is killing the enemy fast and as effortlessly as possible.
But, the survival/tanky types need some love and maybe this can be done by allowing one or both of the defensive stats to mitigate Boss level damage more effectively and noticeably.
Those of us in the dungeon subforum have been saying this the whole time. But everyone seems to ignore it and continue to blame the gear. Weve been saying the solution is making the content harder.
But the problem with doing that is it will most likely alienate lower skilled players. And you definately dont want to go so overboard that glass gear is no longer possible and roles are forced. Thats a sure fire way to kill half your playerbase by making their gear unuseable.
I definately would support higher pressure so it is more difficult for people to get away with full glass but only in instanced group content. But that would surely have to come in through new content such as dungeons, fractals and raids. Changing it in the current dungeons might not be best as there are still some people that have difficulty with them, they are only easy because they have been around for 2 years so everyone knows every trick and tactic. And we already know that dungeon development has been axed so that means the only hope is raids and fractals.
That falls through when you realise that many bosses can hit some classes for 90% of their hp when in berserker. But if you use a defensive gear stat you can take quite a few extra hits. So basically if you mess up a dodge its not completely over if you mess up the next one.
Its way easier to to solo with defensive gear. The question is do you have the patience and endurance to do it with that low damage. If you have the endurance to keep it up for a berserker kill then you should definately be able to do it with defensive gear and it will be easier but slower. Because its more forgiving.
Its because people like you seem to think that its all about dps. And you dont realise how much support and control comes into play in the meta. You have tunnel vision and you cant see past the gear stat. “Oh glass gear so they must only be doing damage!”
