Guild Wars 2

Zoid.2568:

Ferocity is THE solution. Crit damage now scale down better and Berserker is less effective which means you may not want a team full of zerkers.

You still want a team of full berserkers. People will just be more selective and kick more often for errors/ways of play zerk that used to be minor or irrelevant. Most of the player base (pugs, casuals) get hit hard.

Harper.4173:

This is not that game.

But it’s fun and should be implemented.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

You still want a team of full berserkers. People will just be more selective and kick more often for errors/ways of play zerk that used to be minor or irrelevant. Most of the player base (pugs, casuals) get hit hard.

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

Lue.6538:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

You still want a team of full berserkers. People will just be more selective and kick more often for errors/ways of play zerk that used to be minor or irrelevant. Most of the player base (pugs, casuals) get hit hard.

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

I still wonder why you’d bring a cleric support if a berserker can do the job with aegis/blinds/condi cleanse, whilst the berserker kills faster aswell. I still don’t see why anyone would go Knights/Soldier’s if fractal bosses will still 1 or 2-shot them just like the berserker, whilst berserker kills faster. So I’m skeptical about how it allows more diversity in your groups and an overall friendlier envoirment towards people not running meta…

It’s the mechanics that need to be adjusted rather than the builds, but that leads to Trinity. Though goodjob to them if they scaled down all DPS-orientated gear the way they want to.

To be honest, I’ve always felt that having both critical chance AND critical damage be influenced by build and stats was a poor choice.
When the concept of critical hits was introduced to P&P RPGs, while certain classes or circumstances had higher chances to crit, the results were always the same; a roll on the critical effect table or a straight double-damage hit.
I think ArenaNet would be much better off adopting a similar mechanism, as this current one is obviously incredibly difficult to balance.
Have critical chance be variable, sure, but leave critical damage as a set amount.

I also think certain circumstantial attacks should be changed to be guaranteed critical hits, such as attacks on knocked down or stunned opponents.

And as an aside, I don’t think there’s any reason to have both Daze and Stun in the game.
They should be rolled in to one effect, as currently they’re far too similar in behaviour and end up confusing players, new and old alike!

Lue.6538:

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

Everything works so I’m not sure what your point is.

I also like that Change.. Zerker Builds just suck and does’nt belong in a Team Based Oriented game where most of the Raid Content Encounters Fail because the Berseker are always the first that go down. Cuz all the can do is doing Damage, they have not Thougness and no Vitality to even tank a bit..

That’s why Cleric is the Master build of the game.

Keichi – do you even high-end pve?
In most speedclears those doing it are successful because they’re good players and the run is fast because they are zerker.

Also GW2 is not a team based game – in a game where EACH character is self-sustainable and doesn’t rely on anyone else.

Also I think with that last line in your post that you’re just trolling.

If this Ferocity change was supposed to fix balance or make Berserker gear less attractive in PvE it entirely missed the point.

People run Berserker gear in PvE because nothing except damage matters.

And guess what? Nothing has changed about that.

People will run just as much Berserker as before, not because it’s more or less powerful than other stats but because nothing else matters except DPS.

haviz.1340:

Lue.6538:

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

Everything works so I’m not sure what your point is.

My point is that it is not the game that is to be blamed for the lack of diversity but rather the players, when the only builds being accepted by the kitten s end up being berserker builds then that is all you get to see. Theres also a significant exaggeration in terms of how hard most mobs hit in these discussions..
I suppose exaggeration is alright tho as long as it further solidify the zerker builds position as the primary part of any decent blob.

Really you need to wait until it’s implemented before calling it a failure. You haven’t even played the game with these additions yet man!!!

Zoid.2568:

Ferocity is THE solution. Crit damage now scale down better and Berserker is less effective which means you may not want a team full of zerkers.

DPS is still the solution, nothing changed here. And Zerkers are still the best dps build – again, no change here. The only difference is that alternative dps builds that were based on minmaxing crit damage got hit by this nerf stronger than zerkers did.

The ferocity change does absolutely nothing to address the core problem behind zerer meta – complete supremacy of dps over all other options.

Inimicus.7162:

Funny, that ascended % creep you speak of is 1%, thus this 1% from ascended leggings (4% ascended versus 3% exotic) warrants the “10% dps reduction” anet has mentioned?

Erm… exo→ascended dps increase for full zerker is somewhere over 20% (it’s over 10% for PVT builds, and 5% for having an asceded weapon alone, regardless of its stats). The ferocity change is actually too weak a nerf to compensate for it.

Lue.6538:

My point is that it is not the game that is to be blamed for the lack of diversity but rather the players, when the only builds being accepted by the kitten s end up being berserker builds then that is all you get to see. Theres also a significant exaggeration in terms of how hard most mobs hit in these discussions..
I suppose exaggeration is alright tho as long as it further solidify the zerker builds position as the primary part of any decent blob.

Same stuff happened with gw1, either you brought proper builds or you got kicked.

Moreover, any decent blob is running soldier’s cause berserker’s are just rally bots and they can’t even tank last mobs from ls – the assault knights.

Nightarch.2943:

ArenaNet should be merging stats, not creating more.

This, this and kittening this again. The system is a convoluted mess and they’re just making it worse with every update.

I kind of get the logic behind this.

For most difficult encounters in the game (ie, not CoF P1 etc), theres a consideration between being survivable so you’re less likely to wipe and doing massive damage to make the fight shorter, so mistakes are less likely to happen.

Yes, you can do most fights (apart from stuff like Dredge, which you can but you won’t have a good time doing it) in zerker gear, but we’re human, we all screw up sometimes, especially in a video game because we play it when we’re in a relaxed mood and it isn’t exactly a life-affecting task.

If they reduce the amount of damage done by zerkers, and thus reduce the amount of time it deducts from a fight, there’s more incentive to get more defensive because wiping over and over again doesn’t make the run shorter.

Now of course, there’s the argument that attacks end up hitting you for most of your HP anyways so why bother going defensive. I never personally understood that. Reasons being:

1. The game doesn’t exactly consist only of 1HKO attacks. There’s a lot of encounters out there where the problem isn’t massive attacks but a lot of attacks coming from all directions. A tankier build helps a lot in those.

2. Even if you are on an encounter which mainly has massive damage spikes, like most of the ‘old’ bosses, there’s a huge difference between being dead and being left on 2K HP. Even if you got any HP left of all, you can retreat, recover and join back into the fight, where in a lot of fights like Lupi, getting downed often means you’re very likely to be out in a few seconds as well because your teammate won’t be able to always help you.

Of course, there’s the actual 1HKOs as well. But if you get hit by those, most of the time you really aren’t paying attention because they tend to have a huge telegraph that lasts for quite a bit beforehand. And no, Icebrood Wolf’s bite isn’t actually a 1HKO.

haviz.1340:

Same stuff happened with gw1, either you brought proper builds or you got kicked.

Well, yes..

There is a vast difference tho because in GW your builds were highly specialised for a very limited part of the game. Whereas in GW2, you slap on your warriors berserker gear and then google whatever build happens to be the flavor of the month and you can get away with this in all PvE related content of the game.

See the difference? GW: Build diversity dependant on what content is being tackled.
GW2: Berserker fotmbuilds regardless of what train/blob they are currently participating in.

There is another significant difference here tho; In GW you joined a Team, you had to work with eachothers skills to make sure that you were able to properly progress throughout areas.

In GW2, you locate the latest fotmbuild, equip your berserker armor and plow through the content while hating anyone attempting to test a new build as that build is totally not part of the meta and is going to potentionally ruin your precious gold per hour.

haviz.1340:

Moreover, any decent blob is running soldier’s cause berserker’s are just rally bots and they can’t even tank last mobs from ls – the assault knights.

Any decent blob isn’t a blob.
Unless the blob is by majority made up of a single guilds members, you’re not going to see anything regarding gear. As you can not determine what a member of the blob is actually wearing, you simply do not have a way of determining what their setup is.
(Berserkers)

haviz.1340:

Lue.6538:

My point is that it is not the game that is to be blamed for the lack of diversity but rather the players, when the only builds being accepted by the kitten s end up being berserker builds then that is all you get to see. Theres also a significant exaggeration in terms of how hard most mobs hit in these discussions..
I suppose exaggeration is alright tho as long as it further solidify the zerker builds position as the primary part of any decent blob.

Same stuff happened with gw1, either you brought proper builds or you got kicked.

Moreover, any decent blob is running soldier’s cause berserker’s are just rally bots and they can’t even tank last mobs from ls – the assault knights.

From my experience, as the guild/zerg/blob gets better, the fewer solider and more berserker you see…

Also, as always, ferocity is meant only for PvE, but it also will affect WvW, and here will hurt incredibly. For roaming, forget about going with power builds. For zerguing, it’ll promote bigger blobs, as the coordinated spike from smaller guilds will have less impact.

Lue.6538:

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Miku Lawrence.6329:

You still want a team of full berserkers. People will just be more selective and kick more often for errors/ways of play zerk that used to be minor or irrelevant. Most of the player base (pugs, casuals) get hit hard.

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

Lue.6538:

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haviz.1340:

Lue.6538:

Let them kick then.
berserk gear needed a change to break up this horribly boring PvE and even tho there will still be zealous elfs who refuse to accept that other things than pure zerker works they’ll end up being a minority.

Everything works so I’m not sure what your point is.

My point is that it is not the game that is to be blamed for the lack of diversity but rather the players, when the only builds being accepted by the kitten s end up being berserker builds then that is all you get to see. Theres also a significant exaggeration in terms of how hard most mobs hit in these discussions..
I suppose exaggeration is alright tho as long as it further solidify the zerker builds position as the primary part of any decent blob.

Xae Isareth.1364:

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I kind of get the logic behind this.

For most difficult encounters in the game (ie, not CoF P1 etc), theres a consideration between being survivable so you’re less likely to wipe and doing massive damage to make the fight shorter, so mistakes are less likely to happen.

Yes, you can do most fights (apart from stuff like Dredge, which you can but you won’t have a good time doing it) in zerker gear, but we’re human, we all screw up sometimes, especially in a video game because we play it when we’re in a relaxed mood and it isn’t exactly a life-affecting task.

If they reduce the amount of damage done by zerkers, and thus reduce the amount of time it deducts from a fight, there’s more incentive to get more defensive because wiping over and over again doesn’t make the run shorter.

Now of course, there’s the argument that attacks end up hitting you for most of your HP anyways so why bother going defensive. I never personally understood that. Reasons being:

1. The game doesn’t exactly consist only of 1HKO attacks. There’s a lot of encounters out there where the problem isn’t massive attacks but a lot of attacks coming from all directions. A tankier build helps a lot in those.

2. Even if you are on an encounter which mainly has massive damage spikes, like most of the ‘old’ bosses, there’s a huge difference between being dead and being left on 2K HP. Even if you got any HP left of all, you can retreat, recover and join back into the fight, where in a lot of fights like Lupi, getting downed often means you’re very likely to be out in a few seconds as well because your teammate won’t be able to always help you.

Of course, there’s the actual 1HKOs as well. But if you get hit by those, most of the time you really aren’t paying attention because they tend to have a huge telegraph that lasts for quite a bit beforehand. And no, Icebrood Wolf’s bite isn’t actually a 1HKO.

Oh my god….
What we’ve been trying to say is that nerking berserker gear won’t solve anything. Mob design and dodge mechanics are at fault here. In high level dungeons, mobs have been all figured out. There are no new interesting tricks, bells or whistles to make the fights anymore than an annoyance that need to be dealt with as fast as possible. Dodge helps by negating ALL DAMAGE (aegis too, but not important) that would have downed you in the first few seconds. You see how vitality’s and toughness’ importance is significantly reduced here? If dodge was gone what would become important again, hmm?

Because mobs are so numerous (along with being elite) it doesn’t make any sense to bunker up and make dungeons last 5x longer with periodic wipes making things even worse, does it? It would be better to take appropriate utilities while pumping out as much damage as possible to get that sort of situation over with. Additionally, VIGOR (imo, also a HUGE issue along with “endurance regen” anything) can be passed out to almost ensure surviving any encounter.

TL:DR
Unless something happens to dodge (never) and mob design becomes sufficiently better (unlikely), I don’t see how reducing our damage (being the first change to zerk gear) is going to change anything.

P.S.A. time folks. Ferocity is not “the” solution to anything. It was never stated as such. The very first mention of ferocity was in a stream by Anet where they stated it was only one change in a line of changes to come that were intended to address the zerker meta. And yeah, they aren’t talking about the other changes yet. So, feel free to tag em on that one but I can’t stand idly by and listen to people argue based on a false premise. Anet did not say Ferocity was the solution as described by the OP, if anything they said the opposite. That it was not the solution to shaking up the meta and are working to do more, albeit behind closed doors. Carry on.

Lue.6538:

In GW2, you locate the latest fotmbuild, equip your berserker armor and plow through the content while hating anyone attempting to test a new build as that build is totally not part of the meta and is going to potentionally ruin your precious gold per hour.

You mix up under “zerk” smart players willing to complete content in the most optimal way and terrible knownothings that copy past fotm builds.

Ps: You can’t plow through the content in berserker gear, unless by content you mean Hearts and World Events.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

You mix up under “zerk” smart players willing to complete content in the most optimal way and terrible knownothings that copy past fotm builds.

Ps: You can’t plow through the content in berserker gear, unless by content you mean Hearts and World Events.

No I really didn’t, but people attempt to glorify zerker gear and it is just not a be all end all if you don’t use it.

And PS: Yes, you definitly can.. That is the entire point right now, people don’t attempt to counter mechanics of fights because they would rather just brute force the boss with berserk builds and as long as it works they’ll keep doing it, this nerf is a definite step in the right direction.

blakdoxa.7520:

TL:DR
Unless something happens to dodge (never) and mob design becomes sufficiently better (unlikely), I don’t see how reducing our damage (being the first change to zerk gear) is going to change anything.

If it doesn’t change anything, you have nothing to worry about.

Ansau.7326:

From my experience, as the guild/zerg/blob gets better, the fewer solider and more berserker you see…

Also, as always, ferocity is meant only for PvE, but it also will affect WvW, and here will hurt incredibly. For roaming, forget about going with power builds. For zerguing, it’ll promote bigger blobs, as the coordinated spike from smaller guilds will have less impact.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that ferocity change is meant only for pve? Isn’t wvw a hybrid of pve/pvp? For me it means ferocity change was meant for both pve and wvw since possible future vertical progression will affect both of those modes, unlike pvp.

Lue.6538:

blakdoxa.7520:

TL:DR
Unless something happens to dodge (never) and mob design becomes sufficiently better (unlikely), I don’t see how reducing our damage (being the first change to zerk gear) is going to change anything.

If it doesn’t change anything, you have nothing to worry about.

Exactly. What is really changing here? Just what is Anet doing?
I know it’s not all they are going to “do” but they certainly do imply it’s only things pertaining to “zerker” that are going to be changed.

No mob mechanic changes. Nothing to dodge or vigor regeneration either.

They are shooting blanks….

The problem was never crit damage, the problem was having an armor set that has the ideal stats for any dps build. The only “solution” would be to remove berzerker and then rebalance the whole game around every armor set having 2 dps 1 tank stat or 2 tank 1 dps stat. Berzerker is like having an armor set that is toughness vitality and healing.

The logic was that Ruby Orbs and their equivalents were way over budget, so they made a change that brought it into line. They also reduced the amount of critical damage you get from traits for similar reasons.

Equalizing everything resulted in some minor gains and losses amounting to rounding errors on every other piece of gear, which was an acceptable trade-off for increased clarity.

I think that Anet simply wants to make an end to the word “Speedclear”. No game I played have boss encounters of 3 seconds.
The problem is that everything could be solved introducing a better system of collisions in game, so the “mechanic” of stack couldn’t be in game anymore.
But “nerfing” the speedclear gear is simpler.
Personally, I think this nerf will not bring anything good to the game. Squishy zerker will be MORE squishy, because the fight will take more time. And OBV squishy zerkers, proud of theyr big domages, will not want support build to not slow theyr run any more. So, a party of 5 zerk pugs, will take longer time, because of the non optimization of party. The more squishy is the class, the more beginners will be kicked from parties, fearing they makes zerkers pro slow down. Speed. it’s all a matter of speed. And personally, I don’t find any sort of enjoyment to end a bossfight in 3 seconds, but this is not the solution. Maybe a start, but knowing only what we know, this solution is worst of the problem.

Stampede.5308:

I think that Anet simply wants to make an end to the word “Speedclear”. No game I played have boss encounters of 3 seconds.

And this still does nothing to solve the problem.

So the same run now takes 3.3 seconds. Oh my golly-gosh, a huge increase in time spent!

It doesn’t solve the clear time/berserker requirement meta for dungeons, but it also has adverse effects on WvW and solo play, while also reducing build diversity and overall valid build choices/stat paths.

Mob/boss behavior/movesets needs updating and their stats changed, and stats need to scale more exponentially. Inconsistent scaling on stats : damage (or mitigation) is BAD. It prevents growth implementation but also makes it so that content is very difficult to balance towards allowing for variable builds. It also encourages players to optimize around the steeper curves instead of building for scenarios or other builds. The berserker meta exists because of a combination of factors, which include poor/un-updated mob/boss behaviors, cheesy mechanics/one-shot kills/passive un-mitigatable DoT effects with inefficient support skills and techniques as well as inconsistent stat efficiency curves favoring DPS over survivability also heavily influenced by the above.

A 10% reduction in damage throughput and destroying stat combinations is not how normalizing stats is done. Normalizing is examine stat effectiveness formulae through existing in-game scenarios and attempting to equalize them.

blakdoxa.7520:

Oh my god….
What we’ve been trying to say is that nerking berserker gear won’t solve anything. Mob design and dodge mechanics are at fault here. In high level dungeons, mobs have been all figured out. There are no new interesting tricks, bells or whistles to make the fights anymore than an annoyance that need to be dealt with as fast as possible. Dodge helps by negating ALL DAMAGE (aegis too, but not important) that would have downed you in the first few seconds. You see how vitality’s and toughness’ importance is significantly reduced here? If dodge was gone what would become important again, hmm?

Because mobs are so numerous (along with being elite) it doesn’t make any sense to bunker up and make dungeons last 5x longer with periodic wipes making things even worse, does it? It would be better to take appropriate utilities while pumping out as much damage as possible to get that sort of situation over with. Additionally, VIGOR (imo, also a HUGE issue along with “endurance regen” anything) can be passed out to almost ensure surviving any encounter.

TL:DR
Unless something happens to dodge (never) and mob design becomes sufficiently better (unlikely), I don’t see how reducing our damage (being the first change to zerk gear) is going to change anything.

I don’t agree with that. Its good if your party actually can fight in zerker gear, and the fights doesn’t have anything to just screw you over for using it. But frankly, not everyone can fight in zerker gear, and a lot of content makes fighting in zerker very, very frustrating.

I don’t really see having every single build being viable and equally good in everything a good solution anyways. Because then, what’s making me wanting to try new things?

I think having some content being best done in zerker (has a DPS check for example), whilst others done in full bunker (39 Collossus, where 2k constant explosions happen) is a good way forward. And others in between, is a good way forwards.

I’m completely confused by your analysis.

DeceiverX.8361:

The bottom line is that this change reduces critical damage. Okay, working as intended, right? Absolutely not the case. This change is designed to affect berserker builds such that their overall effectiveness in PvE is toned down slightly. Okay, that’s fine. But the real problem is that precision builds are not compensated in any way for this, because 10% damage overall includes damage dealt by non-critical strikes, thus meaning the penalty on critical strike damage is going to increase by a significantly larger margin.

1. This change reduces critical damage for characters which use critical damage(soon to be Ferocity). It has no effect for people who do not use what will soon become Ferocity.
2. Precision w/o Ferocity builds do not need to be compensated as they are not suffering any losses.
3. I’m fairly sure the “Berserker builds will suffer 10% damage loss” is “Berserker builds will suffer 10% damage loss as a direct result of the Critical Damage reduction through the Ferocity change”.

DeceiverX.8361:

What does this mean? It means the value of precision even further decreases. Precision-oriented builds are established to get high critical chance to bolster DPS against low-toughness foes. That said, since crit damage is multiplicative on power, precision-based builds already deal less overall damage output than power/berserker based builds. When the modifier becomes reduced, all that happens is in order for players running high-crit chance builds to work as effectively as they are now, they need to build into more power at the expense of some precision. What does this mean? All precision-oriented builds must be forced into using berserker gear to retain their existing damage while losing their high crit chance.

4. Precision oriented builds? Do you mean builds that would want to use the Assassin’s spread? Yes, the Assassin’s spread is hit more heavily than the Berserker’s spread, that’s true- However, I struggle to think of a situation in which an Assassin’s spread would be preferable for anyone over a Berserker’s spread. Could you please provide a specific example of a viable build that gains clear benefits with Assassin’s over Berserker’s?

DeceiverX.8361:

And if celestial gear gets buffed out of this zone… does this not then encourage players running anything except berserker to run celestial because it offers the best returns? This is absolutely foolish.

5. Celestial is utter junk for 95% of builds at the moment. The 6% raw stat buff is projected to only deliver a 3-4% EHP benefit at the cost of 4-7% direct DPS. There is no reason to assume that non-berserkers would desire Celestial gear over their current spread. Remember, Celestial is a complete non-option if you cannot make efficient use of a single stat on it, and that will not change even with the stat boost.

DeceiverX.8361:

Non-power based critical damage sets need to be re-evaluated. Ferocity needs to be implemented in significantly raised values in sets like Assassin’s and Valkyrie’s in order to retain their current set values (which are far out of the meta and already considered mediocre for both DPS and/or survivability) such that the only build choices beyond this point are not just berserker’s and celestial.

6. I agree, Valkyrie’s and Assassin’s will be hit harder than Berserker’s. These are two stat spreads, though, of almost two dozen. Reducing these four spreads makes the other seventeen more valuable by comparison.

Only applicable to dungeon crawling and zergs, though. Condis are already strictly better in WvW/small groups PvP.

And again, nothing actually changes here. People will just run berserker more, and berserker groups will still deal more damage and still be better for dungeons than any other group composition.

DeceiverX.8361:

And again, nothing actually changes here. People will just run berserker more, and berserker groups will still deal more damage and still be better for dungeons than any other group composition.

Why would people run Berserker more if Berserker is getting nerfed? IIRC you posted a theory about it earlier but the average player isn’t a scientist. They’re just going to go “oh, i wasn’t berserker before, it got nerfed now, why would i change now?”

And yes, changing the stats desired for dungeons will require changes across the entire game, and Ferocity barely changes anything there. Ferocity only does two things in that regard; makes conditions more appealing by comparison, and reduces the quick-kill/rallying aspects which add up to “the best defense is a good offense”.

I also hope that other changes will affect the condition meta in WvW, because as far as I can see, that’ll be the real victim of these changes. I dunno though. Fingers crossed I guess.

Nobody should be switching to berserker if they aren’t already. This is about berserker/DPS builds and those who already run them.

Because those players are going to switch to condi, quit, or keep playing damage-based DPS.

And the ONLY choice by an extremely large margin is berserker to maintain such damage values on the last of the above options.

Berserker does get nerfed, but it gets nerfed the least of all of the offensive sets.

Until mob behavior is changed, the best defense is a good offense. A lot of bosses have auto-kill mechanics, regardless of defensive stats, or just deal s much damage that stats attainable in-game currently cannot negate said damage effectively enough to reduce time spent killing. Condis will not be appealing in PvE/dungeons, especially not when they share stacks from different players.

So the point of the thread is to point out the logical flaw in the ferocity nerf. It literally accomplishes nothing. It makes a meta set less appealing, but still the best for those which already use it. It’s in the meta because it’s the best, and sooner or later people would recognize this, anyways, making the patch accomplish absolutely nothing and possibly make people waste a lot of money on gear.

The patch is about condi viability and support role viability in dungeons. Nerfing critical damage isn’t going to accomplish anything in regards to those subjects.

Lue.6538:

My point is that it is not the game that is to be blamed for the lack of diversity but rather the players, when the only builds being accepted by the kitten s end up being berserker builds then that is all you get to see. Theres also a significant exaggeration in terms of how hard most mobs hit in these discussions..
I suppose exaggeration is alright tho as long as it further solidify the zerker builds position as the primary part of any decent blob.

Actually, it is the game that is to blame, at least the dungeons are designed that way. People want DPS gear because it allows you to plow through the current content the fastest. Last time I checked, players didn’t create the content, they just found the best way to defeat it.

The mob damage is not being over exaggerated here. Higher level fractal mobs pump out crazy damage. Did you play the last living story? If you bothered to check the combat logs, you would have seen some really high single hit numbers. There was even a thread about it at the time.

For me, anet starts from ban without reason…
now that patch… just mostly stupid patch.
They kill game( good game…) and kill my interest to play.

all this talk bout stats makes my head hurt… whatever happened to just playing the game for fun?

What is this nonsense about mobs with “auto kill” attacks? There is no such thing, at least none that can’t be avoided. If you’re dying to auto attacks a projectiles, maybe you should try knights armor.

Also, the idea presented here in the OP is a bit flawed.

Are you saying that because more power means higher base damage; losing critical damage will hurt low power gear with ferocity more than berserkers? How is that so? Since berserkers has more power, 1% critical damage is more valuable to them than to assassin or valkyrie. More power means more value in critical damage, not less.

Also, celestial is getting buffed not because of this change hurting their damage more than it will hurt berserkers, it’s because the only reason anyone runs celestial right now is because it has higher critial damage than any other gear set right now. When the change hits and this is no longer the case, no one would want to use it unless they did something to it.

This change is going to bring berserker closer to assassins. Assassin’s gear is taking a hit, yes, but berserkers is still taking a larger one.

10% critical damage from 2000 power crits lost > 10% critical damage from 1600 power crits lost

TL;DR What the OP is implying seems wrong mathematically.

DeceiverX.8361:

This patch is about condi viability and support role viability in dungeons. Nerfing critical damage isn’t going to accomplish anything in regards to those subjects.

This patch is about laying groundwork. As much as I and a lot of the playerbase just wants them to get all of the changes out of the way to open up build diversity, for whatever reason they said that they can’t make them all at once. As Anet has said, changing crit damage scaling works allows them to set up the other changes they are going to make. You (and others) keep asserting a position on the subject that they haven’t taken. Do you assume that this is all they are going to do? Most recently, they have said:

“These updates will help make other builds more viable, increase the clarity of the attributes panel, and fix core issues with critical damage.”

They said it in the stream before but what they haven’t said explicitly this time around is that the issues this and other balance changes in the patch are meant to address have not been completely rectified. Ferocity alone will not change the meta as you and many others have been said. The end result is somewhere off in the distance…it would seem. A lot of the changes to combat you mentioned have been suggested by other players too. The point being, harping on Ferocity as a non-solution is a non-issue in and of itself. For everyone looking at it as Anet’s solution to build disparity, they are missing the point. Anet will probably reveal their long term plans at some point but with arguments like this popping up again and again, they need to work on their messaging.

Oh, crap, Ferocity failed? kitten , I must have missed when it was implemented.

Oh, wait.

The biggest nerf here is that orbs and jewels aren’t insanely scaling in favor of crit damage anymore. They could have not introduced ferocity and could have not reduced the overall crit damage from builds.

The fact that orbs and jewels scale so incredibly high with crit damage and that is being changed is what will be the destruction of hybrid builds, not the concept of ferocity.

I just want to say is that when people talk about how players should into building their character more diversely……aka build diversity, I have to just say they are NUTS. The game ultimately is killing the enemy soonest. Not running around with stupid build diversity. At this point, ANET cannot even fix some characters shortfalls. Whatever it is, the character build will move towards a more common build in a matter of time. Meaning, people will evolve their build and in 6 months down the road, the problem will surface again. The game should have been designed from the beginning with each race and profession having some serious advantage and disadvantage over the other. Not a general mathematical formula applied across the board.

lchan.2169:

I just want to say is that when people talk about how players should into building their character more diversely……aka build diversity, I have to just say they are NUTS. The game ultimately is killing the enemy soonest. Not running around with stupid build diversity. At this point, ANET cannot even fix some characters shortfalls. Whatever it is, the character build will move towards a more common build in a matter of time. Meaning, people will evolve their build and in 6 months down the road, the problem will surface again. The game should have been designed from the beginning with each race and profession having some serious advantage and disadvantage over the other. Not a general mathematical formula applied across the board.

I have to disagree when you say that, ultimately, combat boils down to killing an enemy the soonest. Grammar aside, I think you are trying to say that combat is meant to be an endless speed run. I feel this is a very limited view on how players interact with combat. Defeating your foe is indeed the goal of engaging in combat (most times) but what if you want or need to delay your foe? What if you want to control enemy placement on the battlefield to take pressure off of a team mate or perhaps the battle calls for turning a foe into a pawn out of necessity? Combat can be and currently is about more than aiming for highest dps. Even with the zerker meta, there are more factors to surviving than killing your enemy as fast as you can. The issue Anet is attempting to address is how heavily those other factors are weighted in combat and what contributes to or detracts from them with regard to the tools (stats, traits, etc.) professions have available to them.

Some players are happy with the current meta and those players will move on to whatever they view as most efficient in any balance scenario you can dream up. For everyone else, they want if not need options on how to achieve a win in a fight to enjoy combat or at least stay sane. Consider that.

nightwulf.1986:

lchan.2169:

I just want to say is that when people talk about how players should into building their character more diversely……aka build diversity, I have to just say they are NUTS. The game ultimately is killing the enemy soonest. Not running around with stupid build diversity. At this point, ANET cannot even fix some characters shortfalls. Whatever it is, the character build will move towards a more common build in a matter of time. Meaning, people will evolve their build and in 6 months down the road, the problem will surface again. The game should have been designed from the beginning with each race and profession having some serious advantage and disadvantage over the other. Not a general mathematical formula applied across the board.

I have to disagree when you say that, ultimately, combat boils down to killing an enemy the soonest. Grammar aside, I think you are trying to say that combat is meant to be an endless speed run. I feel this is a very limited view on how players interact with combat. Defeating your foe is indeed the goal of engaging in combat (most times) but what if you want or need to delay your foe? What if you want to control enemy placement on the battlefield to take pressure off of a team mate or perhaps the battle calls for turning a foe into a pawn out of necessity? Combat can be and currently is about more than aiming for highest dps. Even with the zerker meta, there are more factors to surviving than killing your enemy as fast as you can. The issue Anet is attempting to address is how heavily those other factors are weighted in combat and what contributes to or detracts from them with regard to the tools (stats, traits, etc.) professions have available to them.

Some players are happy with the current meta and those players will move on to whatever they view as most efficient in any balance scenario you can dream up. For everyone else, they want if not need options on how to achieve a win in a fight to enjoy combat or at least stay sane. Consider that.

Speed runs if that is what people call it, I just call it winning the fight. Pure and Simple. If you wanna run piddling around, so be it. Like I said before, the game ultimately is to win. Build diversity at the end of the day is how you intend to play your character. Bottom line is, you down your enemy soonest. You want to take heat off your teammate, pound the enemy. You want to win the game, you kill them. But it irritates me that people shout “greater build diversity”, “everyone is using grenades” or “most people are using axe”…etc. WTF….If they wanna run around naked, let them be. Why try to control how people play their game. This ferocity wont solve a kitten thing.

haviz.1340:

How did you arrive at the conclusion that ferocity change is meant only for pve?

Perhaps because zerkers aren’t that much of a problem in WvW. They have their uses in skirmishing, but are way less useful in group fights than PVT and other survival/sustain sets.

Sarrs.4831:

Why would people run Berserker more if Berserker is getting nerfed?

Because the domination of DPS over other options has not changed, and all alternative offensive hybrid builds (utilizing cavalier, assassin or celestial pieces, and/or zerker orbs on nonzerker sets to buff up damage) are going to be hit harder than Berserker will. Thus people that ran zerker before will most likely continue to run it after, while some of the people that ran hybrid dps builds will switch to zerker when their old builds become unviable.

Ferocity is the exact definition of lazy development.

If WWW has the huge issue of condimeta and bunkers.
And PvE just want the highest dps whatever it will be

Ferocity don t change PvE issues while ruining even more WWW.

This is the worst balance mistake since release…and they did a lot already but seems they works towards a totally broken meta where Warriors can outrun and outheal everything whil doing the same damage of a dps build with soldier equipment.

Astralporing.1957:

Perhaps because zerkers aren’t that much of a problem in WvW. They have their uses in skirmishing, but are way less useful in group fights than PVT and other survival/sustain sets.

I’ve also added a remark about possible future progression that applies to wvw as well. Ferocity might not have been made up for wvw but it applies there as much as in pve.

I do not see the need that precision builds to have a compensation. If they are not heavily rely on ferocity nothing will change. PVT or condition bulds wont be harm at all. In contrast they gain DPS through the changes on sigils. Many sigils will be triggered soon by hits instead of critical hits.

I have the feeling the introduction of ferocity was a necessary step before the devs can change the core mechanics in PvE to break the dominance of beserker builds and groups. The goal should be that none of the builds will be the fastest way in the majority of the dungeons or other events.

In WvW we have one meta: the boon meta in large groups and to a certain extent in smaller groups.

Belenwyn.8674:

The goal should be that none of the builds will be the fastest way in the majority of the dungeons or other events.

Care to elaborate on that? Why would I ever wanted to play risky if I can wear cleric’s gear and facetank every boss with dodge key disabled watching TV at the same time. Isn’t that comparable to botting?

Who would ever wear more risky gear set if the reward is the same?

Let us assume a full beserker group. In dungeon A this group will be the fastest because most the bosses favor this composition. In dungeon B the same group would be the slowest because most of the bosses favor other compositions maybe a condition damage group. To be clear each composition should be able to complete each dungeon but none of the compositions will the fastest in every dungeon.

haviz.1340:

When will I be able to properly heal my partymates? I want to select someone and cast infuse healing then heal myself back up.

I guess when you start playing a different MMO?

Zoid.2568:

Ferocity is THE solution. Crit damage now scale down better and Berserker is less effective which means you may not want a team full of zerkers.

I think it is now more important than ever to have a full group of zerkers. Prior to this you could carry bads, now there is less room for slack.

If anyone is interested, I ran some math in the Guardian forums to show the Dps loss is indeed roughly 10 percent.