I hate what DPS meters have done to PVE endgame...

[Jarvis.9540]

Tonight in a t4 fractal PUG I got yelled at for temporarily attuning to water on my meta zerker elementalist (a build I've begrudgingly acquiesced into playing after seeing the party finder messages aimed at keeping my necro main from participating) after 3 of my 5 party members died, and I attempted to heal and rez everyone. I was sternly advised that my tempest is supposed to always be in fire or air. Weird. The main thing I liked about ele is its versatility and ability to hop into defense and save a party as needed. Apparently one of my party members was running "arc dps" (previously unknown to me - a tool that can show every party member's dps to each other) and saw that my dps dropped below his dead body's average numbers because he bursted the fight (ignoring mechanics) right up until he died while I tried to clean everyone up. It's a strange thing to be yelled at by a person that you are trying to save/rez because your dps numbers are dwindling while doing so.

This is my umpteenth night in a row dealing with folks shouting at each other (even if it's not always directed at me) over parsed dps numbers in higher-level fractals. I'm really tired of it.

[Syktek.7912]

Great way to fix this problem: Get a clique and play with them on a regular basis. Occasionally you'll need to pickup a pug (not everyone can make it every time) which you can simply kick them if they go ape. There's no excuse not to do this as you have five guild slots and one should be dedicated to a mass pve guild.

[Helbjorne.9368]

Donkeys will be donkeys regardless of whether or not there's a DPS meter, but I can definitely see both sides of the argument. Personally I think it allows us to hold other people accountable if they're just looking to get carried in PUGs, but there's a good and a bad way to address that.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

Skytek and Helbjorne make good points.

I remember one thread in the old forums back when the CoF1 dungeon meta was four warriors and a Mesmer. The OP was complaining about being kicked from a group that had formed to farm the dungeon path (for those who weren't around, DR on rewards was not yet a thing). The reasons given for the kick were: (a) he was a couple of seconds late in pushing the Slave Driver into the wall so the warriors could use Whirlwind Attack without going out of attack range, thus not needing to take a second or two to get back to melee range; and (b) he was slow setting the portal for everyone to bypass the rolling boulders.

There have always been people upset with others about their performance in instanced group content. Exclusion and anger were around in PuG content even before there was a usable in-game LFG. The meter didn't create the behavior, it just gave it something else to focus on. Were ANet to return to a no-meter policy, the behavior would still happen, though it would be focused on something other than numbers.

[Yasi.9065]

I tend to be really cautious with posting comments to threads like these, because usually theres several different points of views to the whole story ;)

Im guessing here, the problem wasnt really the attuning to water when three people of the party already were downed/dead.

Rather... and here's the thing... your dps might have been rather subpar before that... which in itself isnt all bad. But if you join a specific dps-driven lfg group (which you admittedly did) then you have to realize one thing. EVERYTHING is about max dps in those setups. And someone hanging behind in dps means you cant phase bosses fast enough to avoid dmg taken. Which is probably exactly what happened, since you said 3 people were already dead.

Not saying the behaviour was reasonable, I dont know enough about the situation to evaluate that properly. Theres quite a lot people that put in lfgs with a speedclear setup that arent good enough for it themselves.

Just... going to the forums... after joining a speedclear group... and complaining about said speedclear method... I dont know... it kinda... sits unwell with me.

If you want to play your necro, or you want a more casual run... then make your own lfg, or join one that is aimed towards that goal.

[Rhatha.2376]

On the flip side, this makes it easier to play a build that's not strictly in the raid meta if you can perform well with it, and if people are running a meter the smart ones will see this and tell anyone being a jerk off for you.

Examples like in the first post here are people just being silly. Especially in fractals, you don't just mindlessly do your raid dps rotation, you need to react to what you're fighting appropriately to avoid dying, unless you're spoiled by having a healing build in your party that's able to outdo whatever you're fighting. The player that was doing that was just flat out wrong.. in most cases, with 3 down, why would want to just sit there attacking? You may just want to make your own groups, though, and mention in the title that it's a no-stress run. You'll probably find groups a lot more enjoyable then. Works for me.

I have mixed feelings, overall, but ultimately, dps meters are just tools for personal improvement. People looking for an easy (and often incorrect) answer to why a particular group is having problems is nothing new. The ability to get actual data in a readable form for people who are into that is very useful.. we just all need to be responsible for curbing the negativity. If you see people in your groups spouting off numbers and not taking into consideration the real problem, speak up (politely), especially if the anger is directed at someone else in your group.

[Faaris.8013]

I would love to hear the other side of the story on that one. Which Fractal and which boss was it? I got the feeling that you left out important information.

I agree in general though that the players who start pick up groups for T4 fractals with specific requirements are often on the less relaxed side of the playerbase. It's almost like they are doing something they don't enjoy. If I have to pug, I join these groups though because wiping 3 times at Subject 6 and then see the group disband is no fun. If 100 is daily, I don't pug it at all, most people are not ready for it yet. Yes, those unrelaxed players stress, but so does a group with people who doesn't do enough dps.

[Cynn.1659]

Dps meters are the best thing that has happened to the game. You no longer have to guess who is trying to leech, since now you can see those pesky 7k dps tempests at 5 orb kc. Also people stopped kicking at random, because you didn't play "meta class", a lot of non meta builds do decent dmg and are much easier to play than some of those "meta builds" . If you don't like getting kicked, then you just have to improve. As for the dead guy, he is just dumb, on so many fractal bosses your dps goes down hard, becuase of invuln phases. So comparing that to "dead guy dps" is so dumb.

[Zacchary.6183]

Whenever I encounter someone who uses a DPS meter in an elitist fashion, I tell them that the DPS meter is a crutch among other subliminal things until they leave or kick me. c:

[Arzurag.7506]

Probably, it would be good to give more specific informations about the situation thereupon we can say what was wrong or right.There are always two views.

Except you just wanted to point out that dps-meter are unhealthy to the game and turned pve into "ruler"-comparison.

[Sarie.1630]

@Yasi.9065 said:

If you want to play your necro, or you want a more casual run... then make your own lfg, or join one that is aimed towards that goal.

Back when people cared about dungeons and you'd get aggressive warrior heavy meta-only groups there people would say the exact same thing. It's not bad advice, it's logical, but it doesn't always work. I will occasionally make an explicitly "casual" run for something because I want to play something non meta or, gasp, not want to care about rotations. More often than you might think you will get 3 people join you because it's a casual run, but then one guy joins and yells at people all the way through because you're not fast enough or understand the content well enough. You can't really defend against people joining but not taking cognisance of what the group is for.

The attitude and inflexibility of people, and the "dps meter intrusion", however useful and justifiable people find it all, really turns me off group content in GW2 these days. Toxicity just escalates.

[Yasi.9065]

Ive been doing instanced endcontent with a power mesmer for two weeks... another week with a power necro... before last patch I played power engi... and though I was met with a lot of skepticism, thanks to dpsmeters I didnt get insta kicked. So yeah, Cynn is kinda right. In some ways dpsmeters actually made people more open and serene about dps builds.

But then Ive also seen people crowing about being "top dps" in their openworld squad at tequatl in mapchat. And people complaining about magi druids only doing 1k dmg instead of 2-3k. Players so fixated on their dpsmeter, they stop doing other mechanics always in fear of loosing that top-spot. I could continue that list for at least half a page ;)

Basically its like this. In the hands of good, dpsmeters -> good. In the hands of bad, dpsmeters -> bad ;p

Its all about the person behind the dpsmeter.

@"Sarie.1630"Heres the thing, in the 4 warrior meta of past times, there was no dpsmeter (or people would have realized there were way better group setups ^^). People still were toxic - without dpsmeter. Overall the community didnt get more toxic. Its pretty much still the same as four years ago. And I should know, Ive been pugging daily ever since the lfg tool got put in. On the contrary, I notice people being less "stressed" about others and more concentrated on their own performance in pugs ever since dpsmeter became a thing. And in my opinion, thats a positive developement. A not so nice developement, is that people abandon lfg groups now earlier when dps is low.

You say you dont have a tool to remove that one toxic person, but you can votekick him. You can put him on your blocked list with a nice "ToxicPersonThatCantReadLFG" nickname. Or my personal favorite "WannaBePro". So there are tools in place for you to deal with someone disturbing your casual run.

The main problem I see with lfgs... is that most arent worded clearly. I kinda know that when I join a fractal group with "2dps, druid, chrono, cps" setup, I get to expect at least rudimentary speedclear tactics (I gave up on the portals long ago ^^). When I join a group looking for 3 dps, druid, cps... its a more laidback run. And when I join a 4 necro+druid group, its a run thats very casual.

[titje.2745]

all addons that shows dps should be removed. i also dont like a meta. i want to play a class the way i want. not always 1 perfect role that gets boring because you may not switch to something else or you dont get invites for whatever thing. i like to be a healer :D i hope i am welcome everywere. its very nice if you can support in big events and healer get easy gold medal :) i hope in pof the healers i play got buffed or nice new abilitys. ele and reve cant wait to check it :)

[Ok I Did It.2854]

I have found that mostly in raids and T4 fractals with people running the dps meter, they tend to be ok, the ones that you really hear go off on a rampage are the ones running it who are lying dead on the floor, ive seen this more and more, when I see someone in fractals now lying dead screaming at other players about their DPS, I tend to just leave the group,

We had a group one night where the warrior was screaming at the chrono telling them they where doing it wrong, and when the chrono asked them did they want to run it instead, the warrior said they cant play chrono as its to hard facepalm

So yea, don't let it get to you, you will always find that 1 person who thinks they are better, or demand more, and have let the game become more numbers than fun, most groups do not act like this.

[Jarvis.9540]

OP here. Maybe I should clarify... I'm not new to endgame GW2 by any stretch of the imagination. I've been active in endgame since CoF P1 speedruns pretty much all we did. I get that the meta will always exist. My post wasn't anti-meta (that's a whole other thing). It was anti-folks being jerks to one another inside of instanced game environments over the readout of a meter they are staring at rather than performing actual mechanics.

I know my class (most classes actually), how to go through my rotations, field/combo play, etc. The boss in question was Ensolyss from nightmare. The person on the floor yelling died within 30 seconds. I wasn't kicked from said party, and we finished the run after the wipe that caused homeboy to lose his mind on the party . I didn't leave out any information about the fight as some of you might have suggested to tip any sort of scale on the opinion of my run. That's not my goal here, and honestly if you are suspicious of the events mentioned in my post, there's not much I can do to sway you on that other than going and finding the other four parties members (3 of whom were fine actually) and convincing them to join our conversation. That is all a departure from my overall point here which wasn't to complain about a specific dungeon run - but rather a tool that I always thought was deliberately left out of GW2 that is giving most of my endgame parties these days a goob-measuring stick to yell at each other over.

I've played tons of other modern MMO's with dps meters (WoW, FFXIV, etc.), and I get why people find them useful. Those games have enrage mechanics that cause wipes if there is not enough cumulative dps in the party. I just never thought these meters belonged in GW2, because the content was built differently prior to raiding than other MMO's (more action-oriented combat, active dodging, invulnerable phases, etc.). Perhaps this isn't the case, and I just need to suck it up and accept that the endgame here is no different. That was really my reason for making this post last night - to gauge how others feel about the issue. It seems pretty split which, I guess, it to be expected.

One last thing... One of you guys threw a pretty good gotcha at me above by saying that you suspect my dps was lacking in this run prior to all this happening. The thing is, other than telling you that I was using a meta build and that I know how to play my class, there's no way I could actually prove to you that I'm not just spitting hyperbole without downloading the dps meter myself and showing you - which ironically puts a nail in the coffin on my whole point.

[Cyprien.4208]

I dislike dps meter while I don't mind it for personal use on self. I don't like the idea of it showing my dps or others.

I don't mind people making dps or blank classes only groups as long they state it.

I bought gw2 because the play like you like style and for the most part it's still around many groups won't care what you run as long say for fractals you have the ar required.

[Dante.1763]

I dont know they have some good uses, Like finally being able to see how little damage rangers do compared to the other classes is a nice thing to have, maybe with that in the open we can see some thing done finally.

Or seeing whos being a dead weight on the team. I did a raid for the first time this week, and i can see how its important to have everyone doing the most amount of damage they can. You may not like it, im starting to wish it was part of the game to begin with.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

I agree about DPS meters, but unfortunately they are here to stay and for those that love them, let them play together.

For people like you and I (and there are many) make your own PUG and stipulate no DPS meters. You'll def get people that want to play without them present. That or run them with some in game friends that are like minded. No point trying to argue against the beast as Anet has gleefully sanctioned it for a while now so its not going anywhere.

[SaraGreen.2345]

Create your own friendly groups.Most of those zerker kids spend more time on the ground dead then fighting.

What good is high dps if your dead or im resing the zerker kid over and over I'm losing dps because of him being down.
Dps meters have always harmed games integrity if games were designed so hard that you needed toughness and vitality games would be much more fun for everyone.

That's why I hate enrage timers it encourages bad behavior just make content so hard your instantly dead in power gear.

In a max dps elementalist or thief you die almost instantly on 14k health.

[SaraGreen.2345]

@Dante.1763 said:I dont know they have some good uses, Like finally being able to see how little damage rangers do compared to the other classes is a nice thing to have, maybe with that in the open we can see some thing done finally.

Or seeing whos being a dead weight on the team. I did a raid for the first time this week, and i can see how its important to have everyone doing the most amount of damage they can. You may not like it, im starting to wish it was part of the game to begin with.

Tip those green circles keeping you alive the ranger does those. Since its saving your group from being down and then time spent resing you its easily worth losing a little dps in short burst.That dps is regained easily by the group staying alive and then some.

[IllegalChocolate.6938]

The door swings both ways in regards to who gets to fall on the dagger. I remember one of my guildmates playing an offspec power revenant during vale guardian, meeting 20k on that fight overall. When the group wiped, a meta build tempest suggested to boot him from the group for not running a meta accepted build. Our revenant posted the arcDPS meters showing that the ele managed to only push a hilarious 4k dps overall prompting the tempest elitist to leave immediately without saying a word.

In any case, those who only focus on raw DPS are not to be taken seriously, often times most people who look at the bigger picture will observe total damage done, boon uptime, breakbar contribution, etc. Someone who only offers 38k dps for 3 minutes before dieing will contribute less to the party than someone who can contribute 20k dps over 10 minutes while providing might, fury, protection, alacrity, exceptional breakbar, or in dungeon cases, blind fields, weakness, condition removal, good use of reflection, proper temporal curtain pulling, boon removal.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how people want PvE to be designed in this game, we have made our bed in regards to how PvE content is handled in this game. Rather than improving on the aspects that defined Guild Wars 1 challenging content, we have decided to bring in the Wildstar content designers to handle our PvE content so expect to see a Wildstar-esque type PvE community. Whether that is a good thing or not, only time will tell, however I recall many top Wildstar streamers leaving the game causing a viewership collapse due to the fact that no guild was willing to accept a warrior into raids or because of other things. Will things evolve? will see once Path of Fire's lifespan finishes its arc (get it? arcDPS? ayy lmao rofllmaosawtfbbq).

[Dante.1763]

@SaraGreen.2345 said:

@Dante.1763 said:I dont know they have some good uses, Like finally being able to see how little damage rangers do compared to the other classes is a nice thing to have, maybe with that in the open we can see some thing done finally.

Or seeing whos being a dead weight on the team. I did a raid for the first time this week, and i can see how its important to have everyone doing the most amount of damage they can. You may not like it, im starting to wish it was part of the game to begin with.

Tip those green circles keeping you alive the ranger does those. Since its saving your group from being down and then time spent resing you its easily worth losing a little dps in short burst.That dps is regained easily by the group staying alive and then some.

I have no clue what you are getting at here. If you are speaking about druid, they have their place in raids because of that. I however am talking about Ranger, not druid.

[Seera.5916]

The thing is without DPS meters, players will still try to figure out who is doing the most DPS and who is not. And in your situation, he would have still yelled at you. The party member list shows what element you're attuned to and everyone knows water has less DPS than fire or air.

At least with the DPS meter they can figure out who has the least DPS and go from there (some members may logistically have lower DPS depending on their role), so if they are going to just kick for lowest DPS and not try to give the player a chance to improve, at least they'll be kicking the one with the actual lowest DPS and not just their guess.

The players who are jerks with DPS meters were likely jerks before they were allowed to use DPS meters. They just used things like assuming the low DPS is the ranger or that it's not them (even in a situation where a DPS meter would show that they are the lowest DPS).

Here's an example of guessing DPS without the usage of DPS meters. I was running Fractals with my brother and some friends. Three of them were in Zerker gear. Me and one of the friends were in Clerics. The friend because he had a healing build, me so that I can heal my own self when I got in trouble (GW2 was my first MMO). We're fighting one of the bosses (I don't remember which one at the time) and due to the fact that none of us are elites, the zerkers end up dying. My brother, one of the zerkers, then made a comment on how non-existant the DPS of us Clerics was. I can't remember if we ended up wiping or just taking forever to finish or if one us Clerics kited while the other resurrected the Zerkers.

[Ashen.2907]

This sort of crud has existed in game since the earliest days of dungeon running. DPS meters are just a different tool used by tools to justify berating others. The guy the OP was rezzing didnt need a DPS meter to know that a character's DPS drops while rezzing. He could have been just as much a tool about a drop in damage output before DPS meters ever made their way here.

[Beorn Raukar.4328]

@WARIORSCHARGEING.2637 said:can not blame you at all . when anet let the proism and elitism come into the game. that was the day the game lost its fun and way as the game was promoted to be fun . now well salt and more salt comes in these days. from the use of some of these add ons . now the really sad part is getting yelled at while you was trying to rez players back up and getting yelled at still for it

Its not like there were players like this from launch of the game. DPS meters did nothing to the game, there always was and always will be elitist players.