Guild Wars 2

I don’t think no one have asked this question in the forums or at least i haven’t see the subject been bough to light. How will the coming Berserker changes affect rangers? I mean classes like warriors do lot o damage we all know that, a reduction in 10% crit damage might not be much but what about rangers?

I might be wrong but our damage is lower than other classes by a wide margin and now a 10% reduction in critical dmg, doesn’t this change once again affect the ranger more than any other class?

Its not a 10% critical damage reduction, its a net ~10% drop in DPS IF you are FULL zerker. Also, rangers are best played (my opinion) as a hybrid damage class; condi + direct damage.

A ranger’s damage isn’t that low relative to any other class once you factor the pet’s damage into the equation. While consistent pet hits can be problematic in PvP, in PvE this isn’t really an issue (only pet survival is.)

Whether or not it hurts our direct damage DPS more than another class’s depends entirely on how the change affects pets. If pets keep their current critical hit percentages, then rangers(as a class) will probably see a smaller drop in direct damage relative to other classes. If pet stats are affected, it will probably break even with other classes.This is due to how a ranger’s damage is split with their pet.

Pet’s don’t have Critical Damage to start with (they start at 0 crit damage, which right now is 50% increase in damage on critical hits (I should also note that many calculations on the forums tend to ignore the fact that you deal 50% increased damage on critical hits by default)), and I doubt that Anet is going to give them Ferocity, they will most likely start with 0.

The part where pets might suffer is in the Pet’s Prowess trait, which gives pets 30% crit damage (for a total of an 80% increase in damage on Critical hits). If only that gets affected, and Anet does nerf crit damage by 10% as they are promising, then the increase in Crit damage would be only 27% instead of 30. (10% of 30 is 3)

Adding 50%(original damage increase) with 27% = 77%

if you divided that….77/80 = 96.25%. So, about a 4% decrease in overall damage from citical hits. Pets with alot of power with little precision (like Canines) won’t even be affected by this. In this case, Rangers will actually be better off than most classes because pets don’t rely on critical damage as much as players do, but its also assuming that critical hits still deal +50% damage by default.

………….

However, if Anet gives it a stat increase like how other pet traits work (a 350 point increase), and they make Ferocity scale in the same way as Precision (21 points equals 1% crit damage), then 350 points will result in only a 16.6% increase in critical damage.

Adding the 50% you get by default at 0 crit damage, and assuming it stays that way……(50 + 16.6), you get 67% increased damage on critical hits, rounded up. This new number divided by 80 (the old maximum damage increase from crit hits), puts you at 83.75%….a 17% decrease.

In this case, then Rangers do infact suffer more.

We won’t know for sure until the balance patch comes though.

We might get lucky and they will over stack the Ferocity on Pet’s Prowess for a couple of days.

Ouch. Rangers pet getting nerfed as well from crit dmg change?

More than likely, but only if the ranger is using the Pet’s Prowess trait.

I think the current default 0 crit dmg = 50% crit dmg is getting reworked as well since theyre changing the entire crit formula tho. I hope theyll compensate non-zerker ranger builds. Itd be cool if they add 2ndary stats to pet stats as well, that would make traiting into BM worthwhile again.

Yeah… I’m not looking forward to the 10% reduction in overall damage from pure DPS builds. I was planning on putting my Ranger back into a pure DPS build and it’ll be 10% less effective than it was before the last time I ran it in November. Yay.

And yes, 10% is noticeable. I’d notice 10% more body fat. I’d notice 10% more hair on my head. I’d notice 10% more money in my bank account. I’d notice 10% more top speed on my motorcycle. You better believe I’m going to notice 10% more time to kill the same hsit I was killing before with my DPS builds.

kiwituatara.6053:

I think the current default 0 crit dmg = 50% crit dmg is getting reworked as well since theyre changing the entire crit formula tho. I hope theyll compensate non-zerker ranger builds. Itd be cool if they add 2ndary stats to pet stats as well, that would make traiting into BM worthwhile again.

If that’s the case, it might make some more unconventional builds worthless then, like this magi build that I will run with in WvW for no other reason than to do something a little different for a change.

edit : slight alteration for boon sharing with pet.

They will reduce the effectiveness of increased crit damage you can get, the default 50% crit damage will keep the same.

Pets will only be affected if you have points in BM, and even so it will be barely noticeable since the points you get from BM isn’t that high.

The only doubt I have is about Honed Axes, currently it gives 10% crit damage, after the update it will give an amount of Ferocity enough for 10% crit damage or they will give 150 Ferocity like all stat trait or maybe another thing … who knows?

I’m mostly (~70%) zerker and not liking the sound of this (obviously). It can be very difficult to impossible to down some regen bunker builds already.

What is the justification behind the nerf? If there are specific abilities that are doing too much damage look at those, blanket nerfs are generally not a good thing!

Can someone post a link to where this is presented?

Kilger.5490:

I’m mostly (~70%) zerker and not liking the sound of this (obviously). It can be very difficult to impossible to down some regen bunker builds already.

What is the justification behind the nerf? If there are specific abilities that are doing too much damage look at those, blanket nerfs are generally not a good thing!

Can someone post a link to where this is presented?

From my understanding, in PvE the meta is zerker gear because you kill the mobs faster then the mob’s able to dish any damage on you. Anet doesn’t want the meta, or everyone to be on zerker, so in order to make all the other build’s ‘look’ better, they are nerfing zerker build. It’s the same kitten they did with longbow and shortbow, in order to make the longbow look better, they nerfed the shortbow. Same kitten, different flavor.

Rangers will be hit the least by this because rangers benefit the least from going full zerker. Rangers (as others have mentioned) get the most out of their hybrid damage builds because condis get full scaling and we have easy applications of all of them but confusion and torment, and power is nice, but we kinda get kitten by the whole “pet tax” (god knows why this is even there since condi builds completely ignore it).

Not to mention zerker builds sorta favor burst because it’s “do or die” and rangers are lacking in burst… Granted we make up for it in leaps and bounds in the steady DPS department.

Long story short, our power builds aren’t as 1337 as the warrior ones so a 10% damage increase across the board will hit us less than a warrior, ESPECIALLY since X% of our damage is tied to our pet who in most builds has 0 crit damage and is thus unaffected.

Durzlla.6295:

Rangers will be hit the least by this because rangers benefit the least from going full zerker. Rangers (as others have mentioned) get the most out of their hybrid damage builds because condis get full scaling and we have easy applications of all of them but confusion and torment, and power is nice, but we kinda get kitten by the whole “pet tax” (god knows why this is even there since condi builds completely ignore it).

Not to mention zerker builds sorta favor burst because it’s “do or die” and rangers are lacking in burst… Granted we make up for it in leaps and bounds in the steady DPS department.

Long story short, our power builds aren’t as 1337 as the warrior ones so a 10% damage increase across the board will hit us less than a warrior, ESPECIALLY since X% of our damage is tied to our pet who in most builds has 0 crit damage and is thus unaffected.

Your premise is based on a hybrid build, why do you draw conclusions about a zerk build from that? I do perfectly fine as a zerk heavy build, its what my weapons (ascended btw a lot of work) and trinkets (also ascended) are based around. I dont use conditions aside from immob/cripple/vuln (non-damage) and havent been wanting for them. This is a game in progress, I have already invested a LOT of time in assembling my gear, its not a reboot where we all go back to start.

From what you say it means they should leave us alone… we dont need nerf; any would be excessive. Nerf the warrior if thats where the problem is.

Kilger.5490:

Durzlla.6295:

Rangers will be hit the least by this because rangers benefit the least from going full zerker. Rangers (as others have mentioned) get the most out of their hybrid damage builds because condis get full scaling and we have easy applications of all of them but confusion and torment, and power is nice, but we kinda get kitten by the whole “pet tax” (god knows why this is even there since condi builds completely ignore it).

Not to mention zerker builds sorta favor burst because it’s “do or die” and rangers are lacking in burst… Granted we make up for it in leaps and bounds in the steady DPS department.

Long story short, our power builds aren’t as 1337 as the warrior ones so a 10% damage increase across the board will hit us less than a warrior, ESPECIALLY since X% of our damage is tied to our pet who in most builds has 0 crit damage and is thus unaffected.

Your premise is based on a hybrid build, why do you draw conclusions about a zerk build from that? I do perfectly fine as a zerk heavy build, its what my weapons (ascended btw a lot of work) and trinkets (also ascended) are based around. I dont use conditions aside from immob/cripple/vuln (non-damage) and havent been wanting for them. This is a game in progress, I have already invested a LOT of time in assembling my gear, its not a reboot where we all go back to start.

From what you say it means they should leave us alone… we dont need nerf; any would be excessive. Nerf the warrior if thats where the problem is.

What are you talking about? I never said zerker ranger is bad or anything it’s just DIFFERENT from a zerker thief or warrior, it’s not burst reliant, and it has a “pet tax” so direct damage doesn’t scale as well as condi does (god knows why), rangers still deal an insanely high amount of consistent damage between them and their pet and of you’re full zerker using a cat? You’re probably out DPSing that warrior, ESPECIALLY if you’ve got companions might on.

I’m just saying since a very large chunk of our damage (our pet) doesn’t even use crit damage we are getting nerfed less than the guys who put all their eggs in one basket. Crit damage got nerfed so naturally that nerfs all builds that use crit damage , however just like with quickness we got nerfed the least and it actually brings us up because of it.

Before anyone pulls the bullkitten argument of “oh we were more reliant on quickness!” Ranger builds still used/use quickness a lot, the warrior and thief meta builds that used it? All dead, every last one of them.

NemesiS.6749:

I don’t think no one have asked this question in the forums or at least i haven’t see the subject been bough to light. How will the coming Berserker changes affect rangers? I mean classes like warriors do lot o damage we all know that, a reduction in 10% crit damage might not be much but what about rangers?

I might be wrong but our damage is lower than other classes by a wide margin and now a 10% reduction in critical dmg, doesn’t this change once again affect the ranger more than any other class?

Their dps isn’t lower by a wide margin. People’s problem is they don’t build them properly. Mine geared for full damage matched up against my warrior and necro geared for all out damage, out dps’s them by a 25% margin in both burst and sustained.

The zerker changes however I think hurt the ranger more because from my experience, they are best in full zerker gear. I’ve tried all the builds, and they really pale in comparison.

With the changes to the sigils however in being able to put 2 on a 2hander weapon, it possibly might make our overall dps go up. I ran the fire sigil for quite sometime before putting on the one with a 5% damage boost. Now the fire sigil + 5% damage boost or possibly fire + air sigil, with it’s 100% proc chance on crit, could very well pump our dps way up.

Im not sure what to think about the changes at the moment, so i’ll wait until I tinker with the sigils before deciding whether I don’t like the changes.

Durzlla.6295:

What are you talking about? I never said zerker ranger is bad or anything it’s just DIFFERENT from a zerker thief or warrior, it’s not burst reliant, and it has a “pet tax” so direct damage doesn’t scale as well as condi does (god knows why), rangers still deal an insanely high amount of consistent damage between them and their pet and of you’re full zerker using a cat? You’re probably out DPSing that warrior, ESPECIALLY if you’ve got companions might on.

You implied rangers were ok since we have access to condi damage, where I said that zerk ranger was a valid route that many of us go too, and hence are very affected by this unmitigated.

Now why do you believe burst is the only way to dps? Steady dps is affected by the same measures being proposed in equal measure. Cat doesnt survive two seconds in zerg wvw or help with keep warfare, so pet damage isnt something I am concerned with.

Kilger.5490:

Durzlla.6295:

What are you talking about? I never said zerker ranger is bad or anything it’s just DIFFERENT from a zerker thief or warrior, it’s not burst reliant, and it has a “pet tax” so direct damage doesn’t scale as well as condi does (god knows why), rangers still deal an insanely high amount of consistent damage between them and their pet and of you’re full zerker using a cat? You’re probably out DPSing that warrior, ESPECIALLY if you’ve got companions might on.

You implied rangers were ok since we have access to condi damage, where I said that zerk ranger was a valid route that many of us go too, and hence are very affected by this unmitigated.

Now why do you believe burst is the only way to dps? Steady dps is affected by the same measures being proposed in equal measure. Cat doesnt survive two seconds in zerg wvw or help with keep warfare, so pet damage isnt something I am concerned with.

If you’ve seen any of my builds you’d know that i think burst is stupidly useless in this game, way too easy to mitigate because people can just hit dodge.

The rest of the playerbase thinks differently than that though and seem to be under the delusions that Burst is end all be all.

And you don’t need to use cats i very rarely use them, i normally stick with Canines which i have not yet a single issue with in keep/zerg warfare, just keep your pet out of the fight unless the front lines have clashed, normally keeps my pet up in WvW and still allows him to run around being a monster.

A 10 percent drop will mean we’re 90% as effective. Likewise a warrior would be 90% as effective. Answer, we’ll be hit equally hard as other classes, Zerk will still be king in PvE and in 1 month most will not care as that will be the new reality.

the 10% are overall, the war lose about 3%, ranger about 10%…

I seriously just can’t wait to read their reasoning behind this DPS nerf. God, every single time I read update notes or previews I just sit there and laugh. So many things have been identified as core issues of design and need addressing for well over a year and none of it gets touched meanwhile, “OMG my fellow Devs, we need to fix critical damage! It’s breaking our game!” gets the spotlight? ANet has become such a joke over the past year it really isn’t even funny anymore.

Castaliea.3156:

I seriously just can’t wait to read their reasoning behind this DPS nerf. God, every single time I read update notes or previews I just sit there and laugh. So many things have been identified as core issues of design and need addressing for well over a year and none of it gets touched meanwhile, “OMG my fellow Devs, we need to fix critical damage! It’s breaking our game!” gets the spotlight? ANet has become such a joke over the past year it really isn’t even funny anymore.

They’re nerfing the damage because everyone being DPS is too strong in PvE, it literally trivializes fights and ignores entire fight mechanics, the devs (as one would imagine) don’t like this so they’re trying to nerf down DPS builds as a whole and bring support and control builds up, which is why all the heals we were given are very supporty/ tanky oriented (with the exception of the guardians), and why support stuff is getting added/buffed every balance patch.

EDIT: kitten you auto correct.

Durzlla.6295:

They’re nerfing the damage because everyone being DPS is too strong in PvE…

You know the only reason we run DPS builds in PVE is because that’s the most efficient build to run, especially in dungeons/fractals. Why is it the most efficient? Because of the core mechanics the game is built on. When you remove the trinity and content is revolving around active mitigation of damage through evades, dodges, and blocks once you learn the content there is no reason to run anything but DPS build. Not to mention I want to get content I have already run dozens and dozens of times as fast as possible… which is why I will always skip mobs when possible… especially if they don’t drop good loot (I’m looking at you dungeons). It’s why I run DPS builds on all my other toons. No reason anymore for me to run anything but … I’m lying … I do carry a few sets of PTV gear on my toons for when I’m drunk playing.

Not sure about ranger’s pet damage coefficient, seeing anything from 10 to 50, so I’ll just say 30% of our base damage comes from pet.

Whatever we are wearing does not apply to pet (wearing zerk is not getting our pets damages higher; wearing soldier is not making it longer lasting).

So, if we take the assumption
that 30% of our base DPS comes from pet,
that zerk doubles the base DPS (no idea what real increase is)

on an attack that would deal 100 base damage, 30 from the pet, 70 from the master, the attack would deal 170 (30 pet + 70 ranger + 70 crit)
Diminish crit damages by 10 % (30 pet + 70 ranger + 63 crit), means still deal 163.

take class with no pet, 100 damage is base damage.
Current crit (with same number as above) make a 200 attack.
diminish crit by 10%, make (100 base + 90 crit) makes 190 attack.

Real damage reduction for ranger would be 4.1865… %
real damage reduction on other class is 5 %

These are not any realistic calculations, since I have no idea whatever part of ranger’s DPS comes form the pet, how much increase its DPS gets in zerk.

But the mere fact that we have a pet (that basically, with no ability points in it, have no crit damage modifier) makes it so we are less hurted from this update than other classes might be…

Durzlla.6295:

Castaliea.3156:

I seriously just can’t wait to read their reasoning behind this DPS nerf. God, every single time I read update notes or previews I just sit there and laugh. So many things have been identified as core issues of design and need addressing for well over a year and none of it gets touched meanwhile, “OMG my fellow Devs, we need to fix critical damage! It’s breaking our game!” gets the spotlight? ANet has become such a joke over the past year it really isn’t even funny anymore.

They’re nerfing the damage because everyone being DPS is too strong in PvE, it literally trivializes fights and ignores entire fight mechanics, the devs (as one would imagine) don’t like this so they’re trying to nerf down DPS builds as a whole and bring support and control builds up, which is why all the heals we were given are very supporty/ tanky oriented (with the exception of the guardians), and why support stuff is getting added/buffed every balance patch.

EDIT: kitten you auto correct.

That has almost nothing to do with the DPS done by players but the complete lack of effort taken to design boss attacks, Unshakable denying the point of any control builds, support being unneeded/lack-luster, and condition play being almost jut as pointless due to a terrible stack system.

Nerfing DPS simply because one is too lazy to address the real issues eating the game is not an excuse at all.

You want to fix it?

• Give bosses smaller, weaker attacks that don’t do a lot of damage in addition to the powerful, must dodge, attacks.
  This hurts DPS groups as they can’t just sit there and sandbag the boss (which is exactly why bosses seem like such paper and therefore DPS is getting nerfed) but it doesn’t affect more sustain based builds as they can take the hits. It also encourages support builds to help negate the smaller packets of damage done by the bosses.

• Re-work Unshakable
  A huge problem was how easy it was to simply shut down bosses before. Now it’s pointless. This needs to be re-worked as to not discourage control based builds while still rendering normal shut down spam less effective. One suggestion I’ve had before was I’ve to implement a “Sundering” stat (not actually a player stat) that rates the power of control effects like Blind, Daze, Stun, Push, Launch, Pull, (PLP is Push, launch, and/or pull) etc. This allows certain types of control to only affect certain actions the boss performs.
  Ex:
  Unshakable: Blind can only be applied once every X seconds and PLP attacks take two hits within X seconds to effect the target.
  Weak attacks- All control can stop attack. (Including Blind)
  Strong attacks- Only stun, X hits of daze, 2 hits of PLP.
  Deadly attacks- Only X hits of stun.
  Special attacks- None. Dodge only.
  This encourages teamwork, smart use of control, and most importantly it does not completely discourage teams from placing emphasis on control. Naturally however world bosses would be immune to all Blind and PLP and need many more hits of control to be stopped, if they can at all. This is a more much more complex system but it takes effort to create the type of game ANet originally wanted. I don’t know if they care anymore.

• Make condition stacking on bosses more effective.
  Re-work the way bosses take condition damage so that conditions are not negated by simply applying more. This can be done by conditions applying damage instantly on contact (perhaps with a % of damage taken off for the reduced time ratio). Meanwhile the secondary effects of conditions (such as Poison) simply add the time to the existing timer. Again, more complex and takes effort but doesn’t discourage entire playstyles.

Do we see any adjustments to these systems (which are undeniably the real problem) at all? No. We see DPS get nerfed (which makes no sense in the context for the rest of the game) just to make other builds more appealing and/or bosses take longer to kill? What a joke.

Castaliea.3156:

Durzlla.6295:

Castaliea.3156:

I seriously just can’t wait to read their reasoning behind this DPS nerf. God, every single time I read update notes or previews I just sit there and laugh. So many things have been identified as core issues of design and need addressing for well over a year and none of it gets touched meanwhile, “OMG my fellow Devs, we need to fix critical damage! It’s breaking our game!” gets the spotlight? ANet has become such a joke over the past year it really isn’t even funny anymore.

They’re nerfing the damage because everyone being DPS is too strong in PvE, it literally trivializes fights and ignores entire fight mechanics, the devs (as one would imagine) don’t like this so they’re trying to nerf down DPS builds as a whole and bring support and control builds up, which is why all the heals we were given are very supporty/ tanky oriented (with the exception of the guardians), and why support stuff is getting added/buffed every balance patch.

EDIT: kitten you auto correct.

That has almost nothing to do with the DPS done by players but the complete lack of effort taken to design boss attacks, Unshakable denying the point of any control builds, support being unneeded/lack-luster, and condition play being almost jut as pointless due to a terrible stack system.

Nerfing DPS simply because one is too lazy to address the real issues eating the game is not an excuse at all.

Hey, don’t shoot the kittening messenger, i don’t think it’s a good idea, i think it would’ve been a lot better for everyone if they just made the mechanics of fights not as DPS friendly IE unavoidable damage, more enemies using protection and regen/heals (like legit heal skills that you’d need to interrupt or weaken), more retaliation etc.

Where the crit damage nerf will hit most is ascended zerker kit, particularly the trinkets. Anyone in zerker exotics will be less effected.

As for rangers, I run with ascended zerk trinkets and exotic zerk weapons and arnour. I use sword/xxx and axe/axe with cats and speced with sigils and runes to stack as much might and do as much directed damage as I can. Also, I have decent crit chance in order to proc my sigils.

I will notice the nerf in my crit damage output, I doubt I will see 6k damage on my sword auto attack anymore …

bri.2359:

Where the crit damage nerf will hit most is ascended zerker kit, particularly the trinkets. Anyone in zerker exotics will be less effected.

Part of the reason I’m glad I got off the gear treadmill.

The most exciting change is going to be with the sigils.

I hate what they’re doing with the runes since they’re nerfing runes 1-3 and buffing 4-6.

On the bright side, Ferocity sounds like something Ranger could easily earn access to in the future through some means.

Ferocity is a gear stat… so yeah. They could easily earn access by putting on gear that has the ferocity stat on it.

Pet might be able to give some, eventually?

Probably through poorly placed traits if ever.

It’ll probably be in BM, AoE Ferocity buff while your pet is up or something.

IF the problem is in PVE, then lets fix it in PVE. Leave Wvw damage alone.!!!!