Guild Wars 2

I only have three complaints about the patch.

#1: Town cloths were ruined, since they can no longer be dyed.
#2: The UI is cumbersome to fight with.
#3: Consecutive dungeon runs were nerfed hard. I used to do these to help out players, but now… ow my wallet.

Otherwise it is a decent patch.

Semi zerkers were nerfed less than pure zerkers.

The changes to crit damage only affect crits. So, if you run something like Valkyrie, which crits less frequently, you received less of a nerf.

It kind of puts those dystopian future movies into perspective: everyone dresses alike because they think those jumpsuits are snappy.

Anyway, the thing with all of those players is that they aren’t dressing for individuality. They’re dressing for status. So, no matter how obtrusive those holographic wings and legendary are, they won’t be caught dead without displaying their gaming prowess. Hopefully, players will eventually get bored of everyone looking alike, and then start down the individuality road again. Worst case scenario, LFG starts demanding legendaries and wings for entrance.

AxelFace.6728:

I logged in today to people actually complaining about being around rpers and as I offered a suggestion to it I was attacked and categorized. Well that was a great to see.

This sounds more like a community problem than an Anet problem.

This is a whole lot of fanfare for something so inconsequential. In a full zerk party, dungeon mobs live for about 4 seconds. Them surviving for 4.4 seconds means almost nothing from a balance perspective.

While I agree that this change is stupid, I don’t think this really affects that much in the grand scheme of things.

I used the razer naga for awhile. I was disappointed…

#1: It installs some strange software that completely changes how the mouse behaves. Forever. You can’t access this software without the razer naga, so I had to do a fresh install of windows to fix this problem (old computer), since removing the program didn’t fix it.

#2: The buttons are placed in a manner that didn’t fit the shape of my hands at all. All of the number keys were below the knuckle of my thumb, meaning I had to do some pro thumb-wrestling contortions to get to the buttons.

#3: The buttons on the mouse weren’t well defined, often causing me to over-press because I was essentially just bending plastic instead of having an actual click to press.

The combination of 2 and 3 lead to my hands hurting quite a bit. All in all, I was better off just sticking to the track pad on that old macbook. I use a fairly standard mouse to play GW2 on my new PC, because it is easier and hand healthier to just mouse skills than it is to fight with a Razer naga.

Bombsaway.7198:

Engineers have huge build diversity. One of the things that makes them annoying is there are few tells on what build the engineer is carrying until you engage. You would have little clue as to whether I am a tanky/healing/power bomb build or a grenade spamming condi build.

This. It is surprising how infrequently it is brought up, but the scariest thing about the Engi is the unknown. Engineers are the boogeyman of PVP in the sense that, until you see what they can do, it is possible for them to do anything.

I wouldn’t call engineers OP, though. Engineers, for their wide toolbox of utilities, have some pretty glaring weaknesses. Our strongest trait is automated response, and since that is being nerfed into the ground, expect to see engis being thwarted by condi all the time. Engis also have had most of their effective stun breakers removed, meaning that heavy CC counters them.

Outside of sPVP, engineers are just mediocre. They can be used alright in WvW, but without area restraints it is much harder to land bombs or nades. Zergs are dangerous due to Engi’s weakness to retaliation, and without good condi cleanse and stun breakers, engineers frequently get caught and trained over.

In PVE, Engis are good at debuffing and heals, and they are great at immobilizing, but nonetheless suffer from a lack of potency. They have fire fields and can blast in them quite well, but Eles do that better. They have smoke fields for stealth, but thieves do that better. They have projectile reflection and blocking, but mesmers and guards do it better. They have good controls, but thieves strip defiant better. They have some rez skills, but other classes are faster on the draw.

I’ve always found the way this game handles stealth to be a bit… odd. It is so binary.

I came form City of Heroes, which had a perception mechanic. There were various buffs and class abilities that could improve perception, and different kinds of stealth had different perception thresholds needed to see them.

Stealth only cloaked you until a certain distance away from your target. More perception means that distance is further and further. Stealth skills stacked their cloaking level, allowing you to put on multiple skills to be harder to see, but with each skill having more and more drawbacks this could be dangerous in its own right.

This was important, because there was something you could do preemptively to counter stealth. In GW2, there isn’t much of a pre-emptive measure, or even a counter measure. Once someone drops out of sight, your best bet is to guess and hope you are right. It is really hard to balance something with no preemptive or countermeasures.

In PVE, I think that the range/melee mechanic works alright. In ideal circumstances, you would melee enemies until you were in trouble, and then when you are nearly dead/in danger you would back off to lose some of the aggro. This does work. However, currently many enemies in PVE aren’t dangerous enough to really do damage to meleers, so there is no need to disengage a lot.

Likewise, range was meant to be an option when fighting melee enemies that are way too strong to fight back in melee. Again, in rare circumstances this is true, but most enemies aren’t dangerous enough.

I can’t say much about sPVP, since I haven’t played it in forever.

I see complaints about armor, but from a statistical standpoint the necromancer is the second bulkiest class in the game. Armor is overrated. The HP tiers impact much more than armor does. Look at the differences between armor ratings (exotic)

Light: 1836
Medium: 1980 (7.8% higher than light)
Heavy: 2127 (15.8% higher than light, 7.4% higher than medium)

And HP ratings:

Low: 10.805
Medium: 15,082 (38.6% higher than low)
High: 18,372 (70% higher than low, 21.8% higher than medium)

And you can see how silly this “heavies only” really is. The whole “heavies only” stereotype is perpetrated by people who are too stubborn to learn that armor doesn’t mean squat in the long run, and too impatient to learn what other classes can do.

I run full zerker necro in dungeons all of the time, and it is the tankiest toon I have. Sure, it doesn’t have the endurance regen options that other classes get, but with DS and so much health, I find I’m more than capable of just tanking a few hits. Worst case scenario, I pop a meat and orrian truffle stew and carry on like nothings different.

No, the real problem with Necros in dungeons is that we lack sufficient AoE direct damage, and that we lack potent utility. Most of the things a necro can do, another class does better, and the necro doesn’t do a whole lot of things. The big role necros have, being a debuffer, is ruined by champions having halved vulnerability and weakness duration, and also by champions spamming boons whenever they get removed, and also by nearly all enemies attacking too slowly for chill and cripple to matter.

The complaints about PVE conditions is valid. But in WvW, the condi necro is a roaming bastion of power. In 1 on 1, the necro’s massive bulk means immediate advantage in the fight, and on small scale fights the condi pressure and AoE damage the necro puts out is scary. Power necros are more difficult to play, but far from impossible. Even in zergs, I find condis to be a meaningful contribution, especially with how well staff can apply them. But in zergs, necros have another unique utility: with spectral wall, the necro is the only class that can give protection to the entire zerg. A 33% reduction in damage for 5-10 seconds for 40 people is enough to make or break a charge.

The biggest flaw with the necro in sPVP is that, due to our low amount of skill evades and mobility, and utter lack of effective direct damage burst, we ultimately aren’t in control of the fight. Our opponent either has enough cleanses to neutralize the conditions, or they don’t. Our opponent either has enough bulk to survive our burst, or they don’t. Our opponent either has the stun breaks/stability to survive the condi burst, or they don’t. In the end, there’s nothing a necro can really do, other than make a build and hope that our opponents are lacking in the end.

The necro actually has two blast finishers. Putrid explosion counts as a blast finisher, and on a 20 second cooldown it is quite spammable. Bone minions don’t have a lot of control in their placement, but most circular fields will encompass them. Now, I agree that it is weird for Well of Blood to be a light field, and I agree that Well of Blood should be a water field, but I disagree that light fields are useless in WvW. Light fields blast for retaliation, so a good light field can make a zerg incredibly dangerous to attack. Unfortunately, other classes do light fields better…

But if you want to heal someone, I’d recommend getting Transfusion. It heals for about 2.6k with no healing power over a large radius. There are some other skills you can pick up, like Deathly Invigoration, but they mostly aren’t worth it.

I agree that the necro needs some tweaks, and the necro forum is full of these tweaks, but things aren’t nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

For my direct damage bombnades(30/10/0/0/30, full zerk): Plate of Truffle Steak + Quality Maintenance Oil

For my SD bomb build (10/30/0/0/30): Plate of Truffle Steak + Hardened Sharpening Stone

For my grenadier hybrid build (30/10/0/0/30, rampager/carrion mix in PVE, 30/10/0/20/10 in WvW): Rare Veggie Pizza + Hardened Sharpening Stone.

Personally, I quit trying to argue about the time when I posted an analysis comparing two damage types, and the response I got was “nuh uh! I posted proof against this”, and I can’t find their example.

I do hate this whole “sinking ship” feeling GW2 has lately. Getting flashbacks from when CoH up and asploded.

Digging up an older thread where I talked about this manner:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvP-What-s-the-point-of-raw-DPS/first#post3648161

People really underestimate direct damage.

Something interesting about PVP condi builds is that they’ll forgo condi duration, but not because it is more effective. The thing with condi duration is that it is more susceptible to cleanse. So, many condi builds will focus on defenses or more malice, assuming that additional ticks will probably be cleansed away anyway. But a condi duration stacked build against a build with few cleanses, and the duration adds up very quickly.

If you’re going to be doing comparisons, there are several things to look at:

#1: Tooltip armor is listed assuming 2600 armor rating of the target. Adjust tooltip damage accordingly by using the formula: Tooltip Damage x 2600/(armor) = adjusted damage.

#2: Attack rate and attack frequency. How much damage is done means very little when it takes forever, so a DPS comparison is often more important than a damage comparison. So, take the following into account:

Attack activation time
Attack post-activation delay
Attack chains and skill rotation
Length of these attack rotations
Recharge time of attacks

#3: How to consider conditions. There are two ways to consider it: conditions can be seen as a total amount of damage with a delayed effect (thus, for any attack that applies conditions, you can say that attack does x amount of damage, and takes y number of seconds to execute). This method can compare the efficiency of attacks, and can be compared to power builds on a blow by blow basis.

Second way is to consider conditions as a scaling DPS. While power is static, conditions take awhile to build steam, so you’ll have to consider stuff like the average number of sustained stacks of conditions a build can have, as well as the average uptime of non permanently sustained conditions. This can graph the growth and sustain of damage via conditions that has better real world implication, but nonetheless is a pain to actually do.

I wish you the best of luck. I’ve done a few spot comparisons in the past, but I’ve never done a full “analyze all builds compared to all other builds”.

I suppose I got lucky. Or rather, I’m still getting lucky. Because I still pug, to this day. I just got done pugging CoE.

The interesting thing is, I’ve seen people get kicked from teams before. Sometimes it is from someone being trollish or picking fights, or refusing to follow simple instruction while being incompetent, or bringing in toons underneath the recommended level. Sometimes, the LFG will ask for specific classes, or specific gear, and people will join up without it. Sometimes, people will join a group with a friend who is clearly AFK and doesn’t show up after 10 minutes of waiting. Sometimes there will be bad blood between players from previous encounters.

I’m not exactly some dungeon running master. I’m clumsy, I’m not well liked by elitists, and outside of the forums I’m not famous at all. I only open dungeons on occasion, too. So, when I can run dungeons continuously and not have issues of anonymous, unexplained kicks, then it makes me wonder. I think that two things are happening:

#1: the guys who do kick everyone from a dungeon unprovoked are extremely rare, and the severity of their act makes them disproportionately represented in the community. You can talk about that one time this happened, but what doesn’t get said are the hundreds of times it doesn’t happen.

#2: There is more going on than complaints are telling. I’ve seen people omit their dirty laundry all the time, whether by an inability to admit wrongdoing, or an inability to care.

Wethospu.6437:

Did 1200 more tests and all were criticals.

So 1700 tests, 1700 successes and 0 failures. Using formula
(tests + 1)! * r^success * (1-r)^fail / (success! * fail!)
I get
1701 * r^1700.
Integrating that gives r^1701.

Let’s say 99.5% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.995^1701) = 0.9998. So 99.98% chance that the cap is between 99.5% and 100%.

Let’s say 99.9% < r < 100% so we get (1^1701 – 0.999^1701) = 0.81765. So 81.765% chance that the cap is between 99.9% and 100%.

Looks pretty reasonable to me. If someone actually knows statistics please correct me if I did something wrong.

Times like this I’m glad I’m going back to college. I used to be able to do this stuff from memory.

I don’t immediately recognize the formula you used, so I did a one-sample proportions test on the data you provided. One tailed.

Null Hypothesis: the percentage is 99%
Alternate Hypothesis: the percentage is 100%

Proportional standard deviation (sigma) = Square root of (p(p-1)/n)
Z-test: Z = (p – P) / 2sigma

N = 1700
p = proposed probability (0.99)
P = sample probability (1.00)
sigma = 0.0024
Z = 2.07
P = 0.9615

The Z value is the number of standard deviations away from the null that the sample test obtained. For a one tailed test, this comes to a probability of 96.15%, or some pretty strong evidence to reject the null.

So yeah, I’d say it is pretty safe to throw that “99% cap” theory out the door, and attribute the differences to other factors like enemy level changes.

I’m sorry of I’m missing something, but won’t players still be grouped in PVE content prioritizing their own servers?

Usable props are always an extremely big pain from a design standpoint in an MMO. You have to deal with clipping and vastly different character sizes, and vastly different armor styles, and also have to deal with gender issues. Heck, back in City of Heroes, there was an issue where many of the sitting animations weren’t available to female characters because they wouldn’t be very… appropriate.

That said, I fully support interactive props. Its a lot of work, and it is on the back burner as far as development resources go, but it is still something I’d love to see.

I pug a lot. I mean, a lot. I mean, I rarely do anything other than pug, due to a hectic schedule. And I can count the number of times I’ve been anonymously kicked from a group: 0.

Whenever I see one of these threads, I always think there was something more going on.

I think this might be too much effort for too little return, but I am looking forward to something…

If this goes the other way, then hilarity can ensue when you change male armor to female armor on male characters. It is old school British humor, but nonetheless can still be funny sometimes. I’d make a maximum size male norn, then outfit him in all of the pink and frilly stuff (kind of like what Wooden Potatoes did), just to make other players uncomfortable and start conversation.

Its old school funny. I used to do the same thing in City of Heroes and Phantasy Star Universe. Just run around in a speedo and be awkward as possible, and you’ll make friends surprisingly quickly.

Something that I would suggest that everyone learn, from a very young age, is how to ignore people. And not just a “block their phone number” or “put their chat on the ignore list”. I mean intellectually and wholeheartedly ignore people, even when they are in your face, yelling at you.

The reason why I say this is because critics and haters are never going to go away. So long as you do anything more than cave and be invisible, you will draw the ire of others. It will come from the strangest places and in the strangest ways (darn passive aggressives… just punch me already), and unless you learn to deal with them, then it will be the death of you. Whether you disregard someone for being evil, or pity someone for being stupid, or understand that it is for the best that ignorance and different views are allowed to be expressed, this is something that everyone should learn how to do.

Then comes the hardest part. If you find that you cannot ignore people, then you have to take a look inside yourself, and try to discover why. This is the hard part, because this requires someone to be objective about themselves, and often this reveals something about ourselves that we’d rather not know. For a personal example, the reason why I have issues with critics and dissenters is because I have a controlling personality, and see disagreement sometimes as insolence that requires my intervention before something goes wrong, and sometimes as deliberate malicious defiance. These, of course, aren’t good things, as I have seen these traits lead to decline of my family as a child (like father like son, unfortunately). Because of this, issues with critics, dissenters, or disagreements often becomes less about what they are doing, but about me restraining myself, and reminding myself that it is O.K. for someone to get the numbers of the zerkers change wrong, or that my neighbor smoking on his patio isn’t an act of war against me.

There’s talk about petting zoos, but Spirit Weapons still get no love.

Personally, I like things like turrets, spirit weapons, and minions. This is mostly because I’m actually quite bad at PVP. I can’t see anything, I’m extremely clumsy and fumble with the buttons and controls the vast majority of the time, I can’t tell what is happening most of the time, and there is no amount of “L2P” that can fix this, since these problems are innate to my biology.

The low maintenance and AI options appeal to players like me. They take a lot of the micromanagement and hassle out of play, while also minimizing personal error. The AI can never truly compete with true skill, but it certainly does help the little man.

I did the math on these changes once: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/It-s-Not-10/page/2#post3832036

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I did a comparison of exotic effective power in another thread. I’ll post the results here:

Effective Power = Power x (chance to crit x crit damage + chance to not crit)

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or 55% crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

---

Anyway, you can play with these numbers all you want by adding extra stuff:

Might: +875 power for max might, before calculation. On zerkers, this results in the exact same 10.1% reduction in damage. This makes sense when you know that all the changes come from modifiers after power.

Fury: add 20% to crit chance, subtract 20% from chance to not crit. On zerkers, this results in an 11.8% reduction.

Sigil of Perception: add 250 precision or 11.9% crit rate. On zerkers, this results in a 67% crit rate, and an 11.1% reduction.

Sigil of perception + Fury: 12.5%

Throw bowl of curry butternut squash soup on top of that: 14.6% reduction

Throw on banner of discipline: crit chance caps out at 99%. Now, the only real differences are crit damage, with pre-ferocity being 281%, post ferocity being 237%, resulting in a 15.5% maximum possible reduction in damage.

This is where Anet can go lawyer on us with what they mean. The thing with fury, butternut squash soup, sigil of perception, banners, and spotter is that these aren’t “builds” or “gear” as we’ve come to know it. These rely on outside factors, such as consumables and teammates of particular classes, and can exist outside of the gear choices we make. Thus, when Anet said they were going to balance zerkers, they did so to the letter.

Likewise, not every class can have 300 power/precision/ferocity from traits. Many classes, such as necromancers and engineers, have all of those in different trait lines, meaning that the most they can get is 300/300/100, and thus depending on build chances the reduction can be greater or lesser.

There is a lot of misconceptions on this thread… I’ll have to address them:

#1: The meta is pure DPS. This isn’t true. Ultimately, in any game you play where there is some kind of “damage”, the goal is always trying to obtain the maximum amount of damage possible within certain constraints. That is, having just enough heals and durability to survive, and nothing extra. It is rare to find any circumstance in the game where players forgo all active defenses and just go for raw, stand-in-your-face damage.

Anets design was not that you sacrificed damage for utility, but that you sacrificed damage for durability. How tough you are is ultimately to be a preference.

#2: Passive defenses are useless. This also isn’t true. Passive defenses can be quite powerful, and even in small amounts they can contribute meaningfully to survival. So many of the One-Hit-KO attacks are just so only because players run around in glass cannon gear. Even running in Valkyrie or Knight gear will result in you taking substantially more damage.

The issue is that, as skill level increases, passive defenses become less meaningful. Since there is a very low amount of ambient, light damage coming from enemies, the majority of enemy damage can be blocked, dodged, or interrupted. In situations where this isn’t true, or for inexperienced players, passive defenses mean a whole lot.

#3: There are no builds. Again, this isn’t true. The “zerker meta” is about just that: gear. Weapon choices, utility choices, and trait choices still have a meaningful impact on the build, and even denotes how that build will play out in the large run. Some builds are quite defensive and supportive, despite being in full glass cannon gear. For example, on my ele I have 2 builds: 30/20/0/0/20 staff DPS, and 0/30/0/20/20 dagger/fresh air support build. The difference being that one stacks a ton of AoE might and fury with a lot of AoE damage, while the other stacks AoE regen/protection and regularly pulses heals/cleanses and uses more support skills. Both can wear full zerker, but these builds barely resemble each other in both playstyle and overall team effect.

#4: Anet isn’t improving the AI. This also isn’t true. Scarlets minions are a fine example to the contrary, as they employ more ambient damage and more complex maneuvers than what most players are familiar with. Mobs in the rest of the game get updates on occasion, such as the risen mobs and various boss encounters in dungeons (most recent being HotW path 1 troll). The zerker meta issue is likely one of those issues that will simply fix itself over time.

#5: This is about bad players/good players, or smart players/dumb players. This, again, isn’t true. This is about respecting preferences of players. I, personally, like to run hybrid condi gear and non-pure DPS gear in PVE. The problem is that, with the way the game is currently designed, these builds don’t get to show their strength in the vast majority of PVE. So, I run pure zerker most of the time.

I did a comparison of exotic effective power in another thread. I’ll post the results here:

Effective Power = Power x (chance to crit x crit damage + chance to not crit)

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or 55% crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

Anyway, you can play with these numbers all you want by adding extra stuff:

Might: +875 power for max might, before calculation. On zerkers, this results in the exact same 10.1% reduction in damage. This makes sense when you know that all the changes come from modifiers after power.

Fury: add 20% to crit chance, subtract 20% from chance to not crit. On zerkers, this results in an 11.8% reduction.

Sigil of Perception: add 250 precision or 11.9% crit rate. On zerkers, this results in a 67% crit rate, and an 11.1% reduction.

Sigil of perception + Fury: 12.5%

Throw bowl of curry butternut squash soup on top of that: 14.6% reduction

Throw on banner of discipline: crit chance caps out at 99%. Now, the only real differences are crit damage, with pre-ferocity being 281%, post ferocity being 237%, resulting in a 15.5% maximum possible reduction in damage.

This is where Anet can go lawyer on us with what they mean. The thing with fury, butternut squash soup, sigil of perception, banners, and spotter is that these aren’t “builds” or “gear” as we’ve come to know it. These rely on outside factors, such as consumables and teammates of particular classes, and can exist outside of the gear choices we make. Thus, when Anet said they were going to balance zerkers, they did so to the letter.

Likewise, not every class can have 300 power/precision/ferocity from traits. Many classes, such as necromancers and engineers, have all of those in different trait lines, meaning that the most they can get is 300/300/100, and thus depending on build chances the reduction can be greater or lesser.

I have to constantly say this: there are still roles in this game. The roles are simply more subtle and nuanced:

Thief: Defiance stripper, aggro management, defensive utilities, evasion tank.
Guardian: Offensive buffer, Healer, block tank, projectile management.
Elementalist: Offensive and defensive buffer, healer, combo field user/finisher highest PVE DPS, miscellaneous utility
Engineer: Debuffer, high CC and immobilization, Healer, buffer, combo field user/finisher, extremely versatile miscellaneous utility (capable of fulfilling any role to a satisfactory extent)
Mesmer: Mobility, aggro management, high CC, block and evasion tank, projectile management, high miscellaneous utility, and also sometimes healer.
Warrior: unique buffs, self buffer, high durability for sustained DPS.
Necromancer: Debuffer, high durability, miscellaneous utility
Ranger: Rage magnet (seriously though, I don’t know much about rangers)

Running around in dungeons with pugs a lot, I’ll find that we’ll be lacking in the strangest utilities that other classes have. For example, sometimes we’ll fail due to a lack of projectile blocking/reflecting, or a lack of condi cleanses, or a lack of defensive utilities via protection/blinds/heals, or the strangest one which was a lack of range. Different classes have different combo fields, which and different finishers to use in those fields.

At no point in fulfilling any of these roles should a class have to sacrifice independence. This is what the trinity does, though. To have the trinity, you need DPS that is too weak to take hits, heals that are ineffective except with durable targets, and an aggro manager who lacks the durability and DPS to fully survive an encounter.

I haven’t played wildstar and TESO. I’ve only looked at hours of videos on both of them, and I have to say that Wildstar would be the one that would be closest to getting me away from GW2. I, for one, find the cartoonish and silly nature to be welcoming, and also find the combat system dynamic and engaging. But, I encounter two problems:

#1: Pay to play. In a bit of financial straights atm.
#2: Trinity game. The combat is interesting only at first.

And those two really lower the value of Wildstar for me. As much as I love the targeting, evasion, and graphical loadout, being a trinity game means that all this new stuff is just trimmings to the same dish. Except now, instead of chopsticks, you eat it with a fork and knife.

If anything, once the semester starts up again, I’m closer to just not playing anything than moving to a new game. That, and the recent slew of family problems is making things even harder.

As an industry: There is money involved. There is advocacy involved. There is prestige involved. All of these things resist change. The guy who proves the sky is red has doomed the blue-sayers to obscurity, and denoted their existence as falsehood and misinformation. Blue-sayers will fight this to the bitter end, truth be kitten ed. The money and advocacy control which studies are funded, as well as which information is published, and also subtly put pressure on the outcomes of those studies to suit their desires. I felt I’ve already explained this info with a quote, so I’ll leave this section shorter.

Combine all of these, and you get a method of acquiring information that one must be skeptical on, at all levels. These flaws compound themselves, and loop around to the start. Now, normally the philosophical side of science doesn’t get involved in debates over scientific issues, since debating them assumes some kind of intrinsic value to science. However, when one fails to acknowledge the philosophical origins and limits of science, this leads to widespread dismissal and blind faith. The zealot has already made up their mind that science (or true science) can never be wrong, so the moment anyone launches a criticism to any article they find, they regress into pride and hate. Then I sigh, because once I again I find myself trying to kill someone’s god.

bullyrook.2165:

Kheo.2504:

I remember in the first Sylvari quest, the Green Knight one, a male Sylvari casually refers to another male as his “love” and the game desn’t make any mention of it again. I’d say they’re being pretty fair across the board, the only group they don’t have represented is the people who don’t accept LGBT, and there’s a pretty good reason for that.

Many of us do accept, we just don’t advocate. I would ask you to pick up a dictionary, but you might select a thesaurus by mistake

This is actually a subject I’ve been wanting to write about. Regarding homosexuality, there seem to be 3 different aspects that someone can either be for or against.

A)Homosexuality as in the act.
B)Homosexuality as in the people.
C)Homosexuality as in the idea.

And these aren’t necessarily dependent on each other. There are people who support C, but don’t necessarily like A or B. There are people who are against A and C, but still like and feel compassion for B. There are people don’t like A, but don’t like B or C. IMO, someone who supports the idea, but still has an aversion to the act or the people is the strongest willed out of the bunch, since this requires them to have a belief that consistently conflicts with their id.

I’m not sure I can say more on the subject, though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

There is a difference between “being skeptical of scientists” and “being skeptical of science”, my friend.

Abbreviated for space. Since I’ll need to dice this into more than one section, I’ll just start with various categories:

Science as a philosophy
Science as a practicality
Scientists as humans
Science as an industry

As a Philosophy: Science needs a series of fundamental assumptions in order to function, and there are two competing world views that allow science to function. In particular, from the secularistic branch you have humanism, naturalism, and uniformitarianism. That is, the particular belief of humanity as the arbiter of right and wrong, the belief of completely intrinsic and self-contained properties of nature, and the unflinching ubiquity of all properties throughout the universe. From the non-secular side there is Providence, the belief that the world and all its functions are sustained through non-dependent and non-intrinsic factors. There is also a third, really small philosophy of divination, or the belief that each person is their own individual god and thus science works because they say it works, but outside of a few pagans this belief isn’t widespread.

To anyone who doesn’t subscribe to these beliefs, the practice and conclusion of science are meaningless. Granted, it is rare to find someone outside of these 3 categories. Also for consideration is the comparison of science against other methods of acquiring information: creation, observation, exchange, and divination. Then, there is also the debate about what constitutes knowledge and truth, but again I must say that epistemology is a very large topic.

Finally, there exists the limitation of science in that it is incapable of proving anything. The philosophy of science ultimately works by prediction and exclusion. and can only seek to disprove things by finding contradictions in those predictions and exclusions. Thus, science contributes more to a narrowing a falsehoods, and not the acquisition of truth. With endless interpretation and creativity, one can question whether science can accomplish anything at all.

As a Practicality: The basis for science is really simple: change variables, keep others the same, see what happens. Thus, in order to function properly, science requires someone to be capable of actually doing so. This is where we run into some solid walls on the realm of science: if we can’t do one of these, then science doesn’t function. We run into this wall in nearly any paper done: confidence intervals are a statement of probability, in the sense that a 95% confidence interval says that, controlling for pure chance alone, there is a 95% certainty that the true value lies within this range. Likewise, there is a 5% or 1/20 chance that it is completely wrong, and it is outside of our range.

There’s the common flaw of sampling bias, or faulty sampling, which is improper information gathering due to any limitations like limits in communication, or population, or demographics. Likewise, there’s improper calibration and tool usage, and also a hard limit on what is an observable effect and what isn’t. Then there is always the issue with confounding variables or unaccounted variables.

As Humans: This leads to a very big flaw in science in general, and that is that the scope of science is ultimately limited by creativity. The scientist is the one who has interpret what constitutes as variables, what constitutes as information, what constitutes as evidence, what constitutes as a control, what the evidence means, and if the scientist doesn’t have the right idea about what represents what, then the experiment is little more than tea leaves and palm reading. The greatest advancements in science have often come not from new evidence, but from new interpretations and ideas. There’s a reoccurring phrase in the scientific community, or at least at my college: “Epi-cycles can fully explain the motion of the stars, but this doesn’t make it right”.

The other side to incompetence is apathy. The scientist himself is a person with a set of preconceived notions about everything and anything, and these can interfere with proper studies, but there can be worse things at play. Intellectual integrity is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and with good reason. A morally lacking scientist that doesn’t care about honesty can reinterpret, selectively display, or even fabricate results for their studies. This is done for many reasons.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

No, that would only be expected if genetics were the sole contributor. The “genetic standpoint” does not mean ignoring all other factors— that’s simplistic.

You realise, of course, that in non-twin siblings, the Fraternal Birth Order Effect will account for a significant difference. The more older brothers you have, the greater the likelihood of homosexuality.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10051890

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/28/10771.long

…now, this means that the rate between the brothers themselves will be lessened, because the older brothers will have a rate of homosexuality closer to the average, while the younger brothers may have an increased rate.

It is still solid evidence, of course, that the role of biology is significant.

The FBOE will not have an affect on twins, though, either DZ or MZ, so they are the ones we have to look at to eliminate extraneous factors. And what do we find? That the more genetic material they share, the greater the rate of concurrence!

I apologize, but the abstract/info for the first article won’t load for me. However I digress:

You must have a very different definition of “solid” than I do. I’ve done research on the birth order effect, and I’ve always found it to be quite interesting. First, because the proposed biological explanation of immune responses from the mother are are nonsensical from a cognitive developmental standpoint, and second because studies seem to regularly contradict and muddle the findings:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18937128

http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/205a/ecp/bearman_bruckner_ajs.pdf

It is no wonder why when you consider the acquired data ranges for any of these articles. A large portion of the data is within a single standard deviation between different categories, meaning that the implications of these studies can be wrong by sheer luck alone, let alone how indeterministic the results of these studies can be.

However I digress: What did this have to do with the concordance of homosexuality among adopted siblings? Are you saying that the 600% increase in expected concordance is from birth order? Likewise, the assertion that fraternal twins have higher genetic similarities is flat out wrong. There is no difference genetically between fraternal twins and regular siblings, despite there being a larger concordance among that demographic.

Likewise, the concordance of monozygotic or identical twins doesn’t always appear in studies. In the second study I posted from Bearman and Bru?ckner, particularly on the table on page 21, it finds the average concordance of sexuality on siblings to be 5.3%, and MZ twins to be 6.7%. If identical genetics and prenatal environments only accounts for a 26% increase in the likelihood of sexuality, then the theory genetic influence is dubious at best.

As for the differences in the 1991 study… I assume this is due to the age of the study. With rapid growth in technology, better sampling methods can lead to less sampling limitations and less sampling bias.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Alright, I’ll investigate that possibility.

First of all, such a study could only look at environmental factors, because the genetic material is identical or nearly-identical and you’ve not chosen a second group to compare with.

Second of all, any conclusions based on determining meaningful environmental factors would be extremely subjective (almost Freudian, if the researchers ended up attributing it to absent fathers or other circumstantial, untestable hypotheses).

Thirdly, you need another group to compare with, or you have no Control. That’s why most studies compare MZ with DZ, or Related with Adopted. Study a single group and compare it just with the national average, and then you’ll have an impossible time singling out meaningful environmental factors.

#1:The evaluation of sociological and environmental factors becomes the centralized focus of that study because other factors are isolated. This is basic variable control, and the best circumstances a sociologist could ever get, barring dystopian violations of human rights. An evaluation would be a cross comparison between identical twins who are both homosexual and identical twins with differing sexualities, there are already multiple groups to compare it with. Additional factors can be added and analyzed.

#2: The acquisition of data is more important than the conclusions themselves. Likewise, the conclusions can make predictions and be tested by further studies, as is what the institution of science does as a whole.

#3: Then just insert additional control factors outside of MZ twins who are both homosexual. This isn’t a problem; this is experimental design step 2.

Everyone gets hit by these damage changes. If anything, this helps out the elementalist the most, since the cap on burst damage is being decreased for the more ambush-like classes, such as thieves and warriors.

dodgycookies.4562:

or as some people have suggested only remove the damage cap but keep the healing/boon cap in place…but that seems completely unfair to the support classes imo.

There isn’t really any “support class”. All classes have support skills. That said, the reason why I and many others suggest removing only a cap on targets, and not a cap on boons or buffs is because boons/buffs are far more powerful. Imagine limitless shadow refuge on a group of 50 players, or infinite retaliation on a group of 50 players, or Time Warp on 50 players. If you think retaliation is a problem now, wait until retal auto-smacks you for 10k health any time you use a single attack.

This is done to accomplish a goal. The players don’t want gameplay to be about getting 50 people in one spot so they can abuse a game mechanic to be indestructible. They want cheap tactics to be punishable, and higher coordination to be rewarded. They want a small group to be capable of fighting off a much bigger group when using the right tactics.

To accomplish this goal, some concessions have to be made. Yes, offensive potential will far outpace defensive potential if you retain a boon/buff limit, but this is only true for stacks. For the coordinated army that doesn’t stack, boons and buffs will only match the damage output of the enemy.

Something I’ve found interesting in this game is that, as I go through the game, I have a harder time not earning gold than anything else.

I recently made a new toon. An elementalist. I wanted to have myself some sexy duds from the Crucible of Eternity dungeon, so I began to run that dungeon over and over again. Then, I combined that with more armor from Honor of the Waves, so I ran that dungeon a bunch of times.

At the end… I had 100 gold from a few days worth of playtime. Keep in mind, this wasn’t all made from hours of endless playtime. This was all made by just doing dungeons and getting tokens, then selling the extra stuff.

I’m actually starting to run out of things to do with my gold, now that I’ve bought every weapon and armor for my 5th (and likely final) toon, I’m starting to run out of things to buy with it. Now, I’m going to start putting ascended backpacks on all of my toons, because I don’t have much use for the gold otherwise.

Maybe its just a “way of play” thing, but there are a lot of ways to get money in the game. Unless you concern yourself with getting full ascended, or getting a legendary weapon, you’ll find your gold continually climb up as you sell stuff and do stuff.

I think the ferocity change is being overrated here. Knight and Soldier builds will barely be touched, and event to a lesser extent Valkyrie will still do fine. It is only assassins and berserker who feel that 11.4%/10% nerf.

Another issue with Unholy Sanctuary is that, in PVE, the most players use DS to avoid getting damage. On my generic LB build (30/0/0/10/30), I can sit in Death Shroud for forever, face tanking mobs while blasting away for long periods of time. Unholy Sanctuary wouldn’t be of any help, since I’m not taking damage in the first place.

In emergency usage, I’ll sit in DS to disengage and use a heal skill once it goes off cooldown, and not to get my health back very slowly. All in all, I have trouble justifying the use of this trait in any game mode.

I’ve mentioned defiance before. The best solution I’ve heard to the problem is to have defiance automatically remove itself over time. Like, if you get 5 stacks of defiance, then every 2 seconds a stack is removed. Stacks can also be removed by CC.

…does anyone in this thread know how to dodge?

I’ve been running a full zerker ele for awhile, and I don’t have trouble surviving. Granted, it is harder to survive as an ele, but that is largely due to how the particle effects obscure my vision, making it harder to properly dodge enemies.

Two builds that I run. One is a 30/20/0/0/20 staff DPS build. Take the vigor on crit trait, and you’ll rarely ever have to leave fire. In the overworld, this does so much damage that I don’t even bother with dodging regular enemies. They die too quickly under the combination of lava font + blast finishers. In rare circumstances, I’ll have to alt to Earth for the reflection + immobilize, or water to cure condis and blast heals, but otherwise the combination of vigor + fiery retreat + other staff utilities for emergency leaves me with quite the survivability.

That is nothing compared to my other build. 0/30/0/20/20, fresh air build. Uses any combination of weapons, but I like D/D the most. There are 4 things in this build that make surviving against trash mobs a cinch: glyph of elemental storms makes a blind field while in Earth Attunement, Lightning Hammer causes blind on auto attack, Elemental Attunement gives me constant protection AoE and regen, and the water line gives me spouts of AoE heal and cleanse. That is all before getting into the weapon sets and their abilities.

At this point, I’d put the survivability of the second build as higher than my zerker engineer.

SaltyDave.7346:

I don’t get it what’s all the hate about that crit’s 5% is given back as health.

Abridging to save space. One of the biggest issues with this trait is that thieves already have this ability via Signet of Malice. SoM heals for 133 per hit, even on hits that do little to no damage, so they’ll heal on caltrop proc and choking gas. Also, this will proc on every hit instead of just crits, so in standard zerker gear (55% chance), this matches hitting 4.8k crits regularly.

In high end PVE, where you have high fury time and Signet of Agility, hitting 80%+ crit rate, the new trait will regularly outpace Signet of Malice. But… this is where we get another issue: in high end PVE, the other healing skills of the thief don’t do much. Withdraw can act as an additional evade, but in all my dungeon running it is rare for me to ever opt out of SoM. And the heals from SoM are massive.

I guess if you are in extraneous circumstances and you need a whole lot of healing that SoM doesn’t provide, you can trait into this. Barring that… I’m not sure I’ll be getting out of executioner that often.

Necros actually have a hard time keeping perma poison. The poison comes mostly from the scepter auto attack’s 3rd chain, but condi necros are busy swapping between weapons to fire off all of their multi-bleed AoE attacks. The only time you get perma poison is when you are doing nothing but auto attacking.

That said, tying Dhuumfire to Life Blast isn’t that bad. In more hybrid builds, life blast isn’t completely useless. So, a hybrid necro can pop into DS for weakening shroud, then follow up with tainted shackles, hit with life blast during this time that they immobilize, follow through with dark path + doom for terror lock, and you’ll get a similar effect to just having burn proc on one of the attacks.

But I would like the nerfs to be reverted still.

I think the class descriptions were made during a term where the devs really had no idea how things were going to turn out. High end PVE and PVP kind of took a mind on its own.

That said, something that the game has been lacking sorely is a tutorial. From starting to play all the way to endgame, there’s no real guide or instruction to the games deeper mechanics. Instead, GW2 has opted for a “give the player tools slowly” kind of method, and expect people to learn either by being taught, or by looking up information on their own.

Problem is, players don’t know what they don’t know. So when it comes to things like combo fields and finishers, skill evades and blinds, conditions and tick thresholds, as well as boon radii and grouping, the average player is truly left in the dark. It is no wonder that so many players just hang back and shoot from afar. To them, zerkers meleeing an enemy is like some bizarre wizardry.

There needs to be something in-game to explain this. Like, a story mission or an instance where an NPC plainly tells you about how conditions work (tick rates and stacking), how combo fields and finishers work, how dodges work, how boons work, how melee weapons work. Just something to tell players “Yo, there’s all this stuff you need to learn!” instead of leaving it to jaded players to explain.

As always, my opinions on these traits…

Revealed Training: This is kind of “Meh”. It only works on stealth thieves, so unless I am going D/D against a boss it won’t do much in PVE. In PVP I imagine it is a bit better, since this will be about a 10% increase in damage for a few seconds, but all in all I’d call this a “meh” trait. Not bad, but not really good either.

Invigorating Precision: Not bad… at first. We already have signet of malice for static heals, but for DPS builds this can be used to top yourself off. Problem is, this competes with Hidden Killer or Executioner, which can be substantial boosts to damage. Compared to the damage loss, the amount of healing gained is inconsequential.

Shadow Arts: I can see the use in this one. I use Shadow Refuge on downed players to revive them, but sometimes enemies just bash my face in while I’m healing them. The damage reduction would be pretty strong for escaping, too. It’s a bit similar to shadow rejuvenation, but since this can apply to teammates, I think it would be a better option.

Acrobatics: this trait is nigh worthless. If I am in stealth, I’m probably not going to get hit by CC. If I’m probably going to get hit by CC, then I probably can’t reveal myself easily. Also, pretty much every weapon has something I can use anyway. Sword already stuns/blinds from stealth, shortbow would immobilize and potentially stop the attack anyway, and more than likely you’ll be able to dodge or shadowstep out of the way.

Bewildering Ambush: This is a trait I"ll use. 5 stacks of confusion on steal sounds basic, but also sounds really useful for condi or hybrid builds. Definitely a nice trait.

Yeah… not really looking forward to these GM traits.

Parasitic Contagion: This is the most interesting trait for me. I will be sticking with dhuumfire most likely, but in a WvW scenario I can see use for this. In WvW I will frequently use marks and epidemic at max range to harass at a distance/from walls, and to establish barriers. This can spread a lot of condis out amongst enemy groups, with the end result being enough passive heals, which is useful against all the ambient damage in WvW. In sPVP and PVE this is nigh useless, though.

Path of Corruption: Basically an inferior version of Chill of Death IMO. Though Dark Path can be used immediately and has 5 seconds lower cooldown, it doesn’t hit as hard, is harder to hit with, and doesn’t remove as many boons. From a PVE perspective… seems like it would be better to just use other skills to remove boons. From PVP, this is meh at best.

Unholy Sanctuary: Out of all of the boons in the game, regeneration is the one that I pay attention to the least. 130 HP a second isn’t stellar in any sense, with only the tankiest builds even bothering with it. Case in point, in PVP this is negligible at best, and in PVE you’re probably already at maximum health or dead anyway.

Unholy Martyr: Well, at least I can kill myself from other people’s incompetence. I’ve played with condition transferring for months, and I can never get it to work in a satisfactory manner. Ultimately, I’d rather just cleanse conditions, or cure conditions, instead of loading my own toon up with a bunch of conditions.

Renewing Blast: Compared to Deathly Perception or Foot in the Grave, Renewing Blast is another “Meh” skill. It is better than unholy martyr IMO, and I could see a use for this if you already have ridiculous amounts of precision or don’t need to worry about control effects, but with how hard this is to use, I’m not sure I’ll be able to slot this unless it heals for a lot.

Farzo.8410:

I hope, and if they aren’t, I WANT them to do something with the Spirit Weapons.

I think Spirit Weapons sounds really cool, but they have become completely useless. My fear is that they aren’t fixing them because they will become too similar to Necromancers. Well, too bad, they should have thought about that before adding such skills to the Guardian, and showcasing them in a video before release.

I really want Spirit Weapons to be useful.

This. So much this. That said, a lot of the new traits do seem to… suck.

Amplified Wrath: Biggest selling point is that it is better than Kindred Zeal, pretty much no matter what.

Radiant Retaliation: this, arguably, has the most interesting possibilities. I did some theoretical math in another thread, and I came up with about 550 damage per tick from retaliation. This is… quite scary. A condi support guardian that spreads masses of retal can be quite deadly in WvW and PVP.

Valor: Meh. AoE Aegis is good I guess.

Honor: It is about as flat a buff as you can get.

Virtues: Little point in such a minor endurance gain when AoE Aegis does more for group protection.

Some of these skills are alright. I’ve seen other classes where I’ve thought “what were they thinking?” and “OMG WTH WERE THEY THINKING!!!” but all in all the engi doesn’t seem too extreme.

Synaptic Overload: I’m just glad they finally have an option that isn’t grenadier or Autodefense bomb dispenser. This trait might see use, but even in the master tier the explosives line has fierce competition (Incendiary Powder, Enhance Performance, Explosive Powder), so this might go by the wayside for one of those. Still, nearly every engy build has some form of knockback, and so they can get quickness precisely when it would be best if they wanted to.

Bunker Down: I like this one. I’ve always found napalm specialist to be meh, and modified ammunition as a generic damage increase. If the mines do a lot of damage, then I can have fun with this while stacking or kiting.

Fortified Turrets: This trait is meh. This seems like one of those highly-situational “I spec this just for a lot of projectile protection temporarily” kind of things. Turrets are weakest to AoE and cleave, so in a PVP perspective this does little. Against bouncing projectiles, however, this can be quite useful. Otherwise, I’ll just use shield / elixir U for projectile protection.

Experimental Turrets: The alchemy line again suffers from immense competition. Next to HGH and AR alone, it is hard to justify using this trait. Still, I can see some use as ambient protection stacking or additional team vigor/fury, and it is true that engineers are only so-so with team buffs. But… going 30 points for this seems like too much of a hassle.

Gageteer: this is the least appealing trait IMO. I usually have a single gadget or two on builds, but nothing to really justify this trait. I can get 4 seconds of vigor from boots… or I can just take adrenal implant and get more than that overall. I can get aegis when using a mine… or I can take armor mods and get aegis passively but more frequently. Retaliation on AED isn’t appealing, since you get long duration retaliation from Elixir B and hidden flask anyway. Slick shoes gives regen, but healing turret gives near permanent regen anyway. Utility goggles and battering ram have some use, but the explosives trait would be better for battering ram, and utility goggles getting might is dwarfed by HGH in general use.

Covering conditions aren’t an issue with guardian burns. With burning, important thing is the frequency at which they are applied. Guardians are very good at rapidly applying short duration burns, so cleansing means nothing when the burn is back in 2 seconds anyway.

The issue with a condi guardian is two fold:

#1: lack of conditions overall
#2: high investment requirements to be competitive.

It is really that simple. The reason why condi engineers and condi necros are so scary is because they have a lot of conditions to do damage with. Burning, bleeding, poison, confusion, torment, terror, when all these things are being applied, and all of these things are doing damage, it translates into a lot of pressure, even alongside of their direct damage.

Because of this, engis/necros get a lot of use out of condition damage. But guardians get burning, and only burning. Do you know what 33% of a burn is in extra damage? 2 bleeds. That’s it. No matter how much you invest in condition damage or condition duration, that burning will only make up a small amount of damage when compared to other classes.

Since burning only stacks in duration, the moment you are with another class that causes burning, the burn becomes a redundant condition that contributes little to nothing as far as total DPS goes.

So, the second problem is the investment required to get it that high. Burning has the lowest proportional scaling out of any condition, so make burning a viable strategy, you have to put a whole lot into condition damage. This gives returns to only burning… making investing in condition damage nigh useless.

Now, the interesting trait for guardians isn’t the increase in burn, but the retaliation change. Now, this is where Anet may be on to something. Currently, retaliation scales with power, but does so very poorly. Only about 50% higher than bleeding, and this changes depending on the game mode. For high power builds, this is a useful boon…

But if Anet does what I think they’ll do, then they’ll make retaliation scaling insane with radian retaliation. Just to go for the baseline, at 300 condition damage (the minimum needed to get the trait), to match regular retaliation it would have to scale at about 25% of the stat (on par with burning). This means that, with 1400 or so malice from a dedicated condi build, retaliation would hit for 548 a pop.

That is… quite high, actually. A dedicated retaliation condi guardian can be an incredibly scary fight under these circumstances. In PVE this might be nearly useless still, but a condi support guardian in WvW with massive retal would be a frightening thing.

Though this is all just guesswork. I don’t know how this will really turn out.

You know, I could’ve sworn that Anet said that making ferocity also opened up the option of having crit damage be a primary stat… implying that ferocity will be a secondary stat on all gear currently.

It makes the most sense from a simplicity standpoint. The 15 = 1% conversion is arbitrary, as Anet could’ve easily made it 14 = 1%, or 12 = 1%, or 20 = 1%. So, we are left with two things anet could’ve done:

#1: Anet could have chosen the 15 = 1% because of wizards or something, and went about adjusting the ferocity stat for all stat combos individually to have only a net loss of 10% overall.

#2: Anet could have stuck with the secondary stat value that was predetermined from the whole primary/secondary stats dynamic they already have set in place, and just chose 15 =1% because it is closer to their ideal distribution.

The second seems more likely. After all, this is what they’ve done with precision (21 = 1%), condition damage (each condi has its own scale), and healing power (each heal skill has arbitrary scaling).

Anyway, as much as I appreciate the math, I think the OP has messed up somewhere: Anet balances on exotics, and not ascended. So, I’ll do the exotic computation myself:

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or kitten crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

So, why does everyone get much bigger numbers? This is ultimately about standards, really. When Anet sought to balance zerker gear (which I argue was fine in the first place), they did so to the letter. They looked only at the gear, and nothing else. No boons, no traits, no sigils, no team composition, and no consumables.

The community, however, looks at more things. Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Banner of Discipline receive heavy nerfs, getting their crit rates cut from 10%/15% to 4.6%11.3% respectively. Likewise, the more precision bonuses one gets (fury, spotter, sigils, other banners), the more severe these changes to crit damage become.

Whether focusing on just the build was the right move is debatable. I can see both sides of the argument, but since I opposed the zerker change in the first place, this is like seeing both sides of which foot gets stomped on.

For assassin gear, you’ll get

Power: 1998
Precision: 2339 (71% crit chance)
Ferocity: 72% crit damage

= 3729 effective power

against 4211 effective power form before, resulting in a 0.885, or a 11.4% reduction in effectiveness.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I need to ask, for the sake of my curiosity: exactly what is the alternative to science which may be proven . . . faith, which cannot be proven and only felt? Or personal experiences, which cannot be truly shared with others who were not there? Blind distrust is as useful as blind faith.

We do have to take someone’s word with the trust they aren’t lying, or there is no point to allowing the pursuit of understanding or knowledge through scientific methods. Cynicism must be tempered by limitation somewhere, or you run into only one possible conclusion: nothing can be trusted.

Now, may we discuss the nice young ladies who have a thing for each other again and how that’s a thing which happened?

The whole point of science is to be skeptical of science. Otherwise, if you just accept anything that you find in any journal anywhere without questioning the methods, reasoning, or inspiration behind it, then “science” just becomes another form of crystal balls and Latin chanting. Complete with Latin. There’s rhyme and reason to things, and I hate when people divorce rhyme and reason from science and scientists.

If you want to talk Epistemology, well that is a whole other topic. Also complete with Latin.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

You’ve overlooked the massive difference between the rate in adopted siblings and related ones. Adopted ones share all of those environmental factors you listed, and lack the biological common factors. If biology did not play a significant role, then adopted and related siblings would show the same rate— but the rate is substantially higher for related siblings.

You’re doing what you said others were doing— you’re reaching a conclusion you want to be true, and then viewing the evidence through that lens.

You’re also simplifying genetics substantially. Genes do not always directly cause individual traits. Genes can be connected with others, they may have (or require) triggers, or they may convey a predisposition rather than a certainty. When you dismissed the genetic argument by pointing to the fact that MZ twins do not have a 100% rate, that was a simplification of genetic science.

The rate in adopted siblings is higher than the rate in related siblings… that’s the issue. From a genetic standpoint, someone of no relation should only coincide with the sexuality of their adopted relative (given that the relative is already homosexual) at roughly the national average of distribution.

The biggest problem with genetics is that it is being used to encompass everything, regardless of hard evidence. Then, when genetics fails to explain something, they attribute this to unknown genetic factors instead of looking elsewhere. Genetics has taken on a nebulous aspect in this regard, and has ceased being scientific because it lacks any means to be disproved. I can say that there is a genetic cause to be predisposed to liking the Dallas Cowboys, and it is impossible to disprove that statement.

But lets look at “lenses” for a moment. The greatest platform for furthering research that this study provides would be examining the differences between identical twins of differing sexuality, because this is the closest we have of isolating all variables leading to the manifestation of sexuality. But no one I have ever talked to about this article with has ever reached that idea. Why? They don’t care. They are more concerned with who I am, what I am saying, and how to spin things their way than they are about actually studying or gathering information. They would rather dismiss, and nit pick, and name call, and despise, because they see me just as some villain to their cause.

So, quick shorthand, the usage of any of these phrases or their kin when talking about a non-personal subject:

“What you’re doing is”
“What they say”
“What you say”
“They use this as”
“Who they are”

Is a failure in logic, and the end of reasoning. These are not attitudes of discussion, but confrontation and accusation. They dismiss the topic to argue the man instead of the idea. The moment that anyone becomes more concerned with the people than the idea is the moment that unsaid one should take a long look in the mirror.

I recently changed up the outfit on my engineer as well. Cultural Tier 3 didn’t feel quite right, so I went with the full magitech set.

She’s still shooting you in the face, though.

My thief has gone through a makeover awhile ago. New hairstyle, and new armor set.

First armor set is still anonymity hood, duelist chest, gloves, shoulders, and whisper’s leggings/boots.

Second armor set is full Kodan, except the mask, which is a generic seeker mask.