Guild Wars 2

Hey there,

Since Patch of March 16th seems that the powercap of AC on my elementalist has gone from 720 to 607 without anything changed on my gear or traits.

Thats +- a 15% power nerf, which is kinda huge, especially since there isn’t anything about it in the patch notes.

Hope this topic will give me some insight about this and of other dungeons

UPDATE

All changes are reversed again and stats are what they were before the 16th patch!

Another leaderboard wipe hype!

Good going anet.

With casual buff food, no infusions, full ascended, full berserker on ele I’m hitting 626.
Seems like the power cap may be the same, only they made the downscaling harsher.

Could be but i’m testing it with different kinds of buffod (food that gives power and without), and didn’t make diff in ym case. Aswell for CM powercap used to be 1020.
It’s now 825. So will be for whole game a power nerf of 15%..

Are ascended weapons making a difference in ac now?

pokmaster.9703:

Could be but i’m testing it with different kinds of buffod (food that gives power and without), and didn’t make diff in ym case. Aswell for CM powercap used to be 1020.
It’s now 825. So will be for whole game a power nerf of 15%..

I’m at 841 in CM atm.

Casmurro.9046:

Are ascended weapons making a difference in ac now?

Fully buffed with food and all ascended gear (no infusions)
I got buffed to 629 with ascended staff and 628 with exotic staff? so nope doesn’t make any diff

dboylolz.3916:

pokmaster.9703:

Could be but i’m testing it with different kinds of buffod (food that gives power and without), and didn’t make diff in ym case. Aswell for CM powercap used to be 1020.
It’s now 825. So will be for whole game a power nerf of 15%..

I’m at 841 in CM atm.

It’s then still a 100+ power nerf which is kinda huge imo.
Spreadsheet

With no power buff food and no ascended gear I had 985 power in CM back in August

They could just explain it in patch notes that there are changes to lower capped areas with power cap or something like that insetad of nothing

Well the scaling in low level dungeon (AC in particular) is broken for a long time now. That,s why you can see one person kill the Spider Queen in a couple of seconds, or that end boss get pulverised.

Do we really complain that AC will be harder now? Because mobs in AC are pathetically easy to kill, so I welcome that change greatly. I’ll have to check it out myself tonight.

I’m fine that it can be a bit harder now, not that it will make anything different in full groups, wil be more a thing of solo runners which will just adapt. My point is just that there isn’t anything about it in the patch notes and rather important power cap nerf is something that people should know

Why cant they add this stuff to the patch notes?…

Kind of annoying for those of us having to deal with record resets etc.

Yup. Anet is good at a lot of stuff, but patch notes were always a problem.

One more thing that isn’t in patch notes, swirler can’t be destroyed in snowblind fractal anymore. Tried with ele and engi. Can anyone confirm for other classes?

just tested on a fully powerinfused thief with 66002 traits +200 power on kill food and +100 power sharpeningstones and reached 703power(with revealed training)

The problem with AC right now is path 3. Grast is using his shield way more often after the patch wich causes a glitch. The stones falling down sometimes still hit you even tho you are under the bubble.

In AC my ele (my only full ascended character) shows 590 no buffs, 878 with 18 might, 894 with 18 might + steak & asparagus.

The food didn’t seem to do much… Does this mean I should use minotaur steaks and maintenance oils for AC?

I don’t know what it was before the patch.

spoj.9672:

Why cant they add this stuff to the patch notes?…

Kind of annoying for those of us having to deal with record resets etc.

I think they don’t add this because they never talked about powercaps at all. If they were saying they are changing something they never aknowledged and that 95 % of players have never heard about it would be a bit weird.

I think this info is useful for people who use it, that is the same that discovered it by testing, that is the “world champion” crew. On top of that this crew discovered the change in less than an hour after patch release.
Maybe to have some sort of confirmation, you should bring this question in game discussion (yeah I know…) where things are most frequently answered. Or else the nice Dungeon specialist could try to get some insider info

The change affects open world zones as well, the power caps at Tequatl and Triple Trouble are different from yesterday.

Time to optimize the builds... again.

Gruocs.3412:

One more thing that isn’t in patch notes, swirler can’t be destroyed in snowblind fractal anymore. Tried with ele and engi. Can anyone confirm for other classes?

I just tested it very thoroughly on a lv 1 snowblind Craius, I’ve tried looking for the hitbox all over the vicinity as I thought of the possibility that it had just been moved however I couldn’t find it. My guess is they moved the hitbox deeper underground where not even AoEs with 300 radius can reach it.

So any exact numbers?

Lots of posts but barely any information. :P

Veckna.9621:

Gruocs.3412:

One more thing that isn’t in patch notes, swirler can’t be destroyed in snowblind fractal anymore. Tried with ele and engi. Can anyone confirm for other classes?

I just tested it very thoroughly on a lv 1 snowblind Craius, I’ve tried looking for the hitbox all over the vicinity as I thought of the possibility that it had just been moved however I couldn’t find it. My guess is they moved the hitbox deeper underground where not even AoEs with 300 radius can reach it.

If its within 600 range then necros should still be able to hit it.

Anyone noticed a 15% drop in both health and armor? (In AC)

Wethospu.6437:

So any exact numbers?

Lots of posts but barely any information. :P

I’ll run around the map tonight and try to get some of them.

This is pretty alarming. I don’t mind it, but that it’s unannounced is fairly significant. This was severely impacting people at Tequatl just now, and a 15% damage loss in lower level zones is pretty huge.

I also don’t personally think a power cap is the right approach to fixing this. I’d much rather downscaling be harsher but there be no power cap, as that way you don’t have to worry about ‘overbuffing’.

Anyway, I think I’ll make a special report to ANet and see if I can learn more.

Rising Dusk.2408:

This is pretty alarming. I don’t mind it, but that it’s unannounced is fairly significant. This was severely impacting people at Tequatl just now, and a 15% damage loss in lower level zones is pretty huge.

I also don’t personally think a power cap is the right approach to fixing this. I’d much rather downscaling be harsher but there be no power cap, as that way you don’t have to worry about ‘overbuffing’.

Anyway, I think I’ll make a special report to ANet and see if I can learn more.

Isn’t that what it is? a decrease in scaling rather than cap?

If so then there you go. It sounds like, from the description, that there is a much lower upper threshold that you cannot pass with certain stat boosters. It’s not entirely clear to me based on the posts in this thread alone as to which category it falls into.

It looks like both.

It’s not the first time there has been nerfs to both open world and lowered damage in low level zones without patch notes.

The funny thing is this hurts PHIW groups (which already struggle) more than organised teams (meta) who understand the mechanics of a dungeon and can mitigate everything.

The difference in high end play vs average play is Hugh – let’s say I had a pugtastic experience today and went to have a look to see what they were doing post nerf. It did not go well for them.

Yea most organized groups damage come from 25 might/vuln more than stacking base stats :p

The entire idea behind downscaling players was to keep content from any lvl still as challenging as lvl 80 ones.

Before the fix to scaling the sub 80 dungeons were much easier than the lvl 80 ones like HotW, Arah and CoE.

My ele for example was getting about 10% extra crit chance in AC compared with lvl 80 dungeons. The extra stats were also not affecting only the offensive stats, but everything. It was making that dungeon soo easy that even in zerker you don’t need to dodge and most times. Now with the reduction to everyone’s survivability the dungeon will be on par with the lvl 80 dungeons again.

Pre patch,
- 2707 power @ lvl 80 downscales to 260 power @ lvl 10

Post patch,
- 2,707 power @ lvl 80 downscales to 159 power @ lvl 10

Something is VERY different about the new scaling formula…

If this is intentional, I welcome it, I just wish it was communicated.

I really think a lvl80 downleveled to lvl30 should be roughly similar in power to a lvl30. That is to say, the lvl30 needs better raw output as she lacks abilities, traits etc, so she gets more raw oompf, the higher-level player gets “overnerfed” to make up for their variety and adaptability.

Carighan.6758:

I really think a lvl80 downleveled to lvl30 should be roughly similar in power to a lvl30.

It’s a difficult one — what about gear and traits?

Say a level 80 is in AC in full exotics with superior runes/sigils and full traits, but downscaled. Should they match someone who wandered in wearing typical levelling gear? Unusually good levelling gear? Or should they match an optimal character of the dungeon level?

is crit chance affected?

EcoRI.9273:

is crit chance affected?

All stats are affected by the scaling.

xDudisx.5914:

EcoRI.9273:

is crit chance affected?

All stats are affected by the scaling.

Lemme rephrase has crit chance been lowered because of the march 16, 2015 patch?

EcoRI.9273:

xDudisx.5914:

EcoRI.9273:

is crit chance affected?

All stats are affected by the scaling.

Lemme rephrase has crit chance been lowered because of the march 16, 2015 patch?

if your precision stat has been affected by the scaling

then

1 + 1 = ?

????

maha.7902:

EcoRI.9273:

xDudisx.5914:

EcoRI.9273:

is crit chance affected?

All stats are affected by the scaling.

Lemme rephrase has crit chance been lowered because of the march 16, 2015 patch?

if your precision stat has been affected by the scaling

then

1 + 1 = ?

????

could be 10 or 2 or 11 depending on how you look at it. my question was vague and the answer I got were vague.
Also I am pretty sure crit damage is unaffected? because They were alittle too high. I never kept track of stats in low levels so I can’t tell

Yes. In one of my characters I had about 72% crit chance on AC, now it is 53%. I think the power went from 720 to 590. Pretty sure all stats got a reduction when inside ac, cm, etc…

Considering that in lvl 80 the same build had around 63% I think the scaling reduction was actually too strong.

For my ele:

Lvl 80: 63%
Old AC: 72%
New AC: 53%

xDudisx.5914:

Yes. In one of my characters I had about 72% crit chance on AC, now it is 53%. I think the power went from 720 to 590. Pretty sure all stats got a reduction when inside ac, cm, etc…

Considering that in lvl 80 the same build had around 63% I think the scaling reduction was actually too strong.

For my ele:

Lvl 80: 63%
Old AC: 72%
New AC: 53%

Are you sure all stats are afffected? My crit damage(ferocity) is still insanely high.

EcoRI.9273:

xDudisx.5914:

Yes. In one of my characters I had about 72% crit chance on AC, now it is 53%. I think the power went from 720 to 590. Pretty sure all stats got a reduction when inside ac, cm, etc…

Considering that in lvl 80 the same build had around 63% I think the scaling reduction was actually too strong.

For my ele:

Lvl 80: 63%
Old AC: 72%
New AC: 53%

Are you sure all stats are afffected? My crit damage(ferocity) is still insanely high.

Well I notice a clear reduction on power and critical chance.

The build was similar to this

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AmNAdEGAAACjREDA-TFBXgAA7PK/C1B0r+zjSQA-w

As the calculator shows should have around 62% crit chance at lvl 80. In the old AC it had around 72% now it has 53% in the new AC. The crit chance inside new AC is 203%. At lvl 80 (wvw) is aroudn 226%.

I don’t know the old numbers for my hp and armor but I think they also got reduced.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Anyway, I think I’ll make a special report to ANet and see if I can learn more.

You, Sir, are awesome <3

This change really screwed me over in my daily dungeon tour. Well, at least I now know why everything felt so off today…

Morte.5916:

In AC my ele (my only full ascended character) shows 590 no buffs, 878 with 18 might, 894 with 18 might + steak & asparagus.

And… 897 power with 18 might and truffle steak which is nominally 20 more power than steak & asparagus. That’s 3 more power for about 15 extra silver…

Also in AC…

487 precision and 38.66% crit base
499 precision and 40.66% crit with minotaur steaks (nominally +60 precision)
577 precision and 53.66% crit with signet of fire
589 precision and 55.66% crit with signet of fire and minotaur steaks
+20% to crit chance with fury

The tooltip on signet of fire says +90 precision in AC, +48 outside it, and +180 in WvW. This does match its effect. It seems food is giving 20% of its tooltip effect in AC.

Well, I foresee more scepter/focus in my AC pugging future.

Edit: first time I ever used truffle steak, and look where it got me…

Food actually makes a difference in AC now. Before you were above the cap without food. Now you can use it and it actually makes a decent difference.

I think we have different concepts of “decent difference”.

But sure, for you over-competent types.

Footnote… today in the Lover’s Crypt in AC3, the other ele failed to kill a burrow with icebow 4. Never seen that before.

UPDATE: changes are reversed again: went with my ele in ac: got directly power cap at 720, + all other main stats are where they were before. Seems this wasn’t unwanted by the devs after all

pokmaster.9703:

UPDATE: changes are reversed again: went with my ele in ac: got directly power cap at 720, + all other main stats are where they were before. Seems this wasn’t unwanted by the devs after all

if this is true I am engaging my fireworks