Agrippa.1693

I did give you a thumbs up, because you at least try to break common tongue by looking at real numbers, but it's actually even worse than what you describe. Reapers in the mediocre spectrum (50th percentile) were even further behind mediocre Dragon Hunters (for example) than what these top benchmarks show now. In percentages of course. Like I said, it sometimes goes up to 60% behind even. And for a DPS role, that's just pathetic.And let me repeat, cause some people find it really hard to read, this is within the mediocre raiding spectrum. Not the speedclearers, TOP benchmarkers, etc. (they will min-max the kitten out of the Reaper so they will only be 30% behind). EDIT: And let me add, it's probably even worse now, cause GW2Raidar went down before all the buffs to the other classes!!!!

EDIT: I really would like to add: YES, a Necro can be very tanky in soaking up damage, but the trade-off is imminent: it is then officially worthless in the role it has! No other class has that as extremely the Necro has that. Also a very important note: GW2 doesnt have a real classic tank role where it's good to have one tank to soak up extreme amounts of damage, and really has to build as such, in order so that other players can go glassy. It's not designed like that. ANd even then, the Necro is not even the right choice to go for! .... Which says enough! Yes, and once you factor for gear, builds and everything you can do: you have left pretty much 70% of the entire player base behind. Marauder is approximately a 10-12% dps loss versus berserker (without factoring for over capping crit chance on Maurauder). So I'm not seeing how a Marauder Dragonhunter leaves a Power Reaper behind. They are pretty close in the damage they can put out if the DH is on Maurauder. Unless you are assuming Virtues, which requires permanent retaliation to achieve its 38k benchmark, which should be obvious is only available on maybe 2-3 raid bosses and if the entire squad is built around this setup. The same goes for Warrior. Drop the benchmark by 10%, and you are very close to the Power Reaper Benchmark. Really not sure where you are getting your numbers from here. Given the dps loss on Marauder gear and current benchmarks, I'd say taking Marauder gear on other classes to make them as tanky as necro for day to day stuff works perfectly balance wise. And this is where you're wrong, the Reaper is NOT just 10% behind in real raid scenarios, not under speedclearers and not even under mediocre players. Even in best raid scenarios for the Reaper, they're at least 20% behind, and in worst case scenarios even up to 60%!!! I've showed you the numbers before with high enough 'n' to make it conclusive (when Raidar was still online), but you still hold on to your stigma ... just like almost everyone else does!!!

EDIT: I really would like to add: YES, a Necro can be very tanky in soaking up damage, but the trade-off is imminent: it is then officially worthless in the role it has! No other class has that as extremely the Necro has that. Also a very important note: GW2 doesnt have a real classic tank role where it's good to have one tank to soak up extreme amounts of damage, and really has to build as such, in order so that other players can go glassy. It's not designed like that. ANd even then, the Necro is not even the right choice to go for! .... Which says enough!

Can you show me real data on this lovely story of yours, or is this just from hearsay?Cause Raidar was showing a different picture back when it was still online (a couple of months ago): it was actually the other way around. power Reapers scored even worse (read: even bigger gaps compared to other classes) in lower levels for the punishment when you make a mistake is quite high (eating shroud for defence, camping axe, sitting out full animations, etc.) as a power Reaper.

There was in the form of Raidar (site's offline since several months now) ... even before the buffs of the other professions, DPS differences between ALL other professions and Necro's (pReaper AND cScourge) were ranging in real raid scenarios from 15% up to 50% even. And those gaps were not only measured amongst speedclearers and such, but also amongst mediocre players (making mistakes in their rotations, etc.): actually there tend to be even bigger gaps there!Again, this was data before the buffs to the other classes (Necro didnt receive any), so these gaps have only grown bigger now!

Wow, I see a LOT of stigmas from "hearsay" popping up again, about how easy Necro's are, and how they deserve no good DPS, etc. Sometimes even coming from Warrior mains .... c'mon, really???? With full marauder on my Warrior I can still outdps a Necro easily and have superior survivability ...OR that easy rotation argument ..., cause pDeadeyes, staff Daredevils, pDragonhunters, axe/axe Berserkers, cSoulbeasts, even pHolos have such difficult rotations ... right?Another aspect that no-one ever talks about is the forgiveness of a rotation: I can say from proven numbers (with high enough 'n') that the forgiveness of the so called very difficult cWeaver rotation is quite a bit higher than that of the pReaper, where you're punished severely if you actually use your shroud for survivability. But I guess it doesn't matter how much proof or good arguments are given against it, these stigmas are not for nothing just that: stigmas. I'm definitely not the one who's going to change that!

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your team: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right? You see what I or actually you did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime. To get into somewhat more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that you as a player contributed for, for you AND all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario! Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these! Percentages. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant! Simple! K.I.S.S. :) Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything. Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to not be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually have to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the beginning of play time to impact others cumulatively. None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds. And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 884.5 or nearly five hours of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?" And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the result of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals. Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of your perspective of needing that "saved time." The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia. If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game 100% of the time as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math. You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate. If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with real numbers and harms the bulk majority of players. Off topic, but from the little bit I read I would take the 10 mill to work 5 days a week rather than 8 mill for 4 days. Who would pass up two million dollars for 1 day extra a week within a year.:)Me2.But to get on-topic with this picture, because it's even worse than that: Now imagine that you can make 10 mil with working 4 days a week or 10 mil while having to work 5 days a week, because you've happen to choose the wrong profession. The choice gets even easier, right?!!

I always wondered why ANet chose to strip the whole shroud mechanic for Scourge but still not allow it to go full DPS. You still HAVE to go for defence (in the form of barrier). Necromancers are just really not allowed to go FULL offensive. And I really got the feeling that ANet just made a mistake in doing this. I really don't believe it's a 100% deliberate design choice from them. It just happened that way ... Or at least, that's what I believe ... Anyway, imo they should either fix that with te next e-spec, or do this with the Scourge, already. It already has lost its shroud mechanic, why not at least give the player a choice to be able to go full offensive! And it doesn't HAVE to be that complex: I was always thinking of changing or altering the Sadistic Searing trait in the lines of stripping barrier (or making it only 5% effective or something) from your F3 and F5 abilities and change it to (party-wide?) dps instead. You can make it even sound interesting, that your barrier from F3 and F5 now changes to thorns barrier which will increase outgoing damage instead of decreasing incoming damage. Whereas within the code, it just adds dps to skills until the barrier is eaten away. And for the fun of it, you could just turn the health-globe upside down, where the thorns barrier is at the bottom of your health globe instead of the top.Really, just spit-balling here of course, it doesnt have to be complex imo, just keep it simple.

we're talking about Necro here, not Warrior!

That's also true for gw2, not sure what you're trying to argue here, but it seems you don't understand the responses you keep reading. At least the ones from the earlier stages of the thread. Huh? Yea, that's what I'm saying. It's an argument that some of the people here use a LOT to try to silence any class balance related criticism here on these forums, while it's a complete blank. I'm pretty sure the game wouldnt even exist if that wasnt the case (as of any other RPG for that matter). So it's imo a complete non-argument in ANY balance related discussion! Not when the claim is that something's not viable because it's not at the top of dps table, which is a straight up lie. @Sobx.1758 said: That's also true for gw2, not sure what you're trying to argue here, but it seems you don't understand the responses you keep reading. At least the ones from the earlier stages of the thread. Huh? Yea, that's what I'm saying. It's an argument that some of the people here use a LOT to try to silence any class balance related criticism here on these forums, while it's a complete blank. I'm pretty sure the game wouldnt even exist if that wasnt the case (as of any other RPG for that matter). So it's imo a complete non-argument in ANY balance related discussion! Not when the claim is that something's not viable because it's not at the top of dps table, which is a straight up lie. I'll never use the word viable: I think it might be THE most misused word on this forum: with both sides to blame for that matter. People saying that a class is NOT viable is at all times a false statement! But on the other side saying that every class is viable, doesn't add anything to ANY discussion. It's like so p(l)ainly stating the obvious that it doesn't hold any value at all! Read above: This game or any other game (RPG) wouldn't exist if classes weren't viable to begin with. No, this discussion is about huge gaps between classes. The good and the bad (still viable though). The (benchmarked) tops and bottoms. Optimal and far from it. Etc. Ok, so your claim is a bit different from the creator of this thread. But I'm not sure what you mean by "class being viable" not adding anything to the discussion. OP literally claims a class isn't viable if it doesn't contest top of the dps meters. Then some other people claim that their guilds "don't want x because it's not on top of dps meters", so the class "isn't viable". Those claims ARE just false and that's the fact. Viability isn't somehow misunderstood "all around", it's an incorrectly used term by people like OP, which doesn't make it an overally meaningless word. It's just that some people clearly don't understand what it means. Imo it is completely meaningless in the context it's always been used in on these forums: Is a class viable or not?! It is; simple; now move on with the discussion!But that's the thing, some people are using this as a defence mechanism to silence every form of constructive criticism: "Yea, but the class is viable right, so stop complaining"!It's a non-argument, and it's actually quite annoying that people still use it as an argument. It's the same as asking your boss for a raise, and your boss replies, well, your current income is enough to provide you food and shelter, so there's the door: leave yourself out, please! It's everything BUT contributing to any form of discussion. And if we really want to get into the nitty gritty of the word "viable" itself, it's literally meaningless without a context! Now I know the context on these forums is pretty much always the same, but who knows??? Some people might mean if a class is viable in a speed-run or (benchmarked) optimal setting. Which completely changes the context! But oh no, asking some other people on these forums to think a little bit outside their neatly constructed box (mostly aided by ANet themselves and their set of rules) is a radical question to ask!Either way: I constrained myself a long time ago to even try to use that word here in a constructive matter: I learned that the hard way.

That's also true for gw2, not sure what you're trying to argue here, but it seems you don't understand the responses you keep reading. At least the ones from the earlier stages of the thread. Huh? Yea, that's what I'm saying. It's an argument that some of the people here use a LOT to try to silence any class balance related criticism here on these forums, while it's a complete blank. I'm pretty sure the game wouldnt even exist if that wasnt the case (as of any other RPG for that matter). So it's imo a complete non-argument in ANY balance related discussion! Not when the claim is that something's not viable because it's not at the top of dps table, which is a straight up lie. @Sobx.1758 said: That's also true for gw2, not sure what you're trying to argue here, but it seems you don't understand the responses you keep reading. At least the ones from the earlier stages of the thread. Huh? Yea, that's what I'm saying. It's an argument that some of the people here use a LOT to try to silence any class balance related criticism here on these forums, while it's a complete blank. I'm pretty sure the game wouldnt even exist if that wasnt the case (as of any other RPG for that matter). So it's imo a complete non-argument in ANY balance related discussion! Not when the claim is that something's not viable because it's not at the top of dps table, which is a straight up lie.I'll never use the word viable: I think it might be THE most misused word on this forum: with both sides to blame for that matter. People saying that a class is NOT viable is at all times a false statement! But on the other side saying that every class is viable, doesn't add anything to ANY discussion. It's like so p(l)ainly stating the obvious that it doesn't hold any value at all! Read above: This game or any other game (RPG) wouldn't exist if classes weren't viable to begin with. No, this discussion is about huge gaps between classes. The good and the bad (still viable though). The (benchmarked) tops and bottoms. Optimal and far from it. Etc.

That's also true for gw2, not sure what you're trying to argue here, but it seems you don't understand the responses you keep reading. At least the ones from the earlier stages of the thread. Huh? Yea, that's what I'm saying. It's an argument that some of the people here use a LOT to try to silence any class balance related criticism here on these forums, while it's a complete blank. I'm pretty sure the game wouldnt even exist if that wasnt the case (as of any other RPG for that matter). So it's imo a complete non-argument in ANY balance related discussion!

.. and GW2 isn't exceptional in that regard because people clear endgame content with every single class all the time. For the people that can't do that ... it's due to something THEY are doing, not something wrong with the game that Anet has to fix for them. From where I sit, that 'something' is how they try to team with people that tell them how to play. Don't do that, and the problem is addressed. If Anet weren't happy with the game, they would change it. We know they do. The fact we have class DPS differences for 7 years indicates Anet doesn't think it's the big problem you want to believe it is. You think I'm making assumptions about what they want because they don't change that? OK ... from where I sit, it's a really good assumption to make because they aren't changing to be something else like you think they should be doing. I mean, we already established it's not hard to fix it ...Where do I say it's NOT HARD to fix that? That's exactly the opposite what I'm trying to say, really. I've got a feeling it's quite hard, actually. I even believe, this game might be so far off with all its spaghetti code from what the initial designers envisioned it to be right now, that I feel it might be needing quite a lot of resources in order to get this heavy truck back on the road again. And those resources I BELIEVE is the real problem here! If they have two full FTE's in the balancing area, it's already a lot, and I KNOW they are at the moment completely focused on PvP and WvW (which imo is not that bad to start with, btw). And I even got the feeling that has only been the case for a couple of months now! So with those 7 years with no real emphasises on balancing: - they were so HEAVILY focused on CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT (and monetarization of course)-, it's gonna be a real challenge to balance things out again. But they somewhat have to, cause when the new expansion is going to hit the shelves, they don't want all the big media write about the bad class balance in this game (which they HAVE been doing lately). Hence the HUGE PvP/WvW balance update as of late. so there is a reason they haven't done it. You aren't asking yourself why this difference exists. You just assume like everyone else it's some sort of mistake that needs to be fixed. Bad assumption.Read above, I believe (not an assumption, just an opinion) that is the real reason! Ow and fun fact, which might put things in perspective for you (and maybe others as well) on how heavy and complex this beast of a GW2 is: Guess on what game engine it's designed on? Hint: it dates back to 2005. Balancing a game like this is NOT easy! But they still should do it. Imo it's paramount, definitely now!

There isn't an issue there because the game is designed so that it doesn't require playing optimal DPS classes in teams to succeed. If losing group dps by bringing a subpar class bothers you, choose better. If it bothers the people you team with ... team with people that it doesn't bother. Not being optimal DPS is definitely NOT a barrier to completing content unless you make choices where it is. That means there isn't any point to complain about class DPS discrepancy and you should just move on. You bring up a good point here that this game is designed a certain way. But that doesn't say anything about how it's supposed to be designed. Of course it does. So you think the way the game has worked for the last 7 years is some unhappy accident? Let's have a moment of clarity and honesty here: If Anet didn't want the game to work the way it does, they have had 7 years to change it ... and they haven't. If the current way the game works and has worked for 7 years isn't an indication of how the game is supposed to work, then NOTHING is.WRONG again! And also really heavy on the assumptions side again. You blame others for assuming how ANet thinks, but you're even worse! You don't know if they're happy with the game as it is now, and all odds are against it; otherwise they wouldn't have done ANY balance updates whatsoever. They do (imo still not enough, but they do), which already clearly states that it wasnt exactly designed the way it supposed to do! Simple as that.Furthermore, designing an MMORPG is complex, it's not easy. Of course there will ALWAYS be discrepancies between a supposed design and how a game finally pans out to be! Hell, I can't even imagine a simple IKEA cabinet to come out exactly how it was supposed to be designed ... let alone a complex MMORPG like this! Therefore, people make mistakes, even ANet employees do, shocking: I know! They should just live up to them and try to fix it when/if they have the resources available. EDIT: and if it's technically possible of course ... again designing an MMORPG is complex! And I'm not saying they can't fix the DPS discrepancy. I'm saying they don't have to because of how they designed the game. I have no doubts that the there is a strong relationship between Anet's CONSCIOUS decision to design the game with low success thresholds and their approach to making class decisions and changes resulting in the class DPS differences. See, this is where you have it wrong. DPS differences aren't restricting anyone. It's who you decide to play with that's restricting you. I'm not restricted ... and neither is anyone else that plays with people that don't 'invent' class DPS as a barrier to choosing team members. The fundamental question here is why should Anet make unnecessary changes to adjust for these DPS discrepancies when they don't prevent game success? Why are players CHOOSING to take a path that makes this a problem when the game is designed so it's not an issue in the first place? The range of classes and builds that can be played in this game is massive compared to any other game I've ever played ... but players still decide to make choices where they feel restricted to a handful of optimized builds. That's NOT a problem with the mechanics of the game that Anet needs to fix. This is a player-made problem and the solution is player-made as well. You do know that EVERY single RPG out there has that one 'given': that every single class is able to clear (endgame) content, right? I mean, that's literally the first rule of designing a class based RPG game. That every single class has a place in the game. It's what comes next that is actually interesting to discuss. And I actually don't know any game that's as restricting as Guild wars 2 is when it comes to PvE and it's most important pillar (to accomplish stuff): DPS. There's such huge gaps there, again I don't know any other game that does that. It's not for nothing that major gaming sites talk about GW2 having bad class balance, even with games like BDE still on the table. That's NOT good! It simply isnt.

There isn't an issue there because the game is designed so that it doesn't require playing optimal DPS classes in teams to succeed. If losing group dps by bringing a subpar class bothers you, choose better. If it bothers the people you team with ... team with people that it doesn't bother. Not being optimal DPS is definitely NOT a barrier to completing content unless you make choices where it is. You bring up a good point here that this game is designed a certain way. But that doesn't say anything about how it's supposed to be designed. Or how a majority of people want it to be designed. And I'm certain that even ANet themselves didnt want the game to come out a way where it heavily restricts OR permits further choices available purely on initially choosing a class.And again: THEY can fix that!

That's not a problem ... they CHOOSE how they want to play. My guild also chooses ... and we run necros all the time ... successfully. Sounds like you just identified another choice you can make if you want to play how YOU want.Yea, you're right, except for the fact that some people have far more choice available than others which is purely imposed by the makers of this game! No, everyone has the SAME access to choices for playing how they want according to the factors they decide influences that choice. All classes are available to every player. That's just not true again! What if my choice is to play the class theme I like and be capable of doing the highest DPS possible in Raids. Which is not even a very weird way of thinking, really: it's actually a common question for newbies, i.e.: "I like dark/summoning classes, and I like doing the highest DPS possible, what class do you recommend?". That choice is literally impossible to make! Simple! In this particular case, you can not even say: "well you're so close to the top, if you're min-maxing the sh*t out of your class and have some good RNG, you might actually be lucky". There is a HUGE discrepancy between top and bottom in this game when it comes to PvE. And the "good" thing about this example is that this particular choice (or actually lack thereof) is imposed by the makers themselves: by their set of rules. Hence: they can fix that! Imo, it's just a matter of acknowledging it and residing the resources to it. And I really hope they'll do that soon.Although (big although here!): I can also understand that PvP and WvW balance comes first! Which it really does right now.

That's not a problem ... they CHOOSE how they want to play. My guild also chooses ... and we run necros all the time ... successfully. Sounds like you just identified another choice you can make if you want to play how YOU want.Yea, you're right, except for the fact that some people have far more choice available than others which is purely imposed by the makers of this game! The Necro simply doesnt have the choice to do 32K+ dps on the golem (or ...K+ dps in real raid scenarios), whereas all other classes have!Furthermore, a choice is never made in a real vacuum which only affects you! Not in the real world, and not in this game either. As an example, anyone who raid will all choose to go for a successful run (maybe with the exception of pure roleplay characters ;) ). Which happily ever after will mean that all class, specialisation, even skill choices are still on the table for everyone to choose. But a second choice someone might make (which actually happens a LOT) is to try to accomplish this within a reasonable time or even as fast as possible. Now this is already an interesting choice, that will either limit other peoples choices or this direct choice itself!In other words: 100% free choice is always an illusion: not only in the real world, but also in this game. It's just that in a game: a "maker" can heavily steer those choices into a certain direction. Now, here comes balance into play!What the "maker" should do is present its players, whatever class they choose (making this unanimously the primary balance divider, I think we all agree there) as much choices available as possible, on how they want to play the game! Which clearly isn't the case right now if you've chosen certain professions!

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your team: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right? You see what I or actually you did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime. To get into somewhat more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that you as a player contributed for, for you AND all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario! Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these! Percentages. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant! Simple! K.I.S.S. :) Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything. Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to not be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually have to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the beginning of play time to impact others cumulatively. None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds. And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 884.5 or nearly five hours of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?" And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the result of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals. Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of your perspective of needing that "saved time." The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia. If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game 100% of the time as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math. You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate. If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with real numbers and harms the bulk majority of players. This got toxic fast.Yes, and I'm sorry about that. Wasn't my intention to start something like this! I even ended it with a kiss ;) Anyway, in the end it doesn't matter at all what we or the whole community thinks about balance. Or what statistics are saying, etc.It's what ANet thinks and does about it (or more specifically: the balance team). Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that ANet is communicating more about it, but it's still far from fully transparent. About their reasoning behind it, their motivations, etc. Is it based on logic? Is it random? Does monetary value play a role (I know this is difficult to be transparent about to the public, they'll never do that, obviously)? Or is it mainly based on statistics? And then on performance? Which parameters? Or is it overall playtime? Is it mainly focused on class balance? Or specialisation? PvE? or PvP/WvW only these days? Etc. etc. etc. So many questions!

I don't know, I really don't know how they balance this game, but those big differences (again, 20% to 50% difference is a LOT: think of a real-life pay-rise like that, and you know it's a lot) in such an important aspect of the game: DPS, ... Well, I find it strange, to say the least (I don't know any other game that consistently does that)

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your team: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right? You see what I or actually you did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime. To get into somewhat more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that you as a player contributed for, for you AND all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario! Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these! Percentages. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant! Simple! K.I.S.S. :)

Its one build at 40k DPS. A build that will not be able to reach this on most encounters because Focus 5 is stupid. On a class that will have really good damage in some phases and bad damage in other phases. I really dont understand why so many people in this thread look at benchmarks. Yeah, they are nice for comparisson but often dont even come close to what is good on actual bosses. The spread is not at an all time high. We have one class pulling 40k. And except for Necro every other class is at about 38k. As to the argument that dark themed classes see more play, I had a good chuckle there. Nice try, but last I checked, and this is actually supported by gw2efficiency stats, the most favorite classes played once again are paladin types (guardian), warriors and rangers. You just proved my point :) ... you know that gw2efficiency account owners are mostly veteran players, right? You also know that new (newbies) and casual players mostly don't do raids, right? Do I have to explain further, or can you see the 1+1=2 ? I know that gw2eff suggests that the most played classes are not necro. I also know that this metric might have flaws, but it is by far the most reliable one which we have as to class popularity and distribution. Everything else is baseless speculation. 2.5k LI/LD, compared to your close to 0. The thing I've learned in all that time: you can raid on any class in the 99% bracket of players, on nearly any damage build, and outperform nearly any 80th percentile player. Which is more than sufficient to clear EVERYTHING in this game, even CMs. The only players affected by necro not being viable are the top 1%, IF they optimize. Get there first, then complain. Or just start at all, then make comments about a game mode you have no understanding of. Also, how is stating a fact an accusation? Some posters in this thread have openly admitted to not participate in raids or challenging group content, yourself included. I was not accusing, I was stating a fact based on past information posted on these very forums by members.Myself included? ...Assumptions on assumptions again! Those 90th to 99th percentiles, that's where I actually used to raid! But you got one thing right, I don't raid anymore (as of recently), because of the balance issues! I hate to see that one of my favourite games is putting almost no effort into balancing it's game compared to other games I play. Not just for the Necro, but generally! I.e.: it took them almost 8 years to finally trying to fix PvP (where I btw, complained about the Necro's performance as being to high). Imo it's just really insane. Balance wise, ANet is REALLY bad! But more importantly if you really are on 2.5k LI, you KNOW I'm speaking the truth: it's literally impossible to get to those numbers Guardians, Engineers, Thieves, Eles, Warriors, Mesmers can get to with a Necro.

Hmmmmmm, Bersekers Axe/Axe rotation is indeed very difficult ... Or that of the Daredevil? Or the D/D Deadeye? Or the Dragonhunter? Or condi Soulbeast? Or even the sword Holo? Really .....Yet they ALL do (significantly) more DPS than a power Reaper!

I think you misunderstood something back then. It was only played for a short period of time because it became playable and wasn't complete meme anymore. Not because it was good or tanky.In fact reapers shroud damage mod is far harder to keep than modifiers of other profession + hard time keeping scholar.Reaper is even unplayable if there is a bit pressure or unavoidable stuff like boneskinner or vale guardian. Dh or fb just yolo through everything with their invincibility heal or 3 million blocks. Even power renegade has more dps than reaper now. Also ip DD has more dps than reaper and is almost unkillable aswell. Shroud is a handycap in raids or strikes, not something usefull.And i dont make this up. Data is also backing this since the average condi weaver performed way better than the top performing reaper when raidar was online. Necro needs a pve dps buff since beta. All true for the top end. Not true for the 99% of the player base below. Yes, necro is more tanky for average players. The only time where necro will receive a buff again is if it has to sacrifice baseline survival not only for the top end players, but across the board.And again: MARAUDER is the key word here ... you can slap it on any other power class and still have more dps than a Necro with Berserker gear on, and I'm not even going to mention traits like invigorating precision and/or full traitlines like the warriors tactics line, which will just make you straight up invincible ... AND STILL DO MORE DPS THAN A NECRO!!!! (with easier rotations as well, btw)And let me explain it once more: if you actively use that tankiness of the Necro (read popping shroud for defence), your DPS drops far below those said marauder players!

Its one build at 40k DPS. A build that will not be able to reach this on most encounters because Focus 5 is stupid. On a class that will have really good damage in some phases and bad damage in other phases. I really dont understand why so many people in this thread look at benchmarks. Yeah, they are nice for comparisson but often dont even come close to what is good on actual bosses. The spread is not at an all time high. We have one class pulling 40k. And except for Necro every other class is at about 38k. As to the argument that dark themed classes see more play, I had a good chuckle there. Nice try, but last I checked, and this is actually supported by gw2efficiency stats, the most favorite classes played once again are paladin types (guardian), warriors and rangers.You just proved my point :) ... you know that gw2efficiency account owners are mostly veteran players, right? You also know that new (newbies) and casual players mostly don't do raids, right? Do I have to explain further, or can you see the 1+1=2 ?