Guild Wars 2

Careghan AAA mmorpgs don t make 6 months grind equpment comparable to 2 tiers lower.

That is a clear mistake they didn t even considered…..and NO it doesn t happen.
When it happens people quit (its almost comparable to a server wipe….for some players).

How is it comparable to 2 tiers below? It still gives 20% more total stats than specialized gear.

That’s pretty significant in it’s own regard and – AFAIK – the point of Celestial. Less per-stat, more total. Assuming you can use all stats (quite a few engineer builds do this) it’s very powerful gear.

Yes, it’s slightly weaker because it no longer offers “full” Prowess. But really, did you expect that to last? I know I didn’t, and it surprises me somewhat that apparently others did not.
The Prowess scaling made no sense because the gear pieces have a certain stable relation to each other in how many stats they offer. Until you look at Prowess, then it’s all over the place.

So it’s really not that surprising they’re changing that.

And well, Celestial still does what it came here to do. I think 25% would be better than 21%, but that’s a comparatively small tweak.

carighan i don t know if you lack the knowledge on the issue or what…..
Yet is pointless to discuss with you until you check how celestial works….

A celestial set primary stat is critical damage.
Even with that celestial dps is worse than a power vitality thoughness.

After patch will be EXTREMELY WORSE comparing to PVT dps.
(at that point mixing PVT, Valk, Cavalier etc would give better stats than celestial and celestial would have no reason to even exist)

The whole problem of high zerk dps is due to the formula that gives exponential results.
But it requires high values to begin with. If you have small ones – like in celestial’s case – you suffer from the opposite problem, that is also what zerkers suffer when downscaled: very small returns.

The should have just changed the formula, imho.

read above….if celestial becomes less efficient than mixed stats combination (already was but just slightly) it will become USELESS.*

LordByron.8369:

carighan i don t know if you lack the knowledge on the issue or what…..
Yet is pointless to discuss with you until you check how celestial works….

A celestial set primary stat is critical damage.

It’s how we interpreted it. The game only tells us it “provides all stats”.
And since all other stats are the same, what seems to be the outlier to you? Hrm?

LordByron.8369:

Even with that celestial dps is worse than a power vitality thoughness.

For some builds. I’d go as far as say that right now, Celestial is only very rarely useful, as only a handful of builds actively utilize all stats in a balanced manner.
The change will not help this, but as it’s already generally not taken, there’s not really any loss, either.
The new loadout certainly makes more sense. And as I said, should just increase the amount of bonus stats. It’s one more item type, less of each stat but more total

LordByron.8369:

(at that point mixing PVT, Valk, Cavalier etc would give better stats than celestial and celestial would have no reason to even exist)

Care to give any details on that one?
Because when I mathed it earlier, Celestial still had 21% more total stats than any single item, respectively any mix (as the total never changes on the specialized items).

Look, I get it, you use the gear and you feel personally attacked by the devs.
And your whole “Useless!!!”-crying is a bit weak, if you consider that in theory Celestial is the strongest gear, even post nerf, by a sizeable 20%. If you were to consider for a moment a situation where all classes had a strong build which utilized all stats, and those builds were balanced with non-Celestial gear in mind, then that build + Celestial would be stronger by virtue of the extra stats.
(As in, Celestial is plenty strong, class balance just isn’t :P )

He’s looking at it from a direct damage+damage mitigation perspective, since healing power and condition damage scale poorly generally. It’s a reasonable point of view.

I personally don’t think celestial is a very good set generally because most trait/gear setups require specialization to shine, and because the power stat is more important than any other stats for direct damage builds which make use of crit damage.

I still have a full set on my second engineer though, just for fun…

Mixed gear suffers also more compared to full zerker..

Its like
10% lost for full zerker.
15% lost for mixed (like knight/zerker)
20% IF not more for celestial.

but thats all if they let ferocity becomes a % crit damage..

not sure yet how they are going to do it.

icewyrm.5038:

He’s looking at it from a direct damage+damage mitigation perspective, since healing power and condition damage scale poorly generally. It’s a reasonable point of view.

I personally don’t think celestial is a very good set generally because most trait/gear setups require specialization to shine, and because the power stat is more important than any other stats for direct damage builds which make use of crit damage.

I still have a full set on my second engineer though, just for fun…

Oh, I don’t disagree that right now, for the builds we have, only Engineer would be a class I can think of which can benefit from it. No other class has enough access to enough well-scaling abilities all at once in a fairly balanced setup to make Celestial feasible.

Still, on paper the gear is actually pretty strong. 20% more total stats in return for losing specialized power. Assuming we had more balanced builds, it’d be at least on-par.

Carighan.6758:

icewyrm.5038:

He’s looking at it from a direct damage+damage mitigation perspective, since healing power and condition damage scale poorly generally. It’s a reasonable point of view.

I personally don’t think celestial is a very good set generally because most trait/gear setups require specialization to shine, and because the power stat is more important than any other stats for direct damage builds which make use of crit damage.

I still have a full set on my second engineer though, just for fun…

Oh, I don’t disagree that right now, for the builds we have, only Engineer would be a class I can think of which can benefit from it. No other class has enough access to enough well-scaling abilities all at once in a fairly balanced setup to make Celestial feasible.

Still, on paper the gear is actually pretty strong. 20% more total stats in return for losing specialized power. Assuming we had more balanced builds, it’d be at least on-par.

there are pages of build comparison in elementalist section …
You will find there .

Instead of theorycrafting with lot of missing informations take a build editor and see for yourself.

Carighan.6758:

I don’t truly see where the big deal is, sorry. :$

I mean yes, Celestial gets weaker, happens. Nerfs happen all the time in MMOs. If they were to buff Dire gear, and it’d become the best, you’d still have to switch gear.

I would hardly call it “invalidating time invested”. And mind you, I hate Ascended gear with a passion. But meh, not like I’d re-do any gear over this. So I’m a bit weaker after, so what? Happens.
I mean if you don’t enjoy playing the underdog every once in a while, not sure MMORPGs are the right genre, due to their ever-changing balance.

WTF Seriously?
Other games dont come around and complete destroy your progress of ~6-8 months just like that. Its not like a profession gets adjusted some %, this is a “get out of the game” type nerf accross a whole account, right in your face.

This makes playing gw2 pointless in every way. They just undo everything youve done in app 6 months in a blink of an eye. Lol

Anymras.5729:

Manuelito.6081:

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

If berserker gear becomes useless in PvE (It will most likely still be king) I will be sending support a rather long letter, basically demanding my 200+ laurels and 800g+ which has been spent on ascended berserker gear :’(

All nerfing berserker gear will do is punish better players, not make other gear more viable.

Shouldn’t you be buffing up the other gear sets to be on-par with berserker gear? we all know conditions and support need a lot of love for PvE, however, nerfing berserker gear is NOT the answer.

there might be a base for a law sue as well.

Basis for a lawsuit my hairy left butt-cheek. If there isn’t something in the End User License Agreement going “We can do whatever we want with this game,” I’ll be surprised – as far as I know, that’s pretty much standard procedure, especially in MMOs where people might otherwise go “Hey, they made a change I don’t like! I’ll sue them until they undo it!”

ye, obviously I was joking.

The problem is ascended equipment; they put a high time sink requirement in the game to get equiped properly for a spec. I spent a LOT of time getting my zerk weapons and trinkets together. I cant just change spec now to accomodate a heavy nerf.

Zerk rangers were already considered underdogs, and not needing nerfs. Blanket nerfing zerk equipment is just very heavy handed. If there is a specific problem, nerf that.

Edit: What we will need is a free full equipment respec as well.

• head slap ****

Just realized, of course Anet realizes many people have done their farming etc for Zerk stuff and are all fitted out. That means the revenue bonanza has died down and they need to chase people into farming other armor types to get things going again.

Never before have they done an overall equipment nerf… until now that equipment is actually worth something in terms of actual money spent for mats and time to grind.

Wrong way to go about generating money imo. Better to supply content.

Kilger.5490:

• head slap ****

Just realized, of course Anet realizes many people have done their farming etc for Zerk stuff and are all fitted out. That means the revenue bonanza has died down and they need to chase people into farming other armor types to get things going again.

Never before have they done an overall equipment nerf… until now that equipment is actually worth something in terms of actual money spent for mats and time to grind.

Wrong way to go about generating money imo. Better to supply content.

Why didn’t we thought of that as the root cause of nerf.

very funny umbra… altrought that could be a motivation i think they just dont want 60% of their player base to quit the game out of sickening of the forced meta way wich kills their ‘’i play what i want to play’’ fun. In some way they are totaly justified.

Problem is guild wars 2 touts being a horizontal progression game which means it has to be fine tuned with even launch content in mind. Most vertical progression games can render overpowered skills/traits etc useless as the game progresses if they choose not to nerf it. That’s why it was a massive contradiction to introduce ascended armor in this sort of game since it is more prone to balance issues than your typical mmo. This game would be better off being compared to arena based action mmo’s than other mmos outright.

The ease of obtaining exotic armor clearly wasn’t intentional, but it was appropriate with the kind of game anet wanted this to be. If they don’t address the issues with ascended armor and let this change go through, the player base won’t go unscathed. The silence on anets part is extremely sloppy, they clearly don’t know how to handle this situation.

kyubi.3620:

very funny umbra… altrought that could be a motivation i think they just dont want 60% of their player base to quit the game out of sickening of the forced meta way wich kills their ‘’i play what i want to play’’ fun. In some way they are totaly justified.

We have to be careful how we write it here not to point out certain sensitive clans.

But I see it in terms of general human behavior. This tag line “I Play How I want” was a marketing tag line, as catchy as it is for mass communication its also boils down to our very human nature, everyone wants to be different.

In real-life – were are all the same. Just not existing in the same space, time, etc.

That tag line – backfired and abused.

This game is free anyway once you have it. It’s just your time. Probably its the signal for us to leave this game alone for a year or 6 months, ArcheAge is on Alpha testing now, let’s see in the future when we get back how this community and the game has become.

It could be Arena’s tactic to bring in new players to refresh the lot. Since new players will not be aware and not affected. They just cycle though these cycle of change. Just like what’s happening to Living Story of 2012. To flush out old players. Since there is huge opex/capex to maintain existing infrastructure for already paid accounts like ours.

Why not get new ones, and make the old ones (1 year long accounts) play less. Win-Win situation for them, as they get to retain the existing capex/opex.

Yeah, i think Umbra is right – time has come to move on, anet clearly has lost it.

This upcoming balanced patch isn’t just a small nerf to max dps builds on dungeons, it will change things in WWW significantly, just imagine:

- it takes away 35-45% of critical damage from the game.
- it will buff up tank builds, because low values of critical damage will be more beneficial.
- damage difference between dps builds and tank will change significantly, for example my guardian with 103% critical damage now is dealing about 21,5% more damage than guardian with 30% critical damage (value from trait), this difference will drop to 13,8% or even more after the patch.
- two sigils on 2h weapons will not save critical damage builds, we can only cut some loses with them, this is another buff for other builds, for example condi can take another condition on sigil swap.
- anet will not gives us any refund or stat choice – we will have ferocity items after patch we want it or not, just have fun collecting gold/laurels/accommodation for new condi set.

And just to make sure, we will not play critical damage anymore :

- Critical Damage trait will be nerfed too – 300 ferocity, not 30% critical damage anymore.
- Celestial weapon/armor will be nerfed to the ground in order to take out highest critical damage set from the game – 147 + all stats, have fun with your mixed build now!

This is not a small nerf, this is a meta change to me.

Sorry for my English, its late and I’m tired.

Pure zerkers:
From my calculations, 1% critical damage can’t be more then 12-13 ferocity. If the “change key” will be higher, the overlapping between trait’s stats, foods, boons etc… will cause in much higher DPS loss(for zerkers) then 10% and I don’t think A.net want that.
If I’m right, the DPS loss for zerkers won’t be that of a big deal, I expect that the sigil/runes changes will almost balance the dps loss and make pure dps builds to be as effective as they are today.

MinMax:
For the min\maxing builds-(I’m among this group), we just need to min-max differently.
What we used to do is taking zerker accessories for the sweet +crit damge / stats exchange and maxing it with knight/celestial armor(zerker armor +crit damge / stats exchange sux) .
If I’m right, zerker armor set(especially ascended) will give more +crit damge (about 3-2%) in comparison to the current zerk armor set. The accessories loose the biggest chunk of +cirt damage (like 14%) that’s why we need to change them into the “dark knight” set(the knight with precision as primary). The result of mixing this way, is no more then 4-6% damage loss.

Celestial:
Celestial gear will no longer be used as min-max filler armor but as a “Jack of all trades” set
for specific builds the way it was intended (I think). I would like a.net to add small bonuses to boon/condi duration as compensation for the huge damage loss on Celestial gear.

Damage spikes:
Even though the flat damage nerf will not be that of a big deal, the damage spikes will get lower. If it’s good or bad, I’m not sure. Let’s wait and c how fire+air sigils will proc together on a power build user perhaps it will be the damage spike answer.

LughLongArm.5460:

Pure zerkers:
From my calculations, 1% critical damage can’t be more then 12-13 ferocity. If the “change key” will be higher, the overlapping between trait’s stats, foods, boons etc… will cause in much higher DPS loss(for zerkers) then 10% and I don’t think A.net want that.
If I’m right, the DPS loss for zerkers won’t be that of a big deal, I expect that the sigil/runes changes will almost balance the dps loss and make pure dps builds to be as effective as they are today.

MinMax:
For the min\maxing builds-(I’m among this group), we just need to min-max differently.
What we used to do is taking zerker accessories for the sweet +crit damge / stats exchange and maxing it with knight/celestial armor(zerker armor +crit damge / stats exchange sux) .
If I’m right, zerker armor set(especially ascended) will give more +crit damge (about 3-2%) in comparison to the current zerk armor set. The accessories loose the biggest chunk of +cirt damage (like 14%) that’s why we need to change them into the “dark knight” set(the knight with precision as primary). The result of mixing this way, is no more then 4-6% damage loss.

Celestial:
Celestial gear will no longer be used as min-max filler armor but as a “Jack of all trades” set
for specific builds the way it was intended (I think). I would like a.net to add small bonuses to boon/condi duration as compensation for the huge damage loss on Celestial gear.

Damage spikes:
Even though the flat damage nerf will not be that of a big deal, the damage spikes will get lower. If it’s good or bad, I’m not sure. Let’s wait and c how fire+air sigils will proc together on a power build user perhaps it will be the damage spike answer.

But is the game balanced right now? Are power builds holding their own in this game? Or are condi and bunker builds reigning supreme? That’s the issue I think a lot of people have with ANets so-vague-they-are-useless comments.

For PvP, power hasn’t been a contender for nearly a year.

For WvW, bunkers are all that matters and roaming is dominated by condis just like PvP.

For PvE, the berserker problem is a fallacy and revolves entirely around poor content design and has nothing at all to do with stating your character.

I think a lot of players are wondering what this change is supposed to be fixing since the name of the game for the past 8-12 months has been condi/bunker and nothing else.

Simply removing Critical Damage from the game entirely would have been a better alternative than trying to nerf something that doesn’t appear to have any impact on the game at large anyway.

ps. Yes, 250% crit dmg on thief backstab is an issue. But I’d like to think this change was done for more than just this.

Kilger.5490:

• head slap ****

Just realized, of course Anet realizes many people have done their farming etc for Zerk stuff and are all fitted out. That means the revenue bonanza has died down and they need to chase people into farming other armor types to get things going again.

Ah kitten , you’re right!
Those bloody 10 cents I have to pay every time I want to harvest something or loot a monster!

Their revenue stream is simply drying up!

Good thing you figured it out!

Carighan.6758:

Kilger.5490:

• head slap ****

Just realized, of course Anet realizes many people have done their farming etc for Zerk stuff and are all fitted out. That means the revenue bonanza has died down and they need to chase people into farming other armor types to get things going again.

Ah kitten , you’re right!
Those bloody 10 cents I have to pay every time I want to harvest something or loot a monster!

Their revenue stream is simply drying up!

Good thing you figured it out!

what about trasmutation crystals?

From what I understand the cirt damage(runes and sigils) change is only one step in A.net plan for re-balancing/changing specific metas. They are doing small steps and monitoring the outcome. I think the real imbalance in the game today is only in fractals(zerk meta) and SPVP for the rest i’m not sure(there is no 100%meta ruler).

Carighan.6758:

Ah kitten , you’re right!
Those bloody 10 cents I have to pay every time I want to harvest something or loot a monster!

Their revenue stream is simply drying up!

Good thing you figured it out!

I spent $20-30 actual cash to get the mats I needed to level up to 500. If you have more time than money then I see where you wouldnt get what I am saying. But I dont believe I would be the only one, by a long shot.

Multiply money spent by 10% or so of their user base and its not rocket science to see they made some good cash. One way to grab more cash.. make em do it again. “Rinse repeat” – where this phrase even came from, made the shampoo companies some good money. This is how the marketting world works.

edit – actually they probably wouldnt make much real money since peeps are leveled up already, but they would add a lot more artificial grind at least

Full respec for the whole Equipment is the only acceptable way to do these changes.

People complain that Zerk and Celestial are nerfed, but the true victims are people with soldier armor and crit based jewlery/back.
Until now the high crit on jewlery made these build playable. I don’t see how this would be possible if the critvalues are tuned down on jewlery and you don’t have any crit on your armor.

LughLongArm.5460:

Pure zerkers:
From my calculations, 1% critical damage can’t be more then 12-13 ferocity.

With 1:14 you get a decent match between current crit damage and ferocity as minor stat. The pain is in celestial gear and the jewels – and consequently ascended trinkets.

But yeah, if 1:14 yields too much DPS loss they might try to limit DPS loss and give a better stat ratio. They might change the formula’s to increase or decrease the default 50% crit damage, or make it similar to other stats, with a base 916 ferocity added, but the 50% default removed.

Zacchary.6183:

How about anet stops touching what we already have and ADD some counterplay to all professions that lack it?

I mean, adding skills and traits that could temporarily shut down combat advantages would not only increase build diversity but make combat less stale. The way they go about balance is like hitting a totaled motorcycle back into shape.

I will agree that, in theory, nerfing everything will increase build diversity because whatever you choose is going to suck around the same severity. However, arenanet has not nerfed everything and has thusly contributed to the changes in the meta.

So I shall say this again…. leave what isn’t broken alone and start adding some more skills. If those new skill need a slight tap with nerf bat, then by all means do so but understand that breaking everything is not your only option.

^This is what almost every developer for online games (balance requiring games) does wrong. No idea why. No idea whether it will ever change.

Escadin.9482:

Zacchary.6183:

How about anet stops touching what we already have and ADD some counterplay to all professions that lack it?

I mean, adding skills and traits that could temporarily shut down combat advantages would not only increase build diversity but make combat less stale. The way they go about balance is like hitting a totaled motorcycle back into shape.

I will agree that, in theory, nerfing everything will increase build diversity because whatever you choose is going to suck around the same severity. However, arenanet has not nerfed everything and has thusly contributed to the changes in the meta.

So I shall say this again…. leave what isn’t broken alone and start adding some more skills. If those new skill need a slight tap with nerf bat, then by all means do so but understand that breaking everything is not your only option.

^This is what almost every developer for online games (balance requiring games) does wrong. No idea why. No idea whether it will ever change.

It won’t because tearing down one good thing instead of building up everything around it is the easy, no effort way to balance games.

One way results in a more diverse, enjoyable game experience but requires more effort and planning. The other is much easier and we all just forget about it a month later no matter how hard they screw us over. You will get the occasional gripe but people either leave or just accept it with far more choosing the latter.

They go through with this, people will kitten and moan on the forums for a few weeks, and then we will never hear about it again because zerk will still the best for pve. It’ll be slower but people will just acclimate to the point that they don’t even notice it anymore.

The Time Lost and burned. No matter what Arena says that It will not impact much on our investment. Time is time.

1. Time is wasted on obtaining Quartz Crystal Formation achievement to get the home node.

2. Time Wasted to Gather everyday

3. Time Wasted on charging 25 quartz everyday.

Just don’t destroy build for players like us who knows how to min/max gears of different stats to build a optimum build that allows our single favorite profession to be versatile and able to do all high-end contents.

just make ascend gear stats swapable like on the legend weps . so i don’t need to worry about all the time and money i have wasted on my thief getting all this ascend gear
would just make every thing sooooo much better
not to be pressured after putting all this time in

…. lol i know what they will do instead
they will drop the damage by -10% now and make all of our ascend gear like exotic than they will come out with legend armor rings and amulets lol
and the legend gear will be as strong as the ascend is now lol
i really hope that is not what they meant when they said we have more stuff coming later down the line lol

Pitiful.

So we’re all just going condi now, seeing as crit damage is the only way to actually deal with toughness.

And all of the squishy classes that run berserker get shafted because now they’ll pack less of a punch, as if tank hammertrain wasn’t bad enough.

If I can’t maintain my current values, I’m done. 10% is absolutely massive, especially when you play burst damage. Not only was the GW2 team pathetically unprofessional in the livestream, but they’re showing to be totally removed from the actual game every patch they release.

The PvE reduction is fine, but come on, separate this bull crit damage removal/rework from WvW.

Its not 10%

Its 10% on an unbuffed build

Add runes/food/sigils/traits/buffs and see…..

Zerk nerf is the proof the CDI is a lie.

Its not zerker deals too much….even your latest LS content have Champions oneshotting tanks making any form of defense useless (not to mention new fractals…its a oneshot fest).
Also Warrior banners….Add something to the AI to walk out of them unless controlled (immobilize/chill at least bypass defiant).

having permanent 10-20% DPS boost to any party from a single profession is TOO MUCH expecially if it comes from utilities.