A plea for the Community why are you trying to kill your own MMO?

[Tutifrutilandia]

As a long GW2 player I have suffered the Berserker meta 4head of the base game, and the Necro Condi only and Druid Healer, when Elementalist Tempest Monk was literally any F healed you, and all the shouts, it was unable to die, fractals CM or even Raids, and doing it as a tank, healing himself alone.

And do you know why? Because a Guild named Quantify was giving fake data on their benchmarks. This guild made a lot of ♥♥♥♥, the raids for example because Arenanet hired them, then after

And after that..... That happened back in HoT, and after PoF, and now in EoF... the community still continues to lie to new players, telling them that Berserker is a good thing for open world, or even for Fractlas or Raids, when in fact, the best one (overall) is Celestial, and changing a bit the runes and sigils of the weapons.

I don't understand why the community of this game tries year after year to make the experience of the new players absurdly stressful and agonic.... And almost all the streamers follow this ♥♥♥♥ telling everyone to go Berserker or Viper. And you go like that and die because you are literally a glass cannon, so you do nothing if you are new player.

Celestial should be one recommended for the new players when arriving at lvl 80 or close to it. There's some exceptions, of course, but what you gain makes you literally a wall, of course you have to choose the traits and the weapons to go accordingly to fit Celestial or Ritualist.

I only enjoy this game with my friends or doing it alone soloing the bounties as Celestial, those ones that people recommend squads... Yeah.

Take care.

[Ajja Sudu Aya]

This is really hard to understand....but I agree everyone doesn't need to run Beserker or Viper. People in all games tend to be like this though, and strictly recommend going for more damage. Killing things fast and having big numbers is fun, but surviving is even better. I for one run Trailblazers on my Mirage, because I'd rather have more surviablity.

[[RvB] RedArmyGrif]

Berserker IS good for raids because you want to maximize damage. Anything else gets you worse DPS ratings and might sink the wing.

Also, Berserker is leagues cheaper than Celestial, especially for newer players.

[EvilZombie]

bah bah thats why i play whatever i want don't bother with meta just have fun Celestial is all you need trust me

[Ashrala]

There is nothing wrong with running Celestial prefixs for anything, especially if a player is new to learning certain content and just wants the extra survivability as long as they tweak their traits/runes a bit to make up for the slight lack of damage in the gear. Berserker prefixs indeed have the best damage rate, but you need to learn how to minimize the amount of damage you yourself take when wearing that gear, and that may take some players a bit of time to learn.

Another problem lies in a lot of players that look to do fast runs demanding higher damage, which is not wrong, but it limits the choices for newer players when trying to learn harder content like raids without the help of a guild or some training. The consent demand for the high damage tends to thin out the choices for a new pool of players to choose from as sometimes it can deter them from trying harder fractals or raids because of this. It's an old problem.

[Flushing]

Very hard to read post. Could have been shorter and simpler.

That said, Berserker is a good starting recommendation for new players because:

1. All classes have at least one dps build that works exceptionally well with the Berserker stat allotment.

2. Most gear is account bound, so Berserker gear is going to offer the most cross-class compatibility and will eliminate that feeling of loss when you need to farm gear for alternate characters.

3. You have to start with something. If by level 30, you believe that you want to explore condition builds, tankier builds, or dedicated healing builds, then all you have to do is choose different rewards and start slotting in different gear from that point on. Nothing has been lost.

4. You can, and should, get gear with alternate stats too, and it's so easy to do. I have sinister gear for one mesmer template, but I also have beserker gear for a different template. Sometimes I opt for Maurader instead of Berserker gear if I need a little more survivability.


I think OP is blowing things out of proportion. In short:
1. Berserker stat gear is a great "out the gate recommendation" for new players.
2. Noone is "antagonizing" new players by making the recommendation. No conspiracy exists to lead new players astray by recommending berserker gear.
3. First two paragraphs of the OP's post sound crazy.

[Sirius]

Raids are the one (significant) place where I think "just bring Celestial gear" *is* a problem. This is because many raids use toughness to determine who the tank is, and if you have celestial, in most groups that'll be you.
There isn't really a shortcut for raids - you do have to learn how they work before you can succeed at them, and the fastest way to do that by far is to find training groups. They can probably work around your cele gear but one of the first things they'll tell you is "you're better off using berserker/viper and relying on your healers to keep you alive".

Fractals, strikes (not counting CMs) - sure, it can be done. Open world, WvW - cele is really good. It's just raids where I think you'll have trouble.

[Flushing]

Originally posted by Sirius:

Raids are the one (significant) place where I think "just bring Celestial gear" *is* a problem. This is because many raids use toughness to determine who the tank is, and if you have celestial, in most groups that'll be you.
There isn't really a shortcut for raids - you do have to learn how they work before you can succeed at them, and the fastest way to do that by far is to find training groups. They can probably work around your cele gear but one of the first things they'll tell you is "you're better off using berserker/viper and relying on your healers to keep you alive".

Fractals, strikes (not counting CMs) - sure, it can be done. Open world, WvW - cele is really good. It's just raids where I think you'll have trouble.

Questions:

1. Do you think that it's poor advice to tell new players, right out the gate, that they can't go wrong by going for Berserker gear first?

2. Do you think that the community is "antagonizing" new players by making that recommendation?

3. Do you think a, so called, "Berserker Gear Conspiracy" exists involving a cabal of the GW2 community and guilds who dedicate their time, after every expansion release, wrongfully suggesting that new players should farm a set of Berserker Gear?

[Xylion]

Originally posted by Flushing:

1. Do you think that it's poor advice to tell new players, right out the gate, that they can't go wrong by going for Berserker gear first?

2. Do you think that the community is "antagonizing" new players by making that recommendation?

3. Do you think a, so called, "Berserker Gear Conspiracy" exists involving a cabal of the GW2 community and guilds who dedicate their time, after every expansion release, wrongfully suggesting that new players should farm a set of Berserker Gear?

1. It's not bad by default, but it does matter how the message is delivered. It's actually much worse telling them, that it doesn't matter what they wear, which class they play and which skill they use.
2. Except for the very small % of elitist players (that tend to play raids with their own groups anyway), no. Most of the playerbase I came across, are not just pretty welcoming, but do tend to give the new player advices on how to play the class they picked (and not automatically tell them to swap to berserker).
3. No. They suggest it, because it's the easiest class to both survive and inflict a significant amount of damage with it, without long skill rotations and without any kind of focus on utility skills that the whole party depends on. It's basically a suggestion to make them first get used to the raids, to experience the mechanics (one thing is seeing them in a video, another is experiencing them) of the raid bosses.
I personally think it's a fine suggestion, as long as it is not forced upon the new players.

[Karnage]

OP says all of this as if Celestial isn't a highly recommended and at times broken set in WvW for a number of builds.

Berserker sure as heck isn't meta or even top-tier for various forms of content. The min-max power builds generally run mixed gear to reach certain stat thresholds.

The reason so many people recommend Berserker to newbies is simply because it's fairly cheap and easy to obtain compared to other sets. Most open world / story content in GW2 is laughably easy, so running a glass cannon isn't a problem for most gamers. And for those that struggle, we have LI builds or alternative gear sets listed within various builds.

By all means, play with what you're comfortable with as long as you're not running raids that outright require a certain amount of damage output within a timer to complete. People in the community just don't recommend starting with training wheel sets because they're fairly expensive, will usually be replaced when you get more comfortable with the game, and in some cases, will make the game harder as higher toughness directly increases your aggro.

[KILLERMAN69]

Why do you take this game serious? It's just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mmorpg with a set in stone meta, half the players in this game run the same class with same spec. Play whatever you like and ♥♥♥♥ the elitist meta dogs.

[Tutifrutilandia]

Originally posted by Flushing:

Very hard to read post. Could have been shorter and simpler.

3. First two paragraphs of the OP's post sound crazy.

Sorry, english isn't my main language.

And the first two paragraphs sound crazy, but it happened when Colin was the director of the game, before going to Amazon Games.

You can find the story of that guild on internet and what they have done with all the fake benchmarks that i see it still linger until this day.
_________

Saying that celestial is not easy to get as a new player is stupid, when you have the sigils and runes for berserker that cost more than a full set of celestial.

And In raid you can go as celestial, there's no problem because the tank would have more thoughness than a celestial, take a food of thoughness now you are the tank, gg ez.

And saying that it would do less dmg than full berserker, yeah, no. Except 2 specs that can go full berserker and there's no problem, one of them is scrapper, the other one i forgot who was it. A full berserker can't handle to eat mechanics and have to literally play the game, a celestial doesn't have to, mechanics are literally, and i'm not joking, a suggestion.

But literally you can do face roll to everything with celestial in raids, with the specs supports and still do a lot of dmg. Firebrand you heal people meanwhile you put all buffs except cele, but everytime you use the 5 of the F1 tome, it counts as YOUR burning dmg now put 100% burning duration, and all the buffs of the game permanent, except cele.

And firebrand is not the only case.

And yes, usually the boss are killed at 3-5 mins mark, adding 2 more mins to that when the enrage is at 10mins is not a big deal for anyone.

[SuperCereal85]

Cele is by far not the best to run. It’s loaded with stats that most builds have no use for, so it’s wasted potential and frankly crappy advice to give.

If I’m running a strike based build I have no use for the measly condi buffs I’ll get - that whopping 0.5 secs of buff or debuff isn’t as useful as taking more power/precision/ferocity or toughness/vit for survival. So no, your wrong about that. It would be more useful to point out sets specific to each build like meta battle does with options to swap pieces for boosts here and there. The majority of the community I see post online advises berserker gear with the caveat of using marauders if you want more survival and only as a starter set due to its ease of acquiring.

You don’t really expect a new player to wrap their head around the 20+ stat combos available and what each does, do you?

Are you part of a conspiracy to sell more exotic celestial gear on the TP?

[Slain The Ulti-Maid]

Just let ppl do what they want, if ppl want to run meta then let them do it. If they want to experiment or run something off meta then let them it's very simple. I don't understand why you are flipping out over something so stupid as stats in a videogame and this is coming from someone who does nothing but play videogames.

[raditzaceme2]

I am still relatively new to the game, and even i can see how bad celestial is depending on build. A jack of all trades, master of none is weaker than a min maxed type. Anyone that has played any JRPG can tell you to mix and match marauders and berserker as needed (high damage with some survival or pure damage), since over 100% crit chance is probably useless, but still more powerful than using stats that are unneeded for the build (like buff/debuff duration when you dont use them often). It is all about knowing how your character and build works.

[Karnage]

Originally posted by raditzaceme2:

I am still relatively new to the game, and even i can see how bad celestial is depending on build. A jack of all trades, master of none is weaker than a min maxed type. Anyone that has played any JRPG can tell you to mix and match marauders and berserker as needed (high damage with some survival or pure damage), since over 100% crit chance is probably useless, but still more powerful than using stats that are unneeded for the build (like buff/debuff duration when you dont use them often). It is all about knowing how your character and build works.

Correct. Celestial builds must actually make use of enough of the stats given within the prefix to benefit from running Celestial gear. A pure strike damage based build looking for more survivability is better off running mixed or full Marauder rather than Celestial for that reason. Celestial is only beneficial if the strike damage build in question is also utilizing stuff like boons, healing, conditions for hybrid damage, etc. And if you're not making use of enough of all of that, there's other prefixes that focus more on exactly what you need.