Guild Wars 2

The ballad of the 3

And if by any chance I can freely swap all three? Well, this is where I’ve found the most interesting result (and the confirmation of the empirical guess above)

Average damage will always benefit from more power, even if that means less ferocity and less precision, unless with all buffs you go to high points of these stats

More specifically

If Sum is lower than 5200 (almost all game actual occurance) -> Ferocity = 0, Precision = 916, Power = Sum – 916 (i.e. all points in power, 916 is the minimum Precision)

If Sum is between 5200 and 6231 -> Ferocity = 0, Power = Sum/2 + 1684, Precision = Sum/2 – 1684

If Sum is between 6231 and 7882 -> Power = 2/3 * [ (Sum-82) – ( (Sum/2-41)^2 – 9450000 )^2 ], Precision = (Sum – Power)/2 + 791, Ferocity = Sum – Power – Precision (actually, weird things happen around 6250 because we’re so close to the boundaries, but it doesn’t change much so I won’t make this longer)

If Sum is higher than 7882 -> Precision = 2932 (due to approximation, this could be 2922 actually), Power = Sum/2 – 341, Ferocity = Sum/2 – 2591

Again, I’ve said a constant sum of the 3 factors. Berserker’s has an higher sum than Soldier’s, so more DPS obviously. Celestial has similar value of Soldier’s usually.
If a “only power” item existed (with Power equal to the sum of usual Primary and Secondary attributes), it would be way better than pure Berserker’s
And If ever a “Ferocity primary stats” equipment make its way into the game, with current mechanics it will almost surely be far behind the any other offensive set.

Final Words

Again, this analysis doesn’t take into consideration some factors like “on critical” sigils/traits and so on, you might want to consider those before blindly put all in Power.
Remember to account buffs like Might, Fury, Banners, Sigils (stacking/permanent) and so on.

If any calculation are wrong or you are unsure about those, just let me know.

Precision vs Ferocity

A new “dispute” could be between those 2 factors. So, suppose we’re not going to touch Power, is it better to have a high critical chance or high critical damage?
Back to our formula above, we discard the power factor so we want to maximize the multiplier

Damage Multiplier =[1 + (Precision – 832) (Ferocity + 750)] / 3’150’000

I get that to get to a maximum (= best return) I need to get

Ferocity = Precision – 1582, or Precision = Ferocity + 1582

Since base Precision is 916, Ferocity is 0 (level 80 character), I still have that Precision should be 666 more than Ferocity. Even if I subtract Fury (=420 Precision) and sigil of accuracy (=147 Precision) I still have 99 more for Precision. (If you use a stack sigil you should go for Bloodlust, so I don’t consider it).

TL;DR: Precision over Ferocity. The more precision means that you should take a Power/Precision food over a Power/Ferocity (wasn’t like that before this patch)

The only Precision <-> Ferocity swaps I know are
Knight’s equipment <-> Cavalier’s equipment
Eagle Runes <-> Golemancer Runes (6th bonus is different)
Food example above
Quite close is also
Valkyrie’s equipment <-> Zealot’s equipment (also swapping Vitality with Healing)

Power vs Precision

This is an old topic, so I’m not much going to discuss it. At set point of Critical Damage, how should I spend my points on Power and Precision?
There are several calculation out there, just look at this table and these graphs .

They are “old”, however even if Ferocity has been introduced, it doesn’t change much as Critical Damage was treated as a constant.

If I take my formula above, put ferocity as a constant, and impose that Power + Precision = Sum (which I assume constant as I can only swap those) I get that best returns are obtained if (skipping boring part)

Power = ( Sum + 31500000 / (Ferocity +750) – 832) /2

Precision = Sum – Power

What does that mean? Take your build, sum up Precision and Power, then do the calculation above. If you’re not close to the numbers from calculation try to swap pieces in order to get as close as possible. It’s not sure you can get actually close to that point, however there are few gear swaps you can do maintaining the other stats untouched:

Power <-> Precision
Berserker’s equipment <-> Assassin’s equipment
Sharpening Stone <-> Maintenance Oil
Scholar Runes <-> Eagle Runes (6th bonus is different)
Several food combinations

Almost similar are

Cleric’s equipment <-> Magi’s equipment
Carrion’s equipment <-> Rabid’s equipment

The last 2 have also a swap of toughness and vitality, so other factors come into consideration.

You do some calculation you’ll find out that you’ll almost always prefer to increase your power. Do remember to add 875 power for 25 stacks of might and 420 precision for fury, or any other particular buff (bloodlust/perception/banners…) you think is important. On some extreme cases you can find out that some points in precision are better, but generally Power > Precision.

In the last few days after April 15th release, I’ve done some tests with build editors to see if my builds are still the best I could get.

As everybody knows, damage in power builds comes after a combination of 3 factors, which are Power, Precision and Ferocity. Say you have the possibility to swap stats freely between these 3 factor keeping the sum constant (you can’t actually, only in small amounts), what you would prefer? What combination would give the best return?

Warning, this is really long and in several posts, plus requires a bit of calculus knowledge in some points, so I’ll immediately give you the TL;DR version: ALWAYS Power over Precision over Ferocity. Simple as that. Side note, Precision should be 1582 more than Ferocity (taking into account base Precision of 916 and other buffs)

Practical example, I take my Guardian DPS build (with traits, but no runes/sigil and food) and I wonder which would be the best choice for Food: Power and Precision ? Power and Ferocity and Ferocity ? Precision and Ferocity ?
And Runes? Shall I take the good old Scholars or Eagle or even Golemancer whit a bonus 6th piece?
And Sharpening Stones are always better than Maintenance Oil?

And if I don’t use a Berserker set but instead Knight’s/Soldier’s/Celestial/whatever?

(again, quick TL;DR: for DPS, take Truffle Steak and the new “standard” Rune of Strenght or even Ruby Orbs! )

So, let’s have a look how direct damage works .

On non-critical hits:
Damage dealt = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

On critical hits:
Damage dealt = (Weapon strength) * Power * Critical Damage * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Since Weapon strength, skill specific coefficient and target’s armor do not depend on Power, Precision and Ferocity, we treat those as a constant and forget it.

A common formula obtained from the above for average DPS is

Average Damage = Power *(1 + Critical Chance * (Critical Damage -1) ) * Other stuff

“Average DPS” is just the average of critical hits and non-critical hits, weighted after the critical chances. I’m not taking into consideration any kind of “on critical situation” or similar stuff. Those could change the balance of things, but that should be treated separately.

Average Damage = Power * [1 + (Precision – 832) (Ferocity + 750) / 3’150’000] * Other stuff

Just looking at this formula we realize that power has more weight than Precision and Ferocity (the second term inside square bracket is hardly more than 0.6). That is to say, if I have 100 points than can be allotted however I want, Power should be my best choice guessing from that formula. Is that correct? Yes, but I’m not really happy with “guessing” so I’m going more into numbers.

First I’d like to talk about 2 special cases, one is Power and Precision at set Ferocity, the other is Precision and Ferocity at set Power, then I’ll be back to the “main topic”.

The sigil I’ve bought (renewal) was available to all my characters, so Muchacho you weren’t wrong.

Solstice.1097:

i had to buy a cavalier’s amulet twice now. was that a bug I should submit a ticket for?

I sincerely hope so… Traits could be tied to class, but trinkets sigil and runes should be acc bound. It’s 10 gold for a trinket kitten .

I’m going to check with a Sigil I’ve bought.

You could do the same going to WvW and using a crafting station. If that is the reason is pretty lame.

+1 to Bank in HotM

EotM is the reason why Anet shouldn’t stack server to form a 3 way WvW. Nobody cares about defending because they don’t care about winning a match or at least put some efforts against the enemy. Who cares if “Badlands” or “Overgrowth” wins, who are they? Who am I playing with when I’m in EotM? No idea, I see a tag and just follow.

Sometime while trying to join with my commander, I might step into enemy zerg. Do you think I care to fight or going into that tower, build siege and stuff? No, I just jump to my death. I would die anyway, so nobody deserve my bag

So it has become a place to level alts and farm. No more no less. At the point that people rage if they see enemy defending.

Maybe a token system? A reward track = 1 token.

5 tokens = nice weapon
10 tokens = cool weapon
20 tokens = OMG weapon

I’d like to have a reward track with an exclusive cool weapon (skin). Pretty much something similar to Mistforged Hero’s weapon from WvW tournament, but exclusive to PvP of course.

+1 all that Scars said, especially

The Scars of Time.6324:

- Add extra areas with target golems to the Hearts of the Mists. There are not enough of those to test damage or builds with this number of people.

[…]

- Add a drop down list of servers/maps to choose from like districts in Guild Wars 1.

[…]

- Keep at least 1 map/city with access to most services server based. This gives us the possibility to stay in touch with the server community many of us have been working kitten. Advertising for WvW events for example is crap with people of the enemy servers in that same map. And no, don’t make this the home WvW borderland because I guess some servers have constant queues.

City: I want to have a place where I know I can find my community. Being LA or the new hub or whatever. (BTW, are we ever going back to a city as a central hub?).
WSR has an awesome community, I don’t want to need a huge friend list just to communicate the people. I have a small guild because I like playing in a small guild, at the same time I help other people in WSR so we can play together to a common goal, being playing in WvW or killing a World Boss.

With the new system, I guess my only chance to kill Tequatl randomly with people I don’t know. Earlier I did it with my community. Maybe to Anet this don’t concern, to me a lot.

I like the megaserver on some maps where I can find other people to do group event on casual exploration. But that is all the good up to now.

The idea is great, but has its flaws otherwise we won’t have hundreds of replies with the same tone. Suggestions are there, I hope we won’t have to wait a month or so to hear a “Soon™” reply.

Don’t know mesmer, but boonmancer was pretty common on guardians and not that unique for sure. And they want people to use more a full set than mixes.

Just go with a full set of water, you’ll have 25% less boon duration but has more AoE healing. Or full monk (more healing here as well).

kimeekat.2548:

This sounds like the GW1 F key weapon system. You had up to 4 different equipment slots where you could put different weapon combos to swap between (I don’t recall if it was out of battle or not)

There wasn’t “out of combat” in GW1. You could always swap. The fact is that you couldn’t change your skills in GW1 and even less your attributes.
You primary swapped to change stats (example, half recharge time on a particular attribute before casting a spell tied to that attribute).

Wait to draw conclusion. I had the same thought (and fear) but consider these 2 points

1) Tournament wouldn’t have any sense with only 3 servers.
2) No more servers = no more transfers = less money to Anet. I guess this is important to them.

But we have to wait 2 more days to know that.

For PvE I like the idea, I’ll see hot it works.

But since I’m mainly a WvW player: DO NOT MERGE SERVERS. I repeat if I wasn’t clear enough DO NOT MERGE SERVERS

I’ll wait the next 2 blog post on the matter, but DO NOT MERGE SERVERS

I’ll lose all the matchups because of nightcapping and people leaving for higher tier server, but DO NOT MERGE SERVERS

What is a “queue”? (Sarcastic question from non-bandwagoner server in EU Bronze)

BTW we actually managed a queue of 10 people in our border saturday night. People were “WTF?!?!?!” Same on reset night (wasn’t playing, but people told me)

Reverence.6915:

If they’re transferring out, it’s because they haven’t found a home in your server. There’s very little reason to transfer to another server for PVE reasons so your WvW community either didn’t fit them or wasn’t there in the first place

I’m from WSR, We had people moving out coming back for our PvE serverwide events because “wsr is their home” but at the same time “they want to try something different in WvW”

Anyway, since preseason transfer are over (or almost), we can draw some conclusion from our small server POV

As a server, I’d say that transfers pretty much equalized between in and out. To be honest, we have lost more people before the free transfer period started.

Few days ago it seemed worse, but actually we found a few coming back (either transferring back or resumed playing) and some addiction.

Be aware that at our level (T8/9) even a single dedicated WvW guild makes a difference.

Anyway, I’m not upset of how things went. It could have been worse.

On the other hand, we can’t oversee the fact that other servers were severely affected by the transfers:
1) Gandara had so many (free) transfers that the average of this week matchup is 515- 100 – 80. JS.
2) Blacktide was losing against us last week after 2 weeks in a row they were behind, after that this week they have won a matchup against a server 280 points ahead in rating! Also BT used to suffer a lot nightcapping, now they are dominating on that aspect. I also suspect that Dzagonur has lost players, but I can’t confirm that. They could also just taking a break before tournament.
3) Vabbi is crushing Underworld and Fissure of Woe. According to what I’ve learned, this is a combination of Vabbi having transfers and the other 2 bleeding almost to death.

My 2c on lower tiers free transfer

It’s legitimate and everybody has their way to play the game. There are people who spend a lot of time just flipping items so they can have more gold. There are people who just afk and chat. You and others will play like this? Ok, fine to me, at least I appreciate you’re genuine. But I won’t support it, ever.

ArkAngel.7940:

Everyone who has ever raided SMC with a large force knows the Castle Lord is a big push over. Such weakness I believe does not deserve to be a Castle Lord. This is why I propose we get a new one.

We’re not fighting NPCs. The NPCs have to be there for several reasons, but fighting them (and this one in particular) is not a reason for them to be there.

goldenwing.8473:

Top of the head ideas (including both useless and those that have little possibility of ever existing):

Account bound legendaries.

Account bound dye.

Account bound skins.

Account bound gear. (Ascended)

Account bound useless (items from dungeons/personal stories)

Account bound items purchased from gem store (past, present, future)

And the one that really matters: account bound Wexp

I think ANet believes teasers are clever marketing tools. I also believe they could write an entire article hyping anything.

-Not holding breath

well sir, you guessed 4 items correctly

Sol.8341:

lot of really good things
When season 2 start, low population servers will be medium population due to the influx of pvers chasing achievements and rewards and they will become a zerg capturing objectives but not defending as there are no defend / yak escort achievements. another lot of interesting things

No, at all, people stacked to some silver league server, both in EU and in NA. In EU things were helped by the fact that of the silver league free transfer, only one (Gandara) was international, so guess what, ALL the bandwagoners went there.

Sol.8341:

The maximum amount of gems you have to spend is 2400, just treat it as a quality of life gemstore purchase for no queues and buying a Season 2 weapon skin.

To the Arena Net staff that is reading this: I’m sure you’re happy that you’ve achieved your goal of selling gems (even if I’m sure that reward hunters are actually people that has stacks of gold so they can burn 250g for that)

I’m not. And I’m really sure you won’t care. Have a nice day

And a reset too Nice nice nice!

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

lol well the Account Bound feature was for skins and dyes, no WXP in sight!

wait 2 days, then you can despair

Daddar.5971:

Don’t you see, this whole trolling, slow-rolling, drip-dripping rollout is entirely and exactly timed to coincide with ESO early access opening. That by the way is at 7 a.m. ET on March 28. Regular access ESO launches on 4/4, the same day ast the last scheduled GW2 blog post reveal. Coincidence? Yeah, right…

It’s called marketing. It’s not trolling, this is how the entire World work.

Carpboy.7145:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Not only did I not say no, I said this “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea,”

:0 so we can expect this by April 15th?

we could be pretty sure it won’t happen by that date (and hopefully the day after tomorrow we’ll learn something important that will be release on the 15th)

Say she is passing the suggestion to the dev team now, they have at least figure out what are the consequences if they add a thing like this before a “yes or no”. Coding should be trivial.

GG from an old WSR enemy

I hope to have some fierce fights during season

So, now transfer to WSR is officially free. So what are you waiting for?

BTW listen to Sorte. She’s blonde, so you have to listen to whatever she tells you.

They are also a good spot to regroup while travelling. So no.

If you have an issue with fellow players that stop to gather resource, find others to play with.

Atherakhia.4086:

So does anyone else out there no what the point of WvW is? Obviously we do it for fun? But is that enough? Should it be enough?

Of course. If I’ll ever stop having fun, I’ll just stop playing (either WvW or the whole game).

Rewards are fine and I get some (let’s say most) play to get those, but if that is your main motivation, sooner or later you’re done and after that you’re back to square 1. I remember one of my guildmates saying “If I get a Twilight I’ll stop playing this game”. Totally fair, but a bit depressing to me, after that Legendaries are just a collection of bits… Just for an example.

What’s the point to me going for a run each day? Or go skiing on the weekends in winter/hiking in summer? Because I have fun doing that stuff. Same is GW2 to me.

Imho the real issue is to avoid gameplay to become boring. (And this half depends on the player and half on devs)

The server with the highest coverage (= highest PPT) will probably win in all of those categories, so I don’t think it will change much the current situation

+1 for me too, nice idea. I usually use my BoH for siege or ascended trinkets, but this is actually a good idea!

No. WSR (=EU T8/T9) here.

I found it as a bug and quite annoying tbh, waypoint is a T3 upgrade, it’s not you get it after flip.

Having to load twice to get to a specific waypoint instead of map spawn is a waste of time.

Zerg will move faster? So small groups trying to defend. You work hard to get the 3 wp in home border and in EB keep to improve your mobility.
If a blob can’t succeeded in defend, it will just brute force a structure and cap it back. Small groups could have an hard time.
So I guess this favours numbers over strategy.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d say there is a pretty strong sentiment against the idea of collapsing all of WvW into 3 colors, rather than the current world set up. Which I agree with. I think world pride and association is an important part of the way that WvW works currently.

+1

DevonCarver.5370:

Here’s a possible version of shorter matchups that wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice the long term fight of a WvW matchup currently and wouldn’t involve merging everyone into one of three teams.

Matches last 8 hours, there are 21 matches in a week with the same 3 worlds, […]

IF the 3 matches have different weights based on active population (or like 10-6-3 for “primetime”, 5-3-1 for “night”, 7-4-2 for “day”), that could be an interesting idea. Reset should be really quick, like no more than a few minutes, possibly with all people ported to starting waypoint in respective map with closed gates, like start of a pvp match, so while waiting for new match they can discuss strategy.

Coverage will still be an issue, but maybe underdog server can try to gather people for a night to say “at least we win one on primetime”

Off hour PPT will still have the same weight as primetime PPT, so I fail to see the “fixing”

Actually stomping and sentries (!) will actually become more valuable, maybe to the point that score is essentialy the sum of points in a team deathmatch.

Who wins in an unbalanced team deathmatch? You guessed it right.

Because of the rewards specific to the 7 weeks tournament.

Dayra.7405:

Killing large karma train with an organized guild is probably the most profitable thing you can do. Only problem: The karma-train gets smaller and smaller very fast with every wipe.

But you have other server karma train. So while you’ll fight those, the first server karma train forms again and the cycle of life continues!

Seigfried.5938:

But the servers are then more in control of the enemies score if they have to die to give their enemy a point. Between pvdooring and kills for points, which do you think is a better option?

I just want to remind that kills somehow counts (through stomping), I don’t have the exact number but I guess it’s in the 15-20% range of the warscore (basing on gw2score.com statistics on point not from tick which are roughly 25% of the score and subtracting the sentries which I estimate at 5%)

Anyway, if WvW was a team DM (which is essentially what you are proposing) it should just have a flat terrain with 3 spawn point, as no structure would have any significance.
No tactic and strategy = no fun to me. At least now there are some components involved, even if most of people just zerg.
You remove the structures, you’ll just have a big zerg fighting a big zerg and another big zerg, as roamers will be just easy points and small guild groups will be more easy points.

Seigfried.5938:

Kills for points should dominate the scoring. After this happens, we can have a competitive second season.

Because “kills for points” is nowhere linked to coverage and zerging, right?

Anyway, YES, I do want a new season/tournament, I don’t care that we will probably finish second or third last in europe, I had some exciting battles during Season 1. Which is all I want from WvW, battles.

I have a brilliant idea: no more MF in Vigil’s keep, people will have to cap Garri or SM to have a forge.

Just to hear more people complaining about being forced play WvW

If rewards are tied only with participation, no need to transfer, just fight. The best would be have repeatable achievements, so MOAR WvW = MOAR reward.

Blackgate and Vizunah will win? Or will be Jade Quarry and Seafarer? GG to them, I don’t care, just give me some fun fights.

Already missed with EotM release, please give to us account WXP with the Spring tournament.

It’s not like you can go at the wurm and slay it whenever you want. You should know that specific builds are required, plus stacking might, stability, books, tornadoes…

Of course the first build works better in group, I wrote as a first sentence in my post however the OP asked for something viable also in PvE and I don’t find the 0 / 0 / 10 / 30 / 30 cleric’s to be the best in PvE

Personal preference ;-)

That build works wonder in group, you’re a constant source of buffs and heals, I use a similar build in WvW lately.

However it doesn’t work a lot in PvE because the damage output is small (but you won’t never fall either, so as long you’re not looking to have arguments with dungeon speedrunners you’re fine )

If you want to go a bit on the damage side, you can use this (I used exotics instead of ascendend, I never knew ascended as “cheap” ^^)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlcgqCnFyMEm4ESWBRC7BGlRd01jECDZIA-jkyAYrARcAoPQJwioxWZLiGraBTVmI1pQt3QRzfIULFATKjA-w

0 / 0 / 30 / 30 / 10 Hammer and Staff, mainly Knight with some zerk trinkets and zerk weapons if you like have some more damage. I use this build on “easy” runs in WvW and in dungeons. Survivability is on the low side of the bar, of course.

However, remind that you’re never the primary source of damage in a zerg, but a Guardian that falls easily is a shame to the profession.

My suggestions: have a bit of everything. I have 4 different sets of armour (Soldier, Valkyrie, Knight and Clerics), ~20 weapons (Soldier and Berserker of all, Hammer and GS in double copy as I have always a Bloodlust stacking weapon) and ~20 trinkets (see armour), I just adjust myself to the situation.

Option A: Ctrl + click on someone. Done.
Option B: Ctrl + T while having the character selected. Done.

Doesn’t seem so hard to me.

(yes, I know you lose targeting, BUT you’ll probably have some voice communication on those situation and therefore you can literally call the target, plus with more than 5 people you’ve already lost targeting)

Priority should be having the commander functionality reworked completely, having more tools for commanders that could be useful.

People should speak English in EotM, that’s it.
If the won’t fair enough, I don’t think there will be much coordination needed tbh, I think people will mainly play with guildmates and other friends.

+1, could just be a general multiplier called “participation bonus” with range from 0 (never played) to 1 (actively played, based on how many ranks have been gained in the current matchup) but the Power of the Mist is a really low buff, to actually motivate people the buff should be higher. And if that is the case, many dedicated PvErs will cry for it.

So: it won’t happen.

Ok, but we hoped that by now they would have implemented without “kinks”

Let’s wait, the Living World content will be there, don’t worry

And a new interface!

I’m a bit too sarcastic, I know, but I really hoped that it would have arrived with this update.