Guild Wars 2

Clearly I’m missing something. There used to be a stat buff on gear/traits/etc that was “+X% Critical Damage”. Now we have ferocity which means the same thing. So, what has happened besides changing the label? It seems like crit damage was tied to precision, but now it’s not? Is that the problem? Clearly I’m not… clear, on exactly how changing _crit dam to ferocity has changed the mechanics of the game, and why it’s “bad”, or a “nerf” etc.

Thanks!

It’s minimally to somewhat (Celestial) lower in total effect. Really, nothing changed though. Situations which picked crit damage before pick ferocity now, done.

The problem was due the fact that items gave +X% crit damage, there wasnt really a system behind this, like +90 power, +60 precision, +60 ferocity now. Rings and trinkets in general gave too much crit damage compared to a weapon or an armor. So they just adapted all the items to give % the same amount of stats. You actually lost stats by not using cirt dmg jewelery.

In the end, now 15 ferocity grants 1% crit dmg, wich is a nerf to anyone playing the zerker pve meta. Before you had like 100% crit damage wich was in fact 1.5+1 = 2.5x the normal damage on crit. Now you have something like 210% listed wich is the actual number you will crit for. Base crits are 150% wich is now listed as 150% but before was listed as 0%.

Maybe a bit confusing but you got it? If no, just tell me

it is the chance of hitting critical that has changed. You have less chance of letting all that ferocity do its job.

You now have to trade off whether you want to increase your chances of critical with precision or if you want to have a lot of damage with ferocity – assassin armor vs berz armor.

Take my old roaming build from wvw – I used a GS and sword/pistol – I relied on being able to do a lot of damage quickly then dodge out of the way kiting while cool downs expire using my GS and invisibility to keep foe(s) at range… then leap back in with sword and pistol for another fast burst of damage. Attached to my sword was a sigil of torment that activated aoe torment upon critical. With only a 52% chance of achieving critical and then only a 50% chance of torment being activated… it kind of made the sigil of torment (something that was/is quite expensive to purchase) useless – like wise any other sigils that rely on critical being achieved.

Now I’ve managed to get around some of these headaches by using mantras and sigils of intelligence – but I have had to sacrifice other sigils that I had and move them around a bit to make them work. So before my GS had hobbling to stop people running away all the time… now it has sigil of intelligence for 3×100% crit, and I bought some gems to salvage my torment sigil and I place it on my GS instead of my sword. My sword now has the same sigil of intelligence 3×100% crit – so I have 6×100% crit chance from switching my weapons (9s cool down and you only have a limited time to use the crit hits). My pistol still has increased stun because that is its primary function – magic bullet (best way to kill most things).

I am using mantras atm which are difficult but give some awesome damage but I probably could get away with my old build with just the sigil changes… tbh not really given it a try yet. Been too focused on trying out the new traits and coming up with viable builds using them.

So if I understand correctly, they just renamed +X%CritDam to Ferocity, and then lowered the bonuses of ferocity on gear? So in other words, the same exact thing could have happened if they just lowered the +X%CritDam on gear and didn’t rename it?

Values are lowered, I think I lost about 15% crit on my current build.

sirrealist.1360:

So if I understand correctly, they just renamed +X%CritDam to Ferocity, and then lowered the bonuses of ferocity on gear? So in other words, the same exact thing could have happened if they just lowered the +X%CritDam on gear and didn’t rename it?

Yes. But then they had to do stuff like +4.53% crit damage and this would have been complicated I guess.

How does the relate to “precision being less important”?

Precision hasn’t changed. Its only use is determining crit chance, and crit chance hasn’t been touched at all.

What numbers you go for is going to depend on the game mode you focus on – pvp/wvw or pve, as well as your build’s strategy and tactics.

As said, ferocity is what crit damage is now derived from. Precision has nothing to do with it, and crit chance remains untouched.

Why precision could be seen as “less important” again largely depends on build and game mode.

In pve where you are repeatedly chipping away at absurdly large health pools, getting the most in resultant damage output is needed. Because the damage of crits is overall lower now than it was before , having a high base power is more important than it was before. And similarly, precision is slightly less important than it was, simply because when you crit it won’t be as hard as it used to be unless you have a high base power anyway.

In pvp/wvw, it depends on build – if you need damage in high burst spikes, then the amount of precision you need will likely remain the same as it was, although when you crit it will not deal as much damage as it used to – this is why again having a high base power (boosted by might maybe) is favourable.