The math clearly shows that the stats on these items are 20-50% higher than those on exotics. don’t buy the propaganda that says that these differences are trivial. The gear grinders will throw all sorts of other nonsense in to confuse the issue.
Add 11 power as you go from berserker exotic ring to berserker ascended ring. Witness 0.4% increase in dps.
Yes, it’s a big increase on the ring, because the numbers on rings are quite small. It doesn’t actually increase your character’s performance to a detectible amount.
Sometimes I think this game would benefit from dps meters cuz the gamer market is so weak at quantitative thinking (it’s been a few years, but another symptom seeing fewer than 10% of the seats in my grad math courses at a top US university filled by US students).
The formulae are out there. Seems like almost no one looks at them, and even fewer that look at them can manage the algebra to comprehend.
All of this for a half a percent increase in dps.
oi
I happen to have an ascended item, the quiver of swift flight, and to be fair I can’t really tell the difference in my gameplay. I die just the same in Orr if I act like an idiot. Only reason I got it is because I thought a quiver would look awesome on my thief rather than the lightsaber legendary dagger or my little pony legendary shortbow. Yes, legendary gear blows for my class.
Congrats on the new gear piece!
You’re not seein a diff in the performance because of the way stats work in GW2. There simply isn’t a detectable difference with your upgrade.
The upgrades amount to about .004 * dps increase (4/10 of a percent) in dps.
A detectable increase in light/loudness/taste is ten times as great.
If you’re going to revive a week-old thread, it bears noting that the top post has bad misinformation about how stats work in GW2. In particular the claim that you might double your damage going from 1k to 2k power on your gear is wrong.
The claim is correct, the Attack value in Characterscreen which show Weapondmg + Power is completely useless for the damage calculation.
When you go from 1k power to 2k power, you WILL do double dmg
As you can see in the damage formula, power is multiplied with weapon damage: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage
You linked it, but you’re drawing an erroneous conclusion.
Plug in the numbers from your character. You can go naked in the mists with a pvp weapon to try it out.
It’s (weapon damage + 916 naked + gear + traits) So naked your multiplier is about 2k. To double damage, you have to double that multiplier, i.e. add 2k of power with your gear. A whole set of zerker armor gets you just over 300.
If it should be additive and not multiplicative, then why are you the only one who says so?
Why did so many ppl test it and got to the conclusion that double power = double damage?
So honestly, you can equip a weapon in the mists, take off your amulet and runes, and smack a golem to see what you get. They even have “steady” weapons so you don’t have RNG from the weapon.
You have 916 in every stat while completely naked as providence at lvl 80. If we’re looking at direct damage on regular hits, to double the damage you have to double it all. So naked with a 2-h weapon I have about 2k (depending what the traits are). It’s simply not possible to get an additional 2k power from your gear. The largest amount on a stat from any of the karma exotic kits is 236. I think full berserker gives you ~320 power.
Do you see it now? You’re not gonna get high enough to do even double damage of a naked character.
Add to this there’s so far +11 power going from exotic to ascended ring or backpiece. The grand total is approx 1.25% increased damage for a typical character if you get all 3 pieces in zerker form.
Yes +11 to the main stat seems like a lot. But it’s 1/10 the variability from RNG, and about .004 of your total damage.
I like the feel a lot better than Orr. It does have a bit too many places that you can’t climb up. Forced long walks do not make for a heroic feeling.
It really feels incomplete with the lack of events and things to do. Just go ninja the rich ori vein and pop back into the mists.
The stat cap vs stat progression broohaha is missing an important point.
It’s a point that’s missed because the game market comprises people who don’t appreciate math.
The gear steps in GW2 are not like gear steps in other games. It’s built into the formulas, these are small, incremental steps that decrease in significance the higher you go. (of course there’s the exception of infusions and the Agony mechanic, because that’s a brand new element).
We only have the rings and back, two small-stat components of the kit so far.
But imagine if Ascended main hand weapons come out and they have 50 more stat points. This is an extreme example, and you know if it came to play, people would be both screaming about how the game was ruined, and jumping at the bit to obtain these new weapons.
How much more damage will your character be able to do? For a typical power character, you’d get less than 2% increase in damage.
In contrast a single weapon upgrade in Rift would often get you 10 times that.
The formulae are in the wiki and other theorycraft posts. Figure it out.
This huge one-step increase to the stat-capped system is functional equivalent to still being stat-capped.
1) An Ascended weapon will have additional weapon damage, which all by itself will add more than 2% to damage even at a realistically expected increase… never mind the increase of a full set of berserker’s Ascended over Exotic. But, it will be some time before you can dress in all Exotic and “appreciate the math” of being pounded on by someone in all Ascended.
2) The percentage increase in other games doesn’t really matter. Mobs are scaled up to meet that percentage and in PVP gear differences are usually nerfed (because fighting someone that does 3 times your damage is dumb). So you might say that stat-wise you could suffer through Ascended level content in Exotic? Well, agony is there to prevent anything like that!
3) Only having 3 slots of Ascended items so far is a non-talking point. They are in the design, and they are coming to a grindy experience near you soon!
1) We’ll have to see. Yes it’s true they could make a complete about-face and make the stats differences actually large enough to be significant.
However, so far with 3 slots, we’re seeing a total dps increase of about 1.25%. There are a grand total of 12 non-weapon slots equipped at any time (because the breather swaps for the helm underwater).
If the scaling goes in a similar pattern, where every slot is about .4 of 1% increase to dps, the total increase will amount to about 5%.
2/ Right the agony means that, right now, if you want to do FotM, you have to do FotM for the Agony. They’ve said there’ll be other ways to get the gear in future content. We’ll have to wait n see.
3/ We’ll have to wait and see, maybe they’ll make the increases much larger, and as noted, we’ve never seen an ascended weapon yet.
Right now, all the cries of verticality are neglecting the basic maths, that this appears to be the smallest increment in MMO history.
I’ll tell you, when I first heard the gear was coming, I freaked. Then the stats got leaked and I realized this new tier is a wafer-thin increment.
I also looked at this game, where everyone has a kitten magic-find set that we wear while doing the highest pve content in the game, and discover that it really doesn’t matter — our characters don’t need stats to do the content, because stats have minimal impact on the performance.
I know it’s not actually an either/or thing.
But I’d really like them to get all the things working that should have been working at launch. Get traits working, runes and sigils working, guild fully functional, etc.
I’m afraid bug fixes don’t get great press or promotion.
I would think they would base their conclusions of how the players reacted to the content by looking at things like concurrency-rate, changes in #hours individuals logged, and how many people ran how many levels of FotM, how many visited the island.
It’s voting with your feet, and from what I saw a lot of people voted in favor. But I can’t tell how many people totally quit playing. ArenaNet can.
If you’re going to revive a week-old thread, it bears noting that the top post has bad misinformation about how stats work in GW2. In particular the claim that you might double your damage going from 1k to 2k power on your gear is wrong.
The claim is correct, the Attack value in Characterscreen which show Weapondmg + Power is completely useless for the damage calculation.
When you go from 1k power to 2k power, you WILL do double dmg
As you can see in the damage formula, power is multiplied with weapon damage: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage
You linked it, but you’re drawing an erroneous conclusion.
Plug in the numbers from your character. You can go naked in the mists with a pvp weapon to try it out.
It’s (weapon damage + 916 naked + gear + traits) So naked your multiplier is about 2k. To double damage, you have to double that multiplier, i.e. add 2k of power with your gear. A whole set of zerker armor gets you just over 300.
To the OP: Its not the “competitive” part people are focused on as much as the “staying” part (re: your thread title).
i.e. if you log off and come back in 6 months, that would mean probably 2 content patches would have passed, meaning an additional 4-6 pieces of ascended gear (with accompanying infusions) would be “live” in game. Thus you and you full exotics would be unable to “compete” alongside an ascended kitted character in terms of how deep you could get inside fractal dungeons and by that time the aggregate of bonuses over exotic gear would have begun to unbalance PvP. Hence you were not able to “stay competitive” by staying in your exotics.
P.S. please stop with these poorly constructed, half baked arguments.
Stay competitive — what’s half-baked here?
As I pointed out, this content update, assuming you do the work and get all 3 items upgraded, will garner you about 1.25% damage increase.
We haven’t seen the next content update yet, of course, but if it’s similar in scale…
How will these couple percent in dps unbalance pvp or make you not stay competitive?
Here is something to chew on. I kinda liked Rift and wouldn’t mind checking it out. However, I never will. Why? Because if I returned I would have no one to play with and no way to gear up to do the content everyone is currently on. PVP… omg that would be impossible.
Now apply this to GW2 which is a free to play game. If you put in vertically progressive gear. People will come and go. But they won’t be coming back, they will be unable to take part in the current content.
If stats are capped then people will be more inclined to come back and play for periods of time, just like they did with gw1.
First off, Rift just launched an expansion with a new level cap, which reset the gear ladder. It’s a perfect time to give it a try.
Second off — you have to look at the way the gear increments affect performance. In Rift, there’s a large increment in performance (dps) with single upgrades.
If you got berserker style ascended gear replacing similar exotic gear, the actual damage output for a typical GW2 character increases about 2%. This is because we have a huge “providence” of 916 naked for each stat, and damage is based on the sum of power + weapon-damage (scaled by other coefficients, and inversely proportional to toughness + armor of the target).
So go ahead and skip this whole addition, and no one will be able to see any difference (until you get to someplace with Agony).
It’s very different from Rift where a single item upgrade could give you +20% dps.
If you’re going to revive a week-old thread, it bears noting that the top post has bad misinformation about how stats work in GW2. In particular the claim that you might double your damage going from 1k to 2k power on your gear is wrong.
Adding those 11 points on all three pieces will increase in-game normal direct or condition damage on a typical character by about 1.25%
I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.
How much gear improvement do you think it will take to make you feel like you’re overgeared? How many stat points?
This game was painstakingly balanced around the maximum level of exotics. I’ve seen the difference moving from greens to superiors as I leveled, and I think anything beyond exotic would ridiculously trivialize the content. (for reference on this.. what I “think” about this is quite relevant, as both of my degrees are in STEM fields which stress the analsys of both time-series and cyclical scaling)
Yeah, I used to teach that.
Look at the equations, look at the gear, calculate the gradient, or partials. For other readers, just do a “what-if” using your current stats and an increase.
They are simple, linear in their coefficients, equations.
The numbers for anything approaching “ridiculously trivialize” just aren’t there, if you do your homework.
I think I will read it when it goes live.
You have to understand the function of AMA is PR. But it’ll be interesting, regardless.
I appreciate the irony that this thread has the most personal attacks and talking past each other of any thread I’ve read on these forums.
Maybe it is true that forums posts are the worst thing that happened to this game.
I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.
How much gear improvement do you think it will take to make you feel like you’re overgeared? How many stat points?
@OP: Excellent post.
@mulch: Thus by your own logic, reverting ascended stats to exotic stats will be functionally equivalent? So then, ANet might as well do that.
Well the beauty of it is, they can give apparent progression to the many people who complained that there was no way to improve their characters, while giving stat increases that are so minor, none of the old content will need retuning. So it all can still be done with exotic, and not trivialized to ascended.
Edit: with the holidays it took me a while to respond — the point that I made was that because of the formulas that determine characters’ performance in GW2, what appear to be meaningful changes in stats do not translate to discernible performance changes in game. For example, adding 50 power on an item (substantially larger than we’ve seen on ascended) is still less than 2% increase in damage for a typical player character. This is in contrast to other games (e.g., Rift) where a new tier often represents 10 times that increase.
So this vertical progression is, in fact, basically flat.
(edited by mulch.2586)
The stat cap vs stat progression broohaha is missing an important point.
It’s a point that’s missed because the game market comprises people who don’t appreciate math.
The gear steps in GW2 are not like gear steps in other games. It’s built into the formulas, these are small, incremental steps that decrease in significance the higher you go. (of course there’s the exception of infusions and the Agony mechanic, because that’s a brand new element).
We only have the rings and back, two small-stat components of the kit so far.
But imagine if Ascended main hand weapons come out and they have 50 more stat points. This is an extreme example, and you know if it came to play, people would be both screaming about how the game was ruined, and jumping at the bit to obtain these new weapons.
How much more damage will your character be able to do? For a typical power character, you’d get less than 2% increase in damage.
In contrast a single weapon upgrade in Rift would often get you 10 times that.
The formulae are in the wiki and other theorycraft posts. Figure it out.
This huge one-step increase to the stat-capped system is functional equivalent to still being stat-capped.
I think you have to consider that even casual dungeon-runners had exhausted what they wanted from the older dungeons. I was doing them for fun, not the gear.
The fractals are fun and it’s something new and different for a game that was running low on things to work on.
Oh and regarding map chat — especially in a place like Lion’s Arch, the game is sooo much more satisfying if you turn off map chat.
If only..
If only the worst thing that happened in GW2 took place on the forums.
Cuz that would mean bot trains hadn’t run over the game, that would mean 40,000+ players wouldn’t have had their accounts hacked, the game would have launched When it’s Ready™, the pvp system would have been properly in place for the first months of play, it’d mean our characters’ abilities and traits would work bug-free, that wvw would be about players, rather than about exploiting bugs…
If only…
The event was very poorly done. Each phase was plagued with bugs and performance problems. The apology addresses that.
The loot from the event, I think was appropriate. Looking at the market, ectos aren’t cheap, desirable runes still aren’t cheap. It feels really bad to some people who were in the market and didn’t see the signs, despite all the hints, that precursors were going to be made more accessible. I’m not a market player in GW2, but even I saw that coming.
What wasn’t fair was the way it was handled, with a single hour-wide opportunity to participate. I hope they rethink that, and go more like Mad King’s event style in the future.
If I were guessing why they’re there, I’d say it’s prob’ly one of the duplication exploits or vendor mispricings like the infamous Norn cultural gear fiasco that got some people a few bags full of them.
They can’t be crafted. If you need one and it’s cheaper, go for it. Not that 4s will change your life.
AMA are meant as promotional tools. Hopefully they can keep the message positive and forward-looking.
We have a very vocal minority of people who think 1 step of gear equals a treadmill.
I’ve been in other games when they did huge changes, much bigger than anything suggested for GW2 so far (thinkin of Everquest and WoW). People doom and gloom, people cry, people threaten rage-quit. But a year later those same people were still playing it, with a playerbase bigger than ever before.
We older gamers have a bit of history to guide us, and also less likely to suffer from “gamer ADD” that tends to make younger gamers jump from game to game. I like that GW2, like GW1, is one you can leave and come back as it suits you.
I haven’t tested the Ranger runes, or seen where anyone has posted a test. So many of the special things like that don’t work more than half the time.
Still, people like Sup Rune of Lyssa, even tho its 4 and 6 work about half the time, cuz they’re so good when they do work.
Or for a wvw player who’s otherwise glass-cannon, you could do divinity (cept it’s expensive) or something to get you better survivability.
I frequently run group content with guildmates who haven’t done it yet.
The first time can be rough, especially if you have people who play in a group like they solo.
The fractals aren’t particularly hard at low level, but they are different from wvw, open pve, dynamic events, etc.
I don’t think you should ever PUG, but if you’re that kind of person, FotM are fine for it. Would be perfect for it if we had EQ2’s in-game voice utility.
I think wvwers buy gold and stuff.
I like sPvP. It just doesn’t seem to be really taking off. A lot of that is it’s just barely ready for release yet. Still workin on the basics.
I’m not sure if the game is rich enough or fun enough for pvp to flourish esport style. Making a successful esport almost feels to me like trying to go create a viral video. Sure you can try, but it’s really about what gets legs in the community.
Who could have predicted LoL?
A key point of a MMO with it’s persistent world is that you can play when you are able and still have same chances as somebody else (if you can find other players to play with).
Imagine locking down a dungeon so only those who are only at time X can play and loot? Doubtful many would accept that outside the timezone.
But locking down an event is okay? When it provides better rewards?
I can see that point. When I think of this event, I keep imagining they could have instead done it as small-group instanced content, which this game actually does pretty well. And like the story dungeons, they could have made it give one-time rewards, so people couldn’t farm it, but players all over the world with different time schedules could have participated.
But locking down dungeons and bosses to keep them from some players?
This has long tradition in MMOs, particularly pvp games (which I recognize gw isn’t). In Everquest 1, one or a few guilds typically held all the keys to the latest dungeons, and would block any one else. East coast guilds had an advantage because they could get their raids started earlier…
GW2 is on the opposite spectrum from hardcore or pvp-oriented game. There should be a princple of access for all.
Dunno what you can expect from a company’s PR if it’s not PR…
I got the spvp monthly. And if you just show up for 3 games you get the daily. But seriously, how many glory boosters do you want? And 5 extra pvp salvage kits (i.e. 75 pvp items, which is almost a lifetime supply). Oy!
Costumery, whether it’s cultural weapons or things you pick up on karma vendors.
Just let it pile up, cuz it doesn’t use up any inventory space.
Just getting the guild system to work mostly bug-free was an accomplishment, compared to what it launched.
The 500-person limit is awkward. The lack of communication channels or alliances is awkward. The absurdly useless guild bank is awkward. The lack of “last time logged in” or list of all characters for a member is awkward.
There’s a bunch of other things that could be useful (guild bulletin board or mailing list). I think still working toward basic functionality.
So it’s hard to see the costs/benefits of small vs large, when there’s so many benefits not yet in game.
IME when a game launches, there’s a lot of people who will start guilds. After the game matures, some flourish and a lot die out. It’s okay, cuz an empty guild doesn’t take up any space, really.
There’s detail, yes, but refer back to my “everything’s sunny here at GW2.” Nowhere in that message do they address the problems.
There’s a whole paragraph on it:
“Having said that, we’re also aware that there were certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did, and thanks to your excellent feedback we’ll be working toward strengthening this type of content moving forward. At ArenaNet, we always try to push the boundaries of how we build online worlds, and we thank you for your patience and collaboration as we pioneer into unknown territories. We’ve seen people saying that they really liked the principle of using events to unveil new content, but we need to tighten up the methods by which they are deployed. We take these comments to heart, as it is our goal to always deliver content of the highest quality.”
That’s as direct as you can get from someone who uses phrases like “tighten up the methods by which they are deployed.”
Did you miss
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/
Seems timely, and as informative as any I’ve seen by mmo folks.
My 80s are ranger and guardian.
Ranger: my 3-5 on shortbow are a dps loss from 1
Guardian: the cooldowns are so long, but I’m mostly 1-2 on every weapon set I use.
Appendectomy scars abound.
When it’s ready™
Unfriendly to casual players — I include here wvw exotics, T3 cultural items, legendaries, Greatsaw Greatsword, Mad King tower puzzle, 100% map completion, cute/sexy/kitten outfits (in both regular and pvp), and complete dungeon sets.
The monthly is hard, but my son, who’s a 3 sport athlete, in 2 music groups, honors student, active in clubs… even he got the monthly done, just this weekend. He’s not casual about anything he does, but his playtime is very limited. I guess he’s kick-butt-casual.
“tighten up the methods by which they are deployed”
my favorite line
Hint*hint* to Doc Overload: You already can dungeon with people on other servers.
Seek and ye shall find.
I think this is intended to serve the purpose the top post was requesting.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/
What happened to like, putting in an effort, working hard, and getting rewarded as a result of it?
There’s many people in real life who persevere under circumstances they hate. But they persevere nonetheless, and sometimes, they get rewarded.
This is just a game, and rewards are guaranteed for your efforts. Seriously, stop being lazy. If you want to be rewarded, prepared to work hard towards that goal. Not every step of the way will be fun.
Rewards are in no way guaranteed. I’ve yet to get anything useful from a dungeon. Or any other chest in the game, really, aside from the Karka end-of-event chest.
Rewards are guaranteed as long as you finish (and there’s no glitch).
First run of any path gets you 60 tokens. Each fractal pays off, too. Plus there’s the loot, which really doesn’t suck. Always get a pile of vendor items and just about always something to break for ectos.
The GW2 system is a nice break from dungeons in other games where the item you want may never drop, and/or you get out-rolled. Here it’s much less emphasis on loot, but you get currency instead.
(now the fact there’s no line of upgrades to buy once you have the basics…)
A misconception up above a dozen posts or so: Story mode dungeons are not easier. IME they’re always longer than an explorable path. And, of course you don’t get the currency for story-mode, just a one-time quest item (plus a wad of cash, xp, karma)
I haven’t noticed any change in the PvE areas. I was in Orr yesterday. It was bleak and unpleasant. Did a few events, harvested some nodes… Same as it ever was.
@Jeremy
There’s nothing in your story quest that takes more than 5 people. But you all should look to merge with a bigger/more active guild, as your friends/guild really make or break a game like this.
I don’t know how long we as a community will have hunger for the mats to make exotic gear. We’re all out of things to buy with karma, unless you’re doing legendary. So yeah, it won’t last forever. But it’s really not changed, cept Plinxx
The dulfy.net site is quite helpful.
Was it really run by botters?
How many thousands of posts (albeit most of them from the same posters, ya)?
On the one hand, I think everything that could possibly be said, was said.
On the other hand, there’s not much else to talk about.
Congrats on your achievement. Sounds like it was very rewarding!
I find it a bit frustrating/confusing as there’s one place in my bank where I store all my tokens. But there’s enough pants that use gloves icons that I’m not surprised.
As far as i understand – noone forces you to do the achievements. I play for 1-2 hours a day if i have time, so you can call me pretty casual – and i am not stressing as much about not being able to complete everything.
Not everything should be designed for casuals ONLY.
Watch the manifesto, this game was originally for casuals, not for dungeoneers.
Secondly, making the monthly require this dungeon for the monthly is the same slap in the face they gave crafters by making the important expensive mats only drop in the dungeons.
Completely opposite of their manifesto and completely against their main player base.
I just went and re-watched the manifesto. There’s nothing in there that it’s for casuals not dungeoneers. There’s nothing in there about achievements, monthly or otherwise.
The only thing possibly relevant is CJ’s line about having to do a bunch of boring things to get to the fun stuff. In a game with 32(?) different dungeon runs, asking you to do 5 for an optional monthly achievement isn’t requiring a grind. It’s just giving you the option to earn an achievement for participating in a variety of the game’s content.
So far the only thing you need the new gear for is to do higher/deeper levels of FotM.
There are many examples where the difference between identical power are substantially greater, all cuz of appeal and the difficulty/cost to obtain.
Short term, yes, the RNG can be a fickle vindictive spinster.
In the long run, it balances out, ala Bernoulli’s principle. Meaning you can flip and coin and have a chance for 6 heads in a row, especially when you consider we have over a million players flipping the coin. But for a given player, if you play the game for a length of time, the difference between your flips and anyone else’ approaches zero.