Guild Wars 2

How is the crit change helping PvE balance and build diversity? With the same boss mechanics aka massive damage spikes that is avoid or die no matter what gear you are in. I do not see how this change helps with diversity. All it seems to me is doing is going to make the fight last a few seconds longer.

Still see no reason to make a damage reduction set for pve. With out a change in the way fights happen there is no reason not to go zerker still. Seems to be they need to look at how PvE content is done and needs a fund mental change in how they are fought.

Even with all the doom and gloom posts and threats of people quitting because they lost a misally 10% crit damage. Zerker gear is still going to be the go to gear set for PvE.

Asko.4120:

I’m happy that celestial crit.dmg might be getting nerfed. It makes no sense whatsoever that an ascended celestial GS gives 11% crit dmg. and ascended zerker gs that I got many copies of only gives 10% crit dmg lol

Yay. Somebody always needs to post this: I’m happy they nerf gear X because I’m wearing gear Y.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

IndigoSundown.5419:

The fault in that position is that the “X or gtfo” mentality will always exist. The X may change as adjustments are made to the game. There only needs to be a slight advantage for one choice, and that will become the meta.

Adjustments to mobs to introduce more opportunity cost for going glass cannon would make other stat choices more viable — providing those adjustments favor something other than damage. That could be accomplished without touching the stats on berserker gear. That said, I’ve never seen another online game where critical damage could exceed 2.5x base damage — the ones I’m familiar with hit a hard or at least a soft cap at 2×.

Yes, the mentality will always exist; however we need to start somewhere when it comes to fixing the issues. Reducing the gap between zerker and other armors is a starting point, and bringing it in line with other sets. It’s fine to be slightly better, thus making it the best option for straight up dps.

Then the next steps are as you suggest. Changing mob AI so straight up glass cannon is not the only ‘acceptable’ way to play, possibly even requiring some defense. Adjusting how defensive stats scale, bringing condition damage into line (and thus making it competitive with) straight dmg. So and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.

It’s my hope that the only change to berserker is a cap on crit damage. Crit damage max before Ascended was fine for the content of the game. The additions to crit damage from Ascended were egregious. Crit damage could be capped where exotic berserker plus traits took it. This might mean that only 1-2 pieces of Ascended berserker gear would become unwanted, rather than a whole set.

The other part of the issue is with mob abilities and AI. There seems to be broad agreement that the game is easy, the AI is rudimentary, and that combat can be boring as a result. Despite this, I have seen many people downed all over the place in PvE. The opportunity cost for wearing/playing berserker is slightly out of balance. However, adjustments to encounter difficulty are going to cause more problems for average and below-average players than for highly skilled ones — whatever their gear. Adjustments to difficulty should be done in small increments, rather than large ones. The same is also true of adjustments to glass cannon output.

Really? Everyone was complaining about how OP celestial gear was? Everyone crafted celestial gear instead of berserker ones? That’s news to me. In any case, I’m talking about a nerf to gear brought about by changes that is designed to address an unrelated issue. Nowhere in the talk did the developers talk about how this change will affect celestial gear nor whether or not it is even intended that celestial gear lose effective stat points because of this change.

if they get rid of zerk or ruin it, i will be kittened, it would make being an instagab thief completely worthless. it’s already dangerous enough to run a build like that, and even if you’re not going full glass, you still expect a certain level of damage for risking your life like that. on average, i don’t even use my zerk armor set unless i am messing around, but my weapons and trinkets are zerk on my thief, and my warrior is full zerk, my ele is nearly full zerk, my mesmer recently went half zerk, and my guardian still has some zerk trinkets i hadn’t replaced yet due to build balancing debating.

whatever they decide to do, it better be wise, because you have a lot of good tanky condi builds that deal steady damage to those who don’t have much removal in their build. the contrast to that is the power prec crit dmg, dealing fast and high direct damage, but if not careful, can be a double edged sword.

if they make zerker kitten , everyone will just start using knights, and then knights will be nerfed, then valkyrie, etc :p

so either way, smart decisions, think carefully Anet if this is truly something you’re considering.

I think Celestial should have all their stats raised, since Celestial already had its magic find stat removed before, and got no compensation for that either.

I think they meant 10% overall damage on full stacks and not just 10% for crit but I could be wrong. I can tell you right now, that I WILL not craft any ascended weapons or armor for this game with the constant nerf shadow hanging over my head.
Equipping a fully ascended(zerk or otherwise) character with rings, trinkets, weapons and armor is a massive gold and time sink. When you nerf or tinker with the inherent stats of the items that people GRIND for, they will be very very upset.

is this 10% damage or 10% crit damage? big difference but either way your getting nerfed, suck it up and deal with it. It will still be the EXACT same style of gameplay, you just wont be as powerful as before(and oh godforbid you might get rebalanced later), this happens all the time, this time its just on the gear instead of traits or your class skills.

And this is why I put off crafting Ascended armor even though I already have more then enough mats for a full set until the next patch. Anet always screwing people over. My heart bleeds for whomever gets screwed by the next update.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Welcome to GW2.
Knew it was broken from the start.
Still decided to invest in it regardless.
It gets fixed.
Everyone screams nerf.

I am not pointing at you specifically, but everyone here acts like this.

Old Example: Pure of Voice for Guardian was removing 2 shouts when it said 1 in description. Everyone equipped Pure of Voice build. When they fixed it, everyone screamed nerf!

Upcoming Example: Spirit of Nature for Ranger currently healing for 480 per second instead of 320 per 3 seconds. Spirit of Nature is getting moved to 320 per second. Still considered a nerf!

Admittedly the 2 examples I gave would cost you at most 3s50 to change build, and changing your whole Ascended gears because of this nerf will cost you about 1000 times more(literally), but we should all have known that they would not leave 11% Critical Damage on Celestial Ascended Greatsword(where Zerker only has 10%) just like that, it was too good to be true.

What are you on about?
This isn’t about a bug getting fixed. Or are you implying that these stats were a mistake? Like a dev typing in 11% instead of 10?

The point is: the only way to get celestial was to invest a lot of time in the game.
Some people went to commune on a kittening skill point every day for months just to be able to craft their gear. And now this gear is going to give absolutely no crit damage (ferocity) compared to the other stat combos.

Like OP said, this is a huge change that requires a stat selection option as with mf gear.

Grats! This sure is going to make me pick up Clerics, Soldiers and Magi! Good job ArenaNet, diversity has been promoted!

/endsarcasm.

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

But even as a whole, this is a fair change for regular dungeons, maybe players will have to take note of mechanics of bosses now, because as it was the “risk” by dropping the defensive stats was nowhere near the reward obtained from the offensive stats.

This little change could be enough alteration to burst damage of groups that, for example, they now need to acknowledge Kholer’s spin, and may have to find a source of vigor/extra dodge for Subject Alpha.

“10% reduction in damage for maxed out full DPS builds” Sounds like overall damage. Should have been higher but it’s a good first step. Cutting back on dodging is also a positive step. But still, the best fix would be to improve the enemy AI and change enemy damage in more but smaller packets.

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Welcome to GW2.
Knew it was broken from the start.
Still decided to invest in it regardless.
It gets fixed.
Everyone screams

That about sums it up.

I’m actually glad they’re looking at ferocity as a whole rather than just zerker. I love Celestial on my more support oriented toons, usually going zerker armor as a base (to only have to collect one transmog set per toon), and having multiple trinket sets with zerker, celestial, knights, dire, rampager’s… w/e I think I need. Although… now I might go through and make all my toons a new armor set for whatever stats seem like good alternatives. I’m ok with that.

An already terrible gear set can’t be “gged” or “nerfed” because it sucked in the first place.

Flissy.4093:

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Since when was min/maxing (read: cookie cutter max dps) a sign of diversity?

Berserker sets will still give the highest dps in GW2, so there’s no alternative armour set you can go to, so no one has to change your armour/weapon/trinket sets.

The change is your damage is going to be 10% lower then currently and that’s it. Nothing you can do to get around it in theory.

Just to put it into context:-

If a dungeon run takes you 10 minutes now in zerker, it will take 11 minutes after the balance patch and still be faster than any other armour set in the game, assuming you do not die in the run.

Ya, didn’t event think about this impact when they talked about it. It’s probably time to give celestial an over all buff to every stat, to make up for losing crit damage and magic find. That said, no, it doesn’t need a comparable crit damage stat to something that has that as a secondary stat, that wasn’t very good design to begin with.

Mackdose.6504:

Flissy.4093:

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Since when was min/maxing (read: cookie cutter max dps) a sign of diversity?

We will now only be using 1 gear type – Berserker – instead of 2, Berserker & Assassin. Any defensive stat sets are still not even going to get a glance, because they still are useless to someone worth their kitten.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Ashen.2907:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

If they can adjust these coefficients properly, zerker will still be plenty viable but not the out and out dps winner by such a stretch.

That is kind of the problem IMO. The glass cannon gear suite should be the out and out DPS winner by a stretch. Ideally the game itself should have more situations where the zerker tradeoff of survivability or versatility for extra damage is more meaningful. Right now there is little or no opportunity cost for going full berzerker.

No, not by a stretch. Yes, it should be better though not so much so that it turns into ‘the only choice.’ Not so much better that it seemingly renders all others obsolete by comparison. Thus the issue we have right now. It drives the ‘zerker or gtfo’ mentality, which should not exist.

That is not a problem with berzerker, it is a problem with encounter design (IMO of course).

There’s been no mention of encounters being buffed to murder zerker users. It’s still going to be the same offensive build banking on avoiding damage, it’s just going to take a little longer. You won’t get more damage out of other gear. Conditions will have the same issues/limitations they have now and still won’t be recommended most of the time in speed runs.

Although a gear swap wouldn’t be bad… I could fix some of the oddball choices I made in the past.

Amiron.1067:

I’m going to eat my words now. They are indeed nerfing zerker gear (by ~10% they said), and I’m very disappointed with the dev team. Here I was hoping they would actually make other builds more viable.

Instead, they make the strongest build 10% less strong, while doing absolutely nothing to other stats to make them more desirable in pve situations. Shame on me for having even the slightest amount of faith in ANet.

Yeah, instead they should’ve introduced a never ending stream of power creep by bringing every other stat allocation up, that would make the game much better.

/sarcasm

Its not zerk armour need to have stat change but celestial, ferocity on it will be nearly half less and atm celestial have more crit dmg than zerk. This change make it totally useless.

“The devs have indicated that anyone with crit dam % on there gear now (note, not just berserker but celestial as well and any type of gear armour, weapons, trinkets) will lose 10% of the damage.”

Really? So I played condition damage and get kicked in the balls for that. Then I work my character over to go for a more berzerker heavy build including Ascended trinkets and then I lose 10% of my damage for it (which wasn’t great to begin with).

Where was the CDI and discussion on this? kitten off ArenaNet

I think its just narrowing the gap damage wise between zerker and all other sets of gear.

But zerker remains number 1 choice if all you care about is highest in game damage.

Well good job destroying my celestial ascended armour, wasnt it easier to make boss more immune to crit dmg than this crap. Ty you pve scrubs.

Flissy.4093:

Mackdose.6504:

Flissy.4093:

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Since when was min/maxing (read: cookie cutter max dps) a sign of diversity?

We will now only be using 1 gear type – Berserker – instead of 2, Berserker & Assassin. Any defensive stat sets are still not even going to get a glance, because they still are useless to someone worth their kitten.

That doesn’t address what I said at all.

Oh no, 30k 100B crits will now only crit for 27k. The horror.

Sooo. When are they going to nerf the bunker sets for WvW next?

Since you know. They totally dominate WvW in effectiveness.

Flissy.4093:

Grats! This sure is going to make me pick up Clerics, Soldiers and Magi! Good job ArenaNet, diversity has been promoted!

/endsarcasm.

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

But even as a whole, this is a fair change for regular dungeons, maybe players will have to take note of mechanics of bosses now, because as it was the “risk” by dropping the defensive stats was nowhere near the reward obtained from the offensive stats.

This little change could be enough alteration to burst damage of groups that, for example, they now need to acknowledge Kholer’s spin, and may have to find a source of vigor/extra dodge for Subject Alpha.

You do realize you just neutered your whole point with that last paragraph, right?

till now i have not seen any berserker profession…….nor any reason to call a profession a berserker…….do you ppl even know what a berserker entales?

this game does not make sense…

LOL, zerk will still be the best for PvE, all anet achieved is make encounters last 3-5 seconds longer. That second Sigil on 2 handers will cover most of the damage nerf on crit damage.

I just hope they allow to change stats for my Cavalier trinkets for WvW if Knights ends up having more effective power after introducing Ferocity tweaks >.>

When you look at it, berserkers still serves the same purpose, highest damage stat spread overall.

For min-maxers though, Assassins will be worse in some cases when they were better prenerf.

The same is also true for Cavalier vs Knights.

Some people also choose celestial for some parts because of the higher crit damage/stat tradeoff they get for that slot.

Just give any stat combination with Ferocity a 1 time re-roll thing will solve all these issues(although berserkers doesn’t really need it).

Question, Zerkers.

If berzerker gear is still the best dps gear, what exactly would you swap to?

I would like to say that “ferocity” is a silly and confusing name for the stat.

Pls use something sensible (or stick with crit dmg lol).

How about critical severity?
Critical bonus?
Critical power?
Critical KABLAM factor?

When you run through the math on it Berserker took a nerf but every other crit chance set got hit harder.

Basically when you mixed and matched gear before you would freeload a lot of critical damage from ascended jewels and traits, which pushed up the relative value of other stats compared to piling on even more critical damage (at a worse rate of return).

With it all uniform and critical damage numbers lower in general, there’s less incentive to splash in other gear types, and the marginal value of the next piece of Berserker is higher – pre-patch, you might have run some other set of armor on shoulders/gloves/boots, for example, since you only got 17:1 on those sets, but after this patch Berserker shoulders/gloves/boots will be stronger.

Gear stat swaps would realistically be switching from stuff like Assassins into Berserker, not the other way around.

For my opinion, this change will only make other set be kicked in dungeon group more often, because speed run group cannot bear more damage loss after patch.

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

I would expect the numbers on celestial gear to be pushed up in response to this nerf, since as you said celestial gear has an overabundance of critical damage at the moment. I’d expect your weapon + armor to give more like 255-260 to all stats after this patch, not 230.

i dont think i get this ferocity bs… is it just a new name for “crit damage nerf” ? or is it a diferent stat??

They openly admitted that more changes are necessary, including other stats and AI. Normalizing critical damage is only one step.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

They could be doing both you know. I assume you understand how hard AI in an open environment is to code. This means long development, and a massive amount of testing.

If this nerf is true I would like to see boon duration included in celestial gear for compensation, as suggested in another thread.

Dev for Anet “we need to change crit damage but hey people we complain”
Another Dev “lets change the name so maybe they wont notice”
Fans of Gw2 reads the changes m nfadnf;k mzasajdgajs;gasjcljjageiwp[tiwepwauqpw;ajs

it’s effectively a 10% drop. the sky isn’t falling. the game will update, we will all log in and play and that will be that.

Ensign.2189:

I would expect the numbers on celestial gear to be pushed up in response to this nerf, since as you said celestial gear has an overabundance of critical damage at the moment. I’d expect your weapon + armor to give more like 255-260 to all stats after this patch, not 230.

This would be an acceptable compromise. However, this was not mentioned at all in the live stream, and I’d rather make sure that developers are aware of the issue instead of taking the whole thing on faith then end up with subpar equipment once changes go through.

Mackdose.6504:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

They could be doing both you know. I assume you understand how hard AI in an open environment is to code. This means long development, and a massive amount of testing.

Open environment… we are talking fractals and dungeons as well… that’s where there are speed runs.. not in open world. There is no reason not to fix 5 man group dungeons for a more diverse build/class make ups.

Morgash.3165:

Mackdose.6504:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

They could be doing both you know. I assume you understand how hard AI in an open environment is to code. This means long development, and a massive amount of testing.

Open environment… we are talking fractals and dungeons as well… that’s where there are speed runs.. not in open world. There is no reason not to fix 5 man group dungeons for a more diverse build/class make ups.

How would you fix it, then? I’m genuinely interested.

Also, Mob AI is kind of a global thing.

Mackdose.6504:

Morgash.3165:

Mackdose.6504:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

They could be doing both you know. I assume you understand how hard AI in an open environment is to code. This means long development, and a massive amount of testing.

Open environment… we are talking fractals and dungeons as well… that’s where there are speed runs.. not in open world. There is no reason not to fix 5 man group dungeons for a more diverse build/class make ups.

How would you fix it, then? I’m genuinely interested.

Also, Mob AI is kind of a global thing.

Do you think it would be possible for mob AI to be altered in dungeons ? I know that setting the game to hardmode altered mob AI in GW1. Do you think the varying AI based on instance settings could be managed here ?

10% drop may not seem like much, but the question that needs to be asked is, why exactly are they reducing a set’s effectiveness by 10% when it’s the hardest set to play in, in the game?

What they really should be reducing is the effectiveness of toughness and healing. When your attacking a tanky target, a full blown zerk build hits it for a measly 800 damage per crit hit. That same tanky target can dish out 1000 damage to you with their crits; how does that work exactly?

Isn’t a set that is supposed to be damage/crit based, it should do high damage while you suffer high damage; but a tanky person can deal more damage with their crits (due to your lack of armor), than you can dish out with a heavily weighted crit build against their toughness.

If they want to fix it, I possibly see them lowering the upper end of crit damage against less tanky builds, but at the same time, they need to increase the damage against tanky builds by at least 50%, because as of now, it isn’t balanced.

I can see that possibly doing 7-8K per hit might be a little harsh and should be reduced, but when your dealing only 800 damage to a player that has 20-25K hp, it really needs to be increased.