Guild Wars 2

1.) Take the cap off of how many conditions you can stack.

2.) Put a cap on crits or flat damage.

3) Make support actually mean….support.

Is there a zerker problem?

….or just nerf the warriors damage and give them more ability to adapt and not just rely on pure damage output to flatten something in fractions of a second….

There aren’t that many classes that can go full zerker without some serious glass cannon risk involved. Currently warriors are causing the biggest issue with this, as many players prefer them just because all they can do is damage because of their design (which I think was really poorly done). Maybe it’s just that I come from actual sword fighting a bit (kendo and fencing), but the warriors skills just don’t feel warrior-ish and just plain boring compared to other classes.

Every class should be just as viable at damage, support, whatever the hell else, as any of the other classes; they should just have slightly different approaches to them, different play styles. Raw damage is just a poor excuse for a play style.

EDIT:

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Is there a zerker problem?

It’s mostly with the CoF, but many players “prefer” zerker warriors almost exclusively in order to kill things ridiculously fast and speed run the dungeons. Other classes just can’t keep up (unless you are a gaurdian or mes, then you bring “preferred support” abilities to certain dungeons like fractals). It’s just rubbing some players the wrong way here and there.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Is there a zerker problem?

Its the only armor type that boosts the stats that have no cap on them so much, therefore its the most effective. I consider that a problem. Think about classes that work horribly with a power build and would do better with a condition build (Necro) or just think about the people who don’t want to be pigeonholed into a power build because everything else doesent even come close to the stats zerker gear brings.

As long as condition damage has a cap on it, that gear will be bad. Yes I do in fact consider it an issue that there is only one viable armor type in this game.

or give me a stone to change the spec of my gear and the class of my char and leave warriors alone so i become zerker warrior, more armor and more hp and damage than any PVT or dunno 1/2/3 combo out there

Make mob auto attacks hurt way more.

Make conditions by mobs much more debilitating.

Make bosses gain a big buff for defeating a player if he doesn’t get rezzed in time?

Make CC much more rewarding.

Make DPS pull aggro much much more.

Introduce a mechanic that messes with endurance. Weakness is way too tame. Make it deplete endurance on top of slowing regen.

Sollith.3502:

….or just nerf the warriors damage and give them more ability to adapt and not just rely on pure damage output to flatten something in fractions of a second….

There aren’t that many classes that can go full zerker without some serious glass cannon risk involved. Currently warriors are causing the biggest issue with this, as many players prefer them just because all they can do is damage because of their design (which I think was really poorly done). Maybe it’s just that I come from actual sword fighting a bit (kendo and fencing), but the warriors skills just don’t feel warrior-ish and just plain boring compared to other classes.

Every class should be just as viable at damage, support, whatever the hell else, as any of the other classes; they should just have slightly different approaches to them, different play styles. Raw damage is just a poor excuse for a play style.

EDIT:

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Is there a zerker problem?

It’s mostly with the CoF, but many players “prefer” zerker warriors almost exclusively in order to kill things ridiculously fast and speed run the dungeons. Other classes just can’t keep up (unless you are a gaurdian or mes, then you bring “preferred support” abilities to certain dungeons like fractals). It’s just rubbing some players the wrong way here and there.

Yeah, see that’s what I thought. The problem really isn’t with zerkers being OP – its that anything else pales in comparison.

They should let mobs have permanent Retaliation that scales with incoming (crit) damage. This makes Condition DPS more attractive or support builds a welcome for helping counter such unavoidable damage.

The only option is to nerf crit damage on items by a good amount.

molepunch.5673:

Make mob auto attacks hurt way more.

Make conditions by mobs much more debilitating.

Oh hell no, just watch the issues with the boosted krait.

Make bosses gain a big buff for defeating a player if he doesn’t get rezzed in time?

mobs in general already have a vendetta on anyone trying to help a guy back on his feet…

Make CC much more rewarding.

Oh so much this. 2 second stun/daze on a x20 cooldown?!

Make DPS pull aggro much much more.

again, this. Right now a scholar can pull aggro from across the room if he wears armor with high toughness while the rest wear zerker into melee.

Introduce a mechanic that messes with endurance. Weakness is way too tame. Make it deplete endurance on top of slowing regen.

Perhaps. Would also impact professions that has builds focused around dodge procs.

what the uking problem whit zerker? learn to play and leave the other use whatever they want. Jesus Christ why so many jelly?

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Is there a zerker problem?

This.
Is there a zerker problem at all? o.0

There will always be an optimal set up for everything.

Fix the “berzerker problem,” and the “cleric problem” will arise. Before, it was the Soldier’s problem.

Perhaps critical damage as a flat boost instead of a multiplier, so a GS would have:

179 power
119 precision
119 critical damage

And have the stat work as follows:
Final damage = ((Damage Coefficient * Power * Weapon damage) + (Damage Coefficient * Critical Damage)) * (trait multipliers, base crit damage %, etc)

So, taking some numbers from the wiki, let’s use the Elementalist skill “Fireball”. Fireball has a damage coefficient of 0.85 according to the wiki page, which means the formula for Fireball on a crit is:
Attack Damage = (0.85 * Power * Random value in weapon damage range/enemy armor) * (Misc Modifiers) * (1.5 + Crit Damage%)

Our new formula at 1000 crit damage would be:
Attack Damage = ((0.85 * Power * Rand. in weapon range/enemy armor) + (0.85 * 1000)) * (Misc) * 1.5
So 1000 crit damage adds a flat 850 * 1.5 = 1275 damage to the fireball skill

Perhaps rebalance the numbers as necessary and/or move crit damage to being the last thing calculated so it’s not affected by multipliers, but the idea is that crit damage is no longer a multiplier itself so it won’t break the game as much; instead it’s now bonus damage that effectively ignores enemy armor (which is something you’d expect a critical hit to do!)

Edit: For reference, if crit damage was changed to have the same stat total as precision on ’zerker gear, a full exotic+ascended set + 30 in crit damage trait line would be worth around 1.1k of it max, so adding an average of 550 (or 825 if allowed to be multiplied by base crit) damage to someone with a 50% crit rate on an attack with a coefficient of 1.0; this seems fair enough, as power as a secondary stat would add a similar, maybe slightly lower amount of damage without requiring anything else unlike crit damage requiring precision.

There’s not a zerker problem. There’s an anything but zerker problem, apparently. lol

Crit damage is OP in every game …. deal with it

Vayne.8563:

There’s not a zerker problem. There’s an anything but zerker problem, apparently. lol

Well said

kikittener.9578:

what the uking problem whit zerker? learn to play and leave the other use whatever they want. Jesus Christ why so many jelly?

“Learn to play” is probably the most stupid answer to this as there’s nothing you could learn that makes you bypass a cap. Except learn to hack their servers.

Vayne.8563:

There’s not a zerker problem. There’s an anything but zerker problem, apparently. lol

Zerker is the poster-boy for the problem.

The easy road might be to nerf power/crit gear but it not real issue. Healing power and condition damage scale horribly. Start by fixing these . Healing skills should be % of max health so that vitality scales better. Toughness needs to make me survive abilitys that 1 shot players with out it. Its just not effective enough atm.
To me the cry to nerf zerker gear is wrong. Its the only gear working right atm. It scales at any amount/level/spec. Bring up other stats efficacy to match, don’t bring power builds down.

If you want to talk condition damage vs. pure damage balance, there are a couple of solutions to this that are quite easy.

#1: Have a limitless condition cap only on champions and world bosses. That’s the place where people are hurt by the cap the most, so tackling the problem here directly would work.

#2: Increase the armor of half the enemies to higher levels. An important facet in direct vs. condition damage is that conditions go right through armor, while direct damage can be mitigated by it. Currently, however, highly armored enemies are a rarity in the game. Because of this, there is never a tactical point where anyone would want to go with conditions.

If you want to just have players not using zerkers… well that is quite a bit harder. Since the majority of defense in this game is active defense via dodging, blocking, and controlling, increasing the damage output from enemies won’t end well. It’ll just end up discriminating against less durable classes and less skilled players. If you give enemies more HP, then it just makes zerkers more valuable since they end the fight quicker than others. If you give them debilitating conditions, then players just complain about the conditions and also put a bit of condition removal in their build.

The way a trinity system is implemented is usually by having player DPS or survivability be exponentially more potent than the others. In a system where everything is so close, where players are fighting for a 30% increase in survivability through stats, a proper mandating of builds will never occur. The fact is that DPS will be king until one player can be 5 times more durable than another and the game is built around that fact.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Is there a zerker problem?

Its a symptom of a larger problem being roles like support and control are not needed. While we dont have the traditional roles, we still need roles . Its part of the reason why mesmers are so awesome is because they are great support, they offer something no one else brings and its a good one, partly because it funnels back into the “Just do more damage” . The next best example is guardians wall of reflection however beyond from those two its hard pressed to think of anything memorable .

The Main problem is pure damage can solve every problem, and that results in fights that are simplistic.

Ballads.2509:

The easy road might be to nerf power/crit gear but it not real issue. Healing power and condition damage scale horribly. Start by fixing these . Healing skills should be % of max health so that vitality scales better. Toughness needs to make me survive abilitys that 1 shot players with out it. Its just not effective enough atm.
To me the cry to nerf zerker gear is wrong. Its the only gear working right atm. It scales at any amount/level/spec. Bring up other stats efficacy to match, don’t bring power builds down.

Healing Power scales badly on most skills but tweaking it has some issues. The easiest way to tweak Healing Power is to increase the amount of Healing it actually gives, however that will lead to numerous problems in PVP – WvW, given the upcoming split it shouldn’t be a problem though, and making lots of skills scale better shouldn’t be out of the question. However making Healing affect a % of health isn’t needed, go Toughness/Healing gear if you want to play “0 to 100 in one click” spec.

Condition damage has been a problem since the game’s release and unfortunately they are doing nothing to solve this issue.

Toughness is a rather terrible stat and it’s quite easy to understand why, using the damage formula, Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor) it’s easy to see that you need 916 Power to double your damage output from the “base” since base Power is 916, so another 916 from traits/gear will double your dps.

Unfortunately Armor doesn’t scale well because it’s Toughness + Defense (from gear) so given the base 916 Toughness, you need 916+(your profession’s armor) to double your mitigation in any build. This means that an Elementalist with 920 Armor needs 1836 Toughness to achieve double mitigation, a Warrior would need 2127… The difference is clear.

Khyber.2693:

1.) Take the cap off of how many conditions you can stack.

2.) Put a cap on crits or flat damage.

I don’t like both suggestions. The cap is fine as it is, it would lead to a lot of problems if there wasn’t a cap, however the cap should be per character, not global.

Puting a cap on crits/damage is a very nice suggestion for certain bosses, giving them abilities that actually do that, for example the Effigy in CoF P1 could use something like that, with the cap going lower and lower the more crystals are up, so players would actually have to move around and destroy the crystals. However, making this global in the game would be bad, Zerker gear is the only gear that is working right, as someone else said, the others need tweaking instead.

What they could do is add more stats that affect condition damage builds and add more Condition Duration options. Currently, flat damage is affected by Power/Precision/Critical Damage, 3 stats that work together will obviously give far better results than having one stat do all the work, that’s why Berserker gear is so powerful, all the stats give a damage boost, while there is no gear that all 3 stats boost Condition Damage, there is not even any kind of gear with both Condition Damage and Condition Duration!

wow so many poorly thought out and off the wall ideas crammed into one thread.

First off Zerker’s in general are not a problem. The only class where a Zerker build vastly outshines other builds is Warrior because it is so absurdly OP’d in PvE that no one wants anything else. Other classes all have multiple viable builds.

Secondly the condition cap is never going away. The devs made poor decisions when they designed how conditions work and the caps are there as a consequence of their poor technical decisions, it doesn’t have anything to do with damage (or so they say at least)

Finally, the real problem is just CoF. You never see people spamming for zerker geared people in fotm 20+ because you would be totally worthless to the group.

I’ve never run into a zerker problem. In fact, we exclusively don’t allow zerker’s to be on our teams in my guild when we run, or are reluctant to it (obviously we don’t bar guildies out of content) because they cause so many problems. They die all the time. Speaking from a zerker warrior perspective, I can only efficiently run Zerker warrior in a boss no matter how much I dodge and position, when there are others on the team running support+ durable builds. This is because if a boss focuses you, usually you don’t have enough dodges or time to run compared to how much health they can take. The only time I can survive on a zerker is if I have teammates able to tank the bosses for an amount of time where I can run away and recover and come back to unload more burst on the boss.

Dare I say, the support problem is worse. My friends and I conducted a test you all should try too if you’re curious. We put at least 4 (sometimes 5) guardians with a substantial amount of support in their build, coupled with damaged (whether its boons, healing power, condi removal etc) and did a few dungeons. Normally bosses and mobs that were meant to be tactically thwarted through use of pulling aggros and tactical dodging we facetanked. Lord it was too funny and fun too see that we could facetank almost anything in the game and wail on the boss till they died. Which is usually much faster than all zerker setup cuz we didn’t need to dodge any of his attacks.

Zerker’s aren’t really a problem, CoF is a problem in itself because the path is so kitten easy. But that’s not Zerker’s. A full term of zerker players will go down fast….very fast. Most dungeons would eat you alive, warrior or not, at least that’s all I’ve seen in my experience.

maddoctor.2738:

What they could do is add more stats that affect condition damage builds and add more Condition Duration options. Currently, flat damage is affected by Power/Precision/Critical Damage, 3 stats that work together will obviously give far better results than having one stat do all the work, that’s why Berserker gear is so powerful, all the stats give a damage boost, while there is no gear that all 3 stats boost Condition Damage, there is not even any kind of gear with both Condition Damage and Condition Duration!

Nor is there any gear that give toughness, vitality and healing power.

1. remove hundred blades = No more warriors, or maybe a few which acually uses banners and support

well, seriously now..

The crit thing is a good idea. Maybe stop at 50% crit chance or something, and maybe nerf a little crit damage.. i dont know, but right now the zerker thing is horrible, atleast in dungeons.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

That actually made me facepalm hard. I wonder if Devon has a different attitude towards this as it’s just plain nonsense. The only unbalance is that there’s no such cap on direct damage.

If berserker is viable and the others weak then the others are the problem there is just not any roles for them when everyone is dps.

Iruwen.3164:

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

That actually made me facepalm hard. I wonder if Devon has a different attitude towards this as it’s just plain nonsense. The only unbalance is that there’s no such cap on direct damage.

The more interesting bit is the second part of the answer. There has to be a way to make conditions scale better for the resources available during larger events.

Best guess i got is that it is related to how each intensity stack are in fact 25 timers (never mind that there seems to be a global DOT application timer that triggers the actual pr second DOT damage calculation, as a 1.5 sec bleed can actually do damage twice if there is another condition already ticking). If this is the case, i wonder if they could convert intensity stacks into a system where each second the stack is reduced by 1 (or more).

Meaning that a 25 bleed stack would take 25 seconds to drop to zero, if it was allowed to run that long.

They could perhaps even turn all conditions, and boons, into this, and introduce additional effects that would manipulate stack sizes for various results. say rather than count the unique conditions on a necro, consume conditions would also take into account the size of the stacks. Maybe have utility skills that would spend stacks of boons or conditions to do single target or aoe damage.

That’s quite similar to what I proposed as a change to confusion:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Confusion-1/first#post1886024

cof speed runs are the problem, not zerker gear…

I know I sound like broken record but

1) perception is OP, due to various on crit effects it outshines other stats due to food/sigil/trait special effects that occur on crits but never on other occasions.
re-design perception scaling with cap perception crit rate to 30% (at ~1200 perception) so max achieved perception with fury boon will be 50%, CC condition crit is extra 50% duration modified by crit damage etc.

2) make condition damage and heals (including regen boon) crit from perception stat.

these two changes will introduce more depth to stat play and mixes between condition/crit and healing/ crit stats, also due to lower crit attractivity power/condition damage will be also viable, etc Zerker stats still be very good but other stats will be on the same level.

3) in PVE increase basic CC duration of cripple, chill, immobilize by scale of ~3. (for pvp current durations are fine)

A very egotistic thread, considering that many people prefer things the way they are now.

OP, you are in a minority that asks for a change.
Here are my solutions for you:
- Create your own zerk warrior and start farming.
- Play with buddies who share similar ideals in running dungeons.
- Don’t do dungeons.

I hope you realize that many people who never or will bother looking at these forums (posters here are below 1% of whole community) will be very very aggravated with the outcome of a “nerf” to zerkers.

About that bandwit cap…

One possible fix though could be to drastically lower the amount of stacks skills cause, and increase the damage per stack. That would keep the damage the same, but if each dedicated condition dealer can only get to say 10 stacks max by themselves, there’s be room for other players causing conditions as well.

For example, the earth scepter skill Stone Shards causes 3 stacks of bleeding. It could also cause just 1 stack that deals 3 times the damage. Same effect. 1/3 of the server load.

As said before, the problem isn’t with berserker’s gear, it’s that everything else pales in comparison. If condition damage was competitive, rampager’s gear would be what everyone complains about.

Build diversity would help if all the on-crit effects were just fair and random procs, but then min/maxing would bend towards weapons that had multiple hits, and 20% recharge reductions on weapons would be the new meta.

Remove condition cap and make condition damage subject to crit

They can’t increase the condition cap because it costs them too much bandwidth, which is really expensive. This was said by a dev.

Second, if nerfing zerker gear, aka nerfing warriors is kitten considering how this class is one of the weakest classes in WvW.

tl’dr this thread is basically non-warriors crying that warriors shouldn’t do that much damage even tho that’s what they’re built around.

I’m a Warrior who prefers Sword/Axe Rampager build, but isn’t all that effective because my bleeds aren’t as good as my Hundred Blade Zerker.

If they cannot remove Condition Cap, then they need to make Conditions be subject to Crit and Power to a greater degree so that the damage from them scales better.

Remove condition cap ? are you guys crazy….Honestly,do you Ever play pvp/wvwvw ? Removing condition cap is about the dumbest idea i heard just yet.

Caedmon.6798:

Remove condition cap ? are you guys crazy….Honestly,do you Ever play pvp/wvwvw ? Removing condition cap is about the dumbest idea i heard just yet.

Thank you for putting me in my place oh wise sage…I am now a better person then I was before I read your well thought out reasoned and intelligent post.

Ordika.9513:

Caedmon.6798:

Remove condition cap ? are you guys crazy….Honestly,do you Ever play pvp/wvwvw ? Removing condition cap is about the dumbest idea i heard just yet.

Thank you for putting me in my place oh wise sage…I am now a better person then I was before I read your well thought out reasoned and intelligent post.

No prob,that’s what i’m here for.It would create a hell of Aoe storm’s and people would drop like fly’s,wvwvw is alrdy based on balling and pushing or stacking and Putting Aoe’s infront,hardly seeing any melee’s these days.Removing the AOE cap because warriors in you guys opinion are to heavy on the dps/crit would be senseless.Aoe’s are strong enough as they are,you would know if you ever play Wvwvw and stop farming dungeons over and over.

Firegoth.6427:

A very egotistic thread, considering that many people prefer things the way they are now.

OP, you are in a minority that asks for a change.
Here are my solutions for you:
- Create your own zerk warrior and start farming.
- Play with buddies who share similar ideals in running dungeons.
- Don’t do dungeons.

I hope you realize that many people who never or will bother looking at these forums (posters here are below 1% of whole community) will be very very aggravated with the outcome of a “nerf” to zerkers.

This thread isnt about dungeons, it is about the fact that one type of armor completely outshines every other set. And that we who use condition damage are completely screwed.

Sure I hate the speedfarmers ruining the in game economy too, but that is not this threads purpose.

There is no zerker problem.

The only problem is that condition builds need to be buffed in PvE and the condition cap dealt with in some meaningful way.

This thread isnt even just about warriors. Its about one type of damage and gear completely outshining everything else.

Btw the argument that we’re whining and that we have no argument because warriors are ment for obscene damage… WHAT? Then what the kitten is every other class here for? Also what about condition damage? It should be equal to flat damage and crits. It just doesent make sense, too bad Anet, you dont get to kitten everyone just to save money.

Void.3254:

They can’t increase the condition cap because it costs them too much bandwidth, which is really expensive. This was said by a dev.

Second, if nerfing zerker gear, aka nerfing warriors is kitten considering how this class is one of the weakest classes in WvW.

tl’dr this thread is basically non-warriors crying that warriors shouldn’t do that much damage even tho that’s what they’re built around.

Then put on a damage/crit cap. Balance would be nice, condition damage isnt supposed to be so much worse than normal damage. Its just supposed to be a different method of delivery.

kikittener.9578:

what the uking problem whit zerker? learn to play and leave the other use whatever they want. Jesus Christ why so many jelly?

What did the English language do to you that you’d butcher it so heinously?

maybe OP should explain what he/she thinks is the problem before suggesting a fix to an imaginary problem perceived as a problem that doesn’t exist.

Firegoth.6427:

A very egotistic thread, considering that many people prefer things the way they are now.

OP, you are in a minority that asks for a change.
Here are my solutions for you:
- Create your own zerk warrior and start farming.
- Play with buddies who share similar ideals in running dungeons.
- Don’t do dungeons.

I hope you realize that many people who never or will bother looking at these forums (posters here are below 1% of whole community) will be very very aggravated with the outcome of a “nerf” to zerkers.

And you call his thread egotistical?

Caedmon.6798:

Ordika.9513:

Caedmon.6798:

Remove condition cap ? are you guys crazy….Honestly,do you Ever play pvp/wvwvw ? Removing condition cap is about the dumbest idea i heard just yet.

Thank you for putting me in my place oh wise sage…I am now a better person then I was before I read your well thought out reasoned and intelligent post.

No prob,that’s what i’m here for.It would create a hell of Aoe storm’s and people would drop like fly’s,wvwvw is alrdy based on balling and pushing or stacking and Putting Aoe’s infront,hardly seeing any melee’s these days.Removing the AOE cap because warriors in you guys opinion are to heavy on the dps/crit would be senseless.Aoe’s are strong enough as they are,you would know if you ever play Wvwvw and stop farming dungeons over and over.

>eyeroll<

I thought I left this type of person behind when I left WoW.