Why is gearing up such an absolute nightmare?

[Maulclaw.4365]

@Badcat.7320 said:Just focus 1 main with many setups.

Never worked for me before, so why bother.

[ArcPrincess.9054]

I believe the game would be greatly improved if they just got rid of all stat combinations and just kept Berserker.

No, I know, support, but hear me out: this game has no trinity, there's no way to manage aggro, and out of nine classes just two have some measure of healing/buffing that the meta finds "viable", and they're still required to hit an arbitrary bar on a DPS metre or they're "dead weight". Also take a look at just about any sort of content outside of dungeons, from which GW2's game design has moved as far as possible: everything is a DPS check; meta events in any map are just DPS checks, PoF bounties and legendaries are DPS checks, the maximum variation on this formula comes in the form of moments when you need to CC, either fast or slow. That's about it: at no point in the entirety of the game will high toughness or vitality be worth a damn, or just a balance of stats, because all you can achieve is to lose DPS and losing DPS makes you fail events and get you kicked out of groups.

The problem is that at no point does the game explain any of this to you. It presents you an idyllic scenario in which you can play around with just about anything you want and there's so many combinations, so many trees, so many ways to build a character! Wrong. There's only one correct way to build a character that doesn't come from a class that has a support build: DPS, the very game mechanics make this objectively true.

If your playstyle doesn't fit going full DPS, either look for casual guilds or play near-exclusively with friends or join trains where content is so trivialized that no one even notices whether you're doing something or not. Fortunately most PvE content (even most dungeons) can be soloed if you find something that clicks well enough, but of course it's going to take a while longer.

I have a reaper with Ossa armour and weapons and Nomad trinkets, I love her, it's the character I've done most content with, but someone brings ArcDPS in a fractal and I either leave or the rest of the party does, not because I can't complete it (there's been times where we got through precisely because I was able to tank stuff and provide healing/condition conversion, did that just a couple days ago in Arah too), but because it takes longer to. I have a guardian with full cleric gear, mace and shield/staff, I love her too but I can't play her because there's no way to ensure the mobs will stay on me and keep punching me instead of arbitrarily deciding they're all going to murder the DPS which will yell at me for not doing enough damage to kill them before they killed him, and most of my healing, shielding and aegis-providing is wasted too because I have no way of handling aggro.

Another thing that I feel most of the community doesn't get is that sometimes you don't quite know which build clicks with you until you try it, but try crafting a full set of exotic gear to "try out a build" in PvE. I'm now converting my mesmer back to Dire because condi with some survivability was the only build that didn't make me feel like a glass cannon that couldn't shoot, and good thing I didn't actually go all the way to try and go full Commander to "try it out" because that would have set me out a few dozen gold just to end up saying "eh, I liked it before"; I got her all the chronomancer tree and farmed Dragon's Stand enough to deck her in Wanderer gear with Berserker accessories and weapons, but I felt way too frail already and I just didn't like the mechanics.

Have that journey of self-discovery a few times and you'll start to understand why gearing up can feel like a nightmare. Objectively speaking it's great that we have a gear cap and that after two expansions your vanilla exotic gear is still on par with even the most recent content, don't get me wrong, I appreciate it. Then again when I had to gear up in WoW to reach endgame GS I didn't have to grind quite as much, and if I played a certain class I already had an idea of what sort of builds I could have done, the rest was a matter of mastering the mechanics. Here in GW2 I love that I could theoretically build a thief with lots of healing power and the ability to tough attacks out and cause mayhem through stealth and active defenses, but then that dream crashes against the harsh reality that if I don't go full Berserker Daredevil spamming 2 I'm all lost DPS and dead weight and relegated to the stinky casuals corner.

Sorry for the long rant, I have read the discussion and felt like there were a few points nobody was touching on, which I feel are pretty important in understanding why some players believe that gearing up is a nightmare. I'd love to try and see what happens if I put some Seraph or Marshal gear on my ranger or heck, even my thief, but the "curiosity cost", if you allow me, is high enough to make me feel like it's not worth it, and considering how much grinding is required just to find out which build "clicks" for me with which character, yes, it feels like a nightmare even though I do fully realize it's not as bad as it could be.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

Gearing is not a problem if you have just a few characters.

But once you get past 20, it becomes a hassle when you want to have different stats in different characters, or when you want to switch around those stats between them.

That is why it would be better if we had a Template and Gear loadout system that allows us to unlock stat combinations and upgrades, then load them up, since GW2's stats and upgrades do not have random values, they can be used in a system of presets and unlocks.

After all, once you have an Ascended Berserker sword, all your characters have an ascended bersker sword because it's account bound.Why not being able to salvage one ascended berserker sword to unlock then stats, then all other ascended swords you get would be able to switch to berserker stats for a small fee. You'd not be getting anything for free since salvaging the sword is impossible unless you had it, you'd just be saving the hassle of constantly moving the sword around between characters.Or we could be able to have a gear rarity between ascended and legendary. Like "Mystic" craft a "Mystic Sword" out of an ascended sword with a mystic forge recipe, then you can switch stats on it like legendary, but requires you to unlock each stats first, and to unlock the stats you have to prove you got the stats before.The mystic forge recipes to switch stats would still have use, since you could use them to get different stats on ascended gear before salvaging them, to unlock those stats.

There should also be a way to craft "replicas" of legendary items you've crafted and bound to the account before. Replicas would not count to unlock for Twice-told legend, and they would not be as cheap as an ascended and require decent amounts of Dark Energy and copious amounts of Dark Matter among other materials to craft, so you'll have to salvage ascended and exotics to craft them, but they would be much cheaper than another legendary. They would also show "Replica" in the description, in the same manner some items show "Unique".We could use a skink for all these exotics that are getting under 50silver. Specially armors.

[Samnang.1879]

r u kidding me... exotics are like 20s-50s nowadays... 1 year ago i could sell a berserker exotic for like 10gall my 21 characters are ascended geared... and am not even complaining about the price of gearing up... just complaining when anet decides to nerf things and then i have to change the stats again - sigh-

[MarshallLaw.9260]

@"RandomWolf.3986" said:As someone who has a lot of characters, I honestly feel like gearing up for this game is such a massive burden.This is your choice to have a lot of characters, it's like saying you have 20 children and it's more expensive to feed and clothe them for you than for a parent with only 2 children. Of course it is, that's maths.It seems like it's outright impossible to gear up a character with the original stats these days; unless you wish to run around as a glass-cannon.Please be more specific. You say no glass cannon but the most expensive and in demand HoT stat is Vipers - which is glass cannon. Which stat combi are you referring to?

I keep getting myself into feeble groups.I don't know what you play in fractals but if you see this too often, why not play a support build if you think you are so much better and can carry a group. Personally I started fractals with a zerk DH but also made a support Temp simply because I felt there were situations where I could do better than the support in some of my pugs.

I tried to find myself a guild, but none were all that "active" or willing to help by any means.No offence but with so many guilds about, (95% of the ones I've been/am in are very friendly) I feel that you maybe haven't made enough effort to locate one. Look on forums for advertising posts.Other MMOs that I've played were pretty much straightforward when it came to gearing up, and even lesser versions of said stats were enough to get the character working."character working" is a rather ambiguous term, but "lesser" stats are still very viable with some dependence on content. Rabid/Carrion/Dire are super-cheap condi alternative; Magi (good for support) is one of the cheapest to buy/craft. Zerker you've ruled out due to glassiness, why not try Soldiers, Cavaliers, Valkarie? (I still don't understand why you're saying vanilla stats are irrelevant - I cant remember the last time someone wanted a Harriers DH over a Zerk DH)

I just can't understand what I'm doing wrong. I've been struggling at this for over a year now, and taking breaks every now and then doesn't seem to be helping.My best suggestion is to join a a good guild. Search for one on forums which is suitable for your playtime and server.

[Rashagar.8349]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a nightmare for myself but I certainly don't do myself any favours when it comes to making gearing up easier.

If I decide I want a particular armour stat I first look for what armour skins I still have to unlock that would provide me that stat and give me a good excuse to finally get it. And then from then on I'm stuck in this kind of limbo where I feel like buying the cheap exotic on the TP is a "waste" of 1g (or whatever relatively insignificant price it is) but I also remember that the reason I don't have the skin unlocked yet is that actually unlocking it is a lot of time investment and my attention is too split between other things I want to do instead heh.

So my advice would be: don't be like me. :p

[vampirelazarus.9403]

It sounds like you're trying to gather all the mats.

Stop that right now!

A full set of vipers is somewhere around ~80g if you buy the mats (I just did this for my scourge this weekend). You get roughly 80g just from the daily log in rewards. Heck, even just playing you get a good amount of gold. Fractals are another easy ~30g per day.

I think you need to take a step back, and look for the easy way to get the armor, not the hard way.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

gearing isn't hard at all. But figuring out where to go and what to do to gear can be a pain because everything is set up in a really confusing manner with a wide variety of currencies.

[Maulclaw.4365]

r u kidding me... exotics are like 20s-50s nowadays... 1 year ago i could sell a berserker exotic for like 10gall my 21 characters are ascended geared... and am not even complaining about the price of gearing up... just complaining when anet decides to nerf things and then i have to change the stats again - sigh-

It looks like someone didn't bother to read a thing. The hypocrisy in your post is painful to read.

[Maulclaw.4365]

@"ArcPrincess.9054" said:I believe the game would be greatly improved if they just got rid of all stat combinations and just kept Berserker.

No, I know, support, but hear me out: this game has no trinity, there's no way to manage aggro, and out of nine classes just two have some measure of healing/buffing that the meta finds "viable", and they're still required to hit an arbitrary bar on a DPS metre or they're "dead weight". Also take a look at just about any sort of content outside of dungeons, from which GW2's game design has moved as far as possible: everything is a DPS check; meta events in any map are just DPS checks, PoF bounties and legendaries are DPS checks, the maximum variation on this formula comes in the form of moments when you need to CC, either fast or slow. That's about it: at no point in the entirety of the game will high toughness or vitality be worth a kitten, or just a balance of stats, because all you can achieve is to lose DPS and losing DPS makes you fail events and get you kicked out of groups.

The problem is that at no point does the game explain any of this to you. It presents you an idyllic scenario in which you can play around with just about anything you want and there's so many combinations, so many trees, so many ways to build a character! Wrong. There's only one correct way to build a character that doesn't come from a class that has a support build: DPS, the very game mechanics make this objectively true.

If your playstyle doesn't fit going full DPS, either look for casual guilds or play near-exclusively with friends or join trains where content is so trivialized that no one even notices whether you're doing something or not. Fortunately most PvE content (even most dungeons) can be soloed if you find something that clicks well enough, but of course it's going to take a while longer.

I have a reaper with Ossa armour and weapons and Nomad trinkets, I love her, it's the character I've done most content with, but someone brings ArcDPS in a fractal and I either leave or the rest of the party does, not because I can't complete it (there's been times where we got through precisely because I was able to tank stuff and provide healing/condition conversion, did that just a couple days ago in Arah too), but because it takes longer to. I have a guardian with full cleric gear, mace and shield/staff, I love her too but I can't play her because there's no way to ensure the mobs will stay on me and keep punching me instead of arbitrarily deciding they're all going to murder the DPS which will yell at me for not doing enough damage to kill them before they killed him, and most of my healing, shielding and aegis-providing is wasted too because I have no way of handling aggro.

Another thing that I feel most of the community doesn't get is that sometimes you don't quite know which build clicks with you until you try it, but try crafting a full set of exotic gear to "try out a build" in PvE. I'm now converting my mesmer back to Dire because condi with some survivability was the only build that didn't make me feel like a glass cannon that couldn't shoot, and good thing I didn't actually go all the way to try and go full Commander to "try it out" because that would have set me out a few dozen gold just to end up saying "eh, I liked it before"; I got her all the chronomancer tree and farmed Dragon's Stand enough to deck her in Wanderer gear with Berserker accessories and weapons, but I felt way too frail already and I just didn't like the mechanics.

Have that journey of self-discovery a few times and you'll start to understand why gearing up can feel like a nightmare. Objectively speaking it's great that we have a gear cap and that after two expansions your vanilla exotic gear is still on par with even the most recent content, don't get me wrong, I appreciate it. Then again when I had to gear up in WoW to reach endgame GS I didn't have to grind quite as much, and if I played a certain class I already had an idea of what sort of builds I could have done, the rest was a matter of mastering the mechanics. Here in GW2 I love that I could theoretically build a thief with lots of healing power and the ability to tough attacks out and cause mayhem through stealth and active defenses, but then that dream crashes against the harsh reality that if I don't go full Berserker Daredevil spamming 2 I'm all lost DPS and dead weight and relegated to the stinky casuals corner.

Sorry for the long rant, I have read the discussion and felt like there were a few points nobody was touching on, which I feel are pretty important in understanding why some players believe that gearing up is a nightmare. I'd love to try and see what happens if I put some Seraph or Marshal gear on my ranger or heck, even my thief, but the "curiosity cost", if you allow me, is high enough to make me feel like it's not worth it, and considering how much grinding is required just to find out which build "clicks" for me with which character, yes, it feels like a nightmare even though I do fully realize it's not as bad as it could be.

The rant is fine, no need to apologize. It's always nice to hear someone out when it comes to alternatives.

[Jimbru.6014]

PVE meta builds are designed for max DPS in raids and high end fractals, with support specialists helping them. They are NOT ideal for solo survival in the open world and character stories. Meta players might say, "You just need to get better at survival," but the ugly truth is that the majority population of any game does not play for hours at a time on the bleeding edge of the content. Most people, self included, are filthy casuals. Meta builds either aren't useful for such purposes, or aren't affordable. Why? Because time is a currency. We only get so much of it outside work, kids, and the other demands of having real adult lives. And the gear for most meta builds is locked behind weeks to months of grinding in relatively difficult content, and the worst crafting system in any MMO ever. Even if all you do is grind for gold to buy the gear instead of make it, that still takes time unless you buy gems.

All that is why none of my characters now use meta builds. I have five 80's; they're all Power builds with exotic gear (only my main has ascended) and customized for better survival than meta builds offer for my mostly solo casual style of play.

Things that would help the gear grind:

• The plethora of zone by zone currencies in this game is an absolute bane. This game needs to do what WoW did and concentrate its currencies into just a few types.
• The crafting system in this game is the most unfriendly I have ever seen in a successful game. It needs major streamlining to get rid of the time gates, the layers upon layers of sub-components, and the bottlenecks like Obsidian Shards.
• Expertise is the absolute worst stat in terms of being both essential to condi builds, and difficult to acquire. Fix that.
• Tone down the "sensory overload" combat style that makes all this meta vs. survival argument necessary in the first place. Durability vs. DPS should not have to be one or the other; we should be able to build a healthy balance of both.

[Rauderi.8706]

The stat system for GW2 is pretty terrible. And it's rooted in the crafting system's limitations, so in order to really break away from this nonsense, ANet would have to completely reform the entire system. And because the system is as bad as it is, it's only going to get worse with each Living World chapter and expansion.

[Chichimec.9364]

@"Etterwyn.5263" said:Chichimec.9364 if you join an organized RIBA squad in Silverwastes and stay through the chest farm between metas, you will get a TON of Dragonite and Empyreals. As well as the occasional Obsidian Shard. I don't think anyone does chest-only maps in SW anymore but you should check LFG anyway.

Also don't forget the LS3 maps. Each map has a special node that gives Ascended crafting mats as well as map currency.

When Etterwyn first gave me this advice I said thank you. Now, having followed that advice, I have to give an even bigger thank you. Not only have I been scooping up up some much needed ascended mats but the experience changed my perspective on the "gearing up nightmare". When I first realized what was involved in crafting ascended gear, my initial reaction was similar to the the OP's - frustration and anger. Here was a whole new level of complexity, yet another steep learning curve in a game that has thrown out steep curve after steep curve. (For me at least, your mileage may vary.) As I actually started running around Silverwastes and Ember Bay, (the only LS3 map I have unlocked), I began to realize just how cleverly designed this game is.

In the five months I've been playing GW2 I've spent most of my time in open world PVE on the core Tyria maps. At this point I know my way around them fairly well and they've become a comfortable sandbox for me. If I want to move to the next level of gear though, I have to step out of my comfort zone and start getting serious about doing other maps. As I did that, I realized that I had been getting bored with core Tyria and was actually enjoying the challenge of learning maps I hadn't spent much time on before. I could have stayed in my little sandbox but the design of the crafting system was pushing me on to new challenges if I wanted better gear.

Heck, even the time-gating started making sense to me. For one thing, I need a lot of time to gather the massive amount of mats needed. For another thing, the amount of time and mats needed to produce each piece of ascended gear gives me a meaningful goal to work toward over an extended period of time. It took me a bit but I finally realized that gearing up is not a nightmare for me, it's a compelling challenge, one that keeps me engaged with GW2. And that's good game design.

[Jimbru.6014]

@Rauderi.8706 said:The stat system for GW2 is pretty terrible. And it's rooted in the crafting system's limitations, so in order to really break away from this nonsense, ANet would have to completely reform the entire system. And because the system is as bad as it is, it's only going to get worse with each Living World chapter and expansion.

Agreed. Crit chance and crit damage (Ferocity) should be one stat. Condition damage and duration (Expertise) should be one stat. And many other simplifications that could be done.

[Rauderi.8706]

@Jimbru.6014 said:

@"Rauderi.8706" said:The stat system for GW2 is pretty terrible. And it's rooted in the crafting system's limitations, so in order to really break away from this nonsense, ANet would have to completely reform the entire system. And because the system is as bad as it is, it's only going to get worse with each Living World chapter and expansion.

Agreed. Crit chance and crit damage (Ferocity) should be one stat. Condition damage and duration (Expertise) should be one stat. And many other simplifications that could be done.

It goes muuuch deeper than that.

Granted, gearing could greatly benefit from a simplified stat system. (ie, Power applies to both Power and Condition, Support to mesh Healing and Concentration, Severity for Crit and Expertise, Toughness becomes Tough + Vit)

But what I mean is the entire "nomenclature" of stat sets. It's gated by entirely too many different things:

• Whether the stat set even exists
• Material grind
• Expansion ownership
• Submaterials within those expansions (flax, linseed oil, ley-infused sand...)

It's not terribly appropriate for something that's essential to buildcraft, but the crafting system as a vector to get gear is what stops any better system from getting worked on.

[Voltekka.2375]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:PVE meta builds are designed for max DPS in raids and high end fractals, with support specialists helping them. They are NOT ideal for solo survival in the open world and character stories. Meta players might say, "You just need to get better at survival," but the ugly truth is that the majority population of any game does not play for hours at a time on the bleeding edge of the content. Most people, self included, are filthy casuals. Meta builds either aren't useful for such purposes, or aren't affordable. Why? Because time is a currency. We only get so much of it outside work, kids, and the other demands of having real adult lives. And the gear for most meta builds is locked behind weeks to months of grinding in relatively difficult content, and the worst crafting system in any MMO ever. Even if all you do is grind for gold to buy the gear instead of make it, that still takes time unless you buy gems.

All that is why none of my characters now use meta builds. I have five 80's; they're all Power builds with exotic gear (only my main has ascended) and customized for better survival than meta builds offer for my mostly solo casual style of play.

Things that would help the gear grind:

• The plethora of zone by zone currencies in this game is an absolute bane. This game needs to do what WoW did and concentrate its currencies into just a few types.
• The crafting system in this game is the most unfriendly I have ever seen in a successful game. It needs major streamlining to get rid of the time gates, the layers upon layers of sub-components, and the bottlenecks like Obsidian Shards.
• Expertise is the absolute worst stat in terms of being both essential to condi builds, and difficult to acquire. Fix that.
• Tone down the "sensory overload" combat style that makes all this meta vs. survival argument necessary in the first place. Durability vs. DPS should not have to be one or the other; we should be able to build a healthy balance of both.

You can choose between meta build if you want to do end game content, or your own open world tanky-healer-support-whatever you want build. The reason is very simple. In endgame stuff, the faster you kill the enemy, the less time there is for your teammates to make mistakes and wipe. Durability vs META dps has always been a thing. It is natural for the tank to... Tank instead of doing huge dps. Should it be able to do both? No. You want to do endgame stuff? People will probably kick you for having tank stats instead of dps stats. It is a matter of l2p. In open world, you can bring nomad thief or whatever works for you. Noone will complain or care.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

shrug I find gearing up so easy and quick, that I can't even imagine it being faster and quicker. Exo gear is easily done or cheaply bought. Ascended gear just takes a bit of determination. If you craft your time gated asc mats every day, you have a huge stockpile whenever you decide to make a new character. Ascended trinkets? Cheap and easy to get. Orrian pearls? You get so many you drown in them. Karma? Just piles up. Winterberries? Farm the map and you can buy a trinket every couple of days.

Seriously, gearing up is the least problem this game has.

I really don't see the problem at all.