Guild Wars 2

Molch.2078:

With 25 points in virtues, the vigor still lasts 7.5/10 seconds. Why is 100% vigor uptime a must have and really good, but 75% uptime not?
This doesn’t make sense.

It’s more like 6.25 :P

Iavra.8510:

Apart from PvE…what zerker meta?

Correction. Apart from PvE dungeons/fractals … what zerker meta?

Most open world pve doesn’t encourage berserker at all. Things are so massively zerged that explode anyways and killing time becomes minimum when compared with running time.
Even if berserker still hits harder, it also puts you at risk of dying for some damage source you won’t avoid because the screen is completely cluttered by other players and you barely see anything.
That’s assuming the boss you’re trying to take down can be critted :P

Demanding some kind of fair effectiveness for every class is completely OK … but for every weapon? Dungeons are just a small part of the game.
If every weapons would be balanced for the current dungeon gameplay, then we would need to create new ones for PvP enviroments.

As a lot people have stated, the only way to bring more varied builds to dungeon, is about making control/conditons/healing/whatever more interesting, which basically requires a complete redesign of encounters and AIs

style.6173:

I’m not even convinced that a guardian is the best bunker anymore. If I am attacking a point, I’d much rather fight a guardian than other bunker builds.

Of course, I am separating the class from the player here. There are some incredible guardian players out there. That doesn’t mean the class is OP though.

It’s not the best bunker in the sense of someone who is left on a point to defend it.

Guardian is a mid-point bunker or, better said, a teamfight bunker.
It’s a character who stands inside the point during a temafight so you decap it / it doesn’t get decapped, and in guardian case, performs pretty much a support role.
It can also solo defend a point for some time (even indefinitely) if needed, but that’s not its primary role. There are better options for that.

A 50% vigor upkeep (which can be increased with boon duration) seems enough for Guardian to remain strong without changes on Selfless Daring.
With a possible Sigil of Energy nerf on top of that, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if Guardians started to be replaced with Warriors for mid-point bunkering.

oZii.2864:

If you understand how damage works in this game. 10% dps reduction would only apply to a full zerker player fully buffed (25 stacks of might/perma fury/dps stacks) from the example given in stream. That doesn’t mean it applies to a person that happens to have 4 pieces of zerk/valk gear.

For WvW the dps decrease wouldn’t even be noticeable and for many probably would maybe be a 1-2% decrease in damage for WvW. We aren’t hitting AI in WvW we fight other players theoretical dps is very very hard to apply in a WvW setting because this isn’t WoW where we stand and hit each other. People dodge, have different armor values, different builds, etc.

The problem is not as much related to that 10% decrease (which is a noticeable decrease of about 30% critical damage over multiple sources) as to coverting critical damage into an even stat.
That makes impossible to get advantage from those extremely cost efficient trinkets. A player using zeker trinkets and soldier armor/weapons will suffer a heavier damage nerf than somebody on full zekers.
The change makes extremely hard to balance damage, which you need if you really want do down people, with some survivability that some specs can’t so easily give up.

As a guardian, I need a fairly good amount of damage for WvW solo roaming.
Even if I have a good amount of gap closers, I lack the ability to keep enemies at melee range without heavy investment in runes and sigils (and even then melee time is still quite small) so I need to make those seconds matter. Otherwise, any tanky build could just outheal my damage and become unkillable.
On the other hand, I still need survivability because the time I’m not in melee, I’m being kited and harassed.

With the changes, I’m almost forced to some full zeker burst gimmicky build. It’s that or just give up, because if I can’t kill people at all (they’ll just flee away if the fight becomes attrition based and it looks like I’m winning), what’s the point on even trying to solo roam?

My problem is probably more about the class itself, which is more suiited for other tasks (which I dislike I won’t ever play) in WvW. I can live with that, but it still sucks :P

nicknamenick.2437:

it will…

10% for full zerker is less compared to mixed setup.. so the builds running ascended zerker trinkets with lets say knight gear is getting nerfed much more..

Yes, that will happen for sure.
The change, even if we can’t exactly calculate it, is gonna hurt mixed gear badly and might lead people to extremes, be it full berserker or full tank.

Some cheap calculations over a possible maximum damage spec, sitting on 100% crit chance, with food and banner of Discipline, suggested that each 1% critical damge would be obtained every about 13.5 Ferocity points.

I don’t know what they are going to do with sPvP amulets. They’re supposed to not be affected by this change, which suggest 1% every about 16.5 Ferocity points, but there are currently some cost disparities between jewels and amulets themselves that would necessarily lead to changes.
Any scaling different from 1%/10 would also nerf Critical Damage traitlines so I guess we can’t use sPvP as a reference wihout further information.

There’s too much inconsistency with the new system to make real calculations.
Maybe we won’t have Ferocity at all in sPvP; maybe some soruces, like traitlines, will bypass Ferocity and deliver direct amounts of critical damage; …

It’s hard to say right now if the damage loss will be about 10% or higher, not even think on calculating the effect on “suboptimal” builds.

Well, since it’s a quite different stat combo, they still can set Ferocity as some kind of major and let it keep high values. Who knows …

The nerf is even bigger than it seems.
Not everyone runs exactly full berserker in WvW. Some Thieves or Mesmers may do it, but for most power based roamers mixing gear is a common thing.
When mixing gear, we were always slotting berserker (or any ohter combination with critical damage) on trinkets, because they were extremely cost efficient.
This won’t be the case anymore. Critical damage is not only going to get nerfed, but also evenly distribute across gear/traits/food like any other stat, which means that gear mixers are going to get nerfed twice. We’ll be hit by the overall nerf on critical damage, and by the trinket cost efficiency loss on top of that.

ens.9854:

I’m confused… so they are changing crit dmg basically so that it is not affected by power?

Doesn’t this make builds that can ignore power in favor of precision or precision/ferocity? So like rabid and rampager amulets will be very good in pvp because you don’t need the power to make them hit hard?

OR will precision basically become useless without ferocity so that these builds stay somewhat where they are? (ie. crits do not start at +50% dmg)

WHAT ?!

They’re just renaming CriticalDamage as Ferocity.
This “new” stat will have the same values other stats have (instead a fixed critical damage amount) and every N (somewhere between 13 and 17) points of it will grant a 1% damage increase.

Instead of having items like:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +2% Critical Damage
We will have:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +34 Ferocity
And finally, the total amount of Ferocity will be translated to Critical Damage at a fixed rate.

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

The impact of that is significant … it affects two of the three primary power stat combos. Relatively, this brings zerks and valk closer to soldiers DPS.

Can you elaborate a bit? I can’t really see your perspective.

You’re going to get less critical damage on the same gear. Since both Zeker and Valk have critical damage and Soldiers don’t, Soldier gets closer to them damage wise.

The tricky part is that trinkets are the pieces were critical damage is more cost efficient. Without this advantage, Zeker might be further from Soldier + Zerker trinkets specs.

icewyrm.5038:

Yeah, did they actually mention anything about how ferocity will work?

Ferocity will be a new stat that will replace Critical Damage. It will be given on the same numbers Power, Precision and almost any other stat is and will take the value it deserves as minor attribute for each piece of gear.
Making some cheap calculations, 1% Critical Damage for every 13-17 (lets say 15 :P) Ferocity points is more or less consistent with maximum damage builds losing a 10% DPS and sPvP amulets keeping their current critical damage.

Edited because of bad calculations :P

Celestial is going to get nerfed to the ground.

The nerf actually hit other specs a lot more than full zekers.

Even if I’m mostly playing full berserker right now, I’ve run mixed gear for a lot of time (and I still do for WvW roaming), and when you do that, zerker, or whatever combination with critical damage, is ALWAYS slotted on trinkets because it is way more cost efficient.
With Ferocity behaving as any other secondary stat, that trinket advantage is lost, and mixed builds will lose A LOT of critical damage.
This will be less problematic for berserkers since every other gear piece is expected to become slightly more cost efficient.
It might have reduced the quite big gap between berserker and something clearly defensive like soldier, but it has opened it between zeker and most inmediate competitors.

I also want to offer my condolences to all those Celestial gear users. Sorry guys.

Travlane.5948:

Vargamonth.2047:

Travlane.5948:

i agree about compesation. we are still due alot of compensation.

guards = perma vigor
thiefs = no perma vigor

guards are heavies
thieves use leather.

hrmmmmmmmmm

we have no defense outside of being able to dodge. yes stealth helps but we still get hit.

…

Thief has Feline Grace. It’s not as poweful as permavigor on its own, but on the other hand, has multiplicative effect with sigils of energy and any other endurance regen booster, like vigor (which is still available) itself.
It also has evasive weapon skills and/or blinds in most weapon sets and Withdraw, which is next to Shelter with half cooldown.
And then stealth.

I’m not saying Guardian doesn’t have active defenses. It has a lot of them, less than what a thief can have, but with access to protection on top of them.
It’s not also like Guardian base survivability is a lot higher than on thief. Both classes are low HP tier, and the armor difference is about, idk, a 6% direct damage reduction.

listen. my guardian can SOLO priest of grenth….atleast if other people are keeping shades (some of them busy). my thief has absolutely NO chance at that and im main thief 99% of the time. so dont really wanna hear about base defense :P

thief even with feline grace has less energy then a guardian can. thats all that matters. yeap its true.

so if a guy is wearing full plate and its heavy as heck. youthink hes going to be having as much energy/endurance as a thief in leather that weights 90% less? cmon its just silly to think about it. guards have abuot 15 defensive things thief doesnt. yet thief is the one that gets vigor nerfed. anet is a bunch of catering $#&#$!#@ that only changes for QQers.

guardian has that theif doesnt:

1) high toughness
2) high armor
3) protection
4) aegis
5) invulnerabilty
6) blocks
7) protection
8) stability (srry lets not play nickle/dime game with DS)
9) about 6 full heals every minute
10) 5x more productive F mechanics
11) easy perma swiftness (yes thief has assassins reward but withotu that they dont have easy access to swiftness)
12)easy access to multiple boons at one click. 5-10+
13) Multiple Knockbacks
14) shield skills to bubble and keep enemies/projectiles out (thief has smokescreen but not even close the same)

so tell me why guardian should have more energy than a thief. guardian shouldnt have any vigor period. no heavy should have vigor. thats fair.

Acrobatic thieves can have more regular evades than guardians.
Guardian can have 3 every 10 seconds, the regular one, another one from permavigor and a third one from sigil of energy.
An acrobatic thief with the same sigils reaches that with just 1/3 vigor upkeep (vigor on healing skill use) thanks to feline grace.

About the long list you made (which shows protection twice, don’t know if intended or no), I can see you’re comparing thief with a bunker/support guardian spec.
Is guardian better bunker/support than thief? Sure. Can facetank things easier in PvE? Absolutely.
Now, it would be interesting for you to make comparisions on both classes trying to perform other things like solo WvW roaming.

Boyd.5438:

full soldier meta guardian does nowhere near a full zerker guardian damage, i have full soldier, full clerics and full zerker spec guardians… the risk on a full zerker guardian pretty much die 1 hit but deals very high damage comparable to thiefs auto attack at glasscannon mode.

cleric guardian hits like little girls with a bolster.

full soldier guardian deals damage but never will crit much damage.

consider this.

any class @ a 100% crit chance and 122% crit damage will deal

base damage +122% more every hit. tradeoff is 1 hit KO.

where soldier build will get around max 30% crit and at most 60% crit chance.

meaning base damage + 30% @ 60% crit chance lottery. BUT survive more hits and allow more mistakes to be made.

thats on the pve front.

wvw front is a different story all togather.

Tests on build calculators using Sw/Fc on a 10/30/0/5/25 build, fully buffed (up to where is possible, no banners and the like), shows full soldier having 62% of full zeker’s effective power. Math shouldn’t lie.

Guardians usually dont reach that high at critical damage since no investment is done on Valor. Also, the build is using RHS which leads to better critchances than with other classes.

Considering full boons and banner of discipline, full zeker gets 100% chance of dealing 254% damage, so 254% damage.
On full soldier it would be 39% chance of dealing 100% damage, and 61% chance of dealing 183% damage, so 150.6%, which is 59% of 254%.
The differences coming from the lack of banner and using a Signet of Accuracy on the calculator that doesn’t make any sense to use here (already 100% critchance).

Something that takes 20 seconds (without time warp) in full zeker, takes 34 seconds for a full soldier counterpart. It’s not THAT much for someone having 224% the effective HP.

As i said, the differences we use to see are not exactly caused by gear. It adds up, yes, but rune/sigil/trait choices and lackluster boon/vulnerability stacking is what makes the gap huge.

Boyd.5438:

you say pvt deal much less damage, but did you count in that they can HEAL because they did not get DOWNED?

The problem is that the damage loss isnt even THAT much.
A zeker meta guardian replaces weapons/armor for soldier and retain about 81.5% of the damage. A FULL soldier meta guardian still deals 62% of full zeker damage.

The damage loss comes from gear, but even more from defensive trait/runes/sigils and lackluster boon/vulnerability stacking.

Every game has different damage formulas.

Gw1 used with the idea of damage reduction, which worked as a multiplier and was calculated like this
In Gw2, armor is just the denominator of the damage formula

kyubi.3620:

between 500 armor loss and 1500 armor loss who do you think take the most increased damage?

50% of 1000 = 500
50% of 3000 = 1500

Both will take double of what they would take without armor penetration.

Damage formula is (Various Damage Multipliers)/Armor, so:

1000 armor: Damage/1000 — Armor Penetration —> Damage/500 = 2 x Damage/1000
3000 armor: Damage/3000 -- Armor Penetration —> Damage/1500 = 2 x Damage/3000

You will exactly need half of the amount of hits you needed without armor penetration.

If you reduce target armor on x%, you get:

Damage = Stuff / (Armor – Armor*(x/100)) = Stuff / (Armor*(1 – x/100)) =
= ( Stuff / Armor) * (1 / (1 – x/100) ) = ( Stuff / Armor ) * ( 100 / (100 – x) )

You multiply damage dealt by [ 100 / (100 – x) ] no matter how much armor the target has.

You have designed a damage multiplier which does exactly the same thing critical damage currently does but which applies to every hit instead of just to crits.
Even better, you have designed a non-linear one that gets stronger the more of it you have.

It’s not CritDamage, it’s CritDamage in steroids.

kyubi.3620:

The armorless elementalist should be taking as much damage or barely less then the plated tank when it comes to armor penetration so likely the stat would be like up to 50% and it would be weaker on target with no armor but stronguer on ennemies with high amount and toughness. Thing is 50% of 1k armor and 50% of 3k armor is a lot of armor loss for the tank but very little for the glass cannon who barely will take more damage then before.

Until you realize that armor is in damage formula denominator, so in both cases the target takes double damage.

Zepher.7803:

Another problem I see here the words Zerker and PvE in the same sentence.

and also when you say Zerker what class are you talking about because as a main Guardian going Zerker is no way efficient and it’s pretty laughable because of way those traits work.

so what Classes are all you people talking about?

I’ve always had a problem with the traits and what stats they are paired up with

I think thief, Ele, Ranger, Mesmer have the most trait pairings that make sense.

for the life of me how is Precision and Condition damage supposed to work together?

anyways Zerker is a build, whats the Class.

Zeker isn’t even a build, is a type of gear.
A character using full soldier gear can outdamage another one in full zekers depending the traits/runes each one is using.

Guardian is prefectly fine in berserker gear.

Condition damage and precision work together through traits/sigil that inflict additional conditions on critical hits.

You’re partially right.
Trinity help PUGs a lot since it reduces communication, planning and other forms of true teamwork to the very minimum.
A game without distinct roles, where utility is spread over all party members, can offer greater challenges, on the other hand, for organized groups.

ANets has somehow managed to make the content easy enough so organized groups are not challenged and PUGs get quite annoying experiences from time to time :P

We still need someone who uses to run away.

Travlane.5948:

i agree about compesation. we are still due alot of compensation.

guards = perma vigor
thiefs = no perma vigor

guards are heavies
thieves use leather.

hrmmmmmmmmm

we have no defense outside of being able to dodge. yes stealth helps but we still get hit.

…

Thief has Feline Grace. It’s not as poweful as permavigor on its own, but on the other hand, has multiplicative effect with sigils of energy and any other endurance regen booster, like vigor (which is still available) itself.
It also has evasive weapon skills and/or blinds in most weapon sets and Withdraw, which is next to Shelter with half cooldown.
And then stealth.

I’m not saying Guardian doesn’t have active defenses. It has a lot of them, less than what a thief can have, but with access to protection on top of them.
It’s not also like Guardian base survivability is a lot higher than on thief. Both classes are low HP tier, and the armor difference is about, idk, a 6% direct damage reduction.

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

But that part already exist.
What do you want to do? Make it the only part where you can fail the event (which almost never happens)? Get rid of defense phases and make the regular spawns (which are usually handled by 3 small 4-5 man groups) go for those batteries?

How do this punish crappy turret usage? How do this punish people dying at Tequatl itself over and over?

The only problem with Tequatl is that it scales horribly and is designed to require A LOT of people.

Almost never happens? Unless something has changed without me noticing, it constantly fails outside of the forced overflows that the Taco specific guilds maintain.

I mean the defending phase every 25% HP, when Tequatl flies away and waves of risen start attacking the batteries/cannon for 2-3 minutes.
I’ve only seen this phase to fail ONCE out of about 20 succesful Tequatls (each ones having 3 phases like this), and it was because a weird cannon oneshot.
When Tequatl fails, it’s almost always because of timeout.

digiowl.9620:

Vargamonth.2047:

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

Remove the timer, make it be about defending the batteries and the cannon from the word go. Most Taco failures fail without ever seeing the first cannon event.

But that part already exist.
What do you want to do? Make it the only part where you can fail the event (which almost never happens)? Get rid of defense phases and make the regular spawns (which are usually handled by 3 small 4-5 man groups) go for those batteries?

How do this punish crappy turret usage? How do this punish people dying at Tequatl itself over and over?

The only problem with Tequatl is that it scales horribly and is designed to require A LOT of people.

ustor.3759:

Players who want to “unbalance” their character (either by skewing toward damage or survivability) can still do so with Skills, Traits, Runes, Sigils, and Consumables.

It’s not like gear balances your damage/survival, with traits and runes soft-tuning that choice. It’s EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE.

Chose a berserker meta build and replace weapons and armor with soldier (which is exactly the more even distribution you’re proposing) and you don’t even lose 20% of your damage output.
Take the same build, keep it in full berserker and change traits, runes and sigils for a more defensive setup and you can lose up to 50%, maybe even more, of your damage output.

For me, this is not anymore about if speedkills need or not a nerf. It’s about why so many people is failing so kitten addressing the real causes of the “issue”.

Mixchimmer.7230:

Oh, play style is absolutely affected by non-gear factors — I will not disagree with you there. Like I said earlier, I agree that their content is a large chunk of the problem, Tequatle was literally just a DPS check.

There are a whole lot of different things that change the play style. I don’t particularly think altering gear is going to fix it. I do feel that is it a baby step in the right direction though. All I know is I’m personally sick of DPS dominating all PvE content and I’m ready for the meta to be shook up. Whether changes to gear, changes to content, new content, or deciding that GW2 is no longer the game for me, is what will cure the sickness is yet to be seen.

The problem is … Tequatl absolutely needed to be some kind of DPS check.
It can’t be critted, so Precision/CritDamage become completely useless for anything but defending risen spawn point. Same goes for Condition Damage because of the condition cap. Only Power, major in one of the most bulkiest sets ingame, is useful, so it can hardly be a DPS check on a gearcheck basis.
It’s a DPS check done in a really good way, mostly performance dependant.
If you’re going to have a zerg of bunkerish geared players that, even if they die, will be back in about a minute … how do you fail the event without a DPS check at all?

About the CritDamage nerf itself … it’s not a baby step in the right direction, it’s a stab in the dark, an absolute blindness on what’s going on.
Make some calculations and you will realize that you can replace half of a zeker meta build gear for solider and retain over 80% of the damage uotput.
If having a boss being downed in 10 seconds by a full zeker group is a problem, a group of balanced geared (mix of zeker and soldier) characaters doing it in 12 seconds is nothing but an even bigger issue.
Unless they do something really extreme (with probably terrible results for WvW, maybe even for sPvP), what’s going to be achieved? Would a 10%-15% damage decrease change something at all? If anything it’s going to benefit that soldier-zeker mix which is quite more toxic IMHO.

If you want something like making bosses last longer or reduce the gap between different “playstyles”, and you want to do it as easy and brutish as possible, you don’t nerf some gear, you attack the real reason of those disparities: traitlines.

70 trait points aren’t just 1400 stat points (which is a lot), there are also extremely redundant. Toughness/Vitality traitlines are filled with survival tools, while
Power/Precision ones often grant access to additional damage boosts.
This creates huge disparities on damage outputs, but the situation can go even worse when you scatter a lot of cheap damage boosts over different traitlines.
Look at a popular 30/10/10/10/10 elementalist staff build. What’s the reason behind investing in a such a way? Are they looking for a bit of armor and health? Maybe some condition removal or another utility source? No, it’s just damage.
10% increased damage when you are withing a range of 600, 10% when you’re health is above 90%, 20% when your enemy is under 33% HP, 10% against burning foes … all of them multiplicative. I guess you get the picture.

Unless you’re running some kind of burst spec, those traits will be often outperformed by utility (even survival) ones in PvP. You still might have one or two for some builds, but it’s not like you are going to scan the traitlines looking for them.
Even with that, devs keep improving these traits, probably because doing this is a lot easier than introducing new functionalities. Powerful Blades (sword and spear damage increase for guardian) was boosted from 5% to 10% in the last balance patch even after users had stated that it didn’t address the issues with the class and wasn’t needed.
Something like Merciless Hammer (20% CD reduction on hammer skills, 25% increased damage on disabled foes) will always be more interesting for PvP than a 10% damage increase when using a hammer.

Against the current PvE mechanics, however, swapping some utilities (even traits) here and there is more than enough to cover punctual needs, and those damage boosts are just the best choice BY FAR.
I just can’t believe that devs are trying to nerf PvE speedkilling and have not figured yet how huge the role of these traits is and how little use for a PvP scenario many of them have.

Obviously, as dozens of people already stated, the best solution is about improving enemy AI and mechanics so utility can outperform raw damage … instead of that, we don’t only get a cheap and easy solution. We get the wrong one.
I guess everything is going as expected :P

Bran.7425:

A lot of the problem is recently Anet address vigor/endurance recover on Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. And the vigor on critical hit possessed by Elementalist, Guardian, and Mesmer along with Signet of Stamina (passive effect) on Warrior remained untouched. So in the patch that was adjusting vigor/evasion balance ignored most of the professions, but stuck professions that are in an evasive Archetype (and are jokingly stating that Warrior needs a certain level of sturdiness that would be considered slightly off topic but show that Archetype within play should be maintained at least some professions).

I don’t thik they messed up with evade related balance changes. Moving up one tier the elementalist vigor on crit trait is the only one I disagree with; the class is in too bad shape for getting this kind of nerfs.

Mesmer and Guardian vigor traits will eventually get nerfed, they are just a little bit trickier because of main functionalities relying on dodge rolls.

Blind is used A LOT when fighting trash. Against champions, however, it’s completely unreliable because of “unshakeable”.
Aegis sources are not so common, even less party wide ones. There’s one on activable VoC (90 second CD), another one on Retreat! (60 second CD) and a third one if you recharge VoC with Renewing Focus (90 second CD).
Even with that, aegis is one of the main guardian stregths and becomes more powerful the shorter the fight is. Retreat! is almost always slotted in meta guardian bars.

About evades …
Vigor is not needed at all for most content. If some content requires more evades, food and energy sigils are more than enough.
That being said, I wouldn’t be against removing vigor (which won’t happen, it might get a 50% nerf at best) since that would punish wasting dodges.

Trying to reduce the amount of evades or introducing unavoidable attacks so charcaters need to trait/gear defensively, however, doesn’t make any sense.
Anything that FORCE to use defensive stats on gear is bad design . Why?
Because characters are given base stats, health and armor. If a higher amount of defense should be NEEDED, then those base stats should be increased and gear stats, the ones you can chose, overall reduced.
Giving players the idea that they can chose something when they really can’t is an atracious design and just makes people angry.

About vigor and guardian … this change is not as simple as it might seem.
The usual sPvP bunker/support guardian has a great upkeep of vigor (it might not be 100% because of the low crit rate) and also uses energy sigils, for 3 potential evades every 10 seconds. That’s an insane amount evades, promoting mindlessly dodging and spammy gameplay.
However, and here comes the tricky part, a good amount of Guardian sustain comes from Selfless Daring (healing on dodge roll). If we nerf vigor (or evades in general) without any other changes, we’re actually nerfing guardians twice and might make them obsolete for arguably the only role where they’re competitive.

Blaeys.3102:

You are right to a degree. However, I contend that longer fights (in some situations) are good for the game. Killing a boss too fast means the boss doesnt have time to put out the consistent damage or cycle mechanics that require mitigation, support, etc. Now, I do lay some of this on boss design – but before they can design a boss that requires those things, we have to be sure that every group (even those hyper efficient at dealing damage) will see those mechanics enough times to actually matter.

Keep in mind im talking about legendary bosses that die in seconds, not minutes, to these groups.

I completely agree with you but …
… when you look closely at numbers, it’s not clear at all that this is caused by stat combinations like berserker.

Using a Guardian zeker meta build as standpoint, you can replace every weapon weapon / armor piece for soldier ones (just keeping the zeker trinkets, main source of cheap critical damage) and still retain over 80% of the original damage output.
A boss which dies in 20 seconds in full zeker, does it in 25 seconds with a fairly balanced gear setup that could cover quite better any mistake.
Any nerf on critical damage would do nothing but decrease those differences, which are rather small IMHO.

Big differences on killing speed are caused by other, usually overlooked, sources.
Proper might, fury and vulnerability stacking, which tend to be lackluster in PuG groups, are one of this sources.

Finally, the most obvious and most overlooked damage source comes from those percent final damage increases on sigils/runes/traits.
If you go from the 10/30/0/5/25 spec I used for calculations to something like 0/0/30/20/20 where you can get Altruistic Healing and Empowering Might, you don’t just lose next to 25% damage output from obvious stat reallocations and giving up Right Hand Strength (replaced with Retributive Armor); you also lose:

• 10% increased damage against burning foes
• 10% increased damage against enemies inflicted with conditions
• 10% increased damage with sword
• 1% increased damage for every boon you have

Which are all multiplicative and add up for about a 38% damage increase with 4 boons.
The trait reallocation almost reduced the original damage by HALF, even more if you replace Scholar Runes with something different.

In terms of damage, both, the good stacking of boons and vulnerability, and sigil/rune/trait choices are A LOT more important than gear stats.
A fully soldier geared character using damage oriented sigils, runes and traits can easily outdamage a full berserker one on a fairly defensive spec.

fadeaway.2807:

Not sure I understand the fascination with mace ‘burst’ – if hits about as hard as two auto attacks from a sword or greatsword. I didn’t know that about the signet though. Thanks for your thoughts.

It’s just about dealing the maximum amount of damage on a Judges Intervention instant teleport.
I don’t like the palystyle (too one-trick-pony for my taste), but mace is hardly matched at it.

SonOfJacob.7396:

So here’s a thought: what if instead of nerfing anything, they simply incorporate Crit Damage into a bonus multiplier for Condition Damage?

I know Crit Damage doesn’t affect Condition Damage, but that’s just the current system. Couldn’t they implement some kind of bonus to Condition + Crit Damage set up so they multiply off each other? That way zerker stays the same, but Conditions get a buff if they have added Crit Damage.

I doubt that’s even possible.
Afaik there isn’t a single situation where condition damage scale with anything but the “condition damage” stat. There are no 5% increased condition damage sigils, traits or similar … whenever something is meant to boost conditions, it does through duration or just creates a new effect adding a few more, independent, bleed stacks.
Condition damage calculation probably need to be kept as simple as possible for the same technical issues that force the condition cap to exist.

Lucey.1452:

So the big question is what’s going to happen with this “crit damage nerf”.

When setting primary and secondary stats it is done ratiometrically (i.e. secondary stats are 70%) for crit damage, this value should be around 7% of the primary value.

Right now crit damage on all pieces is fairly out of whack, especially around scaling for trinkets. Right now crit damage scales at around 11%. As such, a fair nerf would be to bring it down to 6% for amulets, 5% for rings, 4% for earrings, and 4 for the backpiece. As well, the scaling of the other secondary stats are off atm as they are too low. As such, this secondary stat should be improved for ascended pieces to 90 for amulets, 73 for rings, 65 for earrings, and 40 for the backpiece.

As for armor, crit damage needs to be improved a bit. Where helms now have 3% instead of 2%, and the armor has 7% instead of 5%. All the other ascended pieces are good scale wise for ascended armor.

All in all, this will results in a 13% drop in crit damage, with about a 2% increase in crit chance.

But the point is, this will be a fair scaling that should not “ruin” the zerk meta but just result in kills being about 7% slower.

You’re completely right here, but I honestly think that these differences currently benefit mix and match gears oven pure zerkers.
Whenever I try to combine different pieces, I make sure that critical damage is slotted on trinekts and ignore it for other pieces where “opportunity cost” is higher.

Evenly scaling critical damage cost would hurt more, IMHO, something like a soldier/zeker mix than a full zeker spec.

Thorwyn.8469:

Exedore.6320:

- Mace is great in PvP for DPS (if you’re good at using #3) and defense.
- Torch sees occasional play in sPvP for DPS, though is a bit weak.

You know what DPS stands for?

Mace is an awesome burst tool. Protector strike deals a huge amount of damage on a single hit (unlike most other guardian damage skills, which are channeled and almost never will fully land).
Mace obviously only aggravates guardian mobility issues and is one of the worst options if you want to chase someone who is running around, but it still can apply decent pressure on a small point and has, as already said, an insane burst potential.

Valdur.2679:

people think that doubling the armor of the monsters and cutting their health in half would nerf the zerkers. WRONG! the zerkers will kill the monsters in the EXACT amount of time because toughness x health = THE SAME as before

…

i think this this is the best solution possible for now. do you all agree?

No, your numbers seem unfair … for the condition user.
If you take a usual meta build and replace all zeker gear for a knight/cavalier mix (which don’t even have power as primary), you still retain about 75% of your damage output.
A rabid user, who is getting less armor and more offensive stats, should deal about 80% of that damage (way more than your 66%).

The condition problem is, however, much deeper than this. Even if we get rid of the shared condition cap, even if we increase armor on enemies and make condition damage more on par with power, we would still be far, really far, from solving the problem.

People tend to look ar berserker as the main source of insane damage. The truth is that boon/vulnerability stacking (which is available for everyone) and, specially, multiple final damage modifiers (+10% damage against X, +5% damage when Y, …) are often overlooked and play a HUGE role.

Conditions don’t get any benefit from vulnerability.
Vulnerability duration is halved on champions and, like other conditions, is capped at 25 stacks. It requires some investment and party wide configuration to make a good use of it; keeping the stacks as high as possible without wasting them.
Conditions also bypass protection. If enemies are given the ability to cast protection on themselves (and not refresh it as soon as it’s stripped), the skill/configuration required to get of rid of it as fast as possible should play in favor of power builds.
If good vulnerability stacking and protection stripping are expected for power play, you’re at risk of making condition users clearly favored for PUGs (where this is unlekily to happen), which is quite a bit unfair.
If you try, however, to reward it (making condi users slightly weaker if these thing are done but slightly more powerful if not), that could be enough for removing any chance on condi users being included in organized groups.

All those X% final modifiers are multiplicative, and often require a heavy investment trait/gear wise, an investment that should be also required on condition users for things to be fair.
There’s a complete lack, however, of multiplicative condi damage percent increases. Most traits would increase duration (another problem I’ll introduce next to this) or create additional effects, usually on crits, which are additive by nature. All of this means that condition users needs to be either stronger before traits or weaker after them, which leads to the same problem as before.
Some of those raw damage multipliers aren’t also automatic and require not so easy conditions to be met. A X% increase when wielding some weapon is trivial, but the usual 10% damage increase when over 90% HP from scholar runes is not. Should things be balanced around players who get hit here and there or around godlike ones?

The final and probably most important difference is the time needed to build up conditions. No matter how many stacks you’re able to keep on a steady situation, you’re going to need some initial timeframe, where you’re going to lack damage, to build them up.
If the fight is short enough, this timeframe can be a noticeable part of it. In some extreme cases or just when dealing with trash, the combat might be over even before it finsihes.
Another way too look at it is through condition duration. If you look at condition attacks individually, they’re not that different from power ones (specially in PvE where monster rarely cleanse them). They will ensure some amount of damage if they connect, just with it being dealt over time.
Whenever the fight ends, some of this damage will be lost, and the shorter the fight, the more noticeable that loss will be. If you take into account that many of the trait/gear damage improvements, which should be taken to compete with optimized power builds, are condition duration based, the disparity gets aggravated.
Now again, if you try to balance this for speedrun groups, you create unmatched monsters in any other enviroment. If not, condition users will never be competitive.

We have three main differences, all of them leading to the same balance problem.
Any step into conditions becoming competitive, makes them clearly OP in any non optimal enviroment. Fixing this is FAR from easy.

voidwater.2064:

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

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

Bezagron.7352:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I DO think there are issues, and even with that I still feel like the “fix” is going to be cheap, lazy and, I don’t think if I would call it disrespectful, maybe disheartening is the word.
I just want to see the changes and the reasoning behind them. If after so many zergy and faceroll easy LS patches, I feel changes are done for no other reason than making the “play what you want” thing more strong even for a content advertised like “epic challenges for organized groups”, that might be the last nail in the coffin.
It’s not like sPvP developing is going much better after all.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

The crit damage changes may be to accomidate the balence differences in pvp/wvw. All balence is based around the glourious esports yet crit damage can be so much higher in wvw – meaning burst skills become far more powerful than their pvp components when comparing the ratio of offense to defense stats other than crit damage.

Anet may be trying to tone down the burst so people complain less about 15k killshots, 8k backstabs etc (while burst is nice, we have to be realistic about how much shere burst can be achieved in wvw and how this affects the game as a whole, not just for people who want to ‘one shot all the noobs like a master assassin’. Ascended gear has made this even worse.

That’s true., critical damage numbers are way higher in WvW than in sPvP. They are not, however, the only big difference between both modes.

• 40% condition duration food is a monster. It can be countered with another food, that’s true, but that gives only a situational advantage (when facing a condi spec), while a condition build will always get the benefit of those pizzas.
• Runes of perplexity are insane.
• Dire stats are ridiculous for any form of PvP

Berserker amulet isn’t the most favored choice in sPvP either.
Condi bunkers tend to work better for 1v1 and PVT usually offers a quite even battle.

idk, I think condi bunkerish specs (some of them really trollish, like pistol thief or PU mesmer, that can’t be competitive in sPvP because of conquest) clearly outperform berserker in WvW roaming.
Against PVT there might be some advantage, but they fit zerging just too good to also deserve a roaming advantage.

The only thing sure about Critical Damage changes is that some new Hitler / Crazy German Kid videos are to be released.

Wanze.8410:

What is this Light Up the Darkness mode you speak of? I want to die faster in wvw but Commander Sird and Caic are too good to let me.

As Rising Dusk says, it was a Queen’s Gauntlet achievement that could neat over 20 fresh deaths / hour until completed :P

If you want to die more in WvW you just need to roam solo, always in some map where you’re outnumbered, and be sure you charge into every arguably small group (3 or less people could work) you spot XD

BlindedPeace.8736:

Support specs should feature traits where they deal more damage the more boons/heals they place on allies. This not only keeps support specs useful, but also would attract more players into this spec; Support could also provide DPS, while not being berserkers. “Altruistic Healing” is a current Guardian trait that fits right into this spec.

Altruistic Healing is not a supportive trait by any means.
Even with pure healing/support specs (I’ve played them, and I’m not ashamed! XD), it’s a trait that should never be taken. What’s the point on getting healed yourself if your mates get their HP slowly drained and eventually die? If the healing is enough to keep people alive, what’s the point on taking it at all?
It’s a 100% “tank” trait. Unless you manage to be the one focused and receiving the most damage, there’s no point on it.

Freeelancer.2860:

Faster and more varied attacks, less of telegraphed “hurr durr I keel u” attacks. Contrary to the popular belief, spamming aegis/blind/dodge/invoulnerability for a 3 seconds wind up attack does not make a skilled player. Also makes room for supports applying protection, regeneration, vigor, weakness, chilled etc. AND makes confusion finally useful.

I don’t think nobody has called that skill.
I have stated several times myself that 3 second windup attacks are easy enough for everyone and, as long as they happen in a less than 1 every 10 seconds (time needed to regain a dodge worth endurance) rate, there’s nothing bad with them causing huge damage, even oneshot, so tanky specs have something to dodge.
The skillful part comes from much more frequent and fast attacks that demolish glass cannons but can be endured, even outhealed, by sustained specs/setups. Lupicus kicks, for example, are far from being a 3 second windup.

Btw, I agree with most of your post. I would say that almost every player who isn’t disturbed by minor, easy to solve, nuisances (ascended armor, gold farming, …) will agree with it.
An AI / encounter redesign is clearly the best for the game. Sadly, it’s also very unlikely to happen, not even think to have it soon.

Silferas.3841:

At the livestream this friday, they are going to go over the “critical damage change”…

I don’t like the sound of that… Not one tiny bit

The most expectable thing is getting half critical damage on gear split into vitality.
It’s not the kind of “fix” i would want to see (it’s incredibly cheap and lazy; the same result could be achieved in a much better shape with similar changes), but it somewhat addresses the “issue” and is consistent with sPvP gear.

This character, for example, has been leveled to 80, but other than that has been used for little more than sPvP, Lupicus solo tries and AC Spider Queen solo tries at lvl35.

Pure sPvP character can die even more often I guess.

Wanze.8410:

Vargamonth.2047:

Wanze.8410:

Vargamonth.2047:

9176 Deaths
2676 hours 508 days

Please post a screenshot of you unrivaled achievement along with your choice of a 800 gems giftable reward or 50 gold.

Your inclusion of 508 days makes your post kinda suspicious.

No reward needed, winnig this competition is honor enough
No, seriously, I’m fairly sure many pure sPvP players will easily beat me :P

Fair enough and i will stand by my word and offer the reward to you, if you please, just pm me. If you forfeit your reward, i will donate 50g to our guild bank, as we do guild lotteries on a general basis.

As i said before i dont do much pvp (lvl 15) and was wondering where my high death ratio came from.

Cheers,

I’m OK with your guild receiving those 50g
Being able to show the fruits of my suicidal tendencies is enough reward for me

If you manage to make the thread remain on first page for some time, someone will beat me by a good margin.
Over 3 deaths an hour is not hard to achieve; in fact, it’s almost ensured in sPvP (not even talking about solo tries, SAB tribulation mode without guides, WvW solo roaming on superhero mode, Light Up the Darkness and a lot more).

Wanze.8410:

Vargamonth.2047:

9176 Deaths
2676 hours 508 days

Please post a screenshot of you unrivaled achievement along with your choice of a 800 gems giftable reward or 50 gold.

Your inclusion of 508 days makes your post kinda suspicious.

No reward needed, winnig this competition is honor enough
No, seriously, I’m fairly sure many pure sPvP players will easily beat me :P

9176 Deaths
2676 hours 508 days

kyubi.3620:

such hate on pet man your terrible. You talk as if running pet for pve was actualy wrong…. aw im crrryyyying…. No seriously i dont think theil ever remove pet from the ranger mechanics to a point where it becomes a simple buff button so go ahead and dream on. + since minion master necro has long been part of the class principe theil likely only improve on it, they already working on buffing the traitline.

as a small reminder beastmastery ranger and hybrid using BM where amonst the top dps Builds ranger could achieve in guild wars 1. Likely theil keep it that way in GW 2, Anet clearly want us to work in team with our pet for dps and shifting all the damage back to ranger would litteraly go against that principe.

You can’t compare GW1 and GW2, they’re just too different.
In GW1 you hadn’t the amount of active defenses you have here. With countless skills to pick over and dual class, it was a lot more based in creating the right build for the right task than on (non mesmer) player reflexes.
Seriously, pet builds weren’t even close to as toxic as they’re here.

Rgearding Ranger, keeping pet damage high means that the damage output must be balanced as a whole.
If your pet, which doesn’t evade and you can’t control at all, gets obliterated by hostile cleave and AoE in PvE, then you’ll underperform when compared with other classes.
If, on the other side, pet survivability is boosted in PvE up to a point where they become almost indestructible, this would allow rangers to build or just play defensively while keeping a higher damage output than other classes, which is also unfair.
Pet damage received a nerf some time ago exactly because this. In PvP, rangers were building mostly defensive and outlasting enemies while their pets did the damage job; the build reached quite ridiculous levels as home point defender.

A lot of people have suggested to make pet attributes to scale based on ranger ones, which is something that could work in many situations but not for PvE dungeons, where a glass cannon pet would still explode at enemy sight, leaving the ranger vastly underpowered.
I really think that a huge link with beastmastery traitline would allow rangers to select how much pet reliant they want to build themselves, solving a lot of issues.

Regarding necromancer, I completely understand a rework on Death Magic.
It has some crappy traits (specially that first minor), and it also hides some arguably interesting staff traits behind some unavoidable minion master boosts. I don’t expect devs, however, to be so weird and buff minion master, which is already receiving tons of complaints in PvP subforums, with those changes.

kyubi.3620:

then double rampager actual condition damage stat versus carrion and dire wich keeps they current stat. As much as passive play shouldnt deal as much damage as running full damage it should still be viable in dungeon. The minion 500 to 2000 damage per attack and near unability to do critical strike doesnt compare in any way to what zerker build runs however if we nerf them again theil just become useless in the whole game in general, Ranger damage is tied to its pet and ranger could likely survive that nerf by running pure rampager (pet can bleed) but non condition damage ranger will likely all be killed outright by that nerf.

Unlike what you believe running a pet build correctly is far from a ’’passive’’ game especialy for rangers (if you do a ‘’passive game’’ with your pet you end up with half of your base damage lost for a while and thats even worse for player who specialise in pet management). I dont mind pet behing left to what they are in pvp but they needs a rework in pve to actualy be meaningfull especialy if we are to weaken the power of physical damage in general.

It has been stated too many times; you can’t toy with stats like there weren’t a whole PvP enviroment sharing the same gear. It’s easier to just increase conditon damage in PvE than making gear somehow mutate between game modes.

I’m not saying minions are going to be overall nerfed. They probably will in sPvP, but I don’t think they deserve it in PvE, not even in WvW. Just don’t expect them to be ever “competitive”.
Oddly, the best “fix” for ranger pet is an overall decrease of pet damage, which would be shifted to the ranger itself, with a boost on the beastmastery traitline (which should never be used for dungeons).