What is it with all these meme builds nowadays?

[SevlisBavles.3059]

Bunker Virtuoso with 90% invulnerability and block uptime, Berserker where all you see is 0s and green numbers, everlasting Bladesworns, Untamed that can constantly stealth with their pet and just drain your cooldowns with their pet attacks, etc. etc. etc.

This sure is some engaging and dynamic gameplay.

[stormemperor.3745]

disengage

[Khalisto.5780]

The best is yet to come, you just cant wait to be stunned when ele stunsbreak

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, SevlisBavles.3059 said:

Berserker where all you see is 0s and green numbers

❤️

[thc enjoyer.4976]

We do meme builds because the meta hasn't moved since the last xpac, I'd argue since pof if it weren't for cata/virt. At some point playing a build you've played for 3k games gets old. 

[Khalisto.5780]

1 hour ago, thc enjoyer.4976 said:

We do meme builds because the meta hasn't moved since the last xpac, I'd argue since pof if it weren't for cata/virt. At some point playing a build you've played for 3k games gets old. 

Most EoD specs were meta at some point, the very first was unkillable mech and vindi, next harb/hb than vindi/spec and finally cata/bs, only virt didnt come close untamed has been gatekept by cata mostly

[Riskless.4275]

>bunker virtuoso

???

[Flowki.7194]

I thought the mesmer/necro nerfs were a good thing at first, but now I see that all those players who will be unable to adapt are just going to end up playing SB and bladesworn, which im sorry to warrior mains.. but stunlocks and 3 button sustain is about as low as it gets for effort to reward. Low ranked is already full of warriors, maybe lets just change it to; platinum > gold > spellbreaker > bladesworn.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Hotride.2187]

3 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Low ranked is already full of warriors, maybe lets just change it to; platinum > gold > spellbreaker > bladesworn.

Silver and below is exactly where I am concerned about the state of the game. 100%.

[Myror.7521]

@Flowki.7194 @Hotride.2187 its like....... Bladesworn is Just mostly Played. In lower Divisions but cause of it is only "OP" as long as You not been focused by 2 players at the same time it get not that mutch played in higher ones. Meanwhile p1+ Divisions are overun by scrapper\ele\virtu cause once you know how to play this class your basicly one of the most broken Builds that you could Play rn xD. Fair enough i must say im Happy when cata/bsw/granade Kits/virtu finally see nerfs (or reworks) cause its stupid as it is rn ^^

Edited June 23, 2023 by Myror.7521

[Leonidrex.5649]

People think virtuoso is meta
🤣

[SevlisBavles.3059]

23 minutes ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

People think virtuoso is meta
🤣

It's not, but meta is about the top 10-15% of games played. The rest have to deal with dumb Virtuoso kitten they don't know how to counter. And even at a high level, it's still frustrating because you can kill them, but it still takes a century of waiting before they blow through all their blocks and invulns. 

But then, at lower ranks people don't know how to play Bladesworn and Untamed to the degree that it's broken, and they are often a liability, while at higher ranks there's often no point fighting either.

Everybody has to endure this "meta" some way or another.

[RatherUnexpected.5603]

The "meme builds" will never end, and it has nothing to do with actual specific class balance, but underlying design philosophy - that they now can't change, because too many people are invested in the broken existing meta.

Which is to say, boon/condition cycling - fundamentally - is broken, because they approached the act of balancing them from the wrong end (which is to say, start with something too powerful, then mitigate and mitigate until it's a flash in the pan). Meanwhile, AOE, which should be treated as something special, with the strongest correlation between power and cost, is effectively the default attack pattern, with single target being the exception.

Oh, and of course then we have the support design philosophy issue - where support roles are simultaneously bunker roles, because they couldn't figure out a way to mesh their "no traditional healer/tank relationship" philosophy with the reality of "what happens when the healer gets targeted?"

The meta-chasing meme builds are a product of a design philosophy that aggressively rewards some of the most brainless, button-mashing strategies to such an extent that it is akin to a solid wall, with a few little cracks. People are always desperately searching for those cracks, because any time they try to be genuinely creative, and play "their way", they slam into that wall head-first.

On the whole, the entire combat design is far less skilful than a lot of PVPers would like to believe. The main deciding factor is "how broken is your build compared to theirs?" Because they are all, most certainly, broken.

That, to answer the OP's question, is "what it is" with all these meme builds - they are the duct taped solutions to problems that are the product of a misjudged underlying game design that was subsequently neglected. No amount of tweaks, nerfs or buffs to individual abilities or classes will ever change that. They'll just move the cracks somewhere else.

[Dreams.3128]

3 hours ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Flowki.7194 @Hotride.2187 its like....... Bladesworn is Just mostly Played. In lower Divisions but cause of it is only "OP" as long as You not been focused by 2 players at the same time it get not that mutch played in higher ones. Meanwhile p1+ Divisions are overun by scrapper\ele\virtu cause once you know how to play this class your basicly one of the most broken Builds that you could Play rn xD. Fair enough i must say im Happy when cata/bsw/granade Kits/virtu finally see nerfs (or reworks) cause its stupid as it is rn ^^

Good luck waiting for grenade kit nerfs. You'll be waiting about another decade before engineer gets something meaningful besides just spamming grenades all day.

[Myror.7521]

@Dreams.3128 i mean not gonna lie. I still don't get why a whole class is now designed though a utility Skill xd.

[Dreams.3128]

@Myror.7521 I'm still wondering that myself. Every time I want to pick up either Holo or Scrapper I literally recoil with the idea of having to slot in grenade kit because it legit still remains a solid, strong option. It's dumb and I REALLY wish they would rework ALL of the kits into something much more meaningful, instead of having this binary focus around grenade kit and how many grenades you can line up on someone.

[shion.2084]

3 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

@Myror.7521 I'm still wondering that myself. Every time I want to pick up either Holo or Scrapper I literally recoil with the idea of having to slot in grenade kit because it legit still remains a solid, strong option. It's dumb and I REALLY wish they would rework ALL of the kits into something much more meaningful, instead of having this binary focus around grenade kit and how many grenades you can line up on someone.

I can run successfully in plat games.... blast, shredder, heal, bulwark and Mortar.   Combined with zerker, chrono and battle/exploitation. 

It's a preferable option against some match ups, so I switch between it and a nades build.