Did anything ever come of this? I haven’t logged into the game or checked the forum much for a couple of weeks.
I haven’t played since the dev stream. The obvious lack of aim at the core gameplay mechanics and pve encounters and AI is upsetting. I don’t mind the nerf to zerker gear, but a nerf mixed with an acknowledgement that there are gameplay issues largely at fault would be been great. As it stands I don’t trust them to do what needs to be done, rather they will simply bandaid fix it.
Finally zerg pve isn’t very fun.
Sorry but everyone knows that all rng items from anet gemstore is a waste. It’s like new player 101.
Many of the good zerker players would play a 1hp zerker if it did a good amount of damage. The problem clearly isn’t the gear but the avoidable damage, game mechanics and ai.
Is this a troll?
Zerkers already have a survivability stat penalty. They don’t get the vitality, toughness or healing power other gearsets recieve.
The gain from going from pvt to power/precision is sub 10 percent at best. Meanwhile survivability loss can be up to 50 percent of burst ehp. Longer fights look even better for it for pvt as the heals heal for less but are worth more due to your Toughness. This is for wvw 0.0.30.30.10 build.
Honestly can’t see much point for this new gear. Healing power is so bad that Toughness increases the effectiveness of heals by more than healing power. Each 100hp healed on a 0.0.30.30.10 power/prec/hp build would have given you the equivalent of 127hp on pvt gear.
(edited by fadeaway.2807)
Boring and messy. You feel like you could not be there and the fight would end the same way. I like to feel important in a game.
Whichever rune give +10/15/20% might duration is going to be a serious contender for some builds. Same for Fury.
Why? Did something change with might?
Interesting changes for the sigils of +X% damage to elementals/ghosts/bandits/etc etc.
;) Fun fun.
I think you would gain more survivability by sticking with zerker gear and simply swapping to heal on crit food. Healing power only really returns a good bang for your buck if you can throw out mass amounts of regen, battle presence and symbol ticks.
I would love to see at least some acknowledgement of the reason for zerker dominance being game mechanics and AI, rather than quiet nerfs.
Confirmed, karma quest rewards a bug. People abusing karma reward bugs to be permabanned.
To be honest they were overpowered and needed nerfed. And they were also a performance hog. Just wish patch notes wouldn’t treat us like idiots.
I can’t believe there’s not a guide in the new player forum telling people not to bother with black lion chests. Such a waste.
Performance issues…. Yeah right. They didn’t want people using these anymore so they nerfed them into the ground.
I’ve seen over 50 at one time on my screen with no issues for me.
If you are going to nerf something just say you are nerfing it because you don’t want people using them. Don’t fall back on a general excuse.
You thought anet would be straight with us?
Somewhere above 1500 hours played since release.
Almost all rare and exotic weapons I found have gone into the MF.
0 drops, 0 MF wins. I’m poor as hell.
Personally I believe anet track who will buy gems for conversion to gold and lower their chances of looting precursors. People say I’m paranoid and crazy for suggesting that, but part of my rl job involves that sort of predictive analytics so I know it happens in companies. If anet aren’t doing it, they should be. Very big moneyspinner.
Honestly for a 20/25/0/0/25 build and the new double sigil 2h weapons I’m not even sure it’s worth swapping to 1h anymore. It’d certainly take near perfect rotation of cooldowns. I suppose if you yearn for the focus blast and blinds it won’t hurt, but if there was a trait worth taking in radiance I’d probably opt for that and stick with the 2h. We’ll see how it goes.
Well, apologies for the disdain.
EP means effective power and is a way of describing how much damage a character will do.
For example a naked character with 916 power and 0% crit chance (I know you start at 4% but I’m keeping it simple) and is said to have an effective power of 916.
For example a character with double his base power, 10% crit chance and 150% crit damage would have 1832 base power. 10% crit chance and 150% crit damage mean that 10% of the time you deal 150% damage and 90% of the time you deal 100% damage. This averages out 105% damage, or your crit chance and crit damage is giving you +5% average damage. This would mean that overall you have 1923.6 effective power, or EP.
Scale that up to the likes of my example above:
Warrior with zerker gear, force sigil, scholar runes. 25 might, 100% fury, magic find food, sharpening stone, banner of discipline.
You get 3135 power, 94% + the basic 150% crit damage, 67.57% crit chance (1831 precision). The crit modifier averages out at 1.973008.
3135 * 1.973008 = 6185.
You have scholar 10%, force 5% and natural ascended weapon 5%
for a total of 1.21275.
1.21275 * 6185 = the 7500 effective power I mentioned earlier.
EHP, or effective health points, is a little more complicated but essentially it describes how much damage you can actually take before you die. In my earlier posts I assumed no heals.
If you have 100hp but 0 resists/mitigation, your effective hp is 100.
If you have 100hp but say.. 20% resist.. that 100 damage hit will only deal 80 damage to you. It would now take a 125 damage hit to reduce you to 0hp. Thanks to your 20% resist, we can say your effective hp is 125. And every 100hp I heal, I get 125 more effective hp from.
If I have 40% resist? It will now take 166.6 damage to kill me! And every 100hp I heal, I get 166.6 more effective hp from. See how it’s returning more effective health the more mitigation I get?
It is difficult to describe EHP in a large, heals flying everywhere scenario (other than to say mitigation plus healing is extremely effective, thus why you see it in WvW). What is most useful about EHP from a PvE point of view is to show how easily you will be oneshotted or burst down by a failed dodge. (Which for many players is the only threatening thing in PvE – A mossyman axe to the face, an archdiviner hammer to the face.
This is a good website for playing around with EP and EHP:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/
And that website is based on a forum post which I had a hand in (Lilitu) on gw2guru back in 2012.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/
I do concede that zerker is the best gear set. I encourage people to use it (and to learn how to actively mitigate damage) but only because the fights aren’t challenging enough to require mitigation and heals. I strongly feel zerker gear is doing what it is supposed to do, deliver high damage at reduced survivability. The problem is nothing threatens your survival anyway. Once things actually start threatening you consistently and you cannot rely on active mitigation to avoid everything (WvW? World bosses? PvP?) mitigation becomes very useful.
One last thing I note about current PvE scenarios – the Mai Trin fotm 49 fight can be very dangerous for zerkers who can’t quite dodge the shadowstep (myself included, I struggle) – the incoming damage becomes simply too much over time and they lose the fight of attrition. Damage mitigation and (because of the close proximity of other players) group heals/symbols etc become incredibly useful. A group of 5 average/poor zerkers can go from a nightmare fight to a cakewalk simply by adding a cleric here.
Hope that helps.
(edited by fadeaway.2807)
HP != EHP
Hmm you don’t know EP either?
Bleh.
Decent dps guards don’t use valor, so we’re not going to get hit as hard as some classes.
Ironically warriors and guards won’t feel this as much as say.. thieves.. or rangers.. or mesmers.
In fact, if they truly mean a 10% dps loss through the ferocity change, I estimate between 10-15 ferocity per crit damage %, and the 2nd sigil almost makes up for it. 20/25/0/0/25 will be incredible. I just wish there was a half decent radiance trait to take in the mid-tier.
I want to roleplay superman without the weakness to kryptonite.
Fortunately for me, gw2 has warriors so I’m good.
CoF heroes 4 life
On topic, Zerker stats are too good compared to other stat combinations just by pure math. It needs retuning.
I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth.
Warrior with soldier gear, force sigil, scholar runes. 25 might, 100% fury, magic find food, sharpening stone, banner of discipline.
4800 ep
40393 ehp
Warrior with zerker gear, force sigil, scholar runes. 25 might, 100% fury, magic find food, sharpening stone, banner of discipline.
7500 ep
21284 ehp
So pvt has almost 90% more effective hp, but zerker has only 56% more damage?
Before taking into consideration heals on a high toughness character improve effective HP by more than they would do for a low toughness character?
Show me where zerker is statistically better?
“Oh but zerker gear scales better with boons and stuff”
Let’s add full bloodlust, add spotter, 10% dmg potion, power/crit damage food…
Soldier
6000 ep
40393 ehp
Zerker
9734 ep
21284 ehp
So pvt has almost 90% more effective hp, but zerker has only 62% more damage?
Before taking into consideration heals on a high toughness character improve effective HP by more than they would do for a low toughness character?
Show me where zerker is statistically better?
“Oh but zerker gear scales better with traits as well!”
Add traits to the above plethora of boons…
Full offensive traits (30/25/0/0/15)
Soldier
10599 ep
43281 ehp
Zerker
17398 ep
23423 ehp
So pvt has almost 85% more effective hp, but zerker has only 64% more damage?
Before taking into consideration heals on a high toughness character improve effective HP by more than they would do for a low toughness character?
Show me where zerker is statistically better?
Defensive trait setups only serve to magnify the dominance of pvt from a statistical viewpoint.
I’ve been saying for over a year now – PVT is the holy trinity of bang for your buck. You gain more survivability with pvt than you gain in dps with zerker. The amount of survivability healing will add to pvt compared to zerker is also ridiculous.
Sad fact is though, you don’t need to mitigate damage and you don’t need survivability when you can dodge/block/reflect/blind almost all incoming damage.
The gear is performing exactly as advertised. A player made choice to drastically reduce your expected survival time in exchange for higher dps.
The problem has always been the game mechanics.
The joy some people take in this nerf is embarrassing. It’s like admitting you’re not good enough to time your active defenses properly yet you still want to do as much damage and clear content as fast as people who are willing and able to succesfully ditch their defensive gear for offensive. I see a lot of people saying it is zerker faceroll easy, but not many people actually running pug 5 zerker fotm49s & meleeing bosses like the archdiviner.
I tried it once in fotm49.
Got hit once, lucky to be alive I used litany.
Wooah, another attack incoming, better dodge or die.
Okay dodge done with, let’s get some damage and healing done.
Oh, the duration is almost finished.
Now I’m low hp and my heal is on cooldown. Sweet.
Unequip litany, regret wasting skill points.
There are a lot of upset zerker players right now. Not for the obvious nerf reason though.
I don’t think the upset stems from their gear being nerfed, but rather because anet have failed to acknowledge at least a little that the dominance of damage in pve scenarios is a result of the core game mechanics and poor pve encounters.
The change was seen as an easy fix to appease people, an easy way out, a band-aid to temporarily hide the problem. This is why people are upset – it is extremely disappointing to see this approach taken rather than an objective look at why things are the way they are. It shows a severe lack ov acknowledgement & discussion on it from anet. It is almost like a statement saying that they are happy with the state of pve, it just needs to go a little slower. And for those of us yearning for diversity and interesting/challenging fights, that is disappointing. With things the way they are, it won’t matter what is increased or decreased in damage – whatever does the most will be the preferred setup.
I tried to make staff (and mace/shield) cleric guardian work but eventually it just wasn’t good enough.
Your damage is terrible and even with boon duration gear empower doesn’t increase your group’s dps by enough to offset the loss of your own.
There are a lot of upset zerker players right now. Not for the obvious nerf reason though.
I don’t think the upset stems from their gear being nerfed, but rather because anet have failed to acknowledge at least a little that the dominance of damage in pve scenarios is a result of the core game mechanics and poor pve encounters.
The change was seen as an easy fix to appease people, an easy way out, a band-aid to temporarily hide the problem. This is why people are upset – it is extremely disappointing to see this approach taken rather than an objective look at why things are the way they are. It shows a severe lack okittennowledgement & discussion on it from anet. It is almost like a statement saying that they are happy with the state of pve, it just needs to go a little slower. And for those of us yearning for diversity and interesting/challenging fights, that is disappointing. With things the way they are, it won’t matter what is increased or decreased in damage – whatever does the most will be the preferred setup.
Are the bland mob specific sigils also going to be reworked next patch alongside most of the other sigils?
I mean the ones which are like +10% dmg to destroyers… +10% dmg to ghosts… +10% dmg to svanir, +10% dmg to undead etc.
Really boring and rarely used.
Did they mention any changes to empowering might? I saw someone post about it but couldn’t find any more info.
Celestial gear is bad for PVE. It will be even worse after the upcoming patch. There is no need for a tank. Your damage won’t be good. WvW <> PVE.
Of course you will want some sustain for your party in high level fractals. Maybe you weren’t in them yet?
40-50+ and the likes.
This was my favourite forum post while on forum vacation. Incredible. Obal is such a noob.
@OP
The reason you are getting lots of PvE comments is this:
“The goal of the build is… none. In dungeons you’ll be the tank(Imagine, in high level fractals you DO need a tank!), which will be cake-difficulty with the variety of defensive stats, really. And you’ll also provide some meaningful damage too.”
My work on guardian dps:
http://s27.postimg.org/nf571pco3/guarddps.jpg
Shows that vitality/toughness add more to your effective hp than precision/crit damage add to your dps. Vitality and toughness are actually already more efficient than precision/crit damage even before you factor in the fact that healing benefits characters with toughness more than it does characters who have no toughness.
Mhmm. Odd merge. The cry for a free swap was very different from the discussion about the nerf itself. I would agree that many of them need nerfed, but not those two points.
I created my ascended gear on the basis of the old tradeoff.
With this new, lower damage, I don’t feel the tradeoff is worth it and regret my gearing decision.
Now what, anet?
You realise people on breaks don’t buy gems anymore right?
I agree. GW2 stands as the test to show that actually, players and combat mechanics require the trinity.
Nice results thus far.
I remember at release when not only was zerker gear considered suidical, the concept of meleeing was also considered suicidal.
There really weren’t many nerfs to pve content. We just got better.
So what you’re saying is : if you can’t dodge, use cleric/pvt gear and you’ll be fine.
If you can dodge, equip zerker gear – your reward is more dps.
Looks like everything is fine.
How on earth did you get magic find up that high?…
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.
I think ncsoft is starting to corner the mmo market tbh. They don’t call themselves the premier mmo publisher in the world for nothing. ESO is not going to work from what I hear from beta friends. If WoW keeps declining and EQ:Next isn’t amazing, wildstar, blade & soul, and lineage 3 are probably going to be the ones to watch.. which are all ncsoft.
Wildstar keeps the trinity (personally I missed it) and almost all of the combat is done using clear aoe indicators which is something I feel gw2 could really benefit from – even boss auto attacks.
Good, relevent quote from a wildstar dev video regarding their rogue type class; “how do you tank using medium armor? Well you can beef up your nanites if you want.. or just be good, don’t get hit”.
On the plus side wildstar is getting close.
Just because you want to do the most challenging content doesn’t mean you’re a hardcore player. It just means you’re half decent at the game and want something tough.
Wanting to play the most challenging content does not mean a player is okay with having to grind for it.
Easily?
The game was intended to be non grindy.
In the scenario above, the players don’t want to grind but want to do the challenging content. Of course they are going to want to bypass the progression which should in their eyes not be there.
Dead easy way to show that there is a grind in a non grindy game:
My friend starts playing, gets to 80, gears up (a grind in itself but let’s not talk about that part).
Finds he’s quite good at the game. Wants to tackle high level fractals, doesn’t care for the easymode low level ones.
Jumps in high level. Agony kills him.
I tell him to go farm laurels/trinkets/commendations, some hundreds of gold for the backpiece, and maybe some ascended gear if he doesn’t want to be instagibbed by the final boss using agony.
Friend asks “what happened to no grind?”.
What happens if he decides to swap spec for a change of flavour in this casual game? Or perhaps his build gets nerfed too badly? Grind again!
I honestly don’t really see any counter argument to that.
(edited by fadeaway.2807)
There’s really no need to get personal and start insulting me.
It’s quite obvious that there’s a grind, as per the original post.
You cannot do 49 without at least ascended trinkets and a high cost backpiece, which require a grind.
The block didn’t stop a lot of people.
It was 9 ticks. 48 was doable, at 50+ the only way you could complete fotm (for fotm level kitten) was by hitting the odd numbers and avoiding the end boss an reward chest or attempting some funky mechanics like full heals. Current 49 with no ascended items would require infused backpiece, which many casuals can’t afford. Even with it, it can be dangerous. There is no doubt about it, if a new but fairly skilled player wants to jump into the hard content – they first have to grind for it.
Please try doing fotm49 with no ascended items, or fotm49 with only ascended trinkets.
You do realize that people were doing fotm49 LONG before ascended armor/weapons came out, right?
How did jade maw go for you at 50+?
Sorry, you’re just objectively wrong. See my edited post above.
Sorry, I think you’re wrong.
Yeah, well math says I’m not.
Your math is wrong.
Yeah, no. Like everyone defending the current status quo for Zerker, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Zerker stats are objectively, demonstrably superior in terms of raw effectiveness, and issue which is compounded by bad encounter design. It needs to be addressed on both fronts.
Here are some numbers I created for various guardian builds with various gear setups.
Here are the effective hp and dps numbers.
http://s27.postimg.org/nf571pco3/guarddps.jpg
If you take each row’s dps as a proportion of the top row, and each row’s effective hp as a proportion of the bottom row, and add them together you get an idea of the tradeoff you gave away in order to get that dps or ehp.
eg 20/25/0/0/25 zerk 10830dps vs 0/0/30/30/10 soldier 5017 dps, row 1 having 1, bottom row having 0.46 for relative dps. Do the same for effective hp, 20/25/0/0/25 zerk having 12518 and 0/0/30/30/10 solvier having 38458.. top row having a relative ehp of 0.32 compared to the bottom row having 1. Add these numbers up for each row and you’ll find that no matter the combination of dps or tank gear or spec, anet have pretty much nailed it. The combined ehp and dps is always roughly equal.
Trading dps for survivability eg zerker/soldier is a fair tradeoff statistically. The problem is the content. In fact, as you add more healing, mitigation starts to outshine zerker in terms of survivability gained for the dps tradeoff.
(edited by fadeaway.2807)