Guild Wars 2

How many of you would drop your zerker gear and switch over to another set after the crit dmg nerf? Keep in mind that it still is the fastest way to kill mobs.

Why? They have stated time and time again that the over-all damage decrease will be 10% and that it will still be the best DPS equipment in the game. No point in switching.

very unlikely for me to swtich i’ll be making another zerk rifle soon so yeah idc about it.

Moshari.8570:

Why? They have stated time and time again that the over-all damage decrease will be 10% and that it will still be the best DPS equipment in the game. No point in switching.

Agree.

But that was the intention for anet to implement this, in hopes that the DPS meta will be more “diversified”.

I think the intention was for this to be a FIRST STEP toward shifting away from the berserker meta. The crit dmg change alone won’t change much other than the overall damage values themselves.

@ Op – Totally depends on the class and what other changes are made. Potentially yes.

Nope. Instead I’m going to be even less forgiving of people playing useless builds as they hurt a zerker party even more than before as they cannot be carried as easily.

The opposite. I’ll be speccing zerker gear now more than before seeing as the nerfs affect it less than every other crit damage set.

The 10% applies to berserkers. For the rest, the damage reduction is an upwards of 20-30%.

Frankly if the results are as they appear to be, I will not switch my playstyle and will just move to another game until ANet finally gets its kitten together and understands the intricacies of its own game.

Unlikely that I’ll redo my armor for my zerk build. The point to to melt the faces off of things, and using zerk gear will still be the most equipped to do that even after the change.

Depending on the target (speaking WvW here), it’s not uncommon for me to kill some people before I’m even done my attack combo, so a reduction of approximately 10% may not actually change a lot in the way the build works.

Besides, it’s also means that glass canon opponents will have a slightly harder time killing me too, so it’s a double edged sword.

Curious Yams, what class do you play?

Actually because there will be no more ‘heavy weighted’ crit damage pieces, there will be less incentive to mix sets. ALL zerk or go home.

DeceiverX.8361:

Curious Yams, what class do you play?

I actually play multiple classes, but I was referring to an engg SD burst build in my post.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Actually because there will be no more ‘heavy weighted’ crit damage pieces, there will be less incentive to mix sets. ALL zerk or go home.

I think the opposite is actually true. Since there won’t be any more “heavy weighted” crit damage pieces, the overall crit damage benefit from those pieces will go down, and thus it might be more beneficial for some to slot other stats (i.e. toughness or vitality). The “all zerk or go home” mentality would actually lessen after the change because the marginal benefit of slotting more berserker gear will be diminished.

It depends on the context though, of course. If you want max damage output, you slot full berserker now and will still slot full berserker in the future… although people might have to redo the math to see if assassin’s or any new ferocity based stat combo would potentially be more beneficial.

zerker change won’t do anything to pve, ppl will still run it

this change will only affect wvw and yeah i would switch to condi because apprently anet wants us to play condi in pvp/wvw

Yamsandjams.3267:

DeceiverX.8361:

Curious Yams, what class do you play?

I actually play multiple classes, but I was referring to an engg SD burst build in my post.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Actually because there will be no more ‘heavy weighted’ crit damage pieces, there will be less incentive to mix sets. ALL zerk or go home.

I think the opposite is actually true. Since there won’t be any more “heavy weighted” crit damage pieces, the overall crit damage benefit from those pieces will go down, and thus it might be more beneficial for some to slot other stats (i.e. toughness or vitality). The “all zerk or go home” mentality would actually lessen after the change because the marginal benefit of slotting more berserker gear will be diminished.

It depends on the context though, of course. If you want max damage output, you slot full berserker now and will still slot full berserker in the future… although people might have to redo the math to see if assassin’s or any new ferocity based stat combo would potentially be more beneficial.

Interesting. Even despite the QQ I rarely find myself easily killing mediums/heavies or good light armor players on my D/D stab thief. Of course, thieves also have immense dependency on critical strikes for success, so the nerf will hit home harder than most other classes.

Regarding the latter segment of your post, I disagree here. The berserker audience isn’t about min-maxing for PvE as much as it is people simply wanting to play DPS. I readily admit I’m a DPS junkie – I do not play anything but that role, and despise playing anything other than it, but simply forcing people into other roles is exactly the opposite of ANet’s vision, and certainly inflicts injuries on players who really want to be effective at what they want to do. As it stands – even right now – builds which have diverse stat sets are strictly MORE efficient than any other build variety in regards to DPS/effective HP. Simply nerfing crit builds is illogical, and as I stated, anyone who wants to retain even remotely competitive builds will simply alter the meta to either berserker from other set combinations or will play condis as they will become strictly better. Dungeon spammers are going to go with whatever builds deal the most DPS. Dungeon speedrunners are selfish. Do you really think they’ll idly use tankier builds? No. if condis prove to have better DPS, they’ll even move to those knowing that their condis may conflict with other peoples’. As long as they believe their build is the best for DPS, it is what they’ll use.

And of course, that’s not counting the extremely angry players, like myself, who would be more than happy to get up and leave the game altogether due to the total resignation of our desired playstyle. I am a DPS junkie. If I’m forced to play a tank, or cannot capitalize on superior DPS values to the point where i can reach equilibrium with the players who build more diverse builds, the game is not worth playing. I like a challenge, and don’t mind losing or dying fast, but to be simply out-performed is no excuse to spend my time here or play in a way I do not wish to play.

I might actually end up switching from Valkyrie to Berserker gear after the nerf. But I’m not sure.

Maybe I should just join the condition spam circus like the rest of the cheese-builds because for small-scale WvW, that seems to be the way forward.

Dee Jay.2460:

I might actually end up switching from Valkyrie to Berserker gear after the nerf. But I’m not sure.

Maybe I should just join the condition spam circus like the rest of the cheese-builds because for small-scale WvW, that seems to be the way forward.

The new pug’fest WvW map sounds like it will be all conditank all the time anyway so might as well start making the gear now.

I don’t plan on changing my gear at all

Tyrannus Blade.3408:

Nope. Instead I’m going to be even less forgiving of people playing useless builds as they hurt a zerker party even more than before as they cannot be carried as easily.

This^

DeceiverX.8361:

The opposite. I’ll be speccing zerker gear now more than before seeing as the nerfs affect it less than every other crit damage set.

The 10% applies to berserkers. For the rest, the damage reduction is an upwards of 20-30%.

I’m curious where did you get that number?

Asumita.2174:

But that was the intention for anet to implement this, in hopes that the DPS meta will be more “diversified”.

Not really. That’s the end goal, but hardly the point of the specific change. That is to:

• Normalize stats.
• Slightly reduce direct damage power.

no one’s gonna change sets because the damage drop is only 10% crit simply put if an attack hit 6000 damage the attack only loses 300-500 damage
so stop overreacting for 10% crit nerf

Carighan.6758:

Asumita.2174:

But that was the intention for anet to implement this, in hopes that the DPS meta will be more “diversified”.

Not really. That’s the end goal, but hardly the point of the specific change. That is to:

• Normalize stats.
• Slightly reduce direct damage power.

now they gotta balance conditions or everyone’s gonna run condition bunkers

after trying Dire on my engineer all i can say is i never expected to destroy a mesmer and necro with 7 skills simply put that was under 10 seconds 2.3k damage per second on bleeds 2k on burns 2500 per action thanks to 14 confusion stacks(dont even have perplexity runes)

zerker unaffected in PvP, so
obv I’m not switching

Rezzet.3614:

now they gotta balance conditions or everyone’s gonna run condition bunkers

No one except 1v1ers or other smallscape PvPers gives anything about conditions. And those who play those formats should seriously consider whether they expect an inherently non-balanceable game mode to be balanced in the future.

Never switching.
Until another set becomes the fastest set to kill. Why change?

Tyrannus Blade.3408:

Nope. Instead I’m going to be even less forgiving of people playing useless builds as they hurt a zerker party even more than before as they cannot be carried as easily.

^This. With everyone losing dps. I will be strict gear checking all dungeons now. Since everyone will have to pull their own weight now. Zerker will be more dominate for PvE in my eyes.

Asumita.2174:

But that was the intention for anet to implement this, in hopes that the DPS meta will be more “diversified”.

Well, isn’t it somehow old knowledge that they usually fail at achieving their original goals?

So no, for me nothing changes, except that I’m playing this game less and less, due to the total lack of new content worth that designation.

I may drop toughness a little and take more crit damage, depending on the change.

Otherwise I doubt I’d change anything – don’t play dungeons, so no need for full zerker.

Despite my horrible english, I’m going to trying to summarise what I honestly believe are the undeniable results on this change:

Actually, there are 2 main benefits gotten from berserker gear for PVE:
1) Obvious speedrun benefit: Stuff dies fester, so less time is spent on fights and higher reward/tme ratio is achieved.
2) Indirect defensive benefit. Stuff dies faster, so lesser the pressure it can be applied to the group and easier the content becomes.

The first benefit doesn’t change at all. Berserker is still going to be the best damage dealing available combination, so it’s still going to provide the best farming capabilities as long as the user is capable of actively countering every threat.

Everythig is about the second benefit. An 11% longer fight might force a dodge (or any other active defense usage) where it wasn’t needed before, and that might become crucial for players whose “dodging” effectiveness is arguably low.
The change is going to promote, in any case, the usage of defensive gear. On the other hand, since the average berserker player failure rate increases the less total damage output the party deals, it’s going to promote, exactly by the same reasoning, even more “elitism” (and less accessibility) among those PUG parties looking for speedruns.

For PvE the change is going to achieve nothing but a slight increase on both, defensive gear usage and the gap between optimized groups and PUGs.
As a guardian player (so I don’t try to relatively nerf other classes), a better result could be obtained by nerfing some direct culprits, like Aegis and projectile reflects/blocks, which should have smaller upkeeps and CDs for overall better results but a much more active usage.
For WvW roaming (which is the only gear-dependant PvP purpose for those who completely dislike massive combat), it’s going to nerf every power spec, probably undeserved for anyone not relying on some cheesy power burst (which is mostly about thieves), and give even a greater advantage to those already popular condition damage semibunker builds.
The change can be even more harsh for some hybrid builds (those sacrifying crit. damage, mainly slotted on extremely cost-efficient trinkets, for defense, like Knight + Berserker mixes) than on berserkers’. Dont’ even think on Celestial gear.

Bottom line, a normalization of the critical damage stat might be necessary for overall balace. In short term, however, it’s likely to bring more problems than solutions.

Probably nobody.
The crit damage changes wont change anything in PVE, the only place anything will change will be small scale WvW, where condi bunkering will be even more of a superior option in every case ever.

Supposedly its all supposed to somehow make sense with the super duper secrets that “We Cant Talk About Yet™” so I don’t know.

Maybe it wont be as silly as we all seem to think it will be, but at the moment we don’t know because apparently keeping the playerbase uniformed and confused is the best option somehow.

If the goal was really to get people to switch gear sets, the Ferocity change should have occurred before ascended armor came out.

They want the condition meta out of PvP and the berserker meta out of PvE, so when those 2 change aren’t they going to want it the other way around?, they will never have a meta that includes defensive stats in PvE.

State of the game right now: The faster something dies, the less damage you take, the more tanky you are. In the words of the guild wars 2 community:

“Everyone should run full zerkers. Zerker gear is objectively better. The reason reason people don’t run zerkers is because they still need to learn when to dodge or haven’t mastered the dodge mechanics (Aka, Only noobs and bad players). Every point spent in any other category besides Power/Precision/Crit damage is a point wasted. The only reason reason to run anything else is because you’re running a Condition damage build.”

See also:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinMaxing
often touted by: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys

After nerf, hopefully, the drop in damage is going to going to discourage players from running full zerker builds. 10% less damage means the enemies are alive 10% longer, and are able to deal 10% more damage, and such elitism will be discouraged.

i don’t want my boring dungeon runs to take any longer i have ran them all way to many times
they put me to sleep i am glad we can power house our way through a dungeon.
lol u need to increase the amount of gold for dungeons if u want us to spend more time in them !
the only way dungeons will ever be interesting .is if they have random grenerated dungeons so u don’t run the same old thing all the time !
till then just let the vets power house there way through dungeons .
and let the noobs take there time and have fun with it it’ll they get bored and can no longer stand to run them anymore and they will swap to zerk!

Escadin.9482:

DeceiverX.8361:

The opposite. I’ll be speccing zerker gear now more than before seeing as the nerfs affect it less than every other crit damage set.

The 10% applies to berserkers. For the rest, the damage reduction is an upwards of 20-30%.

I’m curious where did you get that number?

ANet stated the overall DPS decrease will be about 10%.

The problem is that key word overall

One can evaluate this change on two assumptions:
Assume Ferocity scales similarly like precision in that it has a 21 point/1% ratio. Based on the current calculation and how gearing works, you’ll be looking at something like 30% less critical damage per critical hit if it is treated like a minor stat.

Or, one can evaluate the approximate losses overall and the current crit damage multiplier based on crit rate from berserker gear, causing that difference to equate to approximately 15% on the minimum number.

This means that PRECISION/Assassin gearset builds get shafted, seeing as they lose the modifier and already suffer from already lower base power. This of course also applies to the common valkyrie stab thief and other classes running fury/precision/crit chance builds.

By reducing the damage throughput on critical strikes by such a large margin, the ONLY viable option now is to move to berserker gear due to its inherent power and subset precision/ferocity stats.

It’s why this nerf makes absolutely no sense; it doesn’t just decrease crit damage by 10% or hinder berserker builds by 10%. It hits precision builds by 15-30%+ and forces everyone into berserker or tank roles.

And of course, this also gives a ton of thieves no home to due the inherent problems they face when building tankier roles outside of condition damage/permastealth.

And of course the side effects will be even more exclusive parties and an overall more toxic pug/lfg environment across the board, while wiping a lot of builds from WvW due to the inherent gear and base hp discrepancies between classes suffocating a lot of diversity beyond condition builds.

Simply put, this change is outright negative across the entire board.

The irony is that the Ferocity change might actually be a DPS INCREASE for most low-level dungeons due to how down-scaling works.

Currently Crit-Damage, despite being a fixed percentage, is down-scaled in low-level content. So where you might have 110% normal Crit-damage, you only have 40% in Ascalonian Catacombs.

Your effective crit-chance however remains roughly the same.

Assuming now that Ferocity will use a similar down-scaling formula to Precision it could mean that your effective crit-damage isn’t down-scaled nearly as much as it is currently. So your 110% crit-damage at level 80 would still be about 110% crit-damage at level 35.

Ergo you’ll have yourself a DPS increase in every non-80 dungeon.

Dee Jay.2460:

The irony is that the Ferocity change might actually be a DPS INCREASE for most low-level dungeons due to how down-scaling works.

Currently Crit-Damage, despite being a fixed percentage, is down-scaled in low-level content. So where you might have 110% normal Crit-damage, you only have 40% in Ascalonian Catacombs.

Your effective crit-chance however remains roughly the same.

Assuming now that Ferocity will use a similar down-scaling formula to Precision it could mean that your effective crit-damage isn’t down-scaled nearly as much as it is currently. So your 110% crit-damage at level 80 would still be about 110% crit-damage at level 35.

Ergo you’ll have yourself a DPS increase in every non-80 dungeon.

Will giggle myself silly if this is how it ends up, and I fully expect it to.

Thus further emphasizing my point about why this change is totally silly and acomplishes none of the goals ANet was trying to achieve while simply shafting people in WvW.

Though I understand this is an incremental change to move from the dps meta, nerfing stuff like vigor obviously want us to dodge less. Perhaps they will emphasize on healing/support more. Moving away from DPS is certainly a step closer to the holy trinity imo.

DeceiverX.8361:

Escadin.9482:

DeceiverX.8361:

The opposite. I’ll be speccing zerker gear now more than before seeing as the nerfs affect it less than every other crit damage set.

The 10% applies to berserkers. For the rest, the damage reduction is an upwards of 20-30%.

I’m curious where did you get that number?

ANet stated the overall DPS decrease will be about 10%.

The problem is that key word overall

One can evaluate this change on two assumptions:
Assume Ferocity scales similarly like precision in that it has a 21 point/1% ratio. Based on the current calculation and how gearing works, you’ll be looking at something like 30% less critical damage per critical hit if it is treated like a minor stat.

Or, one can evaluate the approximate losses overall and the current crit damage multiplier based on crit rate from berserker gear, causing that difference to equate to approximately 15% on the minimum number.

This means that PRECISION/Assassin gearset builds get shafted, seeing as they lose the modifier and already suffer from already lower base power. This of course also applies to the common valkyrie stab thief and other classes running fury/precision/crit chance builds.

By reducing the damage throughput on critical strikes by such a large margin, the ONLY viable option now is to move to berserker gear due to its inherent power and subset precision/ferocity stats.

It’s why this nerf makes absolutely no sense; it doesn’t just decrease crit damage by 10% or hinder berserker builds by 10%. It hits precision builds by 15-30%+ and forces everyone into berserker or tank roles.

And of course, this also gives a ton of thieves no home to due the inherent problems they face when building tankier roles outside of condition damage/permastealth.

And of course the side effects will be even more exclusive parties and an overall more toxic pug/lfg environment across the board, while wiping a lot of builds from WvW due to the inherent gear and base hp discrepancies between classes suffocating a lot of diversity beyond condition builds.

Simply put, this change is outright negative across the entire board.

I fail to understand the reason behind this. Is anet really that stupid or is it my fault? :/ I may have underestimated this patch, up until now I thought it leaves too many issues untouched – but it actually makes quite a few of them worse…
Perhaps it’s just my sense for balance and priority being completely different to their’s

It’s not even that, though. The movement is strictly restricting players on build choice, while NOT opening any real opportunities elsewhere. Not only is build diversity and design going to be inhibited on top of deserved nerfs, but the compensation for classes building healing builds is almost non-existent, and of course, as mentioned, even if it were addressed, would be going against the vision ANet had at launch.

Metas should not be determined by class/stat changes, nor should they be by the company making the game, especially one that is trying so hard to makes its competitive scene relevant. Metas are established by players because they are effective win strategies. Companies should be searching for ways to make non-meta play viable against these win strategies, but not simply by forcing players out of relevance or capability via the current ones.

ANet’s vision was to allow players to play as they pleased. The problem is that many players LIKE to play a particular role at an extreme. I’m certainly in this boat, and have been since second grade when I started playing Runescape in 2002. I leveled specific skills that interested me all the way to the end just because I wanted my character to play a certain way, and continue to do so. I do so in Dungeons and Dragons locally, and also do so in every other game I play that gives me the slightest bit of choice.

While I’m all for trinity-busting, because honestly, it DOES make finding parties a more strenuous and exclusive task which only promotes toxicity in play, active damage mitigation, all classes having a heal and some form of defensive play option allow for us to not need the trinity as individuals to some extent. This doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to let people take on such roles, though. Build diversity should be encouraged, and everyone plays at different levels. Yes, a full DPS party with good players can kill a boss strictly faster and more efficiently than one with a healer, a tank, and so on, however such a party requires immense levels of individual skill for a given operation to succeed, instead of breaking the roles down into an overall group effort. If each individual is so skilled to not die and perform at maximum consistently, then the reward of killing faster is deserved, unlike a party which has a more diverse composition that is more flexible and kills slower.

Escadin.9482:

DeceiverX.8361:

Escadin.9482:

DeceiverX.8361:

The opposite. I’ll be speccing zerker gear now more than before seeing as the nerfs affect it less than every other crit damage set.

The 10% applies to berserkers. For the rest, the damage reduction is an upwards of 20-30%.

I’m curious where did you get that number?

ANet stated the overall DPS decrease will be about 10%.

The problem is that key word overall

One can evaluate this change on two assumptions:
Assume Ferocity scales similarly like precision in that it has a 21 point/1% ratio. Based on the current calculation and how gearing works, you’ll be looking at something like 30% less critical damage per critical hit if it is treated like a minor stat.

Or, one can evaluate the approximate losses overall and the current crit damage multiplier based on crit rate from berserker gear, causing that difference to equate to approximately 15% on the minimum number.

This means that PRECISION/Assassin gearset builds get shafted, seeing as they lose the modifier and already suffer from already lower base power. This of course also applies to the common valkyrie stab thief and other classes running fury/precision/crit chance builds.

By reducing the damage throughput on critical strikes by such a large margin, the ONLY viable option now is to move to berserker gear due to its inherent power and subset precision/ferocity stats.

It’s why this nerf makes absolutely no sense; it doesn’t just decrease crit damage by 10% or hinder berserker builds by 10%. It hits precision builds by 15-30%+ and forces everyone into berserker or tank roles.

And of course, this also gives a ton of thieves no home to due the inherent problems they face when building tankier roles outside of condition damage/permastealth.

And of course the side effects will be even more exclusive parties and an overall more toxic pug/lfg environment across the board, while wiping a lot of builds from WvW due to the inherent gear and base hp discrepancies between classes suffocating a lot of diversity beyond condition builds.

Simply put, this change is outright negative across the entire board.

I fail to understand the reason behind this. Is anet really that stupid or is it my fault? :/ I may have underestimated this patch, up until now I thought it leaves too many issues untouched – but it actually makes quite a few of them worse…
Perhaps it’s just my sense for balance and priority being completely different to their’s

Right, and at first I was merely a little bit upset with the fact I would be facing a slight damage reduction until I looked at the phrasing and numbers more closely.

The last few patches have demonstrated a real lack of understanding. Of all of the upcoming changes, this particular one is by far the most detrimental to gameplay as a whole and is extremely concerning. It’s particularly why I’m posting so much lately about this topic now: I want the messages near the top of the boards, because in the livestream, ANet stated these changes are coming strictly from forum feedback. Assuming they continue to pay attention, it’s absolutely critical they get the message about this change.

Recalibar.6482:

After nerf, hopefully, the drop in damage is going to going to discourage players from running full zerker builds. 10% less damage means the enemies are alive 10% longer, and are able to deal 10% more damage, and such elitism will be discouraged.

You wish
People will always run the highest dps builds possible when there is no risk of wiping.
People who can’t avoid damage while bringing zerker gear will still be kicked from groups I expect.

fadeaway.2807:

Recalibar.6482:

After nerf, hopefully, the drop in damage is going to going to discourage players from running full zerker builds. 10% less damage means the enemies are alive 10% longer, and are able to deal 10% more damage, and such elitism will be discouraged.

You wish
People will always run the highest dps builds possible when there is no risk of wiping.
People who can’t avoid damage while bringing zerker gear will still be kicked from groups I expect.

As stated earlier. Expect people to be more strict on wearing zerker. Since damage across the board will nerfed, now you need everyone in zerker to kill stuff quick. Where as before you were ok with Knight’s gear for beginners.

Nerfing crit damage does nothing in PvE except make speed runs/organized groups take 10% longer to kill things. Bad builds will still be bad, clerics/conditions will still be useless.

In PvP, it will further encourage condition bunker gameplay, which is brainless already.

Overall this change will accomplish nothing good, and will actually hurt the game.