Guild Wars 2

+1
I agree with the OP

I demand kittening stat change on all my ascended gear.

every stat on celestial gear will get a buff of 6% so you will be fine man

should be 21 to 1 IMHO.
15 to 1% is too high…

Peixe.1804:

every stat on celestial gear will get a buff of 6% so you will be fine man

Who is speaking about celestial gear here?

is this going to come down to celestial VS condition gear
with zerk being something of the past?

Agreed with the OP.

caveman.5840:

is this going to come down to celestial VS condition gear
with zerk being something of the past?

I think we’ll find that zerk gear will still be highly sought after, especially for PvE content…

With the way that condition stacking works (or doesn’t), direct damage is still the better choice when a group is focusing fire on a single target. And nerfing crit damage, while reducing overall burst DPS, is going to have little effect in boss fights except to make the battle slightly more protracted. In PvE everyone has shifted to the DPS/DPS/DPS paradigm in the first place because focusing down targets quickly is the most efficient way to gain maximum reqards with minim amount of time investment. By reducing crit burst damage they have effectively forced the time investment to be higher, but have not created new ways other than DPS to be efficient. DPS will remain the efficiency paradigm, and that will still be best served through high Power/Crit build designs in most cases.

If anything, I think the crit nerf might actually make zerk gear even more preferrable, because by making battles more protracted, the designers and devs have made it so that efficiency considerations are going to be even more important.

Plus, with some other build possibilities that will result from the new traits, I think having a very high crit chance will still be quite valid, even with nerfed crit damage. For example, with the new GM Fire Magic trait for eles, combined with Burning Precision (Adept Fire Magic trait), having a high crit rate could result in extremely high levels of application and reapplication of AoE Blind, so zerk, assassin, and rampager gear could have significant use to eles that choose to go that route. Also, with changes to sigils, and with 2H weapons now having the possibility for 2 sigils, on-crit sigils could be more useful, and would benefit from high crit chance.

So, in short, even though the damage burst from critical hits is being reduced, I think there is still considerable reason to continue to take gear and builds designed for Power/Crit. I think that Power may become a little more desirable compare to Ferocity than it was compared to Crit Damage, but number crunchers will eventually tell us if the revised crit burst system is actually changed. The question at this point will be if +Power will be better than +Precision or +Ferocity in creating the highest DPS potential, in general, for various builds. But keeping in mind that the baseline 150% damage on crit is unchanged, a 20% decrease to +Crit Damage is not going to equal out to a full 20% decrease to Total Crit Damage. All of the interplay between Power, Total Cirt Chance, and Total Crit Damage will need to be assessed.

In the end, I think that the crit damage nerf will result in slightly less direct damage burst, slightly reduced overall DPS, an increased desire for maximizing Group Total DPS for dungeons and general focused-fire scenarios, and a slight increase to the viability of condi builds for non-focused-fire scenarios (of which there are few). In general, I don’t think this change will have a huge impact on the game or the current meta, and I think it will (if anything) make the scramble for DPS maximizing for dungeon runs even worse than it has been, not better (of course, I’m assuming that counteracting that trend was part of their intention here, and that may not be so).

Odd, I think the ratio is still too high. :S

I mean, either +critchance or +critdamage should mostly be removed, and instead be used for skill balance.

For example, what if dagger weapons had an inherent +15% crit chance, and Fury was the only other source of +crit?

Can they at least cut most mobs hp in half? not so fun to fight veteran mobs with 100k hp that kill you in 2 or 3 hits anymore if they nerf damage.

Lets compare the current full zerker ascended set (armor, weapon, trinkets, without runes) to future zerker set.

If you look at a soldiers ascended helmet, the stats are 47/34/34. I’m assuming zerkers will also become 47/34/34.

Current zerker ascended set:
71% additional crit dmg
101% additional crit dmg if traited for crit dmg.

Future zerker ascended set:
745 ferocity (49.67% additional crit dmg)
1045 ferocity (69.67% additinal crit dmg) if traited for crit dmg and assuming a full traitline will give 300 ferocity.

This is around 30% reduction in crit dmg.

For runes, we can use divinity’s runes as an example:

Current full set:
12% additional crit dmg

Future full set:
60 ferocity (4% additional crit dmg)

Totally agree with this. Lower the ratio.

Make it 12 or 13. 15 is far, far too high. Makes ferocity almost worthless.

I’m signed for 12.

I think it will change nothing in pve but in wvw it will force more people to play right. Zerkers just free lootbags. No fun fights against them and annoying if they are at your side

If they improve the ratio, the damage loss would be smaller and the whole point of the change would be lost.

Direct damage currently scales too well, a result of being able to focus all stats on it. While that ought to be a valid choice, the ratio is too high since the 3 stats multiply off each other.

Yup.

Making us do less damage in pve isnt suddenly going to make people run support/heal/tank.

Running zerker in wvw roaming is about the most exciting moments I have in this game… I love the high risk, you have to use your active defenses to stay alive, because you die if you get hit a few times, but also deal massive damage… But with reduced damage, all condi tanks will just tank all my attacks and spam attacks on me to still instantly kill me without any sort of skill involved.

Condi tank is easier to play… And much better than the hard to play berserker builds O.o.

Crit damage shoulbt change in wvw.

@Alissah
But you do know that per-stat, direct damage scales better?

That is to say, if you had Power/Precision/Toughness gear and use direct attacks, you out-damge conditions with ConditionDamage/Precision/Toughness gear.

Ofc, then the psychological problem comes up: people don’t avoid conditions as they are applied. They worry about them later, when they start losing health (this is also why without this effect, direct damage would always be superior, you can’t even worry about it later).

Carighan.6758:

@Alissah
But you do know that per-stat, direct damage scales better?

That is to say, if you had Power/Precision/Toughness gear and use direct attacks, you out-damge conditions with ConditionDamage/Precision/Toughness gear.

Ofc, then the psychological problem comes up: people don’t avoid conditions as they are applied. They worry about them later, when they start losing health (this is also why without this effect, direct damage would always be superior, you can’t even worry about it later).

I would like to see some math because that sounds very unlikely as Toughness has no effect conditions.

I didn’t say anything about Toughness.

There’s a very simple underlying balance idea:

• Conditions take time to deal damage. This gives the enemy more time to react, especially in regards to removing the conditions again (but also gives time for heals etc to recycle).
• In turn, they are affected by one less defensive stat than direct attacks.

Scaling-wise, Power attacks however have an edge in that they have three stats affecting them (conditions only two, and outside of the frankly overpowered food which should be +/-10%, not 40%, is really difficult to stack), and still scale extremely well with their main stat.

My specific example was probably chosen badly because yes it sounds as if the two setups are fighting each other.
That wasn’t the intention at all. Imagine them both trying to produce damage in a vacuum. Conditions don’t magically scale better than direct attacks. And they give you more time to act.

So why are conditions so strong, especially in 1v1.
Two reasons:

• Conditions vs Condition-removal isn’t balanced for 1v1, in fact the game doesn’t want you to fight 1v1, but players somehow still figure they go to do it, no matter what the game says. Every mechanic involving player-to-player combat favours bringing team mates, especially bringing more than the other side.
• The big one is that players don’t notice conditions. I’m not joking. You notice power attacks so well because bam!, third of your health pool is missing. Shock, panic, adrenaline. But with conditions, they get applied and then so what. Thing is, at that point (conditions applied, but still no ticks happened) you already failed the defence. Like with power attacks, you needed to dodge the attack itself.

in every other normal MMO or game in the genre,
the crit rating usually varies between 5% to ~30%, when it is very hard to reach 30% to crit.
usually most of the classes being somewhere between 15% to 25% to crit.
there are skills or effects that allow the crit to be higher 50% or even 100% but these are only for a short time/next attack etc.
this allows the game to be tactically deep, when you have to chose skills and face the consequences of being interrupted/blocked etc.

the ability to easily reach 100% crit in GW2 is broken beyond repair.

now about critical damage.
in every other normal MMO, critical damage is 150% in general, but some classes have skills or traits that increase the damage to 200% ( damage * 2)
GW2 is the only MMO that you could reach higher percentage unbuffed.
150% base +30% traits +62% from gear = 232% damage before food and banner. 257% after food and banner

the damage scaling is insane.
critical should be capped on 30% + 20% fury, no more than 50%.
critical damage should be ‘balanced’ even more, it shouldn’t be above 200% unbuffed under any circumstance.

@Lalengamena:
True, and I fully agree. I’d go as far as removing Precision as a stat. Base crit chance would be 5%, some extra 5% or 10% could be used for class balance, say Rangers / Thieves crit a bit more or something. And then there’s Fury. That’s it.

Actually its not we want a lower ratio

We don t want ferocity at all but since we know anet won t listen as Always when it comes of balancing delicate changes, we are trying to call a smaller nerfs.

Reality is ferocity has no reason to exists.

LordByron.8369:

Reality is ferocity has no reason to exists.

Agreed. The stat was called Prowess during early design iterations, I dislike the naming change.

The % → rating change? Good one, makes it easier to balance the different amount of it on various items.

McWolfy.5924:

I think it will change nothing in pve but in wvw it will force more people to play right. Zerkers just free lootbags. No fun fights against them and annoying if they are at your side

You can mix up Soldier/Kinght armor with Zerker/Valkyrie/Cavalier Accessories and end up with good armor/health/power/crit chance/crit dmg.Ferocity is major nerf for this hybrid builds.

But you need Power/precision/crit dmg to be efective if fight, compared to condition bunker who have everything in condition damage/toughness/vitality(Dire).

Lalangamena.3694:

in every other normal MMO or game in the genre,
the crit rating usually varies between 5% to ~30%, when it is very hard to reach 30% to crit.
usually most of the classes being somewhere between 15% to 25% to crit.
there are skills or effects that allow the crit to be higher 50% or even 100% but these are only for a short time/next attack etc.
this allows the game to be tactically deep, when you have to chose skills and face the consequences of being interrupted/blocked etc.

the ability to easily reach 100% crit in GW2 is broken beyond repair.

now about critical damage.
in every other normal MMO, critical damage is 150% in general, but some classes have skills or traits that increase the damage to 200% ( damage * 2)
GW2 is the only MMO that you could reach higher percentage unbuffed.
150% base +30% traits +62% from gear = 232% damage before food and banner. 257% after food and banner

the damage scaling is insane.
critical should be capped on 30% + 20% fury, no more than 50%.
critical damage should be ‘balanced’ even more, it shouldn’t be above 200% unbuffed under any circumstance.

What you don’t get is that this game is its own game.
It doesn’t need to play out or balance the way other games do. If you’re so fond of those games what brought you over to GW2?

I’m pretty tired of people suggesting that GW2 should be more like other MMOs in design, balancing or other matters.
No. That’s wrong. This game is its own game – good or bad it should at least remain unique because one of the main strong points of this game is exactly that – the difference between it and every other average MMO out there.

Couple issues here…

For starters, there’s no change in PvP… so ANet doesn’t care about your opinion.

Secondly, burst damage is out of control and this change was more than warranted. That said, you’re right… it’s not a PvE nerf at all because PvE is still going to be berserker or bust. It always will be. Instead, this looks to be a targetted nerf against high crit dmg builds in WvW (and Thief being the primary target).

Lastly, the OP is right and this will make condis more valuable. Condis are already overpowered. However, in WvW, the only thing that matters these days is the size of your hammer train. The hammer train has 3:2 Warriors to Guardians anyway, so condis are meaningless in the meta anyway.

So end result? No change in PvP or the WvW meta and a direct nerf to Thieves and Warriors with a moderate loss to all other power builds if it was warranted or not. Also a moderate improvement in the survivability of everyone.

Lalangamena.3694:

should be 21 to 1 IMHO.
15 to 1% is too high…

^this :]

Atherakhia.4086:

Couple issues here…

For starters, there’s no change in PvP… so ANet doesn’t care about your opinion.

Secondly, burst damage is out of control and this change was more than warranted. That said, you’re right… it’s not a PvE nerf at all because PvE is still going to be berserker or bust. It always will be. Instead, this looks to be a targetted nerf against high crit dmg builds in WvW (and Thief being the primary target).

It is a dungeon nerf. It’s going to be a noticeable difference in how long it’s going to take to kill things in dungeons given the massive healthpools they gave things. When I’m running the same dungeon for the 10000th time, I want it to be as fast as possible and nerfing crit damage is directly affecting me and my zerker builds on all my toons, especially my warrior. And yeah, I do participate in timed runs, so even 30 sec more is noticeable… and massive.

thefantasticg.3984:

Atherakhia.4086:

Couple issues here…

For starters, there’s no change in PvP… so ANet doesn’t care about your opinion.

Secondly, burst damage is out of control and this change was more than warranted. That said, you’re right… it’s not a PvE nerf at all because PvE is still going to be berserker or bust. It always will be. Instead, this looks to be a targetted nerf against high crit dmg builds in WvW (and Thief being the primary target).

It is a dungeon nerf. It’s going to be a noticeable difference in how long it’s going to take to kill things in dungeons given the massive healthpools they gave things. When I’m running the same dungeon for the 10000th time, I want it to be as fast as possible and nerfing crit damage is directly affecting me and my zerker builds on all my toons, especially my warrior. And yeah, I do participate in timed runs, so even 30 sec more is noticeable… and massive.

There aren’t any gear checks in PvE. No boss that you must burst down in 5mins or less before he 1 shots you etc. The only timed encounters are open world bosses which can’t be crit I believe?

So really no impact on PvE at all. Content can still be completed, people will still want berserker and nothing else. I’d be more concerned with the FGS+teleport bug fix if your only concern is the time it takes to complete a dungeon.

Atherakhia.4086:

There aren’t any gear checks in PvE. No boss that you must burst down in 5mins or less before he 1 shots you etc. The only timed encounters are open world bosses which can’t be crit I believe.

actually PVE is full of DPS checks.

From harpy fractal midboss to ascaloninan p2 boss, to ooze in reactor etc etc etc….

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

There aren’t any gear checks in PvE. No boss that you must burst down in 5mins or less before he 1 shots you etc. The only timed encounters are open world bosses which can’t be crit I believe.

actually PVE is full of DPS checks.

From harpy fractal midboss to ascaloninan p2 boss, to ooze in reactor etc etc etc….

I’ve done every instance in the game with a 5man ranger group running bowbear. They are no Patchwerk.

What you want and what the game needs aren’t always the same.

It’s a really bad sign for your PvE where people are concerned about a change that could make their dungeon run take 30 extra seconds. I didn’t ever think that PvE in this game was designed for speed-running, and that ANet wanted to balance the game with speed-running through their dungeon content in mind.

And to be honest, if they DID want to balance the game with speed-running in mind, Conditions would either be seeing a huge buff, or Power would see a substantial nerf to bring it back in line with other diverse builds.

Oh look, the latter appears to have happened. Maybe they DO care about the general health of speed runs as a whole.

Im most satisfyed with this change (critical less minion mancer)

WvW is already a condi bunker meta.

These new ferocity changes should NOT apply to WvW.

style.6173:

WvW is already a condi bunker meta.

These new ferocity changes should NOT apply to WvW.

That specific issue has very little to do with the – factually superior – scaling of direct damage attacks.

style.6173:

WvW is already a condi bunker meta.

These new ferocity changes should NOT apply to WvW.

Here I was thinking that WvW is the exact place these changes should be applied, if only one place could be chosen from PvE/WvW/sPvP.

It does seem a bit excessive although once you crunch the numbers, it’s not THAT huge.

Example: I currently have 100% Critical Strike Damage bonus.

This means my Critical Strikes hit for 250% of regular base-damage. (50% base crit-damage + 100% bonus).

A standard Backstab would hit for 3000 normal damage, or 7500 Critical Damage (250%).

After the change my Ferocity will only be 70% Critical Strike Damage as I lose 10% from the trait line and 20% from gear. Now while this sounds a lot, it means my Critical Strike Damage has dropped from 250% to 220%.

So my 3000 Backstab is now doing 6600 damage. That substantial, but not game-breaking, especially if you account from various Rune and Sigil changes.

The difference between 14:1 or even 13:1 wouldn’t be very noticeable in actual game-play. A 14:1 ratio for example would mean 225% Critical Damage instead of 220%. Nothing to write home about.

style.6173:

WvW is already a condi bunker meta.

These new ferocity changes should NOT apply to WvW.

Umm no it isn’t.

What always makes me laugh at folks like this, is that there are how many servers? 56?? and unknowledgable players like this might have experience with 6 or so of them??? Then think they can stand here and tell us what every server does. Personally I am on JQ and this is not the meta I see in the least. You appear to be completely unaware of what goes on in most servers I guess.

My own calculations put 21 at a reasonable estimate, but that assumed that the crit damage traitline would remain unchanged.

I think that 15:1 is a reasonable amount. Personally, I think it would be better if it were a higher ratio, possibly about 18:1, but that wouldn’t be nice and clean with the crit damage traitline.

LordByron.8369:

From harpy fractal midboss to ascaloninan p2 boss, to ooze in reactor etc etc etc….

Harpy Fractal midboss is a DPS check? I thought it was a put the things in the thing check. I haven’t played 30+ so I’m pretty scrub tier but I didn’t think it changed after that.

Alissah.9281:

Making us do less damage in pve isnt suddenly going to make people run support/heal/tank.

It’s not a be-all-end-all solution, but reducing outgoing damage is an important element of fixing the PvE game. Rallying encourages raw damage, etc etc.

You know what they could do is just make ferocity precision/crit damage because you need both anyway why not? makes it fair since condi classes can stack dire gear and have full damage output without sacrificing survival. If anet did this we could use power/ferocity/toughness or vitality gear and still get our dps output without have to sacrifice a survival stat.

Or remove ferocity/crit dmg from the game entirely and simply make it so everything had 100% crit dmg base.

Sarrs.4831:

Harpy Fractal midboss is a DPS check? I thought it was a put the things in the thing check. I haven’t played 30+ so I’m pretty scrub tier but I didn’t think it changed after that.

You have 4 crystals per side …. if you run out of crystals you simply lose.
People don t know it because today there are so many DPS builds that you Always end up with 2-3 DPS in your party.

In the beginning pugs used to fail the check and thus have one player to die in order to get 2X crystals.

That was due also to the fact we had a noticeable power creep in dps for many professions.

Same can be said for veterans in the lava fractal…
Its a dps check…if you can t kill them fast enough it becomes a CC test (that is extremely difficult for most parties)…

When tank guardians were popular it was frequent to fail that part.

There are even more…that are either “easy” if you follow the DPS check or way harder if you lack it….

Still the issue is not zerker…is grinding pushing to play for rewards (people nowaday call it “efficience” because “farming” doesn’t sound as good) rather than for fun…

Yeah but Byron, the DPS “checks” are so trivial that good players could do them in Dire gear while using power weapons.

While yes, it’s an argument that a certain level of DPS is needed, it’s hardly an argument for/against any crit changes, because none of that gear-based crit is necessary to make it through the DPS checks. Comfortably so.

carighan would you like to bet gold on it?

i choose the builds you choose the players.
a 30% nerf on lava fractal will punish ANY party not full dps while being ingnored by dps groups.

The sole argument against the ferocity is the fact devs didn t think to WWW….it will simply kill D/D roamers…since in WWW without the dps they will be kited forever…

Also it will mean a 20% buff to healing signet in WWW and easier disengage for stealth professions.

And remove the DPS effect on zergs (elementalist etc).

Bsically they will buff the OP and boring stuff we already have in www.
(except power thieves)

I actually soloed that veteran Shaman part on scale 80 without killing or controlling Shamans at all. Just had to get bit lucky with stones.

And how it’s a 30% nerf?

Last I heard it was a 30% nerf in the most extreme case, on just the critical-added part of the damage.
That’s ~15% reduction the crittable part of anyone’s damage, and that’s ~10% reduction in total damage done. Which is btw where the number came from.

And in WvW the crittable part is already lower, so we’re probably looking at much less of a nerf. Due to loss of contact time, less can crit while any condition applied constitutes a greater amount of total damage.

It’s really not that big a deal. It’s quite useful a change – see Cogbyrn’s post above – but it’s not a gamebreaker at all. Especially not since we can soon freely change traits, so we’ll run different traits around keeps than in the open field than inside a keep than when roaming, etc. Always-optimal!

In WWW you have really few seconds to kill your target before it stealth away or run away… or its passive healing takes away all your work.

CC is not an option.

I could list dozen topics concerned with WWW repercussions where non thief/mesmer dps and balanced power builds struggle to be viable in a condi/bunker meta.

And?

I’m sort of not seeing the point here. To me it feels like saying that if you’re running around alone, a group of 5 will kill you and that’s unfair.

When actually, it’s just playing to win. If players run specs which are vulnerable to condition bunker builds, I’ll run a condition bunker build. If players run condition bunker builds which cannot produce much direct offence, I’ll run past and gain a material advantage instead.

That’s just how… to win. Pretty much.

If you run a glassy setup in WvW, you do it because you are in an environment where it works well, say an assist train with external protection support. It’s perfect there, targets go down long before conditions could do any real harm at all, and hence they’d be pretty useless outside of anything holding the target in place like Immo or Chill.

If you do drawn out fights (as in, the smaller the longer it lasts due to less damage sources), then naturally specs better at drawn out fights take the lead.

Is this a surprise?
I’d argue any game where that isn’t the case is unbalanced.

AND if you roam and can t kill people you are useless…..
Not a hard point to see…you don t get point to sit on a circle…on the opposite if you don t defend your stuff, the immortal opponent can come whenever he wants and steal your camps, ruins etc etc …. ALONE.