Guild Wars 2

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I am disappointed with Anets reasoning on the critical damage nerf (which will hurt valkyrie and celestial as well as zerkers). I can understand normalizing the stats, but the justification for implementing the damage nerf just reeks of “I don’t want to change my mind”.

They say in the livestream that there are a bunch of things that need to happen with PVE to address zerker dominance, but then follow up by saying that it is going to be hard and take awhile to do, so now they’ll nerf crit damage overall and institute the other changes later.

This made think “…What?!”. Make a bad decision now, and then do the good one later? Why not just make the good one later? The zerker issue isn’t some end-of-the-world problem we are dealing with at the moment. It doesn’t need to invoke some stopgap measure at the detriment to so much of the game in order to be fixed immediately.

Normally childishness in antics doesn’t bother me that much, as I’m quite the silly one myself, but when it came to the explanation for this decision, the combination of the two was just painful to watch, and painful to think about.

This.

In case anyone missed the explanations in the livestream, here are direct quotes of the reasoning the balance team provided for the crit damage changes (I’m just transcribing the official word here, for the record):

“‘Cause we know how strong berserker damage is in PvE, and it’s a little out of control,” (“It’s a little bit.. a little over the top,” added the guy with the ponytail).

“So one of the main problems with crit damage, is like, the stat ratios compared to other stats are all over the place. For example, it’s much more efficient to have like, rings, amulets, jewels, that sort of thing for your crit damage slot ‘cause you just get, you get way more out of it. It’s like, um… ’bout fifty percent more efficient.”

“..to where it’s not more efficient to wear, like, only accessories, versus like, not wearing armor, and things like that.”

“’Cause we think the damage blows out way too much.”

“This will also help us improve down-scaling, with crit damage, ‘cause right now it doesn’t really work that well, um, with the way it’s currently set up..”

Jski.6180:

Errant Venture.9371:

Jski.6180:

Brutal Arts.6307:

How truly awful.

Why?

A 10% reduction in the output of Zerker builds will not make people more likely to use support builds (healing power/toughness/vitality are still bad stats that promote bad play).

It’s just going to make already tedious encounter 10% slower.

So its bad to make it so other builds are better?

This does NOT make other builds better! It makes critical builds worse. That is all! What about reducing crit damage by 10% will make inefficient stat combo’s BETTER? Do people not get this? Does the dev team not get this?

Hopefully that’s because the responses they’ve seen here have given them a more accurate impression of what the majority of the player base might actually think.

People are coming out of the woodwork to state their disbelief about possible critical damage nerfs. And that’s only the people who are really on top of update news – this only became an official ANet talking point, like, a day ago.

I just want this restated as many times as possible: Fix the state of endgame PvE content. Don’t randomly wreck multiple gearsets. That’ll take time, we get it. We’ll wait some more, just please do this the right way and address the actual problem.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

…

Finally introduce hardmode dungeons that are balanced around ascended gear and have actual mechanics and soft enrages.

Now all of a sudden people will want a variety of specs and gear combos in their group.

I really agree with this bit, pointing to the Twilight Arbor Aetherpath as the lead supporting example. That was a step in the right direction and it’s important to give credit there.

It presented new, more interactive mechanics and thus provides more challenge. Parts like kiting the fire elementals in the beginning reward, to a reasonable extent, having a defensive build in your party.

We need more of this going forward. We do not need radical overhauls to the damage system when that system works, in large part, exceptionally well.

Kyubi, I never have any idea what you’re talking about. Strange analogies about thorns does not a logical argument make.

We’re looking at a potentially radical upset of game balance which has already had a year and a half of tweaks. That alone is a dicey prospect. Further, we’re looking at changing gear because dungeons are old-hat and easy. Isn’t the problem here symptomatic of the fact that dungeons are old hat and easy?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

kyubi.3620:

Replace critical damage with armor penetration, simple.

Realize there is no problem with the game other than stale end game content so nothing needs to be changed except development priorities and it’s even more simple.

+2. Nike is on point.

Fenrir.3609:

Carighan.6758:

DAJDZA.3108:

People farming for their Gear for a couple of months,and then u come and say that is to strong,we are going to nerf that.Its a game spoiling.

Question: Would you leave imbalances imbalanced for the same of not invalidating previous time invested by players?

If yes – and your post seems to indicate that – followup question: How would you ever do balance patching in a MMORPG?

Personally I would address those imbalances across the board by make adjustments to the mechanics which drive said imbalances. Not by kneejerk nerfing stats.

I wouldn’t leave the root cause of the problem alone (i.e. the gameplay/combat mechanics) whilst nerfing a stat which will make fk all difference.

I also wouldn’t target one small niche meta (speed running pve which is not a zero sum, nor a competitive facet of the game) within a pve subset which sees all builds able to complete the content, whilst leaving condi spam and bunker metas to dominate two out of three segments of the game and all of the competitive aspect of the game.

I also wouldn’t introduce time gated, BiS gear and then a short while after say “btw we are changing the meta/nerfing yo stats lulz”.

A thousand times this, Fenrir. I really hope that those points are clear to ANet, and I hope they have the vision and foresight to step back from this sudden gear change until they’ve looked at addressing the actual problem.

Even if changing PvE mechanics is difficult, it can’t be any more difficult than dealing with the absolute quagmire we stand to face if they let easy dungeon mechanics impact the entire game’s balance.

The pace of development is no reason to make inept balance decisions.

The predominance of berserker gear in dungeons is symptomatic of the 1.5 year old content with simple mechanics. Players are so familiar with it that almost anyone can, and therefore does, wear zero-defense gear. Now the proposed solution is to change an entire category of gear that’s arbitrarily correlated?

A guy robs a bank because the bank left the vault open. Do you punish the robber’s clothes?

nightwulf.1986:

So you are either waiting for the devs to enact some positive changes and are being cynical about those prospects to show tough love or are just trying to cut them down because you are hoping the sting of your words will keep the staffers home thus causing Tyria to burn while unattended? Or is there a third perspective that I can’t see because I’m not quite jaded enough yet?

Probably the latter. But no, in all seriousness… While we are technically jumping to conclusions by fearing a crit damage nerf, you have to realize there are only three possibilities here:

1) They change crit damage so it’s weaker.
2) They change crit damage so it’s stronger.
3) They change the system under which crit damage is aggregated, but its power remains identical.

Which of those seems most likely to you?

Cush.4063:

Sounds like a nerf to crit damage which is yet another nerf to thieves. Again…

I can identify. I hopped from S/D thief to zerker mesmer for roaming, and if that gets slammed too, … well..

voidwater.2064:

If they nerfed zerker gear, I’d be very disappointed having spent a lot of gold and laurels on ascended zerker stuff.

I would seriously consider quitting, not because of the nerf’s impact on gameplay, but the reasoning behind nerfing.

Bezagron.7352:

Now I think everyone could agree that PvE wise there is the issue with Zerker being so far out in front. Meaning what is the point of other stats / armours.

Agreement is not universal. I do not think there is any issue at all. If you don’t care about clear speed and want to facetank, the defensive stat combos work as advertised, that is their point. If you like to see things bleed, you run condition damage (I do think condition damage needs to be made more effective in PVE, but nerfing zerk does not make condition builds kill things faster). If you do care about clear speed and efficiency, then you spec for DPS, and you survive through awareness and active defense.

Given the current PVE mechanics/design, the direct DPS meta is inevitable. A nerf to zerker gear does not address this, because the direct DPS meta arises from the ease, simplicity, and slow ‘clock speed’ of current PVE encounters.

As I see it, to nerf zerker gear is to punish skilled/experienced players just to appease people who dislike the natural consequences of their gear choice (i.e., someone who wants to be tanky, yet doesn’t want to accept that zerkers, who die much faster, finish things much faster than him).

A nerf would be ineffective and disrespectful to many players. To adopt that change would not reflect well on the game’s current design/balancing philosophy. Which is why I would seriously consider dropping the game.

Since critical damage was specifically mentioned in the first post, I would be very surprised if a nerf was not coming. It’s a single number, you can only move it up or down if you mean to change it. Up seems unlikely.

A thousand times this.

Since the issue is predictable/relatively non-interactive AI in PvE, for heavens sake fix that before you change a gear choice that became popular in that specific game mode as a direct product of this issue.

I don’t even play PvE that much. I work hard to make my zerker sets effective in WvW. I’ll be tremendously alienated if some change extending from a game mode that’s largely irrelevant to my gameplay suddenly mucks with my gear.

Well they haven’t made the announcement yet, but yeah, I’m pretty terrified. I would absolutely hate to have to quit this game on such short notice and under such bitterly illogical terms.

This announcement will be a deciding factor for me, and a telling indicator of the dev team’s understanding of balance and willingness to do things right rather than taking the easy out.

The issue at hand is the game mechanics system. We can wear high DPS/zero defense gear in dungeons because NPC AI allows us to stack them up and press “dodge” when the one scary attack comes up.

Is the problem with that system the gear? Does it even sound like it’s the gear? That’s the reality of PvE gameplay in GW2 regardless of what gear you wear. That defense and conditions aren’t needed in PvE reflects on nothing more than the simplicity and predictability of NPC AI. Do it right – fix the AI, don’t break the gear.

Proof: In WvW you fight players, not AI. So what gear do people run? Berserker gear is far from the dominant mainstay. Rather, players run defensive gear (Soldiers, Dire, etc.) as the overarching norm because they’re not fighting bad AI that attacks once a year and stacks to line-of-sighting. They’re fighting unpredictable opponents who constantly bombard them with damage and conditions, which lends real value to defensive stats and conditions.

Running zerker gear in WvW is basically limited to skilled small-scale fights players who are highly experienced and familiar enough with other classes to use timing and positioning to leverage their damage gear. It’s not like zerker gear nets free wins here – if you mess up, you’re dead really fast.

In short, if my gear gets nerfed because PvE content is too predictable, I will take my time and money elsewhere.

Roll back the sword change. Just put it back like it was. It was fine.

vincecontix.1264:

The thing is though the apart from the cast time on sword the patch wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately sword thief players are in the minority as it take more skill using S/X specs than other existing thief build. So majority of thief players won’t even care about this nerf.

I agree with you and I should clarify my stance.

By and large, I applaud this patch. D/P permastealth needed a nerf, and A-net made some bold moves that should do the trick.

I don’t have any major beefs with anything else in the patch except the Sword nerf! Why the heck!

I hate to have to +1 this.

I’d already decided I’m not spending any more money on gems until the dev teams start exhibiting some sense. I know their jobs are hard, so I’m not trying to QQ unduly.

It’s just that my S/D WvW build got utterly demolished for no apparent reason. I mean just shooting from the hip, but probably what, like 5-10% of thieves in WvW played Sword, even on a generous estimate? It was so obviously not OP that I can’t justify paying money to the company that thinks it was. The irony is the $20 I spent on gems to buy the Dreamthistle sword skin. Man, feels pretty bad.

DirtyBird.6093:

Hard to catch and last refuge… please take these out – like everyone here has said 10,000x in this post and others, escape mechanics that you cannot control or predict are completely aweful, and actually get me killed more often than they do help :<.

sword #2 return nerf is really brutal, but i honestly have no issues with the initiative traits getting hit. The initiation regen baseline IS huge and is going to be very nice imo. Dagger/pistol perma stealth nerf = goodbye abusive and boring mechanic. Flopping around like a fish in a dark field was never fun and really isnt all that useful.

Healing skill – eh… i just don’t get this push for venoms. What are we supposed to do, share our venoms, attack maybe 5 times and gtfo? Thieves just don’t have the same group combat AoE or synergy that other classes do… Not to mention the glaring fact you have to sacrifice shadow rejuv for it, venoms rarely make their way onto my bar.

Its not even a fair vs unfair, balanced vs OP argument for me, its just really not all that fun for me to play thief anymore. Not QQ i moved on long ago just think its kinda sad such a COOL character in the game is kinda blah atm.

A thousand times this, with one nitpick.

It’s a fair and balanced argument for me and it should be for everyone. Even people who aren’t thieves. People should take issue with a flawed sense of balance.

The only reason to nerf something should if it’s wrecking or negatively distorting a meta, or is blatantly borked (some of those oldschool Mes skills that could shoot through walls, etc.). Sword thief wasn’t exactly a meta wrecking ball. If it was annoying devs in spvp, nerf it there then and leave it alone in WvW.

It had a lot of play to it if you were a skilled pilot. Evidently that’s a Bad Thing.

Yeah, bleeds builds will be around of course. D/D and P/D should be fine.

As for physical builds, D/D looks like the only thing, alas. Man, I really don’t want to have to sit around and C&D into backstab rinse repeat to get by. Bleh.

Mirror Owl.7204:

Mirror Owl.7204:

S/x has been pummeled to the floor, so that dynamic mobility playstyle is out the window. It’s backstabs or bust, looks like.

I don’t play enough S/D to be an expert on it, so I have a question: How critical is that pseudo-stunbreak on IR when fighting any class that isn’t a stun-spamming warrior? I know it’s always useful, but I wonder how often it’s flat-out necessary to compete in a one-vs-one?

I agree with the other guys. It hurts enough to bone us out of much of the weapons’ flexibility. It could be used in loads of situations to dodge chunky hits, AOEs, etc. It was one of the elements that let your play skill and experience out-maneuver easily-anticipated opponents. Since sword had a lower damage output than mainhand dagger, I really don’t see why a relatively niche weapon set is being so utterly destroyed.

Yeah, exactly Anaeili. Most of their balance changes are, as my theorycrafting buddy best put it, flabbergasting. Having sword pulled out from under us is the nail in the coffin for thief for me for a bit.

Reducing the damage of stun skills like Staggering Blow and Earthshaker by 25% don’t really matter when I’m still stunlocked for an hour and my base health pool starts at 10.8k. “Use your utility skills” seems to be their answer. Is one Shadowstep and one Blinding Powder gonna get me out of 6 cc’s back to back from a 20-30k health warrior that can basically match my deeps?

D/D looks to be the only physical damage build not getting obliterated.

D/P perma-stealth is out because of the initiative gain changes, which is cool by me.

S/x has been pummeled to the floor, so that dynamic mobility playstyle is out the window. It’s backstabs or bust, looks like.

Unless of course you want to mainhand a pistol, in which case A-net would give you a cookie to munch on while you have no fun. Heh.

I’ll hang in there, but I feel attacked from all angles. It seems like the warrior gets everything (mobility/escapes, crowd control, damage, huge health pool), while the thief has just gotten much of its survivability downgraded. Removing evades and escapes/mobility seems awful to me when that’s patently all that keeps the thief in the fight.

I also support the initiative-on-stealth nerf; that wasn’t how the class was supposed to work. But the sword nerfs and the evades nerfs really blow my mind, because that IS how the class is supposed to work.

I know this info has been out for a month but this still warrants serious thought. I’ve adopted the S/D thief specifically as an alternative to the stealth-abusing D/P builds that are the driving factor behind the Dec. 10 nerfs. What am I supposed to play now?

The thief is a squishy class, with tricks instead of tankiness. We have the lowest base health rate of any class in the game, and if we’re caught in a protracted punch-session, we’re pretty easy to knock down. Fine. To compensate, we’re supposed to be tricky and hard to pin down. We’ve been given the tools of stealth, evades, and mobility to help us survive fights.

Official website description:
“Thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air… Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”

So if R&D reduces those stealth, evade and mobility tools, we’re increasingly left with a squishy class that can’t do anything to help itself stay alive. You’re taking the trick out of the rogue class.

Referring to these Jon Peters quotes:

“…reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.)”
“This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again.”

Is “being actively engaged in the fight” now defined as “being punched in the face”? Because we’ve already established that that’s not what thieves are supposed to do. So I can’t get punched because if I do, I’ll die.. But now R&D thinks they need to reduce the evasion and mobility. Was Sword thief broken? I would argue it was good, but niche. So why did it get hammered? The most prevalent complaints were far-and-away the most focused on D/P perma-stealth builds. If it wasn’t broken, why are we “fixing” it?

Buffy.9246:

Mirror Owl.7204:

The only people who think there’s an alliance are BP players with an accountability problem. You guys don’t upgrade your stuff? That’s your fault. EBay’s map has stone keeps with waypoints. BP’s map has wooden ones. What do you THINK the other server is gonna hit? It doesn’t help you learn or improve when you can’t knuckle up and accept it’s your own lack of the hard work you’ve been chestbeating about all season.

Yaks pvd us at night for reset night. Them upgraded bay and hills. How can we upgrade stuff with 0night force able to protect it? Then on top of that yaks hit us 24/7 so we can keep things upgraded, even someone from yaks said they hit us too much. eBay has it easy this week.

They hit us, too, homie, along with a zerg of BP folks. I pulled an all-nighter on reset night pushing Yaks off our Garrison so we could get it upgraded. We didn’t have our Hills (you guys had it early on, then Yaks flipped it), and Yaks built a waypoint in our Bay.

Instead of leaving them like that overnight, we took our keeps back, defended them hard, and got ‘em upgraded with waypoints so we could hold them the next day rather than providing a launching pad for assaulters, which is what happened in your guys’ BL.

Don’t tell me nobody attacks Ehmry BL. That would be goofy, and you should feel goofy.

We’ve all said as much ourselves. Neither server is fond of BP, and since they’re worse at defending their stuff, they’re the easier target for PPT. That doesn’t make it coordinated.

Also, Adahilia, you’re misrepresenting what happened last week. We said there was a concerted effort for YB and EBay to cooperate from the get go. Like you said, we told you guys, “all is fair in war.. get over it.” Through the mid week we said there wasn’t an alliance per se, but YB would focus SBI and that they figured EBay was smart enough to capitalize. We were. Then on the last couple days, yeah, we worked together pretty hard. We’re out in the open about what we did, both at the time and retrospectively.

So we have established a precedent of being pretty much straight up about whether or not we’ve agreed to coordinate with another server. I’d also point to the fact that both YB and EBay stuck to the alliance with no backstabbing as further evidence that we’re pretty straight shooting servers.

You guys can vilify all you want, but it just makes you look like the badguys.

I would say that pairing FA and SBI with any silver league server was a pretty huge disappointment.

Lina.9640:

Overall, yes, but the amount of QQ generated by the SBI/YB/EBay matchup was worth all the unbalanced, awful, nightcapping, supply cheating, hacking, poor sportsmanship BS.

Hehehe. Agreed.

The only people who think there’s an alliance are BP players with an accountability problem. You guys don’t upgrade your stuff? That’s your fault. EBay’s map has stone keeps with waypoints. BP’s map has wooden ones. What do you THINK the other server is gonna hit? It doesn’t help you learn or improve when you can’t knuckle up and accept it’s your own lack of the hard work you’ve been chestbeating about all season.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

No offense but I hope to god they do NOT come back EVER… These should be something that people who have been around since the beginning have a priviledge of owning. They can go ahead and make new weapons but I will be EXTREMELY kittened off if they bring these back…

I really dislike this mentality. I don’t like the timegated reward things. I’ve “been around since the beginning” (as if that makes me special?) so it’s not like that’s the issue.

For example I missed the Secrets of Southsun event that granted Fervid Censer. I absolutely love how that backpiece would look on my toon, but I can never have it because I was too busy to play during the timegated period. Is that fair?

*Edit, lol at all the people jumping down this guy’s throat. Sorry to tagteam.