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How to Calculate Your Healing Effectiveness (Debunking Healing Myths)


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I am curious as to these calcs - I've run boon auramancer, shoutbreaker, and heal scrapper and of those the healing style seems so wildly different between them. I'd bring auramancer for solohealing stuff like VG or SH (xtra spicy), but scrapper for stuff like Rainbow Road or WvW. Is there a methodology for accounting for the nature of healing (burst, mitigation, over time), or are all of these numbers on theoretical raw values at 100% efficiency?

Just curious!

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@"Wisty.4135" said:I am curious as to these calcs - I've run boon auramancer, shoutbreaker, and heal scrapper and of those the healing style seems so wildly different between them. I'd bring auramancer for solohealing stuff like VG or SH (xtra spicy), but scrapper for stuff like Rainbow Road or WvW. Is there a methodology for accounting for the nature of healing (burst, mitigation, over time), or are all of these numbers on theoretical raw values at 100% efficiency?

Just curious!

Thanks, I'm glad you are curious, and I took the time to address each point below in sections to answer that question

The potential is the theoretical maximally efficient value for each individual skill, then just added together to give you a total. Then when you play your build in a fight, you see how much you did and you compare that to the potential value as a percentage. If you have a potential of 100,000 healing, and you did 10,000 healing in a fight, then your healing efficacy in that fight is 10% of the potential. You use that information to analyze the performance, the build and/or the fight in order to make more informed decisions.

BurstBurst is a different kind of thing all together. For example, a boss can do 10,000 damage every 10 seconds in two ways. Either 1000 damage per second, or 10,000 damage in 1 second and do nothing for the remaining 9 seconds. In both situations, a skill that heals for 1000 healing per second will at the end of 10 seconds, heal all 10,000 damage in both scenarios. Likewise, just as an enemy can inflict burst damage on you, the same applies for when you apply burst healing to allies. You can either heal 1000 healing per second, or do 10,000 healing in one second, and do nothing for the remaining 9 seconds. In practice, it's always a combination of both happening in tandem, where a burst will occur followed by pressure, or pressure is followed by a burst, and will always go back and forth between the two, and one of your jobs as the healer is to respond to each situation with the appropriate counter situation so that you and your allies health is always returning to100% as soon as possible so you can deal with the next phase of bursts and pressure.

So there is probably a specific calculation to figure out burst potentials, but this calculation in the thread is not it. If I were to take a guess (cause I've never really gave much thought to it before), it would be a comparison between the amount that can be healed, versus the time it takes to heal that number. So If you have Skill A B and C, each doing 2000 healing, and it takes 5 seconds total to use them all, then the burst potential would be 6000 over the course of 5 seconds....My first inclination would be that you want the largest number you can attain, in the shortest period of time spent casting the skills in question, and the way you'd analyze that kind of information is by creating different arrangements of sequences that allow you to do the biggest bursts in the shortest time frames.

MitigationIn general nearly all forms of utility with the exception of a few can be broken down into components of damage, or healing. This includes mitigation like Protection, Blocks, Aegis, etc... The way you think about these kinds of utilities is thinking about it as a healing skill that heals before the damage is done, and then you can use that to give you a general idea of how much the potential of those utilities are in comparison with other healing abilities.

For example, Aegis blocks an attack. Theoretically, the potential "preventative healing" from an aegis is infinite, if it blocks an attack that does an infinite amount of damage. But in order to be more practical, you would use an "average" value that an aegis would block for and then provide a general range for that value to give you an idea of the scope to which that mitigation compares to other healing abilities. The most practical average is to use the amount of damage it would take to otherwise kill you. So if you have 20,000 health, then the potential for Aegis to preventatively heal you is some number between 0 and 20,000. So in this case, 20,000 is the potential, and the average potential would be 10,000.

You can aim for a more practical potential by taking samples of fights and using that information to find the average amount of damage that occurred in that fight to figure out the average damage you could have mitigated. For example, let's say you took 1k, 5k, 3k, 10k, 2k. You find the average number, and that tells you the average damage of that particular fight, in this example that would be 4,200. If you were using your aegis to maximal efficiency, then this number is the average potential of Aegis in that fight, rather than 10,000. This kind of measurement is useful only for specific fights, while the previous method above is useful in a more general sense for any fight.

Now I'm not sure if there is a way to calculate the efficacy of damage mitigation, because I'm not sure if ARCDPS has anything to record it. If anyone knows feel free to tell me. But you can use that potential at least as a way to guage how much you can expect to preemptively heal people with blocks and stuff.

Other NuancesSome mechanics simply can not be measured with an equation in the game. I would call these kinds of mechanics "practicalities" in which some things are just more practical to use than other things, for reasons having to do with the design of the skills themselves. Medblaster is a great skill with high healing potential. But it's effective area is essentially a cone, and relies heavily on quickness and boons in order to reach those big juicy numbers. In fights that make you spread out, the effectiveness of a cone shaped heal plummets the efficacy of your healing, and things like this need to be taken into account when comparing abilities. For example, Revenants Staff 1 skill when used with healing orbs has an incredibly high healing potential. But in practice, it's almost impossible to land Revenant staff 1 in WvW, and it's a pain to heal people that are spread out in an engagement on a boss fight...so your healing efficacy of staff 1 plummets.

Hope all that info helped answer the question.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Psykewne.3025 said:I'm going to be blunt and just say that this data is pretty useless, you just gave a maths lesson nobody needed. GW2 healing doesn't work this way. I'm going to bet someone insulted tempest healing to motivate you to write this.

Wow toxic much?

What motivated me to make this thread was me observing how inefficient people were using their builds in WvW...especially when I know they could be doing so much more cause im aware of the potentials of the builds they play.

What also motivated me a bit was when i asked players in pug squads if they could solo heal bosses. Many said they can't...but i know for a fact that they can but they just don't know how.

So please enlighten me, how does healing work in gw2.

Seems like the easy way to disparage an opinion you don't like is to call it toxic, unfortunately what i said was not toxic. You're really trying to force a narrative that is not relevant when it comes to guild wars 2 healing. It's always about the right healing at the right time and the right boons/cleanses at the right time in order to support your team. Throughput is irrelevant because guild wars 2 damage is very rarely a consistent dirge.

It is all reactionary or preparatory effects. For instance, healing condition damage is simply not as effective as cleansing at the right moment. Aegis negates far more damage than most heals can heal for. Stability can prevent control effects that make you vulnerable to further damage. There is absolutely not point you are standing still just eating damage for an extended 3 minutes without peaks and valleys and effects to interact with.

It is so easy to start doing complicated mathematics to try to talk down to others but it only obscures the fact that you are ignoring everything that makes guild wars 2 combat unique. If you are standing around pumping about heals trying to make the big numbers then you are simply doing it wrong, it's not efficient at all to play like this. True efficiency in healing is when you know significant damage is not coming in and allowing regen to tick to bring people up rather than using a big heal. True efficiency is doing the healing and support that is necessary and then filling in everything else with damage. Every bit of damage you do also limits the healing you need to do as things die faster.

The efficiency maths you are doing is about the least relevant stat you could possibly care about in guild wars 2. You are way too defensive to even see it however and you're getting aggressive with anyone with a differing opinion acting like you are the smartest guy in the room, which you clearly are not as you just hand wave and dismiss any evidence that you are incorrect.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@LadyKitty.6120 said:And also, if you play pure healer instead of boon value,

who ever said this and why do people keep bringing this up? No one is telling anyone here to bring a pure healer over a booner...

If you don't find the exercise useful than don't use it and continue playing how you play what is so hard about that? You'll just be playing without knowing all information. That's up to you and you are perfectly fine with living in that world than so be it

This stuff isn't pulled from the vacuum either btw. This is one of the ways people from WoW community use to make Priority rotations. They're calculations are WAY more exact, but it's essentially the same principles. So continue to live in that bubble that's fine. It's just a shame really that's all.

you shot yourself in the foot there. This is not WoW and healing in guild wars 2 is not like wow, end of comparison

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@"Psykewne.3025" said:It is all reactionary or preparatory effects. For instance, healing condition damage is simply not as effective as cleansing at the right moment.

I'll just say this...that you can apply the same methodology of calculation to cleansing just like you could healing effectiveness, because essentially they are the same thing that can be broken down into components of healing. Because of how cleansing works, you can rather than breaking it all down into how much healing cleansing does, you can just optimize the amount of cleansing you can theoretically do in a fight by looking at the potential and efficacy of those cleansing abilities...again using the same procedure.

Just a personal example. Around the time of the February Mega balance patch I had made a scrapper because my guild wanted me to run one. I had never played an engineer or scrapper before. But after looking at the class for a couple hours and calculating it's cleansing potential, it took me less than an hour to cleanse the most conditions in my squads by nearly 2x/3x margins, and these players are not scrubs. The only way the below picture was even possible, was to look at the potentials of skills, and then using that information figure out which skills were actually important enough to use in a fight, and which ones i should actually keep on cooldown.USBjXt2.png

The point is that you think healing is somehow the exclusion to the rule for gw2 mechanics...but in reality all everything actually is in the game, is some form of healing or some form of damage...with the exception of a few mechanics (like stability) which are just mechanics that can't be measured to any reasonable effect.

Aegis negates far more damage than most heals can heal for.

This is actually not true. You can read my previous comment for more insight into that. Aegis can be broken down into components of healing just like pretty much anything else, and you can quantify how much negation it does to compare it to other skills. I apply the same method for Bulwark Gyro in terms of damage mitigation and the numbers are all there.

It is so easy to start doing complicated mathematics

uhh...dude it's not complicated. Its literally an exercise in addition and subtraction. i actually don't even understand why people are arguing about it...why be so confrontational to very easy to understand math because it might shatter some belief you've held for 5 years about the game which is based on intuition or whatever wooo wooo that someone told you a long time ago?

If you are standing around pumping about heals trying to make the big numbers then you are simply doing it wrong, it's not efficient at all to play like this.

You mean how every DPS class does in the game? You can literally replace the word "heals" in this sentence with "damage" and you'd see how silly this sentence sounds as it's a contradiction to the most common behavior in gw2.

True efficiency is doing the healing and support that is necessary and then filling in everything else with damage. Every bit of damage you do also limits the healing you need to do as things die faster.

This is mildly true...but your also not thinking hard enough about it. If your group uses 2 druids to get the job of support done...rather than each druid doing 5k dps and a little bit of support, you can have someone go full support so a damage dealer can do 30k dps. You don't lose damage if you are hedging it with someone who specializes in doing damage and someone who specializes in doing only support. This way if there is a situation that actually demands a higher potential for healing, you can actually meet that demand via specialization. not to mention it's actually just easier to play like this...mashing 100 buttons focusing on 10 different sub tasks when you can hard focus on a single task to perfection.

The efficiency maths you are doing is about the least relevant stat you could possibly care about in guild wars 2. You are way too defensive to even see it however and you're getting aggressive with anyone with a differing opinion acting like you are the smartest guy in the room, which you clearly are not as you just hand wave and dismiss any evidence that you are incorrect.

I'm actually very open to any and all ideas about many things. In fact every time i lead strike missions, i literally have 0 requirements for pugs to enter the strikes... My LFG message is "Bring whatever you want I don't care." My position here has always been one of exploration of ideas and dispelling false truths...I am a theorycrafter at heart and have been theorycrafting for 15ish years since guild wars 1.

In my brief time of leading strikes, I've experienced an array of just straight up lies that people are taught and I hear these in some of my pug groups sometimes, because the ones that teach these false truths actually don't do proper theorycraft or essential math in order to understand how the skills in the game actually perform in comparison to one another to make rational decisions about their builds.

I've had pugs that never even played strikes before, let alone understand their class to do competitive dps... but you know what? We still manage to defeat Boneskinner in one or 2 tries maximum...

I've been in experienced well comped groups that have wiped more times on Boneskinner on average than my typical pug groups...I know exactly why this happens...it's because people have in a general sense no idea the actual mechanisms going on when it comes to how to make the most efficient use of their class. They are taught a rotation, then they follow this rotation based on memory. But if something happens and rotation is broken all of a sudden? Group wipe...because players panic and have no idea which button to press next...or I just observe players that even though they are playing their class, they are using abilities that are just waste of their potential...so people want to go 4 healer on Boneskinner when it's totally not necessary. I've been in 4 healer Boneskinner groups and people will still full-wipe with 4 healer. what's sad about this is actually not just seeing it happen, it's people not understanding WHY it happens.

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Ugh. Look I think re-reading the thread, your ego is just in your own way on this one. You obviously think very highly of yourself and you're obviously more than competent at the game and that's fine, but this thread seems less and less like a useful thought piece and more and more like tooting your own horn. I think maybe this topic just isn't aimed at me because I really don't have a problem with my healing performance and there's nothing you've said that is of any use to me.

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@"Psykewne.3025" said:Ugh. Look I think re-reading the thread, your ego is just in your own way on this one. You obviously think very highly of yourself and you're obviously more than competent at the game and that's fine, but this thread seems less and less like a useful thought piece and more and more like tooting your own horn. I think maybe this topic just isn't aimed at me because I really don't have a problem with my healing performance and there's nothing you've said that is of any use to me.

This thread is about giving you a tool you can use...that's all this is. Has nothing to do with whether you have problems in your healing performance or not...this is just a method to measure aspects of it so you can inform yourself...you can use it to theorycraft builds...or just for fun calculations if you have ideas for a build... it really doesn't even matter what you use it for...its just a tool.

This is nothing to do with ego either...this has to do with me trying to give people something they can use to improve themselves if they want to or not...I'm like literally trying to help using as much objective logical reasoning as possible (and math) so that they themselves can confirm it to be the case without having to "take my word" for it.

Lastly, I think it's you and your ego is preventing you from learning a different way to look at the game...I mean you assumed in your first comment, that I was motivated to make this thread by being made fun of for running a full heal tempest...which believe me I was made fun of still am for a very long time. Of course that's not my motivation for making this thread otherwise i would have made it a long time ago. And of course when I start showing you pictures where it's is in support of what I'm talking about, all of a sudden its MY ego? (and believe me I could BLOW your mind with some pictures and videos...) But that's not even necessary...in fact I hate making videos and taking pictures just to prove a point when its all there in the math that one can do themselves to find out on their own.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Psykewne.3025" said:Ugh. Look I think re-reading the thread, your ego is just in your own way on this one. You obviously think very highly of yourself and you're obviously more than competent at the game and that's fine, but this thread seems less and less like a useful thought piece and more and more like tooting your own horn. I think maybe this topic just isn't aimed at me because I really don't have a problem with my healing performance and there's nothing you've said that is of any use to me.

This thread is about giving you a tool you can use...that's all this is. Has nothing to do with whether you have problems in your healing performance or not...this is just a method to measure aspects of it so you can inform yourself...you can use it to theorycraft builds...or just for fun calculations if you have ideas for a build... it really doesn't even matter what you use it for...its just a tool.

This is nothing to do with ego either...this has to do with me trying to give people something they can use to improve themselves if they want to or not...I'm like literally trying to help using as much objective logical reasoning as possible (and math) so that they themselves can confirm it to be the case without having to "take my word" for it.

Lastly, I think it's you and your ego is preventing you from learning a different way to look at the game...I mean you assumed in your first comment, that I was motivated to make this thread by being made fun of for running a full heal tempest...which believe me I was made fun of still am for a very long time. Of course that's not my motivation for making this thread otherwise i would have made it a long time ago. And of course when I start showing you pictures where it's is in support of what I'm talking about, all of a sudden its MY ego? (and believe me I could BLOW your mind with some pictures and videos...) But that's not even necessary...in fact I hate making videos and taking pictures just to prove a point when its all there in the math that one can do themselves to find out on their own.

I find it interesting that no one has actually said anything in support or agreement to anything you have laid out in this thread yet you simply refute or ignore all contrary points. Either you are the smartest guy in the thread or you're severely off the mark.

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@"Psykewne.3025" said:I find it interesting that no one has actually said anything in support or agreement to anything you have laid out in this thread yet you simply refute or ignore all contrary points. Either you are the smartest guy in the thread or you're severely off the mark.

Most of the points made in this thread have nothing to do with the actual topic though. One of the main points people are discussing here is that boons are more important than healing...which I don't disagree with or agree with...but it has nothing to do with the topic since some boons are used to increase damage, while other boons are used to increase healing. You can supplement these things by just hedging what you have verse what you don't have. If you don't have access to protection, but you can heal for the same amount that protection would have supplemented in the fight, then both are just equivalent to one another, and likewise, if you have protection and a lower amount of direct healing. So neither is "more important" if you can measure that they have the same value...and this informs your decisions. If a squad leader is forcing you to take protection, when you could just heal through an encounter without protection because your class doesn't have access to it, then the method give more power to you. Having both is ideal...but some builds (classes) just don't have that kind of luxury.

The other point people are trying to make here is trying to use the method in order to compare builds to one another, when this isn't the point of the method. You CAN compare builds on different classes to each other using this method, but that's not what you should be using it for. The design of the method is meant to pick a (any) build, find out it's potentials and see how well you are meeting that potential.

Anyway, pick a build...any build you want to play, find out it's potential, then find out how well you are meeting that potential and it tells you some information you can use to better your gameplay, find different strategies, or mix and match different skills, traits and sigils etc. Only way to do this is to actually do the calculation rather than argue about whether it's a useful calculation for you or not. The calculation is not exclusive to just healing...it applies to anything that can be broken down into components of damage or healing. If you require stability or immobilize for an encounter, then you bring stability or immobilize... that has nothing to do with the potential healing of your build since it can't be broken down into components of healing that you can measure.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Psykewne.3025" said:I find it interesting that no one has actually said anything in support or agreement to anything you have laid out in this thread yet you simply refute or ignore all contrary points. Either you are the smartest guy in the thread or you're severely off the mark.

Most of the points made in this thread have nothing to do with the actual topic though. One of the main points people are discussing here is that boons are more important than healing...which I don't disagree with or agree with...but it has nothing to do with the topic since some boons are used to increase damage, while other boons are used to increase healing. You can supplement these things by just hedging what you have verse what you don't have. If you don't have access to protection, but you can heal for the same amount that protection would have supplemented in the fight, then both are just equivalent to one another, and likewise, if you have protection and a lower amount of direct healing. So neither is "more important" if you can measure that they have the same value...and this informs your decisions. If a squad leader is forcing you to take protection, when you could just heal through an encounter without protection because your class doesn't have access to it, then the method give more power to you. Having both is ideal...but some builds (classes) just don't have that kind of luxury.

The other point people are trying to make here is trying to use the method in order to compare builds to one another, when this isn't the point of the method. You CAN compare builds on different classes to each other using this method, but that's not what you should be using it for. The design of the method is meant to pick a (any) build, find out it's potentials and see how well you are meeting that potential.

Anyway, pick a build...any build you want to play, find out it's potential, then find out how well you are meeting that potential and it tells you some information you can use to better your gameplay, find different strategies, or mix and match different skills, traits and sigils etc. Only way to do this is to actually do the calculation rather than argue about whether it's a useful calculation for you or not. The calculation is not exclusive to just healing...it applies to anything that can be broken down into components of damage or healing. If you require stability or immobilize for an encounter, then you bring stability or immobilize... that has nothing to do with the potential healing of your build since it can't be broken down into components of healing that you can measure.

So essentially either a) you’ve explained it so poorly no one gets it b) you’re so smart no one is on your level to understand it c) your initial premise is so irrelevant everyone is discussing things that are actually relevant d) you’re entirely wrong

You are arguing everything away as “that doesn’t apply” or “that’s not the point” I think it’s becoming clear there is no point. Certainly not in discussing anything with you it seems and I guess everyone else gave up on you a long time ago so I must be the fool for wasting my breath engaging you.

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@Psykewne.3025 said:So essentially either a) you’ve explained it so poorly no one gets it b) you’re so smart no one is on your level to understand it c) your initial premise is so irrelevant everyone is discussing things that are actually relevant d) you’re entirely wrong

You left out the option E) Some people are too stubborn to take the time and do the (very simple) math in order to figure out objective properties about something.... clearly you missed that there are people here that do understand and are interested enough to ask questions about it.

This method isn't some crazy magic dude...its literally adding stuff together...it can not be more simple than that. It's the same as taking the total amount of healing done at the end of a fight, and then dividing by the time of the fight to get an HPS, which is how Kitty does her calculation... It's the same thing except you are figuring out the potential of what could possibly be done in a fight and then comparing it to that number to see how well you are using the build...Because HPS alone in a vacuum isn't enough information to determine how well you are using a build.

Example...Above in a previous comment, I did 4 million healing in a 4 minute boneskinner engagement. Take that number, divide it by 4 minutes, and you get 16,500 heal per second. But what does this number tell you? It doesn't say much unless you have some value to compare it to. People who use HPS meters usually compare this number to other people, to determine relative performance with other players. The method i'm using uses the potential you could ever possibly imagine to heal in a fight as a way to compare what you did, to what you can do on that build....it's literally in essence the same exact thing as Kitty's calculation, but taken a step further. This method is better because it takes values from specific skills, so that you can compare those skills to one another too...something an HPS meter in a vacuum can't do.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Psykewne.3025" said:So essentially either a) you’ve explained it so poorly no one gets it b) you’re so smart no one is on your level to understand it c) your initial premise is so irrelevant everyone is discussing things that are actually relevant d) you’re entirely wrong

You left out the option E) Some people are too stubborn to take the time and do the (very simple) math in order to figure out objective properties about something.... clearly you missed that there are people here that do understand and are interested enough to ask questions about it.

This method isn't some crazy magic dude...its literally adding stuff together...it can not be more simple than that. It's the same as taking the total amount of healing done at the end of a fight, and then dividing by the time of the fight to get an HPS, which is how Kitty does her calculation... It's the same thing except you are figuring out the potential of what could possibly be done in a fight and then comparing it to that number to see how well you are using the build...Because HPS alone in a vacuum isn't enough information to determine how well you are using a build.

Example...Above in a previous comment, I did 4 million healing in a 4 minute boneskinner engagement. Take that number, divide it by 4 minutes, and you get 16,500 heal per second. But what does this number tell you? It doesn't say much unless you have some value to compare it to. People who use HPS meters usually compare this number to other people, to determine relative performance with other players. The method i'm using uses the potential you could ever possibly imagine to heal in a fight as a way to compare what you did, to what you can do on that build....it's literally in essence the same exact thing as Kitty's calculation, but taken a step further. This method is better because it takes values from specific skills, so that you can compare those skills to one another too...something an HPS meter in a vacuum can't do.

Meanwhile the build Kitty's using has about max. 25-29k potential if there's no waste when calculated with Kitty's method (and note: Kitty's math uses harrier's trinkets+weapons, magi's armor and Earth+Water specs instead of pure magi water+arcane healer you use which has over 40k potential by quick estimation) and thus you only used 55-66% of the build's max. healing potential even if you're running the lower healing boonbot version. In other words that's far more than enough for the boss even if you actually brought boons on top of healing. And considering that big portion of tempest's heals hit more than 5 peoples, tempest even gets further boost in numbers over other healers in healing that takes effect in arcdps. And those numbers just further confirm the numbers Kitty's used earlier in this thread with "Boneskinner, the most damage intensive boss by good margin in popular no torch-strat, does 2500-3000 damage per second. " referring to damage per person and if 10-target heals are even 20% of total healing, that's already bringing the healing done by you within that range as 16000 = 0,8 x 5 x 2750 + 0,2 x 10 x 2750, 2750 being the healing per person by average if tempest were a normal 5-target healer.

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@"LadyKitty.6120" said:Meanwhile the build Kitty's using has about max. 25-29k potential if there's no waste when calculated with Kitty's method (and note: Kitty's math uses harrier's trinkets+weapons, magi's armor and Earth+Water specs instead of pure magi water+arcane healer you use which has over 40k potential by quick estimation) and thus you only used 55-66% of the build's max. healing potential even if you're running the lower healing boonbot version. In other words that's far more than enough for the boss even if you actually brought boons on top of healing. And considering that big portion of tempest's heals hit more than 5 peoples, tempest even gets further boost in numbers over other healers in healing that takes effect in arcdps. And those numbers just further confirm the numbers Kitty's used earlier in this thread with "Boneskinner, the most damage intensive boss by good margin in popular no torch-strat, does 2500-3000 damage per second. " referring to damage per person and if 10-target heals are even 20% of total healing, that's already bringing the healing done by you within that range as 16000 = 0,8 x 5 x 2750 + 0,2 x 10 x 2750, 2750 being the healing per person by average if tempest were a normal 5-target healer.

Kitty... 16,000 / 10 people is 1.6k healing per person. This is the amount I healed during that boss fight. The potential of the build i could have had in that fight is 11 million healing....Which means i could have healed 45,800 / 10 people is 4.5k healing per person...1.6k as a ratio to 4.5k is 35% efficacy.

" if 10-target heals are even 20% of total healing,"A ) The problem with your calculations kitty, is you have too many "If's" that you are just adding into it. "If 10 target heals is 20% of total healing" comes out of nowhere, and really there is no reason to believe that the 10 target healing is 20% of total healing. Where did you even get this figure from?

B ) Another "If" in your equations is the boss damage. The boss damage is different for all bosses and different on every encounter... You don't need this figure to find out the same information...Even if you go around trying to find how much damage the boss has done, that only applies for that particular encounter...it's not an average, and the average ranges anywhere from "Did all my allies stand in the ooze" to "did none of my allies stand in the ooze" This variable is to subjective and that's why your numbers become wishy washy.

C ) your number of 2.7k...i'm not sure what it's supposed to represent...because again it's an HPS in a vacuum.... is this the maximum potential healing someone can heal for? Is this the average amount of healing a Tempest can do in a fight? Is this number pulled from a rotation that you used? There's no logical explanation for arriving at this number of 2.7k...

Again you can prove this by just doing calculation backwards...if i healed 2.7k HPS per person, then my total healing should come out to 4 million in 4 minutes right?

2.7 x 10 allies = 27,000 per second. 27,000 x 240 seconds = 6.48 million healing. What am i missing here? Where did this extra 2.48 million healing come from?

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"LadyKitty.6120" said:Meanwhile the build Kitty's using has about max. 25-29k potential if there's no waste when calculated with Kitty's method (and note: Kitty's math uses harrier's trinkets+weapons, magi's armor and Earth+Water specs instead of pure magi water+arcane healer you use which has over 40k potential by quick estimation) and thus you only used 55-66% of the build's max. healing potential even if you're running the lower healing boonbot version. In other words that's far more than enough for the boss even if you actually brought boons on top of healing. And considering that big portion of tempest's heals hit more than 5 peoples, tempest even gets further boost in numbers over other healers in healing that takes effect in arcdps. And those numbers just further confirm the numbers Kitty's used earlier in this thread with "Boneskinner, the most damage intensive boss by good margin in popular no torch-strat, does 2500-3000 damage per second. " referring to damage per person and if 10-target heals are even 20% of total healing, that's already bringing the healing done by you within that range as 16000 = 0,8 x 5 x 2750 + 0,2 x 10 x 2750, 2750 being the healing per person by average if tempest were a normal 5-target healer.

Kitty... 16,000 / 10 people is 1.6k healing per person. This is the amount I healed during that boss fight. The potential of the build i could have had in that fight is 11 million healing....Which means i could have healed 45,800 / 10 people is 4.5k healing per person...1.6k as a ratio to 4.5k is 35% efficacy.

" if 10-target heals are even 20% of total healing,"A ) The problem with your calculations kitty, is you have too many "If's" that you are just adding into it. "If 10 target heals is 20% of total healing" comes out of nowhere, and really there is no reason to believe that the 10 target healing is 20% of total healing. Where did you even get this figure from?

B ) Another "If" in your equations is the boss damage. The boss damage is different for all bosses and different on every encounter... You don't need this figure to find out the same information...Even if you go around trying to find how much damage the boss has done, that only applies for that particular encounter...it's not an average, and the average ranges anywhere from "Did all my allies stand in the ooze" to "did none of my allies stand in the ooze" This variable is to subjective and that's why your numbers become wishy washy.

C ) your number of 2.7k...i'm not sure what it's supposed to represent...because again it's an HPS in a vacuum.... is this the maximum potential healing someone can heal for? Is this the average amount of healing a Tempest can do in a fight? Is this number pulled from a rotation that you used? There's no logical explanation for arriving at this number of 2.7k...

Again you can prove this by just doing calculation backwards...if i healed 2.7k HPS per person, then my total healing should come out to 4 million in 4 minutes right?

2.7 x 10 allies = 27,000 per second. 27,000 x 240 seconds = 6.48 million healing. What am i missing here? Where did this extra 2.48 million healing come from?

The thing is, you apparently don't seem to acknowledge that most of the heals in GW2 are 5-target and as such, there's usually one healer per 5 players and thus Kitty finds it most meaningful to compare the numbers standardized to that format (with 10-target heals counted as double their value to make them comparable though it skews the 10-target healers potential upwards if playing in squad with less than 10 players (which is why tempest is in fact a really dangerous choice for 5-player party's healer (standard party/subsquad size in PVE) as tempest's party doesn't benefit from those and big portion of subsquad prioritizing heals (esp. healbrand and healrene work that way) never leak to tempest's subsquad to compensate.Though then again, now that Kitty took a closer look at your screenshot, you're in WvW where things are way more like you've been saying in this thread. But that leads Kitty to kind of conclusion that you're trying to translate your WvW numbers to PVE (on instanced PVE content subforum, if Kitty may add) and ignore how PVE squads actually work which causes the builds you're using for your math to be irrelevant to actual gameplay scenario that is discussed on this subforum and thus rendering your numbers quite useless for anyone who'd use these kind of calculations in said content while Kitty's calculations are specificly using the builds used for that content.And as raid support main who's actually created prototype versions of and played many of the currently used and unused builds before they were adopted by raid community, Kitty has tons of videos actually showcasing essentially every single healbuild in raids if you need to check out what builds in this subforum look like. And just to tell you, Kitty ALWAYS does the basic potential math before testing the builds in the content itself and she's rarely turned out wrong. Except about that heal mirage...

And as for that 27k for ten players, that 25-29k Kitty HERSELF mentioned is the max. potential in ideal conditions with realistic boons that you can assume to have in any scenario if people even try to play efficiently where this math would even matter to begin with. And that 2750 HPS Kitty mentioned regarding your earlier post is that 16,5k you said to have healed converted to 5-person subsquad standard assuming you had 2 healers (and with 16500 total HPS over 4 minutes, it doesn't sound like you were solo healing unless you had a damn pro squad). "16000 = 0,8 x 5 x 2750 + 0,2 x 10 x 2750, 2750 being the healing per person by average if tempest were a normal 5-target healer." meaning if you were to directly compare with strict 5-target healers such as druid, FB, rene or chrono etc. Only tempest and scourge have direct 10-target healing capabilities in meaningful amounts which is why they need that extra conversion for any comparable number. Ofc you can just calculate without taking comparability and viability account at all for theorethical potential and mathematical self-satisfaction but trying to even test that in any raids as 10-target solo healer... Well, good luck with that. Kitty already had hard enough time on more realistic builds in raids and your build would usually earn insta-kick in T4 fractals 'cause HB.

And as for that if-if-if, yes. Kitty uses the word IF a lot when theorycrafting. When doing calculations with possible variables or uncertain/unknown but predictable factors possibly causing any meaningful changes in outcome, you need to take those into account and for setting a scenario with certain set conditions, word IF is kinda helpful to avoid making a list of those conditions. IF is the conditional, after all :3

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I don't really get the point ... theoretical limits on how much you can heal for are as useful as theoretical limits on how much DPS you can do ... neither help you play the game how you want. I guess it's a cool academic discussion ... but the practical implications for the game are questionable.

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This reminds me of how we used to do DPS calculations before meters were allowed, and before there was raid training golem. It involved a lot of spreadsheets, and having to deal with similarly math-challenged individuals.

Personally, I prefer to keep it singular. When doing comparisons, it is much easier to focus on how much healing is being done to a single ally, rather than a group. For one, it is easier for the average layperson to understand, because that is how much healing they will personally receive. This is also important, because the amount of damage that a skill person does or receives is also calculated on the individual. It makes comparing like numbers easier. Second, it is much easier to scale up for groups than it is to scale down. The issue of target counts is best addressed after the fact.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:This reminds me of how we used to do DPS calculations before meters were allowed, and before there was raid training golem. It involved a lot of spreadsheets, and having to deal with similarly math-challenged individuals.

Personally, I prefer to keep it singular. When doing comparisons, it is much easier to focus on how much healing is being done to a single ally, rather than a group. For one, it is easier for the average layperson to understand, because that is how much healing they will personally receive. This is also important, because the amount of damage that a skill person does or receives is also calculated on the individual. It makes comparing like numbers easier. Second, it is much easier to scale up for groups than it is to scale down. The issue of target counts is best addressed after the fact.

That's right. If any of us plebs question the relevance of your extensive theorycrafting it's because we don't understand basic math...not because not a bit of any of it has any practical application at all.

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:This reminds me of how we used to do DPS calculations before meters were allowed, and before there was raid training golem. It involved a lot of spreadsheets, and having to deal with similarly math-challenged individuals.

Personally, I prefer to keep it singular. When doing comparisons, it is much easier to focus on how much healing is being done to a single ally, rather than a group. For one, it is easier for the average layperson to understand, because that is how much healing they will personally receive. This is also important, because the amount of damage that a skill person does or receives is also calculated on the individual. It makes comparing like numbers easier. Second, it is much easier to scale up for groups than it is to scale down. The issue of target counts is best addressed after the fact.

That's right. If any of us plebs question the relevance of your extensive theorycrafting it's because we don't understand basic math...not because not a bit of any of it has any practical application at all.

Saying something true satirically doesn't make it less true. Cross-application is part of mathematical literacy.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:This reminds me of how we used to do DPS calculations before meters were allowed, and before there was raid training golem. It involved a lot of spreadsheets, and having to deal with similarly math-challenged individuals.

Personally, I prefer to keep it singular. When doing comparisons, it is much easier to focus on how much healing is being done to a single ally, rather than a group. For one, it is easier for the average layperson to understand, because that is how much healing they will personally receive. This is also important, because the amount of damage that a skill person does or receives is also calculated on the individual. It makes comparing like numbers easier. Second, it is much easier to scale up for groups than it is to scale down. The issue of target counts is best addressed after the fact.

That's right. If any of us plebs question the relevance of your extensive theorycrafting it's because we don't understand basic math...not because not a bit of any of it has any practical application at all.

Saying something true satirically doesn't make it less true. Cross-application is part of mathematical literacy.

As does overconvidence in ones own superiority.

For me personally the experience I've made over the years:The smartest people I have met where most often the ones least interested or driven in showing it off to others or proving they are smarter. They usually just did their thing and where grounded enough in their ability, and often surrounded by peers, that spending time on showing off would have been counterproductive.

In this case it was already established that this thought excercise is nice for wasting some time, but pretty useless as far as actual game usefulness (if sticking to only healing and theory).

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@Obtena.7952 said:I don't really get the point ... theoretical limits on how much you can heal for are as useful as theoretical limits on how much DPS you can do ... neither help you play the game how you want. I guess it's a cool academic discussion ... but the practical implications for the game are questionable.

It's the same logic that's used in other areas of research, where measuring the limit of something can help you figure out how to achieve that limit, even if it's theoretically impossible to reach.

For example, the theoretical maximum running speed of a human is thought to be 40mph. The fastest runner in the world, Usain Bolt, has ran at a speed of 27.5 mph. This at least informs you, that the theoretical maximum run speed is incredibly difficult to attain...and people who are interested, find out why that is the case...In this case, the reason is because of the structure of muscle tissue. At that maximum speed, you would have to exert so much force in a short period of time, that your muscle fibers would rip apart.

The same logic is used here in the same manner. You find out the maximum healing you could ever think to imagine to do...and is in theory possible given exactly perfect ideal conditions...which are highly improbable to meet. So this limit informs you on a number of things, based on the proportion of which you are meeting this limit. It's useful for improving rotations, or improving skills that you would have otherwise thought were not useful to see if you can get closer to that limit.

So yes there is a point...It's up to you whether you want to use information to improve your builds, improve your performance, or to test your limits (ie: solo healing encounters)

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

As does overconvidence in ones own superiority.

For me personally the experience I've made over the years:The smartest people I have met where most often the ones least interested or driven in showing it off to others or proving they are smarter. They usually just did their thing and where grounded enough in their ability, and often surrounded by peers, that spending time on showing off would have been counterproductive.

In this case it was already established that this thought excercise is nice for wasting some time, but pretty useless as far as actual game usefulness (if sticking to only healing and theory).

It isn't useless. I did something similar when comparing Marshalls to Marauders for WvW Ele. To see how much theoretical health the additional healing power would give me. I didn't do it as a heal-per-second thing, insomuch as I worked under the assumption that I would get to use all of the big heal + barrier skills within a single fight and went from there. I didn't save the numbers, and they'd all be different now because this was nearly a year ago, but I remember the conclusion: the extra heals quickly eclipses the 5k lost health, and would keep going further with regen, soothing mist, and other skills coming off cooldown.

So I bought the set, and my predictions were true. I gained the ability to fight people into stalemates, I started winning against tanks builds that I formerly lost against, and soloing the champions became a whole lot easier. I could do the same math today. I just have to find the health per second that perma-regen and soothing mist give me, sum up the total health bonus of all of the big heals/barriers, and then divide the difference between that and the Marauder health bonus by Health/Second to get when Marshalls will eclipse Marauder.

It's not the exactly same, but that's what I mean by cross-application.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

As does overconvidence in ones own superiority.

For me personally the experience I've made over the years:The smartest people I have met where most often the ones least interested or driven in showing it off to others or proving they are smarter. They usually just did their thing and where grounded enough in their ability, and often surrounded by peers, that spending time on showing off would have been counterproductive.

In this case it was already established that this thought excercise is nice for wasting some time, but pretty useless as far as actual game usefulness (if sticking to only healing and theory).

It isn't useless. I did something similar when comparing Marshalls to Marauders for WvW Ele. To see how much theoretical health the additional healing power would give me. I didn't do it as a heal-per-second thing, insomuch as I worked under the assumption that I would get to use all of the big heal + barrier skills within a single fight and went from there. I didn't save the numbers, and they'd all be different now because this was nearly a year ago, but I remember the conclusion: the extra heals quickly eclipses the 5k lost health, and would keep going further with regen, soothing mist, and other skills coming off cooldown.

So I bought the set, and my predictions were true. I gained the ability to fight people into stalemates, I started winning against tanks builds that I formerly lost against, and soloing the champions became a whole lot easier. I could do the same math today. I just have to find the health per second that perma-regen and soothing mist give me, sum up the total health bonus of all of the big heals/barriers, and then divide the difference between that and the Marauder health bonus by Health/Second to get when Marshalls will eclipse Marauder.

It's not the exactly same, but that's what I mean by cross-application.

Oh I totally agree about theory-crafting in general. I was explicitly questioning the theory crafting in THIS thread pertaining to THIS game.

Again, I personally also enjoy just spending minutes/hours/days on theory-crafting, diddling with numbers, creating matrixes, etc. You should see some of my multiplex structures in the X series, designed and figured out before the first factory is made, then brought to life over weeks of game play.

Is theory-crafting and calculating potential maximum healing output bad? Absolutely not. It likely will give one good insight into different classes ability and performance in the healing area. Most important: it will probably further ones understanding overall of each class having to interact and deal with traits, skills, coefficients, etc.

Is it useful from a game play perspective or goal focus? No. Boons and utility are the deciding factor in this game for almost all situations. This originates in the initial design that never focused on healers to begin with and while this role was expanded upon, both in terms of class design and itemization availability, some core features still remain. The limited nature of group sizes and the resulting necessity for utility in almost all situations does the rest.

If you are running a pure healer to "solo" heal content, your squad will be less powerful AND less survivable versus say 2 weaker healers which cover the basic boons and utility. If you run more than a solo healer, you are already less efficient versus hybrid healers UNLESS your primary hybrid healer (or squad) can cover ALL the necessary boons and utility and you are just there for pure healing. Yet even in that case, certain classes excel at certain unique abilities which would make their way of healing more desirable or the utility they provide more valuable versus only heal throughput.

This thread would have been very useful IF it had been done with the mainstream support builds, or maybe even not mainstream support builds which are not realized or underutilized, instead of only healing. That would have been of value to players who are unable or unwilling to go so in-depth into build crafting.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:This thread would have been very useful IF it had been done with the mainstream support builds,

Since you won't do the calculation, which you are free to do, I will calculate both the meta Heal Druid... and one of Kitty's druid builds just for you. Trust me you will be very surprised by what you will see.

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:This thread would have been very useful IF it had been done with the mainstream support builds

So i went ahead and did this calculation. I ended up not taking kitty's build because it was basically the same thing as the meta druid build with just slight variation.


MetaBattle Druid Healer

Calculation was done using an arbitrary 3 minute (180s) long engagment. This calculation was also done with no quickness and no alacrity. For calculations that involve quickness or alacrity, there are footnotes and ranges specifically to address the impact of those boons on those skills.

Healing Modifiers

10% - Natural Mender10% - Transference10% - Food13% - Utility20% - Runes of The Monk

approx: 60%

Stone Spirit Passive

! -33% Damage can be broken down into components of healing in the form of! "preventative healing." Assuming that 15,000 health is the average! health pool of a group of players, then we would take the maximum amount! of damage one could take from an enemy and use that as the maximum! limit for how much protection can protect a player for. If a player takes! 15,000 damage in 1 second, protection will protect them for 33% of that! damage, or approx 5,000 damage in that one second.!! 5,000 x 10 allies = 50,000 preventative healing in 1 second. We now provide! the range at which one can upkeep protection. Without Alacrity, this would! be 16 seconds out of every 20 seconds. With Alacrity it can effectivly be! permanently maintained, giving us the value below as the potential limit.!! 7,200,000 - 9,000,0007,200,000 - 9,000,000

Cosmic Ray:

! 1,483 x 5 allies = 7,416 x 30 uses every 25 seconds = 222,480 x 7 uses over! the course of 180 seconds = 1,557,3601,557,360

Regeneration:

! The following assumes that the player can maintain regeneration in perpetuity.! This is done using a combination of quickdraw procs between Sublime Conversion! Call of the Wild, and Water Spirits Active Effect. For purposes of easier! calculation, the potential healing effectiveness of these three abilities! will be labeled under the umbrella term "Regeneration."! In addition, sublime Conversion and Water Spirits Active can effect 10+ allies,! and thus will be calculated as such below.!! 504 x 10 allies = 5,042 per second x 180 uses = 907,605907,605

Seed of Life:

! 1,478 x 5 allies = 7,392 x 10 uses per 25 seconds = 73,920 x 7 uses per! 180 seconds = 517,440517,440

Nature Spirit Passive

! 244 x 10 allies = 2448 per 1 second x 180 uses = 440,640440,640

Rejuvenating Tides:

! Below assumes the player is not an idiot and is given charitable interpretation,! in that they would have effectivly tried to make optimal use of quickdraw procs.!! 1,336 x 5 pulses = 6,680 x 5 allies = 33,400 per 10.75 seconds. Can be used! once every 25 seconds, for a total of 7 uses per 180 seconds = 233,800. If! utilizing quickdraw procs, this ability can be used twice every 25 seconds,! for a total of 467,600.467,600

Lunar Impact:

! Again, this calculation assumes that the player is given charitable! interpretation in that the player would utilize quickdraw procs to make the! best usage of these skills.! Note: Quickdraw can only be used on one skill. So if quickdraw is used on Lunar! Impact, Rejuvenating Tides potential drops in exchange, and visa versa. The sum! of the calculation at the end will however ignore this discrepancy.! read notes below!! 6,009 x 5 allies = 30,048 per 8.75 seconds. Can be used once every 25 seconds! for a total of 7 uses per 180 seconds for a total of 210,336. With Quickdraw! procs, this ability can be used twice every 25 seconds for 420,672.!! Notes: It is possible to use at least one of these abilites twice in one! transform of Celestial Avatar. Celestial Avatar seems to not obey an! exact 15 second duration. Therefor, the previous mentioned quickdraw! discrepencies will be ignored, and the higher potential will be counted,! to make up for the difference.420,672

Ancestral Grace:

! 4707 x 5 allies = 23,536 x 12 uses per 180 seconds = 282,432282,432

Solar Beam:

! 153 x 3 pulses = 460 x 3 allies = 1,382 x 144 uses per 180 seconds = 199,008199,008

Water Spirit Passive:

! 863 x 10 allies = 8,630 x 18 uses per 180 seconds = 155,340! notes: Water Spirit Passive is not effected by player healing power! or Outgoing Healing Modifiers.155,340

-------------------------Total

EsIVPMl.png

12,148,097 - 13,948,097


Take a moment and reflect on what the above information is saying here. Now it's obvious that some abilities can not be used over and over without sacrificing the healing of other abilities due to the gating nature of the spec. For example, when you look at a particular segment of time, if you use only Seed of life, Lunar Impact and Rejuvenating Tides in a rotation during your time spent in Celestial Avatar, that is the equivalent of just spamming Cosmic Ray over and over and over again every time you are inside Celestial Avatar. This kind of information means that you don't need to break your neck focusing on Quickdraw procs...but it gives you the option to do one or the other based on whatever situation you find yourself in.

Another thing to note is the hilarious contribution of protection on the build. The only reason the number is this large, is because the class is able keep it on 10 players permanently. Protection however is not unique to the druid class, and it means that your effectiveness goes down if someone else also brings protection.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of analysis of the build, and can give you some information about what is exactly contributing to the build and what isn't. In conclusion, you also should have an efficacy when doing the potential calculation for a build, so that you can compare theoretical information with practical observation...otherwise it's just an HPS in a vacuum with no context.

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  • 3 weeks later...

First of all, friend. Thank you for giving me these formulae and methodologies to use to theorycraft healers and offhealers(and some dps builds that happen to have healing and barriers in them by happenstance).

I'm someone who experiments a lot but I often just feel things out and only do basic math, often with little idea of how effective things might be until I field test them with friends in a fractal, raid, or dungeon. This info will save me some time and gold. And would have saved my friends from the dreaded healer thief I bumbled awkwardly at them. But I feel that even THAT catastrophe might have been doable if I had calculated the value of each healing skill instead of just "hm. this make green number go brr. I press."

Second of all, please don't let the haters tell you otherwise: But this information is highly valuable. Maybe not to the average joe schmoe who's going to 111 his way through another AV farm, and maybe not even to the average raider. But I'm sure speed-runners would love to make use of stuff like this (If they aren't already!)So let me just say again very overly dramatically:

Thank you for doing what you can to share knowledge with us.

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