Guild Wars 2

It would be a terrible mistake to go the DLC route right after the launch of TESO and close to the Wildstar one. It’s probably now when the B2P can really make a difference.
DLCs might be viable on a different situation, but I would really prefer a true expansion over them.

aocypher , Anet already has the technology to monitor what players want. It is called heat maps which show where players are in the game and what they are doing the most. Based off of this information and feedback from the forums anet should have no trouble deciding on what type of content to bring to the table.

Rewards (gold, achievements, …) play a HUGE role on what the playerbase does, so this kind of metrics usually deliver a completely biased information and should be analyzed very carefully.

RealBGB.9132:

(for us TS users)… When speaking to someone at your desk and keep pressing your ptt button

This happens to me A LOT :P

There are a lot of things involved, but complexity isn’t one of them.

The game is too spammy AND fast paced to work properly.
A fast paced game would have needed a smaller amount of skills or some kind of resource (mana, energy, …) in order to prevent every character involved in a fight from performing meaningful things all the time.
For a game with an arguably high amount of skills per charcater and no resources, the pace should have been quite slower for the insane amount of things happening around to be readable.

Whenever fights get bigger than a 1on1 (probably 2on2 for decent players), everything starts becoming a mess and even the involved players have to tunnelvision and start ignoring many things.
For someone trying spectate the whole teamfight, the game is completely unreadable and several replays are needed in order to understand whta happened (and that’s without considering screen clutter).

Removing the TP sounds like a horrible idea to me.

What the game could use, however, is a less RNG based / gold centric economy.
If drops were A LOT more fixed, the most popular farm spots would only supply some materials, flooding the market and making the prices go down (or other material prices go up). This would create a much more player driven economy, where prices settle on a supply/demand basis.
Since there are taxes tied to the TP, it would always be more cost effective to work towards the specific materials you’re looking for. Players, however, could be OK with smaller earnings and use the TP based on how fun they find the activity to get the desired materials.

Since supply is extremely RNG based, currently prices are almost only about demand and the economy is not player driven at all. No matter what a player is looking for, the method that produce the higher amount of overall wealth will always be the best.

Building momentum at 15% or Engineer Adrenalile Pump (10% on toolbelt skill use) are not much different from vigor. They grant a higher endurance regen as long as you use class mechanics often, but since 50% is the least amount required for a dodge, they can hardly involve any player made decision.
At 50%, Building Momentum also works at background (just way stronger) but can ALSO encourage the player to ACTIVELY use a burst skill in order to ensure a dodge worth endurance.

This is probably one of the most interesting warrior mechanics for PvE (even if it’s rarely needed outside of solos; the game is just too easy for a full group), where using an adrenal skill competes with Berserker’s Power and often results on a DPS loss, and it really saddens me to see it gone (I don’t play warrior btw :P).
I understand the game balance revolves around PvP, but it’s not like this trait, even in its bugged state, is as meta-ish as many others (like Cleansing Ire or Fast Hands, this last one being also a 15 point minor) there.

I would really prefer to see vigor and natural endurance regeneration receiving a hit and this kind of mechanics, which can benefit from an active player imput, becoming more prevalent.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Furthermore, assuming that the intent in removing perma vigor is to actually nerf the on-dodge traits, I think this is a very nice way to nerf the potential power of deceptive evasion and selfless daring. The other way of nerfing the traits is to actually decrease their overall power of changing the effect they have (i.e. the original proposed deceptive evasion changes). Would you rather you heal half the amount on each dodge, or have half the base vigor uptime?

I think permavigor is nerfed in order to, as you say, hit the dodge itself, which is the most powerful part of dodgerolling. The impact on dodge traits is probably nothing but a collaretal damage.
Obviously I would rather heal the half amount than having a 50% vigor uptime, which would made me lose 1 out of 4 dodges (1 out of 6 with current energy sigils). I would just need to avoid what a single selfless daring proc (2 selfless daring procs with current energy sigils) heals in order to outperform it, which is rather easy as long as I’m not mindlessly spamming dodges (at least for sPvP, where the coefficient is already at 0.5).

Yamsandjams.3267:

People were sad about engg losing their perma vigor too (although they technically still have it with infused precision), but they’ve been managing just fine. It’ll just mean you’re a little less free to dodge whenever the hell you feel like it. You’ll still be able to get pretty high vigor uptime, especially with boon duration increases.

And hey, with the new sigil changes, you can put a sigil of energy on your greatsword that you couldn’t before (assuming you didn’t have one on there already). That should more than compensate for a loss of vigor uptime.

ANet said that many sigils and runes have been rebalanced to the new system. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sigil of Energy happens to be nerfed; in fact, I’m actually expecting it.

The case of Guardians and Mesmers is also bit different from the Engineer one.
Both have strong, next to build defining, traits that are triggered on dodge. Deploying a bomb on dodge is nice, but not as important as clone generation is for a shatter mesmer or healing for a bunker guardian.
Shatter mesmer (which arguably offers the most interesting mesmer gameplay) is going to get hit hard, massively if Energy also gets a nerf. Not so afraid on bunker guardian since it can get vigor from PoV too (an Energy nerf would hurt though), even if that means being even more pidgeonholed and absolutely depends on Runes of Soldier not receiving serious changes (which I don’t expect, but could happen).
My concerns on Guardian are probably more about offensive specs, which get hit harder than bunkers and keep receiving crappy burn related updates (which are likely to be useless and would lead to nothing but passive/unskilled gameplay if useful).

Carighan.6758:

I find the assumption that Power-builds need Power+Precision+Ferocity odd.

By that logic, wouldn’t condition-damage need Condition Damage + Precision + Condition Duration?

Power is what scales the raw damage of direct damage attacks. It’s the direct counterpart to what Condition Damage (or Malice) does for conditions. That’s it.

The impact of precision is quite smaller on Condi builds than on Power ones.
Look at Necromancer scepter autoattack and Barbed Precision for example.
The auto inflicts 5s of bleeding while the trait provides a 66% chance to inflict 2 more on crits. The improvement is clearly under the 50% power one, and that’s without critical damage at all which Condi builds have no use for.
You absolutely need it in order to maximize damage, but that’s a PvE thing. PvP is usually more about a good balance between offense, defense and utility, and precision tends to become cost ineffective once you’ve enough to reliably proc some powerful trait like dhuumfire (if your spec has such a thing).

Condition Duration is a bit tricky.
First of all, there’s almost no condition duration gear. It’s something that’s enhanced mostly through traits, runes/sigils and food (if available), so it still leaves a stat free slot which will probably go towards defense.
Secondly, it’s not something you want to max out. Long lasting conditions applications are likely to be cleansed (ASAP or eventually) if they land and won’t get any benefit from it. It’s more about reaching the sweetspot that slightly improves those short duration control effects and/or conditions that are constantly applied, like autoattacks.
Finally, it’s not related to any other secondary stat, so technically it can make good use of heavy investment on its own while allowing room for defense. A high investment on either Precision or Critical Damage often require to invest in the other one too for Power builds.
It’s probably closer to what final damage multipliers are for power builds (something that’s often overlooked in this discussion) than to precision or critical damage.

In any case, as I said before, this is mostly a WvW issue.
Pure conditions builds needs to chose between Settler or Rabid for sPvP.
The first one is not Condition major and often requires investing in traits and utilities that make good use of the healing power (which are usually unrelated to damage). It might create some annoying specs to fight 1on1, but the damage potential isn’t high and can be handled by decent team rotations.
The second one just provides a lot of precision, probably much more than desired.
It’s in WvW, with much more room for mix and match and something like Dire gear, where things get nasty.

Silv.9207:

1) You can apply conditions and run/defend waiting for the enemy death. A dps need to attack to inflict damage, you don’t.

This isn’t true at all.
In order to apply conditions, the condi user usually needs to hit with attacks that can be avoided/blocked/whatever just like power based moves. The damage will be dealt over time, but the source is still a direct hit.
In a situation where the condi user can fous on defense and wait for the enemy to die, equally damaging power skills would already finish that enemy.
This coupled with the player ability to cleanse conditions is the reason why condi specs needs to be given more room for defense than power ones.

The problem with condition damage is not the condition mechanic itself nor even that extra room for survivability. Some skills, traits and design choices are just overpowered and might require some kind of shaving.

From a WvW roaming perspective, Dire is one of the worst ideas ever.
There’s no Condition Duration gear (outside of maybe a Givers weapon) and Precision is only needed in small amounts. Most powerful on-crit procs (like Incendiary Powder or the current Dhuumfire) have a long enough CD to perform finely with a quite low critical chance (15%-20%, maybe even less), while the weaker ones (X% chance to inflict a short bleeding on criticals) usually result on a smaller damage improvement than a power based critical with no critical damage at all.

IMHO the reasonable extra room for defense has been always nicely covered by Rabid. Settler/Apothecary are a bit mor extreme but they’re not Condition major and often require trait and utility choices to capitalize the healing power.
Conditions go through armor and protection, and Poison reduces the effectiveness of healing, so they’re quite antibunkerish by nature. Allowing a condi user to make use of all the available room for defense the more bulky/passive way makes them too resilient to direct damage offensive specs, which should somehow be their counter.
The fact that Dire is not kicking into sPvP on top of the current state of conditions in PvE made me wonder what the hell was ANet thinking on when they released this set.

Condition duration foods are also extremely impactful and should be shaved or just deleted from the game (or WvW at least).

Outside of this, conditions are quite balanced IMHO and there are just a few skills/traits that might require some shaving/rework.
Engineer incendiary powder is going to require some rework sooner or later, for example. It’s a big chunk of damage that will eventually land no matter what the victim does and doesn’t promote skillful gameplay at all.
Such a trait prevents the engineer class to improve on different aspects that could be more interesting gameplay wise or could even misslead to undeserved nerfs, just like happened with Necromancer because of Dhuumfire (which uses pretty much the same mechanic atm).
Among other possible offenders, Necromancer scepter autoattack becomes quite a beast when a good amount of condtion duration is packed (I’m quite afraid on the new bleed based runesets providing a 45% duration increase) and Warrior Combustive Shot is maybe too much for a conquest mode now that it’s also the main trigger for Cleansing Ire.

Dean Calaway.9718:

In a trinity MMO 92% of the players go for DPS, 7% tank, 1% heal.
In a game like GW2 DPS didn’t need to be over the top, players already love to play a damage class even if they’re heavily dependant, but thanks to way crit damage works in GW2 playing anything else just looks silly.

Oddly enough, the reason why I mostly play healer on trinity based games is the same why I go full berseker in GW2. It just offers the most reactive gameplay :P

Never understimate upscaled characters. They’re beasts (so powerful that need to be capped at 2,5k power/precision and 120 % critical damage)

Teratus.2859:

if you want more challenge in low level areas then play on a lower level toon or play with a different setup
no need to make the zones harder because Zerkers gear is stupidly over powered

Zerker (or any other thing with critical damage) is the weakest option on considerably downscaled enviroments. It’s pretty much like you were wearing just Power/Precision.
It’s probably still the most hard hitting combiantion, but Knights, Soldiers or even Condition Damage setups are overall far better.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

Yes, they’re scaled.
A lvl80 blue gear scales perfectly to a lvl62 one when on a lvl62 zone, for example.
Stat points provided by traits are also scaled and the low level character usually has a higher total amount of effective trait stats.
The way downscaling works, however, lvl80 characters end up being quite more powerful than zone level ones, usually by a huge margin.

• Gear is scaled based on character level, not ger level.
  A lvl80 character is usually going to wear lvl80 gear, so it will perfectly match the new zone level. A lvl5x characater, on the other hand, might be using some 4x (or even lower) gear piece and that will be proportionally scaled as if it were a 5x one.
  In short, it’s like the lvl80 would be always using the best gear available, which is soething almost unthinkable for a low level one.

• There are higher rarities of gear at lvl80.
  Just like a lvl80 blue gear scales perfectly to a lvl62 blue, a lvl80 exotic/ascended gear does it to a “lvl62 exotic/ascended” one, which is something that often doesn’t even exist. These differences are quite significative, specially for things like weapon damage.

• High level gear includes more stats than low level one.
  There’s a quite neutral scaling here that can even work in favour of the low level character.
  The number of stats is somehow compensated so, for example, a lvl80 berserker blue gear piece will provide, when downsaced to lvl30, a lower amount of power and precision than a lvl30 blue strong (power/precision) gear would. Obviously, the lvl80 gear will still retain the third stat so the amount of stats will be the same (berserker is a quite weird case, since critical damage scales horribly atm), but the low level character has a higher room for “expertise” (assuming he’s completely up to date on his gear and using the same rarity, which won’t happen :P)
  Something similar happens with traitline and rune stat points. 100 points in the powerline for a lvl20 character can never be matched by a lvl80 one.

• Traits, Runes and Sigils
  Even if the low level charcater can get favoured in terms of “expertise” by raw stat points, additional effects form trait, runes and sigils can’t be matched and are usually much more impactful.

With the feature patch and the new trait system low level mosnters are likely to become even weaker, which is quite depressing since those low level zones (the majority of the world) that were supposed to be replayable thanks to downscaling are nothing but a sad joke already.

On the “positive” side, it’s not like a player should be interested anyways on wandering around the map after the first exploration.
Anything potentially rewarding either requires a zerg to take advantage of scaling (spawn a higher amount monsters to tag, train champions that scale poorly or don’t scale at all, …) or it’s just designed around a massive amount of players.
There are a few world bosses which are faster to kill with a small group or even solo, but the reward is still interesting for those zergs to take place so I guess we should forget about anything different once megaservers kick in

Doing some daily achievements and maybe a bit of gathering. That’s pretty much everything the open world offers to the roaming character, and that’s still likely to happen on predetermined spots.

Neko.9021:

I like how the OP admitted that a Warrior could just play Hambow or Condi War and they’d do well, but any other spec sucks. Warrior has (at least) already two viable specs in dueling and the OP’s complaint is that they need more. Great stuff.

That’s the really funny part of the thread.
Nothing but condition, and hambow to a minor a extent, works for dueling … I guess I should complain too because nothing but a power DPS spec, probably using berserker amulet and built around meditations, works for dueling on a Guardian.

IMHO what the game needs is a major overhaul of the condition system programming wise.

Burning/Poison stacking on intensity for different sources would require different implementations for PvE and PvP and could cause serious balance issues, so they should probably remain close to the current state.
Bleed (and maybe torment), however, could use some drastic changes.

Each character/monster could have some kind of N length array to store received bleed damage, each cell symbolizing a real-time second (N would technically become the maximum duration for bleed stacks), and an index to reference the “current second” in those arrays
Whenever a X duration bleed stack is received, the damage of a single tick would be calculated and added to the “current second” cell and the next X-1 ones (on a circular fashion if the end of the array is reached).
When the damage application timer triggers, the server should just apply the value stored on the “current second” as damage, deplete that cell and increase the index by 1 (now again on a circular fashion).

Something like this would not only solve any stack cap issue (which is rarely reached in PvP enviroments and causes nothing but problems in PvE) but also seems lighter for server performance and could allow fixes for other technical issues like, let us dream, AoE caps or more interesting AIs.
There’s no need to store duration and source information for each individual bleed stack anymore. There’s no need either for constant references to bleed sources in order to dinamically calculate damage (this increases server load and doesn’t really make the game much more interesting. Probably should be extended to other damage dealing conditions).
I’m far from a professional programmer and I could be completely mistaken though.

The are a few downsides on the system, but all of them (as far as i have realized) have rather easy solutions (even improvements)

For example, players won’t be able to monitor bleed stacks anymore. However, that information is quite lackluster atm if we have to be honest.
There’s no way to know how powerful those bleed stacks are on average. The power is better measured through received damage and the duration is completely masked by the longer stack.
It shouldn’t be hard for this system to precalculate and track the total ongoing bleed damage and display that information on the UI as thousands of damage.
Instead of the number of stacks, an index of lets say 4 over the bleed icon would mean that between 4k and 5k damage are expected from bleed, which seems a much more valuable information for removal use.

There could be also issues with condition damage display, since the server wouldn’t recognize anymore who the source of each stack is.
As long as condition duration reductions are provided on the condition application server acknowledgments and condition damage triggers and cleanses are broadcasted, however, display information could be easily done on the client side (duration stacking conditions would require more information, like queue time or if the queue was already full).

You don’t need permavigor in PvE, that’s for sure. For PvP, however, while I agree with too many evades not being specially healthy for the game, I’m quite afraid of how impactful the change will be.

Shaogin.2679:

And a MM strength is CC. As a guardian do you not have access to block/cleanse/stability? Can you not AoE the minions all down or just kite them and take the Necro down?

Guardians have more than enough tools to deal with necro control. The problem with DPS guard is about being a melee spec, usually bringing nothing but melee weapons, which makes MM necro a lot less reliant on those control capabilities.
MM necros are insanely powerful at close combat and supposed to be fought through keeping your distance and kiting, which becomes realy apinful for a class that’s even more pidgeonholed into melee than them.
Pretty much the same problem we had against skull crack warriors before the changes.

Long term displayable rewards aren’t bad by themselves. The problem arises when the community starts using them as some kind of performance measurement.

For someone who tries to form a pick up roster or recruit for an sPvP dedicated guild, some minor requeriment is reasonable because there’s usually a correlation between these milestones and player’s performance at low/mid levels.
The community tends, however, to update these numbers as time goes by according to veteran players’ values. What was r30 yesterday might be r40 todays and probably will be r50 tomorrow.

There’s an easy PvE analogy with AP requeriments for dungeon groups. Asking for 1k or 2k makes total sense; asking for something like 8k is plain ridiculous.
Veteran players having amassed daily/monthly AP for over a year is hte only reason for that 8k mark to even exist and, while a few weeks are more than enough for a new player to get familiar and competent with the current dungeon meta, the requeriment is completely unreachable in that timeframe.

As long as there’s a better displayable indicative for performance measurements (like some kind of MMR, not flawed like the current one if possible :P), there’s no problem on long term rewards existing. When these rewards are the main visual clue broadcasted to the community (which is what happens atm), then there’s a serious long run issue with the system.

Nobody saids rank doesn’t matter. It’s an indicative of time spent playing PvP and has a huge impact at low ranks levels.
If a couple of rank 1x player are thrown at one side of an 4x-5x matchup, that team is likely to lose the game. Those players are just too unexperienced for the game they’re playing.

What most people said is that there’s a point where a player has attained enough game knowlodge and further experience becomes minor to other factors, and that’s what is wrong with your example. The new rank curve is going to differ only past rank 40 and the r1x player will REMAIN being r1x.
Should you expect the same result if a couple of rank 5x players were thrown into a r6x match? Probably not. At this level, there are just better indicatives for expected performance level and makes total sense to use them instead.

Honestly, all these complaints about the new rank system can only be understood as a request for keeping a long term, grindy nature, displayable goal.
Even if I disagree with the idea (I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that “this is an MMO, not a MOBA” thing :P), I can see that as a legit request, but please stop trying to convince us of rank being THAT meaningful through completely biased examples.

Of course rank means something. It’s an indicative of experience and the higher the rank the better player you might statistically expect.

The more experienced on a given task someone is, however, the less it will improve by repeating it over and over. There’s a point were the weight of that experience is minor when compared with other performance elements, like being naturally more skilled, having a better computer/connection or, even more important, they way the experince has been acquired.

The given example is also completely biased. The r70 team is likely to win against the r40 one, but in the new scenario r70 players will be r80 while r40 ones won’t.
r70 team against r55? I wouldn’t put my money there without further information.
In this case (and probably in the r40 vs r70 too), a ladder based information would be a much better indicative.

Honestly, I think that r54-r55 is an awesome placement for the new cap and I’ll be OK if the ladder system would be half as well thought as the rank overhaul will be.

Whenever they release a new skins for the highest AP mark, that’s aimed for a really small minority of the playerbase. Even if a lot of player will eventually hit that mark, the AP hunter that got it long before would have been gaining AP faster, making every new skin more exclusive than the previous one.
While I’m not against exclusive skins, it doesn’t seem the best approach from a bussiness point of view. The cap allows ANet to keep rewarding dedicated players without entering that danger zone.

The cap also makes the achievement system closer to what this kind of systems usually are, a feature aimed for completionists, even if it will still be somehow polluted by the LS achievements.

The next step should be IMHO a laurel system overhaul.
Each daily could grant a laurel and, on top of this, the daily chest could give another 10. With some laurel/cost adjustments and regular expansions on vendors, this could give people a reason to complete additional dailies beyond the 10k mark.

Removing ranks and keeping the finishers was in fact the original idea.
People complained because there was no reason for that exclusiveness to exist. Some players also wanted to keep that kind of long term goal in sPvP, even if it doesn’t make any sense for a competitive game format.

Those are PvE weapons.
After the new patch, PvP gear won’t exist anymore and players will use their PvE gear instead. The original stats and runes/sigils on the gear won’t have any effect (just the skin will remain) but you’ll still need the item itself (if you want a sPvP axe build, your character needs to carry a PvE axe), so they added a vendor selling the most basic PvE gear.

I’m fairly sure the cap has not been reached. Both NA and EU #1 will be somewhere between 9k and 10k.

Everything is about the duration increase on Sigil of Smoldering. If it’s 25%, a pretty decent Carrion build should be possible; if not, I can’t really figure anything truly viable.

The highest reduction I got is about 16%-17% for an ele using Lighting Hammer and Arcane Lightning active (Pure speculation in the conversion). It could go a bit higher, close to 18%, with Ruby Orbs. I don’t know if it’s possible to go beyond that 100% crit chance / 153% crit damage (Runes of Rage are not an option :P).

The loss might be higher if you account other ferocity unrelated changes like stacking sigils and the like but that is applied to every single spec, not just pure DPS ones.

Prysin.8542:

Did anyone take into consideration that they will also bump the BASE crit damage from 150% to 200%??? that is a 50% increase in base damage. Which means i think their basic formula (which also added in crit CHANCE as a multiplier. Allowing for Crit chance to have a increasing effect on the output damage, to an slightly lower degree to crit damage)…..

They won’t AFAIK

Prysin.8542:

Also, it will only force the meta to be reworked. Now you will need 3x damage 1x utility 1 x dedicated healer. As for Dedicated healer, you will have 4 choices;
Direct heal – guard and warrior
Passive heal – Shout + spirit ranger
Hybrid – Ele

No, we won’t, adn this is for sure.
Several solo videos should have been enough to demonstrate that for many players surviving in berserkers is not a matter of killing things as fast as possible.

Dub.1273:

With my warrior, in a lupicus solo setting, I’ll lose about 23% damage.
Edit: Well, that screen was taken a bit bad. With banner, food and all other stuff included (70 food, 100 less ferocity than prec by traits, 170 by banner, etc.) I got to 69,7% critdmg after the change.

Are you accounting not being able to stack Bloodlust?

Wethospu.6437:

Anyways for example on my Warrior I can get like 144 Critical Damage (no idea how some traits behave so excluded). I have 1661 Precision from gear. I assume that will equal 1661-916=745 Ferocity. Traits should give 300 Ferocity. Banner should give 170 Ferocity. Scholar runes should give 75-100 Ferocity. Food should give 70 Ferocity. All in all, 1360-1385 which is 91-92 Critical damage.

Which should be 18% less damage.

Scholar should be 100 Ferocity (It’s what the new Eagle ones get according to the information on the main page, and those are currently equal to Scholar).

There’s still something strange in your numbers.
I’m my calculation for Guardian I go from 104 critical damage to 1085 Ferocity (72.33% crit damage bonus).
Assuming 30% critical damage from traits which translate into 300 ferocity, 134% should become 92%.
You go from 144% to 92%, which seems like a 10% critical damage not being translated. I don’t know, axe mastery maybe?

If we have to be honest, Guardian is the clase whose PvE meta build gets less nefed (no points in critical damage traitline). It will be a slightly higher decrease for other classes.

I did some calculation for a scenario including Spotter and Discipline (but no accuracy sigil, I don’t think it’s worth) and the damage loss was about 12%.
As you said, for not organized groups which might be lacking some of this or even a bit of fury upkeep the loss would be even smaller and the second sigil slot would also compensate a lot of it.

There are some other things to factor in, like the changes on stacking sigil (which might be either a nerf or invalidate the extra sigil) and, much more important, ferocity scaling better than current critdamage, which will lead to higher critical damage bonuses for content leves below 60 or so.

I can hardly analyze the math behind those tables, but if you go from 162 to 90 bonus crit.damage:

EP = K * [ (1- critchance) + critchance * (1.5 + critdamagebonus)]

assuming 100% critical chance:

EP = K * (1.5 + critdamagebonus)

so

Prepatch : EP = 3.12K
Postpatch : EP = 2.4K

2.4K / 3.12K = 0.769 —> 23.1% damage loss

I want to add that, according to the calculation I’ve done, a jump from 162 to 90 seems extremely high, as if the second scenario weren’t including some critical damage bonus present in the first one.
Or more probably I’m totally misreading the spreadsheet :P

Dub.1273:

Fact: Eles in organized runs will be hit with about a 30% damage reduction.

-go figure.

@Spoj, I don’t know why I bother either. Well, actually I don’t. There will always be people who can’t do simple maths, so there will always come up threads like this.

OP math is perfectly fine.

Stick and Move and Berserker Power are OK IMHO because they’re affected by active conditionals. The others are quite lazy design, and obvious targets to work on IF devs were interested on shaving max attainable damage even more.

UltraHiDef.4809:

He’s completely wrong in his calculation. He compared solo guardian before the patch no food, no banners. And guardian post patch with food, banners and everything else.

Everything is applied in both cases

Azgarn.2145:

Anet says “full berserker builds” will only be effected 10%. My first thought was the Crit % trait line will have a maximum of 20% with ferocity instead of the current 30%. There is 10% right there. Is that the only place crit damage is getting nerfed? Or will the ferocity change also slightly reduce the values of total crit damage on gear as well?

Full berserker builds were supposed to lose about a 10% final damage
This final damage also depends on the damage of noncrit hits and the 150% base damage of any crit (which doesn’t change). The loss in the critical damage bonus needs to be way higher than a 10% for this to happen.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s a very big nerf. ‘Full Berserker’ builds are only impacted by about 10%, but when you consider that many people get additional buffs to critical chance from other sources like fury, banners, sigils etc, if you were to have 100% crit chance the nerf is over 33% damage reduction.

No, it’s not. Not even close.

Your effective power can be calculated like:
K * [ (1 – critchance) * 1 + critchance * ( 1.5 + critdamage) ]

For a 100% critchance and 150% critdamage, it would be 3K.
The ferocity changes brings the critdamage from 150% to about 100%, so the new effective power would be 2.5K

2.5K/3K = 0.833 —> 16.7% damage loss

And this is a quite extreme case. A 30 Air full ascended berseker / scholar ele using precision/critdamage food, affected by Banner of Discipline and Spotter, and wielding a Lightning Hammer with Arcane Lightning active is at 100%/149% (It’s possible to go higher with Ruby Orbs, but that would mean a damage loss).

Full berserker ascended/scholar 20/25/0/0/25 Guardian, using Curry Butternut Squash and boosted by Spotter (150 precision) and Banner of Discipline (170 Precision, 15% Critical Damage).

91, 38% crit. chance, 104% crit.damage
Effective Power = K * [ (1-0.9138) * 1 + 0.9138 * (1.5+1.04) ] = 2.407K

With ferocitiy changes we should expect 745 Ferocity from gear. We can also expect:
- Banner of Discipline —> 170 Ferocity
- Food --> 70 Ferocity
- Runes —> 100 Ferocity
For a total of 1085 Ferocity = +72.33% crit.damage

Effective Power = K * [ (1-0.9138) * 1 + 0.9138 * (1.5+0.7233) ] =2.118K

2.118K / 2.407K = 0.88 —> 12% damage reduction

Guardian is a bit ticky because it doesn’t get crit. damage from traitlines, so we should expect a slightly higher decrease for other classes (about a 16.5% for a LH hammer ele whith 30 points in Air and arcane Lightning charged, which is the highest value I’ve figured).

Being able to transmute gear into different armor type skins is pretty much the one I can figure that wouldn’t be completely gamebreaking.

Done it yesterday. Started with 2 people and eventually another 2 joined us.
It took about 3 minutes at most (soloing usually takes 7 minutes or so). It could use some HP reduction but I don’t think it’s such a problem in the current state.

Nerelith.7360:

I agree. Most players only know , " zerg,zerg,zerg." So the question becomes. Is Zerg,zerg the playstyle the devs want for the game? if not, what will they do to encourage more diversity?

Then the next question becomes if the devs wish to encourage diversity, will the community embrace the changes because it leads to a Much better game for all? or whine cause their prefered Playstyle is being nerfed?

Personally I would embrace and adapt to something that would improve the gaming experience for all.

Yes there are players that as of this moment could not play as they would be expected in the example above. But I would still welcome the changes that would make the Playstyle in the example a More common thing. At that point..the " all i know is zerg zerg zerg." can ask themselves…" do i wish to improve, and expand how i play? or do i wanna whine Like a spoiled entitled individual,….or quit?"

Some players only know to use berseker gear and survive by killing things before they become a real threat while others are completely awful at dodging and only know to play things like PVT shoutheal and survive thanks to passive tools. Both gameplays are horrible.

I would like encounters like the proposed one because it’s mechanicaly more complex than what we usualy get.
I don’t think neither the condition users (almost every class can apply a good amount of conditions and with proper might stacking and other tools a power spec easily goes over 1k condition damage) nor the soft heals (heals tend to require stat investment, while other forms of support and control, which should more than enough to handle adds, don’t) are needed.
The encounter would be perfectly doable by a full berserker group properly using support (might stacks in order to raise the condition damage) and control (in order to handle the adds) and that’s the beauty of the game.

The problem with berserker is not about 5 berserker players being the best option; that’s the ideal situation for an action based combat and should never change.
The problem is about performing with this setup not being challenging at all for too much content and relying on the same “LoS and destroy” tactic too often.

About the build diversity … any game offering a wide build diversity will be subdued to a quite harsh meta. That’s the nature of PUGs.
Some specs will always singergize better with others, so players will massively go for a, both efficient and easy enough to perform with, meta setup..
Full berseker/damage teams being that meta is kinda weird as it shouldn’t be exactly an easy to play setup (PUGs still tend to go for suboptimal setups with tons of warriors because they survive easier) but most encounters are just too simple mechanic wise and extreely easy (for any spec).

Nike.2631:

Vargamonth.2047:

You always have that volume on a zerg event. You usually have it even on a small party (and if not, you can easily get it changing some wepon / trait / utility if needed).

And you’ve just described why it was a good test. It let them see if the general audience could understand the requirement in a situation where there were lots of people with mixed builds and skill levels. As opposed to trying it for the first time in a dungeon and watching the meta-party bug slam into the have-conditions-or-fail windshield at 90 miles an hour and declare the content/path unplayable and never come back.

The general audience did understand that the blue hologram had a really high armor and a condition based shield, but would have not moved a finger on its own initiative and would have failed repeteadly if the condition volume weren’t applied naturally.
The general audience also understood that Knight fights were pretty much a DPS check but kept failing them over and over and complained on the forums until the health was reduced.

I tried to convince some people on these forums about the Knight fight, while probably inappropiate for the LS finale, being good in the sense of encouraging players to use consumables (like that Vigil Valiance buff that most player tend to ignore despite all the indications in the map chat) and tweak their build a little bit. Needless to say I had to give up.

Nike.2631:

Vargamonth.2047:

The hologram fight didn’t need any healer or condition user tbh :P
They were likely to slowdown the kill (and maybe make it fail) at best.

Sure. Healers were, as usual completely tertiary to the process . The melee / ranged requirements were soft, but they were still there. You didn’t need condition damage, but if you didn’t have the conditions volume to bust the blue fragment’s shield consistently, your entire platform was going to fail and no amount of ’Zerk was going to change that.

You always have that volume on a zerg event. You usually have it even on a small party (and if not, you can easily get it changing some wepon / trait / utility if needed).

Nike.2631:

hendo.1940:

So basically a trinity of direct DPS, condition DPS and a healer.

How about you get the hint, realise this game isn’t for you and play something else?

Did you not play the hologram fight? The current is flowing my way, so who needs the hint?

The hologram fight didn’t need any healer or condition user tbh :P
They were likely to slowdown the kill (and maybe make it fail) at best.

Nike.2631:

Missing the point – you’re describing content/changes that have failed. Any time the best solution is “an entire party of me” the content design has failed to encourage diversity. Ideally you want the prefight check list to read more like:

“Ok, we need two people who can dish conditions to bust the shield, a straight direct damage Zerk on the adds because their armor is paper but they hit like trucks so burn them quick, a ranged character who can both hit the boss while the shield is down and still stay by the switch, and some soft heals mostly with the Zerk on those adds but ready to react if anything goes off the rails. Take a minute to double check your traits and consumables, then we rock this.”

You’re describing a content that I would wholeheartly welcome but which, sadly, is far beyond the capabilities of GW2 playerbase.

blakdoxa.7520:

Also, I don’t understand whether this is a thing about people being rejected from parties Instead of making their own parties with friends or guildies.
If you’re going to PUG one is expected to adhere to the meta…
…
It’s killing me that this is turning into some personal vendetta against the meta…

That’s not even necessary. You can start your own party labeled as “Path X. All welcomed” and it still fills rather fast.
I’ve done it myself a few hours ago for AC P3. Ended with a lvl32 Guardian, a lvl55 Necro, a lvl80 Guardian (fairly new to the game, probably farming his first exotics) and a lvl80 Ranger. Is it going to be as fast as a meta run? Obviously not. Is it viable? Absolutely.

I really can’t understand this whole thing against the “berserker meta”. Things are far from perfect, that’s for sure, but it’s not like a player can’t start his own party and fill it pretty fast. Berserker is not killing any diversity at all.

IndigoSundown.5419:

While I don’t have a problem with Legendaries being sold on the TP, TP sales are going to devalue the prestige of a legendary a lot more than the tournament rewards ever did.

I can’t figure what’s the difference between the prestige of a legendary that has been crafted and one that has been bought.
Most of the Legendary components have been always sold on the TP and farming gold has always been the fastest way to get them.

What’s the difference? world completion (which is something most players eventually do with at least one character), Karma (which is just about playing a lot and also can be farmed to some degree) and a minor amount of dungeon tokens and badges of honor?

The prestige of a Legendary has always been about farming/grinding, so buying it directly from the TP doesn’t really involve a different kind of commitment.

Winning a PvP tournament is far different because it’s more about skill than commitment (even if commitment is somehow present too). While I don’t have any kind of admiration or increased respect for a legendary bearer, I do for a sPvP tournament champion. Some other player could, however, value things just the opposite way

Verificus.4320:

So now that Art of Combat and Critical! have been posted, I’ll ask again..

Should I proceed crafting my ascended gear for my mesmer (pve) or wait out this week?

If you had the intention to use Berseker, I don’t think there should be any problem. You should probably wait, however, for the runes and sigils (unless you don’t mind trashing them later) and use Ruby Orbs in the meanwhile. This might render the ascended gear inferior to an exotic with good runes (In which case you may perfectly wait for the patch).

I’m delaying my last 80 character only to experience this, even after having played each zone with a lot of different toons and already having leveled the class in question to 80 (I deleted it for reasons that are not relevant here)
If I were new to the game, no way I would be paying anything (even if negligible) to skip it, so there’s no problem at all with a low pricing for those who want they charcater prepared ASAP.

.