Guild Wars 2

I believe the profession balances sub-forum to be the best places for this post as critical damage has been a hot topic and this would have major balance implications.

A new gameplay – Expanding Ferocity
First up; Arena Net announced the addition of a new stat called Ferocity, which is to replace critical damage. The goal is to normalise critical damage distrabution across all items (were before trinkets were the best items to slot for critical damge).

So how will this effect items that have critical damage?
First off Ferocity will replace Critical Damage.
Second Ferocity will be display the same as any other stat (Examples below).

• Ascened Berserker chest: + 106 Power, + 76 Precision, + 76 Ferocity
• Ascened Celestial chest: + 47 Power, + 47 Precision, + 47 Toughness, + 47 Vitality,
  + 47 Condition Damage, + 47 Ferocity, + 47 Healing Power

Now a question.

Why should critical gameplay only effect damage and physical damage at that?

This is a thought that came to me when changes were announced for critical damage. Now what if critical gameplay was not only for DAMAGE but also included CONTROL & SUPPORT. Could this work?

When I started thinking two similar but different ideas came to me.

Now for the Ideas
First – Apply criticals across the board.
What this means is take the function of critical damage – increasing the effect, in this case damage. And apply this to the other areas.

• Condition damage – increased damage / duration.
• Healing – increased healing.
• Control effects – increased effect / duration.
• Boons – increased effect / duration.

Now this change to gameplay would need to be balanced but that’s the general idea. The second idea takes this one and expands and adds complexity.

Second – New conditions, boons & controls. For a simply name:

• Critical Conditions.
• Critical Boons.
• Critical Controls.

Now Critical damage and healing would still function the same as in the first idea (Crit Dmg – increased damage, Crit Heal – increased heal). But now something new is added. Brand new critical conditions, boons & control effects.

• Normal condition – Chill
  Critical condition – Freeze: Locks first 5 skills making you unable to change these skills for a duration. (Effects: weapons swap, attunements, kits, environmental weapons, elites)
• Normal boon – Aegis
  Critical boon – Enhanced Aegis (could be named better): Blocks all attacks for the next ½ second.
• Normal control – Stun
  Critical control – Concussion: Applied when stuned . Your next attack will cause you to be dazed for ¼ second (applied on completion of the attack). Stun breaks would remove concussion as well, meaning if you used a stun break in the stun phase concussion would also be remove and the daze would not be applied on the next attack.

What I’m looking for here is added effects more then increasing the existing effect’s power or duration. These new critical conditions, boons & controls would have their own UI symbols. One problem with adding all these new critical conditions, boons & controls would then be identifying a single condition, boon or control. As this could double the symbols on the enemy.

For simplicity a solution could be to overwrite the normal condition, boon and / or control and have only the critical condition, boon and / or control displaying (Examples below);
Duration stacking effects:

• You already have Chill on you and the next attack applies Freezes. For the duration of freeze the chill symbol would be replaced with the freeze symbol. At the end of the freezes duration the symbol would revert back to chill if there was any chill duration left. In this way having Freeze on you also implies that you are also chilled and you only have to view one symbol.

Intensity stacking effects: Two options added effect or consume stack.

• Added effect – Similar to the above idea with Freeze in that, for the duration of the critical effect the normal UI symbol is overwritten and reverts to the normal effect if on completion of the critical effect there is any normal duration left.
• Consume stack – The critical effect consumes part or all of the stack. Consume part of the stack would reduce the overall stack and consuming all the stack would remove the stack in full (removal of complete stack would remove the normal condition, boon and / or control).

Yes this will add complexity but I feel this is complexity that can enhance the gameplay. Turning Ferocity into a stat that can effect every role (DAMAGE, CONTROL & SUPPORT).

Any changes would required to be balanced across all game play (PvE, WvW & sPvP).

Other ideas:

• Searing (critical burning) – Applies enchanced burning that causes damage and reduces boon duration on target. -20% boon duration.
• Revitalisation (trait) – Next critical boon recharges all utilities (requires 7 active boons on character) 90 second recharge.

I suppose what I’ll looking for is more game depth and a way for critical play to effect all areas of combat not just physical damage. Spreading critical’s out would provide three options to each game play type.

• Go for improved normal conditions, boons and / or control (increase damage and / or duration, already in game).
• Go for critical conditions, boons and / or control (new added effects, new combat interactions)
• Go for a hybrid (a bit of everything).

My questions for everyone are;

• Could this add more combat depth or is this to complex?
• What are peoples thoughts? Is this needed, wanted or any ideas to expand?
• What effects could this have to game balance?

Edit: Changed topic title to better reflect topic.

The 10% reduction in dmg for zerker gear will make boss fights longer by about…10%… GG anet

I think the main issue is that if you make Ferocity do all that, then it’ll just be too powerful. Because it’ll not just increase your damage, but your healing as well (not to mention it’s condition damage and duration in 1).

I very much like the idea of allowing condi damage to crit. It is only fair after all. A power spec needs to stack for power, precision and ferocity. A condi spec only needs to spec for condi damage and condi duration. 3 for each would be nice.

Of course, when adding this new crit, the base damage of condi damage needs to be decreased quite a bit. In other words, if a condi crits, it should damage for more than today. When it doesn’t, it should be less than today.

But is 10% really that long of a time. Even if the fight takes half an hour that’s an extra 3 minutes and a 6 minute fight would increase by 36 seconds.

• Are the boss fights that boring that this extra time is unacceptable?
• Could the changes I talk about above make up for this time loss and make the boss fights more interesting? Also making combat more interesting and giving combat more depth.

Edit: Corrected spelling

@ThiBash I’m looking at it as more effects not over power. If you want the large heals, strong control or massive damage you still need to spec into the other required stats.
I’m looking for an added option for the other combat gameplays. Just like with physical damage were you can go with straight out solid damage or crits.

Bezagron.7352:

But is 10% really that long of a time. Even if the fight takes half an hour that’s an extra 3 minutes and a 6 minute fight would increase by 36 seconds.

• Are the boss fights that boring that this extra time is unacceptable?
• Could the changes I talk about above make up for this time loss and make the boss fights more interesting? Also making combat more interseting and giving combat more depth.

No, the 10% time increase during boss fights isn’t that much. And yes, the boss fights are long, drawn out and boring (soz). The point being, Anets nerfs and buffs do nothing and never seem to help nor hurt the fails of this game. Its almost as if their changes are symbolic rituals, 2nd natured, thoughtless motions dev’s of MMO’s usually do to emanate the air of investment in the game. Picture the worker watching surfing the web at work and OH NOES here comes the boss, pretend you’re working, (proceeds to clack away at the keyboard). The fundamentals of this game are in dire circumstances…

@style Yes that’s want I’m looking for. Just going one stat should not dominate a build / play style (DAMAGE, CONTROL, SUPPORT). And condition damage is a great example in that condition duration is not required to achieve great damage.

I was also looking at Runes & Sigils and all these on crit chance effect applications. Why should the damage play style be to most effective option? If going into heavy Control or Support adding precision was not usually a choice you would take.

On a whole I don’t think the games to bad off. It’s been a year & a bit and us as players have really stretched it to limits. Sadly I find Damage to be too far out in front as a role now but this wasn’t discovered at the start of release. It took time. And that is what I find sad, damage so far out in front. And now reducing that gap is going to have a large effect on players that play that play style.

What I mean is even if they did not change critical damage and looked at buffing only the other play styles. Damage players would still feel an effect and this effect would make you feel like you were doing reduced damage (even if the numbers were the same).

Edit: Changed some formatting

siralius.9517:

The 10% reduction in dmg for zerker gear will make boss fights longer by about…10%… GG anet

O.k…some math. If all 5 party members have 100% critical chance and if none of the party apply any damaging conditions then yes, mathematically the fight should last 10% longer. But that’s a pretty big if.

Wasbunny.6531:

siralius.9517:

The 10% reduction in dmg for zerker gear will make boss fights longer by about…10%… GG anet

O.k…some math. If all 5 party members have 100% critical chance and if none of the party apply any damaging conditions then yes, mathematically the fight should last 10% longer. But that’s a pretty big if.

That post was a mixture of sarcasm/tongue in cheek and a symbolic aggressive finger-poking in Anet’s sore rib gesture

While an interesting idea, perhaps it would over-increase the amount of buffs/boons that players would have to learn to understand and keep track of?

One of the reasons why they stepped away from hexes and enchantments in GW1 was that it became more about watching the UI than spotting the combat moves. Adding more versions of buffs & boons should probably be done carefully to not walk into the same problem they were trying to avoid?

Another thing that might prove problematic is the power of this attribute.

If it is powerful, then not just power based players, but every kind of player will want this stat.

Effectively pushing us all into more precision and ferocity leaving open only one other stat to work with. (Which most likely turns out to be power, since we need it for some basic damage, or perhaps condition damage, but most certainly not any of the others.)

Somehow I don’t think that adding more functionalities to ferocity is the best way to go about this. But it did get me thinking… I’m afraight I’ll be pondering on this for a while.

First note: Going to shorten critical conditions, boons & controls to Crit CBCs and normal conditions, boons & controls to Norm CBCs.

Yes I could see how this could become the alpha stat. It would depend on balance and these new Crti CBCs. Are they required and are critical’s the only way to get them. Could they be added to skills, ever directly or through guaranteed crits on skills applying Norm CBCs.

The next problem is how many is too much. At the moment I feel the current Norm CBCs are not enough and could be expanded. Also not every Norm CBCs needs an individual Crit CBCs. If the Crit CBCs are an extension of the Norm CBCs if should be easier to understand & keep track of.

Having to many can cause problems for identifying a single one on a target. This was why I was looking at overwriting Norm CBCs with Crit CBCs the Crit CBCs could imply the Norm CBCs effects as well.

Also could in game graphics identify these new Crit CBCs allowing players to look at the target and not at the UI symbols under the health bar.

Edit: Added sentence to third paragraph and corrected spelling.

An Example of an in game effect for Freeze could be similar (but not the same) to the legendary axe Frostfang. Someone under freeze could leave frozen footsteps and a cloud of ice particulars behind them as they move. I feel these footstep effect could be a great in game indicator for many effects and just leaving them to legendaries feels like a lost opportunity.

Hmm… (still pondering)…

Would the critical healing chance be determined by precision or by healing power?

And could a general ‘crit’ rule like: extends duration by X% be good enough for an overall effect on CC crits?

Condition damage would already have condition duration to build on. I sort of like the reliability of condition damage. Not everything would have to crit.

I’m still not sure wether I like the idea, but keep working on it.

Some interesting ideas here. Other mmo’s have healing crits and I was a little surprised that wasn’t present in GW2, although the lack of direct targeted heals might account for that. I honestly don’t understand how you propose boons (wow…almost made a really embarrassing typo hehe) to crit.

Most boss fights I’ve encountered in dungeons usually last 2-3 minutes, so an extra 20-30 seconds isn’t that big of a deal for me. However, I do like the idea of having crits applying to conditions and heals as it expands the options for more than just “zerk powah.”

I’m of the opinion that is should be the same as damage. In this way your giving up the other stats (as three stat are usually the focus).

Healing

• Healing Power, Precision & Ferocity to achieve maximum heals.

Condition Dmg – splitting in to 2 categorises

• Damaging Conditions – Condition Damage, Precision & Ferocity to achieve maximum condition damage (per tick).
• Condition effects (blind, chill…) – Condition Duration, Precision & Ferocity to achieve maximum effect of these conditions (increasing duration).
  Note: Ferocity would also open up the new critical conditions.

Boons

• Boon Duration, Precision & Ferocity for maximum effect with boons.
  Note: Ferocity would also open up the new critical boons.

Control
Now this is the funny one as there is no actucal stat that effects and improves controls, so;

• Precision & Ferocity would now effect controls and would be required for maximum effect with controls.
  Note: Ferocity would also open up the new critical controls.

Now I’m just running with these ideas and a general ‘crit’ rule could maybe work but I’m liking the above idea a bit more now.

Edit: Made corrections.

@Wasbunny with boons & controls looking for new added effects or improved effects.
Eg. Aegis blocks next attack and Enhanced Aegis blocks all attacks for the next ½ second.

In all these ideas the toughness & vitality are left out. Is there some way to include these stats in active game play. Maybe enhancing active defences somehow so going in to these stats can improve your active defences as well.

Bezagron.7352:

• Normal condition – Chill
  Critical condition – Freeze: Locks first 5 skills making you unable to change these skills for a duration. (Effects: weapons swap, attunements, kits, environmental weapons, elites)

I quite like the idea of including critical strike chance in more aspects of the game. An idea would be to allow ferocity to enhance the critical effect of things like boons and conditions. To avoid balance issues adding a small cool down between these critical strikes could be beneficial. For example a critical hit with Chill will lock the first 5 skills for a duration that is based on your critical damage and cannot be reapplied for small period of time.

10% longer in a fight like this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPZhPcyhPOg&list=FLch1FHsuRgkBJkp5o2g2mmw&index=8 – is unacceptable.

@Ryland interesting. How these new Crit CBCs would work and how ferocity would effect then I’m going to have to think about. Let me get back to you. Anyone else have any ideas?

A bit off topic
@Aberrant made me laugh (In a good way ), 10% longer in a fight like that true. 21 second clip now takes 22.1 seconds but yes I can see for the elite speed runners 10% does matter. But I ask myself should content designed to be a challenge and a boss fight in that content be that easy and fast. Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of skill involved in pulling something like that off but other then a meat bag was there any other interaction in that fight from the boss.

Should we as players be able to do that?

Complete the battle before it ever starts. If I had designed that content I would be very sad. You spend all this time designing the fight interaction and yet they is no interaction. The boss walks over to the players gets maybe 1 hit or skill in then dies. After a fight like that I wonder why their was even a fight. The designer might as well saved their time and just handed me the reward. I guess after doing that a few times I would be like why.

But for speed runs boss fights don’t matter and are just a speed bump in the way. This makes me wonder why have the intermediate boss fight. Make the paths the challenge and the final boss, maybe one intermediate. Add multiply modes to dungeons, story, exploration, vanquishing, speed runs…

Okay dungeon modes.. now that’s another topic so I’ll stop here.

Remove condi damage from the equation and make it so there is no gear that combines ferocity with condition damage then you might have something that will work.

Maybe removal could work, another one I’ll have to think about.

Was thinking about critical conditions as a condition spike option were the critical conditions consumed the condition stacks. Conditions as a whole would need to be looked at and balanced and consuming conditions could cause other problems. Maybe a basic stack cap before consume, not sure.

Now do they need a spike option?

I think conditions need a good look at before something like this but let me explore it.
Going to step down and try to work these interactions out a bit more. Keep the question and any ideas coming.

I don’t think that healing power/precision/ferocity is viable. The damage output would be terrible. (Power is a must, try running magi stats, it’s horrible!)

By pushing the precision and ferocity combination to further effectiveness, the amount of stat sets that can be used to do this effectively would probably be reduced to condition damage/precision/ferocity and power/precision/ferocity.

The first of those two doesn’t exist yet, but the second one is already the most powerful in the game.

Toughness/precision/ferocity, Vitality/precision/ferocity, Boon duration/precision/ferocity, Condition duration/precision/ferocity, none of those would probably be viable, simply because the damage output wouldn’t be high enough.

(It’s quite cool to see big healing numbers and such, but taking four times as long to take down a foe gets frustrating pretty quickly. 1 hour dungeon runs start claiming the entire evening.)

I disagree on the topic starter idea.

If ferocity affected everything, not just critical damage, then all stat combos without it would be null and void.

It would butcher stat diveristy, and the original idea behind it is to make critical builds bit less viable, to open up other builds and drag them from out of the shadow.

@The Lost Witch had the same thought about healing power/precision/ferocity and some of the others. They might be interesting but is the loss in damage worth it some might work for group play but more likely you would need hybrid builds. I’m thinking it could still effect condition damage, healing & control (tying control to some stats).

This would bring condition damage more into line with physical damage with a reliance on three stats. So using the Dire stat combination (Conditon damage, Toughness, Vitality) you wouldn’t be able to get maximum condition damage per tick and take advantage of all that defence. Having a straight Critical healing build might not be a viable option but using critical heals in a hybrid build might. You now have stat options which could help control builds. But for critical condition effects, boons & controls builds it would really come down to how useful Crit CBCs are.

Just running through test ideas at the moment. Look at posting when happen.

@ZeftheWicked starting to agree about ferocity effecting all. As I run through more ideas were ferocity effects all, it’s starting to cause more problems. But I believe a critical option for builds not focused no damage should be an option. I’m starting to look at partial expansion of critical (precision & ferocity) to the other areas and if Crit CBCs could be worked in. I believe maybe somehow tying our stats into our active gameplay could help. At the moment going into a defensive build has almost no advantages over full Zerker for active defence.

Let me work on it a bit more I’ll see what I can come up with. Thanks for all this feedback.

Ok I’ve been thinking one of the largest sticking points so far with the idea is how do criticals apply to conditions. So question;

How could you make criticals work for conditions?

The big thing to remember here is that’s there two types of conditions;

• Conditions that stack intensity. (Max stack 25)
• Conditions that stack duration. (Max stack 9, except for Immobilized 3 & Weakness 5)

And the conditions are applied to the target no matter the source (Stacks bound to target). Over stacking is not very well understood and what happens when it occurs is less understood (Wiki Effect Stacking, would love an in depth explanation). Over stacking is also one of the largest problems with conditions in group play.

So normal conditions and critical idea #1
Apply the critical multiplier to the stacks (intensity or duration).
Intensity stacking conditions

• If the condition stacks in intensity apply the ferocity (critical damage) multiplier directly to the number of stacks. Eg. Mark of Blood applies 3 stacks, getting a Critical Mark of Blood would apply 3 stacks x ferocity multiplier (say x2) so you would get 6 stacks.

Duration stacking conditions Now there’s two options here;

• Use the same stack multiplying function as intensity stack (Frozen Ground applies 1 stack x ferocity multiplier (say x2) so you would get 2 stacks of Chilled from Frozen Ground resulting in 4 seconds overall or,
• Multiply the duration on the single condition stack. Eg. Frozen Ground applies Chilled for 2 sec x ferocity multiplier (say x2) so you would get 4 seconds of Chilled but from 1 stack.

This critical option for conditions uses the existing mechanic and would most likely only need a re-balance of condition stacks & duration across all skills.

Critical idea #2
The next idea involves separating precision & ferocity for critical gameplay. What I mean here is create two types of critical gameplay.

• One with ferocity – which would require a certain level of precision for maximum benefits and,
• Another with precision – Looking at adding Crit CBCs (Critical Conditions, Boons & Controls) into the mix.

Ferocity
Ferocity critical gameplay would work much the same as the existing Critical Damage gameplay that works with physical damage now but expanded to conditions and healing.

Precision
Precision critical gameplay would be were on crit chance effects and Crit CBCs come into play.

The idea is to increase the desire for Precision as a stand alone stat. At the moment the I believe the primary reason players are taking precision is for damage. The On Crit Chance Effects typical only need just enough precision to guarantee the effects and are a secondary thought. Instead of ferocity I should have been looking at precision to expand critical gameplay. With Precision being the primary stat to open critical gameplay options it still leaves you with two other stats to choose from when looking at 3 stat builds. This changes my idea from requiring both for critical gameplay. Which would most likely work better with stat distribution.

So again looking at stats & stat combinations and their primary aspect as they stand so far in the idea;

Stats

• Power – Damage.
• Precision – Critical chance, applying Crit CBCs.
• Condition Damage – Damage (through conditions).
• Condition Duration – Increase effect duration (conditions).
• Ferocity (Critical Damage) – Effect multiplier.
• Healing Power – Healing.
• Toughness – Damage reduction.
• Vitality – Health.
• Boon Duration – Increase effect duration (boons).

Stat Combinations

• Power, Precision, Ferocity – Maximum physical damage.
• Condition Damage, Precision, Ferocity – Maximum condition damage (building stacks faster).
• Condition Duration, Precision, Ferocity – Maximum condition duration (either through stack building or increased duration).
• Precision – Maximum application of On Crit Chance Effects and Crit CBCs.
• Boon Duration, Precision – Maximum benefit from boons.

Again any of these changes would require a balance, but as a concept so far I’m happy to more on to looking at Boons & Controls also maybe something about critical defence. But again please pick my ideas to pieces as ZeftheWicked said I’m looking to open up more builds and I’m looking at adding critical gameplay to Conditions plus Support & Control with a faint idea of somehow adding to passive and active defence.

Also please note Critical idae #1 is not a solution for conditions in group play but an idea for conditions to be effected by criticals.

ThiBash.5634:

I think the main issue is that if you make Ferocity do all that, then it’ll just be too powerful. Because it’ll not just increase your damage, but your healing as well (not to mention it’s condition damage and duration in 1).

That could however then be balanced by nerfing the raw conversion rate by 50% or so. Random number btw, not thought it through. :P

More rng?

remove stats from gear, remove crit damage, remove precision, remove condition damage, remove condition stacking, remove on-crit sigils and traits.
That would be a good start for a good game.

@Haviz sorry how is this more random. Yes the critical’s have a function of randomness about them due to being a percentage chance. But my understand is that through Precision (Critical chance) you have control of this randomness were at 4% crit chance, critical’s would be very random and a 100% guaranteed. As such players have control of critical’s and their applications.

@Ichishi removing stat’s from gear could be an excellent way to open up build experimentation and swapping, but;

Removing critical’s gameplay, trait’s and drastically reducing condition’s gameplay how is this good for the game?

When I look at that I see the reduction of gameplay option’s. You loss critical’s and the On Chance Effects associated with many critical gameplay in many other games. Drastically reducing condition gameplay will have a large affect on all attrition gameplay through DoT’s (Damage over Time). Removing traits… that one has me lost. That remove’s such a large part that make build’s interesting and allows build fine tuning and help’s differentiate similar builds.

Looking at these removals, they take away many gameplay types that players enjoy. As such I just can’t see how reducing gameplay option’s so much helps GW2.