Guild Wars 2

Boyd.5438:

full soldier meta guardian does nowhere near a full zerker guardian damage, i have full soldier, full clerics and full zerker spec guardians… the risk on a full zerker guardian pretty much die 1 hit but deals very high damage comparable to thiefs auto attack at glasscannon mode.

cleric guardian hits like little girls with a bolster.

full soldier guardian deals damage but never will crit much damage.

consider this.

any class @ a 100% crit chance and 122% crit damage will deal

base damage +122% more every hit. tradeoff is 1 hit KO.

where soldier build will get around max 30% crit and at most 60% crit chance.

meaning base damage + 30% @ 60% crit chance lottery. BUT survive more hits and allow more mistakes to be made.

thats on the pve front.

wvw front is a different story all togather.

Tests on build calculators using Sw/Fc on a 10/30/0/5/25 build, fully buffed (up to where is possible, no banners and the like), shows full soldier having 62% of full zeker’s effective power. Math shouldn’t lie.

Guardians usually dont reach that high at critical damage since no investment is done on Valor. Also, the build is using RHS which leads to better critchances than with other classes.

Considering full boons and banner of discipline, full zeker gets 100% chance of dealing 254% damage, so 254% damage.
On full soldier it would be 39% chance of dealing 100% damage, and 61% chance of dealing 183% damage, so 150.6%, which is 59% of 254%.
The differences coming from the lack of banner and using a Signet of Accuracy on the calculator that doesn’t make any sense to use here (already 100% critchance).

Something that takes 20 seconds (without time warp) in full zeker, takes 34 seconds for a full soldier counterpart. It’s not THAT much for someone having 224% the effective HP.

As i said, the differences we use to see are not exactly caused by gear. It adds up, yes, but rune/sigil/trait choices and lackluster boon/vulnerability stacking is what makes the gap huge.

Just out of curiosity: Does anyone know how many stacks of bleed/poison/torment/ whateva would be needed to kill Lupi in average zerker time(assuming max condi dmg)?

ArchonWing.9480:

I wonder if anyone brought up condition damage.

All this talk about zerker dominance but one of the reasons why it’s so dominant is that the alternatives for defeating enemies are so bad.

If pve conditions were a viable alternative, then at least it wouldn’t just be zerker. If you want build diversity…

exactly, the problem currently is the cap on condition stacks @ pve. you are limited to 25 stacks, and they dont stack up more than that. having more condition builds are not viable BUT having condition duration stacking that support teamplay is.

honestly, full warrior zerker groups dont do as much damage as a dedicated group for dps. most of the time zerker warrior groups dont factor in the other conditions that help out like weakness and poison to avoid healing, they have might stacks, they can banner blast a lb fire field for 25 stacks and long fury durations,

what they dont have?

they dont have traits to deal more damage % when mobs drop below a certain amount. thats where other classes shine, and deal fast damage.

so many other factors to put into consideration… idk why are u guys dropping the bomb on zerkers because they do more damage. the worst groups are full zerker warrior groups because they honestly cant outdo damage @ ele + thief and engi’s.

best combo is always a mix to bring more choices onto the table. even rangers can do massive amount of damage with a melee weapon. but why do you think most rangers get denied dungeon runs?

first of all, most bad rangers, they use a single target weapon, secondly they dont use waterfields or spirits etc to grant team support.

same for any class, they simply dont do what they could do, instead just want to spam 1 and watch a movie. either that or they are just plain ignorant and use lb/sb combo…

ive joined countless groups @ pugs. ive seen the worst, bad, decent, good, awesome groups. i can tell you that awesome groups are not full warriors or even full zerkers, BUT, they are as effective as full zerker group and even better because they bring more to the table.

when a random pug group comes togather, and they automatically knows how to blast might, cast vuln stacks, reflect, block projectiles, remove conditions from you, stack boons and stuff, that is what most players want. honestly, who wants to carry a log that does nothing but stay there not moving?

heck man, ive seen zerker groups that come togather,
warriors that dont use banners,
thiefs that dont use blinds,
guards that doesnt stack might, stability or aegis only staff 1,
engi’s that only shoot with pistol,
ranger that stands far away shooting while group getting banged with conditions,
ele that uses a staff and stay faaaaaaaaaaaar away only using 1 skill,
necro that doesnt drop conditions or wells just staff 1 again
mesmers that never use feedback or phantasm wardens.

when you mention to them, hey, if you do this, we all get this. they will turn around and say “eh, f off, i play how i want”

now, do you understand why people get kicked from dungeons? why people ask for higher AP?

if you dont, its because higher AP players have been ingame longer and usually know what those are and what is supposed to be done.

have you ever had a botched dungeon run? all because nobody knows what to do and doesnt wanna listen to any suggestions? wipe over and over and over again? or runs off and die then expect a ress or rage?

its similar to wvw, no commander will want someone that cannot follow and execute. you stray u die. its a simple rule.

Vargamonth.2047:

Boyd.5438:

full soldier meta guardian does nowhere near a full zerker guardian damage, i have full soldier, full clerics and full zerker spec guardians… the risk on a full zerker guardian pretty much die 1 hit but deals very high damage comparable to thiefs auto attack at glasscannon mode.

cleric guardian hits like little girls with a bolster.

full soldier guardian deals damage but never will crit much damage.

consider this.

any class @ a 100% crit chance and 122% crit damage will deal

base damage +122% more every hit. tradeoff is 1 hit KO.

where soldier build will get around max 30% crit and at most 60% crit chance.

meaning base damage + 30% @ 60% crit chance lottery. BUT survive more hits and allow more mistakes to be made.

thats on the pve front.

wvw front is a different story all togather.

Tests on build calculators using Sw/Fc on a 10/30/0/5/25 build, fully buffed (up to where is possible, no banners and the like), shows full soldier having 62% of full zeker’s effective power. Math shouldn’t lie.

Guardians usually dont reach that high at critical damage since no investment is done on Valor. Also, the build is using RHS which leads to better critchances than with other classes.

Considering full boons and banner of discipline, full zeker gets 100% chance of dealing 254% damage, so 254% damage.
On full soldier it would be 39% chance of dealing 100% damage, and 61% chance of dealing 183% damage, so 150.6%, which is 59% of 254%.
The differences coming from the lack of banner and using a Signet of Accuracy on the calculator that doesn’t make any sense to use here (already 100% critchance).

Something that takes 20 seconds (without time warp) in full zeker, takes 34 seconds for a full soldier counterpart. It’s not THAT much for someone having 224% the effective HP.

As i said, the differences we use to see are not exactly caused by gear. It adds up, yes, but rune/sigil/trait choices and lackluster boon/vulnerability stacking is what makes the gap huge.

yea well u gotta know, RNG is a kitten sometimes. 100% crit chance is gurantee a crit, but with 80% sometimes u get 5 crits out of 10 hits. the % if not 100%, you wont know if its out of a million hits, or a billion hits.

say possibility wise, there is NO WAY to guarantee 80% of the hits you do on an opponent will be a crit, it might be 50% altho you have 80% of crit.

AND sometimes with 50% crit, you deal 70% crits on people just because of rng.

it is not relevant to count the % if not 100% because its not accurate, at least from what ive seen in real application.

but anyhow, my main concern is that they kill the effectiveness of critical hits and damage to the point of oblivion. there is no point of having zerker then because pvt or ppt will be fine and do same damage.

hence screwing up the high risk high reward scenario. they need more active content, not living story, but interactive/evolving AI.

If you are good enough to survive you wear zerker, if you aren’t you wear something else. That is pretty much all there is to it.

As long as there are no roles in combat and the fights are balanced around green gear then whatever set does the most dps will be the meta.

Rebalance to make distinctive roles, no more 25 party wide might stacks, perma prot, and aegis from a full dps character, etc. Make debuffs meaningful and only give them to debuff specced characters.

Finally introduce hardmode dungeons that are balanced around ascended gear and have actual mechanics and soft enrages.

Now all of a sudden people will want a variety of specs and gear combos in their group.

Nike,
I think you’re operating under the assumption that in a hybrid DPS system roles are destined to some kind of empty frivolous flavor text.

That’s just not true. In other games that feature this kind of a system, the gameplay between the roles is legitimately different. Different roles are desired because they keep things interesting by re-contextualizing the same content with a different perspective.

The gameplay between a Medic and an Assault in a TBS will give you an entirely different experience. A Marksman and a Support in a MOBA will do the same thing. A fully Support specced character versus a fully DPS specced character in GW2 will not. Speccing into a role in this game doesn’t re-contextualize your experience and offer a different perspective, it’s the same experience with some superficial mechanics overlaid on top that happens to result tossing around some buffs and conditions.

That’s not standard operating procedure for this kind of a system, that’s a tragic and shallow imitation that’s in desperate need of stepping up it’s game.

I find playing the different classes to be different enough from each other from a playstyle perspective to be meaningful.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

…

Finally introduce hardmode dungeons that are balanced around ascended gear and have actual mechanics and soft enrages.

Now all of a sudden people will want a variety of specs and gear combos in their group.

I really agree with this bit, pointing to the Twilight Arbor Aetherpath as the lead supporting example. That was a step in the right direction and it’s important to give credit there.

It presented new, more interactive mechanics and thus provides more challenge. Parts like kiting the fire elementals in the beginning reward, to a reasonable extent, having a defensive build in your party.

We need more of this going forward. We do not need radical overhauls to the damage system when that system works, in large part, exceptionally well.

Support rebalance proposal:

New stat: Support Power (potentially renamed Healing Power)

Stat role: Increase the value of boons granted by the character

Balance target:
Full Support Power build + self boons = current ‘zerker w/o boons;
Current ’zerker + support power boons > current ’zerker + base boons
Slightly less damage, but covering the loss via increasing everybody else’s, such that any party benefits from having at least one character running support gear.

Also, potentially add unique boons per profession so stacking supports of different professions works, or make new boons which stack per caster. Essentially, provide a use for multiple supports.

i will be watching it with popcorns and chips to see how the critical damage issue is aproached.

That is 90 minutes from now (21:25 CET), I assume because right now he’s talking about engineer.

I find playing the different classes to be different enough from each other from a playstyle perspective to be meaningful.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you’re happy.
But isn’t that kind of beside the point?

/edit: bah. more = me.
I can’t spell.

phys.7689:

Afya.5842:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

phys.7689:

If the only purpose in stats on gear is to say your ability to avoid dmg, then it should not exist. Just remove it totally and put somewhere you can set your difficulty level.

As long as this is the case, there will always only be a few viable sets at a time.

Now you’re getting it. Once you’re experienced, you only need one gear set for pve. That is the point.

Thats how the game is now, thats how it was 6 months ago, thats how it was at launch. Why should it change to be any different now?

1. Either you’re good enough to run Berserker in PVE and you do.
2. You aren’t good enough, so you don’t, and its working fine for you.
3. You don’t like wearing Zerker because you are RPing a healing guardian (or something) and the dps gear doesn’t match the RP flavor you have for your character.
4. You’re a Pro Zerg WvW player who is too lazy or cheap to respec for dungeons.

I greatly, greatly suspect that #3 is the the main cause of all of these threads and all of the QQ. #4 exists but not as big as the crowd of people offended by #3. I wish the people who were in the “OMG ZERKER DOESNT MATCH MY PLAYSTYLE” camp would just admit they want to essentially ruin the game Anet created because it conflicts with their carebear RP considerations.

How a game was at launch doesn’t mean it is good balance, and often it isn’t. The majority of people understand the meta isn’t about the berserker stats itself, in fact rampager/assassin are in the same boat. I see you keep arguing with the “nerf berserker” opinion that in order to divert people from seeing the real issue which is the current OHKO boss mechanic posting minimum risk to zerker players because of so many defensive tools already available to them.

Oh, and this may probably kitten more people off. Crit damage is indeed flawed. You get more/less stats depending where you put berserker equipment in. Same for giver but less people use them and you see less qq. Each point in crit dmg should correspond to a fixed amount of stats points. Ofc how many points is left for Anet to decide and to find the sweet & balanced point. If the crit dmg change is along this line, I’m very welcome to that.

Nerfing crit damage solves nothing in regards to the gear dilemna of having only 1 or 2 gear sets that are considered optimal. All it really will do is slow down max possible time to kill things in PVE, and will probably make it worthless is spvp and WvW where it is already not optimal. Bunker players will be even harder to kill.

All you will get is either berserker remains best gear, but just not as fast, or you get some other new best gear.

I didn’t say nerf crit dmg. Nor did anet. They said “change” and I said each crit dmg should correspond to a fixed number of stats points. Forgive me if the number is not correct but current exotic armors 1% of crit dmg correspond to 12-17 points of stats depends on different armor parts. Hence the practice of prioritizing certain armorpiece when switching to berserker. Not only you can say you can get more/less points than other stats combination, it actually confuses people when they theocraft. Fixing this can benefit not only pve, but also wvw, pvp.

The real deal, is its mostly encounters/AI which are causing berserker dominance in PVE. The other deal, is unless more skills/traits are effected by stats, there will always be only a few valid gear choices, which come down to best dps without dying.

That’s what I kept saying.

It’s not just DPS, it’s the ratio damage-done/damage-taken that is ‘skewed’. Defensive stats are to compensate for damage-taken and they become irrelevant when damage-taken is not present in combat, or easily compensated. You can reduce damage-done all day long but that will not change anything about how the defensive stats are (not) needed, it will just make the fights take longer.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I am against nerfing a gearset for incredibly poor reasons that seem to boil down to cheapness or RP considerations.

RP is not about trinity roles, though you could extend character weaknesses into gear and trait setups, that would be quit rare. I think it’s for not wanting other people to dictate how to play your game. Or at least not being pressured into playing the game ‘their’ way.

@Nike

I just want to point out that you left out those who want build diversity in your list.

You seem to think that everyone who wants some changes want so only because they’re bad, or want a more passive, or ‘trinity’ based, game – a somewhat elitist attitude.

While I agree that “actiony combat” must necessitate, by definition, mechanics that focus more on damage (passive defenses being…by their very name….passive, which is the opposite of “actiony”) – many of us REALLY just want DIVERSITY.

It kinda sucks when everyone is pigeonholed into doing the exact same thing.

Essentially, what we want is customization – people love the ability to come up with combos no one else has yet, instead of following the cookie cutter path that’s been laid out before them. This is where player creativity comes in. I want to BUILD, not STENCIL my character, but right now the mechanics are there to funnel everyone towards a single playstyle over time.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Nike,
I think you’re operating under the assumption that in a hybrid DPS system roles are destined to some kind of empty frivolous flavor text.

That’s just not true. In other games that feature this kind of a system, the gameplay between the roles is legitimately different. Different roles are desired because they keep things interesting by re-contextualizing the same content with a different perspective.

The gameplay between a Medic and an Assault in a TBS will give you an entirely different experience. A Marksman and a Support in a MOBA will do the same thing. A fully Support specced character versus a fully DPS specced character in GW2 will not. Speccing into a role in this game doesn’t re-contextualize your experience and offer a different perspective, it’s the same experience with some superficial mechanics overlaid on top that happens to result tossing around some buffs and conditions.

That’s not standard operating procedure for this kind of a system, that’s a tragic and shallow imitation that’s in desperate need of stepping up it’s game.

Very, very, well put — this further summarizes my feelings regarding the issue at hand.

Again, though changes to gear aren’t going to do a whole lot in changing this — I still think this concisely summarizes why many players are dissatisfied with the meta as it stands — and I beleive we share the opinions that the professions don’t mix playstyle up enough

kyubi.3620:

i will be watching it with popcorns and chips to see how the critical damage issue is aproached.

keeping eating your popcorn. 10% overall damage reduction. Zerker gear still on top.

•Replaced by a numeric stat called Ferocity

That’s what I said and I’m happy for that. Percentage stats is just hard to calculate unless you make it contains decimal number.

but it won’t change the meta.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

There may always be a meta, but in GW1, the meta kept changing, even in PvE (remember SABWAY?). That hasn’t happened in GW2 PvE.

Changing meta is healthy for a game. It means people are constatntly re-evaluating what is best and adapting. GW2 PvE meta is stagnant.

Not looking to argue over it but the reason meta kept changing in GW1 was they kept adding new content, new skills, and new classed (thus new class secondary combos). The meta changed because it had a reason to change.

In GW2, it is an ‘artificial’ change. It isn’t changing because players are re-evaluating what works best or taking into account new skills. All the new skills added are largely useless and not used in the meta. A few new traits and updates have niche uses but largely there has not been anything useful added since launch to earn its keep and warrant a meta change.

We don’t know that it WILL change but if it does, it isn’t for the same reasons that it did in GW1. In GW1 you would have to run different builds in different areas because enemies had different abilities (or environmental effects). This isn’t so in GW2. Everywhere is the same formula. Until that is addressed, there will be no build diversity because it isn’t needed.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I said nothing about not wanting better AI or better encounters. I am against nerfing a gearset for incredibly poor reasons that seem to boil down to cheapness or RP considerations.

Ok, then. First of all, you seem to think that everyone against the zerk meta want to nerf the gearset. There are a lot of people here who don’t want the zerker meta and don’t necessarily want to nerf the gearset (From my read-throughs, it actually seems to be the majority of the opponents of today’s meta).

Personally I’m against the zerg meta, because I find it boring and uninteresting, and would appreciate some variety – both in valid playstyles, and in the content itself. I wonder; in which category you would put me in?

Edit: I’d personally like to see mobs doing more consistent damage, instead of the usual X second telegraphed spikes and very little in between. I want mobs to not fall for the simple stacking tricks used now (ranged should try to keep ranged, mobs should avoid damage pits more actively, do more aoe damage themselves perhaps), I want to see more interesting boss mechanics you have to play around, I want to see more synergy in the mob groups..

Basically, I want more strategy and challenges in the game, and I want pure zerker to only be something viable if you’re extremely good, or have solid backup from your team.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

4. You’re a Pro Zerg WvW player who is too lazy or cheap to respec for dungeons.

Every WvW player I know runs full Zerker in PvE and has no issues purchasing a secondary armour set solely for this purpose (ascended with scholar runes no less). In fact many of us even use the builds that Guang, Obal and yourself have posted on places like Reddit, Guru and these boards. Crazy stuff I know…

Ragnarawk.8697:

@Blood Red Arachnid:

There is nothing wrong with DPS being king. Doing damage is a highly popular role. But from an RPG perspective, there is a missing element to mitigate damage that should be present: resource management. Management of resources is a staple of RPGs that GW2 seemingly ignores. While players do have to manage their dodges to an extent, it is obviously not working as a mitigating factor. This is probably due to the high uptime of both dodges and full damage when correctly dodging. It’s probably not helping that it’s the sole relevant resource to manage, and common to all professions. Cool downs on skills don’t work either, especially with the effectiveness of auto-attack.

Without limiting all out damage with resource management, the game ends up being solely focused on mitigating damage through dps. Armor really isn’t about surviving longer, as it is about making whatever resource that keeps the character alive more effective, and last longer. Since active defense is common to all professions, and is the primary source of survival, armor becomes meaningless, and actually detrimental to group compositions.

I don’t know what the answer is on this one, and you may already be well aware of this missing game design element. If I could give any suggestion, it would be to look towards other “DPS is king” games, and try to integrate what works there into GW2. DDO comes to mind, actually. While it had it’s glaring flaws, it did succeed in having good class interaction and build diversity. All of that interaction and build diversity was completely dependant on a strict resource management scheme. Otherwise it would have been optimal for everyone to run a Warforged great-axe barbarian, with one Warforged sorcerer for buffing DPS.

With all sincerity I say “good luck!”.

The thing with a single gear set being more effective than the rest is that it discriminates against player preferences and future game design in the long run. The ideal system would be to reward diversity of gear in some way or another. Currently, the advantages of choosing more defensive stats are nonexistent because the PVE environment doesn’t have all the factors that enforce them.

But alas, you do have a good point. In any game that doesn’t force completely dedicated roles, the goal is to do as much damage as possible while still performing that role in a satisfactory capacity. This is why I continually say that the problem isn’t about player roles, or the lack of a trinity system, but instead properly enforcing and rewarding preferences in the same build.

But the resource thing is an interesting point. Coming from a game that had an additional resource (City of Heroes had endurance) to cooldowns, I have to disagree with that assessment that resource management limits the prevalence of DPS. What additional resources do is force players to build around the management of that resource, and not off of different ideologies or preferences.

Thus, adding an additional resource to manage in GW2 would change the freeform DPS meta into a DPS meta that is based on competently managing a resource while still doing as much as possible. The only time that the resource is limiting is if one builds themselves into incompetence, and we already see that in GW2. You may notice how many of the peak DPS or high DPS builds (for example, Obal’s build I linked in the second post) are still loaded with a ton of support utilities and traits. This is because those supports are necessary to sustain oneself. It is very possible to go into, say, a full signet or full spirit weapon build that doesn’t have any of the active mitigation in traits, and that build will frequently faceplant at enemies.

Though it might make more sense if I could recognize the games you were citing. Hell, for all I know, an additional resource would add something else to the game if it was something other than a cost for abilities.

ArchonWing.9480:

I wonder if anyone brought up condition damage.

All this talk about zerker dominance but one of the reasons why it’s so dominant is that the alternatives for defeating enemies are so bad.

If pve conditions were a viable alternative, then at least it wouldn’t just be zerker. If you want build diversity…

And personally, I like the fact that utilities, defense, control, and healing can be viable without having to wear crappy gear for it.

Conditions are mentioned here and there. In my solution post I mention a bit about conditions, and there are a few posts talking about conditions in the thread. Good luck finding them, though.

In short, the second big issue with conditions is that their strengths are also absent from PVE. The ability to cripple a mob’s movement, as well as the ability to bypass toughness/protection, as well as the ability to maintain engagement and prevent auto healing, as well as the wider AoE coverage are all meaningless in PVE:

A)Enemies are made bulky seemingly by HP alone. I can’t find a high toughness mob that stacks protection.

B)There’s no reason to cripple or chill anything. Enemies don’t act slower when chilled.

C) Mobs don’t run away to reset. Though this would be kind of stupid to put in the game, so there’s no problem to fix here.

D) Mobs all run right up to you and gather on one spot, ready to be mowed down by PBAoE attacks and melee cleave. Having wider AoE means nothing against enemies that do this, and pretty much all enemies do this.

Of course, the biggest issue is the condition cap. The condi cap makes it so any more than one dedicated condi user becomes ineffective and redundant, so a new system needs to be put in place to have conditions be effective. Otherwise, any other changes are just forcing players to deal with a bad system instead of making the bad system a good system.

Splitting the post here, since this isn’t relevant to the above.

I am disappointed with Anets reasoning on the critical damage nerf (which will hurt valkyrie and celestial as well as zerkers). I can understand normalizing the stats, but the justification for implementing the damage nerf just reeks of “I don’t want to change my mind”.

They say in the livestream that there are a bunch of things that need to happen with PVE to address zerker dominance, but then follow up by saying that it is going to be hard and take awhile to do, so now they’ll nerf crit damage overall and institute the other changes later.

This made think “…What?!”. Make a bad decision now, and then do the good one later? Why not just make the good one later? The zerker issue isn’t some end-of-the-world problem we are dealing with at the moment. It doesn’t need to invoke some stopgap measure at the detriment to so much of the game in order to be fixed immediately.

Normally childishness in antics doesn’t bother me that much, as I’m quite the silly one myself, but when it came to the explanation for this decision, the combination of the two was just painful to watch, and painful to think about.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I am disappointed with Anets reasoning on the critical damage nerf (which will hurt valkyrie and celestial as well as zerkers). I can understand normalizing the stats, but the justification for implementing the damage nerf just reeks of “I don’t want to change my mind”.

They say in the livestream that there are a bunch of things that need to happen with PVE to address zerker dominance, but then follow up by saying that it is going to be hard and take awhile to do, so now they’ll nerf crit damage overall and institute the other changes later.

This made think “…What?!”. Make a bad decision now, and then do the good one later? Why not just make the good one later? The zerker issue isn’t some end-of-the-world problem we are dealing with at the moment. It doesn’t need to invoke some stopgap measure at the detriment to so much of the game in order to be fixed immediately.

Normally childishness in antics doesn’t bother me that much, as I’m quite the silly one myself, but when it came to the explanation for this decision, the combination of the two was just painful to watch, and painful to think about.

This.

In case anyone missed the explanations in the livestream, here are direct quotes of the reasoning the balance team provided for the crit damage changes (I’m just transcribing the official word here, for the record):

“‘Cause we know how strong berserker damage is in PvE, and it’s a little out of control,” (“It’s a little bit.. a little over the top,” added the guy with the ponytail).

“So one of the main problems with crit damage, is like, the stat ratios compared to other stats are all over the place. For example, it’s much more efficient to have like, rings, amulets, jewels, that sort of thing for your crit damage slot ‘cause you just get, you get way more out of it. It’s like, um… ’bout fifty percent more efficient.”

“..to where it’s not more efficient to wear, like, only accessories, versus like, not wearing armor, and things like that.”

“’Cause we think the damage blows out way too much.”

“This will also help us improve down-scaling, with crit damage, ‘cause right now it doesn’t really work that well, um, with the way it’s currently set up..”

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I am disappointed with Anets reasoning on the critical damage nerf (which will hurt valkyrie and celestial as well as zerkers). I can understand normalizing the stats, but the justification for implementing the damage nerf just reeks of “I don’t want to change my mind”.

They say in the livestream that there are a bunch of things that need to happen with PVE to address zerker dominance, but then follow up by saying that it is going to be hard and take awhile to do, so now they’ll nerf crit damage overall and institute the other changes later.

This made think “…What?!”. Make a bad decision now, and then do the good one later? Why not just make the good one later? The zerker issue isn’t some end-of-the-world problem we are dealing with at the moment. It doesn’t need to invoke some stopgap measure at the detriment to so much of the game in order to be fixed immediately.

Normally childishness in antics doesn’t bother me that much, as I’m quite the silly one myself, but when it came to the explanation for this decision, the combination of the two was just painful to watch, and painful to think about.

I guess that they figured it may be hard to rebalance PvE encounters around the current difference between extremely high and extremely low power/crit builds.

Recognising the problem that players have already invested a lot of time in getting their ascended berserker gear, they had to settle upon a limited reduction of overall damage.

This would be ‘preparing’ to properly take on encounter diversity in PvE. – Laying down the ground work.

Now that they have determined the necessary ‘acceptable’ difference between the fastest and the slowest groups, they can balance the health, armor and defensive systems of creatures around this.

If they were to go straight for the good bit, they would have to take the current balance in mind when doing so. (That means, testing the content with the gear we currently have and making decisions based on that.) By the time they’re ready to release that, more players are more likely to have invested fully in ascended berserker gear and rebalancing critical damage then would be even more harsh.

And then there is the problem that the new/revamped content or AI wouldn’t be designed for the rebalanced critical damage. A change in critical damage then might turn out to make creatures have too much health. Which would lead to more creature-rebalancing.

This is just the way I look at it though.

@ Blood Red Arachnid:

Thank you for your response.

I think you hit the nail on the head by saying adding a resource management component would change the meta to one where players did the best DPS they could, while maintaining the minimum amount of resource management effectively possible. The question is; can that be done to encourage build and role diversity without seeming to be an artificial imposition on play style? Working within the framework of GW2, that question becomes really hard to answer. Like you mentioned, cost for ability use is out the door.

I think to answer that question, you have to create an answer to the question of: “Why not front load damage?”. What advantage to group composition can be gained by bringing more than just top dps, even if that advantage is just time saved? I’m leaning towards buying the players off, meaning there are dungeon mechanics that provide increased rewards should players complete the content in the proscribed manner. After all, isn’t this whole problem stemming from the player obsession with gold per hour?

By the way, the game I was referring to is Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Adventures. Strictly a dungeon crawler, with DPS is king format, topped off by healing roles. The interesting thing about the mechanics in this game was that players did not regen any heath or spell points, unless they rested at specific, limited, points in the instance. Experience was also granted based on how many criteria were met in the instance, meaning a speed run (in the GW2 sense), could be less effective xp per hour than doing all the content, and bringing characters with the stats to complete certain stat gated objectives. GW2 may be able to incorporate that idea of “group stats” into it’s own instanced content while still being able to “bring the player, not the build”.

I think that bringing zerk damage more in line with other builds is a good start, and needed to flesh out a more balanced meta. Thanks for the hard work. I hope that maybe something in this thread might spark an idea that gets developed into a balancing feature for the instanced game mode.

A cookie jar.
The problem was is that it is too easy to reach (it was on the table).
Community suggested putting jar to a higher place (top shelf).
Devs decided to “shave” down the players’ legs.
To compensate, wheelchairs (and gem shop skins for wheelchairs) were introduced.
The most players still reached the cookie jar easily (since it still was on table).
Community suggested putting jar to a higher place again.
And now devs decided to “shave” down the wheelchair move speed.

Please. We can’t stop you from ruining our game. But at least don’t let more and more people see how it is happening.
When a bunch of people talk about very and very specific changes but unable to point out ANY specific issues and, in the end, openly admit “we don’t know what to do so lets do… mmm…. OH THIS” its just disgusting.

Do not nerf Celestial because Berserker is a problem. I didn’t spend 30 days grinding/crafting to make Celestial for myself just to have it made the worst armor in the game because Berserker was a problem in PvE.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Terrasque.8735:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

You don’t get better encounters by nerfing gear. Where in my post did you get the idea that I was criticizing people for wanting better AI and better encounters?

“Once you’re experienced, you only need one gear set for pve. That is the point.
Thats how the game is now, thats how it was 6 months ago, thats how it was at launch. Why should it change to be any different now?”

“I greatly, greatly suspect that #3 is the the main cause of all of these threads and all of the QQ. "

“I wish the people who were in the “OMG ZERKER DOESNT MATCH MY PLAYSTYLE” camp would just admit they want to essentially ruin the game Anet created because it conflicts with their carebear RP considerations.”

And that was just from the post I quoted. They seem to heavily imply that everyone who doesn’t accept The Holy Zerker Meta must either be idiots, be wanting to play WoW, wanting to change the game to CareBearLand, or be PvP’ers who haven’t yet figured out how to respec.

I think the current game is stale and need content that makes different roles viable but not required. There are tons of ways to do that, but it requires Anet to rework mob mechanics and AI a bit, which they seem unwilling to do.

Regarding the crit hubbub.. Well, having crit damage as % now is a bit silly. You can’t add x.3% crit damage extra on an item for example, which means many upgrades are not as they should be. Further, Power+Precision+CritDamage have some really good synergy, feeding off each other and are stronger together than any other stat combination. Changing crit damage to a number would solve the itemization problem, and would allow one to f.x make a nonlinear increase. It won’t change the meta any, but would perhaps put crit damage a bit more inline with the other gear stats.

That’s a lot of text to still not understand what I said. I am a rather concise and cogent writer so I am troubled that the point is missing you.

I said nothing about not wanting better AI or better encounters. I am against nerfing a gearset for incredibly poor reasons that seem to boil down to cheapness or RP considerations.

I know you think your posts are intelligent and/or logical, but I also roleplay a Berserker’s Elementalist. RPers do not only roleplay “cleric” characters. In short, you are trolling and insulting role-players with your comments, and should be moderated for it.

And stop using “carebears” as pejorative (you are not the only one by far.) Makes you look like an horrible jerk, which I sincerely hope you are not in real life. Whoever thought that was an appropriate term to use to insult “casuals” and whatnot (in whichever game it started being used) was out of his/her mind-“caring” is not bad, nor is it a sign of weakness/inferiority.

I agree that encounters should be improved, though the same could also be said about your attitude against players that don’t play the way you do, as if your way was “superior” and the one way to play GW2. It’s superior to YOU, because that’s what YOU care about, but they may care way less for min/maxing than you do, and that’s FINE.

And “RP considerations” are important, because RPers play this game, not only your favored niche of players. This is not truly a FPS, but a MMORPG on a fake “FPS” guise (“active combat.”) Of course your playstyle shouldn’t be thrown out of the window to satisfy RPers only, but their playstyle should be somewhat much more “worth it” other than RP flavor. There are quite a few characters of mine I don’t play that much because their character concept have very little place on the PvE game, which thankfully it seems ANet is aware of.

(And yes, I actually agree that changing critical damage is a very diminutive change that won’t help much in this regards-but since they admitted it was an issue, I doubt they will stop there and hopefully we will see better changes in due time.)

You cannot balance a game around roleplaying. Dont be absurd.

^You really can.

I want to roleplay superman without the weakness to kryptonite.

Fortunately for me, gw2 has warriors so I’m good.

Taldren.7523:

Do not nerf Celestial because Berserker is a problem. I didn’t spend 30 days grinding/crafting to make Celestial for myself just to have it made the worst armor in the game because Berserker was a problem in PvE.

Berserker is and never was a problem. However, I quite like the collateral damage done to celestial – it will make more people angry about the ferocity change, increasing the slim chances that it might be actually reversed. Besides, it’s a nice boomerang to some anti-zerker whines.

I love how it shafts every DPS build except for zerker lol.

This was a well written thread, well done OP.

In my experience, class/stat balance vs AI comes in one of two broad categories when it comes to MMO’s/multiplayer games.

• Your standard trinity roles. Which is three or more roles that rely on each other vs AI which functions more like a puzzle. It usually involves standing around pressing the same buttons over and over, as it is more reliant on math and puzzling out how to deal with your opponent. Because it’s all math based, you can finely tune the difficulty of the encounter to what you know the players should have. A good example is FFXIV: ARR and WoW.

• Your non-traditional roles/heavy DPS/self sustainability. This type tends to lean much more heavily on action based gameplay, with action and reactions. This usually has AI that not only moves in large sweeping ways, but telegraphs it’s attacks which would otherwise deal a large amount of damage. So the object of the game is to figure out the tells and timings to get your attacks in. Games like Monster Hunter, Dark Souls, and Vindictus.

One of the problems I see with GW2 is that it’s trying to straddle the line between these two very different types of games, and it just hasn’t quite managed to do it well enough.

You end up with fights that is mostly a lot of standing around spamming skills, slogging away at your tough opponent with occasional dodge and heal.
It’s lacks both the logic puzzle nature of more traditional MMO’s/RPG’s, and the high octane action and timings of more action heavy titles.
It’s sort of the worse of both worlds.

-

And a lot of it is pinned on their design of AI encounters. While there is little you can do with random encounters out in the world, dungeons and fractals shouldn’t have this problem.

What I would recommend is to take more pages from action based titles when it comes to AI design. Specifically: Movement
Most bosses in this game just don’t really move, at all. They just give chase to a single target and pretty mindlessly attacks them, without any real rhyme or reason.

Action titles would have bosses use massively broad attacks, like charging across the screen plowing through everything on the way. It made sense that they did a lot of damage with their attacks, because they were telegraphing them loudly enough.
They would constantly pull in and out of range, forcing the player to be constantly on the move.

They would also attack relentlessly and it would be up to the player to find windows of opportunity to attack. You could not continuously attack 100% of the time.
Because usually in these games, if you got hit not only would you take a lot of damage, but you would also get knocked back or down. At which point you would often have to take valuable time to heal back up.

In other words, every hit you took, was time spent not attacking, significantly so.

-

I’m not sure how GW2 could handle doing that, since usually these games have a heavy focus on melee, where this is more in the ranged department. In either case, finding a way so that you cannot be attack 100% of the time should be more of the goal with this kind of combat system.

Having a boss move in and out of range is one possibility. Or something that otherwise can get out of your line of sight.

Perhaps for more melee orientated bosses, a staple effect could be reflecting projectiles while it attacks. Say you have a boss, and it uses a claw attack that sweeps back and forth as it rushes forward. If any projectile hits it from the front, where it is attacking they will be reflected.

So if your at ranged, you want to continuously be trying to get a flank on your opponent, and time your AOE’s because if it is constantly shifting position, it may very well move out of it due to it’s attack cycle.

-

Something like this would be ideal, so that having high DPS isn’t as much of a problem with bosses, since you have to actually find timing windows and angles to get that damage in.

Great walkthrough of the difference between soldiers and berserkers.

BUT I highly disagree that active defences are too important. Finally it’s not just a matter of facing off until the numbers, builds and gear works out who wins. Active defences is one of the big reasons I care to play this game in the first place.

Gallows.4318:

Great walkthrough of the difference between soldiers and berserkers.

BUT I highly disagree that active defences are too important. Finally it’s not just a matter of facing off until the numbers, builds and gear works out who wins. Active defences is one of the big reasons I care to play this game in the first place.

active defenses are the fun part of GW2.

The problem is they are poorly balanced amongst professions.
Few have too much, Others have none.

The only thing I wish for is for Condition Damage to be more viable in PVE. I feel like Necro really suffers the most from this. I don’t mind the zerker meta at all and that’s what I use on my chars. No reason to not have zerker gear unless you’re doing silly things in PVE or going into WVW. Maybe uncap the amount of stacks for conditions? Or I guess just buff the ratios for the different conditions themselves. I guess it’s kind of a jealous request however, as I just wanna see the dynamics of condition damage being more of a factor in PVE since I have literally zero desire to play PVP or WVW. Either way, my main point is that CD sucks balls in PVE and I wish it could have more of a role in PVE without harming the zerker meta, at least humongously.

Solution for all meta builds.
Leave bers build where they are now.

TL:DR, “not even I get the real problem, the root of this and many other problems, that can’t and definitely won’t be fixed by simply nerffing the effectiveness of the game’s most popular stat combo.” there was a time (long time in fact) where zerk wasn’t the main thing everybody ran. people naturally settled into that groove because of the lazy design of all PVE encounters and the short sighted design of combat mechanics in GW2. no point or value in running anything else, and the cause for that will not be addressed by screwing over stats on gear people grind for and center builds around.

what the hell why the necro post?

why the hell not?

well nvm your right since they showing their balance patch might as well bring back some topic from the dead for them

OP is completely correct. I’ve been saying the whole problem revolves around the difference between player mechanics and enemy mechanics.

Player offense is about dealing a steady, ‘low’ damage (stat dependent) while defense is more about avoiding hard, infrequent hits (not stat dependent) rather than absorbing smaller, frequent hits (stat dependent).

Mob offense is about dealing infrequent, heavy damage (which minimizes the importance of defensive stats) while defense is about absorbing small, frequent hits (which enhances the importance of offensive stats).

This ‘incompatibility’ results in a massive skewing of the relative importance of offense and defense. The mistake Anet made was designing mobs like traditional MMO mobs rather than making them function more like players, with AI that has them dodge and hit more frequently for less damage. This has an impact in many areas of game balance, this is one of the more egregious ones.

I hope this thread gets more attention. I also want to point out the crit damage nerfs affect precision more than berserker builds.

Should also be noted how bogus this change is for WvW, and that there are tons of alternatives as mentioned above which could actually SOLVE the problem instead of just nerfing an entire style of play, or in some cases, particular builds, classes, gear sets, pet viability, and the likes.