Personal DPS and other self-tracking

[Cyndercat.7615]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Hello, Giraffe #2.

This is common miss-attribution. People give all of the credit to DPS meters for making them aware that DPS exists, when throughout the history of the game players have been becoming aware of the DPS concept without meters. It's just rates, and once somebody grasps rates they begin to improve via common sense: don't cancel, string DPS skills together as fast as possible, prioritize the big numbers with short animation times, etc. All the meter did here as make you aware of a problem that you probably would've solved automatically as you became better at mashing buttons. Likewise, you taught yourself burst damage by experimenting with skills on your own. The fact that you didn't automatically know what the burst rotation was from the meter is proof enough that the meter wasn't the one helping you. A systematic approach is used when there's a lack of understanding in the method.

Also, there's a contradicting example: me. Ever since the servers moved and my health started failing my DPS hovers at around 70%, even for the easy classes. No matter what I do. Copying rotations and skills doesn't do anything, because my skills will randomly cancel when other people's don't, my character will randomly stall for 1/4th to 1/2 of a second where other people's don't, the game will eat inputs and not respond to button presses while other people don't have this problem. I once spent an entire day repeating the first 30 seconds of a fight on the DPS golem to try to emulate chrono burst. Three hours, resetting every 30 seconds, came to around 360 consecutive trials with absolutely no improvement. What am I doing wrong? No idea. The game magically refuses to work for me. I can't even replicate my failures, because sometimes a skill will cancel/delay/vanish and sometimes it doesn't with no indication as to why. The meter doesn't tell me what the problem is, all it does is spit out data and metaphorically shrugs, because all of the deficiencies in my performance are out of my control.

Dont call me giraffe 2.

Ive played since launch and I didnt get better at dps until I installed a meter. I didnt get better for 4 years through 'button mashing' and I wouldnt have done either unless the dps meter was there.

The fact I didnt know it automatically is not proof at all. I actually used tools at my disposal and learned something I couldnt without that tool. Its actually ridiculous to say that because I didnt magically gain knowledge just from installing a meter that its worthless.

If you have lag thats a totally seperate issue and not mine or dps meteres fault.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

You just gave an example yourself. "Never seen it happen, except for all the times I've seen it happen." I've seen LFGs demand specific classes all the time, and since I've seen it I really don't care if you have or have not. It's real.

Never seen it happen with regards to thieves and revs. Seen it happen with necro. Different examples. Dont strawman my argument. You even said 'probably happens all the time'. Indicating you dont have a clue if it happens or not. Now you change to 'i see it all the time'. Well maybe in NA it happens all the time. In EU it does not.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It's called combat. The enemy is trying to kill you. Sometimes, they succeed. Random and bad things happen all the time, and the mechanics are meant to be dangerous. Or are you trying to argue that every time somebody drops below 90% health it is solely because they lost the clarity to maintain good health?

Yes its either because the player or his teammates played poorely. Raids are a static environment, they never change. Its perfectly reasonable for someone to anticipate oncoming damage and avoid it to remain above 90% if they are a highly experienced player as the damage happens the same way every single time and can be learned to be avoided.

[Maikimaik.1974]

Meters to measure your own dps? Sure, go ahead.Meters to measure other peoples dps and then judge them, insult them and kick them out because they're not dealing enough damage? No. I can't see any other reason to why you should measure other peoples dps except for disgusting elitism.

[Cyndercat.7615]

@Maikimaik.1974 said:Meters to measure your own dps? Sure, go ahead.Meters to measure other peoples dps and then judge them, insult them and kick them out because they're not dealing enough damage? No. I can't see any other reason to why you should measure other peoples dps except for disgusting elitism.

But what if a player joins an experienced clear group and then does less damage than the druid. Should the rest of the group just put up with it and carry them?

What if 3 of these players join and make it impossible to pass dps checks. Should the other 7 players just give up?

[Gehenna.3625]

@Maikimaik.1974 said:Meters to measure your own dps? Sure, go ahead.Meters to measure other peoples dps and then judge them, insult them and kick them out because they're not dealing enough damage? No. I can't see any other reason to why you should measure other peoples dps except for disgusting elitism.

Then perhaps you should try to think beyond this binary reasoning.

First of all, the tool doesn't create elitism. It's already there. So find people who aren't like that to play with. This attitude will show itself with out without parsers.

Secondly, already described in this thread, when doing boss fights with enrage timers, it's the only way that you will be able to tell who needs to improve when you fail as a group. You cannot expect to remain anonymous in that type of content. What you want requires perfect honesty from players and that's just not realistic.

So that right there is why parsers are needed for content like that.

It baffles me that people think that by not having parsers suddenly they'll be protected from elitism. That's not going to happen. If you do not want to share your DPS or heal values with the rest of the group, then raiding is not for you. It is that simple. If you do not want elitist attitudes, hang out with different people. That's also that simple. Don't blame the tool, but the person. They will be elitist without that tool just the same. You should not want to hang with them.

Besides, for a lot of raiders this is how they like to play and I don't think you have the right to kill their enjoyment so you can have yours at their expense. It's not cool.

[Shikaru.7618]

@Maikimaik.1974 said:Meters to measure your own dps? Sure, go ahead.Meters to measure other peoples dps and then judge them, insult them and kick them out because they're not dealing enough damage? No. I can't see any other reason to why you should measure other peoples dps except for disgusting elitism.

To turn this around to be more constructive, how would you propose a raid group be run in order to be successful without the disgusting elitism as you put it? Everyone can only see their personal data on the meter and you keep wiping on a boss. You're the commander of the squad. How do you rectify the situation?

[sigur.9453]

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@Maikimaik.1974 said:Meters to measure your own dps? Sure, go ahead.Meters to measure other peoples dps and then judge them, insult them and kick them out because they're not dealing enough damage? No. I can't see any other reason to why you should measure other peoples dps except for disgusting elitism.

To turn this around to be more constructive, how would you propose a raid group be run in order to be successful without the disgusting elitism as you put it? Everyone can only see their personal data on the meter and you keep wiping on a boss. You're the commander of the squad. How do you rectify the situation?

It's easy, kick everyone and try again. Lfg would be full all the time, yay!

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:Even DPS meters aren't needed, because we have rage timers in raids (or whatever you want to call them).No. Enrage timers are the only reason why you would actually need DPS meters. So the opposite is true. When you have enrage timers you need to kill the boss within that time. If your group fails to achieve this, you want to solve that problem and improve your DPS so you can beat the boss. But how can you solve it and improve, when you don't know where the problem is? DPS meters will tell you where the problem is.

This here is probably one of the biggest myths with DPS meters. They don't tell you how to improve. At all. They don't tell you where the problem is. They just give you a measure of your current standing. Saying a DPS meter improves your DPS is like saying a yardstick makes you taller. The only way a DPS meter "solves" the problem is if you kick players with lower DPS and invite in somebody better.

That's the actual myth. The DPS tool helps improve your DPS BEFORE you join a Raid. You should PREPARE beforehand. And yes, if you're underperforming in a group you can also see that and work to improve that. Some groups might kick you, others will give you tips on how to improve your build. And if you did your preparation work, the changes required will be minimal, and doable. Usually a trait or a issue with your rotation.

This is the victim mentality at work... "It's not me that's underperforming, its "them" that are the elitists".

[Obtena.7952]

@yann.1946 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@deadpool.7036 said:

@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:

I used the term

current example

to show the problem with an example. As it is explained in the

How to Give Good Feedback

, I should not only use personal assumptions but also mention an example, what I did. It is a good example for that case, as it shows easily where the risks are. In addition I gave a little hint, how to avoid such situations in a direct tone.

Unless I'm mistaken, this was your only contribution and argument. If not, I apoligize.

What I've seen, is that all examples of why DPS meters are abusive snd should be banned have been anecdotal or straw-man in the presentation. No real data, no concrete evidence of it affecting the community as a whole... Just players who ran into a jerk one day and use it against the topic. And ultimately, people have proved that pre-meter... People were jerks about the same thing in other ways.

So (I may be stretching a bit here) there's still no valid argument presented as to why they should be banned. Although I think not discouraging a community to download a network sniffer is a poor response to the current situation. (Again, no offense deltaconnected, I think what you've done is awesome. I'm just not going to use it.)

I would say that players encountering other players that abuse the information IS about as valid an argument as you can get for not having DPS meters. This is fundamentally a service that provides entertainment to players. If there was a feature in it that allowed players to abuse others, I would seriously question the purpose of that feature in an entertainment service, unless the players were knowingly using that service to be abused for their own entertainment.

While the core of you're argument might seem correct this line of thinking is way to much in absolutes.

Achievement points can be used to abuse other players, and they do get used for this from time to time.

The amount of AR that shows during fractals also can be used to kick people.

Do you think these 2 things are fine? '

No, it's not fine to beat people over the head with those things either ... but I know where you're going with this and just because those things ARE ingame and people are abused by them does not make it OK for the same to happen with a DPS meter. The argument for DPS meters isn't that people are already abused so it's OK for more abusive tools to get added.

Even if that's debatable to you, it's simply untrue that the only way to monitor and improve your performance is through a DPS meter ... It's not even the best way of all the available methods. If you break it down to what you are trying to do, DPS meters do not collect data, they simply show you a real time snapshot. That's not going to allow anyone to scientifically evaluate their performance.

It appears you don't really know what dps meters can do.

No, it appears that people are applying a very broad brush to their definition for what DPS meters do. There isn't any ambiguity in the term 'DPS Meter'. If people mean something beyond a meter that measures DPS, they should be more explicit.

[deadpool.7036]

Well a DPS meter might do the following.

Track total damage, damage over time, damage taken, damage taken over time, healing done, healing over time, healing taken, healing taken over time, up time per boon/condition on self, uptime on boon/condition per target, interrupts, stuns, times you were downed, time spent downed, revive count, time spent reviving, misc CC abilities... I'm sure there is more. It's a performance tracker, almost exclusively known as a DPS meter.

All this information can displayed as bar graphs in real time. Viewable afterward as a play by play break down. Percentages, totals, etc.

See the "Details!" add-on for wow for an in-depth view on a quality dps meter.

Edit: And to add to this, it's better if everyone in a group is running it because certain things in the game may prevent the data from being seen. Maybe the combat log doesn't log if something happens 5000 units away, or being dead takes you out of combat, etc.

[Shikaru.7618]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@yann.1946 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@deadpool.7036 said:

@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:

I used the term

current example

to show the problem with an example. As it is explained in the

How to Give Good Feedback

, I should not only use personal assumptions but also mention an example, what I did. It is a good example for that case, as it shows easily where the risks are. In addition I gave a little hint, how to avoid such situations in a direct tone.

Unless I'm mistaken, this was your only contribution and argument. If not, I apoligize.

What I've seen, is that all examples of why DPS meters are abusive snd should be banned have been anecdotal or straw-man in the presentation. No real data, no concrete evidence of it affecting the community as a whole... Just players who ran into a jerk one day and use it against the topic. And ultimately, people have proved that pre-meter... People were jerks about the same thing in other ways.

So (I may be stretching a bit here) there's still no valid argument presented as to why they should be banned. Although I think not discouraging a community to download a network sniffer is a poor response to the current situation. (Again, no offense deltaconnected, I think what you've done is awesome. I'm just not going to use it.)

I would say that players encountering other players that abuse the information IS about as valid an argument as you can get for not having DPS meters. This is fundamentally a service that provides entertainment to players. If there was a feature in it that allowed players to abuse others, I would seriously question the purpose of that feature in an entertainment service, unless the players were knowingly using that service to be abused for their own entertainment.

While the core of you're argument might seem correct this line of thinking is way to much in absolutes.

Achievement points can be used to abuse other players, and they do get used for this from time to time.

The amount of AR that shows during fractals also can be used to kick people.

Do you think these 2 things are fine? '

No, it's not fine to beat people over the head with those things either ... but I know where you're going with this and just because those things ARE ingame and people are abused by them does not make it OK for the same to happen with a DPS meter. The argument for DPS meters isn't that people are already abused so it's OK for more abusive tools to get added.

Even if that's debatable to you, it's simply untrue that the only way to monitor and improve your performance is through a DPS meter ... It's not even the best way of all the available methods. If you break it down to what you are trying to do, DPS meters do not collect data, they simply show you a real time snapshot. That's not going to allow anyone to scientifically evaluate their performance.

It appears you don't really know what dps meters can do.

No, it appears that people are applying a very broad brush to their definition for what DPS meters do. There isn't any ambiguity in the term 'DPS Meter'. If people mean something beyond a meter that measures DPS, they should be more explicit.

For the sake of definitions for everyone in this thread.

Dps meter - the area stats tab of arc. This only shows dps and/or damage dealt. There is no other combat data ie. Boon uptime, mechanics failed or skill rotation.

Combat log - records line by line all combat related data such as boons, damage, skill usage, and mechanics. Typically this log is hard to read because it's a line by line of every damage packet that happens.

VG takes 413 damage from bleeding.VG takes 576 damage from burning.VG takes 700 damage from Quickshot.Etc

Combat log parser - a tool that reads the log and organizes the data in a way that is more sensible. This is dps reports and gw2raidar.

People seem to be lumping all of the capabilities of arc and raidar into the overarching umbrella of dps meter so people are talking about different things. The confusion is that in the context of gw2, the only dps meter is all three of these things so when the term dps meter is brought up, people think about arc and all of its capabilities instead of just the meter portion.

[deadpool.7036]

My apologies to all involved. Please check the original post for further clarification as to what I intend to discuss here.

[deadpool.7036]

@Obtena.7952 said:There isn't any ambiguity in the term 'DPS Meter'. If people mean something beyond a meter that measures DPS, they should be more explicit.

I'm really hoping this can help bridge a gap here.

There is ambiguity because you mean one thing and a laundry list of other people mean something else. It's a term that stretches far beyond GW2 and farther back than a decade. So yeah, maybe we need to define terms.

And even if this is the case for you... An improvement and expansion on something that is only a DPS meter (if we wanted improvements so that it would do more than just damage tracking, which is the primary interpretation of the context of this thread, pre and post edit) would be something even you would want. You know, TRACK EVERYTHING, so a low-dps can show they: did mechanics, kept buffs up, healed as well, took tons of damage away from other players with less self-sustain, revived other players, didn't go down, etc...

[Obtena.7952]

@deadpool.7036 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:There isn't any ambiguity in the term 'DPS Meter'. If people mean something beyond a meter that measures DPS, they should be more explicit.

I'm really hoping this can help bridge a gap here.

There is ambiguity because you mean one thing and a laundry list of other people mean something else. It's a term that stretches far beyond GW2 and farther back than a decade. So yeah, maybe we need to define terms.

And even if this is the case for you... An improvement and expansion on something that is only a DPS meter (if we wanted improvements so that it would do more than just damage tracking, which is the primary interpretation of the context of this thread, pre and post edit) would be something even you would want. You know, TRACK EVERYTHING, so a low-dps can show they: did mechanics, kept buffs up, healed as well, took tons of damage away from other players with less self-sustain, revived other players, didn't go down, etc...

Yes you are right ... and I've been clear that I'm all for something that isn't JUST a DPS meter, because in the most literal terms, I think a DPS meter is the worst tool available to a person to improve their performance.

I mean, if a meter tells me I'm doing 25K DPS ... I'm still not knowing anything about where my floor/ceiling DPS is or what I'm not doing to achieve it or if I'm actually burdening my teammates in any way to get it (that can happen in some MMOs) , etc ... . It's simply insufficient. So if you want to broaden DPS meter to mean a wide scope of measures that aren't just about personal DPS, then that's pretty important distinction because based on the discussion, I'm not the only one here that has taken DPS meter at it's literal meaning.

[DiabolicalHamSandwich.8756]

I don't use them, have no reason to use them at this moment, don't particularly care if others use them. If folks want to measure their own DPS, by all means. If you want a peek at other's DPS, do you. It's when folks don't keep it to themselves, bringing it out in unneeded situations. When folks start speaking on DPS in the most mundane places, or they start to masturbate about their DPS to people who give less then a squirt about it. That's when the "throw that crap in the fire" starts for me.

With that said, I have only seen this happen a handful of times in GW2. So as far as i'm concerned, they were outlier experiences. Whatever dislike/thoughts I have for them though, comes from other games brought with me. I couldn't care less about the tool. It's when a tool starts to use that tool.

[yann.1946]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@yann.1946 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@deadpool.7036 said:

@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:

I used the term

current example

to show the problem with an example. As it is explained in the

How to Give Good Feedback

, I should not only use personal assumptions but also mention an example, what I did. It is a good example for that case, as it shows easily where the risks are. In addition I gave a little hint, how to avoid such situations in a direct tone.

Unless I'm mistaken, this was your only contribution and argument. If not, I apoligize.

What I've seen, is that all examples of why DPS meters are abusive snd should be banned have been anecdotal or straw-man in the presentation. No real data, no concrete evidence of it affecting the community as a whole... Just players who ran into a jerk one day and use it against the topic. And ultimately, people have proved that pre-meter... People were jerks about the same thing in other ways.

So (I may be stretching a bit here) there's still no valid argument presented as to why they should be banned. Although I think not discouraging a community to download a network sniffer is a poor response to the current situation. (Again, no offense deltaconnected, I think what you've done is awesome. I'm just not going to use it.)

I would say that players encountering other players that abuse the information IS about as valid an argument as you can get for not having DPS meters. This is fundamentally a service that provides entertainment to players. If there was a feature in it that allowed players to abuse others, I would seriously question the purpose of that feature in an entertainment service, unless the players were knowingly using that service to be abused for their own entertainment.

While the core of you're argument might seem correct this line of thinking is way to much in absolutes.

Achievement points can be used to abuse other players, and they do get used for this from time to time.

The amount of AR that shows during fractals also can be used to kick people.

Do you think these 2 things are fine? '

No, it's not fine to beat people over the head with those things either ... but I know where you're going with this and just because those things ARE ingame and people are abused by them does not make it OK for the same to happen with a DPS meter. The argument for DPS meters isn't that people are already abused so it's OK for more abusive tools to get added.

My argument is that all these thing have value. Not that it is okay to abuse them.

Ap because the people who go for as much Ap as possible feel like they can flaunt their progress.

AR so people know if everyone has enough without having to force people to stand in the agony puddle.

The fact that I've been belittled on how my character looks is no reason to delete the wardrobe.

This is the crux of my argument.

P..S. The things I asked about where wheter the AR and ap system are fine for you not the abuse.

Even if that's debatable to you, it's simply untrue that the only way to monitor and improve your performance is through a DPS meter ... It's not even the best way of all the available methods. If you break it down to what you are trying to do, DPS meters do not collect data, they simply show you a real time snapshot. That's not going to allow anyone to scientifically evaluate their performance.

It appears you don't really know what dps meters can do.

No, it appears that people are applying a very broad brush to their definition for what DPS meters do. There isn't any ambiguity in the term 'DPS Meter'. If people mean something beyond a meter that measures DPS, they should be more explicit.

I think people just look at the capabilities of arc when they talk about a dps meter.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Obtena.7952 said:I mean, if a meter tells me I'm doing 25K DPS ... I'm still not knowing anything about where my floor/ceiling DPS is or what I'm not doing to achieve it or if I'm actually burdening my teammates in any way to get it (that can happen in some MMOs) , etc ... . It's simply insufficient. So if you want to broaden DPS meter to mean a wide scope of measures that aren't just about personal DPS, then that's pretty important distinction because based on the discussion, I'm not the only one here that has taken DPS meter at it's literal meaning.Well if some people here think that it just shows the DPS and that's it, then there is a big lack of understanding there. I mean yes, it shows your total damage and also the actual damage per second you achieved over the whole fight. Some DPS meters are programmed to the actual game so it can tell you stuff per phase, how often you used each skill, what the percentage is of each skill towards the total damage you did, etc. etc. Defensively it shows also things like how much damage you took in the fight, how much damage per second you took overall. Healing is also there for healers but also how much healing you received. Games with tanks can see stuff about taunting and damage prevented can be in there.

It's a ton of stuff really. And from all that you can tell a lot about what did or didn't happen. I mean if there's a boss where you shouldn't CC you can see how was CC'ing so you can tell em to stop it. If people use a lot of auto-attack, you can see it. If people do lower damage with certain skill than they should, you can check if there's something wrong in their procs or traits etc.

It does depend on the meter or parser but there can be a ton of stuff in there. In SWTOR we had timers in there so when the fight started it synced the timer with the fight and then you'd get countdowns on your screen for tricky phases that were approaching. There were even phases where in the harder modes the DPS check was really hard and so you had a separate DPS measurement just for that phase.

Well, I hope you get the picture. These things are great tools that can be used and it depends on the game and the parser how much it can do, but if you thought it was just telling you your DPS then little did ye know ;) I think that's why I prefer to call them parsers than DPS meters. I mean I can see if you've never used them that DPS meter might give the wrong impression but there it is. It's a LOT more than that.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:So how many thieves and soulbeasts flank VG during his CC?While yeah, they probably know that flanking is good for them, they might not do it in combat without even realizing.The raid combat in this game is rarely random. There are set patterns and timings.Sloth and Matthias are the only random encounters that will change your own DPS outcome.While the walls on SH are random, everyone else has to deal with them. So you can still compare yourself with another person.

I don't care. I've been playing the game for awhile, and I know that unpredictable things happen all the time. Players aren't robots, they don't move and behave in the exact same way every time. You're doubling down on the "compare to other people" thing, which I've already gone over as being wholly impractical, unrealistic, and completely uninformative.

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:And if someone runs the same class but a different build/rotation you can still compare. That person literally showed you that there's another build, probably doing better than yours. You can then parse the log and see what that person has done.

No you can't. This doesn't magically improve your DPS, it is just an extremely long and counter-intuitive method of giving you another person's build, which they had to either devise or copy from elsewhere. Unless your case is that DPS meters improve DPS by solving poor communication issues, which is a cop out Or maybe that this build will somehow improve flanking time, since apparently that's the most important part. I mean, you're really meaning to tell me that all players with DPS meters personally parse their outputs with all other players of a similar class after every encounter in an attempt to find minute variations on how to make a build? Last I checked, there's a million ways to post-rationalize better performance (all of them variations of "play better" and "get lucky"), and the only players who have the time and interest in doing this are the kind of players who are sitting down in front of the test golems to try out different iterations anyway.

The funny thing is, this is all contingent on there being another player who already exists, is currently present, is better than you, has an improved methodology over your current build, and yet for some reason refuses to communicate his new righteous power to the world. But it's totally the meter that makes you better, and not this other guy.

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:Like I said above. There aren't that many random things that only affect your personal DPS.Considering that most people need a second healer in raids, yeah. I actually think that some people don't even have that clarity.

And you were wrong before, too. The entire game is full of random things that affect your personal DPS. Maybe you'll have teammates who mess up. Maybe more players will show up and lag your computer. Maybe someone starts spamming knockbacks and blows enemies out of the way. Maybe someone draws aggro and forces you to avoid attacks just to survive. Maybe your teammates are better than expected, and kill/phase enemies before you get all of your skills off. Maybe enemy RNG will cause them to fixate on you. Maybe other players get distracted by IRL issues that causes them to mess up. Maybe the enemy will go into an odd rotation instead of using their skills normally. Maybe somebody is trying out a different build that they didn't communicate to their teammates, so they act in an odd fashion that messes everything up.

I'll clear this up right now: this isn't just about raids. You can take a DPS meter anywhere in the game. You have to take them into consideration for the entirety of the game.

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

So where does snwocrows copy from to get the builds everyone else can copy?

They have a couple of theorycrafters who can put in the time to repetitiously test out different theories. AKA that whole "make the game a second job" thing I mentioned earlier. You're talking to an old theorycrafter here. I know how to divide damage by activation time to get damage per second, and divide that by total recharge time to get total DPS contribution over a given period of combat.

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:You can still compare yourself with other people in the same subgroup. The boons should be equal there.

It's still meaningless because they are still factors out of your control that you can do nothing about.

You remind me of a couple of math professors I've had. To anyone not in the know, college science professors are among the worst teachers you'll ever get, for two reasons. One of them is that they're just teaching to get further bonuses for their own projects. The second being that they're so wrapped up in their own little ivory tower that they've forgotten how everyone else is. The worst case I had was a physics professor who claimed that the class required no memorization, asserting that you could derive every single one of the dozens of equations using only logic and calculus, while also refusing to let us use calculators because he believed it was easy to do square root functions in our heads.

This is you. The case you're making here is essentially "DPS meters improve you, so long as you have the natural inclination, drive, and free time to improve DPS while also having intimate a priori knowledge of the game's systems in which you can systematically and heuristically improve through various iterations and directly testing hypothesis, but ignore all of that latter stuff. It's totally the DPS meter that does all of it." You're taking the all of the creativity, ingenuity, and drive that existed long before DPS meters existed, and saying post hoc that DPS meters are responsible for all of it just because you know that is the real thing that improves people. We were comparing lupi speedkills and dungeon speedclears long before there was a DPS meter in the game. The only thing the meter does is make measuring the outcome of our efforts more convenient. Like how a yard stick is better than counting hands.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@maddoctor.2738 said:It means you aren't actively going into flank positions. Or maybe you need to remember what flanking means. Now if you DO understand what flanking means, and your flanking percentage is very low, then you are having other issues, even more so, if others in your team are perfectly capable of flanking when you are not.

I don't care. It still isn't improving you.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Reading the rotation and performing it well are two completely different things. The guide will tell you the rotation, the meter will tell you how well you performed that rotation.

So then it is the combination of a guide + practice that improves you.

@maddoctor.2738 said:No I'm trying to say that there are examples of failing that are based on your own mistakes, for example failing to stay closer to their healers to keep your health up. There is even a graph that shows how the actual fight went, and you can see where you were during the fight. Positioning is important and you can't really learn that from reading a guide.

You just said above that the reason why people don't flank is because they've lost the clarity to flank. You can also learn positioning by reading a guide. Fairly easily, in fact. Most guides have the same general advice: stand behind the boss opposite of the chronotank to avoid his cleave, and then get into specific positions on the map to avoid massive telegraphed AoEs.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Copying a snowcrows build doesn't mean you mastered it or that you can actually perform well using that build. Crawling over logs will give you insight on what you did wrong, even without noticing, no especially without noticing. You might think you are doing the rotation well, but then figure out that in reality you are not. You might believe you are flanking, but in reality you are not. The all mighty players that believe that just because they copied Snowcrows are actually masters of the game (when they aren't) are too many in this game. If that was even remotely true then we wouldn't see any huge dps differences, after all, they are all using Snowcrows builds right? Using a build is more than copying the traits and skills, something a guide will never be able to tell you. Seeing in action though? That's way more important and valuable as a lesson.

Generally, if I eat a gigantic attack or half of my moves get interrupted, I know what went wrong. Funny thing about DPS is that you can feel it. There are a lot of non-meter queues that you're doing well or not doing well. From these, improving on the parts that you messed up on are second nature, so long as you have the wherewithal to know what "wrong" is. I mean, if you're a staff camping power necro, then there's a lot that needs to be done. Aside from all that, the number of players who use the raid-tailored full glass builds and tactics is surprisingly low. I usually do pug runs and overworld stuff, and most player's performance is so low that I swear they're all in masterwork gear.

@maddoctor.2738 said:It improves the team as a whole, which is why I said this type of meter data is useful in static groups and not in random groups. The meter "tells you" that it wasn't you at fault but someone else, and that someone else needs to fix their rotations some more.

You know, I've been on a lot of pug groups that use meters. It usually ends in the same way, somebody who previously did not announce they were using a meter freaks out over one player and kicks them while offering no advice and extending no help on the matter. Nobody gets helped, everybody loses. If the meter isn't helping any individual person in the group, then it certainly isn't helping the group as a whole, because the only way a meter can help a person is if it improves their individual performance.

It's a funny thing. One person is telling me that there's no randomness in the way the game works and that everything gets to be perfect, and yet another person is telling me that its all about Actions Per Minute and learned proper positioning. I use the yard stick analogy for a reason: knowing how tall you are doesn't tell you how to get taller. If you know how bad you did in a segment, that doesn't tell you how to get better at that segment. If you know somebody has better APM than you, that doesn't tell you how to get higher APM. The example of flanking is just sad. "Players can divine proper build and theory craft from damage logs with no outside advisory, but they can't figure out if they're standing behind the enemy without a meter to tell them such." Exactly what do you guys expect from players, anyway?

[maddoctor.2738]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:So then it is the combination of a guide + practice that improves you.

Tell me, how do you know that you are performing the rotation well? And don't answer because you do the rotation well on the static golem, that doesn't count.

[yann.1946]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"RaidsAreEasyAF.8652" said:You can still compare yourself with other people in the same subgroup. The boons should be equal there.

It's still meaningless because they are still factors out of your control that you can do nothing about.

You remind me of a couple of math professors I've had. To anyone not in the know, college science professors are among the worst teachers you'll ever get, for to reasons. One of them is that they're just teaching to get further bonuses for their own projects. The second being that they're so wrapped up in their own little ivory tower that they've forgotten how everyone else is. The worst case I had was a physics professor who claimed that the class required no memorization, asserting that you could derive every single one of the dozens of equations using only logic and calculus, while also refusing to let us use calculators because he believed it was easy to do square root functions in our heads.

This is you. The case you're making here is essentially "DPS meters improve you, so long as you have the natural inclination, drive, and free time to improve DPS while also having intimate a priori knowledge of the game's systems in which you can systematically and heuristically improve through various iterations and directly testing hypothesis, but ignore all of that latter stuff. It's totally the DPS meter that does all of it." You're taking the all of the creativity, ingenuity, and drive that existed long before DPS meters existed, and saying post hoc that DPS meters are responsible for all of it

just because you know that is the real thing that improves people.

We were comparing lupi speedkills and dungeon speedclears long before there was a DPS meter in the game. The only thing the meter does is make measuring the outcome of our efforts more convenient. Like how a yard stick is better than counting hands.

To be fair this physics professor was correct in the sense that all these things can be logically derived and should be learned as such to get the most out of it.

On you're general response, i prefer the MRI scanner example. An MRI scanner doesn't magicly cure you, correct. But tell me which hospital doesn't have one, or a doctor who says MRI scanners don't help curing people?

You would be surprised how many people can't tell if their rotation is good. This requires a very specific subset of skills.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@zombyturtle.5980 said:Ive played since launch and I didnt get better at dps until I installed a meter. I didnt get better for 4 years through 'button mashing' and I wouldnt have done either unless the dps meter was there.

The fact I didnt know it automatically is not proof at all. I actually used tools at my disposal and learned something I couldnt without that tool. Its actually ridiculous to say that because I didnt magically gain knowledge just from installing a meter that its worthless.

If you have lag thats a totally seperate issue and not mine or dps meteres fault.

Personally I find it hard to believe that you have practiced, effective rotations on the training golem and yet not a lick of it translated into real gameplay. If you already knew what to do and how to do it, then it is only a matter of time and practiced that you'll eventually get better at that one thing. Then again, the weaver is like that. I also happen to know from experience that playing a staff weaver in PUG fractals is like pulling teeth; all of the skills have long activation times with long animation times, and the build is so frail. It is incredibly easy for things to go wrong, with one of those things being underestimating the burst of your fellow teammates.

But regardless, my point is with my experience that a DPS meter gives absolutely no guidance on how to fix the issues that I am facing. Everything I posted up is just my best guess for why things don't work. To take staff weaver in fractals as an example again, one of the issues with the build is that other players will be late in setting the stage for the fight, ignoring the AoEs I've already placed down and dragging enemies away from them. The meter is definitely going to say my DPS is low, but how do you compensate for unpredictable teammates? The meter certainly doesn't tell me that.

If you're already driven to improve and have enough insight in the game's mechanics to pursue avenues of testing, the meter is a useful tool, but all it does is measure the progress. It doesn't make the progress. I mean, the case you are making here is that you were willfully careless for most of the game's life, and the meter is what made you decided to try harder. That's sort of a you issue.

@zombyturtle.5980 said:Never seen it happen with regards to thieves and revs. Seen it happen with necro. Different examples. Dont strawman my argument. You even said 'probably happens all the time'. Indicating you dont have a clue if it happens or not. Now you change to 'i see it all the time'. Well maybe in NA it happens all the time. In EU it does not.

Here's the secret: I'm not actively playing the game at the moment. There's always a chance that the community as a whole has abruptly decided to stop all of the shenanigans that I complain about. It's very low, but there's still a chance. I have to say "probably" a lot because unless I happen to be standing right there when it happens, I won't have direct information on the subject. Unless you're talking about the scale of the myth, in which case I have no direct measurements other than hearing it a lot.

But nonetheless I have seen it. In the past, I would see groups all the time that asked for specific classes. During the condi era there were a lot of scourge only parties, followed by "REV and FB ONLY". After that, the two popular DPS classes were weaver and holosmith. I'd see "HOLO, WEAVER ONLY" LFGs up on a daily basis. After the updates to Deadeye (before the nerfs), I would see "DEADEYE ONLY" parties. The caps aren't an exaggeration, they would put their demands up just like that. In some of the less restrictive groups, they would just omit certain classes. "No Necro" is the most common one. I would occasionally browse through the raid LFGs, and they'd be asking for specific DPS classes, too. The point of all this is that it is post meter, and thus it contradicts the idea that DPS meters allow disliked classes to prove themselves. When you get groups demanding only Chronobuffer, Druid Healer, and x3 Deadeyes, it means that 5 classes are being omitted via decisions based on the DPS meter. Poor decisions, I might add, since deadeyes have terrible cleave.

Don't say something doesn't happen, then immediately give an example of it happening. The exception does not prove the rule.

@zombyturtle.5980 said:Yes its either because the player or his teammates played poorely. Raids are a static environment, they never change. Its perfectly reasonable for someone to anticipate oncoming damage and avoid it to remain above 90% if they are a highly experienced player as the damage happens the same way every single time and can be learned to be avoided.

If the teammates change then the environment is changing. It is silly to say that the only reason people upkeep the scholar bonus is because the meter tells them to. Not only is it natural to maintain as much health as possible, but when somebody is aware that a certain tactic is the best way to do something, they will continue to attempt to do it without having being told their exact performance. Aside from the flanking example, the scholar bonus is exceptionally ludicrous, because it asserts that players aren't actively trying to stay alive unless the meter tells them to.

[Henry.5713]

By far the best part about ArcDPS or damage meters in general are the recorded logs. They changed damage meters from simple tools to show the live performance of your players during any random run and with so many random things going on into important tools to record, analyse and rather improve yourself and your play as a team. The general performance of our community has been improving dramatically ever since such tools were introduced. This includes personal play as much as build creation and team formation.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:Even DPS meters aren't needed, because we have rage timers in raids (or whatever you want to call them).No. Enrage timers are the only reason why you would actually need DPS meters. So the opposite is true. When you have enrage timers you need to kill the boss within that time. If your group fails to achieve this, you want to solve that problem and improve your DPS so you can beat the boss. But how can you solve it and improve, when you don't know where the problem is? DPS meters will tell you where the problem is.

This here is probably one of the biggest myths with DPS meters. They don't tell you how to improve. At all. They don't tell you where the problem is. They just give you a measure of your current standing. Saying a DPS meter improves your DPS is like saying a yardstick makes you taller. The only way a DPS meter "solves" the problem is if you kick players with lower DPS and invite in somebody better.

It isn't. And it's also a matter of you not reading correctly and making assumptions. So let me try to explain in another way what I said and see if you understand now.

DPS meters, which I call parsers normally, tell you things like who did how much DPS. I don't know the GW2 ones but for SWTOR it tells you a lot more like which skills were used and for how much percentage of your total damage they were responsible as an individual player.

So the first thing you can see is WHERE the problem is. I said where in my post. And once you know where or who in this case, you can look at any additional data to see if there's an indication of what is or isn't happening. For example, again in SWTOR, there were skills that based on a rotation do more damage than if you don't follow the rotation. Call them combo effects. When people do not use this combo of skills this will be visible. Also you see which skills are used as in frequency. So you can see how much auto-attack is going on, to use a GW2 element.

So even though it certainly doesn't tell you everything, calling it a myth that you can find out anything about what improvements via a parser is just false. And the first step when you fail in beating a boss's enrage timer is finding out where the issue is before you go into the how.

People will often say they know what to do, even within guilds and you may be surprised how many people exaggerate their abilities or simply lie because they think they can get away with it and just be lazy. That's a rotten attitude but it happens.

Also doing rotations on test dummies or whatever is not the same as actual boss fights where a lot of movement is involved, especially in GW2 I would say. This movement can be disruptive to the DPS levels you could make on a dummy. So also there the parser is useful to see actual performance. When someone is, for example, not doing nearly as many hits as expected you can look into the why of that. Without that you have nothing to go on. To dismiss that as a myth is just not right. As I said, I agree it doesn't tell you everything but it does give you indications about the who and gives you some starting points at what to look at...provided you know what you're doing with parsers of course.

No, it continues to be false. In order to make the decisions on how to improve on a certain area, you have to already possess in-depth knowledge of the game outside of the meter, along with the creativity to apply that information in a constructive matter in order to resolve a perceived issue. This needs to be combined with both the desire to improve oneself upon that certain task beyond their current standing, as well as having the untapped potential skills with which to do so. The meter gives you none of this.

This information can be be derived without the use of a meter, at least on a personal level. The reason being that, all this vague "how to solve a problem stuff" all boils down to the exact same broad stroke: Take as little damage as possible, and do as much damage as possible. If there's an issue, then either you need to take less damage, or do more damage. You don't need a meter to think "I did squat all at this part. Maybe I should, you know, hit the enemy harder?" Of course, the exact minutia of how to do this isn't given, which is why the DPS meter doesn't solve the problem. If you're already trying as hard as you can and can't come up with a solution to your poor performance, then you're out of luck. Any mechanic more complicated than this is one where a DPS meter provides no support. A DPS meter didn't create the hand-kiting strategy for Deimos. A DPS meter didn't create the P/P Deadeye build for killing Qadim's lava bubbles. A DPS meter didn't create the distortion sharing tactics for Gorseval.

Unless, of course, you're talking about kicking problem players. A meter is great at finding who's doing the lowest DPS. Then you can actually save time, unless you're win-kicking players, in which case it is just worse for everyone.

I say this is the worst myth because it is a common one, expressed in many facets of the world. It's the terrible myth that, if you punish someone for not knowing how to do something, then it somehow teaches a person to do that thing. Not only does punishing somebody NOT spontaneously generate knowledge, but it just manufactures malice, both in you for hating that incompetent person, and in them for having to put up with unrealistic expectations and a cruel system. If you want someone to have better DPS, you tell them how to have better DPS and show them how to have better DPS. You don't tell them to install a meter to reinforce your claim that they're horrible, then expect them to absorb years worth of theorycrafting from an action log they're supposed to somehow know about. I see it all the time in the education system, mostly from liberal arts but also from physics. I worked as a professional tutor for several years at my college, so I had to put up with this nonsense all of this time. "My math teacher wants me to find the geometry for this messed up shape on the test. How was I supposed to know that I have to divide it up into a bunch of triangles on a non-radial axis unlike any problem we've ever seen before?"

It forever irks me that people with creativity, inspiration, and problem solving skills completely fail to realize that nobody else has these traits. We don't even know what creativity is, and we sure as hell can't give it to other people. You'll sit there, saying that the yard stick made you gigantic while being completely unaware that it was years of endless experimentation and theory crafting that made you taller, and hating other people who don't have these mysterious and intangible qualities. This isn't just an annoying myth, it is a harmful one. To someone who's uninitiated to the concepts of rates and experimentation, the DPS meter might as well be magic.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I don't care.

Yes this seems to be your general attitude to anything that doesn't fit your personal narrative.It still isn't improving you.

The tool doesn't improve you directly no, but it helps you identify the issues so you know WHAT to improve as well as it tells a group WHO needs to improve. Those are two very important elements in improvement.You can only actively improve something when you know it's you and you know what you need to do better. Other, more experienced players or guides, can then help with the HOW.

Essentially there are three main elements here to enable improvement. WHO, WHAT and HOW? Parsers help you with the WHO and WHAT. Then the player can get help from other players, video's, guides etc. for the HOW. And then there is the last part which is about the players ability to learn and execute. That is something that no one can do for you. Some people know their limits, some don't.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:So then it is the combination of a guide + practice that improves you.

Tell me, how do you know that you are performing the rotation well? And don't answer because you do the rotation well on the static golem, that doesn't count.

You can tell when the enemies die faster, the rotation feels smoother and flows more easily, you see it canceled and interrupted less, when you personally stall and reposition less, when the numbers appear higher and faster, and you spend less time avoiding being hit by enemy attacks.