Guild Wars 2

Ok, so many players say "they nerf Berserker, we’re all f****d, we can’t be Berserker anymore, we need to reroll bunker and condition damage…
WTF??

Guys, they decrease Critical Damage by 10 if you’re full Berserker, not by “70”!!! (example)
If actually you have 90 of Critical Damage, your critical attacks inflict 140% more damage than a normal attack. You inflict 1000? If critical, you inflict 2400. Easy.
if they reduce Critical Damage by 10, your critical damage is 80 and you inflict 2300 damage.
It is a change, but not a nerf that can change all the game, all the balances and all the classes builds. Come on, guys. it’s a nerf lesser than 5% of your total damage!!!!!!

Ok, your damage is reduced by 2-5%, but that don’t make the Berserker a useless build!!!

Stop cry because they reduce a little your critical damage. It’s not a big problem. it can not be a problem at all!

that is all fine and cool, except most classes are getting their crit damage nerfed by 15-30%.

there a was a 10% dps loss according to anet. DPS loss, not 10% crit dmg.
Berserker is still top damage set but it wont be as effective…
the new sigils and maybe other tweaks may compensate for the dps loss though.

Whit 30 of nerf you reduce your total damage by…10-12%? it can be noticed, but if you inflict 2000 x hit and after the patch you inflict 1900 is all that bad?
That don’t make you lose your damage power in a really noticiable way. And if you use sigils and runes that give you fury or power you don’t see the difference.

Your damage can be reduced a little but that don’t make the berserker build lose all it’s power!

Crit Damage takes more than a 10% hit. Trinkets alone will lose 30 to 45% of their crit damage. They say 10% over all damage, that is probably at a 50% crit chance. The more crit chance you have the greater your overall loss will be. It’s really going to hurt builds that rely on high burst damage to spike an enemy down.

Doesn’t matter, no single group of stats is the problem. The problem is that power is the only viable damage option, dodge is the only viable defensive option, and support isn’t necessary so long as dodge and power damage are so foolproof.

They can nerf damage all they want and it won’t do anything except add a few seconds on to dungeon runs.

Many people only use zerger trinket so Anet is kinda wrong with the -10% damage,but if you full zerg its -10% damage.

Silv.9207:

Whit 30 of nerf you reduce your total damage by…10-12%? it can be noticed, but if you inflict 2000 x hit and after the patch you inflict 1900 is all that bad?
That don’t make you lose your damage power in a really noticiable way. And if you use sigils and runes that give you fury or power you don’t see the difference.

Your damage can be reduced a little but that don’t make the berserker build lose all it’s power!

30% of crit damage = to 20% of direct damage with crits, not 10-12%

chris.6583:

Silv.9207:

Whit 30 of nerf you reduce your total damage by…10-12%? it can be noticed, but if you inflict 2000 x hit and after the patch you inflict 1900 is all that bad?
That don’t make you lose your damage power in a really noticiable way. And if you use sigils and runes that give you fury or power you don’t see the difference.

Your damage can be reduced a little but that don’t make the berserker build lose all it’s power!

30% of crit damage = to 20% of direct damage with crits, not 10-12%

It all depends on your crit chance. Some running 50%+ with permna fury will lose more that someone running with just 30% crit chance.

What makes me scratch my head, is what they are gonna do to PvE conditions?

The reason for zerker’s domninance in PvE is not “because it’s best” it’s because “it’s the only gear that makes sense”:

Condition: Cannot stack conditions beyond arbitrary cap, limiting to number of condition focused player a party can utilise.
Defence: Since bosses one-shot you anyway, there’s not much point running knight or soldier gear which are as effective as goggles (do nothing), and deal less damage to boot
Offence: Since we’ve ruled out condition and defence, pure offence is the only way to go.

Even if they nerf zerker, in this model people in PvE will still run zerker

Conncept.7638:

Doesn’t matter, no single group of stats is the problem. The problem is that power is the only viable damage option, dodge is the only viable defensive option, and support isn’t necessary so long as dodge and power damage are so foolproof.

They can nerf damage all they want and it won’t do anything except add a few seconds on to dungeon runs.

i would like to see a video of you running trough a dungeon with your guild without any support.

i cant believe people still dont understand that support is not depending on gear in this game. support in gw2 is defined by your weapons, traits and utilities.

Conncept.7638:

dodge is the only viable defensive option

aha?

Ryuujin.8236:

Defence: Since bosses one-shot you anyway, there’s not much point running knight or soldier gear which are as effective as goggles (do nothing), and deal less damage to boot

can you name me a few of the bosses who oneshot you?

i always love to see when people bring this up and make it sound like “every” boss. there are a few who hit you pretty hard but they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

NoTrigger.8396:

i would like to see a video of you running trough a dungeon with your guild without any support.

i cant believe people still dont understand that support is not depending on gear in this game. support in gw2 is defined by your weapons, traits and utilities.

You have no idea what you’re talking about do you? Take two seconds to do a youtube search and you can find thousands of videos of people running every single dungeon path in the game not only with no support, but with five zerkers, or even naked.

I have never even once seen a single dungeon run where support was warranted, let alone required. Maybe high level fractals, which have never interested me, but I’ve done speed runs in every path of every single dungeon but Arah and TA and never seen anybody request any type of support. You won’t find people refusing support either, except the full zerker groups, but nobody asks for support.

Granted I still have run support in dungeons, because I have several dungeon support builds that are a blast to play, and I don’t play for efficiency’s sake. But to say it’s required is laughable, you can bring whatever you want in dungeons and live so long as you have enough dodge uptime to avoid all damage, so yes because of that any build can enter a dungeon. But damage and dodge gets it done faster. And to say it is required can frankly only be said by one completely blind or ignorant to all of GW2s largest design flaws.

It’s not about what’s viable or what is not, but about the reckless decisions they make these days. You have PvE’rs saying berzerkers gears are the only option and hit too hard which makes PvE too easy, with examples like those of the gigantus lupicus kill in 12 seconds or so.
So how is arenanet responding to that? ‘’OK, we just nerf berserker gears and asume people will use other gears in PvE’’.

This is the worst issues arenanet has in their game. Once it comes down to balancing, they always go for the easiest way.

This whole change affects everything besides ’’PvP’’, aka cap to win. There’s more PvP involved in WvW, yet they keep hammering on the point that sPvP is the PvP. They might not say it so obvious, but if you watch their streams they constantly describe spvp as ’’pvp’’ and WvW is like a sub object of PvE.

While not only this, but it’s not like everyone will switch gears. Everyone will still be running in full berserkers gears because that still is the highest dps. It will only make boss fights last longer and more boring as they are not really hard anyway. The boss mechanics are so poor in this game that healers aren’t needed either and Tanks don’t exists because there’s nothing you can get a full agro with. This comes down to: dps dps dps, burst everything down as quick possible.

As I already said, this patch also hurts WvW. In WvW, most cases requires you to run already with tanky gears. Organised guild raids are mostly quite tanky and when it comes down to 2 guilds being too tanky when fighting eachother, you’ll get everlasting fights already. Nerfing berserker people, who actually go for high risk- hi… decent reward is not really gonna help these boring fights. It will only make them worse.

In roaming, a lot ppl get nerfed. Condition specs were already strong, but now 50% of their enemies got nerfed by 10%, it will be only more viable to run condition specs. Especially because conditions ignore armor and people will most likely run tankier in WvW.

Like I said, the easy way. Instead of making PvE more challenging and difficult, they prefer just nerfing the dps so it seems more difficult, though it’s nothing but an illusion.

Killface.1896:

Many people only use zerger trinket so Anet is kinda wrong with the -10% damage,but if you full zerg its -10% damage.

Nobody mentioned ptv/sentinel, stay on topic.

Conncept.7638:

NoTrigger.8396:

i would like to see a video of you running trough a dungeon with your guild without any support.

i cant believe people still dont understand that support is not depending on gear in this game. support in gw2 is defined by your weapons, traits and utilities.

You have no idea what you’re talking about do you? Take two seconds to do a youtube search and you can find thousands of videos of people running every single dungeon path in the game not only with no support, but with five zerkers, or even naked.

I have never even once seen a single dungeon run where support was warranted, let alone required. Maybe high level fractals, which have never interested me, but I’ve done speed runs in every path of every single dungeon but Arah and TA and never seen anybody request any type of support. You won’t find people refusing support either, except the full zerker groups, but nobody asks for support.

Granted I still have run support in dungeons, because I have several dungeon support builds that are a blast to play, and I don’t play for efficiency’s sake. But to say it’s required is laughable, you can bring whatever you want in dungeons and live so long as you have enough dodge uptime to avoid all damage, so yes because of that any build can enter a dungeon. But damage and dodge gets it done faster. And to say it is required can frankly only be said by one completely blind or ignorant to all of GW2s largest design flaws.

i run dungeons in one of the best pve guilds in the game and we support each other with:
- reflections
- projectile blocking
- might stacks
- fury
- banner
- regeneration
- protection
- aegis
- blinds
- swiftness

and so on. and all of that happens while using full berserker gear.

support does not depend on your gear. welcome to the game without a trinity and an active combat system.

NoTrigger.8396:

Conncept.7638:

NoTrigger.8396:

i would like to see a video of you running trough a dungeon with your guild without any support.

i cant believe people still dont understand that support is not depending on gear in this game. support in gw2 is defined by your weapons, traits and utilities.

You have no idea what you’re talking about do you? Take two seconds to do a youtube search and you can find thousands of videos of people running every single dungeon path in the game not only with no support, but with five zerkers, or even naked.

I have never even once seen a single dungeon run where support was warranted, let alone required. Maybe high level fractals, which have never interested me, but I’ve done speed runs in every path of every single dungeon but Arah and TA and never seen anybody request any type of support. You won’t find people refusing support either, except the full zerker groups, but nobody asks for support.

Granted I still have run support in dungeons, because I have several dungeon support builds that are a blast to play, and I don’t play for efficiency’s sake. But to say it’s required is laughable, you can bring whatever you want in dungeons and live so long as you have enough dodge uptime to avoid all damage, so yes because of that any build can enter a dungeon. But damage and dodge gets it done faster. And to say it is required can frankly only be said by one completely blind or ignorant to all of GW2s largest design flaws.

i run dungeons in one of the best pve guilds in the game and we support each other with:
- reflections
- projectile blocking
- might stacks
- fury
- banner
- regeneration
- protection
- aegis
- blinds
- swiftness

and so on. and all of that happens while using full berserker gear.

support does not depend on your gear. welcome to the game without a trinity and an active combat system.

I’m glad to see this post. It amazes me how many people seem to think that if you don’t gear for a role, or if the role isn’t baked into a class/profession, then the role doesn’t exist. The alternative role system in GW2 is designed to be independent of profession and gear (the the exception that you can gear to do more DPS). This provides a flexible role system where fulfilling a role is a matter of action as well as build (choosing the right traits/skills to accomplish what you want to do). MMO players, apparently, are too willing to look at this game’s combat and decide that there aren’t roles because they don’t look like the roles they’re used to.

devs nerf bers, but made it more viable /o\

killahmayne.9518:

that is all fine and cool, except most classes are getting their crit damage nerfed by 15-30%.

So? The devs always said that they’re planning a 10% damage nerf, and this fits.

Pelopidas.2140:

there a was a 10% dps loss according to anet. DPS loss, not 10% crit dmg.
Berserker is still top damage set but it wont be as effective…
the new sigils and maybe other tweaks may compensate for the dps loss though.

This is my though precisely.

It’s still the best around, and for what it’s worth I’d like an even bigger drop in efficiency to further smooth out the Zerker-meta

Side note:if you trait 30 point on your critical damage tree, you will no more get 30% critical damage,but only 20% for 30 points.
So -10% dmg from your gears (full zerk) PLUS another -10% critical damage from your traits.

Here are some calculations I made in a Warrior thread concerning the loss of crit damage after patch for s full zerk gear setup and a hybrid gear set up. Though it might be relevant info the share here as well.

Julie Yann.5379:

Let me explain it fully. Zerk Ascended gear and trinkets gives 61% crit damage. 17 comes from your armor and 44 from trinkets. (this is just from armor and trinkets, no weapons or traits)

After patch you will get 15.6 from your armor and 25.06 from trinkets for a total of 40.66.

(1-40.66/61)x100=33.34% loss in crit damage for that build.

A knights armor and Zerk trinket build before patch has 44 coming from trinkets and 0 from armor for a total of 44.

After patch it will have 25.06 from trinkets and 0 from armor for a total of 25.06.

(1-25.06/44)x100=43.04% loss in crit damage for that build

Edit:

Recalculated this to include zerk weapons on both builds.

A full zerk set including weapons will lose 21.4crit damage (49.59 crit from 71) which is an 18.7% nerf to that build.

A soldier/knights with zerk trinkets and weapon will lose 20% crit damage (33.9 crit from 54) which is a 37.1% nerf to that build.

So on a full zerk setup (no runes or orbs) with traits maxed out at 300 the loss in crit damage would be 31.41% (69.59 crit from 101) which translates to a 31.09% nerf.
(1-69.59/101)x100=31.09%

These numbers are just losses in crit damage. Keep in mind that your total DPS loss will depend on what your crit chance is.
If we use a 1000 damage hit. Pre patch it would crit for 2510, post patch it will hit for 2190 which is 12.7% nerf in DPS. So 12.7% loss if you ran at 100% crit chance. At 50% crit chance your loss in DPS is 9.11%

I think zerker builds will still be very viable and in high demand for PvE . This change is going to severely hurt my WvW roaming hammer build since it relies on short high crit bursts to get the enemy down instead on continuous high DPS.

I agree with your calculations, Julie, but yet think it underestimates the effects. For ex, if the +10% crit food goes to ferocity, that’s only 70 ferosity, which would reduce CD to 4.7%. Also, the burst trait line goes from +30% crit damage to 300 ferocity which is another potential 10% CD loss. Plus, the loss from some runes and such. It hurts.

perko.8309:

I agree with your calculations, Julie, but yet think it underestimates the effects. For ex, if the +10% crit food goes to ferocity, that’s only 70 ferosity, which would reduce CD to 4.7%. Also, the burst trait line goes from +30% crit damage to 300 ferocity which is another potential 10% CD loss. Plus, the loss from some runes and such. It hurts.

Yes but overall it’s a good change. It just hurts because we lose some. If we were to gain +30% because it were too weak no one would complain about it, no?

I did the math on these changes once: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/It-s-Not-10/page/2#post3832036

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I did a comparison of exotic effective power in another thread. I’ll post the results here:

Effective Power = Power x (chance to crit x crit damage + chance to not crit)

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or 55% crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

---

Anyway, you can play with these numbers all you want by adding extra stuff:

Might: +875 power for max might, before calculation. On zerkers, this results in the exact same 10.1% reduction in damage. This makes sense when you know that all the changes come from modifiers after power.

Fury: add 20% to crit chance, subtract 20% from chance to not crit. On zerkers, this results in an 11.8% reduction.

Sigil of Perception: add 250 precision or 11.9% crit rate. On zerkers, this results in a 67% crit rate, and an 11.1% reduction.

Sigil of perception + Fury: 12.5%

Throw bowl of curry butternut squash soup on top of that: 14.6% reduction

Throw on banner of discipline: crit chance caps out at 99%. Now, the only real differences are crit damage, with pre-ferocity being 281%, post ferocity being 237%, resulting in a 15.5% maximum possible reduction in damage.

This is where Anet can go lawyer on us with what they mean. The thing with fury, butternut squash soup, sigil of perception, banners, and spotter is that these aren’t “builds” or “gear” as we’ve come to know it. These rely on outside factors, such as consumables and teammates of particular classes, and can exist outside of the gear choices we make. Thus, when Anet said they were going to balance zerkers, they did so to the letter.

Likewise, not every class can have 300 power/precision/ferocity from traits. Many classes, such as necromancers and engineers, have all of those in different trait lines, meaning that the most they can get is 300/300/100, and thus depending on build chances the reduction can be greater or lesser.

The mere fact it is going to take longer to kill the same s_h1t is a problem for me.

The only reason it’s happening in the first place is to bring it more in line with PvP stats.

NoTrigger.8396:

Conncept.7638:

NoTrigger.8396:

i would like to see a video of you running trough a dungeon with your guild without any support.

i cant believe people still dont understand that support is not depending on gear in this game. support in gw2 is defined by your weapons, traits and utilities.

You have no idea what you’re talking about do you? Take two seconds to do a youtube search and you can find thousands of videos of people running every single dungeon path in the game not only with no support, but with five zerkers, or even naked.

I have never even once seen a single dungeon run where support was warranted, let alone required. Maybe high level fractals, which have never interested me, but I’ve done speed runs in every path of every single dungeon but Arah and TA and never seen anybody request any type of support. You won’t find people refusing support either, except the full zerker groups, but nobody asks for support.

Granted I still have run support in dungeons, because I have several dungeon support builds that are a blast to play, and I don’t play for efficiency’s sake. But to say it’s required is laughable, you can bring whatever you want in dungeons and live so long as you have enough dodge uptime to avoid all damage, so yes because of that any build can enter a dungeon. But damage and dodge gets it done faster. And to say it is required can frankly only be said by one completely blind or ignorant to all of GW2s largest design flaws.

i run dungeons in one of the best pve guilds in the game and we support each other with:
- reflections
- projectile blocking
- might stacks
- fury
- banner
- regeneration
- protection
- aegis
- blinds
- swiftness

and so on. and all of that happens while using full berserker gear.

support does not depend on your gear. welcome to the game without a trinity and an active combat system.

LOL that’s not support. Just look at the best MMO ever called WOW. PROPER support are
- TAUNTING
- HEALING
- TANKING
- TAUNTING
- TANKING
- HEALING
- TAUNTING

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

—
crit chance caps out at 99%.
—

I have seen this couple of times and would like to see a proof. Just few days ago I tested 500 hits with 100% Critical Chance and they were all criticals.

I got quite a few non-crit reflects in my guardian lupicus solos while I had fury. As I’m using assassins gear + ranger runes there, I was at 107% critchance.

Anyway, considering sigil nerf and the ferocity transition on runes, traits and major traits, you get up to a 36% damage loss as elementalist. The 15% (without the sigil nerf) are pretty accurate, but don’t consider everything. 15-25% without sigil nerf is realistic, though.

You got a video?

Wethospu.6437:

I have seen this couple of times and would like to see a proof. Just few days ago I tested 500 hits with 100% Critical Chance and they were all criticals.

I tested this as well about 6 months ago and found that even at 100%+ there was the odd hit that wouldn’t crit and I have seen more than a few people claim the same thing. I don’t know if it was a bug back then that is fixed now or what but that’s where the 99% cap theory comes from. Personally, the difference in DPS between 99% and 100% is not something I will lose any sleep over.

I also got similar results but that was when Deep Strikes was bugged and didn’t give Precision correctly in all cases.

I just find it odd that bit over 500 hits and all were criticals when on average I should have got 5 non-criticals. So if someone has something recent and verifiable. Non-recorded run without a permanent 100% Critical Chance isn’t very reliable.

Did 1200 more tests and all were criticals.

So 1700 tests, 1700 successes and 0 failures. Using formula
(tests + 1)! * r^success * (1-r)^fail / (success! * fail!)
I get
1701 * r^1700.
Integrating that gives r^1701.

Let’s say 99.5% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.995^1701) = 0.9998. So 99.98% chance that the cap is between 99.5% and 100%.

Let’s say 99.9% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.999^1701) = 0.81765. So 81.765% chance that the cap is between 99.9% and 100%.

Looks pretty reasonable to me. If someone actually knows statistics please correct me if I did something wrong.

However, against higher level targets it probably scales your Critical Chance as if you were that level. At level 80 first 4% = 916 Precision and then 1% for every 21. At level 82 first 4% = 954 and then 1% for every 22 (values based on wiki).

So at level 82 to get 100% chance you need 3066 Precision which would mean 106% chance at level 80. But if we assume 100% cap on level 80 (2932 Precision) then max you would get at level 82 target would be 94%. This needs some more testing though.

Dub.1273:

I got quite a few non-crit reflects in my guardian lupicus solos while I had fury. As I’m using assassins gear + ranger runes there, I was at 107% critchance.

Anyway, considering sigil nerf and the ferocity transition on runes, traits and major traits, you get up to a 36% damage loss as elementalist. The 15% (without the sigil nerf) are pretty accurate, but don’t consider everything. 15-25% without sigil nerf is realistic, though.

glancing

Wethospu.6437:

Did 1200 more tests and all were criticals.

So 1700 tests, 1700 successes and 0 failures. Using formula
(tests + 1)! * r^success * (1-r)^fail / (success! * fail!)
I get
1701 * r^1700.
Integrating that gives r^1701.

Let’s say 99.5% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.995^1701) = 0.9998. So 99.98% chance that the cap is between 99.5% and 100%.

Let’s say 99.9% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.999^1701) = 0.81765. So 81.765% chance that the cap is between 99.9% and 100%.

Looks pretty reasonable to me. If someone actually knows statistics please correct me if I did something wrong.

Times like this I’m glad I’m going back to college. I used to be able to do this stuff from memory.

I don’t immediately recognize the formula you used, so I did a one-sample proportions test on the data you provided. One tailed.

Null Hypothesis: the percentage is 99%
Alternate Hypothesis: the percentage is 100%

Proportional standard deviation (sigma) = Square root of (p(p-1)/n)
Z-test: Z = (p – P) / 2sigma

N = 1700
p = proposed probability (0.99)
P = sample probability (1.00)
sigma = 0.0024
Z = 2.07
P = 0.9615

The Z value is the number of standard deviations away from the null that the sample test obtained. For a one tailed test, this comes to a probability of 96.15%, or some pretty strong evidence to reject the null.

So yeah, I’d say it is pretty safe to throw that “99% cap” theory out the door, and attribute the differences to other factors like enemy level changes.

I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checking_whether_a_coin_is_fair

NoTrigger.8396:

Dub.1273:

I got quite a few non-crit reflects in my guardian lupicus solos while I had fury. As I’m using assassins gear + ranger runes there, I was at 107% critchance.

Anyway, considering sigil nerf and the ferocity transition on runes, traits and major traits, you get up to a 36% damage loss as elementalist. The 15% (without the sigil nerf) are pretty accurate, but don’t consider everything. 15-25% without sigil nerf is realistic, though.

glancing

While those also happen you can see a difference between a glancing and a non-glancing hit. Glancing blows should have 5 times less damage while non-glancing ones should have 2.5 times less damage.

Some more test data. Almost 600 hits against level 82 target with about 100% chance equals about 97% chance.

Enough of derailing, started new topic here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Theory-Less-crit-chance-vs-higher-level

@Wethospu

Thanks for the testing. I had never really paid any attention to the level of the mobs I was hitting when I tested months ago and my tested were no where near as extensive as yours. Now we know.