Most players don't know how much dps they do

[Tails.9372]

2 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I still probably die 50/50 on tarnished traitor following the octovine because my framerate is a kitten slideshow. 

Don't worry, technological progress has an answer for that: just let the mechs pile-up on him. If that's not an option remember: the attack is 2 dimensional within a 3 dimensional space so a lot of deaths could be prevented if the ranged attackers would spread out properly.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Khisanth.2948]

Meanwhile some people think the numbers that pop up on their screen is their DPS ...

[Raizel.8175]

20 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

To be fair, there is also stuff like this…

A lot of pretty-good DPS builds rely more on gear stats and trait interactions than perfect skill sequencing. (Some of those builds are still deeply unsuited to open-world metas because they rely on other people's perfect buff output, though.)

Hahahaha. This is awesome.

But seriously, DPS in GW2 is - at least in most cases - less about skill, but more about boons, build and equipment. With those, you already get to 10k DPS with Auto Atk Chains. In most cases, you don't even need a perfect rotation - understanding and realizing the key points of a particular build is in most cases sufficient to get you to ~25k Golem DPS at least. There are even some very easy builds to play: both cDPS and pDPS Soulbeast (especially Shortbow-Soulbeast), pDPS Holosmith, cDPS Firebrand, cDPS Scourge, pDPS Reaper and cDPS Daredevil are quite easy to play. Then there are builds that are a bit more difficult, but still quite easy. Sure, there are also harder builds which you have to play decently to do decent damage, but well... People don't particularly have to chose these.

[sasya neko.1985]

i don't care how much DPS i do and in open PvE i never should, that's exactly how it was since launch and how it should be now.

[Hotride.2187]

Would be great to be able to see my dps anywhere I want to. Especially if you are adding dps checks to mandatory content (mastery tracks are to me mandatory).

Edited March 7, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Parzival.9340]

When I got back to the game after 3 years off (I started to play in 2016), I didn't understand what dps means. I thought it was the number that appeared when I hit the enemies XD.

Not until a few months  ago I discovered the special training room in raid where I could test my dps. I was stunned to realize how low the dps that my build gave out (4k back then), then I decided to switch from Power Spellbreaker to Power Banners Berserker. Now I can do 9k dps with only exotic gear (aiming for full ascended gears). I only use this new build for meta events such as The Battle of the Jade Sea or group events.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Parzival.9340

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Yeah... there's several barriers that exist between players and good DPS.

1. The RNG build.  This is done under the old RPG expectation that bigger numbers are better, but with no real "equipment build" to go with, so players will equip whatever they have lying around instead of making a cohesive build.  The first barrier, therefore, is getting to players to acknowledge that builds exist and there's competent ways to do it.
2. Bothering to care.  Fact is that these overworld players are used to succeeding just by existing near events that are happening.  Sure, they could do better or try harder, but they could also not and have almost no change in their success rate.  
3. The glass meta.  The build system for GW2 has players being self-sufficient even in glass, which is not a common feature of other RPGs.  
4. Button Mashing.  When a player mysteriously does sub-auto attack damage in a meta build, this is usually the reason why.  There's a lot of skills in this game that do damage, but they aren't really big damage dealers.  Players need to recognize that skills have a role and a place.
5. DPS as a concept.  Rates are a difficult subject for a lot of people to understand.  These players need to learn that it is technically a race of skills, and not just the numbers in total.
6. The idea that they should, indeed, be trying to maximize DPS.  A lot of players are fine with builds that, in their own words, "aren't meant to do a lot of damage."  This mindset comes from a variety of places, including sPVP itself.  These players need to adapt to the PVE paradigm, where everyone (even the buffers) are trying to do the most damage possible.
7. Sequences and rotations.  Basically, "git gud."
8. Hardware and connection issues.

You can tell that most people are failing before part 5.  While doing my auto attack tests, I came to discover that the Mechanist could have the highest auto in the game.  If the mech gets fully buffed up, it hits around the 27-30k mark.  That's pretty high, considering it is literally hitting one button for the entire fight.  So, why don't more people do it?  They don't have the knowledge, nor the drive.  That is the kind of information that one must seek out to find, but there needs to be the knowledge of performance and the will to improve for that to happen.  

[Razadune.9260]

53 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Yeah... there's several barriers that exist between players and good DPS.

    

Part of the problem is just establishing what good DPS even is. It tends to be a number that a theorycrafter talks about in a forum post somewhere that everyone latches onto as being what that class/spec is capable of, and is then taken as an absolute baseline of where everyone should be.    

     

And then in practice, it's completely ignored by players who want to lord their DPS over someone else that those baselines were established on a training dummy in a perfect scenario and will almost never be duplicated in actual gameplay (especially in open world where perfect buff/party configs aren't guaranteed and are frankly unlikely). They also tend to ignore group/area-wide buffs that see a support character contributing damage that won't necessarily show up as being part of their own DPS numbers. Timely dodges, helping pick up a downed character, "imperfect" weapon choices that buff another player's damage at the cost of your own...all of those hurt someone's personal DPS but help the fight as a whole.    

     

Contribution is more important than DPS in this and every other game, and especially in this one DPS isn't the only way to contribute, and since there's no good metric that really tracks what other players are doing there's a lot of people who would be better off doing something other than pointing fingers and talking about damage meters as if they really paint a complete picture. That's not a solution, it's just looking for someone to blame.

[ASP.8093]

17 hours ago, sorudo.9054 said:

i don't care how much DPS i do and in open PvE i never should, that's exactly how it was since launch and how it should be now.

That all goes out the window the second a big open-world encounter has a tight timer on it. (Which is what we're seeing with Dragon's End meta.)

[Khisanth.2948]

8 hours ago, tclark.8956 said:

    

Part of the problem is just establishing what good DPS even is. It tends to be a number that a theorycrafter talks about in a forum post somewhere that everyone latches onto as being what that class/spec is capable of, and is then taken as an absolute baseline of where everyone should be.    

     

And then in practice, it's completely ignored by players who want to lord their DPS over someone else that those baselines were established on a training dummy in a perfect scenario and will almost never be duplicated in actual gameplay (especially in open world where perfect buff/party configs aren't guaranteed and are frankly unlikely). They also tend to ignore group/area-wide buffs that see a support character contributing damage that won't necessarily show up as being part of their own DPS numbers. Timely dodges, helping pick up a downed character, "imperfect" weapon choices that buff another player's damage at the cost of your own...all of those hurt someone's personal DPS but help the fight as a whole.    

     

Contribution is more important than DPS in this and every other game, and especially in this one DPS isn't the only way to contribute, and since there's no good metric that really tracks what other players are doing there's a lot of people who would be better off doing something other than pointing fingers and talking about damage meters as if they really paint a complete picture. That's not a solution, it's just looking for someone to blame.

There is also defining DPS. You might think "well that is simple, that is damage per second!" but it is more complicated than that. 5000 DPS while cleaving 5 targets is very different from 5000 DPS while attacking a single target. Some builds are mainly single target so they are going to be mostly the same regardless of situation. Depending on the situation cleave DPS may or may not be important.

[Bobajob.7136]

I think you can get a damage count addon. I used to have one in WoW. Similar idea but I agree they should make it in house as a proper system. 

[Doomfrost.5728]

DPS meter in a player home instance, as well as an NPC to configure it to the players specifications. Just don't hope for players to stumble into the Lion's Arch Aerodrome, just throw it in their home where they'll be sure to see it.

[titje.2745]

this game is made for casuals, raiding etc came later, but there are more problems. 
for a casual it's hard to run the meta build because you always have to craft new gear, and so get expensive. casuals care more about skins i think so their gold goes there to. i am a casual, i really want legendary armor. but i just cant raid, if i do it must be a own language guild for easy explanation. and i have not so much interest in raiding, because when you join a raiding guild you are part of a team that raids weekly, i dont want a planned agenda for a game, i just want to do where i have sence to at the moment. 
many times i am tired in the head. so i want to game to relax. i don't want to give up things irl like going to the gym.
i hate the time gate that comes with it, gw2 is nice mmo because not so good players like me can obtain legendarys while in other mmo's you have to be die hard raider to be able to have current xpack legendary's, but why not legenday armor for casuals? 
let us just farm the gold and let us get it with open world bosses. it is ridiculous this way. i want to try a new build sometimes but i cant just stat swap so i keep the gear i already have. 
would be nice that we are able to obtain legendary armor with content we like (no story like legendary amulet)

wvwers are able to get legendary armor with content they like.

raiders can obtain legendary armor with content they like. 
 

pvpers can get legendary armor with content they like. 
 

open world players where the game is made for (because this is more then instanced bosses)  have a problem to be able to get legendary armor. In real life ppl want always to be equal, and everyone the same rights or how can I say it? But now we get exclude from a important feature  

Fractal players are just raiders that do it for fast challenge in small groups for easy gold. 

you can just replace the legendary insights for 4 gifts of exploration to keep the time gate,  so you have to do world completion on 12 characters, just an example, or 2 gifts of exploration for 1 legendary armor piece and maybe a collection for dungeon currency or maybe for legendary light legs you have to obtain every exotic light lvl 80 legs from every dungeon. This would be fair, maybe some world bosses  from tyria (this to not exclude new players who doesn’t have the expansion, I don’t want to exclude ppl in this idea) 

pls don’t put story in it, I don’t like it, it’s a big frustration, long and boring, I just finished legendary amulet story, and I can’t relax because eod features are locked behind story /cry

 

i edit later 

Edited March 9, 2022 by titje.2745

[Goettel.4389]

I don't know and never care.

[Sindust.7059]

As someone who curses every time an update makes arcdps throw a bunch of errors, I would love to have that functionality integrated in the game, but I don't think it would solve the problem you're trying to solve.

 

The problem in GW2 is that the damage varies so wildly depending on boons, encounter mechanics and fight duration that you can never tell whether you perform well, even when you see your DPS. Sometimes the random mechanics just hit you more often than others, and your damage suffers, or vice versa. A DPS meter on an open world boss wouldn't change much, because you could always blame it on being lifted in bubbles, spending time ressing people, and not having boon support in your subgroup. So even if you did see your dps number, you'd still need to do your testing in a standardized environment, and by the time you know how to get that standardized environment, you're in the special forces training area, and you have your dps meter.

[Obfuscate.6430]

I believe what is more important to the majority , and does need work  is firstly knowing game mechanics. How many events failed because people did not dodge, or did know know how to affect the break bar? How many people waited to be revived when fully dead instead of using a way point. How many people auto attacked a target, doing 0 damage, while ignoring the actual objective that would make the target vulnerable?

I have watched someone using a long bow stand beside an elite enemy and continue to auto while standing in a telegraphed attack zone. They were not afk, if the enemy moved, they continued to follow and stand beside it - right in it's AOE, or red marked attack paths. They got downed several times and didn't seem to learn why.

Secondly, I have the feeling that a few other issues revolve around understanding equipment, and stats. There are people who are able to make it to higher end areas/content but don't even have exotic gear. There are some people who have exotic gear but not cohesive stats. Finally there are people with a cohesive set but it's for stats that do nothing for their build - and there are a lot of stats that are superfluous.  It is also difficult to tell exactly how the stats on armor is affecting your numbers. 

Tackling these problems would increase over all DPS - maybe not to raid ready levels, but you definitely would be seeing better results. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Obfuscate.6430

[Suranis.8279]

I just assume I do sod all dps and don't worry about it.

I'm a very specially aware person and I'm more concerned with where I am. I simply cannot handle "rotations." Every time I try I get hopelessly confused, completely stressed out, and get myself killed as I'm more concerned with what number I'm clicking next rather than whats in front of me. And the sad thing is - my deeps is still utter crap despite all my rotation effort.

At this point I just assume most people with mathematically perfect DPS are running macros, and just wish them well.

[fixit.7189]

On 3/7/2022 at 5:32 AM, Sevens.9452 said:

 

if hundreds of people can do it, so can you

 

 

this dude only represents the top 1% and no one else. no ty.

now mukluk is much more level headed and actually sees what it's like on both sides of this instead of only 1.  /flamesuit on

Edited March 8, 2022 by fixit.7189

[ASP.8093]

2 hours ago, Obfuscate.6430 said:

I have watched someone using a long bow stand beside an elite enemy and continue to auto while standing in a telegraphed attack zone. They were not afk, if the enemy moved, they continued to follow and stand beside it - right in it's AOE, or red marked attack paths. They got downed several times and didn't seem to learn why.

Part of the issue is that a lot of entry-level group content will teach you to do exactly that. Stack stack stack, attack constantly, and let the healer handle the incoming mechanics.

[ASP.8093]

9 minutes ago, Suranis.8279 said:

I just assume I do sod all dps and don't worry about it.

I'm a very specially aware person and I'm more concerned with where I am. I simply cannot handle "rotations." Every time I try I get hopelessly confused, completely stressed out, and get myself killed as I'm more concerned with what number I'm clicking next rather than whats in front of me. And the sad thing is - my deeps is still utter crap despite all my rotation effort.

At this point I just assume most people with mathematically perfect DPS are running macros, and just wish them well.

For what it's worth, you can easily become an "80% optimal" player without memorizing rotations at all. A lot of guides present them as, like, the absolute optimal chain of skills, but you can often get pretty good results by just learning a few "skills priorities." Which is likely something you already think about since you mentally categorize your skills like, "this is the best one to do area damage," "this one buffs me to make my next attack bigger," et cetera. Then you just press your best damaging skills pretty much the second they go off cooldown, or stack all your CC skills in when you see a blue bar.

And then the other skill to pick up is just understanding how not to cancel auto-attack chains: most melee #1 skills cycle through several similar attacks, and most classes put the best one on the third skill in the chain. So all you need to know here is not to "interrupt" your nice little 1-1-1 chain by throwing in another attack skill activation in the middle of it very often.

Edited March 8, 2022 by ASP.8093

[Labjax.2465]

2 hours ago, Obfuscate.6430 said:

I believe what is more important to the majority , and does need work  is firstly knowing game mechanics. How many events failed because people did not dodge, or did know know how to affect the break bar? How many people waited to be revived when fully dead instead of using a way point. How many people auto attacked a target, doing 0 damage, while ignoring the actual objective that would make the target vulnerable?

I have watched someone using a long bow stand beside an elite enemy and continue to auto while standing in a telegraphed attack zone. They were not afk, if the enemy moved, they continued to follow and stand beside it - right in it's AOE, or red marked attack paths. They got downed several times and didn't seem to learn why.

Secondly, I have the feeling that a few other issues revolve around understanding equipment, and stats. There are people who are able to make it to higher end areas/content but don't even have exotic gear. There are some people who have exotic gear but not cohesive stats. Finally there are people with a cohesive set but it's for stats that do nothing for their build - and there are a lot of stats that are superfluous.  It is also difficult to tell exactly how the stats on armor is affecting your numbers. 

Tackling these problems would increase over all DPS - maybe not to raid ready levels, but you definitely would be seeing better results. 

I might be missing some techniques for gearing up as I've been away a while, but getting the stats you want for the build seems like a problem in itself that needs addressing in the design. There are so many stat combos now and like celestial for example, I kept having to check a wiki to work out how and where I could get pieces that either came as celestial or allowed me to choose it as a stat. I could have tried to buy the armor itself as crafted off the TP, but if I recall the numbers correctly, I was looking at something like 10-20g per piece.

Point being, it's no wonder a lot of people aren't geared properly when it can require such time investment and wiki reading just to get a full set of the gear you want.

[ArchonWing.9480]

 

On 3/6/2022 at 5:14 PM, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

Do most people even care about their own dps? I know for most games people that actually run raids or high end dungeons(fractals) care about it since the numbers matter before enrage timers kick in and wipe the party. But for here and open world? I don't know of many who even care really. As long as they live is generally the metric some live by, so even if there was a personal one. How many would actually use it?

They don't lol. Even in T4 fractals, people will struggle to maintain 10k dps even with full boons.  I think almost everyone could get 20k dps blindfolded with the right build and support. But if the boss starts beating the crap out of us, suddenly I'm down to like 5-6k dps because as it turns out dying is a very big dps debuff.

In an Open World situation where there may be no boons or it's up to the user to maintain their own buffs, it'll be worse. And that's just considering players who are at least able to survive. Some classes like Necromancers are very self reliant, other classes much less so. *cries in downed ele*

 

And in the few raids I've done, usually casual players are hitting around 15k and maybe 20k if not pressured.

And this is considering raids and fractals. If you go into CM fractals, this is when people start caring a bit and you start seeing good players with 25-30k dps, and 50k bursts, etc. Do you need this? Absolutely not. These are for groups where you blink and you're already done with most of the fractals. Is that enjoyable? Absolutely. But it's optional.

A lot of people would see this as garbage, and they'd be right. But who really cares?

So no, nobody really cares about dps unless it causes the event to fail. But it's extremely rare for a player to know what to do and have potato dps.

Low DPS is usually a symptom. Yes, it could mean you have a bad rotation or bad build. But it could also be because you don't understand the fight. I had a poor friend that spent like more than an hour doing the tank in forging steel because nobody would use the harpoon. In the meantime, I finished that with another group much sooner and did a bunch of bounties.... he was still suffering in there. That is not a dps issue.

Now, what I would love is for the game to put training dummies everywhere in the game and not in that arena though. And more options is always better.

The only argument I have for why you should do more damage is that you will have to deal with less mechanics if you kill the boss faster, and thus less opportunities to fail.  I'll leave it up to you to decide if that's worth it or not. But as you can see, context matters, and ignore anyone that's like "hurr durr, your dps isn't benchmark!"

  

On 3/6/2022 at 7:50 PM, LSD.4673 said:

The AB afterboss megawipe, the "use cc!" mapchat spam while the blue bar never moves, the same people getting downed on bounty bosses with the "stand in the magic circle to not die of ley death-stacks", the masses of people who just stand there attacking during invuln phases...

It's a real problem. Maybe they're not just pressing 1 -- maybe they're hitting all their keys off cooldown like a piano player. But whatever they're doing, it's very rarely damage.

Could be people  don't understand what "cc" means.

What would be the best way to describe it better?

Edited March 9, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Suranis.8279]

 

9 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

For what it's worth, you can easily become an "80% optimal" player without memorizing rotations at all. A lot of guides present them as, like, the absolute optimal chain of skills, but you can often get pretty good results by just learning a few "skills priorities." Which is likely something you already think about since you mentally categorize your skills like, "this is the best one to do area damage," "this one buffs me to make my next attack bigger," et cetera. Then you just press your best damaging skills pretty much the second they go off cooldown, or stack all your CC skills in when you see a blue bar.

And then the other skill to pick up is just understanding how not to cancel auto-attack chains: most melee #1 skills cycle through several similar attacks, and most classes put the best one on the third skill in the chain. So all you need to know here is not to "interrupt" your nice little 1-1-1 chain by throwing in another attack skill activation in the middle of it very often.

 Ya I pretty much do that

[Shaaba.5672]

9 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Could be people  don't understand what "cc" means.

What would be the best way to describe it better?

Crowd Control (CC) has been the terminology forever across many games and I first came across the term playing D&D. So yeah, there probably is a better way to describe it for new players, but I think CC is just here to stay. People explaining fights and mechanics should not assume that everyone knows the gaming lingo. In the heat of the battle, CC is fine - prior to the battle is when CC should be defined.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Shaaba.5672

[Labjax.2465]

10 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Could be people  don't understand what "cc" means.

What would be the best way to describe it better?

May be with some they know what it means, but they don't know which if their abilities count toward CC for breakbars. This is the first MMO I've played in memory where CC is so intermixed with damage abilities, it's kind of confusing. I see they do have a "Defiance Break" thing in the tooltip now, not sure if that was always there, but that might be something to tell people to look for on their abilities.

Also confusing because some abilities have uses outside of purely CC. Example: Warhorn lightning ele ability Cyclone. It can be used for Defiance Break contribution, for pulling enemies toward its location if they don't have defiance (but you can't really control where it goes), or used for Swiftness if you use it and run in its path. Oh and to make matters more confusing, because you can't really control where it goes, it's only really reliable as a Defiance Break if you're up close to the target to ensure it'll get a hit on them.

Not all CC abilities are that overloaded with complexity and context, but just to put in perspective where some of the confusion may be coming from.