Originally Posted by Rera

@Jetrel: I doubt anyone thought the first 55 monks or solo UW rangers were stupid. One look at those builds and anyone who knows the mechanics of the game will realize exactly what's going on.

Your example is misleading, because they're solo builds. Such builds have always required substantially different thinking, because you need to be able to fit, in 8 skills, everything you need to take on an area designed for *8 people*. A build made to work with groups is going to be more conventional, because it's become obvious at this point what generally works and what doesn't. Here, I'll use your example. if a 55 monk or UW solo ranger wanted to join your mission group, what would you think? How effective would they be? Chew on that for a while.

The fact is that cookie-cutter builds tend to represent the most effective builds known by the community. Everyone runs them because they know they're built for maximum effectiveness, and thus the build becomes 'cookie-cutter'. Remember our good friend the Shock Warrior, and before him, the Gale Warrior? These pretty much defined the cookie-cutter PvP warrior, because *everyone* ran these on their teams. Why weren't more teams playing original and exotic builds? Perhaps because the Shock Warrior is a brutally effective build? Take a look at the skill usage charts of the top teams in the Factions World Championship. All of the builds look remarkably similar, don't they? Think that's just a coincidence? These are the top players in the world, and they're all running builds where 6~8 skills out of 8 are identical. Think they know something you don't?

Trying to be 'exotic', just for the sake of being exotic and 'open-minded', is doing yourself and anyone who listens to you a disservice. If you absolutely must build around the idea that anything that's been done before must be bad, that's fine. But talking to beginners as if being exotic were somehow better, and that they can "do anything", is irresponsible.

We have a lot of beginners trying their own thing in PvE. What do you think all the wammos are doing? You think the guy with mending, defy pain, and deadly riposte looking for mission group is following someone's advice (I sure as hell hope not)? If he'd actually taken the time to learn anything about the game I guarantee he wouldn't be caught dead with that build.