Guild Wars 2

I do hope ANet actually sees this. As we’re all aware, the upcoming change to crit damage -> ferocity is slated to decrease the damage dealt by berserker characters by about 10%.

This includes non-critical hits and is extremely problematic not for berserker builds, but for precision builds.

A character running high precision for 100% crit chance, or pretty much any given thief ever, will suffer immensely from this patch. When one calculates the damage loss by berserker builds and accounts for expected ferocity scaling, the expected crit damage reduction on any given critical hit will range from 20 to 30%.

A 20 to 30 percent damage reduction on critical strikes.

So berserkers actually benefit the most of all armor/stat combinations running crit damage. Assassin’s on the other hand, the already-underwhelming set for crit strikes, proves to be made absolutely worthless. An assassin-gear player will see a minimum 18% damage reduction whereas the berserker will expect 10%.

And of course this also means any class reliant on crits will also be negatively affected. Notably, the backstab thief. The reduction in critical damage now strips a stab thief of 20% of his damage due to the instant-critical effect. What does this mean? It means thieves running stab builds will now be FORCED from running valkyrie/celestial sets for survivability into… you guessed it, berserker, with the executioner trait, as there’s almost no point in stabbing for significantly less damage.

I do not understand the implementation of this patch. As it stands, the PvP and WvW scenes are flooded with condi players. Why is this patch reaching WvW when the problem solely resides in PvE? Why were different measures, such as buffing the base toughness of mobs, implementing new buffs to reduce critical damage, putting in a minimum dungeon completion timer, or giving individual players their own condition stack on monsters and bosses not taken?

The intention is good in regards to trying to get rid of the berserker speedrun, but ultimately this implementation solves nothing except makes berserker sets the ONLY viable option for damage classes to use, while simply placing any non-condition builds into “useless” tier in WvW.

ANet, PLEASE do not implement this change, or do so with immense refinement that does not screw over anyone running precision or critical-damage-based builds.

Anet is almost always achieving the opposite of what their intention was when they do a balance patch.

When they nerfed the bunker ele and RTL/Mist Form they forced all eles to spend more points in water.

On this new patch it will be the same, I will ask for a refund for all my celestial gear and replace it with berserker gear.

At the moment, I’m wondering how sigil changes will affect the value of Precision. They could possibly help to cancel out the negative repercussions that Valk/Assassin’s/Celestial will eat with this change.

I do think that changing the crit damage is a good idea but doing it in a vacuum will def cause problems with condi bunkers so that sucks and hopefully they’re paying attention and will maybe change something there too. I dunno \o/

It just bothers me that these people are in charge of a game with worldwide renown and yet they fail to recognize such obvious side effects of major gameplay changes, nor do they consider the outcome for WvW players. Consequently, there are likely easier implementations from a developer/IT perspective due to the immense amount of effort it will take to convert the values and of course, assume that they allow players to refund the stat on the berserker/crit items they currently possess.

DeceiverX.8361:

Consequently, there are likely easier implementations from a developer/IT perspective due to the immense amount of effort it will take to convert the values and of course, assume that they allow players to refund the stat on the berserker/crit items they currently possess.

I doubt it’ll actually be too hard to convert Crit Damage % to Ferocity, at least on gear. Check the item rarity/level, convert it to the appropriate value. Since it always operates as a secondary stat except on Celestial, you only need to have a few numbers in system; the item level algorithm and the rarity modifier.

Offering refunds for gear is already very doable in the structure they have. They gave stat swaps for MF spreads, after all- The tech’s already there.

While it’s possible, yes, and I’m aware they did it with MF, and the system exists 24/7 for legendaries, the DB updating can be strenuous on hardware, and from my knowledge there were plenty of players who experienced problems with the MF gear stat change. Additionally, we’re dealing with new code and systems, not just converting to existing ones. The amount of development effort is more than updating MF or adjusting the DB on mob toughness values, or allowing stacks of condis on a given mob. Moreover, dungeon minimum timers are also an extremely easy problem to solve and would require almost no effort or implementation aside from a check based on time differences before the final cutscene/chest may appear. Seeing as the events are scripted, throwing in an additional condition and an extra variable shouldn’t be difficult.

The problem is all those alternatives, regardless of how well they would solve the problem, require more work and testing than simply nerfing zerkers.

After over a year and a half I can say with confidence that (the GW2) Anet almost always opts for the “sweep it under the rug/bandaid” fix rather than substantive retools of game mechanics to solve problems.

They could have put in randomly generated alternatives to the scripted mobs in dungeons that had low life but massive armor to make conditions viable or boss fights that were a large group of mobs rather than one so you couldn’t just dodge telegraphed attacks to survive to make PVT attractive. Those, however, require a lot more work than just reducing zerk’s dps potential.

I currently play the Hidden Killer, Backstab build with Valkyrie gear, aka. the build that will be hardest hit by the upcoming nerf to Crit-Damage.

And you know, fundamentally I’m ok with this. I do think damage in this came can be pushed to extremes and it’s not much fun.

But you can’t make changes like this without addressing other issues too, like excessive bunkering and massive condition spam.

90% of players are already running -Condition duration food in WvW and for good reason. They are far too abundant and easy to apply while still being ridiculously powerful unless countered by massive condition cleanse.

THIS is something that needs to be fixed. Just nerfing Crit-damage without further adjustments is going to make things worse, not better.

just another proof anet has no idea what is going on in wvw/pvp

Dee Jay.2460:

I currently play the Hidden Killer, Backstab build with Valkyrie gear, aka. the build that will be hardest hit by the upcoming nerf to Crit-Damage.

And you know, fundamentally I’m ok with this. I do think damage in this came can be pushed to extremes and it’s not much fun.

But you can’t make changes like this without addressing other issues too, like excessive bunkering and massive condition spam.

90% of players are already running -Condition duration food in WvW and for good reason. They are far too abundant and easy to apply while still being ridiculously powerful unless countered by massive condition cleanse.

THIS is something that needs to be fixed. Just nerfing Crit-damage without further adjustments is going to make things worse, not better.

Conds are strong in sPvP and solo-small group roaming. In larger groups the conds just get wiped too fast. You won’t see any change in the large scale stuffs. You won’t see any change in sPvP (they find crit dmg already balanced there). PvE will still be a zerkfest. The only place you’ll see any change will be solo/small group WvW.

That’s a hen/egg problem. People stack massive conditions counters because conditions are so abundant, easily applied and powerful.

Make conditions less so and people will stack less counters because other choices become more attractive.

Xillllix.3485:

On this new patch it will be the same, I will ask for a refund for all my celestial gear and replace it with berserker gear.

Good luck with that! :P
(It says in the EULA that they are free to change the game as they wish and you explicitly agree to at most terminate your consumption of it. Or at least it should, all MMOs state that. Which makes sense, because otherwise exactly this would happen with every nerf.)

Dee Jay.2460:

Make conditions less so and people will stack less counters because other choices become more attractive.

True, but then Berserker needs even more nerfs. And it does, combat is way too fast in anything but 1v1.

Whether or not some people believe berserker needs a nerf or not is irrelevant, though. The bottom line is that this nerf doesn’t make any sense.

OP is confused I think.

crits still have a baseline of 150% damage with 0 ferocity.

the builds that stack the most ferocity obviously lose the most

It has been argued that gearing to 100% crit rate by mixing assassin/zerker is stronger than full zerker already; and will lose slightly less than full zerker itself.

ens.9854:

OP is confused I think.

crits still have a baseline of 150% damage with 0 ferocity.

the builds that stack the most ferocity obviously lose the most

It has been argued that gearing to 100% crit rate by mixing assassin/zerker is stronger than full zerker already; and will lose slightly less than full zerker itself.

I’m sorry, but how exactly does this information pertain to the subject, and what exactly are you arguing? Base critical damage likely isn’t changing. Ferocity is supplemental. You admit that crit damage/precision builds deal better DPS, yet then state they end up better than berserker builds after this change. Seeing as I just explained why they end up facing a bigger reduction, which you admit to, how do they continue to have better numbers afterwards?

Why is the target berserker armor in particular and why is this change actually useful aside from hindering speedrunning and downleveling (who cares?)? It’s just not logical.

I hope refunds aren’t just limited to exotic/ascended gear with crit damage and extends to all ascended gear period. Unlike when magic find was changed, I can’t just go and buy/make new weapons on whim.

I won’t jump to conclusions, but Anet’s track record seems to point towards plenty of ascended gear becoming useless in the next month or two.

Dee Jay.2460:

That’s a hen/egg problem. People stack massive conditions counters because conditions are so abundant, easily applied and powerful.

Make conditions less so and people will stack less counters because other choices become more attractive.

And there’s the paradoxic of strong conditions indirectly boosting power builds. More condition threat → more condition counter in builds → less power counters in builds → more threat from power builds

Strong conditions keep people from escalating builds into a power-only ‘arms-race’.

Exactly. Condis are weak when cleansed, but isn’t that the point? Condis are actually one of the few things in this game that are countered by builds and not by player skill.

Of course, this also means that condis counter builds which do not build to counter them. Condis are the WvW meta right now BECAUSE they can so easily be applied by multiple people and each person lacks a number of clears to remove all conditions from themself for an extended period of time. Because they’re so spammable and ignore toughness, builds are forced into hard-countering conditions because it’s the only way to deal with them.

So what simply needs to happen is allow per-player stacking on mobs/bosses to accommodate for the slower runs condi builds face, and all problems are solved. Simply, the ferocity change fails to actually accomplish any of the gameplay resolutions it is attempting to and makes gameplay worse for everyone not running condition damage.

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

stacking warriors isn’t the best tactic for pve, not by a long shot

guanlongwucaii.3162:

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

stacking warriors isn’t the best tactic for pve, not by a long shot

Absolutely warrior is best in nothing well except mobility. The only difference is they are not terrible in anything they could use some buffs to be on par with the other professions.

tom.7468:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

stacking warriors isn’t the best tactic for pve, not by a long shot

Absolutely warrior is best in nothing well except mobility. The only difference is they are not terrible in anything they could use some buffs to be on par with the other professions.

…What?
I assume you have yet to run, well, any dungeons at all, let alone high-level ones, or even used the LFG tool, or you would have had to notice all of the groups demanding berserker warriors.
It’s not really about how much DPS they do, though they are only fourth in that regard (behind Elementalists, Mesmers, and then just barely behind Guardians), it’s about how little they have to sacrifice comparatively to reach close to optimal DPS.

This is pretty much exactly how Warriors seem to be intended to play. They aren’t the best if you are completely used to the content and have a perfect group, but for many players they will perform vastly better due to their ease of use. This is the definition of low-skillcap, in that easy-to-use builds should be less powerful than more punishing ones. So no, warriors do not need a buff.
It is a somewhat different story in sPvP, where very often the best builds are not the highest skillcap ones, but that is a different topic.

Warrior have best sustained damage in game unless you consider easy mobs/golems…..

Elementalist dps is situational, lack sustain and its unlikely to be used at his fullest:
Ex:
Hammer, you are just cut away from ANY defensive skills, and your subpar long CD utilities won t keep you alive.
FGS….Do you like being oneshot while locked in an attack longer than a reaction window of the infamous 1shot Attacks? also same issue as hammer.
Staff: who is gonna keep the target still on the fire aoe? not the ele facetanking for sure.
TL:DR Ele needs a guardian and WARRIORS to do any dps

Mesmer:
Has potential to be the top dps in a long fight….the potential is purely theoretical since it requires a boss with AI so bad to be unable to kill phantasms…..there are a couple. and they are so easy that DPS is not an issue.

Warriors:
1) can survive most things oneshotting any other profession
2) the low CD gives them unpaired sustained damage with no effort
3) lot of invulnerabilities
4) if you add their offensive support to the overall damage they top any profession
5) the ress banner is an insult to other profession being nerfed in the SAME skills (ele and Others used to ress npcs and be more useful…ele in particular was boonsmithered….).

P.S. also stacking warriors is meta, sometimes people wants 1 or rarely 2 gardians, but even in those situational content where other profession would be better, people still asks for only warriors (even AC now).

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

You should replace the word warrior with a guardian. Warrior is easy to play as a glass cannon but in the harder content (high scales fractals) guardian is infinitely better to have.

haviz.1340:

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

You should replace the word warrior with a guardian. Warrior is easy to play as a glass cannon but in the harder content (high scales fractals) guardian is infinitely better to have.

Well yes, but that goes along with the skillcap balance. By the time you are running the hardest dungeons, you generally have gained enough knowledge and experience to lose the high passive defensive abilities that warriors innately have in favor of active defenses and team strategies that other classes have.
It works like this: if you throw a top-end PvE class/build at a group of new players, or even moderately seasoned ones, they will most likely wipe, because they won’t be able to handle the timing of group buffs and won’t have enough knowledge of the encounters. However, throw them a few warriors and a guardian (the more tanky kind) or two and it will become vastly easier for them, because they will be able to optimize the limited strategies available to them pretty easily.
At a certain point, though, players get used to the content enough that they can run more powerful, albeit harder to play, teams and classes. The reward for this is that you gain faster runs with greater power, but it comes with a high expectation for player experience.
Again, this is PvE, things are vastly different in sPvP.

LordByron.8369:

Warrior have best sustained damage in game unless you consider easy mobs/golems…..

Elementalist dps is situational, lack sustain and its unlikely to be used at his fullest:
Ex:
Hammer, you are just cut away from ANY defensive skills, and your subpar long CD utilities won t keep you alive.
FGS….Do you like being oneshot while locked in an attack longer than a reaction window of the infamous 1shot Attacks? also same issue as hammer.
Staff: who is gonna keep the target still on the fire aoe? not the ele facetanking for sure.
TL:DR Ele needs a guardian and WARRIORS to do any dps

Mesmer:
Has potential to be the top dps in a long fight….the potential is purely theoretical since it requires a boss with AI so bad to be unable to kill phantasms…..there are a couple. and they are so easy that DPS is not an issue.

Warriors:
1) can survive most things oneshotting any other profession
2) the low CD gives them unpaired sustained damage with no effort
3) lot of invulnerabilities
4) if you add their offensive support to the overall damage they top any profession
5) the ress banner is an insult to other profession being nerfed in the SAME skills (ele and Others used to ress npcs and be more useful…ele in particular was boonsmithered….).

P.S. also stacking warriors is meta, sometimes people wants 1 or rarely 2 gardians, but even in those situational content where other profession would be better, people still asks for only warriors (even AC now).

again basing meta off PUGs. warriors are easy and it’s easier to find a warrior with half a brain (at least putting down banners) than a guard/ele/etc with a brain. but in organised groups warrior stacking is slower dps in most cases. people just run warriors because they are lazy and warriors are easy, not because they’re most efficient.

I never had trouble with mobs moving off lava font when the whole party is meleeing, maybe you should stop running with bad PUGs who range things? eles don’t need guard to do DPS, lava font + LH = might&fury. and a warrior is more than enough to carry both banners – I don’t see why you bring them up since warriors are as essential to maximising ele DPS as they are to maximising any other class DPS.

eles are squishy but groups with them kill bosses fast enough that they minimise damage taken, and in a good group other classes can also help provide blocks/blind/condi cleanse. even eles can do some of this with glyph of storms etc. I’m not defending the fact that ele is very gimmicky and pretty weak outside of conjures and fire staff but for the time being they are very strong in the pve meta.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Well yes, but that goes along with the skillcap balance. By the time you are running the hardest dungeons, you generally have gained enough knowledge and experience to lose the high passive defensive abilities that warriors innately have in favor of active defenses and team strategies that other classes have.
It works like this: if you throw a top-end PvE class/build at a group of new players, or even moderately seasoned ones, they will most likely wipe, because they won’t be able to handle the timing of group buffs and won’t have enough knowledge of the encounters. However, throw them a few warriors and a guardian (the more tanky kind) or two and it will become vastly easier for them, because they will be able to optimize the limited strategies available to them pretty easily.
At a certain point, though, players get used to the content enough that they can run more powerful, albeit harder to play, teams and classes. The reward for this is that you gain faster runs with greater power, but it comes with a high expectation for player experience.
Again, this is PvE, things are vastly different in sPvP.

You can go play high-end content with newbies with 1-2 guardians and then with 0 guardians. The difference is night and day and it’s not because guardians are easy or hard to play. It’s because they bring too much for very little input.

Any average guardian is able to rotate aegis and reflections that give you so much defense you can easily faceroll through most of the content without paying much attention.

What should be done is to increase the skill cap of guardians by significantly decreasing uptime and duration of aegis and reflections so that timely usage of them is promoted, instead of rotations.

Why aegis (active block) lasts 20 seconds (and that can be increased even further with boon duration) while almost every other active block (riposte, counterblow, etc) lasts usually 2 seconds? Instead of using it just before attack hits, like in the case of other blocks, you can simply re-use aegis after the previous one was removed because there’s virtually no punishment for doing so (you will get hit in 20 seconds).

Any class, without guardians, while running glass cannon builds, is extremely squishy in high-end content. One mistake and more than half of your party might be downed. And the myth of “killing the bosses in 20s before they can even use their attacks” is completely false there and running glass cannons without guardians actually is harder than playing tanky and sustainable builds.

I still fail to understand the logic behind this decision. The stats are perfect as they are atm (well, almost perfect) you have sets for healing and tanking that work, but if you want to speedrun, you can!
Yes, most people are running berserker’s and doing great, but imho, seeing a guardian with cleric gear is a breath of fresh air, and i even remember a guardian with soldier gear saving our arah run (he tanked the kitten ed thing, while downed, without support form anyone else, for a full minute).
People want to speedrun, and they will always take the best dps gear to do that and THAT’S PERFECTLY OK!!
nerfing berserker’s will just make condis even better in pvp than they currently are (which i as a berserker mesmer really do not want).
This change helps abcolutely nobody except for condi wvw players, and EVERYONE will still be runing full berserker’s in dungeons because it is still the fastest way to get through it and it will be until dungeon mechanics are fully changed.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

again basing meta off PUGs. warriors are easy and it’s easier to find a warrior with half a brain (at least putting down banners) than a guard/ele/etc with a brain.

This is a myth…
The issue is how easy guards and wars are…
Kohler and spider queen to talk about easy bosses can down an ele in few NORMAL Attacks…the same Attacks that i read some of you “hitting like wet noodles”.
A single necro/ele veteran/elite attack could mean Death for an ele (in PVE….).

but in organised groups warrior stacking is slower dps in most cases.

Not really…the banner does the same stuff and in many speedruns, the path is so fast that an ele can t keep up with cooldowns…that means being uneffective at 50% encounters.

While in High level fractal ele has to run more defensive stuff like focus…
(at that point their dps falls drastically)

you should stop running with bad PUGs who range things? eles don’t need guard to do DPS, lava font + LH = might&fury

Its not about ranging, is about dying while you attack if you haven t a decent guardian….
(and before anyone thinks of writing learn to play, math with reaction Windows and aftercast will just prove it wrong).

But the point again is:
Anet has to develop for the masses….at least the masses of average competent PUGS.

You are the 0,1% playing a mmorpg like a NON massive multyplayer…your exception is less important than the mass.

eles are squishy but groups with them kill bosses fast enough that they minimise damage taken

Lack of stability, invulnerability and condition cleanse (IN DPS BUILDS) makes an ele useless without a good guardian….warrior is the jack and master of all trades….doesn t need support except for some antiprojectile in few situations…

Etc etc etc.

If they don t fix the guardians and warriors pve issue, stacking and berserker equipment will go on forever.

If few players will be able to stack with 5 eles and be efficient….good for them, they deserve it…

The only way to get anet to change their mind is a absolute boycott of their game until they remove it. On the other hand, people won’t do it because they will just simply switch to their next option, condition damage.

In any case, I don’t think I want to play the game until the devs start reading the forums. (We all know how WvW season 1 turned out.)

warrior is the best damage in dungeons when taking both boss fights and corner stacking into account. Thief is better dps for bosses only but lacks solid cleave. Mesmers are taken for reflects and not their dps.

LordByron.8369:

While in High level fractal ele has to run more defensive stuff like focus…
(at that point their dps falls drastically)

:)

You are the 0,1% playing a mmorpg like a NON massive multyplayer…your exception is less important than the mass.

Yes, in mmos you should be forbidden from joining guilds, forming them and finding new virtual friends. Or that’s the stuff for 0,1% of the playerbase.

Ferocity is not implemented as a measure to nerf zerkers, it is implemented in order to avoid power creep with gear progress (full ascended gear give too much critical damage %…), as raw percentage have very steep linear graph.
stats can have a curve etc that will allow anet to introduce new armors (for example armor with main stat ferocity etc)

haviz.1340:

LordByron.8369:

While in High level fractal ele has to run more defensive stuff like focus…
(at that point their dps falls drastically)

:)

You are the 0,1% playing a mmorpg like a NON massive multyplayer…your exception is less important than the mass.

Yes, in mmos you should be forbidden from joining guilds, forming them and finding new virtual friends. Or that’s the stuff for 0,1% of the playerbase.

1) using focus and equipping a focus, stacking might and then fighting with conjured weapons is a different thing

2) you can but at that point you are less important compared to pugs in balancing.

P.S. and also i doubt more than 0,1% players are in PVE elite guilds

LordByron.8369:

1) using focus and equipping a focus, stacking might and then fighting with conjured weapons is a different thing

Who said anything about conjures? How many times do I need to explain that you can use dagger mainhand with similar dps potential as lh?

2) you can but at that point you are less important compared to pugs in balancing.

P.S. and also i doubt more than 0,1% players are in PVE elite guilds

So only elite pve guild members play with their guildmates? Rest of the community forms guilds and finds new virtual friends just to pug.

tom.7468:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

stacking warriors isn’t the best tactic for pve, not by a long shot

Absolutely warrior is best in nothing well except mobility. The only difference is they are not terrible in anything they could use some buffs to be on par with the other professions.

Let’s summarize the standart dungeonteam: 1 Guardian, 1 Elementalist or Mesmer and 3 to 4 Warriors.

• Guard for protection, stability, might, reflects while either dealing pretty high damage or tanking like a madman.
• Elementsalist for summoned weapons, conditionremove and might.
• Mesmer for reflects, timewarp, portals, conditionremove and boondoubling.
• Warrior for damage.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

• Warrior for damage.

+ offensive support
+ ressing
+ NPC ressing
+ some neat situational tricks (ascalon fractal, taumanova fractal, and many more)
+ best jumps for “skipping”
+ PUGproof
+ offensive debuff
+ defensive if needed
+ might stacking pre battle
+ invulnerabilities
+ best selfhealing

Well i may have missed some…..

Giardian you forgot:
- healing, dps, Aegis, regen the only small weakpoint warrior and guards have (see ranged combat) is non existent in pve.

LordByron.8369:

+ offensive support
+ ressing
+ NPC ressing
+ some neat situational tricks (ascalon fractal, taumanova fractal, and many more)
+ best jumps for “skipping”
+ PUGproof
+ offensive debuff
+ defensive if needed
+ might stacking pre battle
+ invulnerabilities
+ best selfhealing

Eles.

Another factor is that if people used their brain in creating their builds and optimized crit damage placement, but didn’t go full zerker, those characters are going to see a more drastic reduction in crit damage.

For example, if the ratio is 14 pts of ferocity to 1% crit damage, an ascended zerker ring will be reduced from 8% crit damage to 4.86% crit damage.

I expect my crit damage is going to drop from 84% to 42%. (About 11% damage reduction)

DeceiverX.8361:

ens.9854:

OP is confused I think.

crits still have a baseline of 150% damage with 0 ferocity.

the builds that stack the most ferocity obviously lose the most

It has been argued that gearing to 100% crit rate by mixing assassin/zerker is stronger than full zerker already; and will lose slightly less than full zerker itself.

I’m sorry, but how exactly does this information pertain to the subject, and what exactly are you arguing? Base critical damage likely isn’t changing. Ferocity is supplemental. You admit that crit damage/precision builds deal better DPS, yet then state they end up better than berserker builds after this change. Seeing as I just explained why they end up facing a bigger reduction, which you admit to, how do they continue to have better numbers afterwards?

Why is the target berserker armor in particular and why is this change actually useful aside from hindering speedrunning and downleveling (who cares?)? It’s just not logical.

Zerk is optimal in dungeon, no extra precision is required to hit 100% b/c ascended. You said in very first post that this change hurts precision builds more than zerk and ur just wrong. Many of the whiners are WvW players though who should mix armor but don’t.

Speed running (full zerk) is not just faster, it’s safer too.. It’s just better

I’m going to ask players to yell about class power in another thread or making their own “warrior OP” threads in another section.

This is to discuss ferocity’s affects on gameplay and raise awareness. While solutions are always good, I would like more discussion about ferocity and less loudmouthing about x class being overpowered.

Thanks.

TooBz.3065:

Another factor is that if people used their brain in creating their builds and optimized crit damage placement, but didn’t go full zerker, those characters are going to see a more drastic reduction in crit damage.

For example, if the ratio is 14 pts of ferocity to 1% crit damage, an ascended zerker ring will be reduced from 8% crit damage to 4.86% crit damage.

I expect my crit damage is going to drop from 84% to 42%. (About 11% damage reduction)

I think at 1:1400 (1:14 when using ) crit damage on ascended gear would go from 71 to 53%

This pushes direct damage down while still not solving the problem for condition damage. Do they really think that lowering the direct damage bar will be considered a proper solution when attempting to match condition damage potential?

PvE mechanics will still be child’s play. They only increase the duration of a fight while not increasing the difficulty. Congrats, you succeed at wasting more of our time in your petty attempt of PvE content.

Try to get informed about what they said about ferocity before jumping up the barricades.

frans.8092:

TooBz.3065:

Another factor is that if people used their brain in creating their builds and optimized crit damage placement, but didn’t go full zerker, those characters are going to see a more drastic reduction in crit damage.

For example, if the ratio is 14 pts of ferocity to 1% crit damage, an ascended zerker ring will be reduced from 8% crit damage to 4.86% crit damage.

I expect my crit damage is going to drop from 84% to 42%. (About 11% damage reduction)

I think at 1:1400 (1:14 when using ) crit damage on ascended gear would go from 71 to 53%

Oops, forgot trait points. Thanks. Correction, from 84 to 57%, so only a 7% net loss.

re: getting informed: I’d love to, but they haven’t released any details yet. Once they do, it will be too late to change anything, so I think it’s better to raise issues now, while they can/may do something about it.

So yea, after some thinking, I couldn’t come up with a reason why the ferocity change should hit any precision based prefix harder than berserker. The math provided by Deceiver doesn’t really nail it for me.

Could somebody explain to me why this should be the case? (indepth math preferred)

Escadin.9482:

So yea, after some thinking, I couldn’t come up with a reason why the ferocity change should hit any precision based prefix harder than berserker. The math provided by Deceiver doesn’t really nail it for me.

Could somebody explain to me why this should be the case? (indepth math preferred)

Think of it logically. Best example is assassin gear. If you are trying to maximise dps and lets assume assassin and beserker are about equal at the moment. If you reduce the crit damage on both which has a greater loss in dps? Obviously it is the gear which relies on crits more. Beserker doesnt get hit as hard because power scales up your damage when critting or not critting. But for heavy precision gear the idea is too maximise crit chance to utilitize that crit damage as much as possible. With lower crit damage, maxing precision becomes much less beneficial compared to boosting power.

Essentially with lower crit damage, precision is weighted as less important and power remains unchanged.

Nike also explains it in this video: http://youtu.be/AYX4f5pehSU

haviz.1340:

LordByron.8369:

+ offensive support
+ ressing
+ NPC ressing
+ some neat situational tricks (ascalon fractal, taumanova fractal, and many more)
+ best jumps for “skipping”
+ PUGproof
+ offensive debuff
+ defensive if needed
+ might stacking pre battle
+ invulnerabilities
+ best selfhealing

Eles.

not all at the same time so…please stop arguing for the sake of arguing….
As i said you can t have sustained damage and defense…even with dagger air 1….
Utilities are most selfish and won t let attack
Arcane shield is totally broken in PvE it doesn t even stop CC…its wonderful to see gravelings stun you with your shield still up not to mention the multyattack of many bosses will go through it.

Pretty sure my ele has all those at the same time. :P

Except glyph of renewal. No need for that.

But he was right on a thing…
Ferocity SHOULD NOT hit non zerkers ….and instead is what will happen

Once again a poorly thought nerf doing little to its target and having lot of casualties….