Guild Wars 2

in no way should a character have a 100% critical rate. Well i guess Legolas got a 100% critical rate because he gets a headshot everytime he shoots an arrow and cut a head with every hit but here we in a game Critical damage was set as a bonus damage to apply when you get a ’’LUCKY’’, and i put the amphase on the word, critical. In close to all other MMO or just prety much any game you cant and will never be able to do critical strike on all hits because as logic dictate you wont be able to score a mortal blow everytime (unless your target is a stationary sandbag with a big target that wont even try to move the center away from the tip of your more then obvious sword or arrow). Youl normaly have around 50% or 55% at best with a few proc happening from time to time. By definition maybe we should all look at what a ‘’critical strike’’ is supose to be.

Palaryel.2463:

Also, someone wrote about toughness/vitality caps, toughness is soft capped at around 3k, as getting anything above that is giving you very little in return, while theoretically more of it will always be an improvement, the actual improvement would be to small to make it worth it. Vitality has no cap, and should not ever have a cap, it isnt logical to put a cap on vitality, players can adjust their vitality based on how much armor they have and based on their playstyle.

Power has no cap at all, but is a linear function, resulting in a steady increase for a particular amount of power based on your level, as such (theoretically) it would be the best dump stat (followed by vitality) for your leftover points once you have covered all your other needs. Sadly, considering the current state of the game, power along with precision and crit damage is the only viable PVE stat for reasons described above.

This is wrong. Toughness has linear returns, Power has linear returns. None have any kind of soft or hard cap. Linear returns can be seen as a kind of diminishing returns if you want, compared to multiplicative but both have the same scale.

Basically, think at it like that. If going from 2000 armor to 2250 at the same HP total allows you to survive one hit more (exactly, no rounding errors). Then for every 250 more toughness you get past that you survive one more hit. If that isn’t linear I don’t know what is.

kyubi.3620:

in no way should a character have a 100% critical rate. Well i guess Legolas got a 100% critical rate because he gets a headshot everytime he shoots an arrow and cut a head with every hit but here we in a game Critical damage was set as a bonus damage to apply when you get a ’’LUCKY’’, and i put the amphase on the word, critical. In close to all other MMO or just prety much any game you cant and will never be able to do critical strike on all hits because as logic dictate you wont be able to score a mortal blow everytime (unless your target is a stationary sandbag with a big target that wont even try to move the center away from the tip of your more then obvious sword or arrow). Youl normaly have around 50% or 55% at best with a few proc happening from time to time. By definition maybe we should all look at what a ‘’critical strike’’ is supose to be.

There are a lot of games where 100% critical chance is reachable and looked for. There are also games where, even if premacrit is not possible, critical damage can reach insane numbers like x5 or even more.

In the end, nothing of this really matter. Every game has its own ways to calculate damage outputs and players just chose their stats in order to maximize the formula.
In a game where critical rate is capped at 50% you just don’t invest over that mark and you redirect your points to either power or critical damage.
That’s something, however, that can’t be achieved in GW2. Every max level gear piece has 3 different stats attached, and every full offensive combination has precision on it.
If there’s a point where precision becomes useless, then players are FORCED to slot a defensive stat they couldn’t want.
Only one type of game does such a thing, the ones involving vertical progresion and gearchecks (which often also include enrage timers). The very nature of action combat, core of GW2 design, don’t allow gearchecks to exist (just take a look on how popular agony resistance is).

You already made your point clear; you just want the maximum achievable DPS output to be reduced. That would make fights to last longer for full damage groups, so they would be exposed to a higher risk than they are now.
I agree with you on that up to some degree (I think this is a problem in SOME scenarios, with the game working fine for the most part).
There needs to be, however, some kind of balance between stat combinations. If precision and/or crit.damage (directly related to each other) get a nerf and power becomes even more relevant for damage output, then you allow one of the most bulkiest sets available (PVT) to be closer in damage while also being extremely forgiving on player mistakes (This is an action based game. You’re supposed to evade meaningul attacks; missing them is neither a roleplaying choice nor a build option, it’s a failure and should be punished).
The change would be absolutely ridiculous for PvP scenarios.

If any damage stat “needs” to be nerfed (which is a really cheap and lazy “solution” IMHO), that should be Power.

since power is prety much a stat wich appears on every item including critical damage it would indeed significantly lower the dps of zerk class increase the value of condition damage and likely put a revalue of all spec wich use pet damage (pet have static base damage and gain no advantage from the player stacking power or critical damage)

Power does not need a nerf (the stat) directly, like I said it has to be nerfed indirectly with a general armor increase on monsters, which in turn makes condition damage more valuable and that in turn makes hybrid builds desireable aswell. Certain classes (elemental, ranger, probably necro) would profit a lot from going partially hybrid (leaned a bit more towards either condi or direct dps) setups because of that one simple change.

Also, generally condition damage needs a buff (buff is actually not the word, it has to be made viable and comparable to direct damage) for PVE. Achieving that probably is not as hard as it sounds: leave stack cap as it is, make conditions stack per player (instead of global like now), make some of the conditions be easier to apply. Another solution would be for condition damage skills to do 50% of their damage as direct damage upon applying the condition (and then doing their normal cycle like now – with no nerf to the current damage over time done, and that direct applied damage still wouldnt be able to crit and additionally would be affected by amor like direct dps).

Changes like those would make things like full celestial gear elementals, condi/power hybrid necros, etc. viable in PVE and their DPS output comparable to zerk classes.

The monster HP/armor part would shouldnt be to hard to implement at all either: simply remove 50% of the monsters current HP and add enough armor to make up for the HP lost (resulting in the effective HP remaining the same). Doing so would effectively nerf direct damage only builds, buff condition only builds, and make hybrid builds stand in between, probably resulting in hybrids becoming the new meta, but that is a lot better compared to the current situation, since hybrid builds can be achieved by combining many different item stat combinations, effectively making all armor sets useable.

Palaryel.2463:

Valdur.2679:

zerk meta can be nerfed very easily by putting a cap of 50% to critical damage. conditions are caped at 25 per condition, why shouldn’t zerkers be caped at 50% crit damage? (you can only be allowed to do double damage – 200% – not 270% like now. :P

interesting idea, no? it will force the zerkers to look into conditions builds and make a more balanced build if they want to go full offensive. they will have to use damage AND condition damage to be able to achieve similar results. (now zerkers will chop my head with their buffed 270% damage increase. i already wrote my testament, lived a full and rewarding life so go ahead: kill me!)

PS: also cap the crit chance at 50% so going full precision won’t help you. that way ppl will have more balanced builds.

Actually, what you suggested would make things worse. The better solution would be to decrease monster total HP, increase monster Armor (condition damage bypasses armor, so it is more effective against high armored monsters), and reworks conditions to do a bit more damage than they do now.

Also, making monsters hit faster for less damage makes people want more passive mitigation (HP and/or armor). So what others already explained above, they should make monsters hit faster for small numbers (250-1000/hit) and have K.O. skills on a longer cooldown, maybe also add a few cleave attacks.

kyubi.3620:

Ask anyone whos actualy running tank build but theres actualy diminishing returns to running armor over 3k, it may take variable amount of toughness depending on the class but the actual effective sweet spot is always 3k.

precision isnt capped and so does critical damage and if theres a cap id like you to actualy post it so that everyone stop running full zerker for nothing XD (the very fact you can run full zerker proves there is no cap to those stats)

kyubi.3620:

Ask anyone whos actualy running tank build but theres actualy diminishing returns to running armor over 3k, it may take variable amount of toughness depending on the class but the actual effective sweet spot is always 3k.

precision isnt capped and so does critical damage and if theres a cap id like you to actualy post it so that everyone stop running full zerker for nothing XD (the very fact you can run full zerker proves there is no cap to those stats)

Precision by itself is not capped, thats true, however, crit chance is capped at 100%, so the effective precision cap would be whatever number would get you to 100% after food/sigils/runes/… (and after fury if your group can run it permanently), everything above that soft cap would be a waste.

Also, someone wrote about toughness/vitality caps, toughness is soft capped at around 3k, as getting anything above that is giving you very little in return, while theoretically more of it will always be an improvement, the actual improvement would be to small to make it worth it. Vitality has no cap, and should not ever have a cap, it isnt logical to put a cap on vitality, players can adjust their vitality based on how much armor they have and based on their playstyle.

Power has no cap at all, but is a linear function, resulting in a steady increase for a particular amount of power based on your level, as such (theoretically) it would be the best dump stat (followed by vitality) for your leftover points once you have covered all your other needs. Sadly, considering the current state of the game, power along with precision and crit damage is the only viable PVE stat for reasons described above.

+1. Dude, you’re suggestion would WORK – that puts it above 99% of the posts in this thread.

Increasing the monster armor would definitively kill all spec wich runs on physical damage however and not just berserker. While i do agree condition damage would get a revalue what about those poor guys (the rangers) who are forced to run around with pets or the necromancer minion master wich can hardly have its damage upgraded in pvp yet is barely decent damage wise in pve. Wed have to actualy either give them a damage scaling increase based on power at the cost of a small loss to physical damage(this wouldnt affect their actual damage in pvp save for wvw because PVP stat set is based on a single amulet and your personnal runes) just to put them back to the same level as prior to that nerf.

I do aprove your subjestion but there will need to be fix to physical damage specs wich dont actualy run on zerker critical damage in the first place to compensate for these loss. Please remember were trying to make it somewhat fair for everyone.

Imho, toughness and vitality should have some kind of effect to some active skills like endure pain, blocks and similar, alike to how offensive stats work with…well, any skill that inflicts damage.
The easiest way would probably be to tie the duration with some calculation based on those stats; the current duration could be assumed as the byproduct of that calculation when using celestial gear.

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, toughness and vitality should have some kind of effect to some active skills like endure pain, blocks and similar, alike to how offensive stats work with…well, any skill that inflicts damage.

Toughness improves your heals already. No need for more.

stof.9341:

Manuhell.2759:

Imho, toughness and vitality should have some kind of effect to some active skills like endure pain, blocks and similar, alike to how offensive stats work with…well, any skill that inflicts damage.

Toughness improves your heals already. No need for more.

A bit convoluted, but we may say that it ends doing that, by reducing damage. Albeit it is overshadowed by boons like protection, blocks, evades and other means of blocking/reflecting attacks.
Thus, why should people that don’t spec on mitigation be more efficent – as they would receive more damage if those attacks weren’t blocked/ they had no protection – in their active defense as people that take those stats (and thus are lacking in other aspects)?

kyubi.3620:

Increasing the monster armor would definitively kill all spec wich runs on physical damage however and not just berserker. While i do agree condition damage would get a revalue what about those poor guys (the rangers) who are forced to run around with pets or the necromancer minion master wich can hardly have its damage upgraded in pvp yet is barely decent damage wise in pve. Wed have to actualy either give them a damage scaling increase based on power at the cost of a small loss to physical damage(this wouldnt affect their actual damage in pvp save for wvw because PVP stat set is based on a single amulet and your personnal runes) just to put them back to the same level as prior to that nerf.

I do aprove your subjestion but there will need to be fix to physical damage specs wich dont actualy run on zerker critical damage in the first place to compensate for these loss. Please remember were trying to make it somewhat fair for everyone.

It would work.
The only “issue” with zeker is damage setups killing things so extremely fast that the supposed risk disappears. That would be “fixed” by increasing armor on enemies.
If you just reduce Zeker damage, you don’t only achieve this, but you also make bulkier builds closer damage wise, something there’s no arguable reason for.

You make a lot of references to minion builds. Honestly, you should expect nothing but nerfs on that kind of specs.
Most of the PvP community (myself included) are really upset with the current amount of AI entities and the clutter they generate. This game shouldn’t promote passive play, which AI builds clearly are, not even in PvE.

There’s a problem with condition damage, but it’s not as easy to solve as it seems.
Pure condition builds only use 2 main gear stats for damage, and precision usually brings a quite small, even negligible for some builds, boost.
You just can’t let a Rabid, not even talk about Dire, to reach Berserker damage outputs; only rampager hybrid builds should deserve that.

then double rampager actual condition damage stat versus carrion and dire wich keeps they current stat. As much as passive play shouldnt deal as much damage as running full damage it should still be viable in dungeon. The minion 500 to 2000 damage per attack and near unability to do critical strike doesnt compare in any way to what zerker build runs however if we nerf them again theil just become useless in the whole game in general, Ranger damage is tied to its pet and ranger could likely survive that nerf by running pure rampager (pet can bleed) but non condition damage ranger will likely all be killed outright by that nerf.

Unlike what you believe running a pet build correctly is far from a ’’passive’’ game especialy for rangers (if you do a ‘’passive game’’ with your pet you end up with half of your base damage lost for a while and thats even worse for player who specialise in pet management). I dont mind pet behing left to what they are in pvp but they needs a rework in pve to actualy be meaningfull especialy if we are to weaken the power of physical damage in general.

kyubi.3620:

then double rampager actual condition damage stat versus carrion and dire wich keeps they current stat. As much as passive play shouldnt deal as much damage as running full damage it should still be viable in dungeon. The minion 500 to 2000 damage per attack and near unability to do critical strike doesnt compare in any way to what zerker build runs however if we nerf them again theil just become useless in the whole game in general, Ranger damage is tied to its pet and ranger could likely survive that nerf by running pure rampager (pet can bleed) but non condition damage ranger will likely all be killed outright by that nerf.

Unlike what you believe running a pet build correctly is far from a ’’passive’’ game especialy for rangers (if you do a ‘’passive game’’ with your pet you end up with half of your base damage lost for a while and thats even worse for player who specialise in pet management). I dont mind pet behing left to what they are in pvp but they needs a rework in pve to actualy be meaningfull especialy if we are to weaken the power of physical damage in general.

It has been stated too many times; you can’t toy with stats like there weren’t a whole PvP enviroment sharing the same gear. It’s easier to just increase conditon damage in PvE than making gear somehow mutate between game modes.

I’m not saying minions are going to be overall nerfed. They probably will in sPvP, but I don’t think they deserve it in PvE, not even in WvW. Just don’t expect them to be ever “competitive”.
Oddly, the best “fix” for ranger pet is an overall decrease of pet damage, which would be shifted to the ranger itself, with a boost on the beastmastery traitline (which should never be used for dungeons).

Why not ask anet to have a total revamping of classes and revival of trinity system?

When that happen, I am sure people will complain about bad tanks and healers.

Vargamonth.2047:

kyubi.3620:

then double rampager actual condition damage stat versus carrion and dire wich keeps they current stat. As much as passive play shouldnt deal as much damage as running full damage it should still be viable in dungeon. The minion 500 to 2000 damage per attack and near unability to do critical strike doesnt compare in any way to what zerker build runs however if we nerf them again theil just become useless in the whole game in general, Ranger damage is tied to its pet and ranger could likely survive that nerf by running pure rampager (pet can bleed) but non condition damage ranger will likely all be killed outright by that nerf.

Unlike what you believe running a pet build correctly is far from a ’’passive’’ game especialy for rangers (if you do a ‘’passive game’’ with your pet you end up with half of your base damage lost for a while and thats even worse for player who specialise in pet management). I dont mind pet behing left to what they are in pvp but they needs a rework in pve to actualy be meaningfull especialy if we are to weaken the power of physical damage in general.

It has been stated too many times; you can’t toy with stats like there weren’t a whole PvP enviroment sharing the same gear. It’s easier to just increase conditon damage in PvE than making gear somehow mutate between game modes.

I’m not saying minions are going to be overall nerfed. They probably will in sPvP, but I don’t think they deserve it in PvE, not even in WvW. Just don’t expect them to be ever “competitive”.
Oddly, the best “fix” for ranger pet is an overall decrease of pet damage, which would be shifted to the ranger itself, with a boost on the beastmastery traitline (which should never be used for dungeons).

such hate on pet man your terrible. You talk as if running pet for pve was actualy wrong…. aw im crrryyyying…. No seriously i dont think theil ever remove pet from the ranger mechanics to a point where it becomes a simple buff button so go ahead and dream on. + since minion master necro has long been part of the class principe theil likely only improve on it, they already working on buffing the traitline.

as a small reminder beastmastery ranger and hybrid using BM where amonst the top dps Builds ranger could achieve in guild wars 1. Likely theil keep it that way in GW 2, Anet clearly want us to work in team with our pet for dps and shifting all the damage back to ranger would litteraly go against that principe.

kyubi.3620:

such hate on pet man your terrible. You talk as if running pet for pve was actualy wrong…. aw im crrryyyying…. No seriously i dont think theil ever remove pet from the ranger mechanics to a point where it becomes a simple buff button so go ahead and dream on. + since minion master necro has long been part of the class principe theil likely only improve on it, they already working on buffing the traitline.

as a small reminder beastmastery ranger and hybrid using BM where amonst the top dps Builds ranger could achieve in guild wars 1. Likely theil keep it that way in GW 2, Anet clearly want us to work in team with our pet for dps and shifting all the damage back to ranger would litteraly go against that principe.

You can’t compare GW1 and GW2, they’re just too different.
In GW1 you hadn’t the amount of active defenses you have here. With countless skills to pick over and dual class, it was a lot more based in creating the right build for the right task than on (non mesmer) player reflexes.
Seriously, pet builds weren’t even close to as toxic as they’re here.

Rgearding Ranger, keeping pet damage high means that the damage output must be balanced as a whole.
If your pet, which doesn’t evade and you can’t control at all, gets obliterated by hostile cleave and AoE in PvE, then you’ll underperform when compared with other classes.
If, on the other side, pet survivability is boosted in PvE up to a point where they become almost indestructible, this would allow rangers to build or just play defensively while keeping a higher damage output than other classes, which is also unfair.
Pet damage received a nerf some time ago exactly because this. In PvP, rangers were building mostly defensive and outlasting enemies while their pets did the damage job; the build reached quite ridiculous levels as home point defender.

A lot of people have suggested to make pet attributes to scale based on ranger ones, which is something that could work in many situations but not for PvE dungeons, where a glass cannon pet would still explode at enemy sight, leaving the ranger vastly underpowered.
I really think that a huge link with beastmastery traitline would allow rangers to select how much pet reliant they want to build themselves, solving a lot of issues.

Regarding necromancer, I completely understand a rework on Death Magic.
It has some crappy traits (specially that first minor), and it also hides some arguably interesting staff traits behind some unavoidable minion master boosts. I don’t expect devs, however, to be so weird and buff minion master, which is already receiving tons of complaints in PvP subforums, with those changes.

Armor on monsters wouldnt really nerf the zerker builds into oblivion.
First, zerkers would still be the build that do the most direct damage possible, and considering (following what I wrote above) that monster HP would be greatly reduced to allow for the armor addition their net damage output would stay the same (kinda as in PvP, zerkers theoretically do the biggest dps, the fact that players do have armor doesnt remove the fact that pure zerkers still do the highest direct dps)

If there is no better content, this complete discussion is worthless. Stats were never the problem.

Personally, I think the best balance would be to make all specs function at zerker level. In other words, Buff up your vit/tough build lines on all classes, remove the condition cap, add a more mechanic-friendly “defiance” system on bosses and certain mobs to improve crowd control builds.

Unfortunately, the best method to make the classes balanced would be to implement the “Holy Trinity” of DPS, Tank, and Support. However, I think the trinity could be implemented in a way where it doesn’t hinder the “Play like you want” style of Guild Wars 2.

Having all classes have access to all three roles would prevent classes from falling into one roll; for example, Warriors should be able to tank as well as they can DPS, and Support should be equally viable. The DPS meta is popular due to the AI and randomness of most NPCs— why try to tank if there’s no method to prevent Lupi from mauling everyone else? Why support the dps when you can throw your weight in with them, and tear the boss down before it can do any real damage?

Tough/Vit specs (Tank Specs) should have bonuses to generating aggro, as well as buffs when targeted. For instance, add an Necromancer trait that gives bonus Death Shroud generation from foes targeting the Necromancer. Guardians could have increased Toughness vs. foes targeting them, etc.

Support specs should feature traits where they deal more damage the more boons/heals they place on allies. This not only keeps support specs useful, but also would attract more players into this spec; Support could also provide DPS, while not being berserkers. “Altruistic Healing” is a current Guardian trait that fits right into this spec.

DPS specs don’t need much in terms of modification, as this thread points out. I would suggest adding additional means of damage, rather than just zerk gear with a certain weapon. Conditions could use more love. My suggestion would be to add combos from conditions; for instance, and Elementalist can “shatter” a chill effect for additional damage, while removing the chilled effect from the victim. Mesmers could amplify confusions into a single burst, at the cost of removing confusion and having this effect on cooldown. Another idea would be to add methods of re-stacking conditions. For example, engineers can throw a corrosive elixir that resets the duration on conditions he applied, to a maximum of so many seconds.

Anyway, that’s my two cents (more like two thousand, looking back at the length…). I’m sure ANet knows what they’re doing with the revision, and I hope they look more at buffing other specs than nerfing DPS.

BlindedPeace.8736:

Support specs should feature traits where they deal more damage the more boons/heals they place on allies. This not only keeps support specs useful, but also would attract more players into this spec; Support could also provide DPS, while not being berserkers. “Altruistic Healing” is a current Guardian trait that fits right into this spec.

Altruistic Healing is not a supportive trait by any means.
Even with pure healing/support specs (I’ve played them, and I’m not ashamed! XD), it’s a trait that should never be taken. What’s the point on getting healed yourself if your mates get their HP slowly drained and eventually die? If the healing is enough to keep people alive, what’s the point on taking it at all?
It’s a 100% “tank” trait. Unless you manage to be the one focused and receiving the most damage, there’s no point on it.

Vargamonth.2047:

Altruistic Healing is not a supportive trait by any means.
Even with pure healing/support specs (I’ve played them, and I’m not ashamed! XD), it’s a trait that should never be taken. What’s the point on getting healed yourself if your mates get their HP slowly drained and eventually die? If the healing is enough to keep people alive, what’s the point on taking it at all?
It’s a 100% “tank” trait. Unless you manage to be the one focused and receiving the most damage, there’s no point on it.

I agree with you, that was a kitten on my end. I meant to say that Altruistic healing is down the road of what I was looking for in terms of support. It’s supporty for tanks, while another one would be gain Might when you apply boons to someone else.

don’t really care for Berserkers they may be strong but 75% of the time when i am with them in a dungeon they drop like a wet noodle i have been in a few where most of the party was Berserkers died so fast couldnt heal them fast enough dungeons that normally are short turn into hours or rage quit some times i am guilty of rage quieting on them not sure if this is a good idea but i say make everyone else stronger and make them have better survivability i dont know might be a bad idea

So some suggest increasing content armor to counter zerking and promote conditioning.

It would be interesting if the following were added:
- The incoming change to crit damage would be x% of armor(or toughness) ignored instead of a straight up damage mod

This way:
- Power determins your maximum direct damage.
- Toughness counters power
- Crit damage counters toughness
- Lack of toughness counters crit damage
- Power counters lack of toughness

Ahlen.7591:

Xae.7204:

LostInSmoke.2590:

aelfwe.4239:

ANET:
we introduce ascendent armor !!

Player:
QQ 450 gold to craft a full set it requires 30 laurel plenty of time gated mat QQ

1 month later

Player:
Finally i’ve complete my zerker ascendend armor, it costed a lot, but now finally i’m done

2 day later

Jon Peters:
We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berrserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

is this a troll, yeah?

I WILL quit this game if Anet messes this up. I have 2 sets of zerker ascended armor made already.

Most of my friends already quit because they were tired of the boring “balls deep DPS” Zerker kitten. The change is probably too late to bring all of them back, but some of them might come back if the change is solid.

I don’t really understand how it’s boring to do DPS. Is doing less DPS and being tankier going to somehow make the game more fun? Are fights taking longer going to be more fun?

Just because you enjoy something doesn’t mean everyone else does.

Could have sworn that the crit increase is applied after the damage calc:

((power*weapon)*skill coefficient)/(defense+toughness)

Meaning that a crit already bypass toughness in a sense, as it ramps the damage back up again.

digiowl.9620:

Could have sworn that the crit increase is applied after the damage calc:

((power*weapon)*skill coefficient)/(defense+toughness)

Meaning that a crit already bypass toughness in a sense, as it ramps the damage back up again.

No it doesn’t. If it did, I should be critting someone with 1k toughness for the same damage as someone with 0 toughness.

Seetoo.9316:

digiowl.9620:

Could have sworn that the crit increase is applied after the damage calc:

((power*weapon)*skill coefficient)/(defense+toughness)

Meaning that a crit already bypass toughness in a sense, as it ramps the damage back up again.

No it doesn’t. If it did, I should be critting someone with 1k toughness for the same damage as someone with 0 toughness.

It doesn’t matter whether the crit damage calculation is applied before or after toughness, because you get the same value regardless.

Seetoo.9316:

So some suggest increasing content armor to counter zerking and promote conditioning.

It would be interesting if the following were added:
- The incoming change to crit damage would be x% of armor(or toughness) ignored instead of a straight up damage mod

This way:
- Power determins your maximum direct damage.
- Toughness counters power
- Crit damage counters toughness
- Lack of toughness counters crit damage
- Power counters lack of toughness

Its not about “promoting condition damage” its about making ALL playstyles viable, at least to some degree. The problem right now is that only zerker is a viable option, with all other options slacking behind by a huge margin.

Its not the power (stat) part of the zerker build thats the problem, its the crit rating+crit power part together with power (along with almost all monster having very low armor) that makes it stand out this good. The thing is that different damage dealing options should yield similar damage in a certain mainfraime, which is now not a case.

The power/crit/critPower stat combo will always have the maximum possible spike damage, and that is what it is supposed to do. The issue it is that over a set period of time it should even out with so condition damage. The longer that set period of time, the closer should those two different setups be in the damage output.

Regardless of how anet fixes those issues zerkers will always have a place in every group, there are moments when you simply need those few seconds of high burst damage, and that is the area of zerkers.

I really cant understand how can a lot of people in this thread (and the game in general) fail to understand and accept that something is clearly broken in this game when the best possible setup for most of the content is 4xwarrior + guardian, or even 5x warrior all in glass cannon burst damage gear. There are a kittenton of different armor sets which are not used. The common philosophy for all dungeons became “zerk or gtfo”, that cant be right, you might even call it “racist” (except for the fact that in this case everything else really is inferior to the “supreme zerker master race”).

And I really can’t understand how people except anyone to take them seriously if they admit that they think “4w+g or 5w” is the best setup in PvE (not to mention people who barely even understand how the game works).

People just seem to mix random stuff together (sometimes issue is classes, sometimes stacking, sometimes gear, even in the same sentence) and offer random solutions which would break lots of things.

Dude, breath. Read it again. “It would be interesting…”

There’s no point regurgitating everything that’s been said.

Palaryel.2463:

I really cant understand how can a lot of people in this thread (and the game in general) fail to understand and accept that something is clearly broken in this game when the best possible setup for most of the content is 4xwarrior + guardian, or even 5x warrior all in glass cannon burst damage gear.

Are we playing the same game?

Lamir.6702:

Palaryel.2463:

I really cant understand how can a lot of people in this thread (and the game in general) fail to understand and accept that something is clearly broken in this game when the best possible setup for most of the content is 4xwarrior + guardian, or even 5x warrior all in glass cannon burst damage gear.

Are we playing the same game?

according to lfg seems yes…
Warrior is the best dps class for reliability and ease of use….
Guardian support is really uncomparable to any other profession even if full dps.

But we are stil here to discuss if zerker is an issue……..

In the meantime profession discrimination goes rampant.

Whats the point of a mmorpg if i can t play with strangers unless i play a warrior or a guardian?
If i have to use ONLY my friendlist/guild then i would just play any steam/xbl/psn multyplayer game…..

LordByron.8369:

Lamir.6702:

Palaryel.2463:

I really cant understand how can a lot of people in this thread (and the game in general) fail to understand and accept that something is clearly broken in this game when the best possible setup for most of the content is 4xwarrior + guardian, or even 5x warrior all in glass cannon burst damage gear.

Are we playing the same game?

according to lfg seems yes…
Warrior is the best dps class for reliability and ease of use….
Guardian support is really uncomparable to any other profession even if full dps.

But we are stil here to discuss if zerker is an issue……..

In the meantime profession discrimination goes rampant.

Whats the point of a mmorpg if i can t play with strangers unless i play a warrior or a guardian?
If i have to use ONLY my friendlist/guild then i would just play any steam/xbl/psn multyplayer game…..

warrior is the best option simply because the class remains tanky even while in zerker gear, combining supreme survivability with supreme damage…..

people think that doubling the armor of the monsters and cutting their health in half would nerf the zerkers. WRONG! the zerkers will kill the monsters in the EXACT amount of time because toughness x health = THE SAME as before

the only HUGE difference about this is that condition builds will kill TWICE as fast as they do today and PVP and WWW won’t be affected AT ALL by this change.

i think this would be the most simple, beneficial and balanced change that they could make. if you want to stay a zerker fine, you kill just as quick. if you want to go hybrid that’s fine you kill just as quick as a zerker. if you want to go condition fine, you kill 66% of the speed of the rampager and 66% of the speed of the zerker in a rabid gear.

i’m talking about zerker vs rampager vs rabid. rabid should be 66% zerker killing speed and rampager 100% zerker killing speed.

is that fair now? can we all rally on this ideea and convince anet to make the change?

remember! no zerker nerf, no pvp or www change only more killing speed for rampagers and conditions builds.

i think this this is the best solution possible for now. do you all agree?

Players are also more likely to melee on warrior and guardian. Profession discrimination goes beyond the zerker gear. We’re now talking about base hp, base armor, and defense.

Palaryel.2463:

warrior is the best option simply because the class remains tanky even while in zerker gear, combining supreme survivability with supreme damage…..

and supreme offensive support
and the best ressing skill in game
and the best invulnerabilities
the bst mobility skills (see arah exploiting and much more)
etc etc etc

Warrior simply does everything but anti projectiles and healing….. and with the lowest
skill floor.

Any unexperienced player becomes as effective as best pve players with a warrior.

Guardian does everything else without sacrificing damage.

Warrior damage is average. People seem to be really behind the times on this. Warriors are brought mostly for their banners which add to the real DPS of a staff ele or Guardian

Brutal Arts.6307:

People seem to be really behind the times on this.

There are still people out there that believe that 3 War + 1 Guard + 1 Mes is the best party setup for everything, that War has best DPS and that every other class is suboptimal.

I know that usually most of the community catchs up with the meta on a 3-6 months delay, but this is really getting silly.

Guys you should stop working against yourself – do not give ANET the impression that it is fine just to “shave” things one after another instead of solving issues and adding real content.

Valdur.2679:

people think that doubling the armor of the monsters and cutting their health in half would nerf the zerkers. WRONG! the zerkers will kill the monsters in the EXACT amount of time because toughness x health = THE SAME as before

the only HUGE difference about this is that condition builds will kill TWICE as fast as they do today and PVP and WWW won’t be affected AT ALL by this change.

i think this would be the most simple, beneficial and balanced change that they could make. if you want to stay a zerker fine, you kill just as quick. if you want to go hybrid that’s fine you kill just as quick as a zerker. if you want to go condition fine, you kill 66% of the speed of the rampager and 66% of the speed of the zerker in a rabid gear.

i’m talking about zerker vs rampager vs rabid. rabid should be 66% zerker killing speed and rampager 100% zerker killing speed.

is that fair now? can we all rally on this ideea and convince anet to make the change?

remember! no zerker nerf, no pvp or www change only more killing speed for rampagers and conditions builds.

i think this this is the best solution possible for now. do you all agree?

You’re wrong there, failing at simple math: Increased monster armor to make up for the HP lost will directly lower the direct damage the monster receives (resulting in zerkers doing less damage than now). However, berserker geared people would still do the highest amount of direct damage possible. The change is that a condition + direct damage mixed group will kill things faster as opposed to a full zerker group.

I fail to comprehend the logic behind your math xD even though the effective HP of the monster remains the same, the amount of direct damage will be directly decreased by the damage reduction the monster gets from the added armor.

Also, that change would open up certain new possibilities for monsters, as you could intruduce monster types that have really low HP but huge armor. Imagine a dungeon where 50% trash mobs have low hp high armor and the other 50% have it the same way like now (asuming no skipping is possible): a fullm zerker group would die to the high armored monsters since they wouldnt be able to kill it, a full condi group would die to the normal monsters since their raw HP would take to long to chew down via conditions, but a mixed group would do just fine since the conditioners could kill the high armor mobs in a few seconds, while the zerkers spike down the raw HP monster. Voila, build balance achieved

Anyways, yes thats one relatively simple change that wouldnt affect PVP at all, but would do a lot for PVE.

lol. the math is very simple. YES indeed, the zerkers will only do HALF the damage they do today on pve BUT the monsters will have HALF life = SAME amount of time to kill them.

the beauty of this change is that it will ONLY affect pve and the condition builds will be able to kill monsters in HALF the time as they do today and the zerkers will kill them in the SAME amount of time as now. on pvp and www ppl will do the same amount of damage as they do TODAY. (zerkers and condition builds will remain unchanged for pvp and www)

Wethospu.6437:

And I really can’t understand how people except anyone to take them seriously if they admit that they think “4w+g or 5w” is the best setup in PvE (not to mention people who barely even understand how the game works).

People just seem to mix random stuff together (sometimes issue is classes, sometimes stacking, sometimes gear, even in the same sentence) and offer random solutions which would break lots of things.

The frightening thing is I can’t tell if you are talking about the nubs on here crying about zerker because they seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of the issue/meta.

Or the ANet staff themselves…

Valdur.2679:

lol. the math is very simple. YES indeed, the zerkers will only do HALF the damage they do today on pve BUT the monsters will have HALF life = SAME amount of time to kill them.

50% for 50% was only an example, not a solution. As stated above in the edited post, some monster types could have 90% damage reduction and 90% HP decrease, rendering zerkers alone unusable (a 5000 HP monster that you hit for 2 damage per hit takes a while to kill xD)

4W1G is the best PUG party…

Its not an issue if few people can go in dungeons with 5 necros and without equipment…

If you have to evade, use your utilities reactively and adapt to what is happening on the screen, then you are playing the game, and its not a problem whatever equip you are using.

If all your party is spamming skill rotations, that playstyle should be heavily discouraged.

But nerfing zerker will only destroy pve balance even more….its not that mesmer will build on conditions……

Ironically the 2 profession that will lose less are the same who are creating the issue…

The one that can still provide huge damage whatever equipment they use…without needing gimmick traitlines and situational skills.

Nerf crit damage and keep this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banner_of_Strength

nice way to break things more…

i am talking about re-balancing the monsters as they are today. not increase their armor by 90% and decrease their life by 90%. i’m talking about 50-50 so zerkers will kill in the same amount of time as today and condition builds will be twice as fast as today (cause they are pretty slow today compared to zerkers by a factor of more the 2. this change will only balance things more between damage and condition damage making hybrids and condition builds more effective then they are today.

it takes 40 seconds for a pure rabid spec to kill a veteran risen giant. it takes 10 seconds for a zerker to do it. yes, increase the monster toughness, decrease their health so the condition builds to have a fair fighting chance.

also another major issue with the condition builds is the 25 cap limitation. this problem is 99% for bleeds mostly cause you can stack bleeds so fast and they do so little damage (1500 condition damage is only 118 damage per second from one bleed) then when you reach the cap you basically screwed.

to avoid reaching the 25 cap limitation so fast it will require for the a rework on the bleeding system. decrease the bleeding duration cause it’s insanely high (i can inflict bleeds up to a full minute and even go beyond that) and i can stack them so very fast that i can reach the 25 cap limit by myself.

there is something seriously wrong with how the bleeds stack today. they must reword this system all together. make the bleeds not to stack at all but only in length and make them much stronger then today. this will remove the problem. you can apply bleeds with all you’re team and the will stack in length. also poison needs more damage output.

raise the bleeds and the poison damage, make bleeds stack way less then today or make them stackable only in length.

another very cool thing they can do is make monster vulnerable to some conditions (so condition can “crit” as well)

condition system today is totally broke. it works fine when you’re on you’re own or on a small party and you’re the only one doing condition damage but the things change fast for the worse when 2-3 conditioners are on the same party. don’t even start me on world events.

another suggestion is to make specific conditions for the classes so they can’t override themselves so easily as today.

ok, the necro does fear and poison. that will be his specialty. warriors will be bleeders cause they use sharp weapons. elementalists will do elemental damage. mesmers will do illusion damage, guardians will do holy damage, like in guild wars etc

separating the conditions for each class will make the condition system much better and will allow for build and party diversity. today everyone inflicts bleeds so the cap for bleeds is reached very fast and the zerker builds bleed damage is just wasted.

LordByron.8369:

4W1G is the best PUG party…

Its not an issue if few people can go in dungeons with 5 necros and without equipment…

If you have to evade, use your utilities reactively and adapt to what is happening on the screen, then you are playing the game, and its not a problem whatever equip you are using.

If all your party is spamming skill rotations, that playstyle should be heavily discouraged.

But nerfing zerker will only destroy pve balance even more….its not that mesmer will build on conditions……

Ironically the 2 profession that will lose less are the same who are creating the issue…

The one that can still provide huge damage whatever equipment they use…without needing gimmick traitlines and situational skills.

Nerf crit damage and keep this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banner_of_Strength

nice way to break things more…

have you played necro that you can throw you’re opinions so casual about this class, about avoiding damage and inflicting condition damage?

if not please shut up. i bet you’re a hardcore zerker.

necros fwi have NO active evading skills except for the dodge of course. they can only face tank cause they have a skill that will give them protection for a few seconds. THAT’S IT! no invulnerability, no stealth, no aegis NOTHING to evade damage but dodge.

you go ahead and play a condition necro for a few months and THEN tell me what you think.

limiting the build variety to just DAMAGE it’s just plain stupid. necros aren’t a class designed to inflict massive amounts of damage. all their traits minor and major are build around CONDITION damage so playing a zerk necro is like playing a condition warrior! try to do that for a change and THEN tell me how you feel ok?

thanks.

I meant that the issue is W and G…and almost no other profession can SPAM rotations…
I thus implied that 5 necros requires more skill and will never be an issue but the usual 4W1G could even be played with the monitor turned off in many dungeons…

Or if anything W and G dominance is to be fixed way before touching crit damage

I’m all for reducing health of Warrior and Necromancer but giving Death Shroud huge PvE buff (or other active defenses). Also armor classes could be removed.

At least Warrior would be less forgiving.

ok i understand now. you’re opinion is that classes are unbalanced and W and G are overpowered. i won’t go there but W and G are usually the favorites in any team i won’t argue with that. mesmers come second, thiefs, rangers and necros are last on PUG preferences.

but so you know, necros have very good skill rotations if you play with hybrids. also necros are masters of aoe damage and especially condition damage. granted they don’t do nearly as much as zerkers in their hybrid builds but i won’t exclude any necros from a team except if they is more then one condition dealer.

now i try to make my build hybrid and AVOID bleeds as much as possible not to reach that stupid cap and loose damage. i concentrate on having fire and fear damage. bleeding is a given with necro if you play with staff and put 5 points into curses. also poison is present but it doesn’t stack and does minor damage. so i thrive to have fire and fear damage on addition to bleeds and poison and then concentrate all my efforts on pure damage. now i neglect bleeding damage all together and the bleeding duration not to hit that 25 cap in parties and concentrate on the other conditions (to have them all to inflict damage on my build) and on pure damage as much as possible. i don’t go with crit gear cause it hurts my conditions and i don’t want that, especially when i can inflict those aoe.

condition builds should avoid concentrating on bleeds alone cause it will hurt their team.

They finaly got the cat out… critical damage is on the balance headmans Axe and soon all of you petty zerkers gunna taste it badly.

I predicted it several time its the hour of judgment for critical damage user