Guild Wars 2

Saw this in the “Upcoming changes and features” on the GW2 Wiki:

“Attributes
Critical damage will be replaced by Ferocity. This will increase critical damage similar to the way that Precision increases critical
chance, instead of simply adding percentages to critical damage as is the current function. It has been stated that after this change,
a player with as much Ferocity as possible will have a lower overall critical damage modifier than a player that has as much Critical
Damage as possible currently. This has been done to reduce the prevalence of the Berserker meta.”

How would this reduce the prevalence of the Berserker meta?
Because I don’t see any reason for it, it will make Assassins gear useless because power will be a much better stat I guess, not Berserker, even if the damage is lower it will still be higher than any other set in the game or did I miss something?

It’s not meant to reduce the prevalence of Berzerker armor.

It’s meant to make crit damage to be more in line with all the other stats

You think Assassin gear is going to get boinked by this? Have a look at Celestial stats.

The Wiki is an amazing tool in which it includes sources for the information that is stated. In this case, it links to the Ready Up stream on January 21st:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw7MvgNFp6o

The topic starts at around 1:30. One of the devs starts by mentioning they will reduce the overall amount of critical damage because they “know how strong berserker damage is”, to which another dev adds that isn’t doesn’t just affect “berserker damage, but all critical damage in general.”

In this case, I’d say the wording on the Wiki isn’t exact, but still on point. I invite you to listen to the whole topic on YouTube for more information and feel free to contribute to a more precise description on the Wiki!

This is why we can’t have nice things!

Its not patch notes though, so even if a dev put this direction out there, they can change their minds :P

The only reason to do this is to try to force the PvE crowd to diversify the meta. This combined with increasing HP pools on event bosses… these are the sorts of things you do in beta, not release. Its not really game breaking, but for some folks even the in latest ‘already in game’ nerf to crit was pretty bad, especially with the ascended crafters. Add more to this and most of the holdouts that still preach the gospel of zerk will cave or ragequit :P

Martrim.1078:

It’s not meant to reduce the prevalence of Berzerker armor.

It’s meant to make crit damage to be more in line with all the other stats

And how is that even possible? They would have to remove crit damage from the game to make that happen… (ups don’t give them ideas lol), people use Berserkers because they gain nothing in using something else and this nerf wont change that, they would have to change the dungeons not the armor stats…

Yes, it won’t change the zerker meta as zerker gear will still be the highest damage gear. When you only have one combat role, DPS, then the gear that affords the highest DPS will always be preferred.

What the nerf does is essentially balance the game. Vertical progression yielded roughly a 10% increase in the power level of the game in its first year. This nerf removes the increase without having to buff the environment. A simple solution: give the power creep that people grind for and then remove it. Of course, the non-grinders in non-ascended zerker gear are taking it on the chin here and they will experience a net loss in power. This is why when you have a power curve you should realize its mandatory to ride it if you want to play the game long term.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

You think Assassin gear is going to get boinked by this? Have a look at Celestial stats.

Crit isn’t the selling point of Celestial, and the change to Ferocity should not alter someones view on it. Celestial is going to be same tier on the gear tree as it always has – right near the bottom.

Assassin’s, however, is used because the player wants to Crit more. When the change hits, there is 0 reason to use Assassin’s over Berserker, as critical hits will be less important and it is a loss in damage for no defensive gain, so this entire change is entirely counter productive.

Raine.1394:

Yes, it won’t change the zerker meta as zerker gear will still be the highest damage gear. When you only have one combat role, DPS, then the gear that affords the highest DPS will always be preferred.

What the nerf does is essentially balance the game. Vertical progression yielded roughly a 10% increase in the power level of the game in its first year. This nerf removes the increase without having to buff the environment. A simple solution: give the power creep that people grind for and then remove it. Of course, the non-grinders in non-ascended zerker gear are taking it on the chin here and they will experience a net loss in power. This is why when you have a power curve you should realize its mandatory to ride it if you want to play the game long term.

Got it, that actually makes sense.
But wont that make most gear combos even more useless? People that used mixed Berserker with Assassin for example wont use Assassin anymore because power will be a better stat. What I’m trying to say is that it will reduce diversity if this change doesn’t come with dungeon changes that make other sets more viable.

PS: I’m not complaining about this changes (don’t even have ascended armor yet), I just think that it wont change anything by its own.

Letifer.4360:

Raine.1394:

Yes, it won’t change the zerker meta as zerker gear will still be the highest damage gear. When you only have one combat role, DPS, then the gear that affords the highest DPS will always be preferred.

What the nerf does is essentially balance the game. Vertical progression yielded roughly a 10% increase in the power level of the game in its first year. This nerf removes the increase without having to buff the environment. A simple solution: give the power creep that people grind for and then remove it. Of course, the non-grinders in non-ascended zerker gear are taking it on the chin here and they will experience a net loss in power. This is why when you have a power curve you should realize its mandatory to ride it if you want to play the game long term.

Got it, that actually makes sense.
But wont that make most gear combos even more useless? People that used mixed Berserker with Assassin for example wont use Assassin anymore because power will be a better stat. What I’m trying to say is that it will reduce diversity if this change doesn’t come with dungeon changes that make other sets more viable.

PS: I’m not complaining about this changes (don’t even have ascended armor yet), I just think that it wont change anything by its own.

Yes, it will do exactly that. Berserker will be more dominant now than it has been, the gap between Berserker and the majority of other options is just smaller, with the previous near competitors being shot down to the bottom.

All this is doing is destroying rarely used gear sets, and kittening off anybody who made their Ascended before this announcement.

I think a lot of people forgot that ArenaNet said that this will just be the start of changing the Berserker meta. This is not the last change.

But this doesn’t mean that they will change Berserker stats more, but perhaps make the other stats more interesting.

But this also requires change to how PvE works too.

Flissy.4093:

Celestial is going to be same tier on the gear tree as it always has – right near the bottom.

Only in your narrow view of the game. Celestial Ascended Armor lets me play all areas of the game that I enjoy, without having switch gear, traits, and weapons just because I move from WvW to a dungeon.

You don’t have to min/max everything in order to enjoy this game, but Anet doesn’t have to nerf every freaking part of the game either, just because players have found a way to play that might not have intended.

Play the way you want to….

This is one of the only changes I’m fine with; all it’s doing is making the stat more consistent with the way precision works, never mind that it’s already too easy to push yourself past the critical damage cap the way the game works now.

Personally, I’m much more worried about the Necro and Mesmer changes hurting the way I enjoy playing both of those classes.

This move could be to prepare the game for more stat escalation.

Game designers use large numbers on gear that produce minimal changes in effectiveness to foster the perception that players have gained something significant — even if this is not the case. The smaller the scale of the numbers on gear, the more performance improvement there would need to be in order for players to “feel” like the effort to get the gear piece was worthwhile.

If critical damage percentage was left on a 1-100 scale, then anytime they want to offer a stat increase, they would have to offer a percentage increase that looks significant on each piece of gear or on each infusion. By using a bigger number (Ferocity) that converts to a smaller number (critical percentage), they can offer numbers that increase with each better gear piece or better infusion, while reducing the overall increase from getting a full set. If your game has an absolute cap on stats, then a change of this type would not be necessary — but then you couldn’t use a stat chase as incentive to keep playing the game.

As to whether this will reduce the appeal of berserker builds — that remains to be seen. By itself, this change is more likely to strengthen the position of berserker gear. In the livestream, the devs stated that this is to be the first of the changes to accomplish this goal. The nature of those unknown further changes will determine whether the overall initiative will work or not. My opinion is that unless those other changes actually make other gear choices desirable, the initiative will fail.

This change is just the first to come. The devs stated that the reason for this change is because it is the first step in doing whatever it is they are trying to do. So since we don’t know the “exact” reason this is happening I can’t really judge it. You can judge how it is changing the game until they put it the final step I suppose. I just wish we could get an idea on the main reason this is happening and what it is the first step of. They are doing a similar thing to sPvP. Their first step is removing glory. It is the only way they can implement the new system so they must remove it prior to putting it in. But at least there we have an idea on why they made the first step. But in this case I have no idea what the change of ferocity is the main purpose for because it definitely isn’t the fix for the zerker meta and they know that.

Flissy.4093:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

You think Assassin gear is going to get boinked by this? Have a look at Celestial stats.

Crit isn’t the selling point of Celestial, and the change to Ferocity should not alter someones view on it. Celestial is going to be same tier on the gear tree as it always has – right near the bottom.

Assassin’s, however, is used because the player wants to Crit more. When the change hits, there is 0 reason to use Assassin’s over Berserker, as critical hits will be less important and it is a loss in damage for no defensive gain, so this entire change is entirely counter productive.

Actually the high crit dmage is the only thing that made celestial viable in a dps dominant game.

Removing that and celestial falls to that ranking of lower dps then someone wearing knights or clerics.

Celestial was an amazingly designed set. It was strictly mid pack in terms of dps and that’s were it should be as a hybrid set. It was below the zerker meta but above the knights / clerics setups.

What I am trying to say is it was viable.

With the coming changes and how Celestial is getting hit doubly as hard as zerker – Anet devs words not mine. There will be no point to this gear set if the changes go live as stated.

Reducing crit damage is a global player base dps nerf. If things take longer to kill how is that going to create build diversity? It will do nothing but make the zerker meta go from desired to required.

Also, This game is based soley off dps. Look a the latest living story. It’s one huge DPS check. So in saying that the game since release has been designed with only DPS in mind – how is this change going to help anything?

People will always gravitate to the path of least resistance. In a game once again that is designed around the ideal of no healers, support and dps being king and with Anets continued content releases of DPS checks – what do you think the player base will do?

Hence how the zerk meta started and will continue to dominant this game but in a much larger fashion when this patch goes live.

This is not even taking into account the amount of players who crafted ascended zerker and celestial sets who spent enormous amounts of time and or rl money to make them who now do not have what they originally purchased.

It’s simply bad decisions after bad decisions coming from Anet these days.

Most of what you’re complaining about is due to the way the players approach the game, not so much Anet outside of the Living Story events.

medohgeuh.4650:

Most of what you’re complaining about is due to the way the players approach the game, not so much Anet outside of the Living Story events.

Players play by the systems the developers put in place.

So the systems are the problem – not the players approach.

Azreell.1568:

medohgeuh.4650:

Most of what you’re complaining about is due to the way the players approach the game, not so much Anet outside of the Living Story events.

Players play by the systems the developers put in place.

So the systems are the problem – not the players approach.

Its a shared responsibility. You can blame the designer of the cement path for not understanding foot traffic patterns/human nature and you can blame the walkers for creating a dirt path from travelling a much more convenient way. It works both ways. The difference here is that one side is a “paying customer”. That should… probably mean a lot less than it does, but… human nature and all that.

Just play the game that’s fun. When this game stops being fun, stop playing it.

Azreell.1568:

medohgeuh.4650:

Most of what you’re complaining about is due to the way the players approach the game, not so much Anet outside of the Living Story events.

Players play by the systems the developers put in place.

So the systems are the problem – not the players approach.

Yes, most people here, in defending Anet, will blame players for the problems. And, most people don’t realize the extent of design in shaping game culture and play. And, if it were truly a player problem that would mean we could never have a successful game as players would always be at risk of spoiling things by their behavior.

No, we are discussing issues of design, not human nature and behavior.

All these time we get use to crit dmg mechanism and all the ascended gears we collected so hard I kno exactly where this is going…..they pushing us to move to Elder scroll online

We’re all expecting to be able to choose new stats for our obsolete celestial gear next Tuesday… I will certainly not be spending more time in this game re-gearing up.

Xillllix.3485:

We’re all expecting to be able to choose new stats for our obsolete celestial gear next Tuesday… I will certainly not be spending more time in this game re-gearing up.

Not going to happen. The only change is a 6% increase in stats for the set.

I suggested that it get boon duration (to allow Might to make up for lost damage), but the post was semingly ignored just like the rest of the suggestions.

That said, I still feel like it is the best set for Elementalist for mixed PvE/WvW.

i think Ferocity should be like 13 points per crit damage or something like that, or 12, because 15 is a hard hit overall, go ahead and do the math, this is much more than a 10% nerf to dps, this is 30% nerf. i know that 12 or 13 would seem awkward to keep track of, but no worse than counting every 21 precision for a crit chance.

i mean, if it was 13 Ferocity per crit dmg, then sets that go all out dps would be under 100% crit dmg (though after thinking for a bit, i realized if someone went all the way into the Ferocity traitline and also had critical damage food on, they could break the 100% crit dmg threshold by 2 or 3%, but 103% is still lower than like 120%), so that would be enough of a nerf eh? but i’ve been running numbers and this system at 15 Fer~ per crit dmg is gimping it so hard to the point that it wouldn’t force me to change builds, it would just mean that i have no choice but to be this build and adjust to taking 10-20 minutes longer to finish a fractal, or basically never run around as a gank thief ever again since i’ll never see 10,000 damage backstabs anymore.

you know there are probably really good ideas to force build diversity that doesn’t involve severely nerfing dps setups in the process. and i realize that there are hardcore players who run hardcore speed runs, and this will bring them down to finishing pve content at the same speed that casuals did, but now the casuals are going to be useless and no one will want to run with them ever again (i’m glad i have speedrunner friends btw, so this isn’t really a problem for me as it would be for the rest of the players in the game, which is the majority).

as for such examples of ways to promote build diversity, that would take too long and i said enough in this topic, but in conclusion:

this Ferocity system is too big of nerf to critical damage, my suggestion is to change the rate from 15 Ferocity, to 13 Ferocity per point.

or, if 13 seems too amazing, can Anet meet me halfway at 14?