Guild Wars 2

rjnemer.7816:

This is the problem with not having soft trinity (like gw1) or having a full trinity (like wow). Without a trinity its just a dps race. You can change it up all you want but in the end the best players will be running with the gear that puts out the most damage.

True fax!

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

JonPeters.5630:

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

May I ask if people who’re crafting ascended zerker armors should be worried? It does cost a lot to craft it.

This….I just leveled two professions to 500 specifically for this purpose. I have already crafted one ascended weapon and am in progress of a second. I have also started a third profession for the same purpose…have I wasted my time/efforts/resources?

Belzebu.3912:

I think the issue is that evasion is way too good in GW2, …

Trivializing actual player skill is not the way to go.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Berserker gear feels like it has two primary stats. It gets huge bonuses to both Power and Crit Damage which scale exponentially with one another. I’d suggest nerfing the Power to a secondary stat or nerfing the critical damage by 1-2% per piece. This unfortunately also means nerfing the crit damage on Assassin’s gear and the crit damage or toughness on Cavalier’s gear to keep them in line with Berserker’s.

Ascended Berserker hits 30% harder then Exotic Berserker. What I think they could do is remove the additional increased level of stats, bring ascended major / minor to exotic levels and compensate by adding other stats (say vitality, toughness or even healing) on ascended berserker.

frans.8092:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Berserker gear feels like it has two primary stats. It gets huge bonuses to both Power and Crit Damage which scale exponentially with one another. I’d suggest nerfing the Power to a secondary stat or nerfing the critical damage by 1-2% per piece. This unfortunately also means nerfing the crit damage on Assassin’s gear and the crit damage or toughness on Cavalier’s gear to keep them in line with Berserker’s.

Ascended Berserker hits 30% harder then Exotic Berserker. What I think they could do is remove the additional increased level of stats, bring ascended major / minor to exotic levels and compensate by adding other stats (say vitality, toughness or even healing) on ascended berserker.

I’m not sure about that 30% number as the individual pieces have very small increases over exotic berserker, but yeah..without the increase…not much incentive to upgrade. I do like the idea to add the additional survival stats to ascended though. I also believe they could accomplish this the same way they did with magic find…have it be an earned permanent account bonus. That way gear does not need to be altered.

Just make all gear have all stats as main stat. Call it ubercelestial and all your worries are gone. Noone will be discriminated because of the armor he uses. Also give players 80 more trait points to spend and 4 weaponsets like gw1.

Nerfing the stats on zerker wont do a thing.
It will make another armor set take its place.
Things wont get different that way. Fights will just last longer.
There are only a few fights that can get trivialized by dps anyway and most of these are trivial in the first place. If an enemy can not kill you in 20 seconds chances are he wont kill you in 40 seconds either.
It is not the stat combination that makes zerker so good. It is the game design that makes support and tank so weak.

There is a big benefit to having berserker gear nerfed:

The difference between the maximum damage and minimum damage becomes smaller.

And this is important because:

Enemies then no longer have to be designed to have extremely large health pools.

Anyways, my guess to what is going to happen:

Critical damage will be a bit less effective, berserker will still be the most damaging set out there, but the difference between berserker and the other sets will not be as big as it is today.

And if they anet is completely awesome: They offer owners of critical damage sets like berserker and assassin’s a one-time option to swap to another stat-combo. (Magic find-fix style)

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

I find it very odd how so many people are complaining about zerker builds.

It doesn’t affect anybody in PvE. How would it affect you if somebody in your group prefers to be full zerker? If one doesn’t like zerker, then don’t be zerker.

I personally don’t like playing condition damage, but I’m not going to go on the forums to say to nerf condition damage builds. If people want to play a certain build that’s their choice not mine.

It just seems extremely self-centered to me.

The Lost Witch.7601:

There is a big benefit to having berserker gear nerfed:

The difference between the maximum damage and minimum damage becomes smaller.

And this is important because:

Enemies then no longer have to be designed to have extremely large health pools.

Anyways, my guess to what is going to happen:

Critical damage will be a bit less effective, berserker will still be the most damaging set out there, but the difference between berserker and the other sets will not be as big as it is today.

And if they anet is completely awesome: They offer owners of critical damage sets like berserker and assassin’s a one-time option to swap to another stat-combo. (Magic find-fix style)

id rather cut my arms off than using any other statcombo.

and if anet is completely awesome, they wont listen to jelly haters who are on the mission to be as anti-zerker as possible.

the only benefit to having berserker nerfed is to make another statcombo the new meta and having people crying about it again for no reason.

“The difference between the maximum damage and minimum damage becomes smaller.”

exactly. and all you will accomplish with this is punishing good players.

if people cant accept that there is always going to be someone who is simply better, then im losing faith in humanity.

krieb.6039:

I find it very odd how so many people are complaining about zerker builds.

It doesn’t affect anybody in PvE. How would it affect you if somebody in your group prefers to be full zerker? If one doesn’t like zerker, then don’t be zerker.

I personally don’t like playing condition damage, but I’m not going to go on the forums to say to nerf condition damage builds. If people want to play a certain build that’s their choice not mine.

It just seems extremely self-centered to me.

Agreed…and yet…ANET is apparently listening to them….boggles the mind!

krieb.6039:

I find it very odd how so many people are complaining about zerker builds.

It doesn’t affect anybody in PvE. How would it affect you if somebody in your group prefers to be full zerker? If one doesn’t like zerker, then don’t be zerker.

I personally don’t like playing condition damage, but I’m not going to go on the forums to say to nerf condition damage builds. If people want to play a certain build that’s their choice not mine.

It just seems extremely self-centered to me.

It seems extremely self-centered because it is extremely self-centered.

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

yea, we crafted our ascended armor to run around in exotic again.
very smart statement from you my son.

I think you completely missed the point.

People want BiS gear, so they grind for it and now they could be having their time and $$$ taken away because ANet don’t like berserker gear.

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

mahariel.4981:

I think you completely missed the point.

People want BiS gear, so they grind for it and now they could be having their time and $$$ taken away because I PLAY HOW I WANT ELITISTS don’t like berserker gear.

fixed.

Agony.3542:

It is not the stat combination that makes zerker so good. It is the game design that makes support and tank so weak.

This! And nothing else.

Without adding a soft trinity defensive or healinggear can´t be balanced. The problems here will be.

How do u want to make a “support/heal” X, a “tanky/control” Y and a “DPS” Z equal to each other without a soft trinity?

Just take 2/3 Zerk 1/3 Clerics and a few heal/support traits/skills to heal yourself and allies up? This will be completly the same “mindless” game as we have now. Only with less pew pew.

Whats with ranged combat? How do u want to balance melee and ranged combat in this game? Most bosses have only 1-3 attacks, most of them have no “attacking area”.
If u stack Melee u´ll get all attacks, if u stack ranged usually 1 less.

But Bosses will move>melees will lose dps, party dps is already lower cause “ranged dps” sucks in this game (even Staff Ele dps suxx in pure ranged partys).
Usually ranged combat is easier at most bosses, but aswesome boring. Picking up a ranged “DD” is most times bad for all melees. That´s…well rly bad.

I can´t see a way to balance classes/weapons without a trinity.

Part 1
My proposal of PvE Balancing around Berserker Equipment and general making Battles more challenging/interesting:

1) Toughness, Vitality and Healing Power need to become more viable.
The Stat System needs a rework.

We need Stats with Dual Effects and some new Stats.

GW2 should have these Stats:

Power – Increases Attack Power and increases the Maximum Duration of Conditions.
Precision – Increases Criticial Hit Chance and increases Condition Damage
Vitality – Increases Maximum Health and reduces received Condition Damage.
Toughness – Increases Defense Power and reduces Durations of received Conditions
Agility – Increases Critical Damage and lets Endurance recharge faster.
Courage – Decreases received Critical Damage and increases Boon Durations.
Wisdom Increases Heal Efficiency and improves the Class specific Attribute %

7 Stats with Dual Effects, that would make the wholöe Combat System I think better balanced, especially around Power, Toughness and Vitality.

Remove all Stats from Equipment, make the Stat System one, that gives each Class for each Level Up from 1 to 80 a different amount of Base Stats that are from Class to Class different.
Also for every Level Up the player should receive a certain amount of Stat Points, that the player can put into one of those 7 Stats by his/herself.
The player would have then the choice to put them freely as he/she likes, or the player could click a button to get an advice on where to put the points when following a specific kind of “build”.

Say you want to follow a kind of Berserker Build, you have 10 points free to put add anywhere of the 7 Stats and by clicking the Advice Button, the best options for addign those points get highlighted by the game.

Say for example: Power, Agility and Precision get highlighted, if you want to follow the Full Damage Build. With Dual Effects, all Stats will be more interesting and owuld be more impactful for builds. Thats the problem of the current stats, because only Power and Precision are impactful due to their synergies.

Vitality and Toughness aren’t impactful, because they have no synergies with other Stats, like Power and Precision go hand in hand with Critical Damage.

But if you would take a build with high Vitality and Toughness with Dual Effect,s then you’d have a good synergy against Conditions.
If you’d take Toughness and Courage, you’d have a good Synergy against Critical Damage. The game is just missing the defensive synergies betweeen Stats, we only have an offensive Synergy here and this simply said can’t be right that way.
—-

So far on the Character Part, now we come to the Monsters.

Monsters need to receive Resistances and Weaknesses
That are 2 very important instruments to make battles far more interesting and challenging.
If you out of a sudden get attsacked by an anyme, that is resistant versus critical hits for example, but weak versus condition damage, then you know, that you have to quickly adapt your fighting style and maybe change your weapon in the combat to adapt to that resistance of the enemy.

Other types of enemies could have maybe very high defense, until you have beatne them a bit to remove some defensive “parts” of the enemy (like armor), so that we out of a sudden have a weakness spot, that if we hit that, deal massive more damage to the foe, especialyl if we attack it with something, that the enemy is weak to.

We could find for example heavy armored Fishs that receive lesser damage, as long we havend destroyed their armorec plate scales first, that cover their weakness spots and once its open, we attack those spots to deal more damage. The Elementalist changes to air Attunement to shock the fish there with lightnings and will deal directly additional damage on top of that, because fishs are weak vs. electricity!

Thats smart fighting!!! Knowing your enemy and their strengths and weaknesses to know, how you can fight against them the most effective way possible and reacting adaptively to changing situations where enemies simply aren’t impressed by attacks, because of you attackign them with a weapon, that isn’t effective agaisnt them.

Thats in my opinion a good reason, why we have multiple weapon sets and why classes that can’t have multiple weapon sets have so much skill variety, liek the Elementalist, to be able to adapt to changing situations. Resistances and Weaknesses are absolutelym issing to improve the overall Combat System of GW2.

Part 2

ANet should make also better use of those species slayer sigills, remove
them all and reimplement those Slayer Bonuses of increased damage versus certain species for killing speciafic amounts of a species, whenever a player hits the Weakness of a species.

Say I’ve killed 1000 Centaurs, now my Attacks will be 5% stronger agaisnt Centaurs, when I hit their Weaknesses, like attacking them, after a Centaur has been knocked downed, because when being knocked downed, their Weak Spots are totally exposed – the Belly. I killed 2500 Centaurs, now I’ll deal 10% Bonus Damage when I hit their Weak Spots.

Something liek this might not be much ,but I’m sure it would help greatly in making PvE more interesting and it could help a bit also People that aren’t on Full Damage Builds to deal just some more damage occasionally than normal, if they have slayed a certain species simply enough to know this species in and out how to kill them the most effecient way.

Monsters should receive all, I say not Auto atacks, but they should all cereive in general alot more Skill. All enemies in the Game just are boring, because they all repeat every few seconds permanently the same Attacks, because they sadly seem to have all just only like 1 to 3 different Skills and thats it…. add to all Monsters more Skills and the Game would feel so much better, more challenging and interesting.
And where we are at Monsters, all of the Maps could receive some more Monster Types to be found in, especially changing Monsters in the Maps based on if its daytime or nighttime. I should be able to see completely different night active creatures everywherre in the world, that we see only, when its night. as like also creatures, that can be found on, when its daytime!!

Monster AI has to be improved.
Monsters should have mechanics/skills with that they can also block or dodge attacks, they need to have also Skils with that they can cure Conditions and with that they can heal themself.
Mechanics I see way too less being used so far in the Game.
Also more Enemies should have in the future a Downed Mode also, so that they can come back, if they manage to down a player in that time with their downed skills.

Monsters should also have more Skills with that they can remove Boons.
But please, hell NO to more enemies that permanently immobilize players.
Orr is already the hell cause of this shizz, getting permanently every few steps immobilized, crippled, chilled, launched, pulled or knock downed by a bunch of standing around creatures in your near is absolutely NO fun

What Anet could do also is improving the Rune and Sigil System to provide there some better options for Control and Support Builds that make these playstyles more equal to a Full Damage Build.

They should add also some new Boons to improve the Support and Control Builds.
Boons like Sturdiness, that could work like the counterpart of Might, improving Toughness and Healign Power instead of Power and Condition Damage.

Reincarnation/Rejuvenation, which could give players a high heal, when you receive an attack that would be normally deadly, like a different kind of Aegis.

Concentration which could support the class specific features different.

Just a few examples that would be I think very helpful to make Support and Control more equal to Damage, if you’d receive these new helpful boons only through Support/Control Builds lettign Full Damage Builds have no access to these new boons.
—-

That are the first thigns I’d personally change and then see firs,t how those changes work out, to see, if some more changes are required, or if some of the made changes need some tweaks.

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

Well why exactly did you craf ascended? Don’t tell me for the looks.

nagymbear.5280:

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

Well why exactly did you craf ascended? Don’t tell me for the looks.

What does the reason for crafting ascended gear have to do with anything? The only thing that matters is that it has already been crafted…at great expense. That’s like asking why someone ran a dungeon to get exotic gear. Maybe because they liked the appearance, they wanted the stat increases, they ran the dungeons and had the available tokens? Take your pick or any other possible reason.

nagymbear.5280:

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

Well why exactly did you craf ascended? Don’t tell me for the looks.

It’s crafted for the stat advantage, that is not the point though is it.

Having all that grind/time/gold potentially invalidated due to a nerf is not all of a sudden made okay simply because I can go out and spend gold an a crappy exotic set.

It is even less okay when simply nerfing zerker gear would have zero positive impact in terms of promoting build diversity in pve as that will only be achieved by altering the fundamental combat and encounter mechanics and promoting a trinity system. Things which seem highly unlikely to happen.

So no, being able to buy exotics does not make it okay that peoples ascended gear possibly gets turned to crud due to a nerf which is both ineffectual and also seemingly only done to appease a bunch of whiners who complain that people able to use zerkers are clearing content faster then them in there “I want to use my lol play how I wantz random zet up”.

Just to be clear. You buy a car and after 1 day of use you cannot sell it at the same price. There is nothing new here (at least for me). You level a prof, patch comes out, you rage and roll something else. An MMO changin all the time due to its very nature. If you don’t like wasting your time, don’t play an MMO.

nagymbear.5280:

Just to be clear. You buy a car and after 1 day of use you cannot sell it at the same price. There is nothing new here (at least for me). You level a prof, patch comes out, you rage and roll something else. An MMO changin all the time due to its very nature. If you don’t like wasting your time, don’t play an MMO.

It’s time gated, end game, BiS gear that requires a massive grind. The introduction of stuff like ascended was always going to be an issue if they decided to make significant alterations to the combat meta outside of the spvp scope.

I personally feel if they wanted to nerf zerker or change how the meta is they should of done it when Ascended gear got put in the game, the grind to get a full set is a lot and to make zerker not viable and make carrion the best would annoy a lot of people

I think the only thing they can do is make other builds viable and just hope people use them over Zerker…

Something they could do is reset all the stats for Ascended gear so you can test builds and then decide instead of forcing you to grind again for laurels mats gold etc

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Just to be clear. You buy a car and after 1 day of use you cannot sell it at the same price. There is nothing new here (at least for me). You level a prof, patch comes out, you rage and roll something else. An MMO changin all the time due to its very nature. If you don’t like wasting your time, don’t play an MMO.

It’s time gated, end game, BiS gear that requires a massive grind. The introduction of stuff like ascended was always going to be an issue if they decided to make significant alterations to the combat meta outside of the spvp scope.

If you can’t see the issue after it has been repeatedly pointed out then there is little point in going over it again.

You keep talking about that nerf. Is something already announced? And I totally get it. Something is the best thing now, so you go for it, put in a lot of effort and gets not so great anymore. Do you see condition builds being the meta in PVE? How? Your ascended berserker gear (which IMO you didn’t even need) will be just as good. Trust me. Its not like fill zerker warriors will become extinct overnight. If you have problems with some part of the game being changed (not on a whim mind you), than don’t play an MMO, you’ll be off better for it.

ODB.6891:

nagymbear.5280:

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

Well why exactly did you craf ascended? Don’t tell me for the looks.

What does the reason for crafting ascended gear have to do with anything? The only thing that matters is that it has already been crafted…at great expense. That’s like asking why someone ran a dungeon to get exotic gear. Maybe because they liked the appearance, they wanted the stat increases, they ran the dungeons and had the available tokens? Take your pick or any other possible reason.

The reason matters, because you probably didn’t need it in the first place. You put in a lot of effort, for a minimal advantage, and when something changes you become frustrated. I evaluated whether I ever want ascended or legendary gear, and I just didn’t go for them, because its not worth it for me. You want ANET to not change the game, because you crafted ascended berserker gear. Well, there are a lot of players, and they want another type of experience from PvE maybe. Anet wants to do that maybe. Maybe! Nothing announced making ascended berserker gear useless yet.

nagymbear.5280:

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Just to be clear. You buy a car and after 1 day of use you cannot sell it at the same price. There is nothing new here (at least for me). You level a prof, patch comes out, you rage and roll something else. An MMO changin all the time due to its very nature. If you don’t like wasting your time, don’t play an MMO.

It’s time gated, end game, BiS gear that requires a massive grind. The introduction of stuff like ascended was always going to be an issue if they decided to make significant alterations to the combat meta outside of the spvp scope.

If you can’t see the issue after it has been repeatedly pointed out then there is little point in going over it again.

You keep talking about that nerf. Is something already announced? And I totally get it. Something is the best thing now, so you go for it, put in a lot of effort and gets not so great anymore. Do you see condition builds being the meta in PVE? How? Your ascended berserker gear (which IMO you didn’t even need) will be just as good. Trust me. Its not like fill zerker warriors will become extinct overnight. If you have problems with some part of the game being changed (not on a whim mind you), than don’t play an MMO, you’ll be off better for it.

People expect change in an mmo, I don’t need you to tell me to change gaming genre thanks.

Your comment alluding to the fact that people can simply go out and buy exotics so they shouldn’t complain about their ascended getting potentially nerfed was somewhat ridiculous.

nagymbear, have you been here long? I mean, have you seen in the past what happens when they say they’re going to fix something? Because it seems like you have no idea what happens… if you did you would understand exactly why people are reacting the way they are.

Do you suggest that overnight everyone will want rabid ascended to do PvE? If not, you need to worry about nothing.

Guys, no one wants to take away you super-dps toy (aka zerker gear).
All anyone wants is to take away your reason to scorn anyone who would rather play with a different toy.
Because having only one gear/build choice be really viable in the eyes of pretty much everyone (thus inducing scorn for people who favour a different build and playstyle) is just plain boring.
I really doubt that zerker gear is suddenly going to become useless – balancing a game is, after all, all about balancing the proficiency of different choices, thereby favouring an increase in viability and usefulness of other stat combos and playstyles.

You don’t have to play with zerkers if you don’t want to. Set up an lfg “lf2m p3” and if you get any zerkers you don’t like, just boot them.

What should not happen is that an entire stat combination gets nerfed because people are too busy feeling offended about players they don’t even have to play with.

nagymbear.5280:

Do you suggest that overnight everyone will want rabid ascended to do PvE? If not, you need to worry about nothing.

If the Devs drastically change things, then yes, this is in the realm of possibilities. It depends on how hard they swing the bat. Which, again, is why I must ask how long you’ve been here because if you’ve been around at least 9 months reading balance patches and watching the STOG interviews you know exactly how this is going to end up.

mahariel.4981:

What should not happen is that an entire stat combination gets nerfed because people are too busy feeling offended about players they don’t even have to play with.

^ It’s basically this. Zerker is not a problem. The problem is that other setups are not as viable and should be buffed.

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

nagymbear.5280:

Fenrir.3609:

nagymbear.5280:

Meglobob.8620:

All those players who grinded there kitten off for ascended with berserker stats are going to be so happy now…

All that wasted gold, laurels, time etc…

Anet snap there fingers and ‘poof’ your back to where you started…

Because you cannot do content in exotics… riiight.

That’s a joke right?

Well why exactly did you craf ascended? Don’t tell me for the looks.

What does the reason for crafting ascended gear have to do with anything? The only thing that matters is that it has already been crafted…at great expense. That’s like asking why someone ran a dungeon to get exotic gear. Maybe because they liked the appearance, they wanted the stat increases, they ran the dungeons and had the available tokens? Take your pick or any other possible reason.

The reason matters, because you probably didn’t need it in the first place. You put in a lot of effort, for a minimal advantage, and when something changes you become frustrated. I evaluated whether I ever want ascended or legendary gear, and I just didn’t go for them, because its not worth it for me. You want ANET to not change the game, because you crafted ascended berserker gear. Well, there are a lot of players, and they want another type of experience from PvE maybe. Anet wants to do that maybe. Maybe! Nothing announced making ascended berserker gear useless yet.

Your opinion or personal choice to be less effective in pve content aside, the reason does not matter as to why the gear was crafted/obtained. You can choose to not be the best you can be if you want…that is your decision…although it does impact others you group with. What, again, does matter…is that time/effort/resources were spent on what was advertised and implemented…extremely recently on what one would assume is stable content…then will possibly be relegated to vendor trash due to the massive cries of those who feel they aren’t being carried properly though what passes for difficult pve content. You don’t need anything beyond possibly masterwork gear to complete most of the content in this game…with others carrying you to victory…but that isn’t the point either.

This is pretty much the definition of a bait and switch. This ascended gear has been hyped up for a significant period of time..and when it is finally fully implemented, and players are mid way in their investments in it…then all of a sudden a significant group of those who invested just has to start over? Bad business.

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

thefantasticg.3984:

nagymbear.5280:

Do you suggest that overnight everyone will want rabid ascended to do PvE? If not, you need to worry about nothing.

If the Devs drastically change things, then yes, this is in the realm of possibilities. It depends on how hard they swing the bat. Which, again, is why I must ask how long you’ve been here because if you’ve been around at least 9 months reading balance patches you know exactly how this is going to end up.

We are talking rabid gear (condition damage/toughness/perception). Ho do you see condition damage being a part of PvE? By increasing bleed caps to 50? Would you want more than 2 condition damage builds in a party for that? If they reduce the crit damage added by berserker gear to half, condition build would still be unnecessary in PvE runs. If you want condition damage builds in an open world boss battle, you would need a bleed cap of 200, 500 maybe even 1000. And those would need to be all just bleed builds as 1 player can keep a boss under perma burn, poison. Your fear is irrational. I have been around for more than 9 months, and my main is ranger, so I know about changes, and bad changes as well.

ens.9854:

Hopefully they are not shifting the best gear set to something different but rewarding parties for running a variety of stat distributions instead of just one

This is the key point for me. I am not a hardcore dungeon-runner but I was drawn to the non-trinity approach because it seemed to promise a lot more flexibility in terms of playstyle and inclusion of more ‘hybrid’ setups and the like. I do have a berserker set for dungeons/PvE but I feel like it would be good if people who preferred to play a bit tankier, or do healing and support, or run condi builds weren’t just utterly shut out of the ‘meta’ – basically, that any combination of builds should be able to run a dungeon (or complete whatever objective) pretty comparably to another. The efficiency of a run should come down to how well the players run and play their builds regardless of what that build is.

Of course there is likely to still be one ‘optimal’ meta according to theorycrafting, but the difference should be marginal at best. Ideally, no class or build (unless someone is just being ridiculous and deliberately taking stats/gear/traits which don’t affect the skills and weapons they use) should feel useless or unwanted or subpar.

I am sure it is/will be an incredibly difficult thing to balance, but that is the dream, for me, and that is where the ‘problem’ with the zerker meta lies, rather than with zerker itself.

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

nagymbear.5280:

We are talking rabid gear (condition damage/toughness/perception). Ho do you see condition damage being a part of PvE? By increasing bleed caps to 50? Would you want more than 2 condition damage builds in a party for that? If they reduce the crit damage added by berserker gear to half, condition build would still be unnecessary in PvE runs. If you want condition damage builds in an open world boss battle, you would need a bleed cap of 200, 500 maybe even 1000. And those would need to be all just bleed builds as 1 player can keep a boss under perma burn, poison. Your fear is irrational. I have been around for more than 9 months, and my main is ranger, so I know about changes, and bad changes as well.

They’ve said in the past the condi cap is a technical limitation.

And I’m confused as to if you have been around that long and main a Ranger how you think this is going to end well. My “fear” is based on past balance history. It would be irrational if it was not based on past actions, which became history, and thus completely unfounded. Sad truth is that what we all expect to happen is based on the past balancing history and what Devs have openly said on forums and in interviews such as the STOG. Of course, they could completely go against past history and do something extremely unexpected that ends well, but if I was to place bets in Vegas on it, I wouldn’t place bets on this ending well. But hey, maybe my well placed and rational “fear” is wrong… but I seriously doubt it.

An interesting tweak would be to turn damage multipliers from multiplicative to additive. This would impact zerker builds more than other builds, lower overall damage, and promote trait diversity. As well as keeping all the shiny new ascended zerker gear useful.

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure you know they did not come out and say that specifically. They gave a general statement saying they are looking into addressing the zerker meta. Obviously a poor implementation of this would be beating zerkers over the head with a nerf bat. Based on previous nerfs/patches…this isn’t too far fetched of a possibility. Especially so with a significant portion of the player base screaming for it every day.

thefantasticg.3984:

And I’m confused as to if you have been around that long and main a Ranger how you think this is going to end well.

Nowhere did I said it will end well. What I said was:
1. You can do PvE in exotics just fine.
2. MMOs introduce huge changes, and it gets frustrating at times.
3. You need to evaluate how much effort ascended gear is really worth next time.
4. I just don’t see condition build being part of “the pve” everyone is talking about. I presume its dungeon/fractal runs and open world boss events.

ODB.6891:

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure you know they did not come out and say that specifically. They gave a general statement saying they are looking into addressing the zerker meta. Obviously a poor implementation of this would be beating zerkers over the head with a nerf bat. Based on previous nerfs/patches…this isn’t too far fetched of a possibility. Especially so with a significant portion of the player base screaming for it every day.

The only way I can see berserker stats being nerfed is reducing the crit damage bonus they give. And even that would not result in condition builds being desired for PvE. Anet has done some decisions I don’t agree with, but I think even they now better than to just reduce the effectiveness of the power stat. Even a reduction in the effectiveness of precision wouldn’t push people away from zerkers.

J Eberle.9312:

nagymbear.5280:

3. You need to evaluate how much effort ascended gear is really worth next time.

Yes, because we all knew this was going to happen. -_-

brb hiring a personal fortuneteller for next time.

What exactly DID happen? From what I’ve read, they are discussing this, and maybe will post some ideas next week. From what I saw with the pace of the changes to rangers, maybe a december 2014 patch will have this effect.

nagymbear.5280:

thefantasticg.3984:

And I’m confused as to if you have been around that long and main a Ranger how you think this is going to end well.

Nowhere did I said it will end well. What I said was:
1. You can do PvE in exotics just fine.
2. MMOs introduce huge changes, and it gets frustrating at times.
3. You need to evaluate how much effort ascended gear is really worth next time.
4. I just don’t see condition build being part of “the pve” everyone is talking about. I presume its dungeon/fractal runs and open world boss events.

I guess I should have said, “…how you think this is going to end any way but bad.” instead of what I said.

I actually refuse to grind out ascended so I run around in exotics and do just fine. This is only the 2nd MMO I have played as I haven’t liked many. I evaluated ascended and not worth the grind.. and I absolutely loath time gating. Condi builds cannot become the meta until the condi cap is removed or something like the condi cap rollover that was suggested in this thread or the other is implemented… then it’s just going to be condi or dps builds meta and thats it.

nagymbear.5280:

J Eberle.9312:

nagymbear.5280:

3. You need to evaluate how much effort ascended gear is really worth next time.

Yes, because we all knew this was going to happen. -_-

brb hiring a personal fortuneteller for next time.

What exactly DID happen? From what I’ve read, they are discussing this, and maybe will post some ideas next week. From what I saw with the pace of the changes to rangers, maybe a december 2014 patch will have this effect.

Nothing. I am simply saying that you cannot rationalize them making changes to the effectiveness of ascended gear based on ‘well you should have known, better remember next time’

Nobody ever even thought this was up for discussion. Now it is. And based on the track record for ‘balance’ patches, it never goes well so people have a right to be concerned especially since they have or are currently crafting their time gated gear sets.

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

nagymbear.5280:

ODB.6891:

A decision to nerf zerker gear will not even solve the problem. The problem is clearly the ineffectiveness of other stat combinations in the game’s combat system. Their ineffectiveness is not going to change suddenly if berserker gear becomes garbage. Just from your comments, you seem to have some bias against ascended gear to begin with. That’s all well and good, but I’ll stay in my lane.

I must admit I do skip some posts in threads sometimes. Could you please point me to the post where Anet says it will nerf zerker gear.

Sarcasm aside, I’m pretty sure you know they did not come out and say that specifically. They gave a general statement saying they are looking into addressing the zerker meta. Obviously a poor implementation of this would be beating zerkers over the head with a nerf bat. Based on previous nerfs/patches…this isn’t too far fetched of a possibility. Especially so with a significant portion of the player base screaming for it every day.

The only way I can see berserker stats being nerfed is reducing the crit damage bonus they give. And even that would not result in condition builds being desired for PvE. Anet has done some decisions I don’t agree with, but I think even they now better than to just reduce the effectiveness of the power stat. Even a reduction in the effectiveness of precision wouldn’t push people away from zerkers.

My issues with a nerf to berserkers at all, are:
1. The reason for the nerf
2. The fact that the nerf will still not accomplish what some think it will

Berserkers are only really prevalent in pve. Pvp actually makes good use of those other gear combinations. That makes this nerf specifically targeted at pve dungeons/fractals…since you can do open world stuff in masterwork. Plenty of groups fail at dungeons/fractals…even wearing zerker gear. This clearly indicates it is more about positioning/teamwork/utilities/avoidance/timing. This leads me to believe that the reason for the possible nerf really is excessive cries of those wearing ineffective gear stat combinations of getting booted/excluded from pugs. That being said, I pug all the time. I can tell you that there is rarely a group I get that does not have one or more “play how they want” running around in pvt/clerics with an ineffective weapon choice that they never switch from during the entire run. Those runs generally succeed with minimal issues. To get booted, it really requires some serious screwing up…which has nothing to do with the zerker meta. There are always those groups that want gear to be pinged…but guess what…don’t join those groups as they are probably going to be rude and boot you on the first mistake if you are zerk anyway.

It has been covered already why #2 is a bad reason by multiple posters in the two threads I see about this.

Nerfing any type of stat combination is, for me, a very bad solution. Rather than kittening of several hundreds or thousands of players ArenaNet would do much better with designing PvE content in a way that rewards different builds/playstyles.

Berserker gear isn’t a problem in the other 2 gamemodes (it might be, however, if they will ever introduce another step of gear grind. But i will quit the game at that point anyway ^^).

Iavra.8510:

Nerfing any type of stat combination is, for me, a very bad solution. Rather than kittening of several hundreds or thousands of players ArenaNet would do much better with designing PvE content in a way that rewards different builds/playstyles.

But that would require effort and, in consequence, costs, so it is most unlikely to happen.