Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

• High-level overview of planned balance changes

Speaking of high-level overview …how do Anet define “balance”?

I’m personally interested in WvW, chaotic as it is, with casual and hard-core players side by side, but I guess the question is as relevant for Spvp and PvE.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Zero Day.2594:

So yeah… better idea is to introduce a new stat for that… but that’s too big.

The base would be 10% and then any added on Toughness via traits, gear, weapons, accessories would increase it. So you pretty much ignore what every class starts with Toughness wise as no matter how high or how low it is, it would always be 10%

I think something similar to how Precision into Crit Chance would work for the required Toughness for 1% Condition damage reduction.

Though, lets be honest, we wont get EITHER conditions will just be left alone and left to grow ever more powerful…

MMMMMM you’re still not getting me… As far as i know classes don’t start(naked) with toughness … if they do they probably are balanced… that’s irrelevant… we can say everyone starts with 100, or 20 or 10 or 0… doesnt matter if the next bit is true…

However as soon as they equip gear (as you mentioned) the light/medium/heavy categories do start to matter, and what I keep mentioning in my previous posts applies. If you look at say for example CoF gear:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Citadel_of_Flame_armor
Notice the armor/defense ratings are different. This is what I was talking. If you base it off of those, then again, what I’ve mentioned previously will apply and it will only be a buff to two out of the three armor classes.
I would even argue for weapons.. unless the sum of the resistance in 1hand+offhand = 2hander.

If by gear you mean runes… then yeah sure… that again goes into how those new runes will be designed.

But yeah… we wont get either :P … instead… crit dmg nerf! WOOT WOOT! i’m psyched… I can’t wait for the chaos to happen…

Vargamonth.2047:

Blaeys.3102:

You are right to a degree. However, I contend that longer fights (in some situations) are good for the game. Killing a boss too fast means the boss doesnt have time to put out the consistent damage or cycle mechanics that require mitigation, support, etc. Now, I do lay some of this on boss design – but before they can design a boss that requires those things, we have to be sure that every group (even those hyper efficient at dealing damage) will see those mechanics enough times to actually matter.

Keep in mind im talking about legendary bosses that die in seconds, not minutes, to these groups.

I completely agree with you but …
… when you look closely at numbers, it’s not clear at all that this is caused by stat combinations like berserker.

Using a Guardian zeker meta build as standpoint, you can replace every weapon weapon / armor piece for soldier ones (just keeping the zeker trinkets, main source of cheap critical damage) and still retain over 80% of the original damage output.
A boss which dies in 20 seconds in full zeker, does it in 25 seconds with a fairly balanced gear setup that could cover quite better any mistake.
Any nerf on critical damage would do nothing but decrease those differences, which are rather small IMHO.

Big differences on killing speed are caused by other, usually overlooked, sources.
Proper might, fury and vulnerability stacking, which tend to be lackluster in PuG groups, are one of this sources.

Finally, the most obvious and most overlooked damage source comes from those percent final damage increases on sigils/runes/traits.
If you go from the 10/30/0/5/25 spec I used for calculations to something like 0/0/30/20/20 where you can get Altruistic Healing and Empowering Might, you don’t just lose next to 25% damage output from obvious stat reallocations and giving up Right Hand Strength (replaced with Retributive Armor); you also lose:

• 10% increased damage against burning foes
• 10% increased damage against enemies inflicted with conditions
• 10% increased damage with sword
• 1% increased damage for every boon you have

Which are all multiplicative and add up for about a 38% damage increase with 4 boons.
The trait reallocation almost reduced the original damage by HALF, even more if you replace Scholar Runes with something different.

In terms of damage, both, the good stacking of boons and vulnerability, and sigil/rune/trait choices are A LOT more important than gear stats.
A fully soldier geared character using damage oriented sigils, runes and traits can easily outdamage a full berserker one on a fairly defensive spec.

Rly good post. More people should read and think about this.

I will accept any changes as long as they are justified and they refund players properly who are locked into such builds because of ascended armor. I just finished my massive zerker ascended gear grind last week and my necro is built in such a way that, that amount of power, precision, and critical damage was extremely necessary to round her out to my liking.

I’m the kind of guy who prefers using original builds over viable ones (scrub and whatnot) which means I rarely invest in builds that will have me in a panic due to nerfs each update. I actually weight my builds against each other based on how original they are and how nerf proof they are so such a broad nerf really disheartens me if it’s true.

As I said earlier, I’m all for these changes if I can adapt my build properly so my real problem goes back to the grind associated with ascended armor. You should be able to change the stats on your ascended armor for free or for a small fee at an npc in the game. Keeping such a feature exclusive to legendary weapons is poor design when the game is in a constant state of balancing and the end game gear is tied to a nasty grind.

This thread makes it really obvious that they should have stuck to the idea of a cosmetic only gear grind instead of kittening around with stats. Now if zerker ends up nerfed they’re going to have to deal with a throng of angry people demanding new stats. What a mess.

Fungalfoot.7213:

This thread makes it really obvious that they should have stuck to the idea of a cosmetic only gear grind instead of kittening around with stats. Now if zerker ends up nerfed they’re going to have to deal with a throng of angry people demanding new stats. What a mess.

I would agree. I mean stats in gear makes changing builds a bit of a mess (that’s just one massive downside)… plus yeah kitten like this where they are probably going to change stat numbers…
But some people won’t agree.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Josh Davis.6015:

Nice try. I don’t think we have a public date yet.

Ancient Ranger.3276:

Sounds like an awesome time. Just one question will the balance happen after the living story finishes or sometime in between when it is ready?

That’s what I was most interested to know when I asked my second question. The “feature-only” patch seems to be so far away…

Considering that they’re still working on and “fleshing out” a lot of the details, plus the actual implementation and testing for sufficient results, I would not only avoid expecting an answer regarding a release date so soon, but additionally, if we truly are seeking balance, time is not the enemy, despite how anxious we may be to see how it impacts us.

“Changes to crit damage”
Fine give us higher damage multipliers to compensate

Stand The Wall.6987:

“Changes to crit damage”
Fine give us higher damage multipliers to compensate

the main complaint most people have is certain skills hit way to hard (wvw) with crit damage so high. This is mainly since damage is balanced more around spvp where crit damage is much lower. Of course in spvp you see complaints of a condition bunker meta so I don’t see what can be done by only adjusting crit damage that wont push wvw even more into a Condi bunker meta. This is less likely in pve due to condition caps and mobs having large health pools.

Would be cool if you talked about GS on Warrior, since it slowly becomes a hipster weapon anywhere outside of PvE.
Couple ideas:

• Bring back 360° Bladetrail. Or at least make the cone a bit bigger. Kinda sick of failing it when my target moves 1° too far to the side while I’m throwing it.
• Replace Rush with Ranger’s Swoop (minus the wings, we don’t want those), so our #5 actually hits stuff.
• Replace F1 with skill that’s actually worth using. There are plenty ideas for that on the forums (probably buried under ‘HAMBOW OP PLS NERF YESTERDAY’ threads atm)*.

So… you know… stuff we’ve been saying for the whole 2013.

*Disclaimer: I’m strong supporter of slight Warrior nerf in sPvP yesterday. Or two days ago. Or a week. Basically any day War goes without nerf in sPvP, this mode dies a little.

sounds like this kinda junk should ahve been done in beta testing. what do i know.

Travlane.5948:

sounds like this kinda junk should ahve been done in beta testing. what do i know.

I imagine they did do a lot of iterative development and balance testing in beta.Did you know that at one point there was a universal energy system tied to skill usage and that they publicly pondered adding potions to manage energy usage? They spent the last year and a half testing the efficacy of their unconventional combat system. Without relying on a lot of the standard fare mmo combat systems, these sorts of shakeups in balance shouldn’t be surprising. Could they have gotten it all right the first time? Maybe. But they didn’t and now they have to work on some larger balance issues.

Yeah, why make new content when you can just fiddle around with the numbers and add a continuous stream of nerfs patch after patch. CoF p1 will still be the most played instance for 1½ year’ going, but now we get to experience it a bit slower. Yay for imaginary progress!

Gambit.8425:

Yeah, why make new content when you can just fiddle around with the numbers and add a continuous stream of nerfs patch after patch. CoF p1 will still be the most played instance for 1½ year’ going, but now we get to experience it a bit slower. Yay for imaginary progress!

So you are either waiting for the devs to enact some positive changes and are being cynical about those prospects to show tough love or are just trying to cut them down because you are hoping the sting of your words will keep the staffers home thus causing Tyria to burn while unattended? Or is there a third perspective that I can’t see because I’m not quite jaded enough yet?

1) In order of importance, which classes do you believe:
a. Need most balance adjustment upwards
b. Need most balance adjustment downwards?

2) Are there any classes where build diversity (or the builds you expected players to use) is the core problem?
a. Can you give examples?
b. How, from a high level perspective, are you thinking about improving them?

3) When you focus on balance, what is the relative weight of each of the major components of the game: PvP, WvW, and PvE?

4) Do you consider a class balanced if it does very well in some aspects of the game but is otherwise quite weak in others? Or is the goal that each class should have a valuable role in each major aspect of the game?

5) Any mechanics which are not working well which are impacting balance? (e.g. ranger pet)? If yes, from a high level perspective, do you fix around the problem or fix the problem?

nightwulf.1986:

So you are either waiting for the devs to enact some positive changes and are being cynical about those prospects to show tough love or are just trying to cut them down because you are hoping the sting of your words will keep the staffers home thus causing Tyria to burn while unattended? Or is there a third perspective that I can’t see because I’m not quite jaded enough yet?

Probably the latter. But no, in all seriousness… While we are technically jumping to conclusions by fearing a crit damage nerf, you have to realize there are only three possibilities here:

1) They change crit damage so it’s weaker.
2) They change crit damage so it’s stronger.
3) They change the system under which crit damage is aggregated, but its power remains identical.

Which of those seems most likely to you?

Mirror Owl.7204:

nightwulf.1986:

So you are either waiting for the devs to enact some positive changes and are being cynical about those prospects to show tough love or are just trying to cut them down because you are hoping the sting of your words will keep the staffers home thus causing Tyria to burn while unattended? Or is there a third perspective that I can’t see because I’m not quite jaded enough yet?

Probably the latter. But no, in all seriousness… While we are technically jumping to conclusions by fearing a crit damage nerf, you have to realize there are only three possibilities here:

1) They change crit damage so it’s weaker.
2) They change crit damage so it’s stronger.
3) They change the system under which crit damage is aggregated, but its power remains identical.

Which of those seems most likely to you?

Yup that’s it. Playing the game for almost 2 years now should give you a fairly good perception of what is to be expected.

anets marketing is quite sub par. in the minds of consumers they see anet breaking things in order to “fix things” . how about fix things in order to fix things.

aka:

buff weaker areas and dont nerf stronger ones. there are MUCH more nerfs in the game than buffs. that is undeniable. they end up taking so much away from this game by trying to control WAY too much. well thats actually not quite it. they don t have a grasp on competitive play. they are prolly mediocre players themselves as you see in their videos. the real problem is them trying to cater to everyone. they should cater and give a fair playing field for everyone. but you pick a zerk thief and go up against a defensive guardian with lots of burn….yes the the guardian is going to see OP. you take that same thief and put him on a condi ranger….and yes hte thief is going to seem OP. its a part of checks and balances. instead of listening to QQers and nerfing all the time and making more people mad EVERY single patch. how about try shoving a lil reality in their faces and remind them its an awesome game and to try diff th igns, diff classes, all free in SPVP/TPVP. i cant think of even ONE patch where i see MORE happy people than mad in the forums. hrm….

nightwulf.1986:

So you are either waiting for the devs to enact some positive changes and are being cynical about those prospects to show tough love or are just trying to cut them down because you are hoping the sting of your words will keep the staffers home thus causing Tyria to burn while unattended? Or is there a third perspective that I can’t see because I’m not quite jaded enough yet?

My comment wasn’t aimed at your previous post. But now that I’ve read it, have you missed the balance patches every month, a major one just a month ago? Now the hammer has come to zerker, because the 1½ year content we since long can do in our sleep is too easy with zerk-groups. The nerf to loot and gold rewards wasn’t enough, let’s slow it down too!

You sound like it’s a 1-man team working on this, maybe it is, what do I know. 1½ year juggling the numbers to the same old content is a long time. In this chapter, PvE nerf, tweaking runes and sigils and w/e they do to the skills, some up, some down. We might see a nerf to Traveler runes, the only thing that stand out as too good at the moment, basically replacing a skill slot if you aren’t min/maxing. Probably they won’t though, instead a 5% somewhere become 4% or 6%. Don’t wanna rock the boat to much, do they, while giving an illusion of moving forward.

How about adding some new real core-skills apart from the worthless heals nobody bothers with, to add more dimensions to the game play? All the zerk-QQ’s lately seem to be because there isn’t a trinity system in play in GW2. People want to tank and heal despite very clear indications that this wan’t intended or needed in this game. A 5 y/o could figure out that DPS would be king in that scenario. What is the ANet solution to the whine? Nerf DPS of course, anything else is too much work.

Just my 2¢ 2 weeks too late, but on the matter of crit damage I agree with it’s total annihilation. It should be sacrificed on the alter of inequity for a new stat, perhaps Resilience. This stat could be made to mitigate the effects of conditions either in a duration reduction aspect or damage inflicted aspect pertaining to the particular conditions being mitigated.

Simultaneously, they should murder condition duration stat, and add Infliction. This is the direct counter stat to Resilience, increasing duration and inflicting “condition critical chance.”

Make critical damage a 100% across the board efficient and call it a day. Oh yeah, Infliction and Resilience would be armor stats as well, so good luck being a critical conditionmancer and bunker simultaneously.

What do you think?

Gambit.8425:

How about adding some new real core-skills apart from the worthless heals nobody bothers with, to add more dimensions to the game play? All the zerk-QQ’s lately seem to be because there isn’t a trinity system in play in GW2. People want to tank and heal despite very clear indications that this wan’t intended or needed in this game. A 5 y/o could figure out that DPS would be king in that scenario. What is the ANet solution to the whine? Nerf DPS of course, anything else is too much work.

The trinity system was simply spread out, not removed. I wish the clueless masses would stop saying this crud, the game would be a lot better if groups started to work with synergy rather than a clump of soloers.

Spectre.6821:

Just my 2¢ 2 weeks too late, but on the matter of crit damage I agree with it’s total annihilation. It should be sacrificed on the alter of inequity for a new stat, perhaps Resilience. This stat could be made to mitigate the effects of conditions either in a duration reduction aspect or damage inflicted aspect pertaining to the particular conditions being mitigated.

Simultaneously, they should murder condition duration stat, and add Infliction. This is the direct counter stat to Resilience, increasing duration and inflicting “condition critical chance.”

Make critical damage a 100% across the board efficient and call it a day. Oh yeah, Infliction and Resilience would be armor stats as well, so good luck being a critical conditionmancer and bunker simultaneously.

What do you think?

Sure and then we can open a 2v2, 3v3 bracket (we already have a 5v5 kinda) and call it arena, and players can fight for rating on the ladder board and Gladiator titles… oh wait, somebody already did that!

Gambit.8425:

-snip-.What is the ANet solution to the whine? Nerf DPS of course, anything else is too much work.

And this is where I disagree. I’ve played mmos long enough to know that significant changes and fixes can take quite a while. Months if not years. Someone has said before that development doesn’t work on our schedules, it works on theirs. That seems about right. Whenever something is broken and can’t be fixed right away, stop gap measures are used. Condition damage? Way borked. Is it never going to be fixed or changed? Using your logic (well, not just yours technically, I can read the forums) the answer is never. A rational person might also say, it will be changed in some way eventually for the better, just not right away. The difference between conclusion one and conclusion two is patience or a lack thereof. Is it possible that they will twiddle their thumbs forever and not fix anything of importance in a meaningful way? Yes. But why have that discussion? If that is what you believe, should you really keep hanging around the forums or play the game? If you do, you must believe that the devs are competent enough to fix complex issues. I do. More importantly, they haven’t even outlined their overall goals for upcoming balance yet and I’m not a gambling man, so I will hear what they have to say first…and then get my torch and pitchfork if it suits me.

Edit: I should also add that everyone has a right to be upset at the pace of development. It’s just that Anet, at least in my experience, isn’t alone in this area.

The pace of development is no reason to make inept balance decisions.

The predominance of berserker gear in dungeons is symptomatic of the 1.5 year old content with simple mechanics. Players are so familiar with it that almost anyone can, and therefore does, wear zero-defense gear. Now the proposed solution is to change an entire category of gear that’s arbitrarily correlated?

A guy robs a bank because the bank left the vault open. Do you punish the robber’s clothes?

@Arlette
Sorry, I really miss your point here. Literally. In what way does what you said have any bearing upon my perceived boosting condition possibilities, while also adding a counter, and bringing DPs in line have to do with 2V2 etc. Battles. I’m kind of lost here.

if you nerf my scholar runes anet you will never hear the end of it, and what about classes with critical damage trait lines? e.g mesmer with 108 crit, what are they supposed to use? Knights armor designed for children who can’t dodgeroll?
Why should good players be forced into using defensive stats they don’t need?

Mirror Owl.7204:

The pace of development is no reason to make inept balance decisions.

The predominance of berserker gear in dungeons is symptomatic of the 1.5 year old content with simple mechanics. Players are so familiar with it that almost anyone can, and therefore does, wear zero-defense gear. Now the proposed solution is to change an entire category of gear that’s arbitrarily correlated?

A guy robs a bank because the bank left the vault open. Do you punish the robber’s clothes?

Saying that Anet is going to nerf Zerker and be done with it is fiction until it’s fact. There have been other arguments for why zerker is the most efficient stat distribution in dungeons and it goes beyond having stale content. Condition caps being one that you conveniently left out. That alone complicates the argument. No one knows exactly what their solution will be and honestly, I’ve seen a lot of people make some interesting suggestions in the CDI discussion and elsewhere beyond a straight nerf to DPS. So, Anet has more to consider than what you have suggested. A lot of people don’t want the meta to change, in my opinion, either because they are too comfortable with what they have now or don’t believe that there is any viable solution at all to shape GW2 combat into something more open and meaningful to a variety of players and play styles. The latter mindset just makes brainstorming sessions fun, fun, fun.

Consider, for instance, allowing gear stats to affect the efficacy of active defense skills was mentioned at least once in the forums. That is not a straight nerf to DPS. If that is considered, not saying it will be, it will affect any build that makes use of active defense. There are ideas that have been tossed around that are not perfect, but interesting solutions to the issues nonetheless.

Norjena.5172:

Wearing Zerkers makes nothing easy. Pick up clerics gear and healing/supporttraits and weapons. Pick up 4 friends who do this and facetank everything coming in your way.
Disable your dogdekey and please do never use things like aegis or blind. Have mercy with poor mobs who can´t kill imbalanced unkillable pve facetanks.

Stop talking about this crap that zerkers gear makes content easier.

I like how you said group of tanks while one zerker can solo arah p 2 but need five tank to do what one zerker can

nightwulf.1986:

Mirror Owl.7204:

The pace of development is no reason to make inept balance decisions.

The predominance of berserker gear in dungeons is symptomatic of the 1.5 year old content with simple mechanics. Players are so familiar with it that almost anyone can, and therefore does, wear zero-defense gear. Now the proposed solution is to change an entire category of gear that’s arbitrarily correlated?

A guy robs a bank because the bank left the vault open. Do you punish the robber’s clothes?

Saying that Anet is going to nerf Zerker and be done with it is fiction until it’s fact.

You should ve seen by now how anet follows the wack a mole nerf to “balance” what they don t like…..

And whenever people are concerned of something that is not going to happen they answer asap.

The fact that they still didn t reply but are slowly spreading panic with limited informations means only that the reality is gonna be worse than whate we expect…and they give limited informations in order to try to avoid a mass Exodus.

Previous impopular nerfs had the exact same shape and communication.

Expect the worse….

“Critical damage changes” doesn’t necessarily mean nerf, you know.

[img]http://kitchenboy.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Cheese-With-That-Whine.gif[/img]

[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gPQOUQ3LJmY/TgpdSNkJ56I/AAAAAAAAA-Y/kKPfPHBYrFM/s1600/Whining.jpg[/img]

What are the devs opinions and thoughts on hard counters and the direction the concept is going?

Although I like the idea of limiting the zerker gear a bit with my power ranger I will not be able to kill bunkers any more in WvW.
Seems like I will probably have to join the condition meta even though I don’t like it at all. I think if they change zerker gear it’s also time to nerf bunker capabilities by a bit and weaken condition damage by quite a bit.
With the rune/sigill update I really hope that 2-Hand-Weapons now get two slots for sigils.

Mirror Owl.7204:

The pace of development is no reason to make inept balance decisions.

The predominance of berserker gear in dungeons is symptomatic of the 1.5 year old content with simple mechanics. Players are so familiar with it that almost anyone can, and therefore does, wear zero-defense gear. Now the proposed solution is to change an entire category of gear that’s arbitrarily correlated?

A guy robs a bank because the bank left the vault open. Do you punish the robber’s clothes?

Boom. This exactly.

If my Zerker Necro gets screwed I’m done with this game.

Arpheus.6918:

Although I like the idea of limiting the zerker gear a bit with my power ranger I will not be able to kill bunkers any more in WvW.
Seems like I will probably have to join the condition meta even though I don’t like it at all. I think if they change zerker gear it’s also time to nerf bunker capabilities by a bit and weaken condition damage by quite a bit.
With the rune/sigill update I really hope that 2-Hand-Weapons now get two slots for sigils.

Condi bunkers everywhere, such diversity. Good times.

I don’t know about anyone else, but my initial interpretation was that they would be changing crit damage due to what I expect to come from the sigil/rune rework. That is, that you can currently gain 25 stacks of precision (250 total) and then weapon swap and gain the buffs from the second weapon sigil whilst still retaining the 25 stacks. My guess was a buff to level this out specifically for crit chance/damage. But perhaps I am wrong.

Arpheus.6918:

Although I like the idea of limiting the zerker gear a bit with my power ranger I will not be able to kill bunkers any more in WvW.
Seems like I will probably have to join the condition meta even though I don’t like it at all. I think if they change zerker gear it’s also time to nerf bunker capabilities by a bit and weaken condition damage by quite a bit.
With the rune/sigill update I really hope that 2-Hand-Weapons now get two slots for sigils.

Do that and there will be even more condi “meta” builds than right now.

Any nerf to damage is a huge massive buff to the WvW heavy zergball meta.

I for one would be happy with toning down the raw burst in favor of some more sustained damage and possibly not so zergy meta. But in order for them to achieve that they also need to tone down condition damage by just as much to match the overall damage decrease.

No more 2 shot I puwn you nubz lawl is a good thing in the long run.

Josh Davis.6015:

As a heads-up, we won’t be running a Q&A segment during this show like previous episodes of Ready Up. However, feel free to leave questions/comments below and I’ll use them to guide our discussions on Friday.

We’ll see you then!

Hey Josh!

Can you (Anet) explain what happened in the development with Signet of Vampirism, the new necro “heal”? It caused some head scratching moments and rage amongst the necro community, so some detail would be lovely.
tl;dr: Why?

so bla bla and all that bla bla and shebang bang bang and boom and more boom but all things said and done, when are you guys going to fix the imba condis? game’s not getting any younger. i’m sure you know what that means.

Aza.2105:

1. Will more stealth counterplay be given to the other seven classes?

Thanks Anet devs

Seven other classes? Thief, Mesmer and Engineer have stealth. Thief being the most op stealth class. So i’d say five classes. Ranger do however have stealth on a trait but that is 30 cd cooldown and only when you get ccd.

Nerf the stealth so it can’t be on longer than 6 seconds or so. It should be used to trick the enemy and also escape or attack.

Zoid.2568:

Aza.2105:

1. Will more stealth counterplay be given to the other seven classes?

Thanks Anet devs

Seven other classes? Thief, Mesmer and Engineer have stealth. Thief being the most op stealth class. So i’d say five classes. Ranger do however have stealth on a trait but that is 30 cd cooldown and only when you get ccd.

Nerf the stealth so it can’t be on longer than 6 seconds or so. It should be used to trick the enemy and also escape or attack.

Ranger has it also on longbow:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hunter%27s_Shot

This is why I hate ascended gear. As a casual I finally crafted my first ascended weapon last week. Took ages to farm all that softwood, so I could roam without being the ‘noob in exotic’ in WvW again. If crit damage is nerfed well, I don’t feel like starting again. WvW is definitely over.

Tbh i wish arena net definitively Kill zerker and put it on the same damage level as condition damage if not less so people so all pretending zerker is the optimal dps build in all situation (at least well get to have 1 or 2 cond user per party). I agree murdering zerker build in pve will likely also murder it in wvw but theres possible way to actualy make it viable with other stat effect. What about replacing critical damage with something totaly defrent wich would work in pvp and pve alike…. aka armor penetration (yes you heard me im talking about the one stat that made warrior unique in guild wars 1 called strenght and gave armor penetration bonus against mob and player alike). You guys say you got issue with bunkers and want more physical dps but your physical dps is already OP as it is… Player wear armors and monster have variable amount of armor level giving player armor penetration stat would balance the game physical damage wise without making those that dont rely on it useless. There is a limit of how much you can downgrade a monster armor level and at one point some class have so little armor it doesnt realy mather if you cleave it or not.

The armorless elementalist should be taking as much damage as the plated tank when it comes to a 100% armor penetration but likely the stat will be more like up to 50% so to make it weaker on target with no armor but stronguer on ennemies with high amount of toughness. Thing is 50% of 1k armor and 50% of 3k armor is a lot of armor loss for the tank but very little for the glass cannon who barely will take more damage then before.

The defrence between critical damage and armor penetration is that you get to actualy murder those tank easyer without actualy making it so you can take on other glass cannon like if they where made of paper effectively making glass cannon versus glass cannon fight less of a ‘’lets see who 1 shot backstab the other first’’ game and more of an actual battle.

Since bosses also have variable armor level this would make berserker style character effective in some fight and ordinary in others while condition would have prety much static damage behing decent in all fight but master in none. Then youd have the third type wich is the guy who DOESNT run condition or armor penetration, this guy would be somewhat good in fight wich doesnt include high armor level but would be weak against heavily armored bosses. Make it fair for everyone

1. Tanklike and support damage character have similar damage to zerklike character but will effectively hit like moskito on well armored bosses

2. Zerkerlike character will be utherly destroy bosses and player with high armor level

3. condition user will be somewhat decent in all situation but will never actualy be at a serious advantage in comparison to other spec damagewise.

This way we give a direct counter to tank builds in pvp and wvw give condition damage a place in pve and give a slotted place and specific role to zerker in party so to limit its actual viability depending on the fight and situation.

Did you guys fix the broken Mesmer Warden (focus #5) so that he doesn’t randomly just do nothing?

Q: Have you ever thought about linking defensive stats to endurance regeneration? You could use it to reduce the active defense on full dps gear, with levels of dodge in decent defensive gear staying about the same as now.

Josh, can you just make a loop of you saying “PTV” and let it roll for an hour straight?
IT’S PTV…. PTV…. PTV….. PTV…..

Just one of those things that irks the heck out of me when people say it out of order

Oh and Conditions are already REALLY strong in WvW and PVP. Please don’t listen to the complainers who just want more and more. I think the entire balance of dmg vs defense is what needs tweaking. Damage multipliers are too high and it creates the scaling issues.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Critical damage changes

Why a living stream for this?

You will say that you are gonna change how direct damage scale over crit damage in way to reduce the dps differenze between a zerk\sin gear and knight\ptv or other crappy gear.

You will also say that you are going to do this to allow people to play different gear set up in pve.

You want us to bring in party ptv guys.

But that’s a dream, and you’ll wake up soon on a nightmare xD

aelfwe.4239:

Josh Davis.6015:

• Critical damage changes

Why a living stream for this?

You will say that you are gonna change how direct damage scale over crit damage in way to reduce the dps differenze between a zerk\sin gear and knight\ptv or other crappy gear.

You will also say that you are going to do this to allow people to play different gear set up in pve.

You want us to bring in party ptv guys.

But that’s a dream, and you’ll wake up soon on a nightmare xD

I think they could actualy reduce zerker effectiveness to put it on par with non zerker by switching crit damage to armor penetration ;/