Guild Wars 2

I am concerned about what they mentioned on runes. I thought it was good for build diversity when one person would mix/match runes to get +45% boon duration, while another would get +15% duration, some more stats, and some other neat ability.

Mostly, though, I just hope my Traveler’s set doesn’t lose the 25% speed buff. -_-

Fingers crossed!

As for the ferocity stats, they needed to be normalized into units comparable to other stats. People talk about devs fine tuning with a sledge hammer… increments of 1% are too big to fine tune. The stat needed to be put into units that could be fine tuned before anything else.

lazarus.1639:

I think they will nerf the berserker meta, but it will still be better than condis, support, (…), at least in PvE to the eyes of the majority of players.
So the thing is, the meta will be worse, and the other builds will still be less viable than going full berserker (in PvE)…
Wouldn’t it be better if they made condis/support/… more viable?

Also, i feel really kitten sorry for all the people who crafted all those zerker ascendeds. Best luck if you want to keep playing…

There will always be something that is .0001% better than the other options, and anyone who min/maxes will never consider any other option. The rest of us won’t care.

Vayne.8563:

So, instead of debuffing one profession they should raise all the stats to that, and make all the content in the entire game trivial and meaningless to everyone?

If something is out of whack by being two powerful, it’s not only less work to debuff that one thing, but think about it.

If you increase everything you also have to increase the power of all the enemies. Do you know how much work that would be?

One year after this game launched 95% of the content IS trivial and meaningless.

Think about it – just a few areas actually pose a challenge – High level fractals and some other places. The rest of the map? Trivial, boring, easy.

Because the players got better. It doesn’t have that much to do with gear as it does with people adapting and adjusting to the game more and more.
The real answer here would have been NEW content – instead of temporary LS clutter and more importantly the introduction of ELITE areas.

Thing FOW and UW from GW1. Sure fractals can work but not really – and by the time you get into FOTM 40+ you’ve already figured out the best strategies and seen all that fractals has to offer.

Perhaps a hard-mode variant of dungeons would be good – double the gold reward, double the tokens, increased drop rates for those players that REALLY want to play hard content.

Also to those who are considering that the game could be reworked – that will never happen. Each encounter and such will never be reworked – the only solution is that NEW content added is much more interesting and challenging and equally rewarding.

Edit : I see some people have focused on the idea that the majority want challenging content.
That is wrong – the majority of players want LOOT. Gold. Shiny things.
Challenging content is FUN but if it is not profitable or rewarding to run it players will do it once or twice for the challenge and then never do it again.

Why do you think people run AC 1/3 + CoF 1+2, SOS1 and HOTW1? Because of easy money.

Why don’t people do their own Arah paths? And just buy the dungeon from those going " Selling arah path x 5 g " – because they want the reward ( aka achievement) without doing the challenging content.

Why do you think the new Aetherblade path in TA is not being done by anyone?
Why do people never play SE P2?

Yeah, Celestial’s crit damage is going to be drastically reduced. However, I recommend a wait and see approach. IF they fix condition damage, it may still be worth it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before

They will be less likely to take non-zerkers because the nerf means they need more damage.

It looks like the purpose of the nerf is to make zerker groups deal with boss mechanics more than before by making fights longer.

This is what concerns me… the change may well have the opposite effect of what they say they are trying to do.

ArenaNet, why you hate celestial stats so much? WHY?

please don’t hurt me. Q.Q

You guys cried for crit damage nerfs for a year, now you get it. Cry some more, maybe they’ll not nerf crit damage at all then and keep it as is.

:^D

Wonder if it’s going to change its behavior when downscaled, or if we’ll go from 15% crit damage in AC to 14%.

ANET must give us the chance to choose another set, as they did when they changed magic find.

I don’t want to keep my celestial armor is it will don’t max my critical damage.

Refund us for insignas and inscriptions we bought.

Mario Lemieux.9107:

Gosh this game has come a long way…down.

Yes sadly it has.
Look on the bright side, not much time left until the 4’th of April.

can we get a one-time option to change the stats of our + crit damage ascended gear? Mine took a lot of time to acquire and I’m not so sure I want it with the changes being made..

Now i wait for the next Item tier like Ascended T2 that will bring us back to where we are before the nerf.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

Celestial gear getting nerfed seems fine to me…and berserker gear? Everyone’s got that stuff. I’m kinda glad that it’s getting changed to ferocity, because it’ll make people change up their builds and stats.

It isn’t for me. I spent 30 days making Charged Crystals just to make the account bound armor and now armor that was only good for 1 or 2 classes is not the best for any class. That is bad development work on ANets part.

Oniyui.8279:

DaliIndica.9041:

So when they added ascended gear (something most people were against and it went against the core ideals of the game), it has caused an issue in which too much damage is being done with crit gear, so now they need to undo the damage that everyone pointed out long before it became one.

Yep, sounds like a typical ANet patch. Lets see all the mistakes they make this time, so we know what will be “fixed” this time next year.

So, you’re saying a typical ANet patch is to be aware of the community’s concerns regarding damage getting too high with new gear, watch how things play out with the new gear for about a month, and then implement a change reflecting the community’s concerns as well as their own observations?

How dare they!

What are you talking about?! Ascended gear has been in the game a lot longer than a month, its been nearly a year. A YEAR ago people pointed out the folly of gear treadmilling, the problem of not just forcing people to a new tier of gear but also the stat issues that crop.

In fact a lot of people were saying that in WvWvW it would reward top level players with a huge advantage over others. Even a 10% increase is actually pretty large in those terms, its a huge jump in stats when it comes to pvp, and those stats are locked away in time gated content.

All the posts and warnings about this crappy gear idea were ignored and now, exactly as was predicted by most of the forum community at the time is proving correct.

Damage was never a problem with PVE, it was the lack of other options, something this change does exactly nothing to address. COnditions will still be a nightmare as stacking is still rubbish. More defensive stats? why, you will still get one shotted and you will still have to avoid the red rings.

ALl that will change is each boss/fractal/dungeon will take a bit longer, but people will still be using the most damaging gear because the other options are still a huge failure.

No one has been able to express how this will fix the game, it does nothing at all! “it lowers damage” right…..but what about ALL OF THE OTHER ISSUES THAT MADE IT SO ZERKER WAS BEST?!

I would also add, that I am not saying this “nerf” is a bad thing. I am saying that most people saw this coming, most people warned ANet that taking this option would cause problems. A few said “nah it will be fine, lets gear grind” and low and behold, almost a year later they are having to make some more core changes because they messed up.

We just got a new condition recently, whilst the current system made conditions problematic for pve content.

Still have a lot of combo fields that are not working and light field-whirl has NEVER WORKED. Good job they are not addressing the already broken issues and instead adding MORE things to the game.

Magic find was good, then it went away. Its better now but its yet another example of ANet not really having a clear idea of how to make this game work better.

Some classes still have bizarre trait lines that forces them into only a few builds.

Its the same story, I honestly am starting to think that someone else made this game and ANet now has it, not fully understanding what they are trying to do with it. Stop changing things all the time, more so because quite a few times the community warned them against the changes and then ANet had to go and try to fix them buy making grand changes. It feels very unprofessional.

They said that this was the starting point of other changes. That it was something that they had to do first in order to make future changes possible.

Let’s say they will revamp dungeon encounters to allow for more diverse builds to shine:

If they have to rebalance the content for these revamps, bosses may need to come down in health because they now have new ways to defend themselves for example.

How much health the bosses should have is determined by how much time it should take players to take it down. (Some may be spikeable, but others shouldn’t be.) However, team compositions may vary. So if a bosses health is balanced for 5 zerker warriors, it will take much longer for a carrion/cleric/knights mix of characters.

Taking a bit more time to beat these dungeons is not a problem. It is a sacrifice that many players are willing to make in order to allow for a more safe approach. However, taking more than 3 times as long to do a dungeon is a bit outrageous. If a dungeon is an awesome chain of foes for a berserker group. Good for an hour of fun. Then it may turn out to be a very long night for the other non-berserker group (say 3 hours).

In order to balance the healthpool of the foe so that both teams can get through the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time, the difference between the two should be smaller.

Of course, to take away all the difference would not make sense, but there is quite a big gap between no difference and the current state of the game.

So in order for arenanet to revamp old content or create new encounters that are more balanced, they need the damage difference to shrink a bit. Until the proportions are more acceptable. (Say that the berserker group should be 1,5 times as fast as the non berserker group. Maybe even twice as fast, but not the ridiculous amount it currently is.)

Reducing the effectiveness of berserker on the higher areas of critical damage by 10% is not a lot. But it is a starting point for them. So if they decide that 10% less damage is enough to bring it in proportion, then they have a bar set to (re)design their encounters around.

If they were to do it the other way around, encounters first, then they might end up creating encounters that are indeed challenging and interesting for the berserker group, but turn out to be very tiresome stuff for the rest of the playerbase.

Important

How ferocity is going to work is going to be an essential part of how effective this change will be.

It could either be linear, like power, vitality or precision. Where the difference between 100 and 101 ferocity is the same as the difference between 1000 and 1001 ferocity.

Or it could be curved, like toughness works. In which case the 1 point from 100 to 101 toughness is more effective than the 1 point between 1000 and 1001 toughness.

If they will indeed use a formula that curves the effectiveness of ferocity, then the 10% decrease on full berserker gear, could mean a much higher decrease in overall damage output.

Let’s say that we start to really feel the curve at work at 90% critical damage, from there on we start to see that ferocity will not add much more critical damage. We would need to go to quite extreme amounts of ferocity to even reach 100%. Which might be all that we can reach with just gear.

But then extra food buffs, trait related ferocity (such as from the elementalist air line), or skills such as the banner and the lightning hammer would barely add up any further.

This would reduce the total damage output for full berserker armor by 10% (as they suggest at the moment) but limit the total damage output potential with further ferocity increases by quite a bit more than that. (Think more along the lines of 25% for your typical buffed damage focused group)

The curve could be made so that you would barely even feel the difference in PvP and at the same time reduce the extreme difference in PvE by 25% or perhaps even more. While not necessarily making the current berserker gear that much less effective. (You may just find yourself running without the banner of discipline and with some other kind of food)

Just so we’re clear when discussing this, the 10% damage reduction is only for critical damage, not overall dps. I crunched some numbers and with a 50% critical chance and 100% critical damage the overall dps will go down about 2.8% total. If critical chance goes lower this reduction % gets lower as well.

Really a minor change overall, certainly not enough to warrant anyone throwing out their ascended berserker sets just yet.

All we know for sure is
a. Ferocity will replace crit dmg
b. ferocity overall will represent 10% less effective damage overall in critical damage (as mentioned in the video)
c. ferocity is going to have the exact same number as the minor stat for berserker(same as precision)

First of all a 10% less effective damage as mentioned in the video could mean different things, lets just take the scenario which instead of X% crit damage we have now, we will have 0.9X% which doesnt need to be true because to get 10% less OVERALL damage we would need to lower crit damage alot more since it is not the only affix that affects overall damage (power and precision also affect it)

right now we got 6 pieces of armor 1 weapon 5 accesories and 1 back slot, for full exotic zerker that would be:

672 minor stat and 48% critical damage
now we need to get the ratio in which ferosity converts to critical damage, in my
calculation this ratio was over 16

672 ferocity from the overall set would be (672/16)= 42%crit dmg which is about 88% of the previous value (48%)

So 16 ferocity = 1% critical damage

Everything seems fine right now, berserker got nerfed as it was planned but lets see how this affects celestial gear.

Celestial gear by rule has 5/8 of the minor stat any other armor has (feel free to do the calculation yourself or check the wiki)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment#Attribute_bonuses

to simplify i will not include the trinkets or back slot since there are no exotic celestial of this kind.

Celestial ferocity for:
Weapon+6Armorpieces=259
Crit damage after patch:
259/16= 16.19 critical damage

Critical damage prepatch for celestial is:
weapon(9)+6 armor pieces (3) (2) (6) (2) (4) (2)
28 critical damage

(16.19/28) crit damage represent 57.8%
this means celestial crit damage is getting nerfed a 42.2% not 10 or 20 percent like other people think, Do you think Anet is going to have celestial gear with
example:
20 power
20 precision
20 condition damage
20 healing power…
… 34 ferocity?
Because if they don´t we are going to have to say bye bye to all celestial gear, it wasn´t that good before and now it will be complete trash if the changes go like they plan.

We all know patch may change, and non of the results shown on the video are definitive, but if we don´t talk about this stuff how you plan Anet to notice it… So pls dont post bullcrap about
" why are you even commenting if patch hasn´t gone live"

On Celestial, crit damage is equivalent to a secondary value (like Berserker and Valkyrie), while all other stats were tertiary. If Ferocity is lowered from secondary to tertiary, its gonna be a pretty substantial reduction in value on a set that’s already been downgraded once and is unusually heavily gated to create.

Mario Lemieux.9107:

Another example: (quote from dulfy) “We moved stat weights to later bonuses (i.e. 4, 5, 6) so people don’t use mix-match rune bonuses.”

Why? Let people be creative and mix and match. Why the hell would you do this?
You might as well not let us mix and match armor skins.
While you’re at it, only 1 dye color per armor set.

Wait what? On top of the silly nerf to celestial (which did not need a nerf at all) they are screwing with runes? Well, that’s just great. /sarcasm

I don’t see why they want to take away our choices. It’s a terrible move on their part.

Nothing needed nerfed, nothing needed buffed.

Reducing the crit damage will only make the encounter take a little bit longer. Other stats still won’t be wanted for most PvE.

If they buffed other stuff, it would have put the other stuff out of wack. The stats on gear is fine. It isn’t the gear that is causing a heavy use of a particular stat in PvE.

IM against NERF buff the week leave the srong ones there u killing the game play for some of us players here don’t you realise that arena net ?

Mario Lemieux.9107:

For goodness sakes, why was it IMPOSSIBLE to just freakin BUFF the other stat combos??? Slightly BUFF the power/prec/crit dmg, or whatever else is viable, for the other stat sets?!?!

It wasn’t impossible to buff conditions but, then, condi would have been incredibly overpowered in pvp.

Condition vs crit would should work something like: crit has more burst and does more initial damage, but conditions win in the long run. in pve, this is not the case, because crit builds destroy things so fast that conditions doesnt’ have time to do their thing. A change was clearly needed.

Is Dumb.

Every single encounter in this game is based on doing damage to the boss, Not using your superior utility skills.

The one exception might be the frog boss in super fun land. There you have to leap from stone to stone before being able to throw a crystal into the frog’s mouth.

Every other boss I’ve seen, the boss needs to be defeated by jumping, standing, dodging here and this way and then dpsing the boss to death.

Theres no boss where using an AoE stun here, a group movement speed here, a snare or root here, a transform into moa there a portal here an invisible group here, or anything else Utility-wise is necessary.

Changing DPS rates to make boss encounters more ‘Fun’ and ‘Boost the use of Utility’… Well… That’s just a fool’s errand. Everything is based on DPSing the boss. Until you change all of that, your just wasting your time. And fluctuating market prices.

xarallei.4279:

Mario Lemieux.9107:

Another example: (quote from dulfy) “We moved stat weights to later bonuses (i.e. 4, 5, 6) so people don’t use mix-match rune bonuses.”

Why? Let people be creative and mix and match. Why the hell would you do this?
You might as well not let us mix and match armor skins.
While you’re at it, only 1 dye color per armor set.

Wait what? On top of the silly nerf to celestial (which did not need a nerf at all) they are screwing with runes? Well, that’s just great. /sarcasm

I don’t see why they want to take away our choices. It’s a terrible move on their part.

You should go ahead and listen to the broadcast:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/496005243

They are changing runes so a single set has more of a purpose. Take their example with Rune of Strength, now imagine how they can apply that to boon duration. Sounds like a rather interesting change to me.

The problem WAS NEVER THE GEAR – the problem has always been the mindless content design.

If you make content which requires absolutely no support or healing to kill and designed in a fashion that the faster you kill it the better off you are – is it truly any wonder why zerk gear and or crit dmg is so widely desired?

I have been gaming since UO/EQ1 and this will go down in history as probably the worst bandaid fix I have ever seen in a game.

Instead of creating challenging content – they simply reduce our dmg to make fights take longer which is pathetic and a sad example of what they think is a challenge.

The game has been moving in a poor direction for a long time now. I think the living story era left a bad taste in many players mouths. Add into the fact the poor balance direction and bandaid fix after bandaid fix – Anet really should start thinking outside the box because many people no longer have any faith in what Anet says or posts and are loosing interest in the game as a whole.

GG whine. WP op. Welcome to GW2 forums!

theguildless.1386:

You should go ahead and listen to the broadcast:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/496005243

They are changing runes so a single set has more of a purpose. Take their example with Rune of Strength, now imagine how they can apply that to boon duration. Sounds like a rather interesting change to me.

Idk, I’m pretty skeptical. I use a mix match set for boon duration and if I lose out on my boon duration because of this I will be pretty annoyed. If they manage to do it in a way so that a full set gives me the same amount of boon duration then maybe I will be ok with it (though I’ll still be slightly annoyed because now I’ll have to buy more runes and I bet prices will be going up).

On a different note, the changes to nerf zerker don’t make any sense to me. I don’t see how this is going to make support specs more valuable at all. People are still going to go zerker and all this does is make things like celestial more useless. They need to buff support specs.

The thing with celestial is this: The large amount of crit dmg in the itemization was there on purpose.

It was the only thing making Celestial gear viable due to the rest of the points being spread so thinly across all the other stats.

The unfortunate part is this change will pretty much spell the end of celestial gear viability.

Amazing how poor Anet is at balance. They said the problem was zerker yet the jack of all trades set gets the axe harder then any other set in game including zerker.

Given the stats on zerker gear and the suggested changes, my guess is that it will still be the top choice for pve for most professions. Let’s wait and see before we claim the sky is falling.

Umm no! the best way to play the game is how you want to play the game. If you want to do a lot of damage, you can. If you want to support your team, you can. If you want to be tankish, you can.

They only made zerker build lose a bit more damage to get closer to supp and tankish builds and also condition builds. Zerker was too much and condition was mostly “meh”. If there’s a build that is superior to all other types of builds, then what is the point to be tankish, support or to use condition damage. This was an update to PvE though, PvP people rarely go pure zerker, glasscannons.

The monsters need to get smarter though, so they can counter all kinds of build the players create.

Yeah, it really is. I honestly do not see how nerfing zerker is going to help support builds out.

Just for teh lulz: I recently finished the Ascended Armor for my Beserker Mesmer after the 36 days of time gated crafting of Damask. After some theory crafting taking account of different stacking sigils, buff food, runes etc. I forged 6 Omni Infusions to maximize my DPS. I’m pretty sure that this combination of Infusions isn’t the optimum for max DPS after the Crit Damage nerf.

I spent 6 Stacks T6 mats, 600 Passion Flowers, 60 Skill Points and 300 Mystic Coins on those Infusions for something that is now suboptimal. Luckily I had enough mats, gold and Skill Points for T5 mats promotion and didn’t buy gems for real money to get enough gold. Well, bad luck i guess. And after all it’s just toy money, isn’kitten

Part of anets problem is they are to afraid change anything. They take the tiniest of baby steps forward and then immediately take a big step back. Anet gotta learn to be bold. Increase effects or damage, improve the time for these skills more then a %. They know balance is terrible, we’ve made sure of that. If they would only take big steps forward wait a few days and then if it real is suddenly making that class miles ahead of everyone simple reverse what has to be and revisit it for the next patch. I loved blizzard for it. Sure they created a few issues but they were quick to correct it and we’re never afraid to take leaps to improve a class for us. We need more flavours of the month. That’s how your create diverse builds. Make us wanna sudden switch over to this trait line or this weapon because it’s sudden got a big buff

Does ferocity deal critical-hit damage as a % of your base damage? Or is it a flat damage bonus?

i.e. if personA has 200 power and 1000 ferocity, and personB has 1000 power and 1000 ferocity will they both do the same amount of bonus damage on a critical-hit? or will personB do more because his base damage is higher?

lordkrall.7241:

LittleLepton.8915:

I have to agree with this. Although, I’d say that the free stat change should only be applied to ascended gears…. I don’t have ascended armors, but I think had I, I would feel extremely cheated, if the gear I made was no longer optimal for my play style.

So every update where they change a skill or trait that might make my play-style (and thus my stats) no longer optimal I should get a free stat-change?

The difference being that it takes 3s and 3 clicks to reset your traits. People have invested hundreds of gold and quite a lot of time to get their armor a certain way.

I can understand that if all you do is play video games all day having to regear isn’t all that big of a deal to you but not everyone has the time to play 10 hours a day or even 10 hours a week.

Mario Lemieux.9107:

Is simple: stop DEBUFFING. Players dont like to hear “you will do less damage” “you will now loot less” “you will now be less interested in our game”

Stop taking things AWAY from players.

For goodness sakes, why was it IMPOSSIBLE to just freakin BUFF the other stat combos??? Slightly BUFF the power/prec/crit dmg, or whatever else is viable, for the other stat sets?!?!

Abominable decision here. Wonder how many will consider this their last straw with Anet.

Another example: (quote from dulfy) “We moved stat weights to later bonuses (i.e. 4, 5, 6) so people don’t use mix-match rune bonuses.”

Why? Let people be creative and mix and match. Why the hell would you do this?
You might as well not let us mix and match armor skins.
While you’re at it, only 1 dye color per armor set.

Gosh this game has come a long way…down.

reply for your overarching message…

I agree, this game keeps going down hill and the quarterly financials are representative of that. lots of talk and fluff without proof in the pudding so to speak. there is definitely more mmo business than usual around these parts, and last years patch notes speak for themselves. I know the devs work hard, but it’s the smart that is missing.

Terrible idea.
Ever heard of stat inflation? Balancing entails both buffs and nerfs, you can’t just stick to one or the other, it’ll screw up the over all balance in the long run.

This is why it can be a terrible idea to listen to your player base sometimes, they talk with authority about things they don’t really understand. If anything, it is precisely bad player ideas like this that are bringing the game down in any capacity.

tolunart.2095:

Fenrir.3609:

tolunart.2095:

It’s an easy decision to make, when you’re not the one signing the paychecks.

What?

As a consumer, you lack the perspective that the management of a business needs. Your focus is on what you want from the product (the game, in this case), while management needs to balance what their customers want with what the staff can deliver.

If there are two proposed solutions, and one requires many times more resources (money, staff, time) than the other, it’s a manager’s job to decide whether the results justify spending more resources than the simpler solution. The devs do not just come to work and do whatever they want to do, they have to follow the orders given to them by their bosses. When someone above the devs tells them that they have three weeks for a team of four to work on a project, they can’t just decide to take six weeks and draft two more members to work on it.

It’s management’s job to make these kinds of decisions, not the devs’ nor the players’.

I think many of us are aware of business practices and the reality of the situation.

That doesn’t though mean to say that we, as the end user/consumer, should be as happy as larry when nerfs are used as band aid solutions instead of more meaningful changes. Simply because the alternative might take a bit of time and effort.

Are simple nerfs sometimes needed? Yes.

Should we always look to buff everything else instead of nerf individual components? No.

Do we know why a company will nerf as an attempted band aid fix instead of putting a lot more time and effort into actually fixing the root cause of a problem, which would often require a mechanics overhaul? Yes.

Does that mean we should never question nerfs or simply excuse a company and say “oh well, actually making it work properly would take effort”. No, and “it’s hard” is not a get out of jail free card.

The developers said that there is no need to feel forced to change gear, despite the nerf. Berserker will still be the stat combo with the highest DPS. No other stat combo will be better at damaging foes.

Suppose you are driving a car that is the fastest there is; it is a lot faster than all other cars. Now, the car is recalled for an emergency (and mandatory) fix to the engine for safety reasons. The car is now 8-10% slower than it was before. However, it is still faster than all other cars. Therefore, you still drive the fastest car there is. So if you like speed, why would you consider getting a different car?

So just relax. Gameplay will be a little bit more challenging, but that was only because it is currently too easy.

TL;DR: Berserker will NOT suddenly be “suboptimal”.

Yeah i have tried to wrap my head around the critdmg changes on celestial gear and i just cant make any sense of it.

The reason it had more critdmg% than berserker was pretty much the only reason to keep it ok:ish in dungeons and other stuff.
Now that celestials critdmg is going down the toilet there is absolutely no reason to use that set for any of the classes.

Yes it gives more stats than any other gear but that doesnt make it a OP set
far from it. Having littlebit of everything was the strong part of the set.

Now you get littlebit of everything and no offence unless you use condition dmg more than direct dmg.

So yeah patch that should make suppor.t/tankiness more viable in pve did alot more harm than good for celestial gear.

fellyn.5083:

The difference being that it takes 3s and 3 clicks to reset your traits. People have invested hundreds of gold and quite a lot of time to get their armor a certain way.

I can understand that if all you do is play video games all day having to regear isn’t all that big of a deal to you but not everyone has the time to play 10 hours a day or even 10 hours a week.

But what if the skill being changed makes me want to change build completely, including different stats? Is that really any different?

OP, I can’t agree more.
Everything that works at least decently in this game must be nerfed it seems.
It’s like they are trying to kittenin make the game not enjoyable. Do they think that by nerfing damage the fights will be more fun? Because that’s the biggest bullkitten ever. Fights will only be longer and thus more boring. If you want to make more fun, reduce mobs hp and give them more skills, deadlier attacks…
But noooo, for anet it’s – longer and more frustrating = more fun.
I’m really sick of these nerfs everywhere. Instead of buffing other skills that are kittenin useless and no one use them for a reason, they instead nerf those that works perfectly fine. Instead of buffing other classes, they nerf the ones that works fine. Instead of buffing condition and other stats, they will now nerf zerker, so already looong, boring fights will now last even longer. They won’t be more challenging, just longer.
I really don’t understand 70% of the stuff you do, anet. It’s like none of you played any games ever.

xarallei.4279:

Yeah, it really is. I honestly do not see how nerfing zerker is going to help support builds out.

It helps them by preparing the stage for other, more significant changes to encounters.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

The developers said that there is no need to feel forced to change gear, despite the nerf. Berserker will still be the stat combo with the highest DPS. No other stat combo will be better at damaging foes.

Suppose you are driving a car that is the fastest there is; it is a lot faster than all other cars. Now, the car is recalled for an emergency (and mandatory) fix to the engine for safety reasons. The car is now 8-10% slower than it was before. However, it is still faster than all other cars. Therefore, you still drive the fastest car there is. So if you like speed, why would you consider getting a different car?

So just relax. Gameplay will be a little bit more challenging, but that was only because it is currently too easy.

TL;DR: Berserker will NOT suddenly be “suboptimal”.

Using full berserk comes with the set back of having do defense, but to some people this was worth it because of the damage they got from it. Now with the crit dmg nerf, zerker still may be the highest dmg gear, but some people may no longer find the exchange of no defense for higher damage worth it.

Edit: For better wording.

So, “top DPS builds” will be losing about 10% damage. If the relationship between Ferocity and critical damage percentage is linear, all critical builds will lose about 10%, not just the top builds. In order to affect the top builds more than those with lesser gear, there would have to be some amount of diminishing return once you reach a certain threshold in Ferocity. If that’s the case, where is that threshold?

So who exactly got nerfed? Did Ascended pursuers take a bigger hit than those who stuck with exotic or worse? Did everyone take the same hit to pay for Ascended adding damage on the top in the first place? Is there a sliding scale?

Finally, just how much critical damage percentage did Ascended add to the game? Is this cut-back to reign outliers in, or to add ~10% to the health of every mob out there as far as all crit builds are concerned?

Guess we won’t know til this goes live.

Celestial was already inferior, particularly when magic find on celestial was not replaced with anything else.

Now, it’s just a very time-intensive joke.

Benkei.6293:

…
to simplify i will not include the trinkets or back slot since there are no exotic celestial of this kind.
…

Wrong. There is exotic celestial gear for the trinkets slot. The recipe was added with the Bazaar of Four Winds patch. Here’s the wiki link for the pieces: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exquisite_Charged_Quartz_Jewel

From my understanding its a 10% hit to crit dmg… not overall dmg. As for your topic, dunno.

Zoid.2568:

Umm no! the best way to play the game is how you want to play the game. If you want to do a lot of damage, you can. If you want to support your team, you can. If you want to be tankish, you can.

They only made zerker build lose a bit more damage to get closer to supp and tankish builds and also condition builds. Zerker was too much and condition was mostly “meh”. If there’s a build that is superior to all other types of builds, then what is the point to be tankish, support or to use condition damage. This was an update to PvE though, PvP people rarely go pure zerker, glasscannons.

The monsters need to get smarter though, so they can counter all kinds of build the players create.

They didn’t need any adjustment. Tank builds shouldn’t be able to do close to the DPS of glass zerk builds.

To make the other stats wanted, game mechanics need to be adjusted to make it useful to bring in someone else that had other stats.