Guild Wars 2

Now that we have the numbers on the ferocity changes (15 ferocity = 1 critical damage) from the recent blog post I decided to do some math on the changes.

A typical berserker build with ascended equipment not using consumables or skills like banner of discipline will have around:

• Precision: 2,045 (78% critical chance with fury)
• Critical damage before ferocity: 113% + 50% base critical damage (163% total)
• With ferocity: 1,129 (75% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 125% total)

You will see a loss of 38% critical damage, which is a 13.04922074% damage loss.

A “maxed out berserker” build using multiple buffs will typically have around:

• Precision: 2,465 (98% critical chance with fury)
• Critical damage before ferocity: 138% + 50% base critical damage (188% total)
• With ferocity: 1370 (91% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 141% total)

You will see a loss of 47% critical damage, which is a 16.20461582% damage loss.

Surprised that their precious anti-zerk crowd got a response? I am not.
Nothing will change, it’s just a matter of them feeling more special and useful.

And? You still do the most physical direct damage possible.

Zoid.2568:

And? You still do the most physical direct damage possible.

The issue is with how berserker compares to other sets. Even if it was 5% better in damage when compared to soldiers it would still be used in PvE, but in a PvP environment, such as WvW, it would become far inferior.

Your numbers are somewhat wrong. Don’t know where it went wrong since you didn’t list your exact numbers and calculations. I’m losing 27% crit damage on my warrior and I’m 100% full zerk..

I have a guardian in knight gear coupled with the talent that converts a certain percentage of toughness into precision. Due to the low power stat on this gear I depend on critting often to have a good (not cutting edge but good) damage output. The damage loss in itself would be bearable since all damage gets nerfed, not just mine.

The huge crit chance loss however is unacceptable and makes this build become useless. Which is unfortunate as I have tried my best to not give into the berserker meta but still perform well. Not to mention the amount of gems wasted on transmutation crystals.

@Slowpoke – This is about crit damage, not chance…?

Bri.8354:

• With ferocity: 1,129 (75% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 125% total)

I’d like to know where that figure for ferocity comes from… not saying it’s wrong, but there’s nothing in what you’ve said here that indicates where it came from.

• With ferocity: 1370 (91% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 141% total)

Same with this one… it’s all well and good telling us to check the math, but if the figures we plug in aren’t right we’ll certainly not get the right output. (and I’d like to be sure the figures I use are correct)

So, to help with the math checking, where are these figures coming from? (and I’m not gonna go hunting madly through the forums to find where they might be mentioned in a single post in a thread that has a good chance of not even mentioning this subject…)

Here’s how I got to these results:

I took the stats from:

• Base character stats (916 precision, 50% critical damage)
• Full ascended equipment (745 precision, 71% critical damage)
• Ruby orbs (84 precision, 12% critical damage)
• Trait selection (300 precision and 30% critical damage)

Then added them up to get the base critical chance and damage someone would have in the current system.

Next I covered the critical damage to ferocity. Basically ferosity will take the minor stat in berserker equipment and will become 300 from traits, and follow the same numbers as precision would, with the exception of instead of having 916 from base stats you would have a base 50% critical damage stat.

This comes out to:

• 50% critical damage from the characters base stats.
• 745 ferocity from full ascended.
• 84 ferocity from ruby orbs.
• 300 ferocity from trait selection.

In the second test I included:

• Banner of discipline (170 precision and 15% critical damage/170 ferocity)
• Spotter (150 precision)
• Food (100 precision and 10% critical damage/70 ferocity)

From there I did with math with the following formulas:

• 15 ferocity is 1% critical damage.
• The formula for critical chance is ((precision – 822) / 21) rounded down
• The formula for finding how much critical damage increases your damage on average is (critical chance / 100) * (critical damage).
• Convert how much critical damage increases your damage on average into a decimal, take a base damage number like 1,000, and multiply it by this decimal. Now add this to your base damage number to find your final damage.

Then to check how much damage is lost from this change:
Final damage after ferocity = a
Final damage before ferocity = b
(b – a = c)
(b / 100 = f)
(c / f = damage decreased)

Let’s consider a mesmer in full berserker gear, with scholar runes, and a typical build with 30 points in dueling. We need to make some assumptions because I don’t see all the necessary information is in the blog post:

• The bonus to critical damage from scholar runes is changed to the same ferocity bonus we see in the eagle rune image.
• The current +30% critical damage from Dueling is changed to +300 ferocity.
• The base ferocity value is 0.

With no other buffs, currently this mesmer will have 1961 precision and +109% critical damage

Converting the critical damage bonuses to Ferocity, this leaves us with 1961-916 ferocity from gear and traits (current precision value minus base precision), plus 100 ferocity from the scholar runes for a total of 1145 ferocity, or +76% critical damage.

Result is a 21.8% reduction in critical hit damage. Multiplied by critical chance (53%), this is a 11.5% overall damage reduction with no sigils or buffs.

If we add sigil of accuracy, spotter, fury, banner of discipline, and curry butternut squash soup, and make some more assumptions:

• Banner of discipline gives +170 ferocity after update
• Curry butternut squash soup gives +70 ferocity after update

it gets worse. Currently, this mesmer has 2381 precision and +125% critical damage with a flat 25% bonus crit chance, for a total of 98% crit chance. After update, the mesmer has 1385 ferocity.

The result is +92% critical damage, which is a 18.9% reduction in critical hit damage. Multiplied by crit chance is a 18.5% overall damage reduction.

So either one or more of my stated assumptions are wrong or the 10% figure is pretty misleading.

Edit: Fixed damage reduction calculations I think.

Mattargul.9235:

@Slowpoke – This is about crit damage, not chance…?

As far as I know, critical chance will also be lowered. The last news I heard about this implied that at least. Is that no longer true?

(As a sidenote, what is the reasoning behind this change? All critical damage will be lowered so all characters are punished equally but it still leaves berserker as the optimal PvE build. Unless I’m missing something, it seems they just made killing things slower and thus more boring.)

draconx.3102:

snip

I think you made an error, not including the base 50% critical damage the character has that is not shown under stats. However I believe this would make your math match closely to my own, being around a 25% decrease in damage, still far different than that 10% figure they gave us.

Yes you are correct, I miscalculated the final total crit damage reduction. I will fix it.

It’s not quite as dire as the OP, but still way more than 10%. A change from +125% crit damage to +92% crit damage means your critical hits are doing ~80% of the damage they were doing before, or a ~20% reduction.

(base damage*1.42)/(base damage*1.75)

draconx.3102:

It’s not quite as dire as the OP, but still way more than 10%. A change from +125% crit damage to +92% crit damage means your critical hits are doing ~80% of the damage they were doing before, or a ~20% reduction.

(base damage*1.42)/(base damage*1.75)

Thanks, its nice to have some more examples. One question though, was the equipment you used in your test exotic or ascended? I didn’t see any mention of it.

Bri.8354:

Here’s how I got to these results:

I took the stats from:

• Base character stats (916 precision, 50% critical damage)
• Full ascended equipment (745 precision, 71% critical damage)
• Ruby orbs (84 precision, 12% critical damage)
• Trait selection (300 precision and 30% critical damage)

Then added them up to get the base critical chance and damage someone would have in the current system.

Next I covered the critical damage to ferocity. Basically ferosity will take the minor stat in berserker equipment and will become 300 from traits, and follow the same numbers as precision would, with the exception of instead of having 916 from base stats you would have a base 50% critical damage stat.

This is why I ask… Precision doesn’t add anything to the amount of crit damage you do… so unless you’ve got figures for Precision being changed, the crit chance is gonna stay the same. That means you don’t need the crit chance formula in there… all you need is a straight max crit damage comparison to show very simply what the difference is. (especially since the base crit damage stat is 50% right now, so where the heck are you getting that Perception crit damage bonus% from?)

I’m also a little confused as to what you mean by ferocity taking the minor stat on Berserkers… but that’s just a wording issue.

This comes out to:

*50% critical damage from the characters base stats.
*745 ferocity from full ascended.
*84 ferocity from ruby orbs.
*300 ferocity from trait selection.

No, I take that back… you’ve worked this out on the assumption that Ferocity is replacing Precision… It isn’t. It’s replacing Bonus Critical Damage %. This isn’t a wording issue, it’s a fundamental error in the starting figures.

For an example, the ruby orbs should have 84 Precision AND 180 Ferocity. Why so much Ferocity?

All armors and weapons that currently provide a critical damage bonus will be updated to provide an equivalent amount of ferocity.

That would be 12% x (15=1%) = 180.

So, it should be…

*Equipment = 1065 Ferocity
*Ruby Orbs = 180 Ferocity
*Traits = 300 Ferocity

Or, 1545 Ferocity without buffs and stuff. Or, 103% bonus crit damage on top of the 50% base crit damage… for 153% damage added to a normal hit if it’s a crit. Which is interesting because that is just 10% less than you get now…. and because the crit chance isn’t being changed, non-crit damage can be discounted for the comparison.

Your formulas are fine… you’re just plugging in figures that are wrong. (and using a formula you don’t need, which just fouls things up more)

this will destroy totally www and make warriors and guardians unkillable beast with the best dps while being tanks….

Tigera.2916:

This is why I ask… Precision doesn’t add anything to the amount of crit damage you do… so unless you’ve got figures for Precision being changed, the crit chance is gonna stay the same. That means you don’t need the crit chance formula in there… all you need is a straight max crit damage comparison to show very simply what the difference is. (especially since the base crit damage stat is 50% right now, so where the heck are you getting that Perception crit damage bonus% from?)

Precision doesn’t change critical damage, but it does increase your average damage (if you had 0% critical chance your critical damage wouldn’t do anything at all). This average damage was used in my formula and doesn’t skew the end result, which is the reason I included it.

Tigera.2916:

No, I take that back… you’ve worked this out on the assumption that Ferocity is replacing Precision… It isn’t. It’s replacing Bonus Critical Damage %. This isn’t a wording issue, it’s a fundamental error in the starting figures.

For an example, the ruby orbs should have 84 Precision AND 180 Ferocity. Why so much Ferocity?

I’m perfectly aware what ferocity is replacing; critical damage.

And if they are using a system where current equipment is given 15 ferocity for every 1% critical damage it used to have, what about the superior rune of the eagle in the blog? The amount of ferocity in comparison to precision should be much higher if they were converting it like you say.

Furthermore, why would they need to change celestial? Wouldn’t it get 15 ferocity for every point of critical damage it had currently? Apparently not, so they are buffing the stats of it by 6%.

These things point at ferocity becoming numerically equal to all other stat choices of the same tier (in the case of berserker, the minor stat). So for instance, a ruby orb would have 20 power, 14 precision, and 14 ferocity, not 20 power, 14 precision, and 30 ferocity.

Here’s the issue with the math your stats come from many different places. Since traits, gear, buffs, sigils are all changing you can not possibly do the math as you don’t have the numbers.

ok… I am relatively new to the zerker spec, as I have run other builds (for a number of reasons) and I am still learning the mechanics.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but Precision gives you more of a chance of a crit. This means that on every hit, you have a _% chance of making a “critical hit” correct?

Critical damage, on the other hand, is __% more damage you do as a percentage of your “regular damage.” right?

So, with the changes in ferocity/crit dmg, my chance of a crit isn’t changed, but the damage I will do when I crit will be decreased ____% depending on how my ferocity adds up?

As I said, I am still learning the zerker build and I just want to make sure my assumptions are correct before I start assembling the stuff for my baby zerker.

Thanks in advance, folks!

Ashabhi.1365:

ok… I am relatively new to the zerker spec, as I have run other builds (for a number of reasons) and I am still learning the mechanics.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but Precision gives you more of a chance of a crit. This means that on every hit, you have a _% chance of making a “critical hit” correct?

Critical damage, on the other hand, is __% more damage you do as a percentage of your “regular damage.” right?

So, with the changes in ferocity/crit dmg, my chance of a crit isn’t changed, but the damage I will do when I crit will be decreased ____% depending on how my ferocity adds up?

As I said, I am still learning the zerker build and I just want to make sure my assumptions are correct before I start assembling the stuff for my baby zerker.

Thanks in advance, folks!

They are both percentage base chances. Precision is how often you may do it while Critical Chance is the chance for a higher number. It’s actually not as stable as people think thats why even if you watch people who play zerkers on youtube they get excited when they see a big number. Ferocity is just going to make it a more stable chance damage but lower it.

fixed my error

justjon.3189:

They are both percentage base chances. Precision is how often you may do it while Critical Chance is the chance for a higher number. It’s actually not as stable as people think thats why even if you watch people who play zerkers on youtube they get excited when they see a big number. Ferocity is just going to make it a more stable chance but lower it.

How will ferocity make it more a stable chance?

haviz.1340:

justjon.3189:

They are both percentage base chances. Precision is how often you may do it while Critical Chance is the chance for a higher number. It’s actually not as stable as people think thats why even if you watch people who play zerkers on youtube they get excited when they see a big number. Ferocity is just going to make it a more stable chance but lower it.

How will ferocity make it more a stable chance?

Stable numbers… I worded it wrong. Fixed it while you were posting lol.

justjon.3189:

Stable numbers… I worded it wrong. Fixed it while you were posting lol.

For me numerical stability is completely different concept that you bring up here but if by stable numbers you mean that the lowest and highest possible damage numbers you can inflict while criting will be closer to each others then you’re correct but keep in mind that it will still be the same if you take proportions or percentages instead of absolute values.

haviz.1340:

justjon.3189:

Stable numbers… I worded it wrong. Fixed it while you were posting lol.

For me numerical stability is completely different concept that you bring up here but if by stable numbers you mean that the lowest and highest possible damage numbers you can inflict while criting will be closer to each others then you’re correct but keep in mind that it will still be the same if you take proportions or percentages instead of absolute values.

Correct but then when you add in the changes to sigils and such that do random %5 and such are being buffed to %50 this increases more of the numbers and buffs available at a given time evening out this “nerf” everyone is raging about. The issue is everyones just pulling 1 part out and yelling about balance of an entire game.

The real effect is everything will just take that bit longer to kill…boring…

This is really done because of the new china release. Anet did not like the way in NA/EU players blasted through there content in a few weeks to a couple of months. They brought the 50% quickness nerf in a year back to slow us down/reduce damage and after looking at things deceided that was not enough. So brought in crit dam % nerf before GW2 gets released in China…

justjon.3189:

Correct but then when you add in the changes to sigils and such that do random %5 and such are being buffed to %50 this increases more of the numbers and buffs available at a given time evening out this “nerf” everyone is raging about. The issue is everyones just pulling 1 part out and yelling about balance of an entire game.

You’re right but that randomness doesn’t come from critical damage or ferocity. It comes strictly from precision (to get a critical hit) and weapon damage (ex hammer 985-1,111). If weapon damage was just a number instead of a range, the only randomness would be if crit happens or not and crits would be completely determined (stable).

None of those factors are being changed.

deSade.9437:

Surprised that their precious anti-zerk crowd got a response? I am not.
Nothing will change, it’s just a matter of them feeling more special and useful.

Or, y’know, making the game more interesting and less “I could watch TV and play this at the same time”.

Slowpoke.2749:

Mattargul.9235:

@Slowpoke – This is about crit damage, not chance…?

As far as I know, critical chance will also be lowered. The last news I heard about this implied that at least. Is that no longer true?

(As a sidenote, what is the reasoning behind this change? All critical damage will be lowered so all characters are punished equally but it still leaves berserker as the optimal PvE build. Unless I’m missing something, it seems they just made killing things slower and thus more boring.)

Pretty much this^^

Not sure what the devs thinking is here. I don’t know why they feel this will suddenly make builds more varied. The meta will still be full zerk, but now stuff will die just a little slower. It seems like they are looking for a solution to a different problem than the one in which causes people to run full zerk in the first place, the games mechanics and enemy AI/design.

Zyphent.2967:

deSade.9437:

Surprised that their precious anti-zerk crowd got a response? I am not.
Nothing will change, it’s just a matter of them feeling more special and useful.

Or, y’know, making the game more interesting and less “I could watch TV and play this at the same time”.

I don’t know about you but when I play my casual healing shouts warriors I do watch TV.

If a dev/cc is reading this topic, here is a question.

Why go through all this number crunching trouble and what not. Why didn’t you just remove the base 50% crit damage every player has? Why is that even there? Some other games do this too but it baffles my mind. Why would you grant players in your game a chance to do 50% more damage without any stat investment? If you would have removed that you could have given ferocity the same stat conversion rate as precision. Then a berserker player’s crit chance and crit damage would be exactly the same assuming both having the same numbers then you could have removed the 4% base crit chance while you were at it too..

Crit in general are stupid stats in any game. Imo all games should have crit chance capped at 50% and crit damage capped at doing double damage.. back in ancient times (ancient gaming times) all ‘critical hits’ always did double damage in any game. Why did developers decide it was a good idea to mess with solid concepts?

My solution to crit in this game summed up:

Remove crit damage as a stat and let all crits always do double damage OR allow double damage to be the crit damage cap. so 200% in this game.
Cap crit chance at 50%
Increase base damage/weapon damage range/base power or whatever.
Balance it all out so its still a 10% damage nerf as you wanted.

Now other builds become more viable because crit chance is capped at a low 50 and in the case of my first suggestion for crit damage every player always does double dmg when critting. Players running with say 30% crit instead aren’t doing that less damage than zerk players. Right now difference between zerk and pvt is like waht, 40+%? makes no sense to me at all.. Players who still play zerk perfectly are still rewarded with slightly more damage and slightly faster kills and that is a good thing.. proper play should be rewarded.. but bad play right now is terribly punished because bad players run knights or pvt and do kitten damage.. absolutely kitten damage.. This makes a player like me either wanna do speedclears with only pro zerk people rather than with possibly nice but bad players.. make the consequences for DPS output the skill gap presents smaller while still rewarding better players for playing better and using zerk…

Seems like a good idea to me.. but hey who am I?

Bri.8354:

or that 10% figure arena-net gave us was a lie.

They have told such lies before:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Flamekissed-Armor-Skin/first#post3275229

Although the Flamekissed Armor uses the same mesh as the Tier 3 Human Cultural Armor, it was not our intention to create an armor skin that so closely matched the existing Tier 3 Human Cultural armor set. The intention was to use the mesh as a basis for creating an armor set that stands apart and is distinct in appearance. However, after reading your feedback, we agree that the Flamekissed armor is not visually distinct enough from Human Cultural Tier 3 armor.

We will make new art for the Flamekissed Armor Skin that achieves our goal of making a visually distinct and attractive armor set and does not closely resemble the Human Tier 3 Cultural armor.

That from Regina Buenaobra… and at least 1 point of those statements is a bold faced lie.

Just pointing out, they have a history on record of saying things that don’t pan out.
1) If anyone with functioning eyeballs had looked at the original flamekissed set, they could have stopped it from hitting the gem store
2) If their original plan was to use the human t3 mesh, why did they not try again?

One of those two statements is a lie, if not both. Flamekissed ain’t coming back, but they are on record caught in at least 1 lie right there. (A lie can be made of truth when you go back on what you said btw). Crit damage? Zerk is here to stay, and they are really only about to screw the damage up for other builds… and the entire Assassin’s set which they have not named at all anywhere in their posts i should mention. Another major change effecting really expensive gear and nothing specific enough out of them yet to help me believe.

Verificus.4320:

If a dev/cc is reading this topic, here is a question.

Why go through all this number crunching trouble and what not. Why didn’t you just remove the base 50% crit damage every player has? Why is that even there? Some other games do this too but it baffles my mind. Why would you grant players in your game a chance to do 50% more damage without any stat investment? If you would have removed that you could have given ferocity the same stat conversion rate as precision. Then a berserker player’s crit chance and crit damage would be exactly the same assuming both having the same numbers then you could have removed the 4% base crit chance while you were at it too..

Crit in general are stupid stats in any game. Imo all games should have crit chance capped at 50% and crit damage capped at doing double damage.. back in ancient times (ancient gaming times) all ‘critical hits’ always did double damage in any game. Why did developers decide it was a good idea to mess with solid concepts?

My solution to crit in this game summed up:

Remove crit damage as a stat and let all crits always do double damage OR allow double damage to be the crit damage cap. so 200% in this game.
Cap crit chance at 50%
Increase base damage/weapon damage range/base power or whatever.
Balance it all out so its still a 10% damage nerf as you wanted.

Now other builds become more viable because crit chance is capped at a low 50 and in the case of my first suggestion for crit damage every player always does double dmg when critting. Players running with say 30% crit instead aren’t doing that less damage than zerk players. Right now difference between zerk and pvt is like waht, 40+%? makes no sense to me at all.. Players who still play zerk perfectly are still rewarded with slightly more damage and slightly faster kills and that is a good thing.. proper play should be rewarded.. but bad play right now is terribly punished because bad players run knights or pvt and do kitten damage.. absolutely kitten damage.. This makes a player like me either wanna do speedclears with only pro zerk people rather than with possibly nice but bad players.. make the consequences for DPS output the skill gap presents smaller while still rewarding better players for playing better and using zerk…

Seems like a good idea to me.. but hey who am I?

Actually this might be a more solid answer to zerk vs other than if they tried to alter toughness to be effective against some of the things that either hit real kitten their own (boss 1 shots, arah trash moves like that chaos storm…), or are used in spikes (dogs in TA) etc… Either way, they are going to find themselves revisiting old content to dumb it down that much farther, but they chose crit damage specifically which is hilarious and frightening at the same time because zerker’s use crit, and they are only on record afaik to change “zerkers” but that build gets its stuff from how crit interacts with power, the other related set Assassins is about to get demolished by this, because it’s all about crit, causing crit, and procing that crit multiplier all the time along with any sigil goodies you could add to it…this they didn’t mention at all, and it’s about to take a much harder nerf lol. That’s scary to someone who’s already lost real money to forum whining, and is looking at losing a 30 laurel and 500 gold investment (via assassin’s ascended armor set) because they answered only to the forums and didn’t actually consider people like me…again

Also, there seems to be incoherence with their maths.
If you look at lyssa runes and ferocity conversion, you see that 8% crit damage (old) becomes 6.666666666(…)% (new).
So, when you look at trait lines, it used to give you 30% (old), so basically, it should give you (30*6.666666666) /8 = 25%
But they said it would be around 20%, that’s a cut of 33% in here …

Also they had said it would be about 10% loss for maxed out, optimised characters, which would mean characters in full zerker armor, with optimised traits under buffs, affecting some professions more than others.
What seems to be the case actually is that the weakest professions will take a -10% DPS while others will suffer from 15-20% ….
I know there’s the wait and see but honestly, the loss will definitely be over the announced 10%, that’s for sure …
For the 10%, they should have made it so that you need about 12-13 ferocity to get 1% crit damage, not the 15 points …

Who cares if it’s 10% or 20% or 30%. As long as berserker is getting nerfed so other builds are more wanted. Like support, CC builds and tankish builds.

one thing has always made me question this whole idea. They claim its to make Critical Damage easier to under stand but what was so hard about a solid number? 10% means 10%. 25% means 25%. how is turning it into every 15 ferocity equals 1% making it easier. all that is gonna do is add decimals.

If they wanted to nerf critical damage then just do rather then create this annoying system.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

one thing has always made me question this whole idea. They claim its to make Critical Damage easier to under stand but what was so hard about a solid number? 10% means 10%. 25% means 25%. how is turning it into every 15 ferocity equals 1% making it easier. all that is gonna do is add decimals.

If they wanted to nerf critical damage then just do rather then create this annoying system.

Because Ferocity down scales better in low level zones. Crit Dmg didn’t.

Zoid.2568:

Chaotic Storm.2815:

one thing has always made me question this whole idea. They claim its to make Critical Damage easier to under stand but what was so hard about a solid number? 10% means 10%. 25% means 25%. how is turning it into every 15 ferocity equals 1% making it easier. all that is gonna do is add decimals.

If they wanted to nerf critical damage then just do rather then create this annoying system.

Because Ferocity down scales better in low level zones. Crit Dmg didn’t.

oh I understand that. Its just the way they state it. Its a far cry from making it easier to understand.

Zoid.2568:

Who cares if it’s 10% or 20% or 30%. As long as berserker is getting nerfed so other builds are more wanted. Like support, CC builds and tankish builds.

Which gear would you recommend for cc builds or support builds that don’t heal?

Chaotic Storm.2815:

one thing has always made me question this whole idea. They claim its to make Critical Damage easier to under stand but what was so hard about a solid number? 10% means 10%. 25% means 25%. how is turning it into every 15 ferocity equals 1% making it easier. all that is gonna do is add decimals.

If they wanted to nerf critical damage then just do rather then create this annoying system.

Totally true but you don’t understand. It’s a nerf to zerk. Now they will see that it’s absolutely useless because people will still ask for zerkers even more (checking gear more often) because of DPS loss.
So, this system allows them to, after seeing that, nerf zerk even more.
“Hummm so people still want zerkers ? Ok change it to 17 ferocity needed for 1%crit damage those kitteners !”
“Humm stil zerkers ? Put it to 20 ferocity needed for 1% crit damage, that’ll teach them !”
Rince and repeat until zerker is totally destroyed and becomes utterly useless.

Many people is overlooking the part where devs talk about scaling issues on critical damage.

From a PvE point of view, the nerf is going to hit mainly Fractals, Arah and to a minor extent CoE and HotW.
Some of this places are “hard” enough for both a good part of the playerbase requesting the change to avoid them and those who regularly play on them with berserker setups to be more strict when forming a group.

CoF will remain pretty much the same, with CoF1 being so extremely easy that there’s no really point in anything but berserker.

For dungeons like SE, TA, CM or AC, the ferocity change is likely to be a boost for berserker gear and make it more valuable.

Nothing is really going to change in the PvE side and, in the meanwhile, some playstiles are going to get hit hard in WvW, where berserker is not the best option neithr for zerging nor roaming.

Can someone provide the link to the precision changes? As far as I know precision and critical chance were to remain untouched with only critical damage being changed.

haviz.1340:

Zoid.2568:

Who cares if it’s 10% or 20% or 30%. As long as berserker is getting nerfed so other builds are more wanted. Like support, CC builds and tankish builds.

Which gear would you recommend for cc builds or support builds that don’t heal?

Toughness/Condi duration/Vit

Not sure if that exists tho.

ANet encouraging passive game play. why shall I use bers instead of soldier, if there is no big difference in dps, but ptv provides much more survivability, more mistakes, less skill involved.

yeah. condi bunker meta with auto atk spam. i am dissapointed, not because now i need more time to finish dungeon or fotm, but because no more reward for being squishy.now you ll be punished for using bers, well you are was punished using bers, but was rewarded.

and now, no reward , only punishing. i have so much hate on braindead clerics/ptv users with their broken hands growing from kitten . Why are you punishing me ANet, your words “play how you want”, and I want to play bers and be rewarded for being squishy

and definitely its more than 10% dmg loss, huge nerf to elem, thief, mesmer and other crit based classes with duo dps trait (like precision/crit damage in 1 trait line)

GIVE US REWARD for using bers. now you are acting the same with Glory removing. you just remove glory and dont give any reward.

Bri.8354:

Tigera.2916:

This is why I ask… Precision doesn’t add anything to the amount of crit damage you do… so unless you’ve got figures for Precision being changed, the crit chance is gonna stay the same. That means you don’t need the crit chance formula in there… all you need is a straight max crit damage comparison to show very simply what the difference is. (especially since the base crit damage stat is 50% right now, so where the heck are you getting that Perception crit damage bonus% from?)

Precision doesn’t change critical damage, but it does increase your average damage (if you had 0% critical chance your critical damage wouldn’t do anything at all). This average damage was used in my formula and doesn’t skew the end result, which is the reason I included it.

So, you included a formula to show how a stat won’t be affected by the changes (Precision and the % Crit hit chance) and how non-Crit hits won’t change… which just makes the whole thing more complicated.

Never make things more complicated than they need to be, it’ll just make it easy to miss a mistake AND easier to slip in an intentional fudge. (I’m still assuming you’ve done this by accident… but unless you failed to spot the sliding scale effect and the use of a level 60 item to determine the ratio for level 80 equipment, I’m having trouble seeing how)

Tigera.2916:

Tigera.2916:

No, I take that back… you’ve worked this out on the assumption that Ferocity is replacing Precision… It isn’t. It’s replacing Bonus Critical Damage %. This isn’t a wording issue, it’s a fundamental error in the starting figures.

For an example, the ruby orbs should have 84 Precision AND 180 Ferocity. Why so much Ferocity?

I’m perfectly aware what ferocity is replacing; critical damage.

And if they are using a system where current equipment is given 15 ferocity for every 1% critical damage it used to have, what about the superior rune of the eagle in the blog? The amount of ferocity in comparison to precision should be much higher if they were converting it like you say.

Oh good… you’re running on the assumption that it is a straight across the board change… that a level 60 item will be changed in the exact same way level 80 items will.

It’s not like Anet said that runes, sigils, traits and that will be balanced SEPARATELY from equipment… no, they never said that so you must be right in your assumptions.

The way Ferocity works is scaling… that 15=1% isn’t valid for all levels, it’s only valid for level 80. Using anything that isn’t level 80 to show what level 80 figures will be is going to be lowballing the result. By design the maths will be wrong.

Should I continue?

Furthermore, why would they need to change celestial? Wouldn’t it get 15 ferocity for every point of critical damage it had currently? Apparently not, so they are buffing the stats of it by 6%.

Celestial doesn’t have major stats, so any stat changes will hit it harder than any other type… AS IT SAYS IN THE POST!

These things point at ferocity becoming numerically equal to all other stat choices of the same tier (in the case of berserker, the minor stat). So for instance, a ruby orb would have 20 power, 14 precision, and 14 ferocity, not 20 power, 14 precision, and 30 ferocity.

And one last repeat of the “Ferocity is going to be equal to Precision because a single level 60 item that isn’t indicative of anything except the figures for level 60 items shows that level 80 items will be a direct comparison instead of using a sliding scale”…

Go back, find a level 80 item to use as a basis for your assumptions, THEN come back and do the math. Until then you are guaranteed to put in figures that are lower than they will be, ensuring you get a lower result for the damage a level 80 will do.

Go on… get to it.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Toughness/Condi duration/Vit

Not sure if that exists tho.

I can create cc builds and support builds that don’t heal without an armour and trinkets, just weapons!

Zoid.2568:

Who cares if it’s 10% or 20% or 30%. As long as berserker is getting nerfed so other builds are more wanted. Like support, CC builds and tankish builds.

WOW SO BRILLIANT! /sarcasm

CC builds: Defiance
Tank builds: Dodge , Heal , Block, Cleanse

Also there are enough mobs to oneshot you, especially in higher lvl fractals, so good luck tanking them. CC builds could be worth something if it wasn’t for defiance which makes them utterly useless.

Back2topic: I did the math too and came to the same conclusion as OP. In a fully buffed party you will have close to 100% crit chance, which makes this ~ 25% dmg nerf instead of the promised 10%.

You know, I could’ve sworn that Anet said that making ferocity also opened up the option of having crit damage be a primary stat… implying that ferocity will be a secondary stat on all gear currently.

It makes the most sense from a simplicity standpoint. The 15 = 1% conversion is arbitrary, as Anet could’ve easily made it 14 = 1%, or 12 = 1%, or 20 = 1%. So, we are left with two things anet could’ve done:

#1: Anet could have chosen the 15 = 1% because of wizards or something, and went about adjusting the ferocity stat for all stat combos individually to have only a net loss of 10% overall.

#2: Anet could have stuck with the secondary stat value that was predetermined from the whole primary/secondary stats dynamic they already have set in place, and just chose 15 =1% because it is closer to their ideal distribution.

The second seems more likely. After all, this is what they’ve done with precision (21 = 1%), condition damage (each condi has its own scale), and healing power (each heal skill has arbitrary scaling).

Anyway, as much as I appreciate the math, I think the OP has messed up somewhere: Anet balances on exotics, and not ascended. So, I’ll do the exotic computation myself:

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or kitten crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

So, why does everyone get much bigger numbers? This is ultimately about standards, really. When Anet sought to balance zerker gear (which I argue was fine in the first place), they did so to the letter. They looked only at the gear, and nothing else. No boons, no traits, no sigils, no team composition, and no consumables.

The community, however, looks at more things. Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Banner of Discipline receive heavy nerfs, getting their crit rates cut from 10%/15% to 4.6%11.3% respectively. Likewise, the more precision bonuses one gets (fury, spotter, sigils, other banners), the more severe these changes to crit damage become.

Whether focusing on just the build was the right move is debatable. I can see both sides of the argument, but since I opposed the zerker change in the first place, this is like seeing both sides of which foot gets stomped on.

For assassin gear, you’ll get

Power: 1998
Precision: 2339 (71% crit chance)
Ferocity: 72% crit damage

= 3729 effective power

against 4211 effective power form before, resulting in a 0.885, or a 11.4% reduction in effectiveness.

Zoid.2568:

Who cares if it’s 10% or 20% or 30%. As long as berserker is getting nerfed so other builds are more wanted. Like support, CC builds and tankish builds.

Except it hasn’t. The nerf literally only means that fights will take 10-20 secs longer than they already are, which misses the issue. If the AI actually was a threat (looking at Lupicus), then not everyone would run Berserkers. The AI hasn’t changed, conditions are still the same, and crit builds are 20%, but still outshine everything else.

If ANet were truly worried about de-scaling, then they would have made it 10-12 points for 1% Crit damage.

As it is, Berserkers is still the only way to go. Since there is no additional source of damage from another slot outside what we have, and a simple hit in damage, ANet have done nothing but slow everything down. They haven’t fixed nor solved any issues.

They’ve nerfed most builds people play, regardless if it’s berserker’s or not. At times I feel like we have good people working at Arenet, and sometimes I feel like some of them don’t even play this game at all.