A lot of people are saying that oh, it is only a 10% DPS nerf for full berserker builds and stuff like that. Even when talking about WvW, people are like oh, it is only a 10% damage nerf power builds are still stronger than condition builds.
First of all, what I am going to talk about applies to WvW, so please don’t come in and justify my points using PvE arguments.
However, let me just give you the context. ANet’s whole reasoning for nerfing critical damage was to discourage the full berserker meta that currently dominates PvE.
#1: This does not discourage the Berserker Meta, it only makes full berserker runs slightly slower.
#2: These type of nerfs only drive PvE into a new sub-meta, (i.e, Rampagers).
#3: If you think about it, it is really the same meta, nothing has changed. That meta is full damage. People no matter what will run the highest damaging builds, whether that is Rampagers or Berserker. In order to change that, PvE needs to be changed in a way so Toughness and Vitality become more meaningful.
With that said, the 10% damage nerf for berserker builds impacts PvE in fundamentally a much different way then it does WvW. The meta in WvW isn’t Berserker. So why would ANet nerf critical damage in WvW when their whole reasoning was to discourage the berserker meta? It makes no sense to me.
Second of all, for the most part in PvE you are swinging your axe, sword, rifle, w/e against a mostly stationary target with little to no evades or blocks for several seconds to a few minutes. In WvW, most players do not stand still and do have evades, blocks, etc, so over time, the DPS nerf isn’t felt as much in PvE.
Which brings me to my main point, which is the instantaneous critical burst. This basically means in a quick span of time, unloading attack(s) that crit.
For example, a 10K backstab would be an instantaneous critical burst. With the critical damage nerf, say that thief loses 25% critical damage. Suddenly, that backstab becomes around 8-8.5K damage which is much less potent. This could be the difference between the enemy, blowing cooldowns and panicking/playing defensively and the enemy just saying hey, 8-8.5K wasn’t that devastating of hit, let me engage the thief and play aggressively. This instantaneous critical burst has that inherent snowballing effect of allowing you to keep pressure on the enemy while that enemy plays defensively due to taking a major hit. This critical damage nerf makes this inherent effect much less potent and effective.
This nerf also makes it a lot harder to focus targets using power as your source of damage and kill them and gives the enemy a chance to recover easily and remain a contributor to a fight.
What also worries me is damage nerfs on top of critical damage nerfs. For example, a Warriors Arcing Arrow crits for 6K. With a 25% critical damage nerf, this becomes only 5K. And on top of a 15% damage nerf to Arcing Arrow, the damage becomes around 4.5K. Which is very significant, if you factor in what I’ve talked about with the Instantaneous Critical Burst.
Being able to burst down your enemy quickly is the key to winning many fights, even outnumbered ones as well, rather than outputting sustained damage over time which is more important in PvE.
Although I try to reserve me judgments till patch day, because we don’t know the full extent of how runes and sigils will impact the game. But it is still useful to think about and predict how it will impact the game.
With this change, it seems that condition roaming will be more incentivised because as far as we know conditions as a mechanic hasn’t been altered. On-hit sigils will also be introduced which may allow condition builds to invest more into vitality than precision, but obviously this could have a decent impact on power based builds as well. We may see more condition builds in WvW, especially in roaming, that is what it seems like at least.
People have been arguing about which class would be hit the hardest by this critical damage nerf. People have said power thieves, in which I can see their point because they are all about that instantaneous critical burst, disposing of enemies very quickly. However, thieves would be able to take more power-based hits so it is really, really hard to say which class gets hit the hardest.
Glass builds, and builds that invest 60%+ critical damage get hit very hard by this nerf. Those who have invested critical damage in all of their trinkets get hit extremely hard. Weapons and Armor with this change seem to be the most efficient way of stacking critical damage.
Discuss.
(edited by killahmayne.9518)
