Guild Wars 2

Current problem:
EVERYBODY wants a berserker gear! And who can blame them!?
In GW2 if you play your cards right, you can destroy whatever enemy is in front of you without getting hit once! Conditions are useless on bosses, Dungeons take eons to finish without some full DPS builds and As the result, the price of Bloods has skyrocketed.
IMO I don’t think this is how the game supposed to work.
But If we start nerfing the stat combinations them selfs, we might disappoint all those players who spend a fortune building them.
Efforts have been made by A-net in the recent Drytop maps to play a bit defensively, but in the long run, Drytop is just one map, and even there the glass cannon build is still viable.

What do I suggest:
Reduce the damage given from Power, while rising the default damage of your average lvl80 naked player by 20%. Do it in such a way, that a full zerker character will still do the same exact damage (if not a bit more), while all other non power builds receive a 20% boost in damage.

End result:
Almost everybody will receive a boost after this change!
Non Zerker builds will be contributing to DPS more, offering survivability to the party, while droping those dungeon bosses in a managable , while zerker builds will still do as much damage as they used to.

Bonus suggestion:
Do something similar to rise the value of Healing and Toughness while you’re at it!

Terrible suggestion, Berserker is fine how it is.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Terrible suggestion, Berserker is fine how it is.

If you had read it, you would have seen that in the end nothing changes about the zerker…

Kite.2510:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Terrible suggestion, Berserker is fine how it is.

If you had read it, you would have seen that in the end nothing changes about the zerker…

Not only did you break zerker stats, but you broke every stat combination with power on it.

I don’t get the hype about zerker gear. I got a ranger with full zerker and it’s my weakest character i got.

I don’t even use Zerkers..all they are is glass cannons..i use bunker/healing. so Zerker gear is useless to me..always remember (ogre slayer : Big and tough are only impressive if you’re alive to show it off.)

virus.4370:

I don’t even use Zerkers..all they are is glass cannons..i use bunker/healing. so Zerker gear is useless to me..always remember (ogre slayer : Big and tough are only impressive if you’re alive to show it off.)

Sounds like a L2P issue to me.

Does it never end?

“OMG this is too good, nerf it! Whatever you do, do NOT improve on the kitten that isn’t too good! That would be insane! Do not balance positively, only balance negatively! OMG!”

How about instead of nerfing what works, you enhance what does not? boggled

Kite.2510:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Terrible suggestion, Berserker is fine how it is.

If you had read it, you would have seen that in the end nothing changes about the zerker…

I don’t think you understand balance. If you make everything do 20% more damage, that’s like making Berserker do 20% less damage in comparison. Everything is relative.

GOSU.9574:

Does it never end?

“OMG this is too good, nerf it! Whatever you do, do NOT improve on the kitten that isn’t too good! That would be insane! Do not balance positively, only balance negatively! OMG!”

How about instead of nerfing what works, you enhance what does not? boggled

If you buff everything, things die faster and everything has to be rebalanced. Because pepole already complain the game is too easy.

Why should berserker gear gear be devalued? If people want to spec for great dps then they should be rewarded with…great dps.

Vayne.8563:

GOSU.9574:

Does it never end?

“OMG this is too good, nerf it! Whatever you do, do NOT improve on the kitten that isn’t too good! That would be insane! Do not balance positively, only balance negatively! OMG!”

How about instead of nerfing what works, you enhance what does not? boggled

If you buff everything, things die faster and everything has to be rebalanced. Because pepole already complain the game is too easy.

I don’t think this game is easy, I think the content is two years old:P

Drop a newbie into arah and even the good ones’ll die:)

Mea.8967:

Vayne.8563:

GOSU.9574:

Does it never end?

“OMG this is too good, nerf it! Whatever you do, do NOT improve on the kitten that isn’t too good! That would be insane! Do not balance positively, only balance negatively! OMG!”

How about instead of nerfing what works, you enhance what does not? boggled

If you buff everything, things die faster and everything has to be rebalanced. Because pepole already complain the game is too easy.

I don’t think this game is easy, I think the content is two years old:P

Drop a newbie into arah and even the good ones’ll die:)

That’s probably true. The thing is, new content get’s beaten and figured out so fast now that unless it’s mega hard, it’s chewed through because we know the game so well. I’m not really sure how that can be fixed, without adding artificial difficulty, which I don’t personally like.

No. Just no.

If anybody not berserker wants the same power output as a berserker then they should just change their build, and go berserker. If a berserker wants to have the same survivability and room for error as another build likewise they should just change to a different build.

All the talk of nerfing and buffing for the sake of balance is nice in theory but the reality is when applied if every build is reduced to being pretty much the same regardless of mechanics you may as well just remove builds from the game entirely, which ofcourse just ruins it for everybody who likes to make a build tailored to their own play style and the mechanics of their fave professions.

‘Zerker only’ is a combination of problems
- no defensive balance is required in PvE – full dps provides defense by killing enemies
- the condition cap prevents conditions from being useful in PvE
- this only leaves 3 required stats : power, precision, and ferocity – dire and zerker

The first solution should therefore be a change to the condition cap. This would bring variation in builds with players selecting from four dps stats. This would also bring variety of gear and play style for different classes.

You would still see ‘dps only’ groups but that is a much harder issue to solve. If experienced dungeon runners need vitality/toughness when they are using optimum tactics, optimum builds, and good dodges, what hope is there for beginners?

Vayne.8563:

If you buff everything, things die faster and everything has to be rebalanced. Because pepole already complain the game is too easy.

Mea.8967:

I don’t think this game is easy, I think the content is two years old:P

Drop a newbie into arah and even the good ones’ll die:)

Vayne.8563:

That’s probably true. The thing is, new content get’s beaten and figured out so fast now that unless it’s mega hard, it’s chewed through because we know the game so well. I’m not really sure how that can be fixed, without adding artificial difficulty, which I don’t personally like.

I think anet can make difficult content, and they are working on it now, I think they are trying to get their average player-base (hint, no one on the forums) up to speed in terms of mechanics and such (my tinfoil hat theory in regards to the focus on NPE this last patch.)

Difficult content should be achievable with such beautiful, active combat:)

Stooperdale.3560:

‘Zerker only’ is a combination of problems
- no defensive balance is required in PvE – full dps provides defense by killing enemies
- the condition cap prevents conditions from being useful in PvE
- this only leaves 3 required stats : power, precision, and ferocity – dire and zerker

The first solution should therefore be a change to the condition cap. This would bring variation in builds with players selecting from four dps stats. This would also bring variety of gear and play style for different classes.

You would still see ‘dps only’ groups but that is a much harder issue to solve. If experienced dungeon runners need vitality/toughness when they are using optimum tactics, optimum builds, and good dodges, what hope is there for beginners?

Wrong. The issue is that gear on items (for PvE) doesn’t empower playstyles, they are just a kind of difficulty slider. The solution is easy though : ANet just needs to delete all gear stats in PvE and replace everything with Celestial.

The problem is not that offensive stats are overvalued it’s that defensive stats are undervalued and for good reason. As you get better at the game you simply need less of it. The mistake that Anet made was not tying defensive stats to the active defensive system that they built ie dodging and movement.

To fix this issue vitality and defense stats could 1. increase the endurance pool 2. Increase endurance regeneration 3. increase combat movement speed or some combination of the three. Then make boons like vigor and swiftness less common.

Kite.2510:

Current problem:
EVERYBODY wants a berserker gear!

No, not everybody. Problem solved.

Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Greetings.

The problem is that it isn’t just Berserker gear that has power.

Clerics gear has power. And I don’t know about you, but when I ran on Clerics armor with a build that took advantage of the boost to healing power, my DPS was laughably low. And now your change will drop that by 20%. Healing Power and Toughness have NOTHING to do with DPS at all. At least the stats with Precision or Ferocity or Condition Damage have other DPS related stats that would get a boost.

And all your change would do is change what gear is highly wanted. The meta people will calculate out the max DPS and announce it to the world. The world will then ask for that gear type. You don’t solve the problem. You just anger everyone who spent ages gearing their characters in ascended or you changed nothing if the meta remains at berserker. But it will not make the DPS of every build the same. It just won’t. There is absolutely no way to do that.

First of all OP I think you should specify you are talking about PVE – because in other game modes you really don’t want to go zerker.

Reduce the damage given from Power, while rising the default damage of your average lvl80 naked player by 20%. Do it in such a way, that a full zerker character will still do the same exact damage (if not a bit more), while all other non power builds receive a 20% boost in damage.

This translates into : make the game even easier in all forms of PVE because now you can have the same clear times without needing to dodge as well or to improve as much in order to survive as full zerker.

It punishes skilled play ( active defense, dodges, reflects, positioning) and rewards lazy play because all you have to do now is tank up and you’ll clear just as fast with even less risk.

How is that good? This game is already easy in PVE. Why make it even easier?

Do something similar to rise the value of Healing and Toughness while you’re at it!

These are already strong as it is. People can fully do Arah without dodging once in heal and tanky gear and you want this gear to be stronger?

Also have you thought about how your change will influence other game modes such as PVP and WvW?

And no, Anet won’t do a split balance with this feature – they won’t split skills and I’m pretty sure they won’t go for this.

So thanks but no thanks – this suggestion is pretty bad.

stof.9341:

Stooperdale.3560:

‘Zerker only’ is a combination of problems
- no defensive balance is required in PvE – full dps provides defense by killing enemies
- the condition cap prevents conditions from being useful in PvE
- this only leaves 3 required stats : power, precision, and ferocity – dire and zerker

The first solution should therefore be a change to the condition cap. This would bring variation in builds with players selecting from four dps stats. This would also bring variety of gear and play style for different classes.

You would still see ‘dps only’ groups but that is a much harder issue to solve. If experienced dungeon runners need vitality/toughness when they are using optimum tactics, optimum builds, and good dodges, what hope is there for beginners?

Wrong. The issue is that gear on items (for PvE) doesn’t empower playstyles, they are just a kind of difficulty slider. The solution is easy though : ANet just needs to delete all gear stats in PvE and replace everything with Celestial.

I hope you are being sarcastic because if not then (insert profanity of your choice here ). By far one of the best selling points in this game is the range of customisation and the ability to experiment with builds is a fun little game in of itself. Whereas by contrast if PvP had all celestial only as an option we’d really get to see a player’s innate skillmanship trump the skill of the other player rather than letting the build do the killing for them. Feeling insulted yet? I do both pvp and pve and neither PvP nor PvE players will want their customisation taken away from them. If mandatory flat builds were implemented the game would be broken on a fundemental level and Anet would lose players and word of mouth sales as a result.

Kite.2510:

Current problem:

EVERYBODY wants a berserker gear! And who can blame them!?

Why is that a problem?

Kite.2510:

Conditions are useless on bosses,

Not true. Conditions do their thing. The problem is, conditions don’t stack past 25 mark, meaning you can only have 1 condition class per group or you are wasting damage. It also seems that condi damage actually does less damage than direct damage (because conditions fade too quickly, which means that you don’t even have such a big uptime advantage), which is a stupid thing and I’ll explain why below.

Kite.2510:

Dungeons take eons to finish without some full DPS builds and As the result, the price of Bloods has skyrocketed.

Come on, how many bloods do you need? I sold like 40 of them a few days ago. As for the full dps builds doing more damage than non full dps builds, what did you expect? If you are an expert in defense, you cannot pretend to dish out the same damage than an expert in offense.

Kite.2510:

IMO I don’t think this is how the game supposed to work.

Ok, it’s your opinion, but there has to be a reason behind it, or did it just occur to you while you were sleeping? What’s the problem with dps specced people actually doing dps?

I fail to see the reasoning behind your post.

I can tell you for sure, though, that conditions need a rework to make them as viable as direct damage (actually, conditions should dish out more damage in the long run, to compensate for the lack of burst damage…. otherwise, if you move from zerker to rampager, for example (both glass cannon types) you have less burst damage, and also lesss overall damage, it’s a no-win situation!. At least, conditions should last longer, to grant a superior uptime compared to direct damage, and at least in certain situations you could say that, ok, you don’t have burst but if you cannot keep hitting the target all the time, at least your conditions are still doing something for you.

Lady Celtaine.3760:

I hope you are being sarcastic because if not then (insert profanity of your choice here ). By far one of the best selling points in this game is the range of customisation and the ability to experiment with builds is a fun little game in of itself. Whereas by contrast if PvP had all celestial only as an option we’d really get to see a player’s innate skillmanship trump the skill of the other player rather than letting the build do the killing for them. Feeling insulted yet? I do both pvp and pve and neither PvP nor PvE players will want their customisation taken away from them. If mandatory flat builds were implemented the game would be broken on a fundemental level and Anet would lose players and word of mouth sales as a result.

Funny, I find that (outside of sPvP), this game is anti experimentation. I’m still crying for my very expensive runes I put into gear I bought with WvW tokens and forgot I couldn’t salvage those. And now I got a new gear set and no runes to put inside.

I’d estimate it can cost me between 40 and 100g to try a new stat set with new runes, depending on the price of those. This is far too much for my poor self :’(

Much closer to the game’s beginning, just after Ascended came out, I had a similar thought. That was to change the damage formula so that the Weapon Strength contribution increased and that of Power decreased. Balanced properly, Power builds would see similar results to what existed already, and every non-Power build would see an increase. The OP is suggesting something similar.

So why did I reject my idea after some thought? Because of PvP/WvW. Even if one did not play those game modes, all it took was reading forum threads to see that complaints about burst were more about thieves than anything else, and these complaints were mostly about stealth-related burst. Many more complaints were about bunkers being too strong. So, what happens if damage output from, say, a Clerics build got stronger? Further imbalance (at least perceived imbalance) in favor of bunkers.

Like it or not, game mechanics are used in all three game modes. Buffing non-Power build damage would cause issues in two of three game modes. It seems unlikely the 3 game modes will be separated any more than they already are. Ergo, any changes need to be looked at with regard to all three modes.

The problem isn’t in zerker gear but the whole pve mechanic.

First, mobs generally have low armor, high hp. So this favors direct damage over condi. See husks in wurm fight in contrast, they have super high armor but low hp. This is from one extreme to another. This aspect of the game really needs some balance.

Second, condi doesn’t gain advantage from vulnerability and damage modifier. 25 stacks of vuln are became useless. Either change vuln to something else than also help condi, or make another equivalent condition to boost condi damage.

3rd, defience, unshakable, control builds became absolute useless in front of it. Blind and aegis are suppose to do the same thing, but with unshakable, blind stands no chance. So for some class like necro which is condition centric, it’s in a huge disadvantage compare to say guardian which is boon centric. Unshakable really HAS to go.

4th, 90% of the bosses use OHKO spike damage, so healing build is useless if the teammates can dodge. This promote self dodging/blocking than rely on teammate’s heal. Imo, some fights should change so boss do sustain damage.

5th, there just isn’t one full damage condi gear in game. Rampager is hybrid at most.

I think I pretty much sum up the whole pve problem for you. If you still can’t understand the problem isn’t in zerker gear, I really can’t help anymore.

Here’s an idea: Do some wvw/pvp, if you like it you won’t really care about pve anymore but do it as a sport from time to time in full zerkers.

Nothing to see here, move along.
There have been plenty of nerfs recently and this change essentially changes nothing.
Also stop crying.

As Afya said, it’s not that Zerker is the problem. It’s just what happens to work best in the broken gameplay.

ANet set out to “abolish the trinity” and so there’s no tanking or healing. It’s an afterthought.

You’ll still go down in just a few hits from a boss, even if you have a full toughness/vitality build. The whole OHKO mechanic would have to change.

This renders tough/vit basically worthless from a gameplay perspective. You have to learn to dodge regardless.

What’s the difference in going down in 5-6 hits as opposed to 2-3?

There are far too many issues to list with conditions.

And heals are mostly self-centric. You only get one dedicated heal slot.

TL;DR:
I think toughness, vitality, and healing power need to be completely reworked to make them viable.
Toughness: Increases evasiveness/blocking chances (in addition to increasing armor).
Vitality: Increases dodge recharge (in addition to adding HP).
Healing Power: Tie it in with boon effectiveness and duration.
Condition Damage: Tie it with condition duration.

Just leave zerker gear like it is but………

-Bring back death penalty from GW1
-Take reviving off characters except Guardian and Necro
-Bring back foe Necromancer who can raise zombies of our dead………

Problem solved, balanced groups here we come.
No Nerf or Buff needed

stof.9341:

Lady Celtaine.3760:

I hope you are being sarcastic because if not then (insert profanity of your choice here ). By far one of the best selling points in this game is the range of customisation and the ability to experiment with builds is a fun little game in of itself. Whereas by contrast if PvP had all celestial only as an option we’d really get to see a player’s innate skillmanship trump the skill of the other player rather than letting the build do the killing for them. Feeling insulted yet? I do both pvp and pve and neither PvP nor PvE players will want their customisation taken away from them. If mandatory flat builds were implemented the game would be broken on a fundemental level and Anet would lose players and word of mouth sales as a result.

Funny, I find that (outside of sPvP), this game is anti experimentation. I’m still crying for my very expensive runes I put into gear I bought with WvW tokens and forgot I couldn’t salvage those. And now I got a new gear set and no runes to put inside.

I’d estimate it can cost me between 40 and 100g to try a new stat set with new runes, depending on the price of those. This is far too much for my poor self :’(

Aw.

Depends on if you want to run solo in pvE or in a group and if you group are they guild or pug and again the experience varies on what their attitudes are pertaining to builds as much as the builds themselves. Personally I find a mixed build guild party will work just as well as a full zerk pug the biggest factor not actually being so much mechanics but peoples attitudes to eachother and how they communicate and set out their own tactics.
Sadly most puggers are only out for themselves and focus only on what they are doing, all serk pugs have the same positives but also the same negatives (if it goes wrong example it’s party wipe) mixed build teams from a guild work by covering most eventualities and covering any builds short comings before they have even become a problem. But again this is as much to do with the level of communication as it is the build variation. And there is a point to this… when you can relax and just play what you like in an ideal set up you can see exactly how your build is working in relation to the others in the party around you. PvE is only anti experimentation when you come across and have to deal with, not the elite, but the ppl who THINK they are elite and have a bad attitude towards their fellow players not playing the “pro” builds. Which is kitten, personally I like my carrion theif just as much as my zerker theif, and oddly they both perfom equally well just in different ways.

(Skip to and read this bit only if you must TLDR.)
I’d estimate between 30 and 40g per build kit out for a lvl 80 at exotics minimum. I agree it depends on the runes though, some are crazy expensive and others are dirt cheap, not bad, just cheap because the build they are most suited for is not as popular as another.

Giving more damage to other builds won’t change anything. Berserker’s would still be the one who gives you the most damage output.
If you can play fine with it right now, you won’t suddenly feel the need to have more toughness or healing power.

Part 1:
Anet has not to devalue Berserker.
Anet has to improve the value of all other Stats and to rebalance the complete Stat System by adding more values to each Stat, so that each Stat in and for itself becomes more interesting to use over an other Stat.

Nobody uses Healing Power for example because as a Stat in itself alone its completely USELESS. ANets Stat System is completely not well thought out – you can clearly see this due to all Stats being so one dimensional about Stat Synergies that everything on the whole system is completely only dps orientated and that there exists absolute no defense synergies in the whole crap Stat System that we have now.

Thats the reason why the complete Stat System should get better redesigned on one of the next Feature Packs together with changing some other key elements that make the Stat System too grindy and overcomplicated.

Each Stat in this game should be meaningful and helpful for various if different kinds of builds of class roles.
Damage is in this game absolutely out of control
the game lets us deal to enemies and players way too much damage in a short time, especialyl when going onto Berserker.

The most simplest way to keep Damage in check without letting it go out of control are by using simple Max Stat Methods

Maximum Crit Chance should nexer exceed in GW2 a hard cap of per say for example of 50%.
Power should nexer exceed a hard cap of say for example 2500 Points.
If there would be a hard cap for Stats, then would players completely build their characters different, and all the other stats that get in this game no attention currently from players because of Power/Precision/Fecoricity > everything would become more important and play from that point on a bigger role too and have a greater impact on class builds.

Simple rule of character progression – once you have reached a stat limit, you will automatically focus your progression on somethign else that isn’t at the hard cap yet or put your points into other maybe more helpful general areas of your character progression, but not anymore into a maxed stat, because it would be a waste of stat points.

Part 2:

How do you reach this goal?
Its simple – very simple -GW2’s character progression needs to become free from gear slavery.
Once this game becomes free from its gear stat slavery, that stats from gear should be put into the automatic character progression from leveling up your character.
Each Level Up you should get a certain amount of Stat Point that you as a palyer should be able to freely put into any Stat of your Character that you want, until you max out that Stat.

Example:
Lets say every Stat of the game can reach a Max of 2500 points.
Max Level currently 80 and we would gain per Level like 100 Stat Points free to put whereever we want.
That would be then in this simple example 8000 Points with that a character would be theoretically able under the current Stat System with 9 attributes under these numbers to max out just 3 of the 9 attributes and to put into a 4th just 500 points.
—-

However, in my humble opinion this game has currently too many, and more importantly too many uninportant attributes which are alone in itself just total useless.
Anet needs to merge the attributes to make them in itself more important and meaningful!
GW2 should have attributes like this:

Power
Increases the maximum Damage you deal with all sources of your Attacks (No Condition Damage Split anymore, GW2 just needs only 1 Damage Attribute).
So more Power you have so longer are also the Durations of your dealt Conditions partially (No seperate Condition Duration Attribute anymore, just merged with power, because if my attacks are more powerful, its normal that my enemies will bleed from my attacks also stronger as when my attacks are soft like a feather and barely cause my enemies to bleed at all)

Precision
Increases the Damage Multiplayer of your Critical Strikes.
So more Precision you have so longer are also the Durations of your received Boons partially

Toughness
Decreases the maximum Damage you receive from all sources of Damage.
So more Toughness you have, so lower are the Durations of Conditions you suffer from.

Vitality
Increases the Maximum Health of your Character slightly more significantly than before. So more Vitality you have, so stronger do you heal yourself (better Healing Power, Healing Power in itself is no Stat anymore, just merged into Vitality!) and revive faster yourself from downed state due to significantly losing slower health per second and gaining more health back from recovers

Agility
Increases the Character’s Endurance Regen and how much Endurance a Dodge will cost you.
So more Agility you have so more will it affect also various Class Specific Mechanics, like that a Thief gains faster Initiative, a Warrior gains faster Adrenaline, a Guardian will recharge faster his Virtues, Elementalists recharge faster their Attunements and so on…

Courage
Decreases negative Effect durations from CC Skills against you, like knockdowns, stuns, fears and dazes.
So more Courage you have so lower is the critical damage multiplayer from the attacks of your enemies partially

Crit Chance itself shouldn’t be influenced anymore by Precision
Crit Chance should just get influenced only by the type of class you play, by the type of weapon you use, why the type of traits you use, by the type of utilities you use (yes, chosen utility skilsl should have a stronger influence on a characters attributes like critical hit chance, boon duration ect.)
by Crit Chance having nothing to do with Precision anymore, it won’t be such a huge synergy anymore with power, without devalueing Precision, because it got then basicalyl the better effect of the current Ferocity which with this change gets then basically merged with Precision.

This way the game would have 6 instead of 9 attributes, but each of them would be in itself more important, than the stats that GW2 has now currently due to each of the attributes having 2 and not just only 1 effect

Kurrilino.2706:

Just leave zerker gear like it is but………

-Bring back death penalty from GW1
-Take reviving off characters except Guardian and Necro
-Bring back foe Necromancer who can raise zombies of our dead………

Problem solved, balanced groups here we come.
No Nerf or Buff needed

And still all would run Zerker. Look at Afyas post. He/she pointed out the problems with most of the PvE content.

To be said, Anet is on the right direction with the new mobs and bosses in Dry Top. Just try to kill Three Toed Tootsie. Attack this bird mindlessly and you will fail. This is a boss where you need CC.

But the problem is. The rest of PvE can be completed without thinking and tactics. Some Stats need to be reworked, like the way boons are working. Anet must reward other ways than just Zerker to make them viable.

Minos.5168:

You’ll still go down in just a few hits from a boss, even if you have a full toughness/vitality build. The whole OHKO mechanic would have to change.

This renders tough/vit basically worthless from a gameplay perspective. You have to learn to dodge regardless.

That’s the whole point of a dynamic combat system.
You don’t just stand there trading blows with the boss until one of you falls over. The whole point is this :
Zerker gear? you can miss 1 dodge, maybe 2.
Knight’s gear? You can miss 2 dodges, maybe 3.
Soldier’s Gear? You can miss 3 dodges, maybe 4.

But eventually you’re going to have to dodge and learn how to do it – you can’t just gear up to deny a core mechanic of the game because you “want not do dodge” or " to be a tank".

If that’s what some people want -this is not the game for them.

What’s the difference in going down in 5-6 hits as opposed to 2-3?

The difference is you go down TWICE as hard. What did you expect? Imba tanking?

If you want that Anet even gave you an option – Nomad gear – no offensive stats. Use it.
Tanky gear is already incredibly strong in this game.

Advantages:

1) No Gear Slavery anymore, get the Gear that you want, because of its looks, not because of its Attributes and Stat Numbers
2) Free Character Progression, that allows you to build your Character more freely by putting your Stat Points into your Attributes how you like, which you receive from now on with every Character Level Up like in a classic RPG and more similar how GW1’s Attribute System worked
3) Lesser Attributes, 6 instead of 9 with more meaningful Attributes, which are all in itself meaningful and more especially USEFUL due to all having now 2 seperate effects and not just only 1
4) No direct Attribute Synergy anymore between Power and Precision. All Attributes are equal effective now without forcing you into a DPS build, only because its due to its synergies the most effective build.
5) No Damage Type splitting anymore between Direct and Condition Damage, equalizing the DPS efficiency of a pure Power Build with a Condition Build. GW1 also worked fine withpout splitting the damage between physical and condition damage and power affected just equally all skills through the attribute syystem, regardless if the skill dealt a condition or not.
6) Lesser Attributes than before, so Character Progression just becomes easier to understand for Veterans as like also new players naturally too
7) The term of Ferocity becomes again free for its original purpose of the Personality System, how it should be…
8) Some new useful effects find into the game to help in balancing the overall combat system of GW2 and the classes through the help of Agility and Courage which bring new character affecting mechanics into the Character Progression through endurance imporovements and CC/Crit Damage Defense improvements to better the defense gameplay of GW2’s combat system to make it lesser purely DPS centric.
Agility’s side effect also helps in improving individually each single class, thus beign a help in significantly improving each class specific mechanics if you want to focus your class build more onto these.
9) Vitality becomes more important through an increase in the amount of Max health it gives and through the merge of Healing Power, it becomes a much strogner and really useful support attribute that will help better then in surviving against hard hitting power builds and helping your group in ressurct faster downed/fallen allies or to rally yourself more efficiently.
10) Toughness becomes more useful, as it would help also then alot more significantly against strong condition spamming builds due to helping you with decreased overall damage from all sources and lower condition durations if your defense is significantly stronger than the power of your enemy.

@Orpheal.8263

Anet is not ignorant of the system you propose – it was the system they were thinking of going with back when the game was in alpha stages. It was later scrapped for the system we have today.

It wasn’t exactly how you proposed it but the basic outline is that you had attributes that influenced ranged damage, melee damage, critical chance and damage, vitality and armor and possibly endurance too ( can’t remember).

The system was possibly scrapped ( speculation on my part) because it might have been “too hard” for the casual masses ( seems to be in tone with the recent direction the game has taken) and it would have been too easy for bad players to make themselves completely unviable and quit the game because they can’t perform at all.

The idea you propose is now new – but sadly we’ll never see this kind of revamp. Not 2 years into the game. It would make everyone basically have to relearn the game from scratch and would lose too many players as a result -a loss their business model can’t take.

Blizzard didn’t worry about making drasting changes to their whole gearing and stats system in WoW. ANet can do it too.

The problem is not the gear but the game design. There is one class type in GW2: DPS. There is gear for other class types (tank, healing, hybrid of those). Additionally condition damage is not as powerful as power damage for bursting through dungeons. In WvW condi damage is nearly useless except for small scale combat. Therefore there is one set of gear that is actually useful while the others aren’t, and that is berserker.

Demand reduces supply and drives costs up. There you go. To devalue berserker ANET needs to re-value the trinity in GW2. Make certain specs attract more mobs to you, make healing actually possible and viable (eles, guardians) and you’ll see a drop in berserker gear value. Then again.. GW2’s main marketing point was the removal of the holy trinity (tank, heal, dps). It ended up being straight up damage and nothing else.

Sooooo….. Do the damage of a Berserker while getting the protection of PVT gear?!

A canon that never dies!

The problem is 2 fold:

1. Builds are tied into gear instead of traits. In most MMO’s your build is decided by what you trait for and you focus on your classes stats to improve that build. There are no class stats in GW2, just generic stats that do the same thing for everyone. Your build decides very little of who you are and what you do, while your gear decides pretty much everything. In this way gear is much more important in GW2 than in any other MMO on the market.

As a guardian I can take full defensive utilities, full defensive traits and still do 90% of the theoretical max dps for guardian just by using zerker gear. Likewise if I take full offensive utilities and offensive traits and clerics gear I do no dmg. This is the main reason that zerker is so important

2. No roles. By removing the trinity and not replacing it with anything the game became a free for all dps fest. There is no reason to do anything except dps. If you aren’t doing maximum dps then your group takes more damage because things are alive longer. If you aren’t doing maximum dps then you die since the enemies are alive longer. Once you know how to play the game defensive stats become useless since you will always do better to kill things faster.

In order to make zerker less popular you would need to rebuild the game from the ground up and fix those two issues.

Well I like the change in scaling but regarding dmg

To do PLAIN DMG (DPS) you need 3 stats:

- power for base dmg.
- precision for critical chance.
- critical dmg for added DPS dmg.
Well thats a bout it, you’re good to go…

If you want to go *Conditions All The Way (DOT) * you need 4 or 5 stats
- condition dmg (DOT dmg scaling)
- condition duration (DOT duration scaling)
- precision (DOT application (in a lot (not all) classes)
- toughness + (vitality) (well doing less DPS, and needing to wait for DOT to build up you need survivablity)
- NO OTHER CONDI USERS OVERWRITING YOUR CONDITIONS
(else you do not even tag bosses in dungeons and you just walking for show…)

If you wan to go Hybrid (DPS/DOT Mix) you need 5 or 6 stats
- power for base DPS dmg.
- precision for Critical Chance. & (DOT application (in a lot (not all) classes)
(- critical dmg for added DPS dmg.)
- condition dmg for DOT dmg
(- condition duration (DOT duration scaling))
- toughness (or vitality) (well doing less DPS, and needing to wait for DOT to build up you need survivablity)
- NO OTHER CONDI USERS OVERWRITING YOUR CONDITIONS
I run a rabid/rampager hybrid on necro and warrior they both put out good DPS+DOT (warrior: in the range of 1000 on sword, and 2500 bleeds and some fire dmg for the warrior but compared to the easy 3000 on DPS warrior….. it will lack when other players (read dps warriors) do bleeds, and when a guard is in party I do not do fire dmg, and a mesmer, thieves or necro’s can stack quite some torment… If this happens you are left with a tiny bit of dmg…) I do bring a lot of cripples and immobilizes… Unfortunately they do not kill enemies..

Orpheal.8263:

1) No Gear Slavery anymore, get the Gear that you want, because of its looks, not because of its Attributes and Stat Numbers

What gear slavery? This is not world of you know what.

Just transmute the look you want onto the stats you want, it’s not rocket science. You don’t even have to buy the transmutation charges you can map towns and get them for free.

It’s more complicated than the gear itself. For example, in some situations you’re fighting objects and conditions don’t work on objects. Furthermore, in areas such as open world farming, things die so fast that trying to utilize anything other than a full power build is a waste of your time.

I’m not sure if that’s the same for dungeons, but the point is, there are really only two types of damage that I can think of: Power and conditions.

Encouraging the use of both means addressing things like: DoTs overwriting each other, inanimate objects, and the speed at which mobs die. And even then, they have to tweak carefully – one is inevitably going to be stronger on the whole, no matter what.

Reducing the Power attribute would have insanely negative consequences…ironically, you would effect zerker armor the least because it would still be the highest damage set.

By nerfing power, you would instead increase the margin by which zerker deals more direct damage than the next set.

I believe that changing encounters (which has been done in fractals, dungeons, Living Story, and World Events) is preferable. I would also lobby for the improvement of other stats rather than the nerfing of one.

Kite.2510:

EVERYBODY wants a berserker gear! And who can blame them!?
In GW2 if you play your cards right, you can destroy whatever enemy is in front of you without getting hit once!

Doesn’t work as well in WvW or with bosses that do a lot of AoE damage that can’t be avoided. That’s why a lot of players in WvW play with Soldier’s (PVT) gear or other gear that boosts Vitality and/or Toughness and why I saw PVT gear recommended for the Tequatl event. That there are already parts of the game where Berzerker gear is not always ideal points to how one can devalue Berzerker gear in other parts of the game like dungeons.

Title says without nerfing…is infact a direct nerf to stats.

You know how you fix it without nerfing ?

You buff control, you remove the abominations known as unshakeable and defiant.

There, you’ve now fixed the core problem. Now CC is equally as important and Condi’s dont have insanely reduced effectiveness.

Harper.4173:

But eventually you’re going to have to dodge and learn how to do it – you can’t just gear up to deny a core mechanic of the game because you “want not do dodge” or " to be a tank".

In some cases, it’s not even a matter of dodging but simply not standing in the red circles until you die. Move.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. No roles. By removing the trinity and not replacing it with anything the game became a free for all dps fest. ……..

In order to make zerker less popular you would need to rebuild the game from the ground up and fix those two issues.

Or if you had that much issue with how the game is designed from the ground up you’d probably be better off looking elsewhere to get your MMO fix.

Roles aren’t needed, press 6 to heal
Know your utilities
Dodge
Win