Why The Berserker Changes Are Overdoing It

[mandala.8507]

6 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

You yourself mentioned Banner of Defense and Banner of Tactics. Even For Great Justice for might and fury. If you're going full on support warhorn brings swiftness and vigor along, as well as more quickness. Tactics will bring along more stability and protection. Its a matter of how much of a support are you going for. 

But we don't need to bring those things. We will likely provide perma-fury with heat the soul, and we only have to take the reactive utilities banners on fights where those are needed. There is no other boon that qdps is expected to bring because healer builds are overloaded and you aren't getting into a group if you can't do might, fury, alac/quick, prot, regen, and swiftness as a healer anyway.

Doubling up on boons and utility that's already covered doesn't help us unless our goal is to pick up slack for a healer who is making mistakes. And yeah, this build won't fix all your problems in a group with a bad healer. Neither will 95% of any of the other qdps builds. But that doesn't mean this build won't be broken.

Edited October 30, 2023 by mandala.8507
grammar

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

But we don't need to bring those things. We will likely provide perma-fury with heat the soul, and we only have to take the reactive utilities banners on fights where those are needed. There is no other boon that qdps is expected to bring because healer builds are overloaded and you aren't getting into a group if you can't do might, fury, alac/quick, prot, regen, and swiftness as a healer anyway.

Doubling up on boons and utility that's already covered doesn't help us unless our goal is to pick up slack for a healer who is making mistakes. And yeah, this build won't fix all your problems in a group with a bad healer. Neither will 95% of any of the other qdps builds. But that doesn't mean this build won't be broken.

Perhaps, but then maybe when they release staff we'll see some actual healing capability.

I see your concern though, but I agree with the others that we'll see that build end up within band of the other qdps builds. We'll see though. If it does indeed breach 40k dps, then Roy and CMC will bring it down, probably with duration nerfs to force BD investment.

[mandala.8507]

1 minute ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

If it does indeed breach 40k dps, then Roy and CMC will bring it down, probably with duration nerfs to force BD investment.

Unfortunately, this would only serve to punish lower-skill players, because like I've mentioned a few times since I started talking about this heat the soul change, it's implemented in a way that if it's not a problem for the balance at the high level, it means it's pretty unplayable for less-skilled players.

And at that point, it solves nothing. Then we're back to square one, where it's a challenging but "fine" build for super high APM players, but entirely terrible for people who aren't fast enough to maintain uptime when the boon duration is fully optimized.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, mandala.8507 said:

Unfortunately, this would only serve to punish lower-skill players, because like I've mentioned a few times since I started talking about this heat the soul change, it's implemented in a way that if it's not a problem for the balance at the high level, it means it's pretty unplayable for less-skilled players.

And at that point, it solves nothing. Then we're back to square one, where it's a challenging but "fine" build for super high APM players, but entirely terrible for people who aren't fast enough to maintain uptime when the boon duration is fully optimized.

We'd just end up needing concentration instead of full dps stats. The rotation won't be any different then, just a lower benchmark. Those lower skilled players would be in the same relative position.

FWIW, I think it should stand as designed. If the player wants to bring more than quickness, they'll need more BD for what ever other boons they bring and have a lower benchmark as a result 🤷‍♂️

[mandala.8507]

5 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

We'd just end up needing concentration instead of full dps stats. The rotation won't be any different then, just a lower benchmark. Those lower skilled players would be in the same relative position.

No, because it no longer has an ICD, so how fast you can get through your rotation determines what level of concentration you would need to take. Ergo nerfs that would force high-apm players to even consider thinking about running any additional boon duration would make the build garbage for everyone else.

Edited October 30, 2023 by mandala.8507
typo

[mandala.8507]

5 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

FWIW, I think it should stand as designed. If the player wants to bring more than quickness, they'll need more BD for what ever other boons they bring and have a lower benchmark as a result 🤷‍♂️

This sadly isn't the reality the meta is in, so it's not a real concern.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Just now, mandala.8507 said:

No, because it no longer has an ICD, so how fast you can get through your rotation determines what level of concentration you would need to take. Ergo nerfs that would force high-apm players to even consider thinking about running any addition boon duration would make the build garbage for everyone else.

I can conceive of a nerf that would require even a power berserker spamming Decapitate to take BD to perma upkeep it:

• Heat the Soul: The quickness granted by this trait has been reduced to 1s, Decapitate now grants 0.5s of quickness.

See, they can nerf it in such a way to force BD investment. I don't think it will get to that level though.

[mandala.8507]

Just now, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I can conceive of a nerf that would require even a power berserker spamming Decapitate to take BD to perma upkeep it:

• Heat the Soul: The quickness granted by this trait has been reduced to 1s, Decapitate now grants 0.5s of quickness.

See, they can nerf it in such a way to force BD investment. I don't think it will get to that level though.

Cool. Now the build's F-tier for everyone and an insta-kick by anyone who wants to kill the boss. We've now accomplished nothing. Awesome.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

29 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

Cool. Now the build's F-tier for everyone and an insta-kick by anyone who wants to kill the boss. We've now accomplished nothing. Awesome.

Like I said, I don't see it getting to that point. And as I said before I think it'll be fine as is in practice. You still have to do mechanics, so the margin is needed.

[Fueki.4753]

6 hours ago, Arewn.2368 said:

It's still not a good thing for the game over all. If another build can pair with a quickness-only Zerker to fill in the missing boons, it's going to destabilize group compositions (again).

When it comes to group composition and related balance decisions, Arena Net has shown themselves to have terrible vision and control over the direction of their game. They tend to get led by the nose by whatever the players-base does, leading to an incoherent mess of a meta. So it wouldn't surprise me if we once again find ourselves in that situation.

If this "golden combination" is discovered, we'll probably end up with a really awkward group comp centered around an over-performing quickZerker paired with some other build that brings the missing boons while also fulfilling it's primary role. This will last for 6 or 8 months, people will get sick of it, and ultimately ANet will nerf quickZerker into the ground and leave it dead in the water for a couple years.

qBerserker being able to do a bit more damage than other qDPS when it is allowed to be in melee range is far more than offset by the fact that Berserker's output drops close to nothing, as soon as it leaves melee range.

A profession that only reliably functions in melee range should perform better in melee than professions that have access to decent ranged weapons.

I doubt your golden combination would be all that good. If qBerserker needs someone to babysit it so it can stay in melee 100% of the time and have that partner also provide all the other boons, said partner's damage will probably not be scratching the upper end of the numbers and thus offsetting qBerserker's hypothetical overperformance.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Some people just want to keep Warrior bad, so they can feel superior playing the underdog class. 

No other possible explanation for this. 

[Katary.7096]

During the livestream it was mentioned that Berserker is doing great on paper (or against a golem) but it struggles in encounters with actual mechanics. I assume that the devs want people to build a buffer of Berserk time while they are hitting an enemy so they can stay in Berserk mode even when it is impossible to hit the boss for a few seconds. Whether they found the correct values already I don't know.

If Berserker builds have too much damage across the board they can always nerf the power and condition damage on "Fatal Frenzy". If Quick-Berserkers are too good they can nerf "Heat the Soul". I don't expect them to get it right on the first try.

15 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

For example, it's kinda strange that only 1.5 years after EoD release they are realizing that empowered empowerment on catalyst is designed poorly with a ludicrously all-or-nothing skill check. And even this new version is still pretty silly and unimaginative. There could be something actually cool that changes the way catalyst does dmg in that slot, but instead it's just a flat stat enhancement and STILL an all-or-nothing skill check to jump from its skill floor to it's skill ceiling, just a smaller disparity between the all and the nothing now.

I have zero clue why they like it being this way.

Because creating an adept, master and grandmaster trait which provides an X, Y and Z % damage bonus if you meet the requirements A, B and C is infinitely easier than making all damage enhancing traits grant effects similar to "Fresh Air", "Deathly Chill", "King of Fires" or "Jagged Mind".

[Jzaku.9765]

9 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

Call me a fortuneteller if you want, but if there's a quickness dps build doing 40k dps, people are going to pick it up and abuse it on any content it is even remotely decent on. We don't have to wait to find out. The numbers guarantee it will be a problem.

Just like how people "abuse" the top DPS builds now? Even just looking at support builds, take the Snow Crows benchmark list I posted and sort it by DPS:

19 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

Condi qUt: 36.3k
Condi aRen: 35.5k
Condi qHarb: 35.1k
Condi qHerald: 34.3k
Condi aSpect: 33.9k
Condi qFb: 33.8k
(current) Condi qZerk: 32.8k
Power qHerald: 32.6k
Condi aMech: 32.5k
Condi aScg: 32.4k
(current) Condi aMirage: 31.3k
Power qScrap: 32.1k

You will notice that the first build that is actually popular in the sense you are referring to ("people are going to pick it up and abuse it") is qFb at #6 on the list despite #1 benching 2.5k above it. Everything above it would be considered niche at sub 3% play rate according to Wingman stats which is already biased towards tryhards. The most popular build period right now is Power qHerald at #8.

If you go to the benchmarks page on Snow Crows you will find a similar situation going on where the "Top DPS" specs are wildly unpopular for one reason or another. 

In short, you are dramatically overstating the value of DPS. It is just one aspect of the strength of a build, and it is self-evident that players intrinsically understand this.

 

 

 

Regardless, your points are at odds with each other. You consistently identify that pZerk is in fact extremely high APM and that the common player will in no way be able to execute playing it benchmark level, then make a huge case about how playing it at benchmark level will give you a 39k DPS qDPS build (only ~3k higher than the current next highest bench for a boonDPS build). It's like, OK? So an extremely small minority of players will get access to a high DPS boonDPS build and everyone else will be casually playing pZerk not landing every burst skill for procs of both Quickness and Rage-Extension, double dipping in performance drops likely evening out into a perfectly normal build?

 

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

5 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Some people just want to keep Warrior bad, so they can feel superior playing the underdog class. 

No other possible explanation for this. 

I think its more past trauma from warrior nerfs in the past causing them to be afraid of buffs.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

22 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I think its more past trauma from warrior nerfs in the past causing them to be afraid of buffs.

Just let me have my 5min of fun before the Silver 1 players QQ until they make it look like Primal kyogre is let loose again. 

 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

5 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Just let me have my 5min of fun before the Silver 1 players QQ until they make it look like Primal kyogre is let loose again. 

 

Just wait for the triple gunflame complaints in the WvW forums.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Just wait for the triple gunflame complaints in the WvW forums.

Daze removed from gunflame. 

All synergy with on cc traits gone. 

My worst nightmare. 

Edited October 30, 2023 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

50 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Daze removed from gunflame. 

All synergy with on cc traits gone. 

My worsed nightmare. 

You shut your mouth! 😂

They'd do it too.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

I will say it again.

Scorched Earth has a very good power level for WvW. The rest of Bow is terrible is clashes without Arms and SoM. Aka you make a lot of sacrifices to run bow in the first place.

What downed people was Arc Divider. The skill YOU changed into an amped single-strike attack. 

So now what do we get? FLAT STAT DECREASE ON ZERKER! Unreal...

Why not, say, bring back the 3 spins to Arc Divider, give it half the old casttime and make the 3 total strikes have a coefficient similar to the single strike Arc Divider? That would be fun, not a nerf, bring back our cleave and still feel better than the clunky and slow triple spin of the past.

You attack power zerker this patch YET YOU ADAMANTLY maintain ALL CONDITION DAMAGE increases on berserker, despite condition berserker being a pain point in competetive longer than power zerker....

What's next? If Hammer becomes better for zerker over GS, will you revert Rupturing Smash to its old version?

I won't even TOUCH upon the terrible damage that offhand axe does for it's casttime in wvw and how easily it's interrupted or how offhand mace will not be used as long as Tremor remains a CC WITH A PROJECTILE FINISHER kitten.. Dagger still lacks cleave and Sword still needs for skill 3 to become a movement aoe dash skill to improve cleave and mobility.

And since you remove this much power from zerker why not increase the power coefficient for Shattering Blow to match Hammer Shock in aoe, range and dmg? 

I won't even talk about making Wild Blow actually do damage or giving Immob to Sundering Leap.

But sure keep making stuff worse. I mean the ranged wvw meta does hurt warrior more than other clashes and if you don't want berserker to function then back to Rev parties we go.

[mandala.8507]

8 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Some people just want to keep Warrior bad, so they can feel superior playing the underdog class. 

No other possible explanation for this. 

Yeah, this is just straight up lying about my motivations. Sorry, but you're wrong. I do not care if warrior is bad or good so that I can get some sense of superiority or inferiority for playing it. 

[mandala.8507]

5 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

You will notice that the first build that is actually popular in the sense you are referring to ("people are going to pick it up and abuse it") is qFb at #6 on the list despite #1 benching 2.5k above it. Everything above it would be considered niche at sub 3% play rate according to Wingman stats which is already biased towards tryhards. The most popular build period right now is Power qHerald at #8.

If you go to the benchmarks page on Snow Crows you will find a similar situation going on where the "Top DPS" specs are wildly unpopular for one reason or another. 

In short, you are dramatically overstating the value of DPS. It is just one aspect of the strength of a build, and it is self-evident that players intrinsically understand this.

That's because this build doesn't require you to be the best player in the game to get perma quickness uptime while also being able to focus on your damage rotation.

You'll also find that on SC, power berserker is listed at a 2 out of 5 skill floor, which is accurate. It's not even remotely a hard build, it's just a fast one. If someone learns how to press their buttons quickly enough, it's actually quite easy to execute, especially when they no longer have to worry about falling out of berserk.

That is the difference between this build and the other top-bench quickness dps builds that aren't seeing much play. Those builds require much greater class knowledge and combat awareness than this berserker build does, because you'd actually have to try to generate below 100% quickness uptime if you were even remotely doing the rotation on power quickness berserker once this patch hits.

I'm not overstating the value of dps. You just don't understand why the dps differential between condi quickbrand/power quick herald is bridged by the difference in difficulty of execution and ease of use of those builds vs things like quickness untamed and condi alac ren. (People also just shouldn't be playing condi quickness firebrand, because it did get a lot more intricate when they reworked the books, but it was meta for so long that there is a significant portion of the community that refuses to drop it and probably plays it quite poorly).

Casual players also don't have the ability to up and change all their builds every 2-3 months as new classes come in and out of the top of the dps meta. However, this build doesn't require you to change anything if you have a heavy armor berserker gear dps setup on your account. Which is why it will be picked up more often and will be enjoyed more, because it asks nothing special from players other than to try their best at the rotation that they may already be familiar with if they want to play power berserker dps, which will become much more approachable when you don't have to min/max your berserk uptime and use of rage skills come Novemeber 28.

5 hours ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

Regardless, your points are at odds with each other. You consistently identify that pZerk is in fact extremely high APM and that the common player will in no way be able to execute playing it benchmark level, then make a huge case about how playing it at benchmark level will give you a 39k DPS qDPS build (only ~3k higher than the current next highest bench for a boonDPS build). It's like, OK? So an extremely small minority of players will get access to a high DPS boonDPS build and everyone else will be casually playing pZerk not landing every burst skill for procs of both Quickness and Rage-Extension, double dipping in performance drops likely evening out into a perfectly normal build?

And this statement makes me think you truly don't understand the changes numerically, because it will be LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to drop out of berserk unless you're planning on doing a 30% dps mark on whatever boss you are fighting.

You're drastically underestimating just how much wiggle room is in the berserk extension and quickness uptime. The only thing players who should even be caring about the meta in the first place will be losing efficacy from on this build is the rate of dmg they do from how fast they can get through the rotation. Anyone even remotely trying will never fall out of berserk, and anyone capable of doing even an 80-85% of benchmark golem pull will never drop quickness uptime even with zero boon duration investment.

Yes, the game-breaking will be done by mostly top players, but it will still be a very strong build on a lot of encounters for anyone willing to spend 30 minutes to an hour in the golem room. And in typical GW2 fashion, top players thinking it's broken and the only build you can play will trickle down to rest of the end-game scene.

I'm not contradicting myself, you just want me to be wrong. Which is fine — I understand warrior mains thinking they want this change to go through — but I promise it will rubberband back in our faces.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

4 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

I think its more past trauma from warrior nerfs in the past causing them to be afraid of buffs.

I am no longer traumatized, I am hungry. I learned my lesson when I went "maybe arc divider shouldnt hit this hard? <3" and they went "okay" then made power zerk bad for 4 years, then made it worse.

It's time to not care. Respectful of balance generally, of course.

Please forgive my gremlin quippy-ness btw. I am not contributing to the conversation, simply because I don't think zerk blasting in melee range and being good at that is an issue. Its ranged weapons are not useful for dps, and any must-dodge by the boss will cause its damage to fall off. Let them chainsaw.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Puck.3697]

On 10/29/2023 at 1:33 PM, Jzaku.9765 said:

Quick
Condi qUt: 36.3k
Condi qHarb: 35.1k
Condi qHerald: 34.3k
Condi qFb: 33.8k
(current) Condi qZerk: 32.8k
Power qHerald: 32.6k
Power qScrap: 32.1k

Alac
Condi aRen: 35.5k
Condi aSpect: 33.9k
Condi aMech: 32.5k
Condi aScg: 32.4k
(current) Condi aMirage: 31.3k

 

So you're predicting that Power qZerk DPS will pretty much fall right into the band of existing boondps builds? Aren't you overreacting?

The new balance team seems exceptionally good at DPS number balance, so the real strength of builds will lie in the value they can provide outside of their respective quick/alac and DPS (e.g., Stab, pulls, stat-agnostic value). And in that aspect, Berserker isn't too hot.

Exceptionally good at power creep you mean. Those numbers on support builds are ridiculous.

This is the issue, every class is so broken, that the "balance" is being broken. Even the hardest content in the game is done on 25k dps done. And you've got support builds doing 10k more then thst haha 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Puck.3697

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

19 hours ago, Puck.3697 said:

Exceptionally good at power creep you mean. Those numbers on support builds are ridiculous.

This is the issue, every class is so broken, that the "balance" is being broken. Even the hardest content in the game is done on 25k dps done. And you've got support builds doing 10k more then thst haha 

Exactly. Either accept the fact that 90% of your classes are broken and also make the 10% match the new benchmark, or make everyone match the 10%'s benchmark.

Advocating that a single class be balanced strictly while the other ones are not is just bullying under the guise of concern.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261
Not  a single other profession thread has people going out of their way to preemptively advocate for rolling back balance adjustments. Explain.

[mandala.8507]

29 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Advocating that a single class be balanced strictly while the other ones are not is just bullying under the guise of concern.

Yes, because the build doing 40k is surely not an outlier in the landscape of the builds in a range of 32-36k.

Surely I am just a bully hiding behind the very subjective discipline of...*checks notes*...math. Surely. I mean, there could be no other explanation.