Guild Wars 2

Tinnel.4369:

Almost seems to me that Anet is trying to move Berserker to a more condi spec and using Spellbreaker for the power warrior elite spec.

Then you have core that offers more choice, and quality of life features, but with less elite benefits.

No, it doesn’t. It is literally gutting an option of a playstyle in order to linearize the class even further. It is not more choice; it is less. What makes games fun is flexibility in classes. If Berserker is supposed to be a purely condi spec, why even have anything that benefits power at all? We should just strip out trait lines and put prebuilt lines that we take when we level up. All trait lines are now predefined. Let’s do what Pandaria did to WoW’s traitlines.

Hyperbole aside, removing something does not create more choice. It’s making arbitrary valleys (the nerfed builds) in order to make what’s left standing (condi) better for no real reason.

If this is to account for Spellbreaker, then it’s bad game design. There’s absolutely no reason classes should be compromised for upcoming content. If anything else it’s the upcoming content that should be adjusted around that. THAT was the problem with HoT, which I wasn’t hear for. That being said, you don’t balance old content around new content. Of course it’s not perfect; but this is an even more important issue in PVE. In PVE it hurts no one to have a variety of options even if some are overtuned.

In PVP game modes, it might make more sense to be more liberal with balancing changes. However, the problem is that Zerkers were already mediocre to worse in WVW and Power Zerkers were already trash in general, so this change ON TOP of a PVE change is more than a kick in the groin.

All of this would be easily fixed if the damage ramped up over time to compensate for the reduced power in general. Let’s look at this practically.

As of now, the current form of primal burst is nothing but a raw nerf. The 1% extra damage is miniscule and can barely be attained due to separate timer stacks.

I have two proposed changes (one of which people have already been echoing.)

First; reset the timer. At the very least, this will allow for a ramping up of damage over time instead of immediately being at maximum damage. It would live up to the Berserker title.

Second; increase the base damage bonus from primal burst. Power Berserker is already in a bad position and with bursts acting as level 1 and with separate timers, it’s nigh impossible to even attain higher damage. For example, change the damages to 10 – 18 – 26%. Not only does the damage ramp up over time, it integrates the changes that Anet made for this patch while subsequently providing power berserkers a much needed boost to sustain.

More often than not, Berserkers will not be able to sustain at higher levels as most enemies die fairly quickly; the current interation punishes ALL players severely, from raid metas to open world gameplay and enjoyment to PVP. THIS would alleviate the damage in all three as the berserker becomes more dangerous over time.

Absolutely this. This will at least enforce scaling and increasing damage against bigger enemies in longer fights without utterly compromising their strengths from before. THIS would be a step in the right direction.

Nerfing PVE builds is utterly, and absolutely pointless. All this does is increase the build diversity rift between condition and power that already exists for no good reason right now. This is a huge change that not only screws over raids and meta, it screws over regular mob play in an open world. It only reinforces more micromanging play instead of using and managing skills tactically in order to become optimal and efficient. It’s already acknowledged that power warriors/zerkers were already nerfed to some extent but now this has become even more ludicrous.

If this is done to keep spellbreaker in line, then it’s nothing more than some of the worst game design philosophy ever. Not only is this change completely out of hand for reducing power builds even further, the principle of nerfing for upcoming content just to create a niche for it is negative reinforcement. Taking away something to just to give something back to replace it isn’t the same as what it was before. It stings and it sucks.

All this does is limit build diversity and overall enjoyability of the game.

That said, what Mikeskies said would be a proper way to balance out the nerf. That at least promotes sustained and gameplay and ramping up damage over time instead of this being a chasing the tail end of a timer.