Guild Wars 2

While most of people are excited about new, stronger traits…erm..specializations hitting their profession (save necros maybe) there’s one nasty little detail few notice:

our stats are getting nerfed

They say they plan to fix this with stronger stat boosts from gear, but let’s just sit down and so some simple math here:

Currently you can invest into 2 lines fullly and 1/3 of 3rd line. That means usually your 4 of yours attributes get 300 point boost and 2 more get 100 point boost. That makes a total of 6 character attributes getting a boost. Even if one of the total 6 is the job specific attribute (like atunement cooldown for eles) that still leaves at least 5 others that were getting a boost.

Now gear can only boost up to 3 stats, and not equally. Only one gets a strong boost, other 2 a smaller one. So in short we lose out not only on ability to customize our attributes more but also on how many of them can we boost and how strong that boost will be.

And what about ranger pets? Do you see gear with +stats for pets coming out? Cause i don’t. Even if there’s the new 25% damage boost for opening strike in traits, that still doesn’t make up for the rest of the stats being lost (precision, vitality, toughness) that the current beastmastery line provides…

Maybe they’ll just add to each pet’s attributes to make up for it..but add what? Full value? (300). Half the value? Not adding anything?

It’s those questions that make me wonder about just how good that change is…

You can’t really know this until we know how much gear stats are getting buffed. What if gear stats get a large enough buff that a pure set gives you 600 more stat points? Now you can split your gear and get the same 300 point bonuses to multiple stat lines just as before.

I am curious about the ranger beast master line. because BOTH of my rangers run different beast master builds! If they add all the points to pets as a base it would be very nice!

ZeftheWicked.3076:

our stats are getting nerfed

The sources of our stats are getting re-apportioned. The total number of points we’re expected to have is not significantly changing. No nerf or ninjas. Sorry.

Now gear can only boost up to 3 stats, and not equally. Only one gets a strong boost, other 2 a smaller one. So in short we lose out not only on ability to customize our attributes more but also on how many of them can we boost and how strong that boost will be.

So… in the version of Tyria that exists in your game client, does gear CATCH FIRE when you mix different adjectives? Because you’re acting like it does. Oh noes, my boots might not be Berserker anymore! I might have something truly crazy like 1 magi ring!

It has always been easier to customize you stats by mixing gear than by shuffling trait points. Now that flexibility has been applied to even more of your total stat budget.

Are there still question? Sure. There’s a lot of outstanding interest in boon/condition duration and the class attributes previously associated with the fifth trait line. More information will be forthcoming.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

And what about ranger pets? Do you see gear with +stats for pets coming out? Cause i don’t. Even if there’s the new 25% damage boost for opening strike in traits, that still doesn’t make up for the rest of the stats being lost (precision, vitality, toughness) that the current beastmastery line provides…

We don’t know exact numbers and we won’t be able to work with any exact numbers until release. What we do know has been stated is that our base stats are going up and our stats from gear are also going up. Also that ~50% of our profession mechanic stat is getting rolled into baseline.

For animal companions, we can assume they’ll get about 100-200 extra power, precision, toughness and vitality. The other 200-100 points have definitely been converted to something more tangibly delicious. Beastmastery is not the pansy pet buffing line, it’s given nature’s wrath to nature magic then took the two most powerful pet training traits (the two adepts from skirmishing) and forced them into that open minor trait slot. Especially from a PvP standpoint, that’s a buff to any beastmaster rangers.

GW2 rewards players actively taking advantage of the tools they have available to them. Putting focus on interesting effects instead of numbers in a spreadsheet supports this system.

I think the OPs concern is based in a mental block, you say that you will not be getting 6 stat lines because armors (excluding celestial) only boost 3 lines. All you have to is mix-match your armor, you dont have to wear all of the same insignia. The separation of stats from armor is a huge boost because we not will get to choose our stat combinations. So for example, if I wanted toughness from Earth Magic, but didnt care much for the condition damage, because i’l building some sort of zerk build. I could now just put 1-2 pieces of Cavaliers on, instead of investing those 2 points into earth.

I see…well if you put it that way then guess it’s not that bad – save one last thing – the profession mechanic traitline bonus (like pet stats on beastmastery for ranger, or burst recharge in discipline line for warriors). I hope they’ll leave option to customize it, and not everyone being stuck with “happy middle” including those who want to go balls to the wall on it, as well as those who don’t want it in exchange for getting more of something else.

If a player wants to mix and match gear, they can already do that. That has nothing to do with the OP’s argument/issue. The issue is whether or not a player will be able to achieve the same quantity of specific raw stats in HoT that this same player can achieve now, pre-HoT. Since someone choose to take a jab at berserker gear, lets use that example. Lets say a player was fully invested in current trait lines that maximized power, precision, condition duration, and ferocity…mix in whatever combo of other stats from the remaining trait lines partially invested in. Will this same player be able to make up this same investment with the new trait system? Will there be approx 300 more power, 300 more precision, 300 more ferocity, 300 more condition duration, etc split between gear and base stats? Will there be significantly less made up to equate to a net nerf? If there is less, then that will mean there was a nerf….that’s the definition of a nerf. This example does not just apply to berserker’s gear….apply it to whatever your current primary stat investment is…toughness, vitality, etc.. I’m not saying that they won’t make it an even swap, but the OP’s concern may still be valid.

The profession-specific stat is being changed so that everyone gets 15% baseline, and the other 15% for being in the relevant spec. So, for that in particular, we are 100% certain there is no nerf.

As for stats, just swap gear around. Panicking when they say “gear will be buffed so there is no net loss of stats” and taking it to mean “everyone loses stats” makes no sense. If you’re not going to believe one thing they’ve stated extremely clearly, why believe anything else?

What exactly would have been wrong with nerfing player attributes in the first place? It might have helped make the game a little bit more challenging.

Ah right i did forget. Mix-matching boosted gear might work in WvW and PvE. But spvp doesn’t let you do that. Here diversity and choice are getting taken away.

Captain Unusual.9163:

The profession-specific stat is being changed so that everyone gets 15% baseline, and the other 15% for being in the relevant spec. So, for that in particular, we are 100% certain there is no nerf.

Except for the Ranger, who during stream had no mention of what was happening with compassion (or I just missed it) nor is it worked into the tooltips of beastmastery at all. On the flipside, every beastmaster ranger worth their salt is flipping out about what we got instead.

Pet’s Prowess + Agility Training + 100 ferocity as one MINOR trait. Used to have to go into skirmishing to pick those up and they’re huge for pet DPS and survival.

Also adding profession specific boosts as baseline is also OP’ing some characters. Why should ele get an attunement reduction for nothing? Nowadays they gotta trait for it, and everyone who does spvp knows how dreadful eles with short cd on that are…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Confirmed-Numbers-don-t-matter/first#post5001384

Just like any other MMO that is reorganizing a very big part of their mechanics, we can’t place judgement until much more information is out. you can’t compare the impact of a few changes to the current game because the game won’t be the same after the XP. We simply don’t know enough about how the new changes will fit into the new mechanics.

Even if the numbers change affected our capacity to have certain stats frontloaded…it honestly may be by design. they may be taking advantage of this stat and trait change to rebalance the same…and push players out of the current “Boring as heck beserker” meta, and provide alternatives to that. if you can’t stack your stats as high as you used to…and other options (condition damage, defensive stats, etc) become more viable, people will build into those areas to compensate.

Not saying that’s what they are doing…because we don’t even come remotely close to having enough info to make that call, but even if they were limiting stat builds, they may be doing it for a good reason.

Ranger pet stats are still going to be able to be buffed, Compassion was rolled into the Nature’s Wrath trait, it now boosts all your pet stats in addition to you gaining power based on your healing.