DPS Checks

[uberkingkong.8041]

What are the DPS checks for raids and fractals? (minimal/acceptable avg dps)

What tools do people use, like dps meter.

Do raiders use assisted tools too? Say your rotation is 10+ buttons, 10 min fight of maintaining that rotation, do people actually do these rotations without assistance?

Edited December 28, 2022 by uberkingkong.8041

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

What are the DPS checks for raids and fractals? (minimal/acceptable avg dps)

Depends on the encounter and skill level of the group.

1 hour ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

What tools do people use, like dps meter.

There is a training golem in a training area in the Aerodrome (south of the fractal entrance in LA).

1 hour ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Do raiders use assisted tools too? Say your rotation is 10+ buttons, 10 min fight of maintaining that rotation, do people actually do these rotations without assistance?

 

Some might, but in general depending on the tool it might be or not be allowed. Automation is not allowed, aka macros. The exact rules can be found here:

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013762153

 

In short: yes, some players do those rotations and some do them perfectly, while others fail miserably. The essential question one has to ask themselves is: how capable do I think I am and how much effort can or do I want to invest.

 

Perfect rotations are not necessary (except on very high level of player) and for players who want an easier time, with some loss in performance, there are so called "low intensity" builds which usually forgo maximum performance for ease of use.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[AliamRationem.5172]

It's hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer to this question because it depends on a variety of factors.  That's why we use benchmarks, to give a basis for comparison.  It isn't a reflection of actual performance because you'll have to deal with phases and mechanics, which takes practice to know how to modify the rotation to fit within shorter windows of time.  But it's a good place to start because if you can't manage a decent rotation in the first place, you'll probably perform even worse in real scenarios.

In my experience, it's rare that players in T4 daily pickup groups deal much more than 30k DPS average for an entire boss encounter and that's only for bosses which are pretty much a straight burn with few mechanics to deal with (e.g. old Tom, subject 6, Siax, etc.).  If you can manage that much on bosses like these you should never hear any complaints about your DPS and this will probably translate to pickup raids and CM fractals as long as you're able to perform the required mechanics.  When you get into statics or groups with strict requirements, the bar could be higher.

[Stadsport.8714]

In open world, kind of anything will do, just have fun. Same with dungeons and T1 Fractals.

 

As you go up in challenge (higher tier Fractals, Strikes, and Raids), you'll be expected to perform better. I think most would agree that if you're averaging around 10-20k dps for a typical encounter you'll be perfectly fine. 

 

The de-facto DPS meter for this game is ArcDPS, just google it. Very simple to install.

 

As for macros/automations, I'm sure there are people who do it, but I don't think it would be very productive. Sure it would allow you to fire off a rotation on the training golem, but in a real encounter, you need to be able to perform mechanics at the same time. Maintaining good DPS while doing mechanics means you need to have a solid understanding of which skills take priority and should be performed in a certain order, so you know what to use and when. A macro program really can't replicate that. 

[Infusion.7149]

Cyninja is spot on. It depends on the skill level of your group but also their tolerance for failure and dying / "gg". If I want to play meme builds I always join training level or T1 if it's fractals (Fractal God makes up for this I guess) before actually using it elsewhere.

If you're just afraid of being underperforming have a look at Masel's "easy 30K DPS builds". The caveat here is it is 30K DPS with the standard raid boons and not solo.

And the resident meme build maker Mr Mystic which always gives good laughs:

There's a lot of players that will rigidly insist on meta builds however. Had someone ragequit a W3 Keep Construct because half our squad was condition damage (not great there since 35% power bonus) so there's elitists like that.

[Bakeneko.5826]

19 hours ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

What are the DPS checks for raids and fractals? (minimal/acceptable avg dps)

What tools do people use, like dps meter.

Do raiders use assisted tools too? Say your rotation is 10+ buttons, 10 min fight of maintaining that rotation, do people actually do these rotations without assistance?

Fractals have 2 DPS cheks in all fractals - 99CM 1st boss island hops and 98CM shadow snake phase. There are 4 to 6 CC checks in all 3 CM fractals

[Kantharr.2308]

It depends on different parameters like type of instanced content (raids, strikes, fractals), whether you're doing CM or non CM, what mechanics you're going to deal with, etc. Here's a couple of good rule of thumbs that I follow for the majority of content:

 

1. DPS for non healers should be at least 10K for non CM content (since CM content have higher skill checks).

2. Regular DPS players should be doing higher DPS than the DPS Support players (since DPS supports are sacrificing some of their dmg for boon durations, though this is different for some specific builds)

 

What's more important than DPS though is knowing the mechanics and not failing those because failing mechanics or dying because of mechanics means lower DPS.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Most of the high-level instanced content was designed in an area where the average group DPS was half of what it is now.  Powercreep has made all DPS checks irrelevant, because even if one player is doing very badly the top player will be doing 2-3x of what they were required to do when the content was released.

 

In other words, hard carries have become extremely common, and you don't have to worry *too much*. But you shouldn't just leech off your group either, of course.

 

That said, its generally acceptible if you do 10k-20k real-world DPS, in actual fights and not on the golem. This is easier in Fractals than raids, which have more restrictions on your build (like lower boon duration). Of course, builds that bring a support boon like Alacrity or Quickness or other utility such as Might stacking, reflects and so on will be expected to be on the lower end, and the damage also varies alot by boss. Some bosses its easy to hit 20k on with a low intensity build, others won't even hit 10k with the same build and rotation.

 

Keep in mind this is single-target damage, not cleave. If there's adds, you should turn cleave reporting off.

 

The biggest thing to watch out for, and a newbie trap, is when you're doing less DPS than the boon support. I see it very often when I'm bringing Quickness and one of the other damage-focused players in the group is doing less than me, and this is not an acceptible situation. Boon support lowers your damage by anywhere from 30-50%, so if you're falling behind an Alac/Quick, then you're doing quite badly.

 

Another big thing is, pay attention to whether you can maintain your rotation under stress or not. If you can't maintain your rotation and your DPS drops in difficult situations, simply drop the build and switch to a low-intensity build that you can manage instead, while you keep practicing the non-LI build. Trying to force yourself to practice in live situations will only make you a liability to the group; know your limitations.

Edited December 29, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Firebeard.1746]

On 12/28/2022 at 3:49 AM, uberkingkong.8041 said:

What are the DPS checks for raids and fractals? (minimal/acceptable avg dps)

What tools do people use, like dps meter.

Do raiders use assisted tools too? Say your rotation is 10+ buttons, 10 min fight of maintaining that rotation, do people actually do these rotations without assistance?

I think i mathed out the enrage timer on largos, one of the strictest fights in terms of enrage timer and it was around 13-14k each for the dps in the squad iirc and if i didn't screw it up Now this is obviously just a number. Some mechanics require repositioning which can interrupt dps, but that should be pretty encouraging because that's a really low number in terms of skill. You don't even need to be close to dealing top dps to pass an encounter as a dps. Now losing a boon support or even just another dps adds significantly more pressure in terms of performance,  so you should always do your best. 

[Asum.4960]

DPS Checks/Enrages are hardly a mechanic at <10k DPS per player for most encounters, which is more than achievable via just Auto Attacks. 

What makes DPS really important anyway though is simply because the more DPS a group has, the easier most encounter's become. Not only is it far easier to maintain concentration and keep up performance for ~2-3 minutes than 10, DPS also allows to skip a lot of mechanics and even entire phases. So high DPS is less so a win condition, but a significant boost to winrate (via lessening mechanical pressure). 

What's acceptable for that is highly encounter dependant though and varies greatly (and with group expectations ofc). 

 

As for tools people use, Arc DPS is a staple and instrumental for self analysis and improvement. It's very easy to install and provides a great way to compare your performance to others, which will quickly give you an insight on your standing for each encounter and where you can improve. 

Additionally you can check out sites like Wingman and see what people average on each spec for each encounter (do keep in mind to set recent patch windows, exclude supports, etc.).

 

As for Rotations and tools regarding that, I'm not aware of anything - but anything playing the game for you at least would be against ToS anyway. 

Fight's generally aren't ~10 minutes though, or in the few cases they are, have plenty phase transitions and the like for downtime. Rotations are far simpler than they may appear at first. With a little bit of practice (ideally in the Lion's Arch Aerodrome) you will quickly know your priority list of buttons by muscle memory and then it's mostly hitting those things off-cooldown (but do keep in mind to prioritise finishing Auto Attack chains, and then chaining skills together - rather than constantly cancelling skills and autos to instantly get to everything off CD). 

Many rotations are also designed for absolute peak benchmark performance, so even if an active Utility skill to spam only provides literally just a 10 DPS increase over a passive bonus like a Signet, that will be included in rotations on sites like Snowcrows. Test for yourself on the Aerodrome Golem how important/impactful each skill is and evaluate for yourself. 

Most players will perform far better in practice with simpler rotations (which also allow for more attention to encounter mechanics) than the technically slightly higher benchmarking rotations.

 

/E: And since I mentioned Benchmarks and liked a site, I want to add to take those with a massive grain of salt. 

Specs/Builds Benching 40k+ DPS on the Golem can be strictly worse than specs benching 35k DPS or even lower in almost all practical situations (especially in the hands of the average player/group), due to factors like DPS uptime (such as range), adaptability, utility, survivability and easy of use. 

Benchmarks give a rough idea about what builds are viable as DPS by clearing a DPS threshold to be even listed, they aren't a ranking of higher = strictly better.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Asum.4960

[soul.9651]

There are no REAL dps checks in this game just because of the current power creep in this game. If the top bench on sc was something like 30k and it was on melee spec aswell then it would be a different story. Well at least in organized groups.. on the other hand if you have no idea what you are doing everything will be a dps check for you.

 

[Drall.2419]

A few people have posted that macros are not allowed with the link.  When I read the link, It seems to me that they are not allowed in any competitive context - where you compete against other players.  I don't see a restriction on chaining 2 actions on one mouse click for example. 

 

Am I reading it wrong?

 

P.S. I also agree that trying to automate an attack chain would probably more detrimental than helpful.

[Cyninja.2954]

5 hours ago, Drall.2419 said:

A few people have posted that macros are not allowed with the link.  When I read the link, It seems to me that they are not allowed in any competitive context - where you compete against other players.  I don't see a restriction on chaining 2 actions on one mouse click for example. 

 

Am I reading it wrong?

 

P.S. I also agree that trying to automate an attack chain would probably more detrimental than helpful.

 

It's in the very last point:

Quote

Each macro should represent a single action that requires user input before repeating the action.

 

so outside of the explicitly allowed macros, you are not allowed to chain 2 actions to 1 mouse click.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Mell.4873]

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Outside of the explicitly allowed macros, you are not allowed to chain 2 actions to 1 mouse click.

Honestly they have no way of checking or finding out unless you macro a whole string of actions.