Guild Wars 2

ThiBash.5634:

Just for clarification, the main issue is not that things are getting nerfed. The issue is that celestial is getting nerfed harder than berserker.

If it wasn’t for this I would be looking forward to their next update, but now I’m going to have to destroy my celestial trinkets and armors and craft new berserker ones just to keep the same damage as before proportionally? Hurg! Terrible implementation of a change and really not a good way to keep your player base happy.

I carefully designed my builds in WvW, with thresholds like 40% crit damage, 25% crit chance etc. This change completely messes all that up.

Due to personal time constraints, I think it took me close to a year to deck out my main in Celestial gear. If the nerf works out as feared… it’d be incredibly discouraging to say the least. I would probably eschew further gear acquisitions that are time-gated and/or require massive amounts of resources. It’s just not worth the risk.

Gnat.9405:

Ironically enough the builds that are being most kitten by this are the hybrid builds that stretch for crit dmg in the first place, and berserker groups will be more prominent and necessary in speed runs.

They stated this is the first step of many changes to address, but it still sucks for non zerk dps builds.

Imagine people with full celestial sets, getting nerfed on both the equipment and the global 10%.

Someone’s else calculation:

Pre Patch (Currently – full Celestial vs full Berserker/critical damage)
Celestial => 62%
Berserker => 71%
======
Post patch (full Celestial vs full Berserker/critical damage)
Celestial => 39% Crit Dmg
Berserker => 62% Crit Dmg

Had a thought, they are buffing. What do you call the sigil/rune changes? There are people expressing fear of power creep because of that in other threads.

IndigoSundown.5419:

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.

Builds that have a 100% critical chance and all critical bonus damage will lose about 10% of their normal damage.

This diminishes if you have a lower critical chance; at 50% crit chance you’ll see more like a 7% loss in normal damage.

As the losses are disproportionately concentrated in changes to jewels, this will mostly hit people with ascended berserker and cavalier trinkets and a very high critical chance.

Really glad I just crafted my celestial ascended set.

Seriously anet… really bad move from a customer relations standpoint. Way to destroy an entire set of armor that people spend hundreds of gold to craft.

achensherd.2735:

Due to personal time constraints, I think it took me close to a year to deck out my main in Celestial gear. If the nerf works out as feared… it’d be incredibly discouraging to say the least. I would probably eschew further gear acquisitions that are time-gated and/or require massive amounts of resources. It’s just not worth the risk.

I thought I was smart to deck out my alts that I don’t play too much in Celestial gear. I thought I was smart, cause I thought that no matter how much Anet altered the game in the long run, those characters would be safe from nerfs cause they had the most versatile equipment that would fit any kind of build.

Anet: TROLOLOLOLOLOLLLLLLL!!!!!

If A.net wants to to make defensive stats more appealing, it needs to really start hitting the game up with some serious reductions.

1. Reduce the damage dealt by bosses.
2. Reduce the cooldown of boss abilities.
3. Reduce the casting time of boss abilities.
4. Reduce the base values of healing abilities and increase the healing power ratios. (Okay, that one was a bit off theme for reductions…)

Dodging and active gameplay are core for this game, and that’s great. The problem is that right now, dodging and avoiding damage is easy, too easy, and failing to avoid damage is too costly even when you’ve invested in defensive stats. That’s why full berserker gear is so popular. Ideally, there should be a trade off between potential killing speed and risk. However, the combination of easy to dodge boss attacks and massive damage regardless of durability have created a situation where in the risk of taking damage changes very little as the potential killing speed increases.

In an ideal world, A.Net would be able to program AI advanced enough to provide counter play against dodges, complex and difficult attack patterns that respond to player tactics, and thus make glass cannon builds appropriately risky. However, that is likely something very difficult to do. What I’ve proposed on the other hand is relatively easy, as it involves only tweaking of numbers, yet accomplishes a similar end. Playing a glass cannon build becomes more challenging, as damage becomes more difficult to avoid, while building durability becomes more rewarding as it actually has a meaningful effect in combat.

There’s also another key notion. In a nerf-based philosophy, people always try to think of what to bring down (whatever is OP) instead of fixing what’s wrong with their class. This results in a lack of creativity and just a lot of screaming and whining.

How can you balance a game around people that whine about someone else being OP? You don’t.

Treborlavok.3504:

This does the exact opposite of what they wanted…

Now since zerk does less dmg groups will almost have to run full zerk to keep dmg up. If you run anything but zerk you’re going to slow down the group… GG

You can also count on people who want fast runs to start requiring Ascended Weapons with force/night sigils and Offensive Consumables only aside from Berserker everything and Scholar runes in their listing

MrSilver.5269:

Really glad I just crafted my celestial ascended set.

Seriously anet… really bad move from a customer relations standpoint. Way to destroy an entire set of armor that people spend hundreds of gold to craft.

I am actually a little glad about this. This nerf helps show everyone what others have been saying about ascended. Having ascended as a giant time/resource sink does not work in this game. As classes get changed/balanced people want to change specs and that is not supported by ascended. It also inhibits them balancing stats/classes as they have to worry about customer ramifications. If this is what gets people mad enough to demand change then it is a blessing in disguise.

I have some bullet points too.

1) Change the game type from “Action MMO” to WoW clone #786876
2) Give us tanks and healers and taunt so everyone can be as braindead as possible at all times.
3) Give bosses unavoidable damage auras so tanks and healers can feel extra good about themselves
4) Increase backstab damage by 300% (Okay, that one was a bit off theme for reductions…)

See I can do it too, easy.

I, as has everyone else, have spent ages making my (celestial) set of ascended gear for my WvW build. Time, gold, laurels, gems/cash etc and it’s not even finished yet, it never is before the next change comes in. It’s not perfect as a set for me, or anyone else for that matter, but I know a lot of folks that have made it as it’s a good all round balanced set if you use all stats and the crit on it makes it Ok….ish. Anyway, the reasons are irrelevant it was a decision I made based on the perameters that ANET made, whether the set is good or bad or OP is not the point.

The point here is that ANET are changing something that p(l)ayers have invested heavily in and had I known about this change in advance I may have made something else so therefore they should alloy players to change their sets if they are affected right?

I mean, if I buy cucumbers at the store when I get home I expect a cucumber in my bag, not a kitten banana…

Anet surely understands this will mean changes for people and would want to give us the chance to take the cucumber back and get what we wanted right, I mean what difference does it make to them??? After all this is about balance yes… so what if we change our gear for another set as they are all so well balanced right it won’t make any difference yeah?

Certainly looking through these threads no one seems to have a good reason as to why this would balance anything anyway…

But there must be a reason! So heres the rub! Every time they have a ‘balance’ /cough ‘update’ it means that players will invest more $$$, in more gems, to update their build, especially since the players that have the build they farmed for are less likely to want to farm it a second or third time etc. So we are more likely to buy gems (to spend on crazy silk etc – who made an xmas bonus on that one?) and rebuild if we want to have the BiS, which many players do. It seems to me looking through these threads there’s just no other realistic explanation for this change.

We farm drops, Anet farm us! Simples.

Anyways, if those affected aren’t given the opportunity to change their gear I won’t invest any more in this game, im just done, it’s just not worth it when stuff changes so fast, you make something one minute and the next it’s all change.

Any other games coming out with WvW soon please let me know?

Brutal Arts.6307:

I have some bullet points too.

1) Change the game type from “Action MMO” to WoW clone #786876
2) Give us tanks and healers and taunt so everyone can be as braindead as possible at all times.
3) Give bosses unavoidable damage auras so tanks and healers can feel extra good about themselves
4) Increase backstab damage by 300% (Okay, that one was a bit off theme for reductions…)

See I can do it too, easy.

I don’t get it. What exactly are you trying to say here? You don’t think that building glass cannon should be riskier, or you don’t think that building durability should be meaningful?

No celestial values are actually 70 % of a minor spec. The always were, if they up those to 80% it would still be a huge nerf. but who knows, maybe they think this part through…

Just a shame I made a celestial armor before and have divinity runes/traveler runes on my armor(s)… on at least 4 armor sets
If they plainly nerf those, they’ll become useless, On the other hand, they may also receive an alround buff…

Shakkara.2641:

I thought I was smart to deck out my alts that I don’t play too much in Celestial gear. I thought I was smart, cause I thought that no matter how much Anet altered the game in the long run, those characters would be safe from nerfs cause they had the most versatile equipment that would fit any kind of build.

That was exactly my thought process on Celestial gear. I figured regardless of how my class, skills, and/or other gameplay mechanics got nerfed, I would always have sort of a fall-back in my gear. I didn’t think the gear itself might get nerfed into the ground as collateral while the gear that was actually getting targeted would only get sort of nerfed.

All that said, to be fair, we don’t have anything solid to speculate on right now, so I’m not going to flip as if all the calculations presented so far are fact.

Ensign.2189:

IndigoSundown.5419:

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.

Builds that have a 100% critical chance and all critical bonus damage will lose about 10% of their normal damage.

This diminishes if you have a lower critical chance; at 50% crit chance you’ll see more like a 7% loss in normal damage.

As the losses are disproportionately concentrated in changes to jewels, this will mostly hit people with ascended berserker and cavalier trinkets and a very high critical chance.

I understand that you can determine the Ferocity numbers quite readily — however, is this estimation based on linear ratios? If so, do you have a link to show that linear ratios will in fact be used — or is this speculation?

I think the problem is if the game is doable in glass cannon build.

Wearing anything other than glass cannon just mean you are a bad player with no skill.

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.

In the end this means:

Now conditions are still meh, cause they didn’t change AND Dps is a little more meh….

In the end It doesn’t change the fact that DPS is king
Conditions are structurally pushed, shoved or otherwise being forced in a corner.

Arenanet build a nice DPS game but the condi part is USELESS, at least for PvE! I can go with 5 berserker characters and do whatever content. Now take 5 with rabid gear… Just imagine…

Okay this is completely the other way round in pvp, but this is undeniable

As for the suggested/ announced changes:

(deceptive evasion nerf is a HUGE nerf to condition spam clone death build for example, dhuumfire is a nerf to condimancer (though with my hybrid build I couldn’t care. TBH) Longbow skill 5 is a slight nerf to warrior hybrid/condi builds (huge in pvp but slight in pve)

PattyCakeChamp.5268:

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

The max dps builds are based around 100% crit chance so it would be a 10% damage reduction since every hit they did was critcal.

morrolan.9608:

Wasbunny.6531:

To gain a little perspective here; with 50% critical chance and 100% critical damage (reduced to 90% critical damage) the overall DPS is lowered by 2.8%.

That’s reducing the highest physical damage stat combo in the game by 2.8% DPS.

So before anyone starts marching in the streets or throwing away their ascended berserker gear just make sure -2.8% is really worth it.

Tell the devs that then, they said that it will be a 10% reduction in damage.

No, it’s only 10% to full celestial builds.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Almost all my characters use hybrid builds with a moderate amount of crit… “-10%” doesn’t affects full berzerker so much, but hits people who use mixed set hard.
How this should promote diversity? :S

(I could be wrong, maybe I didn’t totally got how the change will work, but for now this is what I’m thinking reading those info :S)

I don’t think this is right. You’re talking as if ferocity will affect anything BUT your crit damage. It seems to me that people who are loading out their builds to get maximum crit damage will be affected more than a hybrid build. This is why.

If you are a hybrid build, your crit damage isn’t your only stat. Most of your stats aren’t diminished at all. So if you have part of your build in toughness and vitality and power and you have some in crit, ONLY the crit portion of your build gets affected…but as you’re not “stacking crit”…that portion of your build is smaller. You wont’ be doing 10% less damage, only the damage being done by the crit portion of your build will be less, but the rest of your damage won’t be affected. Precision isn’t actually directly affected and power damage isn’t affected at all.

So the overall percentage of damage you do DUE TO CRIT, is the only thing that’s affected. Not your overall damage.

The more points you have in critical percentage, the more your build will be affected.

The real problem had nothing to do with DPS from crit damage or zerker crap. The REAL problem is our DPS, Support, and Control trinity that we completely screwed over with that terribly designed Unshakeable BS and puny condition caps forcing a focus on sole DPS. God forbid we saw any changes at all that adjusted these systems. We’d rather add in a new stat, re-balance it and the damage formula, and still not solve any problems because we’re too proud, stupid and/or lazy to ever address the real issues of our game, its professions, or previous additions we added that may or may not now be working against us. Thank you for your understanding and support.

laokoko.7403:

I think the problem is if the game is doable in glass cannon build.

Wearing anything other than glass cannon just mean you are a bad player with no skill.

The game should be doable with a glass cannon build, but it should be difficult. The problem with the way things currently are is that there’s a big increase in killing speed in glass cannon gear, but very little increase in difficulty.

I have a thief with 50% crit.

10% of 50% is 5% dmg reduction.

However my main weapon is shortbow.

Shortbow gets a second sigil.

A 5% damage sigil just dropped for me today.

GG Anet.

laokoko.7403:

I think the problem is if the game is doable in glass cannon build.

Wearing anything other than glass cannon just mean you are a bad player with no skill.

No, wearing anything other than glass cannon means only that you are wearing gear other than glass cannon gear.

Being a good player (with experience in your class, knowledge of the game mechanics, understanding of team synergy and covering down, utilities and build creation) means you can wear glass cannon gear and outperform someone in some other gear set.

Wearing it alone, QQers, does not make you elite. It makes you the first and most frequent to fall. Being a good player is the pre-requisite to successful zerk dominance.

I honestly think most of the people complaining about zerkers never stepped foot outside the open world gameplay or CoF P1 (or comparable content).

We don’t knock players wearing PVT gear if they are learning the game and mechanics. That’s understandable. No sense in going DPS heavy if you don’t know how to stay alive yet.

So to sum it up: If you are a trash player in zerk, your times will be crap anyways. If you are a good player, you are best served wearing zerk gear if you want to clear content.

Many of the whiners (I think) did not and still do not get this. Zerk does not equal insta win. Don’t look at DnT videos on youtube and think that zerk is an EZ mode ticket without playing that way yourself.

Anet definitely has a problem. Severely Time-gated gear should not get massive nerfs without some kind of recompense. I am only glad that I hadn’t made any celestial gear when this nerf was announced.

Even allowing people to swap out the gear won’t help since it shouldn’t take anyone longer than 1 day to get a regular set of exotic armor, whereas it takes a month to get celestial.

Distaste.4801:

MrSilver.5269:

Really glad I just crafted my celestial ascended set.

Seriously anet… really bad move from a customer relations standpoint. Way to destroy an entire set of armor that people spend hundreds of gold to craft.

I am actually a little glad about this. This nerf helps show everyone what others have been saying about ascended. Having ascended as a giant time/resource sink does not work in this game. As classes get changed/balanced people want to change specs and that is not supported by ascended. It also inhibits them balancing stats/classes as they have to worry about customer ramifications. If this is what gets people mad enough to demand change then it is a blessing in disguise.

You gotta have that one jealous/vindictive guy that is happy to see people getting screwed over.

I’ve already stopped logging in after this proposed change. Honestly, after grinding out ascended gear, to have the stats change on you (when realistically the issue is the games mechanics being broken which is why the player base is so heavily skewed on certain stats…fix the mechanics, I realise you may need to have devs rather than stacking your employee base with content designers to get that change done but hey if you want to kill your game with bad decisions I can’t stop you) without having the chance to change the stats post forced change without having to regrind to get new stats….nah thanks, I’m done, the mistreatment of the player base because it’s easier to band-aid a situation with constant nerfs (when as said the issue is the game mechanics being borked) is getting a little tedious.

Eh the thing is, at least right now, Zerker gear is pretty easy to play, even in most dungeons, even in higher level Fractals. That’s really the problem. It should be more difficult than it is right now.

Subdue.5479:

Eh the thing is, at least right now, Zerker gear is pretty easy to play, even in most dungeons, even in higher level Fractals. That’s really the problem. It should be more difficult than it is right now.

Well I think you’re right in a way. It appears easier. The difficulty of playin zerk gear is the same as it always has been though.

The change is that the game has been out longer. The longer the game is out, the more experienced players become. It might take someone 2 weeks to learn mechanics and graduate to DPS gear or it might take someone else 1 year to do the same.

There’s no doubt that DPS gear is ruling the roost in PvE but I don’t think it’s because it is any “easier” than it has ever been. It’s just now revealing the glaring holes in the PvE design. Of course, for open world it doesn’t matter what you wear.

In dungeons though, people have learned just about all the tricks and all the mechanics. So yes, zerk gear is much more forgiving because the learning curve to the content is gone. The answer to this would be a PvE (or dungeon) overhaul to change the way enemies react and vary mechanics. Another answer would be new content that does things in a different way (that starts a new timer until folks learn everything about that).

I know I’m upset about the crit nerf. I think other folks are for the same reason. It wasn’t the only answer. It was the worst answer and it didn’t change anything. It didn’t revitalize the dungeon experience. It just made it slower for (arguably) everyone. I don’t see who benefits (except maybe the TP players).

Treborlavok.3504:

This does the exact opposite of what they wanted…

Now since zerk does less dmg groups will almost have to run full zerk to keep dmg up. If you run anything but zerk you’re going to slow down the group… GG

This is the case now, and hasn’t changed at all. Not one iota.

The thing is, this is supposed to be the first change of many. Anet doesn’t want to make a huge BOOM change. Look at all the crying over this already and it’s not even out. Could you imagine what the response would be if Anet cut it further.

They’re making this change to make other future changes possible, but it’s one step at a time.

Given the reaction record of these forums, I’d think that’s a pretty smart move on their part.

@OP’s calculation

Something people may have looked over is that critical damage builds usually spec into traits to get an extra 30% crit damage, it’s unclear whether ANet was taking that into account when they said berserker builds would have a 10% over dps nerf. If they did then it will a 10% nerf like they said, if they didn’t then the overall dps impact will be a bit less than 10%. The calculations will be slightly different when taking into account ferocity from runes and traits.

morrolan.9608:

Wasbunny.6531:

To gain a little perspective here; with 50% critical chance and 100% critical damage (reduced to 90% critical damage) the overall DPS is lowered by 2.8%.

That’s reducing the highest physical damage stat combo in the game by 2.8% DPS.

So before anyone starts marching in the streets or throwing away their ascended berserker gear just make sure -2.8% is really worth it.

Tell the devs that then, they said that it will be a 10% reduction in damage.

They said Ferocity will reduce “top DPS builds” by 10%. The top builds have crit chance closer to 100% than 50 and crit damage in excess of 110% — not the numbers used by Wasbunny.

Vayne.8563:

Treborlavok.3504:

This does the exact opposite of what they wanted…

Now since zerk does less dmg groups will almost have to run full zerk to keep dmg up. If you run anything but zerk you’re going to slow down the group… GG

This is the case now, and hasn’t changed at all. Not one iota.

The thing is, this is supposed to be the first change of many. Anet doesn’t want to make a huge BOOM change. Look at all the crying over this already and it’s not even out. Could you imagine what the response would be if Anet cut it further.

They’re making this change to make other future changes possible, but it’s one step at a time.

Given the reaction record of these forums, I’d think that’s a pretty smart move on their part.

You think its very smart for Anet to nerf all the DPS builds for literally no reason and to do nothing about the actual problem people were complaining about in the first place?

If the issue was that people are steamrolling content then perhaps make the content more engaging and difficult. Buff the NEED for healing and toughness. The mechanics of GW2 are what the real issue is.
That, of course, would require too much work so do the easy thing and nerf dps.

Sales in transmutation stones are going to go up :P

Those of us who made assassins ascended helm chest and legs are getting a kick in the teeth from this change. They will no longer be optimal so we essentually got screwed.

Play the way you want oh wait better nurf it people are killing things too quick.
All we see are nurf here nurf there every time no buffs since launch its mad to think how many nurfs have been done and yet we as players are way overpowered and must be nurfed still.

As much as i like the game im pretty sure one of the next patches will be “PLAYERS WILL NO LONGER BE ALLOWED TO USE WEAPONS”.

Alot of players would of read the forums/reddit and seen the amount of hate and rage because all Anet needed to do was fix there game instead of changing things that were not broken or in need changing.
How can we play the way we want if the way we play if not how Anet wants us to play.

Umut.5471:

Zerkers were op in pve, and now they are fixing it. It is a fix, not nerf. As some guys said above, if everything gets buffed then the game starts to be too easy. Most people want challenging content to stay in game, not easy speedruns. Bunker, Condition and Healing power builds must be a part of pve too. Not everyone wants to do speed runs with warriors, don’t forget this. People want challenging content in pve. This isn’t even a proper fix, they have to improve mob ai in great amount to allow build/class diversity. For example, to defeat evading, running, stealthing, cc’ing mobs you would need different classes/different builds. They currently stay in front of you without even moving, this makes them to be killed with zerkers and zerker gs warriors easily.

Except this doesn’t fix it. if you want challenging content, run a sub-par build lol.

ArchonWing.9480:

There’s also another key notion. In a nerf-based philosophy, people always try to think of what to bring down (whatever is OP) instead of fixing what’s wrong with their class. This results in a lack of creativity and just a lot of screaming and whining.

How can you balance a game around people that whine about someone else being OP? You don’t.

And that is what is being done here; people complain about the content not being challenging enough but instead they’re nerfing a single stat combo and not getting to the crux of the problem i.e. the poor content design.

i am not smart enough to understand the balance changes(mostly nerfs)which is about to be released by anet, in near future so i ask u smart people to answer 3 question i have on this matter:
first question: the so called ferocity state which is basically 10% nerf to critical damage,
is it suppose to increase build diversity?is it suppose to force people to go for support build as well?((some fanboys might say its little nerf but whats point in that?))
considering all broken boss fight mechanism and design flows are pretty much still in place like stacking in corner and kill boss as fast as u can or boring boss fight which are huge bag of hp like shatterer or maw. considering all those i think this nerf will increase dependency on berseker build since now boss fights takes a bit longer even with full dps build and it will effect my build which is knight build by lowering its dps even more.
second question: about rangers huge nerf to spirit of nature healing skill which they said it was too powerful due to a bug,was it?ranger are among the weakest classes in dungeon imo, i am playing a lot of dungeon with random people through lfg and ive seen people kicking a ranger because there was already one ranger in group and 2 were lowering dps, and even ive seen people asking for no ranger in lfg description.
if u paly as ranger do u feel that ur ranger is op because of spirit of nature and nerfing it is necessary?
final question: nerfing the passive of healing signet and buffing the active part,according to devs, so u use active more,let just say if u want to use an active healing skill which one would u prefer healing surge that gives 10,270 hp and in 30s u can get another 10k or healing signet (now if they increase passive to 6k which is significant increase and i dont think they are gonna increase it that much)that gives u way lower amount and u lose passive effect as well basically u get only 6k in 20second after nerf (if they increase active that much)whether u active the signet or not.
so at least as its current state the healing signet is useful in open world where mobs usually dont hit hard and in some weak boss fights in dungeon so it make sense to have better passive and low active but why on earth they are changing it to exactly do what i think each healing skill should have purpose and right now the way warrior healing skills are working is just fine.“why these changes are necessary”?
thanks for ur answers:)

i cant read this, your “u” and “ur” spam hurts my eyes.

Sorry the wall of text killed me after the first few lines.

Chris RJ.1843:

Subdue.5479:

Eh the thing is, at least right now, Zerker gear is pretty easy to play, even in most dungeons, even in higher level Fractals. That’s really the problem. It should be more difficult than it is right now.

Well I think you’re right in a way. It appears easier. The difficulty of playin zerk gear is the same as it always has been though.

The change is that the game has been out longer. The longer the game is out, the more experienced players become. It might take someone 2 weeks to learn mechanics and graduate to DPS gear or it might take someone else 1 year to do the same.

There’s no doubt that DPS gear is ruling the roost in PvE but I don’t think it’s because it is any “easier” than it has ever been. It’s just now revealing the glaring holes in the PvE design. Of course, for open world it doesn’t matter what you wear.

In dungeons though, people have learned just about all the tricks and all the mechanics. So yes, zerk gear is much more forgiving because the learning curve to the content is gone. The answer to this would be a PvE (or dungeon) overhaul to change the way enemies react and vary mechanics. Another answer would be new content that does things in a different way (that starts a new timer until folks learn everything about that).

I know I’m upset about the crit nerf. I think other folks are for the same reason. It wasn’t the only answer. It was the worst answer and it didn’t change anything. It didn’t revitalize the dungeon experience. It just made it slower for (arguably) everyone. I don’t see who benefits (except maybe the TP players).

The mechanics don’t even have to be overhauled. They just need to be sped up. For example, take Subject Alpha. Right now Subject Alpha is as easy to beat as sitting in a corner, counting to 2 when you see circles, and dodging. That’s it. What if the circles were only up for .5s and he used them more frequently than a player could dodge, even with vigor?

If a player is really good, they’d still be able to avoid most of the damage in that scenario, but it would be far more involved than see circle > count to 2 > dodge > repeat.

My thoughts

1. If you are truly all knights gear, you will not lose any damage.

2. IMO, ‘nerf’ to spirit of nature will not reduce ranger viability in dungeons, let alone change people’s opinions on rangers in dungeons

3. Not too sure on your question but you mention “[pve] mobs usually don’t hit hard so it makes sense to have better passive and low active”. Dev’s point is that ‘low’ active was essentially ‘never used’ active, and that a slightly reduced passive and larger active will still see lots of play in [pve] for the reasons you mention (content that doesn’t hit hard)

All that’s going to happen is boss encounters will take a little longer and people will 100% not want the useless not max dps builds even more since the rest of the team won’t be able to carry them like they currently can.

I fully expect the LFG to be far more aggressive in it’s requirements once the change happens.

To avoid power creep. Buff only policies just lead to out of control power creep.

You can’t really balance them, not against other stats in pve. When you make stat options that are purely offensive while other sets are more balanced to middle of the road (off/def) the offensive load out is always going to win out in pve in an active combat system.

defensive stats aren’t going to be made more useful or desireable in pve unless boss mechanics are completely reworked from being one shot attacks to being lower damage faster sustained dps ones which just defeats the purpose of the dodge mechanic.

All that can be gathered is that the stat combinations available were poorly thought out, unless boss mechanics are completely over turned berserker is always going to be top dog since any skilled player can use active dodging to mitigate damage, reducing berseker damage will see an increase in aggressively slanted berserker requirements in LFG as a team will be less capable of carrying people that are using less useful stat combinations….the community is going to get worse.

“I play the way I want. But those guys over there are getting more shinies than I am. It’s not okay for them to play the way they want.”

Oh power creep. Yea, I think they’re very opposed to that. That’s why there’s all this ascended… never mind.

The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.