Guild Wars 2

I tried doing some math to see how much this ferocity change is going to effect my damage output. At first I came up with 52% crit damage on my warrior build opposed to my current 76%, which was discouraging. Then I went back and reread the changes and just wanted to clear things up.

“All armors and weapons that currently provide a critical damage bonus will be updated to provide an equivalent amount of ferocity.”

This leads me to believe that gear won’t be changed in crit damage total. An exotic chest that has 5% crit damage will have (5×15) 75 ferocity. Anet says this change is going to make the stats more universal in understanding, but adding a unique number value to accommodate crit damage in ferocity is going to change the uniform “main stat” and lower stat values on gear.

As example,
A PVT ring has —-—————— 103 power, 68 tough, 68 vitality.
A zerk ferocity ring would have 103 power, 68 prec, 120 ferocity.

Even the highest condition damage value on an asc ring is 103. I may be over thinking the issue, but I just don’t see how doing all that is going to be easier to understand than just giving us a flat percentage of crit damage.

Anet says “full berserker builds” will only be effected 10%. My first thought was the Crit % trait line will have a maximum of 20% with ferocity instead of the current 30%. There is 10% right there. Is that the only place crit damage is getting nerfed? Or will the ferocity change also slightly reduce the values of total crit damage on gear as well?

It’s 10% less dps so calculating with having for example 60% crit chance the reduction to crit damage would be about 33%, which is quite accurate. For example one with full zerk gear (no ascended armor) would be sitting at 122% crit damage (food buff included) before feature pack and would be reduced to 81% crit damage after the update.

Nope. Now ascended Accessory have extra critical damage per other stats.

You have 1 Major stat and 2 Minor stats.

Critical damage is minor stat everywhere (Berserker,Valkyrie,Cavalier,Celestial,Assassin)

They want equal stats.
PVT ring has —-—————— 103 power, 68 tough, 68 vitality.
A zerk ferocity ring would have 103 power, 68 prec, Equal like vitality 68 ferocity

So its HUGE NERF, something aroung 35-48% less in full critical damage builds with food and banner.

Gynok.1756:

It’s 10% less dps so calculating with having for example 60% crit chance the reduction to crit damage would be about 33%, which is quite accurate. For example one with full zerk gear (no ascended armor) would be sitting at 122% crit damage (food buff included) before feature pack and would be reduced to 81% crit damage after the update.

I feel like this is going to destroy any semi balanced power build, but we shall wait and see.

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

No, it’s not. Not even close.

Your effective power can be calculated like:
K * [ (1 – critchance) * 1 + critchance * ( 1.5 + critdamage) ]

For a 100% critchance and 150% critdamage, it would be 3K.
The ferocity changes brings the critdamage from 150% to about 100%, so the new effective power would be 2.5K

2.5K/3K = 0.833 —> 16.7% damage loss

And this is a quite extreme case. A 30 Air full ascended berseker / scholar ele using precision/critdamage food, affected by Banner of Discipline and Spotter, and wielding a Lightning Hammer with Arcane Lightning active is at 100%/149% (It’s possible to go higher with Ruby Orbs, but that would mean a damage loss).

Azgarn.2145:

Anet says “full berserker builds” will only be effected 10%. My first thought was the Crit % trait line will have a maximum of 20% with ferocity instead of the current 30%. There is 10% right there. Is that the only place crit damage is getting nerfed? Or will the ferocity change also slightly reduce the values of total crit damage on gear as well?

Full berserker builds were supposed to lose about a 10% final damage
This final damage also depends on the damage of noncrit hits and the 150% base damage of any crit (which doesn’t change). The loss in the critical damage bonus needs to be way higher than a 10% for this to happen.

Vargamonth.2047:

Shockwave.1230:

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

No, it’s not. Not even close.

Your effective power can be calculated like:
K * [ (1 – critchance) * 1 + critchance * ( 1.5 + critdamage) ]

For a 100% critchance and 150% critdamage, it would be 3K.
The ferocity changes brings the critdamage from 150% to about 100%, so the new effective power would be 2.5K

2.5K/3K = 0.833 —> 16.7% damage loss

And this is a quite extreme case. A 30 Air full ascended berseker / scholar ele using precision/critdamage food, affected by Banner of Discipline and Spotter, and wielding a Lightning Hammer with Arcane Lightning active is at 100%/149% (It’s possible to go higher with Ruby Orbs, but that would mean a damage loss).

That’s definitely good math there. Bad math is what I did, in that in my head I thought about the crit damage bonus in a vacuum. Always include the other variables people.

Shockwave.1230:

That’s definitely good math there. Bad math is what I did, in that in my head I thought about the crit damage bonus in a vacuum. Always include the other variables people.

I did the same thing at first :P

Although, a 10% reduction in total dps doesnt sound that bad, until you need to have that one crucial damage spike in wvw which would mean the outcome of a fight and that single blow is nerfed 33%+.

More detailed math provided here in a non-theory scenario:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/So-why-are-they-nerfing-thief-damage-again/page/2#post3685695

I created a thread on ferocity over a month ago also detailing this problem. The nerfs are heavier to thieves and precision builds than berserker builds, though.

Actually, it’s best to be playing berserker after the update. All other DPS sets unless modified will be strictly worse in all regards.

Azgarn.2145:

Gynok.1756:

It’s 10% less dps so calculating with having for example 60% crit chance the reduction to crit damage would be about 33%, which is quite accurate. For example one with full zerk gear (no ascended armor) would be sitting at 122% crit damage (food buff included) before feature pack and would be reduced to 81% crit damage after the update.

I feel like this is going to destroy any semi balanced power build, but we shall wait and see.

Indeed it is going to. Especially those builds relying on that crit damage boost of zerker trinkets which do have critical damage by far the highest stat in them compared to other gear. For example a ascended ring now has a 8% crit damage bonus and will be reduced to 68 ferocity after patch (equals to ~4,5% crit damage). A knights armor + zerk trinket (ascended) setup would be suffering critical damage bonus reduction of 19 percentage points and addition to that trait line and buff food will be facing a reduction of 14 percentage points (30 in critical damage line).

The 10% reduction probably factors in two things:

• Not everyone is running optimized builds. Us talking here about it makes us the top 5%, so imagine most players even running “full berserker builds”, are far from the optimum and play far from the optimum so their stat loss is a really minor thing.
• Far from all outgoing damage can crit.