Guild Wars 2

If they nerfed zerker gear, I’d be very disappointed having spent a lot of gold and laurels on ascended zerker stuff.

I would seriously consider quitting, not because of the nerf’s impact on gameplay, but the reasoning behind nerfing.

Bezagron.7352:

Now I think everyone could agree that PvE wise there is the issue with Zerker being so far out in front. Meaning what is the point of other stats / armours.

Agreement is not universal. I do not think there is any issue at all. If you don’t care about clear speed and want to facetank, the defensive stat combos work as advertised, that is their point. If you like to see things bleed, you run condition damage (I do think condition damage needs to be made more effective in PVE, but nerfing zerk does not make condition builds kill things faster). If you do care about clear speed and efficiency, then you spec for DPS, and you survive through awareness and active defense.

Given the current PVE mechanics/design, the direct DPS meta is inevitable. A nerf to zerker gear does not address this, because the direct DPS meta arises from the ease, simplicity, and slow ‘clock speed’ of current PVE encounters.

As I see it, to nerf zerker gear is to punish skilled/experienced players just to appease people who dislike the natural consequences of their gear choice (i.e., someone who wants to be tanky, yet doesn’t want to accept that zerkers, who die much faster, finish things much faster than him).

A nerf would be ineffective and disrespectful to many players. To adopt that change would not reflect well on the game’s current design/balancing philosophy. Which is why I would seriously consider dropping the game.

Since critical damage was specifically mentioned in the first post, I would be very surprised if a nerf was not coming. It’s a single number, you can only move it up or down if you mean to change it. Up seems unlikely.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Mirror Owl.7204:

Well they haven’t made the announcement yet, but yeah, I’m pretty terrified. I would absolutely hate to have to quit this game on such short notice and under such bitterly illogical terms.

Are people REALLY going to quit for them FIXING Crit Damage? I mean it is out of control, Now i understand if you were to crit for the VERY likely result of them over nerfing it but if its a BALANCED nerf and allows us to change our stats to something else – would you still quit?

well I hope its fixed by adding to one of the other stats and not just blanket reducing +crit.

Make all ascended items have user selectable stats and that will address most complaints about gear grind and money/laurels already spent on zerker gear.

voidwater.2064:

If they nerfed zerker gear, I’d be very disappointed having spent a lot of gold and laurels on ascended zerker stuff.

I would seriously consider quitting, not because of the nerf’s impact on gameplay, but the reasoning behind nerfing.

Bezagron.7352:

Now I think everyone could agree that PvE wise there is the issue with Zerker being so far out in front. Meaning what is the point of other stats / armours.

Agreement is not universal. I do not think there is any issue at all. If you don’t care about clear speed and want to facetank, the defensive stat combos work as advertised, that is their point. If you like to see things bleed, you run condition damage (I do think condition damage needs to be made more effective in PVE, but nerfing zerk does not make condition builds kill things faster). If you do care about clear speed and efficiency, then you spec for DPS, and you survive through awareness and active defense.

Given the current PVE mechanics/design, the DPS meta is inevitable. A nerf to zerker gear does not address this, because the DPS meta arises from the ease, simplicity, and slow ‘clock speed’ of current PVE encounters.

As I see it, to nerf zerker gear is to punish skilled/experienced players just to appease people who dislike the natural consequences of their gear choice (i.e., someone who wants to be tanky, yet doesn’t want to accept that zerkers, who die much faster, finish things much faster than him).

A nerf would be ineffective and disrespectful to many players. To adopt that change would not reflect well on the game’s current design/balancing philosophy. Which is why I would seriously consider dropping the game.

Since critical damage was specifically mentioned in the first post, I would be very surprised if a nerf was not coming. It’s a single number, you can only move it up or down if you mean to change it. Up seems unlikely.

I totally agree.

we need buff for critical damage in wvw, condition dmg is very OP with dire gear. Cond + tough + vit + cond duration foods = supremacy of defense and conditions dots.

voidwater.2064:

If they nerfed zerker gear, I’d be very disappointed having spent a lot of gold and laurels on ascended zerker stuff.

I would seriously consider quitting, not because of the nerf’s impact on gameplay, but the reasoning behind nerfing.

Bezagron.7352:

Now I think everyone could agree that PvE wise there is the issue with Zerker being so far out in front. Meaning what is the point of other stats / armours.

Agreement is not universal. I do not think there is any issue at all. If you don’t care about clear speed and want to facetank, the defensive stat combos work as advertised, that is their point. If you like to see things bleed, you run condition damage (I do think condition damage needs to be made more effective in PVE, but nerfing zerk does not make condition builds kill things faster). If you do care about clear speed and efficiency, then you spec for DPS, and you survive through awareness and active defense.

Given the current PVE mechanics/design, the direct DPS meta is inevitable. A nerf to zerker gear does not address this, because the direct DPS meta arises from the ease, simplicity, and slow ‘clock speed’ of current PVE encounters.

As I see it, to nerf zerker gear is to punish skilled/experienced players just to appease people who dislike the natural consequences of their gear choice (i.e., someone who wants to be tanky, yet doesn’t want to accept that zerkers, who die much faster, finish things much faster than him).

A nerf would be ineffective and disrespectful to many players. To adopt that change would not reflect well on the game’s current design/balancing philosophy. Which is why I would seriously consider dropping the game.

Since critical damage was specifically mentioned in the first post, I would be very surprised if a nerf was not coming. It’s a single number, you can only move it up or down if you mean to change it. Up seems unlikely.

I DO think there are issues, and even with that I still feel like the “fix” is going to be cheap, lazy and, I don’t think if I would call it disrespectful, maybe disheartening is the word.
I just want to see the changes and the reasoning behind them. If after so many zergy and faceroll easy LS patches, I feel changes are done for no other reason than making the “play what you want” thing more strong even for a content advertised like “epic challenges for organized groups”, that might be the last nail in the coffin.
It’s not like sPvP developing is going much better after all.

I’m going to copy and paste a reply I made in a different thread about the zerker issue. In pvp you can see zerker is much different than it is in pve but a stat combo like cleric is relatively the same:

Zerker pvp: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFARlUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPgYEbIA-TgAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGFA

Zerker pve: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFARlUgiDnGyNEf4Eh1DAeQ/VVIeXPgYEbIA-jUxAJvioxWcLiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-w

I’m not going to include ascended gear, there is no such thing in spvp and ascended gear just amplifies the stat disparity. Anyhow, if you compare the two stats they are relatively the same. Except crit damage is nearly doubled the amount.

Lets look a cleric pvp build vs pve build:

Cleric pvp: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApelUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPg4DbIA-TcAgzEYp4yxlhLJXWuA

Cleric pve: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApelUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPg4DbIA-TcAgzEYp4yxlhLJXWuA

Stats wise again they are similar. Cleric in pvp has 110 less toughness and roughly 30 less healing power. The pvp version actually has slightly more power! But not by much.
So as you can see, characters in pvp are just as tanky as their pve counter parts. In fact its not much different. But there is a gigantic disparity between the max crit damage achieved in pve and pvp.

Damage is over the top because in anet did not scale defense to the level of crit damage that can be achieved. What this means is a disproportional damage output in comparison to defense. This is why there are complaints about getting hit for 8k-14k in a single blow, because defensive stats are not scaling as well.

If I had to guess it would be that zerker stats will be re-allocated to the following: Power, Precision, Crit damage and Vitality. Like the pvp variant. The max crit damage from gear will probably out around 20% (not including rune sets), the other 30% will be achieved via trait lines. So this makes a total of 60% crit damage possible.

Aza.2105:

I’m going to copy and paste a reply I made in a different thread about the zerker issue. In pvp you can see zerker is much different than it is in pve but a stat combo like cleric is relatively the same:

Zerker pvp: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFARlUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPgYEbIA-TgAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGFA

Zerker pve: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFARlUgiDnGyNEf4Eh1DAeQ/VVIeXPgYEbIA-jUxAJvioxWcLiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-w

I’m not going to include ascended gear, there is no such thing in spvp and ascended gear just amplifies the stat disparity. Anyhow, if you compare the two stats they are relatively the same. Except crit damage is nearly doubled the amount.

Lets look a cleric pvp build vs pve build:

Cleric pvp: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApelUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPg4DbIA-TcAgzEYp4yxlhLJXWuA

Cleric pve: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJApelUgiDnGyOEf4Eh1DCeQ/VVIeXPg4DbIA-TcAgzEYp4yxlhLJXWuA

Stats wise again they are similar. Cleric in pvp has 110 less toughness and roughly 30 less healing power. The pvp version actually has slightly more power! But not by much.
So as you can see, characters in pvp are just as tanky as their pve counter parts. In fact its not much different. But there is a gigantic disparity between the max crit damage achieved in pve and pvp.

Damage is over the top because in anet did not scale defense to the level of crit damage that can be achieved. What this means is a disproportional damage output in comparison to defense. This is why there are complaints about getting hit for 8k-14k in a single blow, because defensive stats are not scaling as well.

If I had to guess it would be that zerker stats will be re-allocated to the following: Power, Precision, Crit damage and Vitality. Like the pvp variant. The max crit damage from gear will probably out around 20% (not including rune sets), the other 30% will be achieved via trait lines. So this makes a total of 60% crit damage possible.

And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.

AsmallChicken.9634:

And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.

Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.

Aza.2105:

AsmallChicken.9634:

And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.

Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.

But they are surviving this “insane” burst damage and thriving in it. So if you nerf burst down, they will become unkillable now.

AsmallChicken.9634:

Aza.2105:

AsmallChicken.9634:

And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.

Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.

But they are surviving this “insane” burst damage and thriving in it. So if you nerf burst down, they will become unkillable now.

This doesn’t really make sense, if all zergs are wearing pvt gear then it will be a pvt zerg vs a pvt zerg. So what will change? Unless you are saying there are zerker zergs running around.

My two cents, this is a very bad idea. Players love the rush of high damage with high risk, and if you take that away from them then that self-limitation will very strongly impact their desire to play

Also since berserker gear affects different classes in many ways there will be horrible imbalances. Classes already behind the power curve will be really behind, and classes on top will still be on top, but by less of a margin.

If this ends up being a nerf to that gear set and not a buff to others, I can see this being a disaster absolutely, and it wouldn’t even surprise me at this point. One step forward and two steps back.

Nova.8021:

My two cents, this is a very bad idea. Players love the rush of high damage with high risk, and if you take that away from them then that self-limitation will very strongly impact their desire to play

Also since berserker gear affects different classes in many ways there will be horrible imbalances. Classes already behind the power curve will be really behind, and classes on top will still be on top, but by less of a margin.

If this ends up being a nerf to that gear set and not a buff to others, I can see this being a disaster absolutely, and it wouldn’t even surprise me at this point. One step forward and two steps back.

What aspect of the game are you referring to?

Aza.2105:

Nova.8021:

My two cents, this is a very bad idea. Players love the rush of high damage with high risk, and if you take that away from them then that self-limitation will very strongly impact their desire to play

Also since berserker gear affects different classes in many ways there will be horrible imbalances. Classes already behind the power curve will be really behind, and classes on top will still be on top, but by less of a margin.

If this ends up being a nerf to that gear set and not a buff to others, I can see this being a disaster absolutely, and it wouldn’t even surprise me at this point. One step forward and two steps back.

What aspect of the game are you referring to?

Well, I was just being as broad as possible, although I don’t think many will lose sleep if the axe hit pvp only. We know that’s not where it’s aimed at though.

Nova.8021:

Aza.2105:

Nova.8021:

My two cents, this is a very bad idea. Players love the rush of high damage with high risk, and if you take that away from them then that self-limitation will very strongly impact their desire to play

Also since berserker gear affects different classes in many ways there will be horrible imbalances. Classes already behind the power curve will be really behind, and classes on top will still be on top, but by less of a margin.

If this ends up being a nerf to that gear set and not a buff to others, I can see this being a disaster absolutely, and it wouldn’t even surprise me at this point. One step forward and two steps back.

What aspect of the game are you referring to?

Well, I was just being as broad as possible, although I don’t think many will lose sleep if the axe hit pvp only. We know that’s not where it’s aimed at though.

Its aimed at pve and by extension wvw since the two are closely related. Anyhow you do not have nothing to worry about if it does happens.

Is it possible we won’t see any thing change on thief? Granted the initiative change wasn’t horrible but sword got pimp slapped, lets make a campaign against all thief changes, just let us die slowly, no sense to pull the plug.

As for sigil/rune changes, You have my full attention, plan to tune in even if I’m at work. Soo much potential with some runes, dying to try new things out.

I have two questions about Engineer Turrets, and one about Engineer main-hand weapons.

• Will Turrets ever get to scale with Power, Vitality, and Toughness?
  This would open up a lot of builds, make some viable that weren’t before…and if they scale to Vitality and Toughness as well, ’zerkTurret builds will be just as vulnerable as any other ’zerk build.
  It might also reduce the prevalence of the drop-and-pop method of Turret use, by way of making them actually useful to keep out by having them scale to your build.

• Will Turret AI ever actually target the user’s target specifically, as opposed to the last-damaged enemy?
  There’s too many area-of-effect autoattacks for the current method to be reliable – within a week of the implementation of this version of Turret AI, there were reports of Turrets refusing to fire due to constantly switching target.

• On the subject of autoattacks, is there any word on Engineers getting main-hand melee weapons?
  This is a balance issue because, as it stands, an Engineer without one of a few completely optional Kits has no recourse against enemies with Reflect Projectile effects aside from simply not attacking at all. As far as I know, this is an issue unique to the class.

Any other questions I would have are about bugfixes, so I’ll leave those off.

Why do we need to CHANGE the normal meta?

Why cant all builds be useful?

If you want High Risk High rewards, LET us with Zerk.

If we want to get Sustain DPS, let us with Conditions.

If we want to Support the team, Let us with CC.

Taking away Crit damage will only hurt EVERYONE not just Zerk.

Valkyire, Calvery, Soldiers with Crit damage Bonus’s from trinkets/runes, It will just make Support even less helpful, Conditions still dont work in group settings, and Will just make the game MORE boring b.c content will take even longer than before.

Nerfing damage isnt the answer. Fixing the CC, Conditions, NPC’s AI, Make the game so Players have to use there utilities, use combo fields (most players dont even know what these are for and how to use them) BOOST combo fields too, make them more useful and desirable.

That will shift the Meta in more ways than one.

I dont want another meta where every player is Fully built the same. Right now its zerk, but soon it could be Soldiers (I can see this happening with World bosses and Events, the gear will be ready to go for WvW too).

LFG “GLFM all Soldiers Ascended gear, Ping gear, 9k Achievement points”

OK but I will watch the Live stream, YES Im jumping to conclusions that it might be a good things, but so far, there hasnt been an update in a Year and 1/2 that “fixed the meta”.

Aza.2105:

AsmallChicken.9634:

Aza.2105:

AsmallChicken.9634:

And yet the WvW meta involves wearing full defensive gear and still steamrolling everything in your path. Buffing defense will just make this dumb meta even more lolworthy.

Pvt gear probably became popular to survive the insane amount of burst damage in pve. If they change zerker in the way I think they will then there would probably be a shift in meta since the disproportionate burst damage will be gone.

But they are surviving this “insane” burst damage and thriving in it. So if you nerf burst down, they will become unkillable now.

This doesn’t really make sense, if all zergs are wearing pvt gear then it will be a pvt zerg vs a pvt zerg. So what will change? Unless you are saying there are zerker zergs running around.

The point is that if you’re going to nerf a stat set because it is so predominant in one game mode, then you should also nerf stat sets and other game modes because they are also the “meta”.

AsmallChicken.9634:

The point is that if you’re going to nerf a stat set because it is so predominant in one game mode, then you should also nerf stat sets and other game modes because they are also the “meta”.

We do not know the crit damage changes that will take place, I’m only taking a guess by looking at how stats are in pvp. In regards to pvt gear, its relatively the same in pvp. Zerker (and valkyrie) is the only stat combo that is grossly different.

NinjaEd.3946:

Is it possible we won’t see any thing change on thief? Granted the initiative change wasn’t horrible but sword got pimp slapped, lets make a campaign against all thief changes, just let us die slowly, no sense to pull the plug.

As for sigil/rune changes, You have my full attention, plan to tune in even if I’m at work. Soo much potential with some runes, dying to try new things out.

Yeah… no… think about it, how do backstab glass cannons work..? At the very least that will hurt a bit.

Nova.8021:

…
Also since berserker gear affects different classes in many ways there will be horrible imbalances. Classes already behind the power curve will be really behind, and classes on top will still be on top, but by less of a margin.
…

THIS, the words in bold…

Anymras.5729:

I have two questions about Engineer Turrets, and one about Engineer main-hand weapons.

• Will Turrets ever get to scale with Power, Vitality, and Toughness?
  This would open up a lot of builds, make some viable that weren’t before…and if they scale to Vitality and Toughness as well, ’zerkTurret builds will be just as vulnerable as any other ’zerk build.
  It might also reduce the prevalence of the drop-and-pop method of Turret use, by way of making them actually useful to keep out by having them scale to your build.

• Will Turret AI ever actually target the user’s target specifically, as opposed to the last-damaged enemy?
  There’s too many area-of-effect autoattacks for the current method to be reliable – within a week of the implementation of this version of Turret AI, there were reports of Turrets refusing to fire due to constantly switching target.

• On the subject of autoattacks, is there any word on Engineers getting main-hand melee weapons?
  This is a balance issue because, as it stands, an Engineer without one of a few completely optional Kits has no recourse against enemies with Reflect Projectile effects aside from simply not attacking at all. As far as I know, this is an issue unique to the class.

Any other questions I would have are about bugfixes, so I’ll leave those off.

In addition to these points (which should be addressed due to the fact that they are other build pathways that do not work at the mechanical level) I also add these two points as well.

*Kit-Scaling up to Ascended Quality – Ascended weapons and armor are both out now and have been for some time now(armor 1 Month/Weapons 6 Months). Can our kits now scale to Ascended quality when we have these ascended weapons equipped? 5% isn’t a huge increase, but it should show and still be incorporated if an Engineer has spent the time and resources to get this weapon and can’t use it because he spends more time in a kit that doesn’t get gear improvement. Which goes on to the second point…..

• Hobo-Sacks- To save time
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Hobo-Sacks-A-Terrible-Fashion-Statement/first
  This has been asked for a while now with good reason. Engineers get gated from these back pieces that you give for rewards and put on the gem store because they won’t see it 90% of the time. Most of the better points are in that thread, but it’s almost unanimous that we don’t like these meshes/textures that are on our backs all the time and can’t customize it or even remove it.

I’d like to see celestial armor and weapons have slight decrease in crit dmg. Zerk on the other hand I believe to be balanced with the other triple stat armor/weaps. All the triple stats have their benefits and down sides, but all in all, it’s more fair than celestial, which is basically, you get everything AND insane crit dmg.

TL;DR
Keep zerk as it in now, decrease celestial crit dmg by a little bit across the board.

Yay! I posted in the thread that marked the slow decline of GW2!

We gotta remember that in PvE you are fighting against scripted/predictable mobs, although some human players may suck compared to said PvE mobs there is still some level of unpredictability, interaction is very different between the game modes.

Nerfing doesn’t solve anything, it just makes runs longer. If crit damage is a problem because of berserkers, nerfing the damage isn’t a solution.

You’re just slowing down people who are good enough to use their active defenses while using berserkers while the tanks/healers/condition/hybrid people are still going to run slow because these people tend to not run the traits that give them the most damage modifiers/or even use consumables.

I do hope that you do consider changing mob/boss meta instead of what players use in regards to PvE.

More faster/constant small damage hits, rather than one big KO move every 5-10 seconds will infact do more good than nerfing the current meta. Even some weakness spamming for like every 10-20 seconds will be great. This will give healing & condition removal more importance in PvE.

Tougness/Vitality will also play a bigger part in the faster/constant small damage hits inbetween one hit KO moves. Players will still have to use active defenses but they cannot avoid the other hits without running out of utility so they have to either gear/trait for it and/or cycle their skills between the party better.

Please reinstate the ability to throw 4 random Sup Runes/Sigils into the Mystic Forge and get a random Sup Rune/Sigil back in return.

And while you’re at it, please remove that stupid Soulbound property on dungeon runes. Make it Account Bound at the very least!

I suspect the crit damage change is aimed more at WvW than PVE, since Anet seem to generally balance for PVX and the pve zerker concerns have only risen to prominence recently. Though it’ll probably affect PVE too.

For what it’s worth, nerfing crit damage won’t do anything to address the issues people have recently raised with the PVE zerker meta. It will only mean the same meta set does less damage.

On another note, any chance of getting the thief flanking strike (s/d 3) to cancel the autoattack the same way a dodge does? The evade is pretty unreliable when it has to wait for the AA animation to finish.

Will the Engi elite skill “Mortar” ever be allowed to crit?

Josh Davis.6015:

• Critical damage changes

How about instead of punishing your players you design better encounters?

General:
-How long until the new weapons show up for classes?

Thieves:
-Any ideas being thrown around about fixing some of the underused traps. (Maybe making them pulse like ranger traps?)
-What is/are the most likely new weapons Thieves will get when new weapons for classes come? (I hope Greatsword, so I can teleport around with a giant sword and backstab people through their whole chest XD)

/beginrant
Engineer:
-HOBO SACKS, when will they DIE?!?!?!
/endrant

I was really excited about the balance livestream until I got to the part about crit damage changes. As a ranger I have enough discrimination from other players. Now lower my damage further then it already is?

I don’t know much about the other classes, but I have put a LOT of effort into maximizing my dps because rangers are perceived by many as low dps.

Right now I’m at 113% crit damage with my bow(s), and 123% with main-hand ax. I have 72% Crit chance without buffs.

I have crafted an ascended Zojja set of armor AND am 4/6 into crafting an Saphir set. Along with crafting 3 bows, and a warhorn. I also crafted a total 8 precise infusions. Please don’t lower my dps further after all the work I have put into building my set up.

I don’t like condition builds because of the stack limits, which leads to wasted stacks. Don’t nerf crit, buff condition instead.

Create better mechanics for boss fights etc… to give people a reason to try other specs.

voidwater.2064:

If they nerfed zerker gear, I’d be very disappointed having spent a lot of gold and laurels on ascended zerker stuff.

I would seriously consider quitting, not because of the nerf’s impact on gameplay, but the reasoning behind nerfing.

Bezagron.7352:

Now I think everyone could agree that PvE wise there is the issue with Zerker being so far out in front. Meaning what is the point of other stats / armours.

Agreement is not universal. I do not think there is any issue at all. If you don’t care about clear speed and want to facetank, the defensive stat combos work as advertised, that is their point. If you like to see things bleed, you run condition damage (I do think condition damage needs to be made more effective in PVE, but nerfing zerk does not make condition builds kill things faster). If you do care about clear speed and efficiency, then you spec for DPS, and you survive through awareness and active defense.

Given the current PVE mechanics/design, the direct DPS meta is inevitable. A nerf to zerker gear does not address this, because the direct DPS meta arises from the ease, simplicity, and slow ‘clock speed’ of current PVE encounters.

As I see it, to nerf zerker gear is to punish skilled/experienced players just to appease people who dislike the natural consequences of their gear choice (i.e., someone who wants to be tanky, yet doesn’t want to accept that zerkers, who die much faster, finish things much faster than him).

A nerf would be ineffective and disrespectful to many players. To adopt that change would not reflect well on the game’s current design/balancing philosophy. Which is why I would seriously consider dropping the game.

Since critical damage was specifically mentioned in the first post, I would be very surprised if a nerf was not coming. It’s a single number, you can only move it up or down if you mean to change it. Up seems unlikely.

A thousand times this.

Since the issue is predictable/relatively non-interactive AI in PvE, for heavens sake fix that before you change a gear choice that became popular in that specific game mode as a direct product of this issue.

I don’t even play PvE that much. I work hard to make my zerker sets effective in WvW. I’ll be tremendously alienated if some change extending from a game mode that’s largely irrelevant to my gameplay suddenly mucks with my gear.

Sounds like a nerf to crit damage which is yet another nerf to thieves. Again…

Cush.4063:

Sounds like a nerf to crit damage which is yet another nerf to thieves. Again…

I can identify. I hopped from S/D thief to zerker mesmer for roaming, and if that gets slammed too, … well..

DEAR ANET :P

IF YOU MESS UP ZERK GEAR …. due to crit dmg changes…. im quitting my thief…and game. all you do is mess thief up…its so obvious youdont like us and you dont play thieves. that is established. we have no role in the game other than roaming. dont even wanna hear that pop venoms junk that is outproduced even by rangers.

i have full ascended zerk gear, full set of legendaries for my thief (4), full ascended accs, extra bag slots, add ons from online store, ive bought gems. but i will be done. ive been discouraged for th past 6-7 months due to nerfs and waiting for the one that really steps of the line. so glad i chose to do bolt last bc now its useless other than s/p for dungeon builds. ill never use that junk in pvp/wvw again. pffft .25s cast on IR. useless weapon.

Cush.4063:

Sounds like a nerf to crit damage which is yet another nerf to thieves. Again…

yeah its another stiff to the thieves without putting the stiff in the thief column.

lets put it this way.

lets say….. we rate guardian , warrior and thief and take them both down a notch in dmg due to the crit dmg change thats coming (granted its a nerf) and see who gets hurt the most

(rated out of 10 being the highest 0 being the lowest)

warrior – defense 8 – offense 8.5 – teamplay 7.5
guardian – defense 10 – offense 6.5 – teamplay 9
thief – defense 4 – offense 9 – teamplay 5

now lets look at POST crit dmg nerf

warrior – def 8 – off 7.5 – teamplay 7
guard – def 10 – off 5.5 – teamplay 8.5
thief – def 4 – offense 8 – teamplay 4.5

it took everyone down the sameamount yet the thief looks like total doo overall. this is bc when a warrior hits thief with that lil nerf its giong to hit the same….. it still takes 2-3 secs to kill that thief.. . where as the thief still needs to hit the warrior but for a few more hits total bc of the warriors high hp/defense/toughness etc.

if there IS a nerf to crit dmg… shoudl prolly pop thieves into middle HP category. 10.8k hp just isnt enough for this mediocre to “on par w/ other classes” dmg.

Just let condition damage and healing be able to crit also and benefit from precision and maybe +crit damage too. The reason behind is crit damage, although becomes strong when paired with a fair amount of power and precision, is too reliant on these two stats while condition damage and healing are pretty much standalone stats. Instead of nerfing zerker gear, my suggestion will balance things out and elevate other gear stats into the current zerker tier.

FallinDevast.5364:

Just let condition damage and healing be able to crit also and benefit from precision and maybe +crit damage too. The reason behind is crit damage, although becomes strong when paired with a fair amount of power and precision, is too reliant on these two stats while condition damage and healing are pretty much standalone stats. Instead of nerfing zerker gear, my suggestion will balance things out and elevate other gear stats into the current zerker tier.

funny how they didnt say nerf….but we all know its a nerf. says alot about player mentality on anet.

if crit dmg needs a nerf. why? where is it OP?

if u need to nerf it…

who will it affect the most/hardest? (thief obv)
and will you make reparations for the nerf like putting thief in mid HP pool or w.e. needs to be done?

guardians get perma vigor but thieves get cut and cant. heavy armor should NOT have vigor at all. period. if thieves dont have protection/aegis/high tough/high hp/high armor/invulnerabilty/stability/blocks wowthe list goes on….then heavies Should NOT have vigor and long swiftness. period. long swiftness and vigor should be only for mediums and under. warrior/guard should never have any ONE skill that gives more than 5s of swiftness. yyyyyyyyyup. its fair.

FallinDevast.5364:

Just let condition damage and healing be able to crit also and benefit from precision and maybe +crit damage too. The reason behind is crit damage, although becomes strong when paired with a fair amount of power and precision, is too reliant on these two stats while condition damage and healing are pretty much standalone stats. Instead of nerfing zerker gear, my suggestion will balance things out and elevate other gear stats into the current zerker tier.

this thought train should apply to all problems. they rather break things than build others. :P

Meglobob.8620:

Berserker gear Power Precision Crit Damage

Please consider it from a PvE and WvW point of view, in how many 100’s of hours and resources in gold, laurels, possibly real money via gems players have spent getting there berserker gear.

A lot will quit, rather than be forced to make new armour sets/weapons/trinkets and redo there appearance.

Its easy to change gear in PvP.

Very, very hard in PvE and WvW.

that’s why, since a long time ago now i which that we could change stat when we want for exotic and ascended like ppl can do with legendary.
( or have a way to change your actual armor stat for a VERY cheap price. )

No speaking how its awfully insane to grind laurel during weeks to get ascended jewels >.>
Stuff grinding is insane in this game since stat / runes / sigil have nearly WAY more importance than your actual “build”

Give us first a cheap and easy way to manage all stat….

best way : Let us change stat like with legendary weapons

Josh Davis.6015:

• New stat combinations for PvP (amulets)

This is soooo crucial to improving build diversity. I am really happy that you are adding combinations. I hope you take the time to make combinations that cater to all professions.

How many will you approximately be adding, Josh?

Grok Krog.9581:

If this critical damage change reduces Berserker gear to uselessness. I will probably quit unless I get a free stat change on every single piece of gear I own.

Which is saying alot because I’ve always been very supportive of Anet and Guild Wars since I started playing the first one 3-4 years ago I think it was

^^ what he said but also, I want my lauresl back that i spent on those ascended armor recipes which were 5 laurels a piece

Fenrir.3609:

Atherakhia.4086:

Fenrir.3609:

Nerfing crit damage, yeah that’s really going to remove the pve dps meta and promote diversity….

They didn’t say nerfing, though that’s likely the outcome. Ideally they’d make crits 100% base instead of 50% and remove the stat so power and condition were a bit more even. But who knows.

It’s safe to say they are going to try and nerf it, it’s what they do. It’s sadly also getting increasingly safe to say that they don’t know what they are doing.

if they really wanna help the game why don’t they remove the one mechanic that has no place in a modern mmorpg aka the kitten stealth

don’t understand why dev’s keep insisting in introducing that kitten thing in every game, if a new mmorpg came out and said stealth does not exist in our game i would pay a sub !

nobody likes to fight an invisible enemy that can stealth at will even after attacking !
at least in older games once you come out of stealth and attack it was a lot harder to get back into stealth and escape or whatever, but here the drawbacks are almost none !

you wanna fix something start there !

Malcastus.6240:

Josh Davis.6015:

• New stat combinations for PvP (amulets)

This is soooo crucial to improving build diversity. I am really happy that you are adding combinations. I hope you take the time to make combinations that cater to all professions.

How many will you approximately be adding, Josh?

What About Pve, like barbarian

Just a guess. I would expect critical damage changes to be a nerf to the amount a crit hit actually does. For instance if a critical hit deals base 2x more damage perhaps the change is 1.5 more damage and then scaled up with critical damage stat. They could also just change how much critical damage % is needed to do increase the amount of critical damage dealt. If it is a 1:1 ratio now perhaps they are changing it to to 2:1 ratio.

Hope this made sense, I’m rather tired.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Ok Grouch, topics which need to be brought up:

8) Can you like give rangers a bone or something so they don’t spam how bad they are in every thread? Maybe a tsun cat pet or something to distract them?

Made my day.

It sounds really interesting, all points are crucial for pvp in general, but you need to manage them carefully, they can have a huge impact in pvp balance.

True the main issues is not with a single armour but the domination of Zerker highlights issues (PvE). Speed runs are a blast, but primarily no other role matters but damage. What happened to Control & Support, is their a way these roles can be included at this high level of PvE play (not provided through a Zerker build) and yet not take away from it.

Looking at active gameplay;

• Physical damage has 3 stat that can interact with it (Power, Precision & Critical damge)
• Condition damage has 2 (Condition damage, Condition duration).
• Healing has 1 (Healing power).
• Boons have 1 (Boon duration).

Just an idea
What if critical damage just became critical power. Critical power could effect Condition damage, Healing & Boons. This one change would add 2 more stat (Precision & Critical Power) changing the associated gameplay for these three other options. Could be interesting.

Again Zerker is not the problem but an indicator of issue.

Also for everyone interested the CDI’s are really taking off. The next CDI Process Evolution Phase 2 (not started yet) looks at refining & improving the process. Choosing of next few CDI topics could also be discussed but mainly how to improve them. It mite be a good idea to jump in, combat gameplay / roles / balance in each sPvP, WvW & PvE (plus different areas of PvE) could be a a great CDI topic between developers & players, helping to influences GW2’s direction.

Edit: Corrected first sentence.

I’d be extremely surprised and dissapointed in Anet if the nerf/remove zerker gear. The issue is not the stats themselves, but encounter design being so mundane that it can be done with your eyes closed.

And all those whining about conditions in PvP/WvW…if you get my necro nerfed in PvE again I’m going to find you and make you suffer. I’m tired of being nerfed to oblivion in my preferred game mode becuase it’s “unbalanced” in other modes.

How about you kids at Anet look at conditions and their application instead of wasting our time patch after patch with non-sensical new trash or bugs/fixes that should have been dealt with months ago.

Berserker meta? LOL

Condition Meta boys. There’s a reason you step into an spvp match and find 10 hambow warriors, or condi necros, or condi pu mesmers, or condi regen bm rangers. notice a trend?

There needs to be either A) immunity timers on condition applications or A stat or a combination of stats needs to aid in the defense/duration of conditions on said player and not rely solely on cleansing skills.

It’s been months of this crap. and AI is over the gd top. The players barely even play anymore.