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Message to Qfy and SC: Stop doing public benchmarks...


Vanlong.1627

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Hi all,

Just before I start, I mostly play as a chrono, in fractals (mostly PUG). T4 and CM included. People love me, I'm always wanted, but I'm kind of fed up seeing people kicking some classes (scourge or herald for instance). Also, your websites are absolutely AMAZING. Like a lot of players, I read your builds and guides, and this is sooooo useful. You guys are doing a great job.

However... Since you are one of the top PVE guilds in gw2, people listen to you. A little too much.

Let me give you some examples on T4 fractals.1°) Yesterday, I just saw what a healing herald could do. That guy was just awesome. Boonshare + boon duration + heals, we all had our health topped up, with 25 stacks of might, and we just rolled on everything. Yellow icons were everywhere, the red bubble was full, with no druid.2°) On another day, I found myself in a beginner group. The only two who knew what they were doing were me and a scourge. The barriers saved the day. Like... Really.

The problem is that I always find people kicking some classes because they were just stupid enough to just read your benchmarks and think "ok, this is not meta, let's kick".

And in my opinion, this is killing the game. People gear up a specific character, and then they realize they are not so "wanted". Ok, some specs need a rework (reaper...), but most of them are perfectly viable. And Qtfy say it on their website ("don't be class nazi"), but I guess most players just read what they want to read.

So please, keep your benchmarks private, just for your guildies. Or just do something more "elusive" (without numbers), that also acknowledges all the aspects and utility of a class...Try to think of a way to prevent our average Joe from reading a little too much. If another guild wants to do speed runs too, just create a "member area" that we can't all access whenever we want...

Again, I absolutely lOVE your websites. This is definately not an "angry message". Just a humble opinion/suggestion. The only players I'm blaming are those who kick some classes for stupid reasons ("the number was bigger for another class").

(Now I'll just expect a lot of hate from a lot of people ^^ ) + (Don't mind the grammar mistakes !)

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Blame the player, not the game.

Those websites are not responsible for what people do with the information they put out there.

That being said I don’t really disagree with you - quite the opposite - but I think Anet are to blame. At least as far as Raids go (I’m not a Fractals guy): bosses have an enrage timer, and the less time spent on the boss means less chances for someone to mess up the Mechanics and wipe everyone. It is a prime breeding ground for this kind of DPS obsession to take hold. With how Raids are it was only a question of “when” rather than “if”.

DPS benchmarks were inevitable: these websites are only supplying a demand that Anet created with their game design to begin with.

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Information is information. How information is used, or misused, by players should not limit the ability for these groups to produce and share information. If you get kicked from your raid squad because you can't pull the benchmarks of the upper echelons of the player base, please form your own.

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If it's not Qtfy or sc it will be another guild. If it's not a guild, it will be metabattle. If it's not metabattle it will be another site. You can't escape the fact that a meta will be achieved in any game and players that have little time to play will always stuck to the meta for the simple reason that it proved to work. And they will always be sceptical toward something that didn't prove it's worth.

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The main problem comes when some of the professions don't even get benchmarks, and when asked why the response is "it's not worth putting there", even though it could be 25k or above in a raid for a DPS which is well over what's needed for any comfortable kill, but just looks laughable because everyone's been conditioned that way at this point.

Things like "Daredevil Power is useless on everything." doesn't help either, on a website meant to tell players what they should play, instead of what they must play.

Also lots of people are sheep and can't think for themselves, like in every other game where meta is word of god somehow.

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@"Trinn.6592" said:The main problem comes when some of the professions don't even get benchmarks, and when asked why the response is "it's not worth putting there", even though it could be 25k or above in a raid for a DPS which is well over what's needed for any comfortable kill, but just looks laughable because everyone's been conditioned that way at this point.

Things like "Daredevil Power is useless on everything." doesn't help either, on a website meant to tell players what they should play, instead of what they must play.

Also lots of people are sheep and can't think for themselves, like in every other game where meta is word of god somehow.

But there are some cases in which, frankly, it isn't worth the time. Trust me, I spent a solid 5 hours tweaking Power Warrior builds trying to find ANYTHING that could realistically hit higher than 25k. Nope.

Its just not worth advertising certain builds that are grossly under-performing to that degree, and that falls squarely on balance patches to edge them up into the viable range.

Power Reaper, Soulbeast, any warrior/revenant power builds, Deadeye etc, they just really arent in the same range as other builds. It takes time, resources, and continual effort each patch cycle to update these builds. We can napkin math from patch notes to see if a change was significant enough to bring something into viability, and if its not a 10-20%+ increase across the board on some of these builds, it simply isn't worth it.

And we're talking some pretty "heavy" looking buffs to power warrior with those changes they had last patch, but it simply was not enough. The "Damage to Animation Time" ratio of a lot of these power builds simply are not there compared to even modest builds, like Power Holosmith, Dragonhunter, and Daredevil. Look at the DPS contribution of the warriors GS and Axe skills, and even Dagger skills from Spellbreaker. Compare them with the dps potential of the other professions for "time spent to complete damage" and then look at the presence or absence of damage modifiers between builds. That is where the issue is found when comparing why "Holosmith works" as a power dps and others do not.

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The thing is. They just show, what works best for them!And people take it and say, thats written in stone.

So. An ele without buffs wont do anywhere near the same dmg as a mirage without buffs.

So use ur brains. Our main mesmer player always sits like 10 hours there after a balance patch and works out a build, that works best for our group.

Or we play with a healing renegade. The burstheal is the highest you can get in the game.And its like the only charakter i saw, that can solo outheal the heavy dmg ae in the dmg testing room. Without having too much problems.

And im excited bout todays balance patch. With the alacrity change. It might even be possible to play like renegade heal, dps buff chrono, necro barrier/heal support tank.

That would really spice things up

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Maybe they should just expand their parameters and views on what's viable, and also provide more boss specific information. I see in their sites what's meta for a given boss but they state no reasons as to why that is. A few sentences as description couldn't hurt. Or maybe someone could set up a raid build and rotations website with a guild that doesn't speedclear, as something like that might be a lot of unpaid work for just 10 people.

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@"Yannir.4132" said:Maybe they should just expand their parameters and views on what's viable, and also provide more boss specific information. I see in their sites what's meta for a given boss but they state no reasons as to why that is. A few sentences as description couldn't hurt. Or maybe someone could set up a raid build and rotations website with a guild that doesn't speedclear, as something like that might be a lot of unpaid work for just 10 people.

SC does this:They have "Variation Options" and "Why this set up?" for each boss, where they explain what skills/professions are also good and why they use these professions/builds.

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@Swiftwynd.1685 said:

@"Trinn.6592" said:The main problem comes when some of the professions don't even get benchmarks, and when asked why the response is "it's not worth putting there", even though it could be 25k or above in a raid for a DPS which is well over what's needed for any comfortable kill, but just looks laughable because everyone's been conditioned that way at this point.

Things like "Daredevil Power is useless on everything." doesn't help either, on a website meant to tell players what they should play, instead of what they must play.

Also lots of people are sheep and can't think for themselves, like in every other game where meta is word of god somehow.

But there are some cases in which, frankly, it isn't worth the time. Trust me, I spent a solid 5 hours tweaking Power Warrior builds trying to find ANYTHING that could realistically hit higher than 25k. Nope.

Its just not worth advertising certain builds that are grossly under-performing to that degree, and that falls squarely on balance patches to edge them up into the viable range.

Power Reaper, Soulbeast, any warrior/revenant power builds, Deadeye etc, they just really arent in the same range as other builds. It takes time, resources, and continual effort each patch cycle to update these builds. We can napkin math from patch notes to see if a change was significant enough to bring something into viability, and if its not a 10-20%+ increase across the board on some of these builds, it simply isn't worth it.

And we're talking some pretty "heavy" looking buffs to power warrior with those changes they had last patch, but it simply was not enough. The "Damage to Animation Time" ratio of a lot of these power builds simply are not there compared to even modest builds, like Power Holosmith, Dragonhunter, and Daredevil. Look at the DPS contribution of the warriors GS and Axe skills, and even Dagger skills from Spellbreaker. Compare them with the dps potential of the other professions for "time spent to complete damage" and then look at the presence or absence of damage modifiers between builds. That is where the issue is found when comparing why "Holosmith works" as a power dps and others do not.

You can get 30k+ on power war if you go for a selfish dps build and assume there is another war with banners.

As for op: qT is pretty much dead so you won’t see benchmarks from them at least

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Kitty's also testing various weapon/build/profession combinations quite widely (Kitty's doesn't call them benchmarks here as some people might feel offended) and she publishes the numbers she gets on her site and videos of those test runs on this youtube channel. Kitty's starting with the simplier and metabuilds and she'll eventually expand her results to include support DPS, grieving and tank DPS builds during next 3 months ('cause one person testing about 200+ builds takes some time).

Unfortunately, Kitty's test results are a bit corrupted by her skill level (a bit or two above average raider but far from top 1%) and some variance in her suitability to certain build (Kitty admits that she's horrible at heavily movement-dependant builds like power and condi daredevil and some complicated builds like power weaver but let's call that "deeerp factor"). And also limited amount of samples as she only gives a build 8 test runs at max.

But at least dem big boys say "she's always 5k below the benchmark" so guess Kitty's performance is somewhat stable. Kitty's also played many of the tested builds in raids and her numbers on DPS golem bosses have correlated quite well with her earlier test results.

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All they provided is info as some said, its the players behaviour in the example (kicking). Nothing wrong to cross reference with benchmarks for reference etc. The numbers is just a benchmark (the more accurate the better) and nothing else. It will still rely on the players to pull the numbers, could be worse, or could be better at times.

But yeh some classes is acceptable and probably can be polished for a slight improvement. Won't be the first but definately viable if much research is done. Thats how some variable/viable builds become potential meta.

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I've seen the same problems as you OP, if it's not on one of the Meta Benchmarks it must be terrible and will be kicked - it's incredible. I'm playing Scepter/Warhorn FA Tempest (the build that used to be highest DPS for a while) and since it disappeared from almost all Benchmarks I've actually had people blame specifically me for the lack of dps while we had a Staff Weaver (who admittedly CAN do more DPS than I can) who was dead or downed 40% of the time and failed his rotation the other 60% of the time but they still asked me to play Staff Weaver because it apparently does more DPS by default. People just don't understand that copying a build from qT doesn't mean you do more damage - it just means that you have a build with the potential to do more damage. I'm 99% sure that I can outdps about 80% of all staff Weaver players with my FA Scepter/Warhorn Tempest just because 80% of all Staff Weaver players don't actually know what they're doing (Don't nail me down on that 80% statement).

And it gets even worse when you play something more out-of-the-box like power reaper, I have no idea why anyone would pick some random weaver who probably spends the most time dead/downed over a spec that is basically immortal and can't really do anything wrong and will thus always have decent dps uptime and a few useful tricks up his sleeve, like pulling downed weavers towards himself to rezz them.

As for Healer, OP already said it but healing revenant is just as good as druid most of the time and thanks to support renegade + firebrand we finally have a decent replacement for Chronomancer as well now. That was something that bothered me for quite a while that Chronomancer didn't really have any alternative, if we wanted alacrity and Quickness we had no other choice but now we do but people don't quite seem to be able to let go of their precious druid + Chrono setup.

Unfortunatly I don't see a real solution for that problem since it's purely a community thing - we have the options, people are just too stuck in their old ways.A good start is what Kitty's doing, showing people that other builds can be viable as well. Another thing you can do to improve the situation is, pay attention when you have a fractal group and be more open towards different builds ;)

Build diversity is, in my opinion, one of the most important things for a MMORPG to be enjoyable and in the case of GW2 I think we have a large amount of "viable" builds and a bunch of "top tier" builds. Now the only thing we as a community have to do is: Accept the fact that "viable" is not the same as "top tier", there are good builds outside those top tier builds. The top tier builds are meant for "speedruns", they aren't the most optimal build in everything - only in clearing specific content in a specific setup as fast as possible. But you can play a completely different build and still clear content in a reasonable time (+1-5 Minutes in comparison to "meta builds").

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One thing that Qt was good at doing - was also saying run this util/that when fighting a particular boss.

The thing people forget is: DPS should be high, but you also need the right utilities/other skills to make a boss fight easier. Team composition is everything, and how it works together and having professions in bubbles (max dps config only) compared vs what to expect for a boss, raid or dungeon will not be optimal.

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@"TwilightSoul.9048" said:I've seen the same problems as you OP, if it's not on one of the Meta Benchmarks it must be terrible and will be kicked - it's incredible. I'm playing Scepter/Warhorn FA Tempest (the build that used to be highest DPS for a while) and since it disappeared from almost all Benchmarks I've actually had people blame specifically me for the lack of dps while we had a Staff Weaver (who admittedly CAN do more DPS than I can) who was dead or downed 40% of the time and failed his rotation the other 60% of the time but they still asked me to play Staff Weaver because it apparently does more DPS by default. People just don't understand that copying a build from qT doesn't mean you do more damage - it just means that you have a build with the potential to do more damage. I'm 99% sure that I can outdps about 80% of all staff Weaver players with my FA Scepter/Warhorn Tempest just because 80% of all Staff Weaver players don't actually know what they're doing (Don't nail me down on that 80% statement).

And it gets even worse when you play something more out-of-the-box like power reaper, I have no idea why anyone would pick some random weaver who probably spends the most time dead/downed over a spec that is basically immortal and can't really do anything wrong and will thus always have decent dps uptime and a few useful tricks up his sleeve, like pulling downed weavers towards himself to rezz them.

As for Healer, OP already said it but healing revenant is just as good as druid most of the time and thanks to support renegade + firebrand we finally have a decent replacement for Chronomancer as well now. That was something that bothered me for quite a while that Chronomancer didn't really have any alternative, if we wanted alacrity and Quickness we had no other choice but now we do but people don't quite seem to be able to let go of their precious druid + Chrono setup.

Unfortunatly I don't see a real solution for that problem since it's purely a community thing - we have the options, people are just too stuck in their old ways.A good start is what Kitty's doing, showing people that other builds can be viable as well. Another thing you can do to improve the situation is, pay attention when you have a fractal group and be more open towards different builds ;)

Build diversity is, in my opinion, one of the most important things for a MMORPG to be enjoyable and in the case of GW2 I think we have a large amount of "viable" builds and a bunch of "top tier" builds. Now the only thing we as a community have to do is: Accept the fact that "viable" is not the same as "top tier", there are good builds outside those top tier builds. The top tier builds are meant for "speedruns", they aren't the most optimal build in everything - only in clearing specific content in a specific setup as fast as possible. But you can play a completely different build and still clear content in a reasonable time (+1-5 Minutes in comparison to "meta builds").

Necro immortal?

HahahahahahahaGood joke.

Had to laugh pretty long.

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@Swiftwynd.1685 said:

@"Trinn.6592" said:The main problem comes when some of the professions don't even get benchmarks, and when asked why the response is "it's not worth putting there", even though it could be 25k or above in a raid for a DPS which is well over what's needed for any comfortable kill, but just looks laughable because everyone's been conditioned that way at this point.

Things like "Daredevil Power is useless on everything." doesn't help either, on a website meant to tell players what they should play, instead of what they must play.

Also lots of people are sheep and can't think for themselves, like in every other game where meta is word of god somehow.

But there are some cases in which, frankly, it isn't worth the time. Trust me, I spent a solid 5 hours tweaking Power Warrior builds trying to find ANYTHING that could realistically hit higher than 25k. Nope.

Its just not worth advertising certain builds that are grossly under-performing to that degree, and that falls squarely on balance patches to edge them up into the viable range.

Power Reaper, Soulbeast, any warrior/revenant power builds, Deadeye etc, they just really arent in the same range as other builds. It takes time, resources, and continual effort each patch cycle to update these builds. We can napkin math from patch notes to see if a change was significant enough to bring something into viability, and if its not a 10-20%+ increase across the board on some of these builds, it simply isn't worth it.

And we're talking some pretty "heavy" looking buffs to power warrior with those changes they had last patch, but it simply was not enough. The "Damage to Animation Time" ratio of a lot of these power builds simply are not there compared to even modest builds, like Power Holosmith, Dragonhunter, and Daredevil. Look at the DPS contribution of the warriors GS and Axe skills, and even Dagger skills from Spellbreaker. Compare them with the dps potential of the other professions for "time spent to complete damage" and then look at the presence or absence of damage modifiers between builds. That is where the issue is found when comparing why "Holosmith works" as a power dps and others do not.

Try again, people are hitting 35k+ on power spellbreaker right now. There are at least three different power war builds running on Reddit hitting those numbers.

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