Guild Wars 2

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

THIS IS NOT A WVW POST. For full disclosure, I have a full berserker mesmer with ruby orbs.

The issue is that Berserker’s pow/prec/crit damage synergy by far dwarfs every other possible stat combination, and on top of it all it devalues support builds because with group setups of 3-4 warriors in berserker with 1 mesmer or a mesmer and guardian, support becomes secondary to the speed with which bosses are downed and trash is cleared.

Pow/prec/condi damage, and condition damage as a whole will never be viable so long as the synergy of pow/prec/critdmg in PvE continues to be what it is. The problem is a) the conversion benefit ratio of condi damage stat and healing power, and b) condition stack cap introduces diminishing returns for condition users, while stacking berserker builds never hurts those involved.

More importantly, because berserker warriors and thieves can sustain the damage they do in berserker gear, the group is less exposed to protracted battles where someone can die. I invite you to see videos like the Arah speed runs. A 20-30 min Arah path happens because bosses simply melt to the damage of berserker builds, especially warriors.

Conditions also suffer setbacks in PvE, like Poison and Chill having diminished value because mob recharged skills cannot be noticed and outside very few fights, mobs don’t heal.

Why not buff condition damage instead of nerfing berserker itemization, then? Because the value of support and tankier builds diminishes when you have a game where groups can brute force something so reliably that survival doesn’t become an issue.

A lot of the mitigation in this game is dodging. How many dungeon groups do you see where people are wanting to build into toughness and vitality and pure group support traits? At best you’ll see one or two members of the group geared like that. Damage output is simply too valuable in the current state of the game. And in the interest of actually having more build options and strategy on encounters, berserker gear needs to take a hit. That and removing the condition stacks cap would go a long way to making other stat combinations in gear desirable.

Yeah pretty much that sums it up,+1 from me there.

Power, precision, and vitality equipment would be more broken than Berserker is now.

GoZero.9708:

Power, precision, and vitality equipment would be more broken than Berserker is now.

You got it wrong. It’s pow/prec/vit/critdmg, with what used to be critdmg halved and turned into vit.

I’m not so convinced Berserker gear is so OP as you seem to think. Having tried it I only really ended up with one character with Berserker armour. My engineer is a dual pistol condition/crit spammer and I find Rampager gear more effective for him. As for my warior, I find berserker accessories useful, but if I want to be able to survive boss battles in melee I need something more resiliant, I ended up opting for Knight’s Toughness, power, precision stats on my armour. Only my ranger uses Berserker gear, and even then not a full set.
Berserker gear does give you good attack power, but you can’t take any damage if you use it for everything. Especially if you play melee, you can’t expect to dodge everything, just the really big spike attacks. The rest of the time the limits of your endurance regeneration rate means you have to be able to absorb that punishment.

Bathos.6341:

I’m not so convinced Berserker gear is so OP as you seem to think. Having tried it I only really ended up with one character with Berserker armour. My engineer is a dual pistol condition/crit spammer and I find Rampager gear more effective for him. As for my warior, I find berserker accessories useful, but if I want to be able to survive boss battles in melee I need something more resiliant, I ended up opting for Knight’s Toughness, power, precision stats on my armour. Only my ranger uses Berserker gear, and even then not a full set.
Berserker gear does give you good attack power, but you can’t take any damage if you use it for everything. Especially if you play melee, you can’t expect to dodge everything, just the really big spike attacks. The rest of the time the limits of your endurance regeneration rate means you have to be able to absorb that punishment.

You really should see the Arah speed run videos. 4 berserker/knight warriors, 1 mesmer.

You don’t need high toughness/vit when bosses die in 45 seconds and trash groups are cleared in 20 seconds tops.

Zenith.7301:

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

I use Valkyrie Armor, eagle runes, and berserker trinkets. I still crit for about 55% of the time and have atm 104% crit dmg, and I hardly call what I do to mobs “melting”. Trash mobs maybe, but with soo much investment to dmg I should get the little kick I paid/worked for. I don’t think nerfing stats is the solution, as much as reworking these boss encounters. 1 shot mechanics, do not promote a support build, if you’re going to die if you don’t dodge why not just go full dmg you know?

Firstly they should do what they can to remove these 1 shot mechanics and add more group oriented mechanics like shared dmg or staying away from each other due to targetd AoE’s or pulsing fire (they have some of these already, and they are quite unique but they are few and far between).

Additionally, they need more stat combinations to better build support and condition builds. I could go on about the builds they “need” but I’ll leave that in the hands of developer’s who can put together the missing pieces if any are found.

NinjaEd.3946:

Zenith.7301:

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

I use Valkyrie Armor, eagle runes, and berserker trinkets. I still crit for about 55% of the time and have atm 104% crit dmg, and I hardly call what I do to mobs “melting”. Trash mobs maybe, but with soo much investment to dmg I should get the little kick I paid/worked for. I don’t think nerfing stats is the solution, as much as reworking these boss encounters. 1 shot mechanics, do not promote a support build, if you’re going to die if you don’t dodge why not just go full dmg you know?

Firstly they should do what they can to remove these 1 shot mechanics and add more group oriented mechanics like shared dmg or staying away from each other due to targetd AoE’s or pulsing fire (they have some of these already, and they are quite unique but they are few and far between).

Additionally, they need more stat combinations to better build support and condition builds. I could go on about the builds they “need” but I’ll leave that in the hands of developer’s who can put together the missing pieces if any are found.

If you think 5-6k autoattack crits and 30k damage 6 sec cd 100b’s and 16k eviscerates compared to every other class who at best sees 3.5k autoattacks and 12-13k burst is not “melting”, you haven’t run a dungeon group with 4 berserker warriors and a mesmer with time warp.

I wish people would hurry up with publishing parsing tools since anet is afraid to publish meters so that people can stop deluding themselves that the numbers are anywhere close to balanced.

Condition damage does not come close to even touching berserker build specs. Not even close.

Full conditiondamage + epidemic can do more damage than a berserker build. Sure, its pretty situational..

I think the issue with berserker equipment has to do with the class and build used more than the stat itself.

The issue people have with warriors seems to be limited to certain classes. The ranger or guardian for example is not overpowered when using berserker, and with many of their strong builds benefits more from throwing in defense or condition damage.

Seeing that the complaints here seem to be about the warrior, perhaps the problem is that their damage is simply too high? I don’t play one myself, but I just don’t see this problem in the few classes I have experience with.

Flowerpower.6795:

Full conditiondamage + epidemic can do more damage than a berserker build. Sure, its pretty situational..

No. You will never do 20-30k damage every 6 second cycle or 12k mindwracks+6k blurred frenzies every 12 sec cycle.

The problem with overlooking things is that most people will play mains, and people who have 3 characters or more to draw comparisons will be in the minority. Single class mains who haven’t played warriors will deem themselves just fine because they have no experience with the numbers.

In a PvE setting with 109% crit damage bonus and 200 power proc food.

the formula for bleeding is:
42.5 + (0.05 * Condition Damage) per stack per second at lvl 80.
Thats 117 with 1500 conditiondamage.
now we have for example 15stacks of bleeding on our main target and use epidemic.
thats 1755dmg/sec on each target effected. 5 targets = 8775dmg/sec until the enemys are dead.
Same formula with 25 stacks of bleading would be 14625dmg/sec. (btw this damage ignores armor)
And with for example an engineer in that team + plague signet you can add burning, poison and confusion.
Thats more dmg than any other class can do. But how i said before.. its situational and in most situations a berserker warrior will do a lot more dmg than a necromancer. I just wanted to show that conditiondamage can do tons of damage as well :P