Does everyone run berserker gear?

[Khisanth.2948]

@jbrother.1340 said:

@Kovac.4372 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Generally, yes. Every class has an effective high DPS build that runs berserker gear, and these builds are usually the best one the class can offer. Condi builds run Viper, and there are some specialty builds, but when in doubt run berserker gear.

I checked, Viper is locked behind HoT. Core only offers 3 attribute gear ... so like, berserker, assassin ...

What about sinister?

Could be wrong about this cannot remember fully...

if you are crafting ascended you can just craft another then stat swap it with the mystic forge and some other small mats.

I personally only craft one stat set as I have the recipes for it already and if I find a need to change it later I use the forge and stat swap it. I have only crafted ascended in berserker. I guess I have no real reason other than I play power more often than hybrid or condition and share the armor sets on more than one toon. I have 2 cloth and 1 leather and soon heavy.

That doesn't help at all because you still need HoT to get the exotic viper's inscription/insignia

[jbrother.1340]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@jbrother.1340 said:

@Kovac.4372 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Generally, yes. Every class has an effective high DPS build that runs berserker gear, and these builds are usually the best one the class can offer. Condi builds run Viper, and there are some specialty builds, but when in doubt run berserker gear.

I checked, Viper is locked behind HoT. Core only offers 3 attribute gear ... so like, berserker, assassin ...

What about sinister?

Could be wrong about this cannot remember fully...

if you are crafting ascended you can just craft another then stat swap it with the mystic forge and some other small mats.

I personally only craft one stat set as I have the recipes for it already and if I find a need to change it later I use the forge and stat swap it. I have only crafted ascended in berserker. I guess I have no real reason other than I play power more often than hybrid or condition and share the armor sets on more than one toon. I have 2 cloth and 1 leather and soon heavy.

That doesn't help at all because you still need HoT to get the exotic viper's inscription/insignia

I see. I had not looked it up and just did. I didn't see they are account bound.

Guess your not getting it that easy :)

[TheQuickFox.3826]

My character is afraid of death, therefore he uses Celestial stats which improves his survivability quite a bit. Zerker and similar all-offensive stats are nice, but only when you can stay alive with them.

[starlinvf.1358]

If it isn't obvious yet from the other posts, the game does have a strong leaning toward burst damage being the most efficient approach to a lot of combat situations. Whats not really obvious to new players is "why". From a high level perspective, GW2 classes are built around PvP, which has specific thresholds and limitations to more or less allow them to kill each other. The problem is PvE is largely designed around Tank and Spank design principles common to most MMORPGs; many of which are designed around Trinity comp.

The AI is pretty basic in its behavior- stands there and takes damage, only a hand full will run when in danger, and even then they'll eventually turn around and try attacking you again. They all have slow attack rates, Core map mobs have limited skill sets, and very few incorporates any kind of counter-play concept. To make up for this, they usually have a lot of HP (25k being around average), some degree of toughness, and substantially strong damage output per hit. They are somewhat balanced around a 1v1 damage trade, so they actually are dangerous to tanky builds with enough of them ganging up on you. As a player you tend to cleave on melee, so in a 1 v many situation, your damage output is flat per target (making your damage potential level), but incoming damage is multiplicative since multiple attacks are hitting you. Since Trash mob damage is pretty low, this tends to not be too much of an issue. But when you start dealing with mobs with stronger attacks (usually AOE), or higher Tiers such as Vet and Elites, they can potentially Out-DPS you in a protracted fight; even with ample defense stats in your build.

This starts to make sense when you look at how the game handles its damage math. On the surface its a simple linear model, where effective DPS and Effective HP scales directly with how your stats are invested. Where this starts to go off the rails is the damage multipliers and skill coefficients, which results in a compound multiplicative effect. Classes also have far more damage multipliers available via traits then they do damage reduction. As a result, the per point investment into damage can be pushed a lot further then with defense ones.

Another fact of the basic game design is that all mobs and players have 100% effectiveness regardless of health level. So be it 30 HP or 30,000, your skills, traits, and gear still perform just as good. And since enemies have this same thing going for them, the only way to stop incoming damage is either stun lock the mob with CCs so it can't attack (which isn't feasible), or to kill it so it ceases to be a thing. Since mob damage output is time gated, the faster you kill it, the less threat it can pose to you. One Shot a mob, and it'll be as if it never existed. This is why so many people lean toward a glass cannon build, since the high damage output shortens the fight, and lowers the risk of exhausting your active defenses.

Which bring us to the active defenses. The best defense is not taking damage..... to which GW2, with an action combat system, very heavily favors. Dodges let you evade attacks and of its effects. Blocks prevent attacks and damage from connecting. Invulnerability and Condition clears stop damage from occurring, Personal Heal skill are infrequent, but very strong, to let you recover from damage taken. The first two counter front loaded damage from being lethal, while the latter two neutralize back loaded and over time damage. Since Dodging is base line ability for all characters, every player has access to the single strongest defense in the game. But to balance this strength, active defenses are treated as a resource within the game's balancing scheme, and is meant to be exhausted if overly taxed. They have limited windows of protection, and most have to be timed well to gain maximum benefit; some even down to a faction of a second. But with enough at player's disposal, and knowledge of how to best leverage them, many players can get away with minimal defense stats (if used at all).

So within this type of environment, defensive stats can't win you a fight, and only effectively stalls death. But in some situations, that can be a big deal. Like surviving 3 hits instead of 2, or being able to shrug off weak attacks to focus your active defenses on the stronger ones. However, without a team comp to substitute damage in your place, going deep into defensive styled builds is almost universally a liability. There are also very few situations where a stat based tank build is actually a functional advantage, since the majority of PvE content is balanced around the standard 1v1 trade, and a high damage build with enough AOE can clear a group of mobs on their own.

Expansion maps/content operate on similar principle, but a key difference is mobs are given more skills that increase their threat level against passive players. Things like build concepts, mimicking player skills (which are very strong), group comp in patrols, access to more CCs and AOE attacks, increased armor or damage stats for its tier, and a proper mixture of damage pressure and damage bursts that the player can't safely ignore. This also has a direct effect on active players, in that it opens up counter-play strategies that players can exploit, but also forces them to face situations they might be vulnerable to. But there is one thing the Devs made sure of in the expansions..... all the mobs, even the trash ones, are resilient enough survive things that would normally 1-shot mobs in Core Tyria. This causes most fights to last at least several seconds, allowing the majority of mobs time to use their more dangerous attacks. With the margin of error being a lot smaller when fighting these mobs, investment in defensive traits, skills and a small amount of defensive stats is prudent. Traits and skills add more resources to avoid or mitigate damage, while the defensive stats are a buffer against damage that will inevitably make it past your active defenses. This minor trade off is to buy you extra time in the fight, and allow additional rounds of damage output that (hopefully) kills the enemy before they kill you.

With all that said, the dynamic gets a little different with a group composition..... but not as big as you'd think. Group content like Fractals, Raids, and team PvP/WvW allow you spread the requirements for a fight across several players. This allows more room to specialize for each player, and take advantage of the force multiplication it enables. But as an aggregate, you're effectively acting as one character that can multitask better. And not surprisingly, if the Supports can carry the job of defense/damage mitigation for the group, that frees up everyone else for DPS. The more damage you can dish out, the shorter the fight is. The shorter the fight, the less time you have to spend dealing with something that might kill you.

[Eomor.1387]

Quote

On 8/14/2018 at 4:08 PM, Danikat.8537 said:

I completely agree that active defences can be enough to keep you alive in almost any situation in GW2. But I also know from experience that it doesn't always work in practice. Whether it's lag or because they're tired or something distracted them or there's too much visual clutter and they didn't see the red circle, or they don't know the fight, or just because there's so much going on that they've already dodged 2 attacks and can't dodge the 3rd, it's very rare for me to do a world boss fight or bounty or even just a Hero Challenge without someone making a mistake and getting downed.

As long as that keeps happening I'm going to keep saying pure damage builds are not right for everyone. It's not that the theory-crafting is wrong - they can and do work exactly as designed and then they can out-perform more defensive builds. But active defenses working as designed relies on a lot of factors which are not consistent across all players. It's like the airbags in your car - you shouldn't ever need it because there are lots of ways to make sure you don't crash at all, which is preferable, but by the time you realise you do need them it's too late to do anything about it so I'd rather have it there just in case. Especially since the trade off in this case is that fights take a bit longer and since this is a game I'm playing for fun and the combat is one of the things I enjoy I don't see that as a bad thing. Given the choice I actually prefer a longer fight where I and the enemy get to use more of our mechanics over one that's over in seconds without them getting to move.

 

I agree, i'm a new player for example, and ive been going throught the expansions and living world stories, so far ive gotten to path of fire and im loving the game btw it just irritates me sometimes to be having to dodge eveything since i like order, simplicity, (final fantasy xiv style)

 

what i do as a warrior was i followed meta builds and i got destroyed by almost everything outside of base game, now i dont do that anymore i use a full soldier gear and i do alot of dmg AND stay alive while not having to be monkeying around everything, i would defenitely not recommend berserker gear for everyone, specially not a meele

 

 

[Eomor.1387]

that being said, while i do survive alot of stuff easier and are more cmfortable playing,  when you go to one extreme and see the difference in how fast you down things by ALOT, you start to consider just staying with that, unfortunately it is the better option in the end when you do have the dodging skill down, i still dont think it should  be that way but thats just my opinion

 

maybe its guild wars 2 selling point their playstyle, and for that it is probably very difficult balance

[Linken.6345]

17 minutes ago, Eomor.1387 said:

that being said, while i do survive alot of stuff easier and are more cmfortable playing,  when you go to one extreme and see the difference in how fast you down things by ALOT, you start to consider just staying with that, unfortunately it is the better option in the end when you do have the dodging skill down, i still dont think it should  be that way but thats just my opinion

 

maybe its guild wars 2 selling point their playstyle, and for that it is probably very difficult balance

You will find that positioning is vitaly important.

And it might feel your doing alot of damage in soldier but you really dont mate.

[chronometria.3708]

Having a nice mix of stats does certainly help in openworld and normal content. Can't deal damage if you are dead, after all.

[Khisanth.2948]

6 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

You will find that positioning is vitaly important.

And it might feel your doing alot of damage in soldier but you really dont mate.

Heh it can feel like you are doing a lot in any gear as long as you aren't aware of the numbers

Even in Magi it can feel fine with sub 1k DPS ...

Feels are unreliable

[aspirine.6852]

Usually the people laying dead on the ground do yes.

[medivh.4725]

No? They are expensive?

[Excursion.9752]

It is one of the ways to and I use this word loosely "practice" for end game content.

I go back to the days where I was trying out my first condition build and I just had finished my first full viper set and I was testing waypoints a little more than I should have because I was not giving respect to the skills of the things I was fighting. I cleaned up my act started to take note and studied the different types of fights I was getting myself into and then I didn't grey out my screen so much.

Once you know your build and how to play it then you know you are ready to move to the next step in your development. Fractals, Strikes, Raids ect... Of course there is more to it than just that but its a step. So In my opinion its best to practice in open world what you would use in the content that you desire to play in. If open world only is your thing then go ahead have it your way! Ba kitten Ba Ba Bahbah dah ba ba kitten!

[Cynder.2509]

As a DPS yes. It really depends on what role your build has and when you use meta builds then it's always the best choice for DPS. For CDPS viper is usually the best. Just look up your builds on snowcrows and roll with it. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

19 hours ago, Eomor.1387 said:

that being said, while i do survive alot of stuff easier and are more cmfortable playing,  when you go to one extreme and see the difference in how fast you down things by ALOT, you start to consider just staying with that, unfortunately it is the better option in the end when you do have the dodging skill down, i still dont think it should  be that way but thats just my opinion

 

maybe its guild wars 2 selling point their playstyle, and for that it is probably very difficult balance

It isn't all about dodging.  However, if you can dodge and utilize your other defensive skills properly, it can also increase the value of your passive sustain.  As Starlinvf.1358 noted, the difference between dying in two hits vs. three is potentially huge.

Imagine you're fighting a champion that can two-shot you, but adding some vitality or toughness makes that a reliable 3-shot.  Taking 2 consecutive hits could easily happen.  Since you can't dodge everything, missing a single dodge at a bad time could exhaust your endurance bar and result in a 2-shot death.  But add a third hit and you survive that, your endurance recovers, and you buy yourself more time to live.  With your heal skill and other cooldowns, you can potentially stretch that single extra hit to recycle those cooldowns and survive indefinitely.