Why everyone is so concerned about Meta and effectiveness in PvE?

[Ellisande.5218]

When it is impossible to be a complete character, impossible to be a complete self healing tank, impossible to CC bosses, players are left with no choice but to overspecialize in DPS. When you have skills and stats that aren't equal then there is going to be an optimal build which dominates every other build.

 

Also, tanks in real life have armor AND a big ass gun. Knights had incredibly effective armor and incredibly effect weapons. Samuria were heavily armored fighters that trained to be good at all weapons, from bows to swords to spears. But for some stupid reason MMOs force you to overspecialize because the developers don't understand the need for being a complete character.

 

Finally, I hate the timed BS in WoW. Nothing pisses me off more than being timed in a video game.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Part of it is that casual players don't know how bad the builds of most players can get. If you see somebody who is in full PVT gear using power weapons and related tactics, then that person is better off than most of the casual player base. A lot of casual players are decked out in random pieces of exotic and rare gear that they happened to find lying around. No coherent sigils or runeset, with traits and utilities chosen for "RP purposes" at best. You don't get to know these players wandering around the overworld. But if you're forming a dungeon or raid group, you'll find out just how many people are running builds built solely by the RNG.

 

It is rare to find somebody who is aware of and has a coherent build that isn't the meta. Usually, by the time a player becomes aware of directed buildcraft, the first thing they do is consult a guide on how to do it, and thus they learn the meta. This creates a very clear divide, where group formers will discriminate on class and build composition just to weed out the people who aren't paying attention. More often than not, when somebody brings something like a deadeye to fractals or raids, it isn't because the deadeye is running a modified buff build to ensure permanent team vigor, but because somebody thought snipers were awesome and wanted to take theirs everywhere.

 

It isn't that fractals or raids can't be completed with a team full of deadeyes and scrappers, but the type of person who is going to bring a deadeye or scrapper to a group is going to be terrible. I experience this when forming fractal groups all the time. I take all classes, and you'd be surprised how often I see core necros using power staff builds in t4. If we had a way to weed out bad players from good players, sure we'd run with whatever class people want to bring. But we don't have that, so we have to check for meta and see what people are doing.

 

The overworld is getting harder. Serpent's ire, for example, requires massive coherent cooperation of all parties to be successful, and having too many people running around in RNG gear makes it impossible.

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

> @otto.5684 said:

> I never managed to understand the “meta” obsession in GW2. Especially considering the content is relatively easy and the difference between meta and none meta builds if trivial at best, if you know what you are doing. I played another MMO, and the idea of not being allowed for not playing a meta class is almost none exisistent.

>

> Though I primarily blame Anet for this. I do not know of any other game that allows players to measure other players dps output in PvE. Ironically the majority of performance measures in PvP are not available... Anet supports elitest manitality in PvE, where it makes no sense, yet trys to avoid even basic performance measures in sPvP.

 

You can measure someone's FPS in PSO2 with 3rd party devices.

It's kind of a finicky situation though as Sega is "partially" okay with it, but more of the "If we can't catch you using it... you can use it"

But if they catch you using it, you're going to get banned and they will not even give you a chance to explain yourself.

 

In Arenanet's case, they're all for it. They still say the whole "use at your own risk", but they're perfectly fine with it.

[Torolan.5816]

My main runs on Soldier gear since release, all runes and weapons are coherent. If I could choose again today, maybe I would go for Valkyrie or Marauder but at least the last one was not available when ascended became a thing. I think I can say that I forget more about classic fractals than most people ever learned about them. And I can proudly say that I only opened a site or a guide once out of curiosity how a chronomancer does look like. Of course i could change it now, but I am frankly too lazy for that.

 

I would be pretty shocked if people did carry rare armor for a long time, exotic armor is basically ambushing you whereever you go.^^

[Feanor.2358]

> @Ellisande.5218 said:

> When it is impossible to be a complete character, impossible to be a complete self healing tank, impossible to CC bosses, players are left with no choice but to overspecialize in DPS. When you have skills and stats that aren't equal then there is going to be an optimal build which dominates every other build.

>

> Also, tanks in real life have armor AND a big kitten gun. Knights had incredibly effective armor and incredibly effect weapons. Samuria were heavily armored fighters that trained to be good at all weapons, from bows to swords to spears. But for some stupid reason MMOs force you to overspecialize because the developers don't understand the need for being a complete character.

>

> Finally, I hate the timed BS in WoW. Nothing pisses me off more than being timed in a video game.

 

Real life isn't an argument. The point of a game isn't to be realistic, it's to be fun. Having a lot of both survivability and damage is no fun - you simply faceroll everything and it gets boring really fast. Hence it is deliberately avoided, because any game designer worth a dime understands that very well.

 

Much more often than not, this leads to players building their characters around maxed damage output. Simply because most players find this playstyle more fun than a repeating battle of exhaustion between you and any enemy you encounter.

[BunjiKugashira.9754]

> @"otto.5684" said:

> I never managed to understand the “meta” obsession in GW2. Especially considering the content is relatively easy and the difference between meta and none meta builds if trivial at best, if you know what you are doing. I played another MMO, and the idea of not being allowed for not playing a meta class is almost none exisistent.

>

> Though I primarily blame Anet for this. I do not know of any other game that allows players to measure other players dps output in PvE. Ironically the majority of performance measures in PvP are not available... Anet supports elitest manitality in PvE, where it makes no sense, yet trys to avoid even basic performance measures in sPvP.

 

I wouldn't call a dps difference of more than 100% of the weaker build's dps "trivial". When running dungeons the top dps usually differs from the bottom dps by more than factor 10! Seeing that I usually assume the top dps player runs something very close to a meta build while the bottom dps player runs... well... something. Not that it matters in dungeons, carrying the bottom dps player is faster than searching for someone else.

 

When I switched my ele gear from celestial to full berserker my dps increased by 50%. Using a more damage focused rotation was a 100% dps increase and switching traits, runes and sigils got me another 50%. That's 4.5 times my old dps. These numbers are only approximates, but if the real dps increase is anywhere close, then by changing my build I now do as much damage as a complete 5 man group of me would have done with my old build.

 

Other MMOs have the same (albeit easier to understand) meta. For example a tank has to have at least x toughness to run a specific dungeon. The game probably has 1 class that is the designated tank class. If you build that class for damage and neglect your toughness you won't get a group. Stacking physical damage on a mage class won't get you very far either. The only difference is that other MMOs make it very obvious what stats are best for your class while GW2 leaves this decision mostly to the player.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @otto.5684 said:

> I never managed to understand the “meta” obsession in GW2. Especially considering the content is relatively easy and the difference between meta and none meta builds if trivial at best, if you know what you are doing.

...in open world maybe. In high-end content, the difference can be staggering. If you don't believe me, try to do a full raid clear in a team consisting of ranger bearbows, power axe warriors, Altruistic Healing guardian bunkers, minionmaster necros, gs-staff mesmers and cele d/d ele (for a good example). And without trying to optimize the teambuild. then tell me how it went and how easy it was compared to the classic raid setup.

 

(notice, that many "anything goes" people may actually run worse setups than the above, because as someone have already mentioned, they may have partially random gear pieces and may not even use runes and sigils - or have them mostly random as well)

 

Edit: As BunjiKugashira mentioned in previous post, when going from"whatever goes" build and playstyle to a meta one on a character, you can increase your effectiveness many times over. That's definitely not "trivial".

 

 

[Velran.1052]

Why would you not run the most effective build for a situation? And really, nobody cares what your build is and how much dps you're doing unless you're in **_their_** group. If it bothers you so much, start your own group.

[LadyKitty.6120]

As if Kitty sees people exaggerating the difference between meta and other builds again. And also the difficulty of most raid bosses. What truly matters is if people know how to play their chosen class and if they know the mechanics. If answer to both is yes, then there's no issue. Like qT says, the DPS checks are very lenient, though a squad of people who've optimized rotations might have a chance to ignore their inability to perform the mechanics. But squad of metabuilds that neither play their builds well nor perform the mechanics correctly are doomed to defeat. Sun Tzu, anyone?

 

By the way, heal-engi works quite decently. Kitty's already healed half of raid bosses thru with it.

[Conncept.7638]

A lot of it is because the RNG rewards are all so bad in GW2 that you're only real reward for general play is gold to purchase those rewards with, because they will never drop, and even gold is pretty slow coming (thank-you gold>gem exchange) so players insist on builds that complete things as fast as possible. GW2 is just a plain unrewarding game and while speed doesn't fix that, it does help.

 

Another part of it is the just plain terrible encounter design since HoT, where the meta isn't "optimal", content is timed under harsh mechanical requirements, and the meta is no longer an option to complete a lot of content as fast and smoothly as possible, but the only way to complete the content without a high risk of failure to meet those mechanical requirements or risk of going down to the the wire on the timer.

[sorudo.9054]

to me "meta" is just an excuse to be an elitist prick, blocking ppl who don't dance their way and be a jerk about it.

i can understand efficiency but what is the fun in doing exactly what others want you to do when it isn't your play style, i play how i want and if it's a bit slower but everyone survives and have fun then so be it.

 

i play games because i want to have some fun, the reason why i never do anything outside story instances and open world is because they are made for group play that is filled with the meta players i just can't stand.

if meta was made with fun behind it then it would be something else, for now as long as meta is what it is i hope everything meta eventually collapses with balance updates so it is destroyed to oblivion.

[Spurnshadow.3678]

From what little I recall from WoW, and other games like it, GW2 is vastly different and not as casual as you suggest. This is mostly because we don't have dedicated trait lines and gear for trinity. This allows for all kinds of variations that are not effective and could be down right horrendous. Also, since we don't have any kind of "inspection" feature, we have no idea what gear people are using. But compound on top of this the vast differences in dps in this game. We know that because if class A with dps build A wears zerk gear and does a good rotation, then put zerk gear on class B with dps traits B, then we'll get vastly different numbers. Sure, they're both gonna be effective, but don't tell anyone else that or they'll loose their shit. So, all those things make the forums a mess asking for class balace, so we can at least take that out of the equation.

[otto.5684]

> @BunjiKugashira.9754 said:

> > @"otto.5684" said:

> > I never managed to understand the “meta” obsession in GW2. Especially considering the content is relatively easy and the difference between meta and none meta builds if trivial at best, if you know what you are doing. I played another MMO, and the idea of not being allowed for not playing a meta class is almost none exisistent.

> >

> > Though I primarily blame Anet for this. I do not know of any other game that allows players to measure other players dps output in PvE. Ironically the majority of performance measures in PvP are not available... Anet supports elitest manitality in PvE, where it makes no sense, yet trys to avoid even basic performance measures in sPvP.

>

> I wouldn't call a dps difference of more than 100% of the weaker build's dps "trivial". When running dungeons the top dps usually differs from the bottom dps by more than factor 10! Seeing that I usually assume the top dps player runs something very close to a meta build while the bottom dps player runs... well... something. Not that it matters in dungeons, carrying the bottom dps player is faster than searching for someone else.

>

> When I switched my ele gear from celestial to full berserker my dps increased by 50%. Using a more damage focused rotation was a 100% dps increase and switching traits, runes and sigils got me another 50%. That's 4.5 times my old dps. These numbers are only approximates, but if the real dps increase is anywhere close, then by changing my build I now do as much damage as a complete 5 man group of me would have done with my old build.

>

> Other MMOs have the same (albeit easier to understand) meta. For example a tank has to have at least x toughness to run a specific dungeon. The game probably has 1 class that is the designated tank class. If you build that class for damage and neglect your toughness you won't get a group. Stacking physical damage on a mage class won't get you very far either. The only difference is that other MMOs make it very obvious what stats are best for your class while GW2 leaves this decision mostly to the player.

 

I was not clear, but slamming random gear on random skill selection is not a build. What I was going for is something like power rev playing the right build with the right gear and stats, and yet being frowned upon cuz something else deals 3% more damage.

 

This is the issue that I see in GW2 more than any other MMO. If you are playing power or condi build for a specific class, you can be out right rejected, even though your gear and skills are optimized and you know what you are doing.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @otto.5684 said:

> I was not clear, but slamming random gear on random skill selection is not a build. What I was going for is something like power rev playing the right build with the right gear and stats, and yet being frowned upon cuz something else deals 3% more damage.

If it was all about 3% damage, nobody would care. Meta builds have damage differences bigger than that. At the moment however power rev dps difference to the meta dps builds (**not** counting Mirage) is over _50%_.

Also, power rev is not that bad. All the builds i have mentioned in my previous post (yes, even bearbow) i _have_ personally seen trying to raid. And not understanding that they were simply not contributing that much (well, the bearbow was a really good green runner on vg, so at least i'll give him that). And all of those are actual builds, not just picking gear and skills at random, by the way.

 

I'm personally not a great supporter of strict meta, and i'd really like to have a greater variance of builds and playstyle options. I can also see that there are types of content in this game that, even if they do not strictly _require_ one to follow the meta, they still strongly encourage it and punish you for deviating from it too much. I do not like it, but i won't be trying to lie to myself that it's not a thing.