Guild Wars 2

Is there any word on how celestial will be affected by the ferocity change? Obviously many pieces now give way more critical damage than they would if the stats are converted. Will they be rebalanced or will the Ferocity just be toned down to the current stat level (effectively nerfing celestial gear?)

EDIT:

Comapre these:

+91 Power
+60 Precision
+7% Critical Damage

and

+38 Power
+38 Precision
+38 Toughness
+38 Vitality
+38 Condition Damage
+5% Critical Damage
+38 Healing Power

which means beserker gets 7% replaced by 60 ferocity, whereas celestial gets only 38 for 5%? That means it just lost 4 stats points.

This would be quite a bit for a full set…and a set that doesn’t need to be nerfed (most would say it needed a buff before this).

I’d suspect it would give the same amount as precision does.

Celestial is going to get nerfed to the ground.

I’d assume ferocity would be treated as a primary stat. Just guessing.

It was kinda silly that celestial crit dmg. was so high. I hope they fix it, not that crappy gear needed a nerf but it makes me feel better as a zerk player.

Could someone explain here briefly, what that new “Ferocity” Stat exactly does, sorry, couldn’t get early enough into the stream, to hear, what it will do soon.

I can say so far only, that I dislike the name of the new stat, because it has exactly the same name, like one of our 3 personalities, what I think is absolutely an uncreative way of naming the new stat.
Why rename it at all?
And if they have to rename it, why can’t they give it not a good Stat Name that fits to the other Stats in its theme, something like:

• Courage
• Agility
• Dexterity
• Perspicacity
• Valor

Somethign like that I see do fit like 100000 times more, than giving that Stat the same name like the personality >.>

@Orpheal
I would have liked Dexterity to be the new name. Reminds me of D&D, and thematically it makes sense.

Asko

It was kinda silly that celestial crit dmg. was so high. I hope they fix it, not that crappy gear needed a nerf but it makes me feel better as a zerk player.

Believe it or not, the critical part was actually what made celestial worth bringing over soldier’s if you supported it with a good amount of might and fury. Which is why I’d rather not see it nerfed. However, adding +1 to all the other stats probably isn’t a solution either, because that would buff it.

Orpheal

And if they have to rename it, why can’t they give it not a good Stat Name that fits to the other Stats in its theme, something like:
•Courage
•Agility
•Dexterity
•Perspicacity
•Valor

Because none of those are fitting as a synonym for ‘brutally dealing
more damage’?

Watching the livestream today it was mentioned that Crit Damage is being replaced with a new stat called Ferocity. Ferocity will work as a fixed number rather than a percentage, which will allow them to normalize the Crit Damage done by various pieces of gear. Further, it was mentioned that the given amount of Ferocity will be equivalent to the other stats of the weapon (the example given was +90 Power, +67 Precision, + 67 Ferocity). This second point is the key to the discussion because it means Celestial gear scaling with the new system is terrible.

Take for example an Ascended Dagger and say for instance they decide to make 15 Ferocity equivalent to 1% Crit Damage.

• If you take Zojja’s Razor (Berserker stats) you get +67 Ferocity. This gives you 4% Crit Damage, with 7 remaining.
• If you take Wupwup’s Razor (Celestial stats) you get +42 Ferocity. This gives you 2% Crit Damage, with 12 remaining.
• This is an overall nerf since before the change both Berserker and Celestial weapons gave 5% Crit damage, but Celestial Crit Damage dropped by much more than Berserker.

No matter what coefficient they chose for the conversion between Ferocity and Crit Damage, Celestial gear will get less Crit damage because it’s stats are spread more evenly. However, people took Celestial gear precisely because the Crit Damage scaling was so good. Is it ok to lower the Crit Damage across the board for Celestial gear, given that it takes so much longer to make than other stat gear already? Are there plans to offer a gear change to those who have crafted Celestial Gear already?

The only other thing I could think of was that the possibility of making gear where Ferocity was the primary stat. If that is done to Celestial Gear and it ends up having more Ferocity than other stats it would remain in roughly the same place as it is now when compared to Berserker stats. What do you guys think?

Yeah, did they actually mention anything about how ferocity will work?

On celestial, celestial was always weaker than berserker and assassins crit damage or not due to the huge loss of power.

So we already lost the MF stat on cel with nothing to make up for it, now they’re nerfing the stats directly. Sure glad I spent all that time making a full cel set.

Celestial always seems to get nerfed by these things. First magic find, then ascended armour, and now ferocity…

Anet will not compensate, as usual, and Celestial will become even more worthless.

i am quitting thief and I might quit the game too because i have no motivation to play this game !!

ThiBash.5634:

Because none of those are fitting as a synonym for ‘brutally dealing
more damage’?

Some other suggestions:
brutality
savagery
barbarism
viciousness
deadly
fatals
perilouss
breaknecks
formidables
menacings
wicked

icewyrm.5038:

Yeah, did they actually mention anything about how ferocity will work?

Ferocity will be a new stat that will replace Critical Damage. It will be given on the same numbers Power, Precision and almost any other stat is and will take the value it deserves as minor attribute for each piece of gear.
Making some cheap calculations, 1% Critical Damage for every 13-17 (lets say 15 :P) Ferocity points is more or less consistent with maximum damage builds losing a 10% DPS and sPvP amulets keeping their current critical damage.

Edited because of bad calculations :P

Ya celestial is getting wrecked if it goes through like they explained. Im sure some people will argue that its still more stats but its so short on power it will be extremely hard to make this gear useful in any builds after the changes.

This would be the second uncompensated nerf to celestial gear in a row. Considering how long it takes to make, it would be nice if they added boon duration to make up for it.

ThiBash.5634:

Asko

It was kinda silly that celestial crit dmg. was so high. I hope they fix it, not that crappy gear needed a nerf but it makes me feel better as a zerk player.

Believe it or not, the critical part was actually what made celestial worth bringing over soldier’s if you supported it with a good amount of might and fury. Which is why I’d rather not see it nerfed. However, adding +1 to all the other stats probably isn’t a solution either, because that would buff it.

Orpheal

And if they have to rename it, why can’t they give it not a good Stat Name that fits to the other Stats in its theme, something like:
•Courage
•Agility
•Dexterity
•Perspicacity
•Valor

Because none of those are fitting as a synonym for ‘brutally dealing
more damage’?

How small minded ….

If you are courageous, you fight more risky and brutally to overcome your foe with your attacks quickly, at the risk to get self some hits if you are too courageous to estimate your situation right in, exactly what you expect from the Berserker Mentality.
Hight Damage for the risk of taking self more damage.

If you are agile, your combat skills can outperform somebody, who isn’t as agile as you, what opens up advantages for you to hit your foe better critically, than the foe can hit you.

If you are very dextrous with your weapons, if you wield them in the fastest combat like a grandmaster, knowing perfectly how to use them, you can deal with your weapons far more brutal and experienced attacks that can lead to critical hits, than somebody, who isn’t as dextrous as you.

If your perspicacity is very good and your character is due of that a very good observer, you know how to react on what your foe does, to use the situations for your advantage, waiting for the right moments to deal critical hits, when the weakness of your foe is opposed to you.

If you’re valiant, then you are so battle experienced, that you fear not the death, you fight recklessly and just brutal if you would want to do so, because nothing will stop you, not even the fear of death due to you being so valiant.

All of them do fit as a name for the stat, its just a matter out of which angle of view you look at these words and what you associate with them in regard of them beign an offensive stat that buffs your attack power/damage ratio.
—-

However, these were just a few suggestions, if you don’t like these Stat names, then this is your problem, not mine. I just thought only they’d definetely fit better and owuld absolutely be more creative, than naming the Stat ferocity, which is in the game already one of its 3 personalities.

Its simply no good game design for me, if you give 2 different mechanics in a game the same names.

PS: thanks for the explanation on the ferocity effect:

Spo basically its exactly the same, like befoe, but now just % got changed into points and we need to get alot of points together now to raise the % chance basically.
in regard of this I also say, Celestial Items need to get a compensation!

ALready the last time we got no compensation for the removal of Magic Find, when Magic Find as Stat was clearly a factore, which was also calculated in for all other remaining Stats.
AT the time when MF got removed, the Stats of celestial items basically all should have been slightly rights to compenate for the loss of MF, which was part of the old balancing of all the other stats, which is the reason, why the Stat Points are now, how they are.

Surely wouldn’t have made the game more unbalanced to rase all stats here for example from 38 points to say like 42 points for the loss of MF.

But if the conversion from % to Ferocity Points leads now to the point, that we all lose 10% Crit Daamage, I think ANet should restat those lost 10% either into a Stat increase for all the other Stats so that celestial stuff doesn’t get death nerfed now, or instead of Stat Increase, Celestials should receive also like Suggested as new Stat also Boon Duration Increase of say 5% or Condition Duration Increase of 5%

Lucky.9421:

This would be the second uncompensated nerf to celestial gear in a row. Considering how long it takes to make, it would be nice if they added boon duration to make up for it.

Yeah, I’d love to see some compensation for when they simply removed Magic Find without giving anything in return.

+38 Power
+38 Precision
+38 Toughness
+38 Vitality
+38 Condition Damage
+38 Ferocity
+38 Healing Power
+1% Boon Duration

That would be a nice setup methinks!

Aveneo.2068:

Lucky.9421:

This would be the second uncompensated nerf to celestial gear in a row. Considering how long it takes to make, it would be nice if they added boon duration to make up for it.

Yeah, I’d love to see some compensation for when they simply removed Magic Find without giving anything in return.

+38 Power
+38 Precision
+38 Toughness
+38 Vitality
+38 Condition Damage
+38 Ferocity
+38 Healing Power
+1% Boon Duration

That would be a nice setup methinks!

1% boon duration is incredibly low. Would need to be like 3 to 5% per piece imo.

Atherakhia.4086:

Aveneo.2068:

Lucky.9421:

This would be the second uncompensated nerf to celestial gear in a row. Considering how long it takes to make, it would be nice if they added boon duration to make up for it.

Yeah, I’d love to see some compensation for when they simply removed Magic Find without giving anything in return.

+38 Power
+38 Precision
+38 Toughness
+38 Vitality
+38 Condition Damage
+38 Ferocity
+38 Healing Power
+1% Boon Duration

That would be a nice setup methinks!

1% boon duration is incredibly low. Would need to be like 3 to 5% per piece imo.

Not entirely sure, but as I recall level 80 exotic Giver’s armor also only provided 1% Boon Duration per piece. And a full Celestial set (including weapons) could then have 14-15% Boon Duration which is not too shabby imo

Orpheal.8263:

Could someone explain here briefly, what that new “Ferocity” Stat exactly does, sorry, couldn’t get early enough into the stream, to hear, what it will do soon.

Think of Ferocity as fractional critical damage or as a “critical damage rating”. Ferocity on all gear will be summed together and be divided by some hidden number to get Critical Damage. Ferocity will work for Crit Damage in the same manner that Precision works for Critical Chance (~21 precision = 1% Critical Chance). If I had to guess, the ratio would be between 12 and 15 ferocity = 1% Critical Damage.

This solves two issues for the developers, compared to using Critical Damage in whole numbers only.:
1. It’s hard to incrementally improve gear with whole number critical damage because it often needs to jump at least one whole number higher.
2. Whole number Crit Damage leads to certain gear being over budget on item stats and others being under budget. If you mix and match gear and stack the over budget items, you get more crit damage than intended.

In addition, jewelry (back, amulet, rings, accessories) is over-budget with critical damage, so when this is converted to Ferocity, you’ll see a net loss in Critical Damage.

Here’s an example. On live, here are some exotic armor stats:

Helm
45 Power
32 Precision
2% Crit Damage (16 stat points per 1% Crit Dmg)

Shoulders
34 Power
24 Precision
2% Crit Damage (12 stat points per 1% Crit Dmg)

Chest
101 Power
72 Precision
5% Crit Damage (14.4 stat points per 1% Crit Dmg)

Total = 9% Crit Damage

With Ferocity, they look like:

Helm
45 Power
32 Precision
32 Ferocity

Shoulders
34 Power
24 Precision
24 Ferocity

Chest
101 Power
72 Precision
72 Ferocity

Total = 128 Ferocity
The scaling factor ANet choices determines how much crit damage this would.
(15 Ferocity → 1% Crit Dmg): 128 Ferocity = 8.53% Crit Damage
(12 Ferocity → 1% Crit Dmg): 128 Ferocity = 10.67% Crit Damage

The catch is Jewelry, which has too much crit damage. Jewelry will lose quite a bit of crit damage.

Ascended Amulet
126 Power
85 Precision
85 Ferocity (formerly 9% Crit Damage)

(15 Ferocity → 1% Crit Dmg): 85 Ferocity = 5.67% Crit Damage
(12 Ferocity → 1% Crit Dmg): 85 Ferocity = 7.08% Crit Damage

It also means that if they ever need to adjust crit damage again, they can change the hidden divider value…

Thanks agai nfor that nice explaination in detailed form.
I did knew that the conversion wil ldefinetely mean ,that basically everydody will lose some critical hit chance.

My Thief for example is currently at 70% crit rate with PVT Gear.
I hope this change won’t nerf my build to death only xD
Somehow I hope the class specific trait lines for Critical Damage will compensate this change also, so that players have chances to stay at their builds without loosing too much Damage Output.

The Intention of this chance should still be to address mostly Berserker geared characters and not to basicall nerf everything down to oblivion.
So I think its quite necessary, that all classes should have to get also some kind of playroom for compensation for those upcoming change.

I had already to significantly adapt my personal character build with my thief due to the change with Assassins Reward becoming for a nonsensical weak useless trait (Hard to Catch) a Grandmaster Trait, so that this mentioned junk could get just moved into the Master Tier.
I absolutely don’t want to have drstic Trait Changes again, just to be able to literally maintain my current playstyle with my thief due to the critical damage reducement that could lead to the point, that my build might become too ineffective, if I just go for more Berserker Equip that will lead again then to lesser Max health making it easier to kill me, which will feell like a double kick into the kitten , for not having Assasins reward anymore what was a very useful passive trait that helped alot in survivability (at least me, saved me many times my butt in dangerous sitations) >.>

It seems Celetestial armors are getting a huge nerf.

Currently Celetestial armors give similar crit dam to their zerker counterparts. If the Ferocity give to Celetestials are matching the other stats on the armor, the resulting crit dam for Celetestials would be hugely decreased.

I am kicking my self for making the Ascended chest, helm and pants not too long ago. I spend a lot of time grinding for these, and simply can’t bring myself to do it again.

The least Anet can do is to let us reelect the stats if you have any piece with crit dam on it. I think I’ll stop playing for a while to see how this turns out. So much for a no-grinding game.

I’m concerned about Celestial too. Hopefully ANet addresses it. My guess would be that they up the value on each stat slightly to compensate.

Celestial gear is extremely time-consuming to get (it takes 5 days per piece to craft it). They acknowledged that people put in hard work to get their gear and they didn’t want to obsolete any gear, but this change will completely obsolete celestial gear if they go through with it.

The fact that celestial gear currently gives about as much critical damage as berserker is what makes it a compelling choice. If that is removed with this ferocity change, there will be no purpose in celestial gear at all.

In addition, they said they were aiming for an overall 10% dmg reduction with this change, but the damage reduction for full celestial players will be MUCH MORE than just 10%.

I really hope this is just an oversight and that they will correct it. This change is completely inconsistent with what their stated goals were.

THIS IS CRAZY after spending weeks to craft this set its now going to be worthless!!!!!!!!!

Come on Anet on top of the debacle with the Edge of The Mists beta testing you do this?????

Ascended celestial 2h + exotic celestial armor + ascended celestial amulet, rings, accessories = 48% crit damage. They will have 356 Ferocity with the change.

Ascended berserker 2h + exotic berserker armor + ascended berserker amulet, rings, accessories = 55% crit damage. They will have 565 Ferocity with the change.

Using a 15 Ferocity → 1% crit damage conversion, that yields
Celestial: 24.33% crit damage
Berserker: 37.67 % crit damage

The ratio of celestial to beserker went from 0.87 to 0.65.

*Note: Back was omitted because there is no celestial back item.

ANET thanks for making us take a month or more to craft an ascended celestrial set then take it from us Way to Go!!!! gather all that crap to make this set charged the stupid stones then you come and say nope its worthless now. THANKS!!!!!! Guess we can buy more gems now huh.

Well, since it’s a quite different stat combo, they still can set Ferocity as some kind of major and let it keep high values. Who knows …

What I think it will be is that crit damage will now be ferocity.
So for Example a Celestial Pearl Broadsword would have +79 ferocity instead of +10 crit.
Over all I am not sure how much of a difference that makes but I believe that all +crits will basically be reduced by 10%.

I would really really like clarification from the devs about this. Celestial armor is the most time-consuming set to get. If you’re going to get less crit damage it may just not be worth taking over a combination of 2 other crit-damage focused sets like Cavalier and Valkyrie. or Cavalier and Berserkers.

Exedore.6320:

Ascended celestial 2h + exotic celestial armor + ascended celestial amulet, rings, accessories = 48% crit damage. They will have 356 Ferocity with the change.

Ascended berserker 2h + exotic berserker armor + ascended berserker amulet, rings, accessories = 55% crit damage. They will have 565 Ferocity with the change.

Using a 15 Ferocity -> 1% crit damage conversion, that yields
Celestial: 24.33% crit damage
Berserker: 37.67 % crit damage

The ratio of celestial to beserker went from 0.87 to 0.65.

*Note: Back was omitted because there is no celestial back item.

So where’s the -10% because this is 17,33% less damage… that’s HUGE!!

so glad i made that full celestial ascended set for my ele now. Now it’s becoming totally useless. Can I have back all the gold i wasted on it so i can make a new set that isn’t completely useless by this stupid change that barely even affects zerkers at all? At the very least they should add boon duration to celestial as compensation for further nerfing it. Removing the magic find with no compensation was bad enough.

I normally don’t like to whine or complain about these sorts of gaming minutiae, but this is really unacceptable. After people have been pouring gold and time into crafting ascended (and doubly timegated in the case of celestial) gear, you make a change like this? The MF change, while certainly an annoying poke in the eye, was not the end of the world for me, personally.

I would really like to see a red address this issue either by assuring us that ferocity will be a straight over change (like zerk) or there will be other stats changed/added to celestial to make it remain relevant to the meta.

Thank you for your consideration.

nicknamenick.2437:

So where’s the -10% because this is 17,33% less damage… that’s HUGE!!

It’s approximately -10% damage for full zerker builds.

Developers stated that they’re targeting a 10% reduction in damage for the best damage setup (mix of ascended berserker/assassin gear, full DPS traits, critical damage food, ruby orbs, precision infusions). One can infer from this that they’re looking at approximately 13 ferocity to 1% critical damage ratio (you can do the math yourself). Let’s see how this affects various gear setups (assuming no sigils, no food, and no runes, and no infusions, 25 might stacks & fury). Compared to live values, this means:

Full berserker (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 7.22% nerf
Full assassin (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 7.83% nerf
Celestial weapon & armour + berserker trinkets (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 11.36% nerf
Full celestial + berserker backpiece (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 11.08% nerf
Full knight (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 3.22% nerf
Full knight (0 ferocity traits) – no change
Full cavalier/valkyrie (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 5.04% nerf
Full cavalier/valkyrie (0 precision traits, 0 ferocity traits) – 2.59% nerf
Full soldier (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 2.05% nerf
Full soldier (o ferocity traits) – no change
Other prefixes – no change unless traited in ferocity (critical damage) line

As you can see, the nerfs to celestial gear completely dwarfs the nerfs to other gear setups, even though it is far from being the best DPS gear. In case celestial gear is being looked at in conjunction with ferocity change, I’ve done some theorycrafting to see what kind of numbers will be needed in order for them to retain their current strength relative to other prefixes. Presently, the ratio of +all stat to a minor stat is 5:8. With the high critical damage bonus celestial gear provides, one wearing full celestial gear is able to achieve DPS numbers comparable to that attained by someone wearing full knight gear (slightly less without full buffs, slightly more with 25 might stacks & fury). Of course, celestial gear provides significantly less toughness compared to full knight, however it somewhat makes up for this rather glaring deficiency by having a little bit of vitality and healing power as well as condition damage. This, coupled with flexibility in build style that celestial gear offers, is what motivated people (myself included) to spend time and gold in obtaining it. With that in mind, I propose that +all stat to a minor stat ratio change from 5:8 to 3:4 when ferocity change goes live. This means that celestial weapon + armour will give 276 to all stats (including ferocity) instead of giving 230 to all stats + 30% critical damage, and full celestial gear minus backpiece will give 532 to all stats instead of 446 to all stats + 59% critical damage. Such change will affect the above setup thusly:

Celestial weapon & armour + berserker trinkets (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 7.42% damage nerf in exchange for 5.66% effective HP buff
Full celestial + berserker backpiece (30 precision traits, 30 ferocity traits) – 3.28% damage nerf in exchange for 9.37% effective HP buff

This will keep celestial gear competitive with knight gear in terms of DPS (obviously, knight gear itself is unaffected by ferocity change), which is where it’s at now. The tradeoff between offensive and defensive power is not ideal, but I feel most people will be able to live with it since the overall power of celestial gear will remain largely the same with this change.

Ooops, I had meant to post it on my own thread :x

Having just crafted a celestial armor set for my ele this is slightly frustrating.

The issue is not the damage nerf, but rather that celestial (which wasn’t a problem) is nerfed relatively more than berserker (which they were aiming for).

A dev reply on this would be very helpful.

Orpheal.8263:

How small minded ….

You can always make some story on why the term fits, however keep in mind that critical damage is basically the don’t let go part of go for the throat and don’t let go. How exactly is that courageous? Or agile? It’s more like feral, more barbaric. They got in a good hit at the right spot and they’re tearing violently at it. The refined part (aiming with precision at a vulnerable part) is long past: it’s the part where a character aimes to deal massive damage at the exposed flank.

I was really looking forward to making ascended celestial armor, but I think this is the final nail in the coffin of nerfs that made me change my decision.

• first: Celestial armor requires Charged Quartz, which is an additional non-skippable time-gated material over all other sets in the game

• second: removal of Magic Find from gear provided no stat buff to the rest of the stat split on Celestial

• third: Ascended Celestial has no increase in critical damage over Exotic… even though they’re removing it as a stat, we still got hosed on it.

• fourth: changes to critical damage now will convert to even less stats for Celestial compared to the Ferocity that will be on Berserker.

Conclusion: Celestial gear is not worth crafting anymore. Its requirements are above and beyond all other sets, yet it’s substantially worse than anything else. Don’t even get me started on the fact that light ascended celestial requires 11-12 ADDITIONAL days to craft compared to medium and heavy ascended.

It would be really nice to get a dev answer to this. I was going to craft a full celestial ascended armor and weapons for my elementalist and/or guardian because of the heavy crit dmg i’d get together with some defensive stats. If you’d really set ferocity to the same level as the other stats I’d lose around 11% crit dmg from weapons and Armor alone. Please don’t do this! Celestial absolutely needs the crit dmg to be usefu!

It would be nice to hear about your plans on celestial equipment because I would really like to craft my ascended armor before april.

Guys lets just calm down:

- One of devs on live stream said that amount of ferocity in celestial armor will equal to other stats, right?
- They also said that reduction in damage for maxed out full DPS builds will be 10%, right?

So logically they must increase the stat ratio on celestial in order to have 10% not 17%

More than just “slightly frustrating”. Combined with the mesmer deceptive evasion trait change my mesmer just turned into a powder puff that makes pretty butterflies.

It has also just occurred to me that my mesmer is my only character with any Agony Resistance, and my only character with a commander tag.

Anet has just told me quite clearly to go play some other game.

Honestly this is a shame. Elementalist has easy fury, high might generation and even some guaranteed crit utilities. In other words elementalist was the profession that could make the most use out of critical damage by far. If nothing is changed about the base stats of celestial, I probably won’t be taking it anymore.

They didn’t mention anything like that though. They just said it would be brought down to the minor stat value. People aren’t presuming anything other than what was mentioned… hence people going what the kitten.

I hope the devs pay attention to this ‘detail’.

One thing that I guess they could do is buff all the celestial stats a little bit to try and make up for the loss.

Or indeed, make ferocity the only primary stat on celestial gear.

A week ago, I just made ascended pieces of Celestial for my d/d ele. Now, thanks to this, its probably useless.