Guild Wars 2

After seeing claims that Berserker equipment was overpowered, critical damage scaled too well, and so the overall damage of someone in full berserker needed to be brought down by 10% (which is actually going to be up to 16%) to bring it in line with other armor sets, I decided to do some math to see just how overpowered it was.

First I compared typical stats of berserker to that of soldier, giving permanent fury to both parties which gives berserker a larger benefit than it does soldier, and this is what I came out with (results are determined by damage formulas rather than in game tests as to provide accurate and precise results).

Rules used in the test:
- All items are ascended
- Armor uses orbs and no infusions
- Major and minor stats from the weapon are taken from a 2 handed.
- Weapon damage is taken from the sword (1,000) for simplicity.
- No buffs or traits are used unless otherwise stated
- Healing (troll unguent) is assumed to be the only source of healing.
- Fury is assumed to be applied permanently throughout the fight both parties.
- Medium armor and health values are used.
- Stats from trait allocation are:
300 power, 100 precision, 10% critical damage, 300 vitality, and 300 toughness for Soldier.
300 power, 300 precision, 30% critical damage, 100 vitality, and 100 toughness for Berserk.
- The percentage bonus WvW score gives to health is ignored because it varies so much. If it was applied it would give soldier a larger benefit than it would berserker.

The results:
Soldier against Berserker
Average damage from an attack with a 1.0 modifier = 1,314.511091dmg
In no healing is used this is 8.173803575 of max health.
If healing is used once this is 5.347% of effective health.
If healing is used twice this is 3.971% of effective health.

Berserker against Soldier
Average damage from an attack with a 1.0 modifier = 1,739.994372 dmg
In no healing is used this is 6.59788553% of max health.
If healing is used once this is 4.989% of effective health.
If healing is used twice this is 4.011% of effective health.

Next I used the same rules as in the previous test, just with the following buffs to see how well soldier scaled with berserker at the highest levels:

For soldier:
Trait that gives 150 toughness
Banner of defense = 170 toughness and vitality
100 vitality and 70 toughness from food.
6% of toughness and 4% of vitality is added to power from sharpening stone.

For berserker
Trait that gives 150 precision
Banner of discipline = 170 precision, 15% critical damage
10% critical damage and 100 precision from food.
6% of toughness and 4% of vitality is added to power from sharpening stone.

This brought soldier got all the way up to 2,435 toughness and 2,315 vitality while berserker got all the way up to 98% crit chance and 138% bonus critical damage.

The results:
Soldier vs Berserker:
Average damage from an attack with a 1.0 modifier = 1,463.924086
In no healing is used this is 9.102873312% of max health
If healing is used once this is 5.955268432% of effective health.
If healing is used twice this is 4.425137797% of effective health.

Berserker vs Soldier:
Average damage from an attack with a 1.0 modifier = 2,017.4
If no healing is used this is 6.93932306% of max health.
If healing is used once this is 5.369424039% of effective health.
If healing is used twice this is 4.378798403% of effective health.

In conclusion, berserker does not appear to be overpowered and is in-line with soldier equipment. It does not get “out of control” scaling at higher amounts of critical chance and damage compared to soldiers.

Reducing critical damage will do nothing to remedy the issues in PvE. It will only cause a stat which is reasonably balanced compared to others, and doesn’t see much use in WvW already, to be unnecessarily weaker at all levels and see even less use.

Why change berserker stat, they should change so we all are rangers instead.

Critical damage is not the problem. The problem is game mechanics like reflect, corner stacking and even dodging which allows players to avoid damage altogether without any defensive stats and coupled with the fact that everyone has their own healing skill and condition removal and healing and tanking not being viable in this game due to heals being weak and the lack of an aggro system, stacking as much damage as possible and killing things before they kill you will always be the meta.

Compare the damage against the same armor please.

Soldiers vs zerker amor and
Zerker vs soldier armor is not an equal comparison.

The problem comes from multipliers.

Assuming Critical damage simply added +1000 damage.
1000 + 1000 = 2000
2000 + 1000 = 3000
10000 + 1000 = 11000
You are dealing +1000 damage regardless of base damage.

Assuming Critical damage is multiplied by 2.
1000 × 2 = 2000 (compare to the above: same)
2000 × 2 = 4000 (compare to the above: 1 extra hit worth)
10000 × 2 = 20000 (compare to the above: 9 extra hits worth)
The numbers get bigger and bigger.

The higher your damage, the bigger the numbers go, the more broken it gets. Of course right now Berzerker is not as broken as people think, the numbers are still within acceptable.

However, they have to nerf it before the next few tiers of gear come out, because otherwise it would already be broken by the time we get to Pro gear and Leet gear(tiers above Ascended).

Which is why they are changing Critical Damage +x% to Ferocity, and the formula will be less about multiplying and more about adding.
(Soldier’s provide an additive model that keeps adding Power, while Berzerker’s provide a multiplicative model. When damage keeps increasing due to new tiers of gear, Berzerker’s damage will progress way too far ahead for Soldier’s formula to even compete)

Nerfing DPS is the first step they are taking towards adding the next tier of gear.

My work on guardian dps:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-dps-numbers-for-various-builds/first

http://s27.postimg.org/nf571pco3/guarddps.jpg

Shows that vitality/toughness add more to your effective hp than precision/crit damage add to your dps. Vitality and toughness are actually already more efficient than precision/crit damage even before you factor in the fact that healing benefits characters with toughness more than it does characters who have no toughness.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Nerfing DPS is the first step they are taking towards adding the next tier of gear.

How do you figure?

Speaking of the increasing returns on critical damage; it is well within a healthy range because berserker equipment at default is actually weaker than some of the other sets and in order to compete it needs to take advantage of those increasing returns.

When looking at a soldier character vs a berserker character in exotic equipment for example:
Soldier has 47.16618636% more damage reduction from toughness.
Soldier has 61.06205696% more health from vitality.
Berserker has 76.47058824% more damage from both precision and critical damage.

Just the damage reduction from toughness negates a ton of whatever damage precision and critical damage would provide. Whatever benefit healing power or vitality provide gives it an advantage.

In order for berserker to make up for this they need to focus on getting whatever traits and skills will grant them more critical damage and precision, and even then they only reach a temporary strength slightly higher than the other stat sets.

All this is healthy for the game. It gives berserker a unique play style compared to the other sets, with its own advantages and disadvantages while not necessarily being stronger or weaker.

However this is just talking about PvP, while in PvE the disadvantages of using berserker are wiped away while higher health and toughness are less useful due to the design of AI and encounters.

But changing berserker equipment won’t do anything to remedy this; it will still have all its advantages with few of its weaknesses and the defensive stats will still be just as weak. What we need is a redesign of PvE so it plays more like PvP does which would remedy a lot of balance issues in the game.

Think there is a big problem in your theory: You are comparing player vs. player fights. But they already said: They won’t introduce furiosity in PvP, which means they already think it’s balanced there.
You should look at PvE fights, where enemies have 1000k Life and much more dmg output. It’s easier to reduce the fighting time by applying more dmg, than having more defense, that in fact can’t compensate, because it dosen’t change the fact, that you can only dodge two times and you still can’t really tank the dmg and get two-shot.

It is not as simple as this.

Bring in food, +x% damage modifiers from traits, from sigils, from runes, banners, might stacks, ascended gear etc… and the balance starts to shift.

As they say: it escalates at the top end. Each point of extra power, extra critical damage, extra precision or extra damage % becomes more effective the more you already have. For toughness, the returns per point are lower at the top end. Vitality and healing power are merely linear.

It makes sense for them to try and keep this in check before playing around with renewed AI or encounter design. Otherwise they are likely to either come up with monsters that have too much health and defense for average groups, or that die to berserkers like flies, just like the current set.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Nerfing DPS is the first step they are taking towards adding the next tier of gear.

Huh? Obviously A-Net thinks Ascended is too powerful for their content so they nerf the damage to former exotics level. For me this is a sign that there never will be another gear tier. They don’t want you to faceroll the open world and dungeons. And they cannot nerf the damage everytime a new tier is introduced. Then you will need Ascended gear for a level 35 dungeon. How will that work?

oliverstoned.2695:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Nerfing DPS is the first step they are taking towards adding the next tier of gear.

Huh? Obviously A-Net thinks Ascended is too powerful for their content so they nerf the damage to former exotics level. For me this is a sign that there never will be another gear tier. They don’t want you to faceroll the open world and dungeons. And they cannot nerf the damage everytime a new tier is introduced. Then you will need Ascended gear for a level 35 dungeon. How will that work?

They wont be nerfing the damage everytime a new tier of gear comes out because they only have to nerf it once by changing the damage formula(which is what they are doing with Ferocity) to be additive instead of multiplicative.

If critical damage has a multiplier of 2x, and considering base damage is increased by 1000 every tier of gear,
current tier: 1000 damage x 2 = 2000
next tier: 2000 damage x 2 = 4000
next tier: 3000 damage x 2 = 6000
my critical damage will reach 6x within the next 3 tiers.

If critical damage has an increment of 1000, and considering damage is increased by 1000 every tier of gear,
current tier: 1000 damage + 1000 = 2000
next tier: 2000 damage + 1000 = 3000
my critical damage will only reach 6x within the next 6 tiers.

Therefore, rebalancing has to occur half as frequently if we move to that additive model. With the correct formula, you can make it so that you never have to rebalance at all while introducing new tiers of gear constantly.

In other words,
Effective damage on crit = Power * Critical damage
is going to be replaced by
Effective damage on crit = Power + Ferocity

Turtle Dragon.9241:

In other words,
Effective damage on crit = Power * Critical damage
is going to be replaced by
Effective damage on crit = Power + Ferocity

Where do you get that from? They will change the way crit damage will be calculated, namely from ferocity. Similar to crit chance depending on precision. It will still be a multiplier.

And intruducing new gear tiers and after that balancing around so the new tier is as powerful as the former best tier? That would be a poor move. Not to mention all other stats will be increased too in new tiers, so you have to “rebalance” them too.

Nah, I don’t see that coming. And sorry for hijacking this thread with off topics.

The Lost Witch.7601:

It is not as simple as this.

Bring in food, +x% damage modifiers from traits, from sigils, from runes, banners, might stacks, ascended gear etc… and the balance starts to shift.

As they say: it escalates at the top end. Each point of extra power, extra critical damage, extra precision or extra damage % becomes more effective the more you already have. For toughness, the returns per point are lower at the top end. Vitality and healing power are merely linear.

It makes sense for them to try and keep this in check before playing around with renewed AI or encounter design. Otherwise they are likely to either come up with monsters that have too much health and defense for average groups, or that die to berserkers like flies, just like the current set.

If they are concerned about the benefit being too high at the highest possible amount of critical damage then they should introduce something like a stat cap on critical chance (around 80-90%) and/or damage (around 100-110), not reduce the damage across all levels of critical damage. This will also allow players to mix and match their equipment if they would reach this limit and use defensive consumables rather than offensive ones.

And if they are trying to address damage being too high for monsters with this change, then they are using the wrong approach and will accomplish nothing. The 10% change they are making to berserker damage will only mean enemies die in 16.5 seconds instead of 15.

Similarly, bunker builds are just as much of an issue when it comes to creating difficult content. If you get a group filled with a guardians using greatsword or hammer with mace/focus, they will have so much healing, reflects, protection, and blocks that they become invincible. They may not beat the content in record speed which is why this hasn’t got attention, but it ruins any sort of challenging content.

The game is littered with things like this, and to try to address them through stat changes is ridiculous. The equipment stats themselves are very much balanced; the problem has to do with the skills and buffs (such as food) players have access to that allows them to achieve such high offensive or defensive capability, as well as the limited intelligence and capability of the monsters.

I’m not sure what this thread is actually about… Nothing is changing in PvP, there is no PvP nerf, the change is PvE only. And there isn’t even ascended gear in PvP so this thread is just odd..

In PvE you gain a ~17% damage increase by upgrading from full exotic to full ascended zerker. However you only gain a ~5.2% damage increase by going from full exotic to full ascended soldier (or rabid). They never planned on adding this new tier of gear so the scaling was all messed up. This change will essentially be about bringing the scaling back to correct levels so all gear sets gain about the same amount of damage. Defense scales at basically 0 due to how the formulas work so upgrading from exotic to ascended defensive gear does almost nothing.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’m not sure what this thread is actually about… Nothing is changing in PvP, there is no PvP nerf, the change is PvE only. And there isn’t even ascended gear in PvP so this thread is just odd..

In PvE you gain a ~17% damage increase by upgrading from full exotic to full ascended zerker. However you only gain a ~5.2% damage increase by going from full exotic to full ascended soldier (or rabid). They never planned on adding this new tier of gear so the scaling was all messed up. This change will essentially be about bringing the scaling back to correct levels so all gear sets gain about the same amount of damage. Defense scales at basically 0 due to how the formulas work so upgrading from exotic to ascended defensive gear does almost nothing.

The reduction in critical damage is being applied to WvW which is PvP, and this seems to be what is bothering people more than the impact it will have on dungeons and such.

Its essentially a 10% reduction in damage to offensive builds, many of which are barely competitive without the nerf.

It’s really interesting to see how those that defend the change completely ignore that crossroad called WvW :P

Vargamonth.2047:

It’s really interesting to see how those that defend the change completely ignore that crossroad called WvW :P

I honestly don’t think anyone cares about WvW after the disaster that was season 1…

And even if for some reason they do care, spamming 1 while stacked in a 100 person zerg is not changed at all by nerfing zerker gear.

There may be the 0.00000001% of players who do roaming WvW on a regular basis, but since they are such a tiny tiny minority I don’t think any balance decisions should be made based on them.

In fact since the vast majority of people only ever PvE I personally think they should never balance around anything other than PvE.

The thing with this change is that it won’t have any real impact on PvE with monsters still dieing before they can do anything and berserker still being the best, and only serves to harm WvW players.

I found it a lot of fun, and actually effective (although not the best) when solo roaming or in small groups to use a longbow/greatsword build with signets on my ranger. Using signet of the hunt for 50% increased damage on your next hit, 25% increased damage for 8 seconds from signet of the wild, and quickness for 6 seconds from quickening zephyr, allowed me to effectively burst down players.

Now that build, which hardly works to begin with, is going to take a 10% hit in its damage. Hopefully ranger gets some upgrades to help compensate or I’ll probably go back to a trap build or something.

For those of you saying this doesn’t effect PVP i does. it effects WvW WHICH IS where alot of us prefer to PVP at. I really hope anet looks into this more before the change.. Such a kitten time sink. Starting to turn into the biggest grind iv ever done in an mmo, and to think i laughed at my friends for playing WoW. lol

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vargamonth.2047:

It’s really interesting to see how those that defend the change completely ignore that crossroad called WvW :P

I honestly don’t think anyone cares about WvW after the disaster that was season 1…

And even if for some reason they do care, spamming 1 while stacked in a 100 person zerg is not changed at all by nerfing zerker gear.

There may be the 0.00000001% of players who do roaming WvW on a regular basis, but since they are such a tiny tiny minority I don’t think any balance decisions should be made based on them.

In fact since the vast majority of people only ever PvE I personally think they should never balance around anything other than PvE.

From my own experience, the percent of people that roam in WvW is A LOT higher than what you think (which is next to no one). My numbers are clearly biased, but yours are just a huge overstatement.

The majority of people plays PvE, that’s completely true. The people who plays dungeons on a regular basis and are really interested on them is, however, also a minority.
Most casual players will run each dungeon once and, after that, won’t touch anything but CoF1 and maybe some AC path for easy gold. Those will never be worried at all about what gear/specs is optimal (since they haven’t the slight intention to modify the one they’re using). They will get annoyed, however, whenever you make any content harder (or even just differet), like the new Tequatl or when AC was modified and the current stacking tactics and safe-spots weren’t common knowledge.

Maybe we should ignore dugeons at all and focus on what really matters: champtrains and open world zerging in general (where berserker is more a risk than a benefit)… Oh wait, that’s already happening :P

And I completely disagree with you last statement.
Whenever a game includes some form of PvP using the same gear/skills/whatever available for PvE and wants it to be competitive (like wanting to become esport * laughs *), then the balance should be made ALWAYS around PvP (and then you design PvE to be coherent with that balance, something were GW2 fails too).
If not, you should advertise PvP as a minigame, just for fun and with next to zero chances to be ever balanced (pretty much like WvW), or just don’t include PvP at all.

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

Sundar.1735:

Critical damage is not the problem. The problem is game mechanics like reflect, corner stacking and even dodging which allows players to avoid damage altogether without any defensive stats and coupled with the fact that everyone has their own healing skill and condition removal and healing and tanking not being viable in this game due to heals being weak and the lack of an aggro system, stacking as much damage as possible and killing things before they kill you will always be the meta.

I honestly see this as a feature, not a bug; enemies just need to be faster and smarter.

Bri.8354:

The Lost Witch.7601:

It is not as simple as this.

Bring in food, +x% damage modifiers from traits, from sigils, from runes, banners, might stacks, ascended gear etc… and the balance starts to shift.

As they say: it escalates at the top end. Each point of extra power, extra critical damage, extra precision or extra damage % becomes more effective the more you already have. For toughness, the returns per point are lower at the top end. Vitality and healing power are merely linear.

It makes sense for them to try and keep this in check before playing around with renewed AI or encounter design. Otherwise they are likely to either come up with monsters that have too much health and defense for average groups, or that die to berserkers like flies, just like the current set.

If they are concerned about the benefit being too high at the highest possible amount of critical damage then they should introduce something like a stat cap on critical chance (around 80-90%) and/or damage (around 100-110), not reduce the damage across all levels of critical damage. This will also allow players to mix and match their equipment if they would reach this limit and use defensive consumables rather than offensive ones.

And if they are trying to address damage being too high for monsters with this change, then they are using the wrong approach and will accomplish nothing. The 10% change they are making to berserker damage will only mean enemies die in 16.5 seconds instead of 15.

Similarly, bunker builds are just as much of an issue when it comes to creating difficult content. If you get a group filled with a guardians using greatsword or hammer with mace/focus, they will have so much healing, reflects, protection, and blocks that they become invincible. They may not beat the content in record speed which is why this hasn’t got attention, but it ruins any sort of challenging content.

The game is littered with things like this, and to try to address them through stat changes is ridiculous. The equipment stats themselves are very much balanced; the problem has to do with the skills and buffs (such as food) players have access to that allows them to achieve such high offensive or defensive capability, as well as the limited intelligence and capability of the monsters.

Caps suck. They are band-aid fixes for poor stat formulas and balancing. GW2 has probably some of the worst stats/formulas that I’ve seen in any MMO. Why some stat systems are linear and others are exponential is mind boggling and it’s worse when they are systems that are supposed to balance the other(toughness+vitalty vs power*Crit*critdmg*% dmg). This is why we end up seeing some incredibly silly numbers damage wise.

I have no doubt a 5 man guardian team can beat pretty much anything, but it has more to do with their damage than anything else. The armor, heals, etc help them stay in to DPS longer but they still won’t be tanking the big hits. There in lies the problem if no matter what gear you’re wearing or team comp you can’t tank the hits, you might as well be wearing full DPS gear. It’s mitigating damage by killing faster. It does need changed so that full DPS builds are a big risk. The dungeon encounters certainly do need changed but so does the overall system. If you update the encounters so it’s much harder to be berserk them people will go to something else entirely, which is equally bad. Since this game isn’t like other MMO’s where a full DPS class is safe due to a tank having aggro it makes things a whole lot harder to balance.

The stats might look balanced but once they start getting used they aren’t. Skills, traits, food, etc just end up making a bad thing worse. The PvE encounters certainly need an overhauled but we probably will never see it or stat/formula changes for a very very long time.

jesus anet, if you kitten up my WvW ele I am quiting this game.

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

Distaste.4801:

Caps suck. They are band-aid fixes for poor stat formulas and balancing. GW2 has probably some of the worst stats/formulas that I’ve seen in any MMO. Why some stat systems are linear and others are exponential is mind boggling and it’s worse when they are systems that are supposed to balance the other(toughness+vitalty vs power*Crit*critdmg*% dmg). This is why we end up seeing some incredibly silly numbers damage wise.

I don’t like caps either, but if there’s a choice between cap on stats or lowering all levels of critical damage (even that which isn’t a problem) to stop the top amount from being too high, I’ll choose the cap.

And after doing some new calculations (now updated my OP with them) it really doesn’t seem like critical damage is a problem in comparison to other stats.

If anything is a problem, it is probably the damage disparity being too high for the design of PvE. If monsters aren’t designed around high damage then they die too quickly for high damage groups. If they are designed around high damage than they die too slowly for everyone but high damage groups.

If they want to address this a good solution might be to bring all the armor stats closer together. Lower the maximum damage AND maximum defense armor can provide. This way you address that issue without screwing over one stat type in places like WvW.

Bri.8354:

Distaste.4801:

Caps suck. They are band-aid fixes for poor stat formulas and balancing. GW2 has probably some of the worst stats/formulas that I’ve seen in any MMO. Why some stat systems are linear and others are exponential is mind boggling and it’s worse when they are systems that are supposed to balance the other(toughness+vitalty vs power*Crit*critdmg*% dmg). This is why we end up seeing some incredibly silly numbers damage wise.

I don’t like caps either, but if there’s a choice between cap on stats or lowering all levels of critical damage (even that which isn’t a problem) to stop the top amount from being too high, I’ll choose the cap.

And after doing some new calculations (now updated my OP with them) it really doesn’t seem like critical damage is a problem in comparison to other stats.

If anything is a problem, it is probably the damage disparity being too high for the design of PvE. If monsters aren’t designed around high damage then they die too quickly for high damage groups. If they are designed around high damage than they die too slowly for everyone but high damage groups.

If they want to address this a good solution might be to bring all the armor stats closer together. Lower the maximum damage AND maximum defense armor can provide. This way you address that issue without screwing over one stat type in places like WvW.

I suppose this is something they could do.

Someone had complaints about there not being enough information of how I came to these results so here’s all the math:

Character’s default stats:
Base health (medium) = 5,922
Base crit dmg = +50%
Base precision = 916
Base power = 916
Base toughness = 916
Base Vitality = 916

Stats from equipment:
Armor
Exotic | Ascended
Medium: 1064 | Medium: 1118

Equipment Stats:
Exotic | Ascended
Major: 1003 | Major: 1087
Minor: 698 | Minor: 745
Crit dmg: 62% | Crit dmg: 71%

Orbs:
Major: 120
Minor: 84
Crit: 12%

Weapon strength (based off sword):
Exotic: 952.5 | Ascended: 1,000

Stats from trait allocation:

Soldier:
300 power
300 toughness
300 vitality
100 precision
10% crit dmg

Berserker:
300 power
300 precision
30% Crit dmg
100 toughness
100 vitality

Now you add this up and find the damage using the following formulas:

Player health = base health + (vitality * 10)
Armor = armor from armor + toughness
Damage = (weapon strength * power) / (enemies armor)
Total critical damage = Base critical damage + Critical damage from stats
Critical chance = rounded down ((precision – 822) / 21) + 20 if fury is applied.
Average Critical Damage Bonus = (critical chance / 100) * (total critical damage), convert to a decimal, then multiply by damage.
Final Average Damage = damage + average critical damage bonus

And finally you calculate the percentage the damage would cause of the enemies maximum (total HP not including healing) or effective health (health including all healing).

The issue could be solved by adding more damage that can only be avoided through armor. However, unless the rewards for such an encounter were worth it, people would just avoid it and continue doing the old content.

Fenrir.3609:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

rjnemer.7816:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

no,

nerfing “in combat” endurance gain is the only way to save this failed game.
as long as you can dodge every 5 seconds, the only meta is berzerker meta and the only role is DPS role.
this game is bland , unimaginative and quickly getting bored.

nothing wrong with some ‘active combat’ but when MMORPG turns into ‘Prince of Persia’ 3D then it is no longer an MMORPG.

the only skill left is to quickly doubletap direction key.

Lalangamena.3694:

Fenrir.3609:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

rjnemer.7816:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

no,

nerfing “in combat” endurance gain is the only way to save this failed game.
as long as you can dodge every 5 seconds, the only meta is berzerker meta and the only role is DPS role.
this game is bland , unimaginative and quickly getting bored.

nothing wrong with some ‘active combat’ but when MMORPG turns into ‘Prince of Persia’ 3D then it is no longer an MMORPG.

the only skill left is to quickly doubletap direction key.

You can’t dodge the marionette

Is there a dummy version of it? How much more damage does berserker do compare to soldier?

Lalangamena.3694:

Fenrir.3609:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

rjnemer.7816:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

no,

nerfing “in combat” endurance gain is the only way to save this failed game.
as long as you can dodge every 5 seconds, the only meta is berzerker meta and the only role is DPS role.
this game is bland , unimaginative and quickly getting bored.

nothing wrong with some ‘active combat’ but when MMORPG turns into ‘Prince of Persia’ 3D then it is no longer an MMORPG.

the only skill left is to quickly doubletap direction key.

removing dodge would turn this game in a general mmorpg clone.

In open PVE PVT is the best
IN WWW PVT or RAbid or shaman etc is most used
In Istances ZERK is the most used.

We all know nerfing zerker will only screw celestial, cavalier etc while not addressing ANY problem.

Since 1HitKO of mobs with no AI is the only PvE mechanic.

Did you ever see a boss moving out of a banner area of effect?
or maybe seeing full melee parties try to range and kite them?

I agree… and I’ve already posted a thread about this…. but it of course was combined into one thread with every other thread that had “zerk” in the title by a forum moderator who has no idea what he is doing. You can find it on one of the 18 pages of this thread according to the automated pm, but I can’t find it anywhere.

Wait, so you’re saying that a theorycrafted PvP encounter between two Rangers auto-attacking each other with sword and never dodging proves Zerk isn’t OP?

Great work.

Woo, I’m going to get pounced on for this, but what the hey…

I believe the adjustment to critical damage in the pve setting is a step in the correct direction also.

throws up flame kittenant shield

The devs did state in the live stream that they want to bring support and control into the game more. Pointing out that with the current ‘dps meta’ the mentality of support is simply ‘bring more punch to kill it faster’ which is not what they want. They want to actually make bringing actual support and control skills necessary as well as viable. It’s going to take some work to do, but adjusting overall dps is a start.

Next they are going to need to take a look at condition damage, need to make it as powerful’desirable’useful as straight damage.

After that, they are going to need to look at the AI systems – punish skipping and stacking, reward strategic play, encourage diversity and tactics, etc.

It’s not going to be easy to accomplish by any means.

Lalangamena.3694:

Fenrir.3609:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

rjnemer.7816:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

no,

nerfing “in combat” endurance gain is the only way to save this failed game.
as long as you can dodge every 5 seconds, the only meta is berzerker meta and the only role is DPS role.
this game is bland , unimaginative and quickly getting bored.

nothing wrong with some ‘active combat’ but when MMORPG turns into ‘Prince of Persia’ 3D then it is no longer an MMORPG.

the only skill left is to quickly doubletap direction key.

Incorrect, dodging every 5 seconds should be a feasible way to play, for certain builds, your problem arises with the fact that most enemies only attack like once every 5 seconds.

If enemies used AA speed attacks, moved in and out of combat, using range at times, and werent immune to control, that alone would increase the need for support and control.
The main problem is that the game was designed to be active, but most fights that matter arent designed with active enemies.
The flow of combat is actually one of the better things about this game. making it more static will not improve anything.

timmyf.1490:

Wait, so you’re saying that a theorycrafted PvP encounter between two Rangers auto-attacking each other with sword and never dodging proves Zerk isn’t OP?

Great work.

A well-known site that provides metrics for a game has a metric called PvP Dummy. The metric essentially assumes that two players stand and trade blows. What this does is to remove skill as a factor and just demonstrate the effects of gear. In other words this assumes two players of equal skill. This is actually a scientific approach. You exclude variables in such a way as to demonstrate the effects of changing one variable—here gear.

Raine.1394:

timmyf.1490:

Wait, so you’re saying that a theorycrafted PvP encounter between two Rangers auto-attacking each other with sword and never dodging proves Zerk isn’t OP?

Great work.

A well-known site that provides metrics for a game has a metric called PvP Dummy. The metric essentially assumes that two players stand and trade blows. What this does is to remove skill as a factor and just demonstrate the effects of gear. In other words this assumes two players of equal skill. This is actually a scientific approach. You exclude variables in such a way as to demonstrate the effects of changing one variable—here gear.

Again, dodging makes a HUGE difference. A Zerker dodge might mitigate 3000 damage while a Soldiers dodge might only mitigate 1800. (I don’t have the numbers up in my reply.)

If you ignore dodging, you’re missing out on a core, essential part of the game.

The issue, ‘zerker meta’, which leads to the call to nerf zerker gear is just a symptom of a larger problem. Sometimes it’s helpful to treat symptoms but here I don’t believe it will bring any positive results. It’s like when people complain about some situation crying why doesn’t the government do something. The government does something and not only do they not fix the problem, they make it worse in the long-term.

The perceived ‘zerker meta’ problem exists because we have only one combat role: The Berserker. The berserker is a combat archetype of a primitive form of combat where a warrior simply enrages and goes for it. This describes well combat in GW2. Only DPS matters. We have coordination to the extent that everyone stacks in one place, but basically everyone just goes for it. When DPS is all that matters, gear that gives the highest DPS will be preferred. This isn’t a problem, it is rather a solution to a combat problem.

The current meta exists because of the lack of meaningful combat roles. Treating this symptom won’t bring any relief except the addressing of people’s complaints who don’t really understand the problem. It could make the problem worse. If people think this is fixing something Anet may put off the fixing of the actual problem.

To tell the truth i have still to see a point where ZERK is an issue at all.

We are in a situation where PASSIVE defense is useless except for a single profession (guardian….and yes an anchor guardian in pug is more than viable and requested)

Zerker happens to be the gear with less useless stats, like thoughness vitality and healing.

timmyf.1490:

Raine.1394:

timmyf.1490:

Wait, so you’re saying that a theorycrafted PvP encounter between two Rangers auto-attacking each other with sword and never dodging proves Zerk isn’t OP?

Great work.

A well-known site that provides metrics for a game has a metric called PvP Dummy. The metric essentially assumes that two players stand and trade blows. What this does is to remove skill as a factor and just demonstrate the effects of gear. In other words this assumes two players of equal skill. This is actually a scientific approach. You exclude variables in such a way as to demonstrate the effects of changing one variable—here gear.

Again, dodging makes a HUGE difference. A Zerker dodge might mitigate 3000 damage while a Soldiers dodge might only mitigate 1800. (I don’t have the numbers up in my reply.)

If you ignore dodging, you’re missing out on a core, essential part of the game.

No, please reread my post. You are not missing out on anything. You are excluding all variables except one in order to understand the effects of changing that one variable, here gear. This demonstrates the effects of gear alone. It doesn’t say there are no other factors, it simply seeks to understand the impact of one. This approach will be clear to anyone who has taken any 101 science class. It is an integral part of the scientific method.

I just attacked a champion keep guy for 5k a whip.

That’s 10k damage per second for anybody who doesn’t know whip.

On the other hand, though, a Veteran Archer on a wall we were attacking took me to 100 health in one skill.

This is Zerker.

Thank you very much.

How is PVP involved in the problem of the berserker gear?
Berserkers is primarily pve problem, pvp has nothing to do with this.
Ergo your math is pointless.

Raine.1394:

No, please reread my post. You are not missing out on anything. You are excluding all variables except one in order to understand the effects of changing that one variable, here gear. This demonstrates the effects of gear alone. It doesn’t say there are no other factors, it simply seeks to understand the impact of one. This approach will be clear to anyone who has taken any 101 science class. It is an integral part of the scientific method.

Exactly, couldn’t have said it better myself.

Goorman.7916:

How is PVP involved in the problem of the berserker gear?
Berserkers is primarily pve problem, pvp has nothing to do with this.
Ergo your math is pointless.

This change also applies to WvW which is is PvP, and once they finish their PvE rework its likely that this will become just as relevant there as it is in PvP.

Raine.1394:

No, please reread my post. You are not missing out on anything. You are excluding all variables except one in order to understand the effects of changing that one variable, here gear. This demonstrates the effects of gear alone. It doesn’t say there are no other factors, it simply seeks to understand the impact of one. This approach will be clear to anyone who has taken any 101 science class. It is an integral part of the scientific method.

Please don’t lecture me on the scientific method. I have an engineering degree from one of the top engineering schools in the United States.

When you are problem-solving, you often have to make assumptions. The problem is that the original post’s assumptions are incorrect. Or rather, they tell us a lot about a very limited case.

Perhaps for WvW this is useful information, but I don’t think this “math” is applicable to PvE encounters in this game.

timmyf.1490:

Raine.1394:

No, please reread my post. You are not missing out on anything. You are excluding all variables except one in order to understand the effects of changing that one variable, here gear. This demonstrates the effects of gear alone. It doesn’t say there are no other factors, it simply seeks to understand the impact of one. This approach will be clear to anyone who has taken any 101 science class. It is an integral part of the scientific method.

Please don’t lecture me on the scientific method. I have an engineering degree from one of the top engineering schools in the United States.

When you are problem-solving, you often have to make assumptions. The problem is that the original post’s assumptions are incorrect. Or rather, they tell us a lot about a very limited case.

Perhaps for WvW this is useful information, but I don’t think this “math” is applicable to PvE encounters in this game.

Your stated gripe was that the rangers were just standing there trading blows. Remember? You said “dodging makes a HUGE difference.” I explained why, if you were interested in the effects of gear, you wouldn’t want them dodging. And, you initially insulted the OP (“Great work.”) for excluding or holding all other variables constant, specifically for excluding dodging, which is what you would do if you were interested in the impact of one variable among them.

I don’t have an engineering degree from a top engineering school. I am not a scientist. In fact, I am a software developer and my degree is not in any scientific field. But, I recognized the scientific method without having to think about it, and you didn’t.

Raine.1394:

Your stated gripe was that the rangers were just standing there trading blows. Remember? You said “dodging makes a HUGE difference.” I explained why, if you were interested in the effects of gear, you wouldn’t want them dodging. And, you initially insulted the OP (“Great work.”) for excluding or holding all other variables constant, specifically for excluding dodging, which is what you would do if you were interested in the impact of one variable among them.

I don’t have an engineering degree from a top engineering school. I am not a scientist. In fact, I am a software developer and my degree is not in any scientific field. But, I recognized the scientific method without having to think about it, and you didn’t.

Okay, look, here’s the problem: dodging is an active part of the game. Dodging increases the effective HP of the character. It essentially makes Toughness = infinity during the dodge cycle. It does this equally for both the Zerker and Soldier.

What that means is that, if you added in dodge cycles, during that time the Soldier’s toughness does NOTHING. That would alter the calculations a bit.

Furthermore, the Soldier has very low critical chance. There’s lots of on-crit effects, including boons and conditions, which would also alter this calculation. (Vigor on crit, for example, would allow the Zerker to dodge more and increase their effective HP even more.) Conditions on crit mean extra damage.

I know it’s nice to have numbers to go along with things, but these numbers ignore too much of the game (and make too many other assumptions) to be useful as a statement in every game mode.

I guess I’d say it this way: if Zerker is not overpowered in PvE, why is it considered the best gear BY FAR?

(The short answer: because you’re not really fighting a single other player wearing Soldier’s gear… the bosses have huge HP pools but not really a lot of toughness.)

I apologize for my original snark, it was unnecessary and unproductive. But the point I was trying to make still stands: this math, while potentially useful for certain game modes, tells us nothing about the relative power of Zerk vs Soldiers in PvE.