Guild Wars 2

Ok, I’m going to preface this with most of you will probably laugh or even this is evidence the change is good. But honestly I think you’re considering doing a lower version of the Star Wars Galaxies dreaded Combat Patch here, so let me explain the issues.

You have three types of gamers, casual gamers, twitch gamers and number crunchers. The first two won’t be effected, you’ll gain a tiny bit of love, maybe, from the first group but honestly you’re not going to break them away from the next Flappy Bird. You’re kneecapping number crunchers though.

Ferocity – an unknown fact that is now suddenly well known is that there currently is a viable chance based build for EVERY class to use excessive crit damage. This means while twitch gamers can most effectively plan out skill chains could find decent opposition in people that can tweak their numbers better or plan out teamwork numbers better. Now Celestial is worthless(there is almost always a dump stat for each class, the excessive crit damage which is luck based made up for it), balancing the best crit damage on accessories over armor isn’t important. The numbers are ‘easier’ but what does that really help? My casual friend told me, “I wish they just kept % that is easier to understand”.

And you’ll have to make all the crit damage gear changeable which will confuse some people when Appleseller’s Lucky Cog is set to Knights stats or whatnot. Though I guess you can just magically transform it the one they want(or make it a ticket for one and give them any infusion back that was in it)

Removal of Hybrids – I’ve poked around with A LOT of builds, found some viable ones I’ve never seen anyone use. And now thanks to this, no one will. Why? Because no one will be able to take the losses required to make a hybrid since they’ll be more severe. But yay for you, easier for you to balance then to actually let crazy people get to that max 100% condition duration or maybe just buff their Poison with 2 different Runes(And yes I know 100% is still obtainable via food/tool but you lose a lot for that too). Or maybe a bit from specific stats rather then a 5th and 6th divinity.

While I don’t personally mind the change to Traits from 30 to 6, there might be crazy people that are will to give up two abilities for 20 of different stats. Worse now your going to see further trait changing on the fly in WvW. It’s bad enough that most commanders I’ve worked with have considered me just utilities skills they can get if they shout at a mic as a Mesmer(especially since you keep nerfing what little fighting capabilities we have, ferocity will nerf our ability to have spike, confusion nerfs killed our attrition, despite it being more spike then attrition, really we need more Torment and maybe a short Poison). I ALREADY have mastered and put a lot of time into Utility/Elite/Major Trait/Gear Changing on the fly to manage different enounters and now I can totally redo my traits at anytime? Can I juggle bottles of plague while I’m at it? Now true, I love having the options and it’s fun being able to have such an exact counter to certain situations, but then there is little use for more then one of me and I don’t get to relax sometimes and let someone take over the juggling while I just enjoy a good fight.

Thirdly 2 sigils on Two-handed, I hope you realize your going to have to do a rebalanced on all those right? Most of them are quite overpowered and the ONLY ‘balancing’ fact was you could have a second sigil with one handeds. So your going to nerf the power that twitch gamers love to abuse and create more a conundrum for number crunchers to wade through, since we don’t mind ‘weaker’ weapons if they fit our tactic. Though while your there why don’t you have Giver’s Two Handeds give 20% duration(and make an ascended version). (As if I hadn’t spent enough time on http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ as is, sigh)

Summery TL:DR – So going through this every group is going to be hurt and little help will actually be made. Casuals will hate Ferocity(one step more they have to think about to get a stat, if precision wasn’t already bad enough, they’ll probably avoid crit play all together unless they just wanna see big numbers), Twitch will hate nerfing to power weapons and power stats(unless you’re going to ignore and just have power creep) and Number Crunchers will hate everything(especially since a lot of things they’ve built will be outmodded).

Really nice post. I was just thinking, why so sudden change and this chaotic nerfs without further investigation. Came up to conclusion that they want to make something fresh even by force, cause in April there is TESO going out with simmilar wvw system (almost the same), with also non trinity rule. Same thing was with WoW when gw2 was coming out. They forced out addition, like in panic on similar date and they decreased price for game itself.

Power creep in a game with already trivial difficulty is worse.

True, but I can see an overnerf f.e. on my celestial gear which was based on crit dmg, or destroying burst builds in wvw. You know pve is connected strictly with wvw, and find balance there is really hard without trinity rule. To tell truth I play this game only because of wvw, like you said powercreeping is too bad for me.

It all suddenly makes sense now. The Scarlet kill was so unspectacular, not special, where was my GW1 campaign end party?
They are making weirdly sweeping changes to things that may be important, but they leave out gripes that large portions of their player base have had since launch.
They are attempting to kill the “zerk meta” by randomly hammering crit damage and do not appear to have given any actual consideration to anything beyond Berserker’s stats (assassins is mine, but valk, etc too), they didn’t consider making toughness work on all the things that make toughness obsolete in pve (1 shot mechancis out the wazoo…thats all they need to do to make toughness worthwhile in pve… make the survivability it grants equal to the cost of the speed of a zerker kill). Most of their announced blog posts look like selling point merchant BS rather than anything useful… yes, TESO comes out in April? I can see that being a spur in their butts to get off the living story, problem is instead of cleaning up their old messes which Funcom’s age of conan only proved such things to linger, and fester and only slowly get worse as they begin to come back to haunt the devs… they go with more more more new stuff…

Real innovative there anet, welcome to the same old hole that killed every other game with solid ground workings… sometimes you gotta quit looking forward so you can look down to fix the floor beneath your feet.

Nike.2631:

Power creep in a game with already trivial difficulty is worse.

I really don’t care about power creep personally, since that term has always came off to me as insecure gamers who want to keep their shiny trophies that prove they’re better than new players or lesser skilled ones.

The whole idea of killing “power creep”, basically insures that average skilled players will always be in an endless wheel to try and be good in my opinion. So I personally never really care about power creep, especially because they could always just make changes that only effect PvP and WvW .

I think all the issues people have of the game could be remedied in much different ways. I think nerfing crit damage doesn’t really address any real problems, but thats just me.

“Power creep” is one of the things that happens when people say “don’t nerf – raise everything else up.” To actually raise everything you have to go back and rescale the enemies to so at the end of the day you get the same gameplay but with bigger numbers… at which point you could have achieved the same thing with a hundredth the effort and less quirky oops/outliers by nerfing the intended target in the first place.

Look at the patch as a whole. Tons of new healing traits/gear. A direct reduction of power-based damage that scales with how deep you were banging all three stats that affect power based damage (because, lets be honest, you don’t start stacking crit damage until after you’re happy with your base power and crit chance…).

GW2’s soft roles of damage, support and control have FAILED in the current environment. And we all know the failure rests chiefly on bad AI/content design. But they are bound and determined to keep trying to whack away at the over prevalent Damage role and try to boost healing to a point where someone — anyone — thinks Support is a relevant job.

Sekhmet.6153:

The whole idea of killing “power creep”, basically insures that average skilled players will always be in an endless wheel to try and be good in my opinion. So I personally never really care about power creep, especially because they could always just make changes that only effect PvP and WvW .

I think all the issues people have of the game could be remedied in much different ways. I think nerfing crit damage doesn’t really address any real problems, but thats just me.

Average players should always be trying to improve themselves.

As for the second paragraph, I couldn’t agree more. Nerfing crit gear isn’t the solution to the “problem”. It will probably end up making it worse.

Nike.2631:

“Power creep” is one of the things that happens when people say “don’t nerf – raise everything else up.” To actually raise everything you have to go back and rescale the enemies to so at the end of the day you get the same gameplay but with bigger numbers… at which point you could have achieved the same thing with a hundredth the effort and less quirky oops/outliers by nerfing the intended target in the first place.

Look at the patch as a whole. Tons of new healing traits/gear. A direct reduction of power-based damage that scales with how deep you were banging all three stats that affect power based damage (because, lets be honest, you don’t start stacking crit damage until after you’re happy with your base power and crit chance…).

GW2’s soft roles of damage, support and control have FAILED in the current environment. And we all know the failure rests chiefly on bad AI/content design. But they are bound and determined to keep trying to whack away at the over prevalent Damage role and try to boost healing to a point where someone — anyone — thinks Support is a relevant job.

Yeah I get what power creep is, but the only thing that has really increased anything has been ascended armor. since launch, what have they really buffed to the point where power creep even came into question? I could be wrong, but there hasn’t been anything close to a power creep in my eyes. Yes a lot of people are using zerker builds and doing well in dungeons, but that isn’t due to power creep.

This just seems like something that wasn’t really needed tbh. I mean what is the point of this? making it longer and harder to do dungeons or world events? Reducing dps doesn’t really seem needed.

no one is really saying raise everything, or at least I never did. If they thought players were having to easy a time with current content, just add harder content that punishes players for not having a diverse team or something.

But problem is that those avarage players wear full zerk and are poping one hundred blades and winning. And as I said 3 sets are really painfully afflicted – cavallier, assassin and celestial, where on those crit dmg was main source of dmg. Hybryd builds is kinda unplayable after patch. Many ppl told which is a best way to solve the problem with dungeon zerk runs, but it is almost impossible to do with current AI of bosses. As for Anet redoing it is not worthy (cause it’s hard and time consuming).

Rudy.6184:

Really nice post. I was just thinking, why so sudden change and this chaotic nerfs without further investigation. Came up to conclusion that they want to make something fresh even by force, cause in April there is TESO going out with simmilar wvw system (almost the same), with also non trinity rule. Same thing was with WoW when gw2 was coming out. They forced out addition, like in panic on similar date and they decreased price for game itself.

They have been working on these changes since last year. They decided to stop adding balance and features in small amounts, and instead release them all at the same time in a big patch.

Ok, has everyone forgotten that when they first announced the crit change, they said that this was actually the first phase in a series of changes to address the zerker meta? I can understand the frustration directed towards the crit changes only if this were the end of the changes being made. A lot of the arguments are being made in a vacuum of information, or more aptly, arguing the efficacy of the changes within the current meta. I’m not saying don’t be critical the situation as it stands, by all means, do so. But keep in mind, it has been said that more changes are coming pursuant the change to crit. We can’t ignore that in these discussions but it is difficult to look ahead when we don’t have a whole lot to go on. What do you think might be the next logical step after a change to how crit is calculated to increase the benefit of other roles while keeping glass cannons relevant?

nightwulf.1986:

Ok, has everyone forgotten that when they first announced the crit change, they said that this was actually the first phase in a series of changes to address the zerker meta? I can understand the frustration directed towards the crit changes only if this were the end of the changes being made. A lot of the arguments are being made in a vacuum of information, or more aptly, arguing the efficacy of the changes within the current meta. I’m not saying don’t be critical the situation as it stands, by all means, do so. But keep in mind, it has been said that more changes are coming pursuant the change to crit. We can’t ignore that in these discussions but it is difficult to look ahead when we don’t have a whole lot to go on. What do you think might be the next logical step after a change to how crit is calculated to increase the benefit of other roles while keeping glass cannons relevant?

I love you for using the words “efficacy” and “pursuant.” <3

nightwulf.1986:

What do you think might be the next logical step after a change to how crit is calculated to increase the benefit of other roles while keeping glass cannons relevant?

Ok, the first thing to realize is the “glass cannon” DOES NOT EXIST in this game.

Everyone — absolutely everyone — has a bank of two on-demand bursts of 2 second immunity to the entire universe and that bank refills fast. That’s a defensive buff the likes of which most MMO tanks would gut-and-barbecue their own grandmothers for. Combined with the ridiculously slow and highly telegraphed nature of boss attacks and you have a game where defensive stats are bad comedy and healers are treated as a blight.

I’d say the question is “do you want entire parties of these lone wolves to be relevant?” Should there be any expectation that Support can, should, or even must be present to tackle the premier challenges? And we’ve already seen them experimenting with how to achieve that. The global reduction of Vigor. The Toxin debuff that applies steady damage over time that cannot be dodged. These are all part of a campaign to beat down lone wolves until eventually one of them says “maybe we should get a healer?” Or at the very least “Hmm, seems like I could use some more self-sustain in my build…”

Anyone ever go look at the stats on SPvP armor? I think that stuff has it right.
Anyone ever go look at the stats on GW1 armor? I think that stuff has it right.

GW1 was built better for this…why?
It’s easier to replace a nerfed build thats made almost chiefly around skills. In GW1 you didn’t have to look far to find a skill.
In GW2, a nerfed build means also replacing your armor. Before December, that was annoying. But only annoying. Come Ascended armor crafting, and whoa buddy… their current streak of wtf has me looking at the same kind of prison-like cavity stretching session they gave me with flamekissed armor, except that oddly, one set of ascended armor is worth more after price conversions and such than all 7 of my now gone-forever flamekissed armor sets (new flaming feathers is flamekissed armor as much as jarjar binks was the real star wars.)

Nike.2631:

Power creep in a game with already trivial difficulty is worse.

this one.
and the nerf is really insignificant. because berzerker is still the top damage build.
it is not like soldiers or magi going to be the next meta…

Lalangamena.3694:

Nike.2631:

Power creep in a game with already trivial difficulty is worse.

this one.
and the nerf is really insignificant. because berzerker is still the top damage build.
it is not like soldiers or magi going to be the next meta…

power creep can also be from unintended consequences… this change will hit Assassins stats in the balls, and celestial will also take a hard hit…if not as bad. Then Valkyrie and Cavalier will also be hit… and zerker elitism is going to get worse in pugs because now anyone who just want’s it done will not spare the time it takes to make up more than the already 10% total party effectiveness hit… anet didn’t think this through.

Inimicus.7162:

Lalangamena.3694:

Nike.2631:

Power creep in a game with already trivial difficulty is worse.

this one.
and the nerf is really insignificant. because berzerker is still the top damage build.
it is not like soldiers or magi going to be the next meta…

power creep can also be from unintended consequences… this change will hit Assassins stats in the balls, and celestial will also take a hard hit…if not as bad. Then Valkyrie and Cavalier will also be hit… and zerker elitism is going to get worse in pugs because now anyone who just want’s it done will not spare the time it takes to make up more than the already 10% total party effectiveness hit… anet didn’t think this through.

I think they did think it through, in fact, they publicly stated that celestial gear was gonna get hit harder than some other stats. So, they are on the same page to some degree. Again, we’re thinking short term instead of long term. Of course, to players, I suppose it’s only the short term that matters most. Who wants to see a change they don’t like and then have to think, “but it will get better soon™.” The devs have basically said that they want to see how this ferocity change shakes out. Maybe the zerker meta will be reinforced for the time that these preliminary changes take place, that sounds….likely. But hopefully, they’ll see that and make a move to solidify these changes to the meta accordingly.

I think Nike raised the question that is being asked by these changes more succinctly. How much does Anet want players to be “lone wolves” in combat? Are the lines that are drawn currently with dodge vs toughness, direct damage vs condition damage, healing, etc. where they should be? I’ve seen more interesting discussions on this subject elsewhere but I’ve been lead to believe that the lines could be shifted away further from the dominance of dodge while still maintaining a fun, reflex and action based combat system.

But don’t worry, it’s only patch one towards the zerk bashing, there will be a patch 2! just like the dungeon patch was going to be in parts, remember how that went?

Unfortunately, if VP via infusions is going to include the possibility of every stat, and if the gains are going to be kept small so as not to (further) trivialize most of the game’s content, stats need to be on a scale where a bigger stat number generates a smaller stat increase. It’s a psychological thing. People don’t pursue a stat gain if it looks like they don’t actually gain anything. But if the new infusion gives them +10 Ferocity, they are partway (probably) to another percentage of damage increase, and that will be enough for the stat pursuers.

Heh, I come back and see my thread and find it’s not quite going how intended, though good discussion.

Anet has done a REALLY good job in the past in keeping power creep out, I doubt that will be an issue here, secondly Zerker does need a nerf, I think everyone understands that. As people have stated earlier in this thread they build it so parties won’t be dependent on the trinity, this means there is inherent defense built into every character. Thus the correct solution would simply be nerfing how much the offense stats actually effect powers. I personally don’t mind as much as others being underpowered, I just mind if a strategy can’t compete at all.

I think the best way to sum up what I was getting at in my initial post is every good epic game should be simple to pick up but also allow players at the end to sharpen their specific build style to it’s best fine edge and the way this ‘patch’ is going it’s simplifying to a point where everyone has clubs instead and the ONLY people benefiting will be those that have the super high end computers, net connections and twitch skills. Simplifying the BACKEND of a game is NEVER the answer, that is what I mean by the fear of the SWG: Combat Patch. If someone plays this long to get to 80 and all ascended/legendary gear dumbing down the game is just going to make their hard work feel like you are stealing it’s worth.

You aren’t breaking characters like SWG did but I’m feel like I’m personally taking a blow to the chest. I’ll get up but I won’t look at you in the same happy light. If you are doing this to up your numbers or some corporate reason, that is your FIRST and BIGGEST red flag why you shouldn’t do this. Respect your current players.

Nike.2631:

These are all part of a campaign to beat down lone wolves until eventually one of them says “maybe we should get a healer?” Or at the very least “Hmm, seems like I could use some more self-sustain in my build…”

I can see it now in the lfg tool. “LF1M/Need healer”