Are there any introductory guides to theorycrafting?

[Hesione.9412]

I've tended to rely on the work of others. However, this is something I am interested in learning, for reasonably balanced subs. It would also be helpful to see the gains/losses where a build is absent.

Is there a starter guide anywhere on how to do this? In particular, I would like some guidance on how builds interact with each other, and where to get the max scores for hit, etc. I'm thinking of working this into a spreadsheet.

Thanks in advance.

[God.2708]

Not publicly available. This is likely something you'd want a mentor for, and finding one that's worth their salt is kinda rare in this day and age. At least to develop the skill expediently as opposed to with 2+ years of trial and error.

Joining a guild is a probably a good start, but for theorycrafting your options shrink a lot compared to obtaining general class knowledge or WvW knowledge.

I suppose a starting point though would be:

1. Familiarize yourself with arcdps, not just the general damage section, but how to read it on DPS.report and what questions it can help you answer.
2. Know boons in and out, AND know all the various unique buffs/debuffs different classes can bring, which are in the current meta, and why.
3. Know the history of the meta(s).
4. Know how to calculate damage.
5. If you can't find a guild, find a friend who you can bounce ideas off of/discuss it with. Real easy to get blindsided.
6. Understanding basic combat game theory helps too. Read some military tactics history or something.

[subversiontwo.7501]

This is the best advice that I can give you:

1. www.gw2skills.net (Not updated to the current balance patch but to the last one; still a useful tool to save time and effort; if it falls out of date just compensate for that and do not rely on it for details, use it for broad strokes and playing around with combinations).
2. Get the gear and play the builds that you craft, practise is better than theory when you go from overview to detail, it's expensive but it is the "endgame" in more senses than one (especially if you aim to aquire a broad understanding; good crafters are multiclassers and swappers).
3. Learn how to segment the data and keep focus on what you are looking to theory craft (eg., understand that the stats go into a build, a build goes into a role, a role goes into a comp and comps go into tactics; those tactics, comps, roles and builds will change based on what you want to do)
4. Understand your relationship to the tags and players in general, you tend to often end up inbetween discussions that transpire and few people will appreciate your efforts, that just comes with the territory and you better just accept it early on - people tend to be more receptive in a guild or if you are a leader (guild, tag etc.) at the same time. In fact, also keep those things in mind (which players on these forums struggle quite alot to fathom) that meta for pickups is mostly based on what makes things smooth for the tag when herding cats alone. There are alot of things that are not being done because they are ambitious or demanding of others.

[God.2708]

@"subversiontwo.7501" said:

3. Learn how to segment the data and keep focus on what you are looking to theory craft (eg., understand that the stats go into a build, a build goes into a role, a role goes into a comp and comps go into tactics; those tactics, comps, roles and builds will change based on what you want to do)

Ima shout-out and emphasize this. It's something the forum often lacks properly explaining whenever people post balance complaints and context is very important. Something may work in a niche, and carving out that niche fully isn't necessarily wrong so long as it's understood that it's a niche.

But be wary that just because something is good IN a niche doesn't necessarily mean the niche itself is good or useful.

I hate the word niche now.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Theorycrafting is a creative endeavor. There's only so much advice you can get on making new builds. Ultimately, it is going to require a lot of legwork, creativity, and testing on your end to create new builds.

[Hesione.9412]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. That's been very constructive, even though the "theorycrafting for beginners" page I was hoping for doesn't exist.

Further suggestions welcome!

[Jski.6180]

Dont play ele. The only guide i can help you with for the ele class its never worth the risk reward to play the class in wvw.

[lovemghool.7613]

Just tinker with ArcDps and build editor then go to the field is what i have always done...

just join a guild and see where to go from there?

[Hesione.9412]

Thanks for all the comments. I'm in a wvw guild, and I was hoping to make myself more useful by having a deeper understanding of how the builds interact with each other. Instead of coming as a completely new person who is going to learn, rather than help.

[Ronin.4501]

The only other recommendation I would make is to get yourself a set of legendary armor if you haven't already. Otherwise you're likely to burn through quite a few sets of armor as you determine what stats work best (or best for you). The alternative is to do the Triumphant Armor reward track over and over and over to give you multiple sets of armor (whereupon you can select from all the various types), but the downside is that it's exotic armor (but still worthwhile for testing builds as the drop-off from ascended/legendary isn't too steep).

[Infusion.7149]

Know the counterplay to whatever you are thinking of playing and make sure you address it in your comp.

Make sure you have stability in some fashion or party/squad level stunbreaks.

Know the maps well (or familiarize yourself with them) and which builds work in certain situations (i.e. you won't use line-of-sight reliant builds on steps or across a gap).

Know how coefficients work and how damage works (find out if you don't).

Get legendary armor ,obtain ascended trinkets from Bjora Marches (trade for LS4 currencies because WvW players have a ton of karma) or legendary ones.

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Performance optimizations: Use model limit low in WvW , shadows + reflections off.

[Hesione.9412]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, they're all very helpful. Things I need to understand better:

1. in which situation certain combo fields are better than others
2. how to optimise runes
3. assumptions around group buffs (distance, interactions).

[God.2708]

I wouldn't worry about combo fields beyond smoke for opening stealth blasts. There's simply no way to reliably 'choose' when to blast a field in the heat of combat, even your own. There might be some tiny merit in fire field blasting now with it being the only way to obtain high duration might, but it's still a pre-combat thing. Mid combat it's just important to know you have finishers and I suppose be able to identify that using them without a field at all is objectively worse than using them with one.

For runes...I'd just start by looking at metabattle WvW builds and seeing what runes are listed as primary/variant. Can ask yourself why the primary one is chosen and what the variants offer. If a rune isn't listed anywhere you can drop it to the bottom of your concerns on what to worry/think about when fiddling with a build.

You'd have to expound on what you mean by assumptions, but generally anything >=600 radius is pretty surefire to hit your party. 360 is unreliable but useful as an opener, <=240 radius and you won't reliably hit your party with it unless you stay on tag like skritt on shinies. It does usually get its effects off on 5 people in squad though. But that difference is why something like "Stand Your Ground" is used as reliable party stability but shared Dolyak's stance is 'eh' and Power Break is more often taken as an 'eh why not' utility.

I'd read the boons page on wiki and understand the way different boons stack in duration and how they apply too, that's useful. And good luck figuring out how damage reduction stacks.