User:Qiff/the zerg meta

State of the game

Currently, the best way to support your party members is to kill your foe as fast as possible. - Arenanet developer when announcing zerk meta changes.

Note: this article is about PvE. It does not account for PvP or WvW. Also keep in mind that the content is partly subject to personal preference, and partly (blunt) generalization. I cannot insert all the nuances, they can be discussed on the talk page, along with spelling errors and incorrect information.

Dulfy has uploaded guides for each profession. These guides are very detailed and describe the optimal role and setup for each profession in dungeons and fractals. I advise everyone to read them for (at least) their mainly played profession.

At the time of writing (Jan 2014), we are 1,5 years into the great adventure that is Guild Wars 2. While I still greatly enjoy the game and play it frequently, some thoughts I had prior to launch have haunted me since then. Some of these brain farts are not thought through and not worth mentioning, but others have actually started to take shape as a real problem. The discussion about the current meta of the game combines two of my initial problems I had with the game.

• Prior to launch, Arenanet stated that Guild Wars 2 would not have 'boring repetitive gameplay like other MMOs, and that it would be accessible for anyone, hardcore or casual. This frightened me, as hardcore players need challenging endgame content so they do not lose interest in the game.
• There are no classes within professions. There are no dedicated healers and tanks. They stated that 'anyone can do anything'. I knew before launch that this last sentence would not be the case. Professions have different skills and different weapons, so they will automatically be better in one or a few specific tasks.

I will explain what this has to do with the zerk meta. In all my examples I will refer to dungeons, because normal PvE (strolling around in the fields) is too easy to require specific builds.

The Zerk Meta

The Metagame refers to anything that is most frequently used by players, so they contain the most popular builds and playstyles. Currently in GW2, it is commonly accepted that damage-dealing professions achieve their highest Damage Per Second (DPS), by using full Berserker's gear and using the appropriate traits. The best example is the warrior. They bring the appropriate DPS-increasing banners, signets or shouts to support and to increase party-wide. Because of point 2 above, any class can run this effectively, to some extent. In dungeons, parties preferably consist of 1 Guardian, 1 Thief, 2 Eles and 1 Warrior to maximize damage output and minimize the time needed to clear the dungeon. Tactics often involve one party member pulling all the foes to a wall, or the whole party stacks in a corner to quickly demolish any group of foes or boss. This does not mean that dungeons cannot be cleared without this set-up, or that this is always the fastest way, but this concept is generally seen throughout the game. Many encounters are not even worth stacking for anymore, since the Fiery Greatsword Skill was nerfed. This leads to limiting builds: the Warrior in particular has almost no other way of playing, other than a greatsword. There are very few people out there who do not use a greatsword warrior.

The problem

This situation has gone so far, some parties do not even accept certain professions anymore. In the early days, the engineer was generally ignored (official statistics from Anet showed it was the least played profession) and people automatically considered it to be bad. The engineer in particular is the most versatile profession of the game, with now the highest DPS behind the elementalist, and, if played correctly, can be an amazing asset on any team. Throwing grenades, while dealing direct and condition damage and stacking vulnerability is very useful, while the healing turret is a useful blasting and healing tool. The necromancer and ranger have the same problem. The rangers suffers from an stereotype problem: the Bearbow ranger (new players often choose a bear to tank attacks, while using a longbow to attack from afar, being useless in teams). In reality, the ranger is a great asset to a dungeon team: good DPS, Frost Spirit and Spotter are nice tools to have in a team. The necromancer suffers from not being able to shine in any aspect: damage is mediocre, its high survivability is practically useless (as I will discuss later) and support in the form of utilities can arguably be done better by other professions. 'Elite' teams therefore reject these players, often not knowing that the Engineer's DPS is now higher than that of a warrior. The community is now roughly divided into two groups: a group that accepts the meta and uses it to its full extent, and another group that rejects the meta and wants a more 'balanced' way of playing. Recently, Arenanet has stated that they are looking into this. So how did this meta originate, is it really a problem and if so, what should be changed?

Origin

It is important to note that all things in life are subject to evolution. Games that form a community and achieve goals together in a specific way are in a way also subject to evolution. People find an effective way of earning money or getting gear, which will naturally spread, because it is effective, and other people also want to make money. This creates a metagame, popular builds that generally achieve the best results. Sometimes Arenanet steps in and changes the game, which can be seen as a series of mutations. Using the new tools we get, we find other effective ways of making money, so the metagame shifts. I have personally experienced this evolution, and will explain this later. I will provide examples and arguments to explain how we got to such a zerk meta, using the differences compared to GW1 and personal experience.

Combat Trinity

The Combat Trinity is a term used for three specific roles a profession can play: a tank, a healer and a damage dealer. In other MMOs (including GW1), the metagame revolves around this concept. In GW1, a speed-clearing team generally consists of 1 tank to aggro and ball the foes, one or two healers to keep the tank and the group alive (should some foes escape the ball) and the rest of the team to dish out as much damage as possible, preferably from a ranged position, using AoE skills. Back to point 2 in the first paragraph, we see that there is no dedicated healer, and the combat system does not allow 'old school tanking'. Here are the reasons why this combat trinity does not work in GW2:

• There is no dedicated healing profession. Most heals are also non-target AoE heals, while in GW1, a monk had to click through his whole party and use the appropriate skills. The closest we have to a healer is a Guardian, which is a supporter. Therefore, I will refer to 'supporting' instead of 'healing' or 'monking'. Your support skills as a Guardian are almost all party-wide and never require targeting of another party member. This makes your job considerably easier, while you can still dish out some damage.
• There is no old-school tank. In GW2, you can never stay alive indefinitely with any build set-up. For example: there are no skills or skill combinations that will negate (almost) all damage, which did exist in GW1. Skills like block of a shield or Endure Pain and Mist Form only last a few seconds, with astronomical cooldowns, reducing your damage negating capabilities. Your tanking skills are further reduced by foes that can hit incredibly hard. Some foes will kill you in one hit, regardless of your armor, and some foes still hit over half on even the sturdiest players. The aggro system has been designed in such a way that enemies behave somewhat unpredictably. Some enemies aggro on the highest armor, while some aggro one the highest DPS'er, and others on the lowest toughness. All in all, the combat system is specifically designed to counter real tankers. When I speak of 'tanky' players in GW2, I refer to players with higher armor, capable of taking more hits than average.

The game favors more DPS

If you click on my character Qiff on my User page, you will see an article about my journey as a warrior. I started off as a Power/Toughness/Vitality Mace/Shield warrior. I thought the weakness + stuns of the mace would be enough to be able to tank hits from dungeon bosses. My shouts healed (traits) and cured conditions (soldier runes) while I supported my party with might, fury, and vulnerability on foes. I found out that 1) I could not tank like I hoped I could, and 2) my DPS was so low that my team around me was getting smashed, and eventually I also succumbed to the hard hits of my foes. I discovered the power of evasion and started using a greatsword as a main weapon, so I could do some damage, but full Soldier armor was clearly holding me back. I switched to knight, which did not help (you get precision but lose power) and slowly swapped gear parts for Berserker's stats. Now I am full berserker and having the best time of my life. Hitting 40k on the last Hundred Blades hit is awesome.

• Defiant. My stunning abilities (get it?) of my mace and shield were not enough to stop bosses from killing me. Defiant is a smart and interesting mechanic, that prevents bosses from becoming baby food by being knock-locked or stun-locked. In GW1, bosses were susceptible to crowd control, or completely immune to it. It does further limit our build-creating options, however, as a warrior with a hammer is therefore completely useless in dungeons. Defiant is a double-edged sword, but in the end does affect our options and thus makes us resort to damage instead of crowd control.
• 5-man parties instead of 8. While I really liked this change from GW1 to GW2, mainly because organizing groups is less tedious, it also affected the gameplay in favor of berserker players. In a party of 8, there would be one tank, one healer and 6 DPS classes. The damage output came from 6/8 party members. In GW2, a tank and a healer only leave room for 3 other party members, so the damage has to come from 3/5 of the party. Luckily, there is no real healer and no real tank, so the tanky and supporting players can still deal some damage, but it will be far lower than the players opting for full berserker. There is also a good possibility to lose the fight, because of too low DPS. In the tank section above I described that many protection skills have long cooldowns. This indirectly means that a party cannot keep up their healing/protection against the damage foes and bosses. I illustrated this with my mace/shield warrior.
• We can evade. The purpose of these hard-hitting foes is to make use of that precious evade-button. Evading is a key component in the GW2 combat system. Dodging all forms of direct damage is an incredibly powerful tool, and makes this combat system so dynamic. The increased mobility let's you keep your momentum and allows for a more dynamic gameplay in general. They clearly want you to evade those insane attacks of the bosses, instead of taking the hits to the face. Good players can make such an efficient use of this feature, however, that they do not need to bring any armor at all. In this way, you can opt for a higher risk/reward build: more damage, less armor.
• Stacking. Stacking refers to the balling up of your own party, preferably in a corner, aggro'ing your foes and slaying them all in a matter of seconds. I saw this technique first being applied in Crucible of Eternity, where it might have oriniginated (not sure). Subject Alpha was a very hard boss in the early days, and dodging his insane AoE attacks in Path 2 and 3 required an great deal of evasion skills and endurance. Players found out that if they stacked, all the AoE fields would overlap, and one would only have to use a single well-timed dodge to evade all the damage. Stacking is now used in almost every dungeon and is detrimental to the general versatility that the game provides. If your damage output is high enough, foes do not even have a chance to attack you, making extra armor or healing even more redundant. On top of that, many parties carry the appropriate skills to migitate damage. A thief with an off-hand pistol can set up smoke fields, keeping all enemies blinded. The same goes for Well of Darkness and the Earth version Glyph of Storms. Some foes only shoot projectiles, which can be reflected with Wall of Reflection and Feedback. Stacking is a naturally evolved playstyle because the game unintentionally favors it. All those AoE fields, combined with your damage output, make toughness, healing and vitality obsolete.

• The best Defense is Offense. The above examples and gameplay mechanics show that players can reduce a lot of (boss) fights to a few seconds, making the content completely redundant. This is also the reason why Quickness was nerfed in the first place (200% faster to 150%). Even with the few nerfs, maximizing out damage and stacking will achieve the fastest results, which is what you want when farming gold or items.

On the other hand, some players would like to see all the things dungeons have to offer (one often forgets how beautiful this game looks), explore a little, figure out the skills the boss has, plan accordingly and clear the dungeon. This takes longer than rushing through it, of course, but might be fun to do once in a while. If you want to rush dungeons but still play a versatile game, make some of your characters full berserker and switch according to the need of your team. This way you can be useful as well as play different classes. Another Example: when dungeons were overhauled (and they implemented the extra daily gold reward), Ascalonian Catacombs also received an upgrade, especially the bosses at the end of each path. All bosses required certain tactics to beat, and it seemed like they implemented some nice gameplay mechanics to further complicate the fight. Boss #1 got different scream attacks, which deal high damage, cause a lot of conditions, but can be evaded quite easily, because he always screams in a cone in front of him. On top of that, an endless stream gravelings spawned to knock you down, so you can get hit by that scream attack. Fires burst out randomly in the room to burn you for more damage. The key is to evade his frontal screams, and try to lure the spawning gravelings into that fire, where they die immediately. This requires some dodging, and planning, as you want to attack the boss at a spot near some fire spawns. As of now, this boss can be killed before gravelings even have a chance to knock you down. Boss #2 is invulnerable, until you charge traps, by pulling special oozes into them. When you lure the boss in, the traps go off and he can be attacked. He has, however, insane AoE fields, that can overlap and destroy your whole party in seconds. The key is to pull him into a trap, and attack him, while avoiding those big AoE fields. On top of that, every time the boss gets hit, an ooze splits off and will attack you (causing 1 stack of Vulnerability, quickly racking up). The oozes are invulnerable. He can pull all the oozes to him to heal himself per ooze. This is an interesting boss, which also requires some planning and dodging. Players have found a spot where you can lure him, again to stack up, and attack him in a corner. The AoE fields are actually projectiles, which the boss shoots, and can be negated/reflected with appropriate skills. Again, with enough DPS, the boss will die in a matter of seconds, before your reflect skill runs out. The same basically accounts for Boss #3. The difference is that Boss #3 had annoying mechanics to begin with, as he could make the ceiling collapse, knocking down and dealing heavy damage. One had to rely on the signature skill of a ghostly ally to be shielded from the collapsing ceiling, which did not always activate properly. Players have found a spot where you cannot get hit by the rocks, and can still attack him close range. Alternatively, with appropriate DPS you do not need to stack into corners anymore for any of these bosses.

Concluding

The way this game is set up, going full berserker, while being able to stay alive with evasion, is still the fastest way to get your money, gear, achievements, etc. On one hand, it is a shame that they implemented so many combinations of armor stats, while most of them are completely ignored. On the other hand, one could argue that there are plenty of feasible options that do not require you to be full berserker. For example, I still play a Celestial Elementalist in WvW. And why would you not try out other builds? Find the right friends or guild, and create something together that works perfectly fine for you. Let the farmers farm, just do what you like best. And are other MMOs really different? In the end, if you have class division, you are also required to run certain builds with certain gear and certain stats. Even GW1 had the same problems, a monk had to be a healer, and an elementalist rarely used anything other than Fire Magic. That is the natural process of evolution, or in the case of MMOs, the creation of the meta-game.

Admittedly, the rush teams (including my warrior) have taken over dungeon runs, making some bosses redundant, skipping parts, all just to get more gold per hour. Personally, I do not mind farming dungeons for gold; I am not bored of them yet and I like the daily reward, which makes me come back. The stacking problem is different for me, as it makes the game more dull. I will not complain, though, as it is still the fastest way to get through a dungeon. Not the most fun, but MMOs have always been one big long chore. And I still love that chore, zerk-meta or not.

Updates

Dev Live Stream

Since I wrote this article, Arenanet has gradually updated the game, to slowly try and make other builds more viable. In the last Live Stream, the discussed the current state of the game and said they were planning some changes to counter this. The first mention is Critical Damage, which will be changed into Ferocity. This skill has the same purpose, more Ferocity means more Critical Damage, but scales like other stats. This balances out Critical Damage, which means that full DPS builds are looking at a ~10% damage. The first thought of me and my guildies was: "Well, this changes nothing." In the case of full DPS builds, it will not be enough to change our gameplay in any way. Other changes that were announced are the evasion system and conditions, which will be changed over the course of this year. I reckon celestial stats will be affected the most, because this was one of their great benefits: decent all-round stats, while still having maximal critical damage.

Origin of Madness

Another stat combo has been released: Zealot's. This combo gives Power/Precision/Healing Power. The Living Story World Boss (Scarlet's Marionette) is a perfect example of a challenging, but not frustratingly hard Boss Battle. It does favor Berserkers over anything else: you have to evade the Marionette's attacks for achievements, and kill the Champions as fast as possible. Nevertheless, this one is amazing. The Wurm is completely different. It is permenantly added to the game, and does not favor Berserkers at all. I even got a Soldier's set for my Elementalist, just to get a little bit more power (than Celestial) and survive the endless stream of mobs that spawn. Teams need different builds to be as effective as possible. Necromancers and Engineers are useful with their AoE conditions, because the Partially Digested Husks take very little damage from normal attacks. The damage all the adds pump out can quickly rack up, so weakness and blind from both professions is amazing. Elementalists and Warriors are needed for their power. Since the Wurms cannot be critically hit, Precision and Critical Damage are useless. They still work on the adds, however, which will have to be kept in check, because they can quickly overwelm a team. Guardians are sturdy AoE supporters and/or damage dealers, depending on your build, while the Time Warp of a Mesmer never disappoints. I do not see as much use for Thieves and Rangers, sadly. The Thief does not deal enough damage if he cannot crit and is way too squishy, while the condition spamming or damage dealing of the Ranger is outshadowed by the Necromancer/Engineer or Warrior, respectively. On the note of creating end game worthy content. I do not think World Bosses are the type of content that is suitable for boss fights as difficult as this. A percentage of the people is amazingly stupid, and has no idea what to do and what is going on. Harder content like this would be better executed in smaller groups (e.g. Dungeons), so communication is done better. In this case, the Marionette is a better example: it is not hard, but not braindead easy, and you will not always win. The Wurm will almost never be won (at the time of writing: Desolation (EU) is the only server that has succeeded), which is why it will soon be ignored as a world boss. On the other hand, it does provide a very challenging boss battle, which will occasionally be attempted, just like Tequatl.

April Feature update

14-04-2014 marks the day the feature pack came out. To appeal even more to the casual player (attempting to make everything easier to access), the trait system was updated, along with the updated rune and sigil system. The ferocity change did absolutely nothing. The 10% DPS decrease is compensated by the two sigils now available on dual weapons, like greatsword warriors and guardians. All the new grandmaster traits are either support or defensive traits, so most meta builds have not changed. If anything, I feel the meta has been anchored more deeply into the game: prices of the best sigils (Strength, Night, Bloodlust) and runes (Scholar) have skyrocketed.

Recently, WoodenPotatoes released a video of why Healing Power is useless in this game. It covers a lot of things from this article.

The april feature update changed the scaling, which means that lower level dungeons (AC, TA, SE) are now so easy with full berserker armor, that you do not even require a brain anymore to beat them. Just smash your head on your keyboard until everything is dead. Not complaining, though, as pugging is now easier for low level dungeons. Small notion: spider queen now uses all her attacks in melee range. Just vaporize the boss before it can do anything. Not complaining here, more gold/hr is fine. Arenanet's mission to make other builds besides berserker's feasible is not advancing, however. One step forward, two steps backward, I guess.

Living Story 2

This Living story introduced the first armor type without offensive stats: Nomad's gear. Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power. Being a tank is still not good, though.

September Feature Pack

September 2014 brought us the second feature pack, with some quality-of-life changes and skill balances. Most notably, the warrior got a 5% damage reduction on the greatsword. This does not change anything at all. The warrior still has the best DPS in the game.* The Fiery Greatsword elite of the Elementalist has also been nerfed. I was surprised by how little this actually changed for our regular dungeon clearing group. It forced the eles to look at other utilities, as their elites are now very situational (almost completely useless), so large bosses are now even more the victim of the Ice Bow's wrath. Skill 5 freezes (almost) any boss for a few seconds, which allows for insane DPS without consequences.

The meta gradually changed from blasting might, then DPS'ing boss to blasting might and keeping that up throughout the fight. I think this was because of the FGS nerf, as this evaporated foes so quickly that a might upkeep was not necessairy. I am glad to see that there are now a few viable builds for the warrior. The standard 6,5,0,0,3 full DPS build, switching to axe/mace for vulnerability, 6 6 x GS camping or the Phalanx Strength build, 4,4,0,6,0, using only the greatsword. This ensures 25 might upkeep (especially with an ele in the team) and also supports the team with Empower Allies. Another advantage is that your offhand can be used for sword/horn for party-wide swiftness, a blast, and Savage Leap for skipping.

I stated that the warrior had the highest DPS of the game. At least since September 2014, this is not the case. The elementalist gets that trophy now. A staff ele, running 6 6 2 0 0 (or 6 6 0 2 0 / 6 4 2 2 0), can keep up lava font at all times and can auto-attack in between for just as much as a greatsword warrior (or even more). On top of that, damage can be increased by using Meteor Shower, Ice Bow, the Lightning Glyph of Storms and Lightning hammer. So besides having the highest damage sustain, they also have insane burst. This lead our group to create the following composition as much as possible: 1 PS Warrior, 2 Utility (Thief, Guardian or Mesmer), 2 Elementalists.

Living Story part 2

With the new area Silverwastes, a new stat set has been introduced: Sinister. Sinister gear is the Berserker's version of condition damage: Cond dmg, prec, power. It has been shown that this set is amazing for solo'ing stuff, with high sustain damage. Too bad that condition damage is still useless in dungeons/zerg stuff, as your bleeds get overwritten. Until they make condition damage individual, this is still not viable in group play.