Guild Wars 2

Crit damage is unfairly downscaled. As most people know, the way to calculate your ‘effective power’ is to run your power through a series of crit chance/dmg modifications followed by overall damage modifications (eg +10% dmg traits). Obviously players need to be scaled.. and if you are in a zone which demands players do half their 80 damage.. then of course power will be halved. Crit damage should therefore remain static if we want to achieve the same benefits from those stats wherever you are in the world as is the case with precision, toughness, vitality, power etc.

Here are my stats when in different places around the world:

LA (80)
51% crit chance
107% crit dmg

Shatterer (50-60)
51% crit chance
52% crit dmg

Dredgehaunt cliffs (40-50)
52% crit chance
37% crit dmg

Kessex hills (15-25)
48% crit chance
20% crit dmg

At 80 my stats show a 80.07% increase in my average damage thanks to my crit chance and crit damage.
When I fight shatterer or travel in that zone, my stats show a 52.02% increase in my average damage thanks to my crit chance and crit damage.
When I run around dredgehaunt cliffs my stats show a 45.24% increase in my average damage thanks to my crit chance and crit damage.
When I run around kessex hills my stats show a 33.6% increase in my average damage thanks to my crit chance and crit damage.

See the problem? Crit chance and crit damage is a percentage based modifier on your damage output. There’s no reason it should be a lower percent in a low level map.

FEROCITY APPEARS
Any idea how this will be scaled?

Good thing that players stopped using berserker like 1.5 years ago.

Junkpile.7439:

Good thing that players stopped using berserker like 1.5 years ago.

Im still using zerk

I have been thinking Ferocity was introduced to fix problems like this.

More theories completely unrelated to the game.
While I do agree with you that it is indeed wrong, the overall damage of berserker’s in low damage zones is 1 hit to kill a normal monster.
But it doesn’t even bother me. It was always faulty, but the last thing we need is more damage in low level zones.
On the other hand, the fact that berserker takes a hit in WvW is just plain wrong, with current prevalence of tanky and condition damage builds.

Keep in mind that in low level zones (1-15) your stats 2 and 3 are not used only stat 1 on the gear. This is because there is not level 15 gear with a 2nd stat. Crit damage is usually the 3 stat so is only effective in higher level areas

Wethospu.6437:

I have been thinking Ferocity was introduced to fix problems like this.

Don’t forget multiple dungeons are flagged as sub-80. Exp AC for example.
If this is ‘fixed’ alongside ferocity we could see zerker gear being even better in ac, cm, some ta, se and cof.

Zerker will still be the best, the next patch but not by much and that is fine. That means that other builds will be as viable and maybe the Meta game will shift a bit.

Grassrab.9302:

Keep in mind that in low level zones (1-15) your stats 2 and 3 are not used only stat 1 on the gear. This is because there is not level 15 gear with a 2nd stat. Crit damage is usually the 3 stat so is only effective in higher level areas

Unfortunately that’s not correct.
Here are stats for a completely naked, untraited level 80 guardian with 1 ascended amulet on.

Soldier amulet:
LA
1042 power
1001 vitality
1001 tough
916 precision (4% crit)
0% crit damage

Kessex
196 power
188 vitality
188 tough
172 precision (4% crit)
0% crit damage

Zerker amulet:
LA
1042 power
916 vitality
916 tough
1001 precision (8% crit)
9% crit damage

Kessex
196 power
172 vitality
172 tough
188 precision (8% crit)
2% crit damage

In all cases apart from the crit damage… the downscaling was to 18.8% of the original stats.
With the soldier amulet your average bonus damage went from being +2% in LA to +2% in Kessex. (No change).
With the zerker amulet your average bonus damage went from being +4.72% in LA to +4.16% in Kessex. (My zerker gear gave me a bigger boost in LA than it does in Kessex).
Scale that up to a full gearset and you see the loss in damage caused by incorrect scaling of crit damage.

You get the full benefit of all 3 stats, apart from crit damage which scales incorrectly. It should scale like crit chance.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Zerker will still be the best, the next patch but not by much and that is fine. That means that other builds will be as viable and maybe the Meta game will shift a bit.

Yes many people will change their gear and get rid of precision mainstat items. It’s something I guess.

I believe the changes coming up to runes will help balance this out through improved might/fury stacking.

It was never an issue running AC or similar dungeons with Berserker.

You always have at least 50% Critical damage in every zone, this just isn’t shown yet. Berserker will still be rediculous on every map, capable of kililng mobs in one or two hits. I don’t really see the problem to be honest.

Low level zones are already rediculously easy for lv80s, this is exactly why everyone advertises that you have to be lv80 to run Ascalon Catacombs, etc.

Plus the set and related builds always have maximum possible power, something that is otherwise only possible on Soldiers, Valkyrie or Zealots.

P.S. Zerker is far from the only Critical damage combination.

This is actually one of the reasons they are replacing Critical damage with Ferocity.

ANet acknowledges that the current Critical damage doesn’t scale well how it sits, This was one of the main intentions for changing it to a number stat instead of a percentage seeing as the number stat is a lot easier to fairly scale.

I would suggest watching their live stream that explains the Critical damage changes as it shed a whole lot of light on how the system is going to work.

Guild Wars 2 TwitchTv:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

For some odd reason anet has decided to change critical damage multiplier into ferocity, and nerf the maximum amount of critical damage attainable. Their reasoning from the official post is.

“Ferocity is being introduced to make bonus critical damage easier to understand, more easily scaled across the whole game, and to help foster a healthy balance environment that encourages players to experiment with their builds.”

How is +10% increased critical multiplier, harder to understand than 150 ferocity? Were is the logic there? I have a feeling this is a low effort solution to the constant whining about the zerker meta, which is really just the meta in this game that says you don’t need any defense at all because a skilled player can clear any content with base vit/tough/hp, and just pump stats into dps…while relying on dodge and abilities to stay alive.

Now the 2nd part of that quote says they are also doing this to encourage build diversity. How is only changing the armor, and not the encounters themselves, or the core mechanics of the game going to solve anything. What is going to happen is people are going to use zerker till 100% crit damage (the new cap) then stack on assassins gear. Essentially nothing has changed, except for now the most damage possible has been nerfed by 8-18%(?)

Less dps means slower dungeon runs, which is going to actually make people hate others using non zerk EVEN MORE. And the newest generation of illegal (against the ToS) UI modification has the capability of snooping through the games memory and giving players information on peoples HP around them, thats right… people can now tell what gear you are wearing using these 3rd party programs (there’s been several threads on reddit now((deleted, dont bother looking for them you will get banned)). Anet you really dropped the ball here, these two things added together are going to make finding a dungeon group outside of a full zerker setup even harder after the patch.

I’m starting to get tired of only playing a “dps” mesmer in PvE. All that is expected of me is to dps, use reflect, remove conditions, cast time warp, and use insp. sig. Why cant I play a lockdown CC mesmer? Or some kind of fun healing build, a phantasm tanking spec or…

And to everyone saying no one will use zerker anymore… take a look at ANY of the hardcore PvE guilds and look at what they are running, its not PVT, its not a zerk mix, its pure zerk or your wont even get in and for good reason.

IMO critical damage how it is is Very overpowered. My guardian runs:

3400 attack, 98% critical damage, 92% crit chance (with fury active), 1629 Toughness, and 18K hp (in WvW). Running alongside meditations I think this is incredibly overpowered and beats most other power/crit based classes.

I will be looking forward to this nerf as it will increase the length of my fights and increase the level of skill required to execute the same burst (e.g. using 1 extra skill in the chain). It will also force me to replace some of the armour I wear now with more zerker type items or change the way I run my traits.

This will make me squishier in the long run and also maybe intice me to try out a different type of build….maybe an immobilize guard…who knows!

Chanra.3561:

IMO critical damage how it is is Very overpowered. My guardian runs:

3400 attack, 98% critical damage, 92% crit chance (with fury active), 1629 Toughness, and 18K hp (in WvW). Running alongside meditations I think this is incredibly overpowered and beats most other power/crit based classes.

I will be looking forward to this nerf as it will increase the length of my fights and increase the level of skill required to execute the same burst (e.g. using 1 extra skill in the chain). It will also force me to replace some of the armour I wear now with more zerker type items or change the way I run my traits.

This will make me squishier in the long run and also maybe intice me to try out a different type of build….maybe an immobilize guard…who knows!

iir that build wont be nerfed at all, you aren’t even over the multiplier cap that will be in effect come the 15th.

I don’t think the upcoming “nerf” will be that bad at all for Berserker’s, but I think the OP is actually overstating the downleveling, since all Exotic gear of any kind is too powerful for low level maps (even rares and masterwork on occasion). Your Exotic Soldier’s or Dire’s gear will also crush anything on the first few maps, and Berserker’s will still do it even faster, as the enemies are also weaker, not just your gear.

Math is cool, but doesn’t “prove” anything for the sakes of this discussion (no offense to math lovers.) Conditions are theoretically “stronger”, for instance, while soloing on low level maps, but you will have no problem with full direct damage gear either.

I actually believe that we should be slightly weaker for a better challenge on low level maps, though who knows, I may be wrong and ANet knows what they are doing (they must clearly have a formula for it.)