Guild Wars 2

A 10% reduction in the output of Zerker builds will not make people more likely to use support builds (healing power/toughness/vitality are still bad stats that promote bad play).

It’s just going to make already tedious encounters 10% slower. Defensive stats need a complete rework to be useful. People won’t use defensive stats just because damage sets are less damaging that they used to be.

This is a shortsighted change. Have Ferocity scale identically to current levels of crit damage when you push it live. Tinker with it later when you’re ready to start revising defensive stats completely.

This I assume was the easiest way for them to drop how far ahead zerkers were in the meta while at the same time making others catch up in a fashion, all with minimum alterations to entire builds. Zerkers are still king good sir. Also, don’t talk to me about tedious fights until you’ve done every single dungeon in this game as a bunker spec. Doing fights 2-4 minutes longer than a zerker is tedious, an extra 10-11 seconds to a zerker fight is not.

as long as it doesnt destroy my wvw roaming build… im fine with changed for pve…. even though i got my only full zerk ascended armor for pve only.. :/

If they wanted the other builds to be better they should of found some way to buff them. All anet does is nerf

Surely now I will see the error of my ways and accept the celestial ele’s and guards and clerics warrior and settler thieves into my groups with open arms.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Surely now I will see the error of my ways and accept the celestial ele’s and guards and clerics warrior and settler thieves into my groups with open arms.

haha

They still said that if you want pure DPS, zerker items are the best to get right now.

I don’t think it’s just zerker builds … I believe they were going to attempt to get the 10% damage reduction by adjusting the conversion rate of Ferocity. This won’t only affect zerker, it will affect any builds with Ferocity stat.

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Strike ressist/strike fortitude. Anet devs should google more for ideas how to fix crit builds dominance in pve and not shaft it in www.

The issue is with the way pve is built. They stated they made this change first so that they can make future changes to make support/condition/control build more viable.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think it’s just zerker builds … I believe they were going to attempt to get the 10% damage reduction by adjusting the conversion rate of Ferocity. This won’t only affect zerker, it will affect any builds with Ferocity stat.

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Great, if you use zerk you can have soldier dps with non of the tank!

the change wasnt really about support, it apparently was more about reducing maximum direct damage in pve, it will also end up effecting WvW, where it honestly probably isnt a good change.

The nerf actually hit other specs a lot more than full zekers.

Even if I’m mostly playing full berserker right now, I’ve run mixed gear for a lot of time (and I still do for WvW roaming), and when you do that, zerker, or whatever combination with critical damage, is ALWAYS slotted on trinkets because it is way more cost efficient.
With Ferocity behaving as any other secondary stat, that trinket advantage is lost, and mixed builds will lose A LOT of critical damage.
This will be less problematic for berserkers since every other gear piece is expected to become slightly more cost efficient.
It might have reduced the quite big gap between berserker and something clearly defensive like soldier, but it has opened it between zeker and most inmediate competitors.

I also want to offer my condolences to all those Celestial gear users. Sorry guys.

phys.7689:

the change wasnt really about support, it apparently was more about reducing maximum direct damage in pve, it will also end up effecting WvW, where it honestly probably isnt a good change.

But how many players outside of thieves ran with full zerkers? That’s pretty much suicide to do in WvW, since you’re basically a rallybot.

Fenrir.3609:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think it’s just zerker builds … I believe they were going to attempt to get the 10% damage reduction by adjusting the conversion rate of Ferocity. This won’t only affect zerker, it will affect any builds with Ferocity stat.

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Great, if you use zerk you can have soldier dps with non of the tank!

No, Zerks is still the DPS king, it’s just less damage.

direct dmg is still WAAAAAAAAAAAY better than condis… (in pve)
cause all the dmg modifiers like
+5% dmg sigil
+10% dmg scholar rune
+15% dmg warrior trait
+10% dmg warrior gs dmg

just as example

theyx all affect direct dmg but no condi dmg so i dont even get what this change would bring…

but i guess i wont complain anymore now before i know what the change exactly is and how the new things will work
maybe it isnt as bad as we expect ^^

Exactly what OP said. This is by far the most short-sighted and ignorant solution Anet could have come up with. There is still no reason to pick a condition build for PvE, no reason to run tanky setup and no reason to spec for anything like healing power or boon duration or CC. Nerfing zerk won’t make other builds any less useless, it is just that stuff takes longer to kill now.

No change to stats was gonna ‘fix’ PvE. So I don’t get how berserker not being nerfed “enough” does matter.

But carry on with the whining.

If it would end up as a nerf to celestial then it certainly wouldn’t help support…

To be fair,
It didn’t seem like they were trying to sell this one change as the final solution to all that ails PvE.

In fact, there’s a quote floating around that implies they mean to change mobs in some fashion in order to help condition specs. So we already know that altering player stats was never the alpha and omega of what they meant when talking about altering the Berserker/DPS meta. Content revision, to some unknown extent, is apparently on the docket somewhere.

As first steps go, it’s not really a bad one.
But I kind of hope they’re ready to roll up their sleeves and get down to business soon.

We were all asking for a buff of other builds and they choose to nerf berserk/dps… I don’t get it.

Obtena.7952:

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Can you elaborate a bit? I can’t really see your perspective.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Can you elaborate a bit? I can’t really see your perspective.

Sure … they are removing crit damage as a stat and replacing it with Ferocity. They will use the conversion rate of Ferocity to balance the damage output of builds that use it and their target for that conversion rate will be whatever rate gives 10% less damage on a full zerkers build. This will also impact other gear that has crit damage as it will also be replaced with Ferocity. .

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Can you elaborate a bit? I can’t really see your perspective.

Sure … they are removing crit damage as a stat and replacing it with Ferocity. They will use the conversion rate to balance the damage output of builds that use it and their target for that conversion rate will be 10% less damage on a full zerkers build. This will also impact other gear that has crit damage.

Yea I see that part, but how does it bring it closer to soliders dps?

Because soldiers DPS isn’t affected by this change … it doesn’t have crit damage or what will be ferocity. So zerkers goes down, soldiers stays the same, hence the gap is closed a bit. Same with Valk.

Obtena.7952:

Because soldiers DPS isn’t affected by this change … it doesn’t have crit damage or what will be ferocity.

I see I see. Thanks.

I wasn’t seeing your perspective because I forgot power was the primary stat on soldiers.

I was really hoping to see a change that would make toughness and healing more important. Instead we have a new stat now… and zerker is toned down a little.

But what about actually fixing the real problem: There is little difference between taking a massive hit in zerker, and taking a massive hit in full toughness gear. That is why everyone is going zerker in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much defense you have, so you might as well go full offense. Until they recognize this core problem, I don’t think we can expect any real improvements in this area.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Can you elaborate a bit? I can’t really see your perspective.

You’re going to get less critical damage on the same gear. Since both Zeker and Valk have critical damage and Soldiers don’t, Soldier gets closer to them damage wise.

The tricky part is that trinkets are the pieces were critical damage is more cost efficient. Without this advantage, Zeker might be further from Soldier + Zerker trinkets specs.

I’m confused… so they are changing crit dmg basically so that it is not affected by power?

Doesn’t this make builds that can ignore power in favor of precision or precision/ferocity? So like rabid and rampager amulets will be very good in pvp because you don’t need the power to make them hit hard?

OR will precision basically become useless without ferocity so that these builds stay somewhat where they are? (ie. crits do not start at +50% dmg)

I don’t understand the point of this change.

So…fights will take 10% longer? That’s all I’m seeing from the crit change. It’s not going to change how people gear or play.

Ahlen.7591:

I don’t understand the point of this change.

So…fights will take 10% longer? That’s all I’m seeing from the crit change. It’s not going to change how people gear or play.

I don’t think it’s meant to change how people gear or play, it’s mostly just normalizing crit damage so jewelry stats are consistent and laying the foundations for future balancing.

ens.9854:

I’m confused… so they are changing crit dmg basically so that it is not affected by power?

Doesn’t this make builds that can ignore power in favor of precision or precision/ferocity? So like rabid and rampager amulets will be very good in pvp because you don’t need the power to make them hit hard?

OR will precision basically become useless without ferocity so that these builds stay somewhat where they are? (ie. crits do not start at +50% dmg)

WHAT ?!

They’re just renaming CriticalDamage as Ferocity.
This “new” stat will have the same values other stats have (instead a fixed critical damage amount) and every N (somewhere between 13 and 17) points of it will grant a 1% damage increase.

Instead of having items like:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +2% Critical Damage
We will have:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +34 Ferocity
And finally, the total amount of Ferocity will be translated to Critical Damage at a fixed rate.

Vox Hollow.2736:

In fact, there’s a quote floating around that implies they mean to change mobs in some fashion in order to help condition specs. So we already know that altering player stats was never the alpha and omega of what they meant when talking about altering the Berserker/DPS meta. Content revision, to some unknown extent, is apparently on the docket somewhere.

Yes, this exactly.

Lowering dmg output of power builds means they can potentially lower the healthpool of pve mobs without having players just one shot everything. That would also instantly make condi dmg more valuable, but also give devs more room to introduce mechanics that would make mobs trickier. Ie, let mobs heal themselves (on cd), or use protection/aegis buffs.

This could lead to more interesting pve encounters in the future.

Ahlen.7591:

I don’t understand the point of this change.

So…fights will take 10% longer? That’s all I’m seeing from the crit change. It’s not going to change how people gear or play.

Big health pools + damage nerf = hard content according to ANET it seems.

Errant Venture.9371:

This is a shortsighted change. Have Ferocity scale identically to current levels of crit damage when you push it live. Tinker with it later when you’re ready to start revising defensive stats completely.

They might just be doing that, but if they aim for equivalence on Exotic then Ascended will see a reduction, at east with trinkets. For armor it would be the other way around.

As someone pointed out the mixed builds will suffer, as those tend to have zerker trinkets with non-zerker armor.

Celestial would be hit even harder as they featured relatively high crit-damage compared to the other stats on them.

Vargamonth.2047:

WHAT ?!

They’re just renaming CriticalDamage as Ferocity.
This “new” stat will have the same values other stats have (instead a fixed critical damage amount) and every N (somewhere between 13 and 17) points of it will grant a 1% damage increase.

Instead of having items like:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +2% Critical Damage
We will have:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +34 Ferocity
And finally, the total amount of Ferocity will be translated to Critical Damage at a fixed rate.

oh why didn’t they just say that
they said it wasn’t % based so i was like wtf

HykCraft.4610:

They still said that if you want pure DPS, zerker items are the best to get right now.

That’s what I’;m saying though. Pure Zerker will always be better than taking healing power/vitality/toughness because evade frames + active defenses allow a talented player to prevent close to 100% of active defenses. And that’s the way it should be.

Do you really want a game where you need to have passive stats to mitigate damage in order to survive? People when apekitten over Ascended gear, but a world that promotes passive stats make things like Ascended gear astronomically more important.

I want a game where the best player performs the best. Passive offense stats allow the best players to shine. Passive defense stats act like a crutch for the less talented players to make up for their lack of talent/skill