Raids are not balanced when there is a 9-10k Difference between professions.

[Obtena.7952]

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:^ true, OP is wrong at the very core of his claim, raids aren't balanced around top tier dps and you don't need anywhere near top tier dps to easly succeed in them. The difference in dps between the classes has nothing to with "raid balance" as long as all of the classes have viable builds to complete them. And as far as I know there's no problem with that.

Necromancers have a lot of fights that Guild Wars 2 Raids sites deem as Unsubstantial and Inefficient.

If that was even remotely relevant to how the game is designed, you would have a point to make an argument with that. The fact is that people do raids all the time with necros ... and those raids succeed. So what is the compelling argument that for Anet to change how the game works? Nothing stops people from using necro and nothing prevents a team with succeeding with necros in that team. If you want optimal peformance, you have it by making different choices.

People get carried all the time.

Your claim here seems to be basically that everyone deals optimal possible dmg for their build and whenever you bring necro, he's automatically getting carried. That's plain wrong. As was said before: you don't need anywhere near top available dps to succeed (or even skip some of the mechanics with it), so saying that raids are imbalanced because some builds have the possibility to outperform other builds' dmg is wrong. It's not a competitive mode.And if necro chooses to go into shroud "because he's low hp" instead of relying on a healer then it's his own choice/problem/fault.

In fights like Twin Largos, Necros do not have a DPS option to do even mediocre DPS.

Way to miss the point.

If you're argument is that Necro needs a DPS buff because being carried isn't ok in a team setting, then YOU don't understand the basic concept behind a team ... because EVERYONE in a team is being carried by their team mates regardless of the DPS they do.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:Why are people so toxic about minmaxing PvE damage lol.

Like, a reaper's damage alone isn't causing anyone to fail a raid.

Like over the course of ten players, if reaper deals 20% less damage than the top-end DPS, here's some head-math:10 players means a given player, assuming perfect balance and everyone playing DPS, does 10% of the overall damage.If we suggest two supports/non-DPS, it's 12.5%.

Assuming all 7 other DPS are the top-end, then the reaper will deal 20% less relatively-speaking. meaning we can knock off 20% evenly and the reaper does 10% flat.This is a 2.56% reduction in kill speed.

If the encounter some some reason takes 8 full minutes, or 480 seconds, the difference in time is... 480*.0256 = 12.3 seconds.

Your reaper is reducing your clear speed by a whopping 12 seconds at the 8 minute mark assuming the rest of the raid is playing theoretical max DPS for completion. That's still nearly 20% of the remaining time on a 10 minute raid.

Even in a party operating entirely of reapers, the net clear time is still only just over one minute slower.

One minute! You're asking to rework a healthily-designed, all-levels-of-play-friendly and fair class for an efficiency difference of a matter of lost

seconds

of time in an MMO of all things.

And of course, this time drops off the faster and better the group is! I see SC put out a video of a sub-two-minute clear today! A reaper instead of a thief or whatever selfish DPS class there adds literally 2 seconds to clear time! That's THREE DODGE ROLLS OF TIME.

How can anyone argue something so asinine?

This is why raids were and are bad for the game. The deviation in terms of performance day-to-day is basically non-existent and has no actual bearing on content completion, yet people are asking for class reworks because something

maybe

doesn't perform perfectly.

Like... it's PvE, where completing the content itself is supposed to be as fun as playing the class. To which most people who play reaper LOVE it. If you're getting your panties in a knot because someone caused you to spend 12 more seconds longer in a raid, you're not enjoying the game and should probably re-evaluate how you're spending your time.

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your

team

: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right?

You see what I or actually

you

did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime.

To get into

somewhat

more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that

you

as a player contributed for, for you

AND

all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario!

Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these!

Percentages

. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant!

Simple!

K.I.S.S. :)

Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a damn about percentages of anything.

Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to not be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually have to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the beginning of play time to impact others cumulatively.

None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds.

And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 884.5 or nearly five hours of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?"

And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the result of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals.

Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of your perspective of needing that "saved time."

The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia.

If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game 100% of the time as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math.

You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate.

If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with real numbers and harms the bulk majority of players.

[Josiah.2967]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Why are people so toxic about minmaxing PvE damage lol.

Like, a reaper's damage alone isn't causing anyone to fail a raid.

Like over the course of ten players, if reaper deals 20% less damage than the top-end DPS, here's some head-math:10 players means a given player, assuming perfect balance and everyone playing DPS, does 10% of the overall damage.If we suggest two supports/non-DPS, it's 12.5%.

Assuming all 7 other DPS are the top-end, then the reaper will deal 20% less relatively-speaking. meaning we can knock off 20% evenly and the reaper does 10% flat.This is a 2.56% reduction in kill speed.

If the encounter some some reason takes 8 full minutes, or 480 seconds, the difference in time is... 480*.0256 = 12.3 seconds.

Your reaper is reducing your clear speed by a whopping 12 seconds at the 8 minute mark assuming the rest of the raid is playing theoretical max DPS for completion. That's still nearly 20% of the remaining time on a 10 minute raid.

Even in a party operating entirely of reapers, the net clear time is still only just over one minute slower.

One minute! You're asking to rework a healthily-designed, all-levels-of-play-friendly and fair class for an efficiency difference of a matter of lost

seconds

of time in an MMO of all things.

And of course, this time drops off the faster and better the group is! I see SC put out a video of a sub-two-minute clear today! A reaper instead of a thief or whatever selfish DPS class there adds literally 2 seconds to clear time! That's THREE DODGE ROLLS OF TIME.

How can anyone argue something so asinine?

This is why raids were and are bad for the game. The deviation in terms of performance day-to-day is basically non-existent and has no actual bearing on content completion, yet people are asking for class reworks because something

maybe

doesn't perform perfectly.

Like... it's PvE, where completing the content itself is supposed to be as fun as playing the class. To which most people who play reaper LOVE it. If you're getting your panties in a knot because someone caused you to spend 12 more seconds longer in a raid, you're not enjoying the game and should probably re-evaluate how you're spending your time.

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your

team

: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right?

You see what I or actually

you

did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime.

To get into

somewhat

more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that

you

as a player contributed for, for you

AND

all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario!

Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these!

Percentages

. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant!

Simple!

K.I.S.S. :)

Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything.

Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to

not

be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually

have

to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the

beginning

of play time to impact others cumulatively.

None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds.

And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 8

8

4.5 or nearly

five hours

of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?"

And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the

result

of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals.

Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of

your

perspective of needing that "saved time."

The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia.

If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game

100% of the time

as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math.

You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate.

If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with

real

numbers and harms the bulk majority of players.

This got toxic fast.

Since we care about real numbers, why don't we balance end game content using benchmarks that can be measured during raid content. Time for balance.

[Sobx.1758]

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:^ true, OP is wrong at the very core of his claim, raids aren't balanced around top tier dps and you don't need anywhere near top tier dps to easly succeed in them. The difference in dps between the classes has nothing to with "raid balance" as long as all of the classes have viable builds to complete them. And as far as I know there's no problem with that.

Necromancers have a lot of fights that Guild Wars 2 Raids sites deem as Unsubstantial and Inefficient.

If that was even remotely relevant to how the game is designed, you would have a point to make an argument with that. The fact is that people do raids all the time with necros ... and those raids succeed. So what is the compelling argument that for Anet to change how the game works? Nothing stops people from using necro and nothing prevents a team with succeeding with necros in that team. If you want optimal peformance, you have it by making different choices.

People get carried all the time.

Your claim here seems to be basically that everyone deals optimal possible dmg for their build and whenever you bring necro, he's automatically getting carried. That's plain wrong. As was said before: you don't need anywhere near top available dps to succeed (or even skip some of the mechanics with it), so saying that raids are imbalanced because some builds have the possibility to outperform other builds' dmg is wrong. It's not a competitive mode.And if necro chooses to go into shroud "because he's low hp" instead of relying on a healer then it's his own choice/problem/fault.

In fights like Twin Largos, Necros do not have a DPS option to do even mediocre DPS. I am starting to question if you have participated in all the raiding content.

Your shroud argument also has a problem. If a Necro is maximizing their DPS they are going to go in shroud regardless of what their health looks like. Those die for the same reason, or decide to intentionally lower their already lower DPS. I also stand by my statement that a moderately good player will do more DPS with the op specs than a Necromancer playing perfect is capable of. I see it all the time.

You can stand by whatever you want, the fact remains raids aren't balanced around highest possible dps builds, you don't need anything even close to that, so your initial claim is still as false as it was.Actually while we are at it -if you want "balanced raids", maybe start with making their mechanics unskippable, which would at least partially fix the problem that -based on what you said in this thread- you are clearly part of in the first place.

@Josiah.2967 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Why are people so toxic about minmaxing PvE damage lol.

Like, a reaper's damage alone isn't causing anyone to fail a raid.

Like over the course of ten players, if reaper deals 20% less damage than the top-end DPS, here's some head-math:10 players means a given player, assuming perfect balance and everyone playing DPS, does 10% of the overall damage.If we suggest two supports/non-DPS, it's 12.5%.

Assuming all 7 other DPS are the top-end, then the reaper will deal 20% less relatively-speaking. meaning we can knock off 20% evenly and the reaper does 10% flat.This is a 2.56% reduction in kill speed.

If the encounter some some reason takes 8 full minutes, or 480 seconds, the difference in time is... 480*.0256 = 12.3 seconds.

Your reaper is reducing your clear speed by a whopping 12 seconds at the 8 minute mark assuming the rest of the raid is playing theoretical max DPS for completion. That's still nearly 20% of the remaining time on a 10 minute raid.

Even in a party operating entirely of reapers, the net clear time is still only just over one minute slower.

One minute! You're asking to rework a healthily-designed, all-levels-of-play-friendly and fair class for an efficiency difference of a matter of lost

seconds

of time in an MMO of all things.

And of course, this time drops off the faster and better the group is! I see SC put out a video of a sub-two-minute clear today! A reaper instead of a thief or whatever selfish DPS class there adds literally 2 seconds to clear time! That's THREE DODGE ROLLS OF TIME.

How can anyone argue something so asinine?

This is why raids were and are bad for the game. The deviation in terms of performance day-to-day is basically non-existent and has no actual bearing on content completion, yet people are asking for class reworks because something

maybe

doesn't perform perfectly.

Like... it's PvE, where completing the content itself is supposed to be as fun as playing the class. To which most people who play reaper LOVE it. If you're getting your panties in a knot because someone caused you to spend 12 more seconds longer in a raid, you're not enjoying the game and should probably re-evaluate how you're spending your time.

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your

team

: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right?

You see what I or actually

you

did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime.

To get into

somewhat

more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that

you

as a player contributed for, for you

AND

all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario!

Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these!

Percentages

. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant!

Simple!

K.I.S.S. :)

Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything.

Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to

not

be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually

have

to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the

beginning

of play time to impact others cumulatively.

None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds.

And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 8

8

4.5 or nearly

five hours

of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?"

And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the

result

of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals.

Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of

your

perspective of needing that "saved time."

The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia.

If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game

100% of the time

as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math.

You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate.

If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with

real

numbers and harms the bulk majority of players.

This got toxic fast.

Since we care about real numbers, why don't we balance end game content using benchmarks that can be measured during raid content. Time for balance.

Because it's not a competitive mode, so it literally doesn't matter. There will always be dmg disparities, SOME people will always cry about only playing meta builds and it'll be equally irrelevant, because raids aren't balanced around top dmg charts.

[Axl.8924]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:

@"Sobx.1758" said:^ true, OP is wrong at the very core of his claim, raids aren't balanced around top tier dps and you don't need anywhere near top tier dps to easly succeed in them. The difference in dps between the classes has nothing to with "raid balance" as long as all of the classes have viable builds to complete them. And as far as I know there's no problem with that.

Necromancers have a lot of fights that Guild Wars 2 Raids sites deem as Unsubstantial and Inefficient.

If that was even remotely relevant to how the game is designed, you would have a point to make an argument with that. The fact is that people do raids all the time with necros ... and those raids succeed. So what is the compelling argument that for Anet to change how the game works? Nothing stops people from using necro and nothing prevents a team with succeeding with necros in that team. If you want optimal peformance, you have it by making different choices.

Well, honestly I think it's impossible to balance anyways, it seems like a pipe dream when some classes have aoes that work well for big bosses and not for small.

Not sure how ANET balances for that, because weaver can be fairly good at that, and I know for sure that if you get firebrand it has aoes and scourge and core nec with staff

How do you balance all this even?

Then again maybe if the single target can do more than others it compensates for lack of aoes or something. Deadeye seems to be fairly one target strong.

[Agrippa.1693]

@Josiah.2967 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Why are people so toxic about minmaxing PvE damage lol.

Like, a reaper's damage alone isn't causing anyone to fail a raid.

Like over the course of ten players, if reaper deals 20% less damage than the top-end DPS, here's some head-math:10 players means a given player, assuming perfect balance and everyone playing DPS, does 10% of the overall damage.If we suggest two supports/non-DPS, it's 12.5%.

Assuming all 7 other DPS are the top-end, then the reaper will deal 20% less relatively-speaking. meaning we can knock off 20% evenly and the reaper does 10% flat.This is a 2.56% reduction in kill speed.

If the encounter some some reason takes 8 full minutes, or 480 seconds, the difference in time is... 480*.0256 = 12.3 seconds.

Your reaper is reducing your clear speed by a whopping 12 seconds at the 8 minute mark assuming the rest of the raid is playing theoretical max DPS for completion. That's still nearly 20% of the remaining time on a 10 minute raid.

Even in a party operating entirely of reapers, the net clear time is still only just over one minute slower.

One minute! You're asking to rework a healthily-designed, all-levels-of-play-friendly and fair class for an efficiency difference of a matter of lost

seconds

of time in an MMO of all things.

And of course, this time drops off the faster and better the group is! I see SC put out a video of a sub-two-minute clear today! A reaper instead of a thief or whatever selfish DPS class there adds literally 2 seconds to clear time! That's THREE DODGE ROLLS OF TIME.

How can anyone argue something so asinine?

This is why raids were and are bad for the game. The deviation in terms of performance day-to-day is basically non-existent and has no actual bearing on content completion, yet people are asking for class reworks because something

maybe

doesn't perform perfectly.

Like... it's PvE, where completing the content itself is supposed to be as fun as playing the class. To which most people who play reaper LOVE it. If you're getting your panties in a knot because someone caused you to spend 12 more seconds longer in a raid, you're not enjoying the game and should probably re-evaluate how you're spending your time.

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your

team

: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right?

You see what I or actually

you

did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime.

To get into

somewhat

more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that

you

as a player contributed for, for you

AND

all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario!

Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these!

Percentages

. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant!

Simple!

K.I.S.S. :)

Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything.

Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to

not

be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually

have

to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the

beginning

of play time to impact others cumulatively.

None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds.

And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 8

8

4.5 or nearly

five hours

of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?"

And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the

result

of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals.

Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of

your

perspective of needing that "saved time."

The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia.

If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game

100% of the time

as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math.

You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate.

If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with

real

numbers and harms the bulk majority of players.

This got toxic fast.

Yes, and I'm sorry about that. Wasn't my intention to start something like this! I even ended it with a kiss ;)

Anyway, in the end it doesn't matter at all what we or the whole community thinks about balance. Or what statistics are saying, etc.It's what ANet thinks and does about it (or more specifically: the balance team). Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy that ANet is communicating more about it, but it's still far from fully transparent. About their reasoning behind it, their motivations, etc. Is it based on logic? Is it random? Does monetary value play a role (I know this is difficult to be transparent about to the public, they'll never do that, obviously)? Or is it mainly based on statistics? And then on performance? Which parameters? Or is it overall playtime? Is it mainly focused on class balance? Or specialisation? PvE? or PvP/WvW only these days? Etc. etc. etc.

So many questions!

[Obtena.7952]

@Josiah.2967 said:Since we care about real numbers, why don't we balance end game content using benchmarks that can be measured during raid content. Time for balance.

What makes you think Anet doesn't do that? If you keep assuming you know how Anet does their balance and it's wrong, you're always going to come to the wrong conclusions. The first question to ask your self hasn't changed: Why is it the way it is?

[skarpak.8594]

you could have watched mighty teapots recent stream to find out a bit on that topic since they had a balance dev on their teatime.

in short: they look at everything and not just the top 1% play. for example they said that dh trapper right now is mid plat in spvp a really strong class and most wins are made there with this build and the majority of player play it. you can't see anything from this in the meta and that build gets crushed at high level play. it will probably still get adressed within the next balance patch if it continues like that since anet does not only look at the top players. they look at all sources and while some stuff makes no sense when you are a 1%er, it makes sense somewhere else.

if a game should always be balanced after top 1% is a whole other discussion.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Josiah.2967 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Why are people so toxic about minmaxing PvE damage lol.

Like, a reaper's damage alone isn't causing anyone to fail a raid.

Like over the course of ten players, if reaper deals 20% less damage than the top-end DPS, here's some head-math:10 players means a given player, assuming perfect balance and everyone playing DPS, does 10% of the overall damage.If we suggest two supports/non-DPS, it's 12.5%.

Assuming all 7 other DPS are the top-end, then the reaper will deal 20% less relatively-speaking. meaning we can knock off 20% evenly and the reaper does 10% flat.This is a 2.56% reduction in kill speed.

If the encounter some some reason takes 8 full minutes, or 480 seconds, the difference in time is... 480*.0256 = 12.3 seconds.

Your reaper is reducing your clear speed by a whopping 12 seconds at the 8 minute mark assuming the rest of the raid is playing theoretical max DPS for completion. That's still nearly 20% of the remaining time on a 10 minute raid.

Even in a party operating entirely of reapers, the net clear time is still only just over one minute slower.

One minute! You're asking to rework a healthily-designed, all-levels-of-play-friendly and fair class for an efficiency difference of a matter of lost

seconds

of time in an MMO of all things.

And of course, this time drops off the faster and better the group is! I see SC put out a video of a sub-two-minute clear today! A reaper instead of a thief or whatever selfish DPS class there adds literally 2 seconds to clear time! That's THREE DODGE ROLLS OF TIME.

How can anyone argue something so asinine?

This is why raids were and are bad for the game. The deviation in terms of performance day-to-day is basically non-existent and has no actual bearing on content completion, yet people are asking for class reworks because something

maybe

doesn't perform perfectly.

Like... it's PvE, where completing the content itself is supposed to be as fun as playing the class. To which most people who play reaper LOVE it. If you're getting your panties in a knot because someone caused you to spend 12 more seconds longer in a raid, you're not enjoying the game and should probably re-evaluate how you're spending your time.

I love it how some people try to convince others by taking real valuable and significant values (like percentages) and turn them to insignificant absolute values (like seconds) in a terribly specific scenario.Let me do the same now, as an example:Let me substitute that 20% into a cut in your income: if you're working 10 minutes this might only contribute to mere cents (or even less) that you're losing out on ... Why would you get your "panties in a knot" on less than a few cents, really??? Even worse: in your

team

: if you're the only one getting that paycut, your team notices even LESS. Wow, what are you even worrying about, right?

You see what I or actually

you

did there? First of all, you are describing a situation from a team perspective, while we're talking about single class (DPS) performance; not team/squad (DPS) performance. But the real elephant in the room is obviously you taking a specific absolute number (8 minutes) of which literally NO-ONE will exactly bound him/herself to in their lifetime.

To get into

somewhat

more real potential time-loss scenarios (without getting tooooo complex): you have to multiply this number (8 minutes) with how many raids you do on your Necro, and well, let's just put Fractals in there as well, and while we're on it: Strikes, and maybe all other stuff where DPS is important, like dungeons, story instances, world bosses, etc. ... (oh wait, this game (or at least the PvE part of it) is one of the most heavily focused on DPS games, I've seen in a long time, so you might just type /age and you have your number right there :)). And when you then have some kind of estimated number of total time spent, you can divide this with your 8 minutes sample, and then multiply this with the time loss that

you

as a player contributed for, for you

AND

all other players (you conveniently left this out in your calculations, but that's ok, I'm here to remind you!), because they ALL could've done better. Because of your choice of class, you're taking away time from everyone, not just yourself. And then you have a more genuine depiction of the truth, instead of your: let's put this in a VERY specific vacuum scenario!

Btw, you know what really helps in complex calculation like these!

Percentages

. Without really having to do complex estimated potential time-loss calculations, you could just look at a relative values and have a straight away feeling with it.I.e.: at least 20% less DPS than other classes, because you've chosen the wrong class is quite significant!

Simple!

K.I.S.S. :)

Your entire first argument defies the very logic you lay out and is based on a logical fallacy called a false equivalency. You say I would be upset about losing the money, but your rhetorical 20% pay cut only has implicit merit because most people can't afford to lose 20% of their income based on numeric absolutes like the value of their wage and the fixed cost of housing groceries, and so on. That's not the case here; if I told you I could pay you $10 million per year to work 5 days a week or $8 million to work four days a week, I can almost guarantee you would take the latter option. Why? Because the consequences of losing an insignificant relative value - the abstract concept of value driven by numeric absolutes in how we live our lives - is lost when considering the positives of work/life balance. See, your money example only works because the value you attach to it is based on a preconceived fixed value INSTEAD of a percentage. In all reality, the percent is totally worthless. And reality is the basis of my argument, because nobody gives a kitten about percentages of anything.

Those seconds lost are not significant at all in the real world, and you're conflating it based on fallacy of how the numbers are actually handled. Period. If you're playing an MMO and raiding, you're not panicking about a raid taking 20 more seconds because you absolutely NEED to

not

be playing for those subsequent seconds with negligible value. Further, such extensions in time, measured in the real world as overall time spent are not measured against other variables (you claim this as a loss of overall time) and are not spent continually at 100% content-completion for said math to matter. Time in the real world that we let ourselves play should be allocated to complete a raid based on its realistic low-ball-expectancy investment; you do not say "I have five minutes so I'll pray for a quick raid and if we don't complete it by then I'll log out midway through." No, instead you look at your remaining play time, make a judgment on if you can realistically complete the content by the time you actually

have

to log out, and go from there with no regard to its duration. If you only have 2 minutes left to play on a hard time cap, you don't go to a raid and log out early. It takes 10 raids to match that point to "save" that time, so for the "lost time" to actually matter, it carries some major assumptions:A.) You would have had the same, optimized group with no wasted time between raids, such as having no waiting periods at all between content. Realistically, this isn't happening;B.) Everyone else is max damage or the skill level is identical across all players pushing upper thresholds;C.) There is a hard time limit;D.) The nominal amount of successive raids is substantial enough to impact the chance of possibly doing another one under the optimal circumstances at the

beginning

of play time to impact others cumulatively.

None of these criteria are realistic to all incur, especially the notion that there is no downtime; if you wait on average longer than 12 seconds to form a group in between raids, your entire argument of "lost time" is literally nullified, and the same goes in most realistic scenarios where the time cap isn't hard; 8 raids at 8 minutes translates to 96 extra seconds.

And to make it matter assuming all of the above criteria ARE fulfilled, to do another raid with said "lost time" in numeric values (because this is the only benchmark that matters in terms of out-of-game time and rewards), would require four and a half times that consecutively to make a difference; meaning the actual time spent playing prior is 8

8

4.5 or nearly

five hours

of game time under IDEAL circumstances. Most players also have a bit of time for leeway when they stop and start, usually by a matter of some minutes (implicitly meaning a significant chunk of a raid in it of itself), so it's more a matter of "do I want to go a little later tonight?" versus "do I want to call it now?"

And like your initial flawed logic I pointed out in the first argument pointing out the abstract value we assign to our time, is also philosophically my point about the very nature of playing in it of itself; you speak on the level of someone optimizing solely around quantitative values that are the

result

of raid completions, because your only innate defense is based on the number of completions for reducing time, like budgeting a paycheck to accrue a resource based on a numeric value (back to my point about it being the only thing that matters). But in reality, this has absolutely no bearing on anything quantifiable in the real world, and we should be deriving worth as perceived fun, an immeasurable concept that can't be quantified. The only reason any of the attitude towards optimization to anyone is for the act of playing itself and some compulsion to optimize, which is in itself unhealthy; you're basing your time spent managing raid completions akin to a financial optimization problem made by someone frantically trying to figure out how to pay the bills. That's not healthy behavior, and if people are playing enough successive raids to see substantial increases in numeric absolutes (I.E. doing enough "extra" raids to shave significant amounts of time for their far-reaching goals), there's serious concern for other real-life problems given the emphasis on expedition and minute value of in-game acquisitive goals.

Not to mention it's strictly hypocritical to say that "wasting" another person's time in such insignificant "losses" (in quotes because of the aforementioned) is justified. You specify it impacts everyone else, but so does reworking classes or expecting other players' patterns to change based on some notion that all people must play according to a certain structure because of

your

perspective of needing that "saved time."

The one constant through this - the one percent which actually holds weight - is whether or not people are having fun in the very act of playing their class, because 100% of the time spent playing is playing said class. If it completes the content without a significant cut in terms of the pragmatic absolutes per player (I.E., not in the matter of seconds relative to several minutes), That's the one and only thing which matters with such minutia.

If the class is redesigned, and it's made less fun or less-well-designed, it impacts everyone in the PvP and WvW sections of the game

100% of the time

as well as players who previously liked the existing design. ANet has already cited of all content, raids and "difficult group content" have the lowest active playerbase. Reworking a class without perfect implementation/ideas with an overwhelming amount of support for the sake of such minutia is literally the best way to negatively-impact the objective most number of players and play-hours from all mathematical perspectives. That's what I'm defending, and why demanding reworks is absolutely asinine, selfish, and is based on unrealistic expectations of play patterns and nothing more than some very oversimplified math.

You talk about depictions of the truth but then put situations in vacuums in your own words. In the scientific and engineering worlds, we call that one thing: BS. Your designations don't follow pragmatism enough to actually work in the real world, to which we develop surrounding models and simulations to get a real picture, because such simplicity is not accurate.

If you're going to try and math me out, I want the full explanation, because strictly speaking, from a pragmatic perspective, I think your argument is indefensible with

real

numbers and harms the bulk majority of players.

This got toxic fast.

Since we care about real numbers, why don't we balance end game content using benchmarks that can be measured during raid content. Time for balance.

It got "toxic" because of my post? Don't be ridiculous. Their response reeked of sarcasm and was heavily patronizing by trying to "simplify" things on so many levels, giving directives to play the game differently, and generally ripe with the expressions of someone with a sense of false superiority. I proved their entire argument as falsehood and demonstrated their primary defense is a logical fallacy. You're deflecting and committing another logical fallacy now by quoting me with an ad-hominem attack with "toxicity." Which is ironic, because the massive elitism coming from the raids community telling people to effectively "suck it up, stop having fun, and play another class for my benefit" is the most toxic ideology here, even ignoring the blatant disregard for other formats of play entirely of which these suggestions have considerable impact, and how as I've demonstrated, the actual, real gains are completely negligible unless supporting real-life addictive patterns. Which should absolutely never be the baseline for any basis of anything at all.

Yes, real numbers. But which ones? My entire post is based on ones which matter and pragmatic value which is a bit more abstract. People here are asking for class reworks. That was what my original post was about, and why the mentality that 'a slight drop in pace for the group because someone playing what they want to pay is apparently ruining the game for everyone else' is total nonsense when it comes to asking for reworks, and how it does more harm than good. And I argued that the notion of minmaxed PvE content being a standard which we should hold the game to (I.E. balance professions around, the professions being the most critical facet of the game itself) is not beneficial to the advancement of the game and community, particularly since the very foundation the game and its community was built on was literally the opposite. Making those kinds of demands as a very tiny set of players (as the tiny high-effort raids community is), is quite frankly, "toxic" in respects to what the game at large - where design and gameplay of the classes themselves - cares about. By real numbers, the raids community alone probably shouldn't even have the leverage for class changes it does by proportion, especially when it comes to gameplay "losses" and enjoyment.

If you want 5% more damage or something on an AA or to take 1s of a condition off from some skill to help normalize things a little tighter, by all means. But reworks are fundamentally a different beast, and when it comes to well-designed, fun, and fair concepts like the Reaper, arguing to fundamentally change a class and its surrounding gameplay because PvE isn't perfectly-balanced (and it never will be, so the people who really do care so much are always going to move to the next-best-thing and always whine when they aren't dominant) resulting in side effects which literally destroy the existing fun while providing no change in terms of the real world for the audience requesting said changes in the first place, the very basis of the rework is indefensible and pointless for both the work ANet has to do and what the rest of the players (the vast majority who don't do optimized raids or care).

You're trying to point math at a problem that honestly, isn't even math-based, like the concept of fun, the nature of community, and defining good game design for non-numerically-optimized encounter spaces (PvP, OW PvE, etc.). As we've learned from this thread, half the problem of why these disparities alone even apparently matter seems to be people skipping entire phases of the bosses themselves which is in it of itself an pretty exploitative, and not the actual gameplay that was created to be played and enjoyed, meaning that should probably be fixed first before we even talking about any kind of numbers at all.

[noiwk.2760]

is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

[Nephalem.8921]

@"noiwk.2760" said:is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

[noiwk.2760]

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@"noiwk.2760" said:is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

[Obtena.7952]

@noiwk.2760 said:

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@noiwk.2760 said:is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

That's from your POV. The game isn't balanced based on your POV.

[noiwk.2760]

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

That's from your POV. The game isn't balanced based on your POV.

dont know how anyone can say it is balanced.. when you have only very specific decent dps classes in pve and 1 support :) and when support does more dps than dps classes.

[Sobx.1758]

@noiwk.2760 said:

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@noiwk.2760 said:is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

Spellbreaker isn't a class, warrior is. If you want to dps with warrior and pick spb spec instead of berk then nobody is at fault here other than you.

[Obtena.7952]

@noiwk.2760 said:

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

That's from your POV. The game isn't balanced based on your POV.

dont know how anyone can say it is balanced.. when you have only very specific decent dps classes in pve and 1 support :) and when support does more dps than dps classes.

And I don't know how anyone can say it isn't because it appears very few people know the criteria Anet are using to make their changes to classes, including you. What you think classes should be balanced on is not relevant to what Anet decided to balance on. That doesn't make it wrong what they did. It simply means their idea is not your idea.

[Cyninja.2954]

@noiwk.2760 said:

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@noiwk.2760 said:is there even anything balanced in the game right now? PVP WVW doesnt seem any more balanced than the were before the "balance patch" only abit worse if anything i still wait to see the fix on FB and necro and some others.

but when it comes to PVE its really is awful.. some classes are worth playing some just not.. some support classes (berzeker banner) can do more dps than a full dps classes? or support FB.. why would anyone play any other support when all you need is FB?and thats true for both raids and also fractals.. the gap between classes is far too big.. for both support and for dps. also the meta of build full zeker and everyone does damage is abit meh? mesmer tank build full damage aside for 1 gear with some toughness and supports trying to build around damage.. and only offensive boons counts.. so only FB is really good choice.. the game need a large and massage balance and thats true for PVE content aswell.. condi builds sucking bad at fractals is also not much fun..

Some harder bosses are tanked in minstrel to reduce risk of wiping. defensive boons count. prot and resistance are covered when needed.Regarding fractals, cfb is still op in most fractals. its just not that strong in 99 and 100.

thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

and yet, the primary support in raids remains druid.

Also complaining about dps on a warrior, basically THE easiest class next to thief for putting out damage (stop playing spellbreaker and use berserker elite) and one of the few with a guaranteed spot in any group due to unique class benefits is a pot calling the kettle out.

Firebrand is too strong, just as warrior does not deserve a USP for groups if other classes don't have them (while being extremetly easy to play). Both could use some adjusting IF perfect class balance is supposed to be the goal.

[Nephalem.8921]

@noiwk.2760 said:thing is.. that protection you also get from FB.. FB is the ultimate support. and regardless of how good Scourge can be.. due to lack of boons offensive boons he just cant replace FB as main support. and thats the issue of PVE.. you have classes that are 100% better no matter how you look at it.. its same with dps classes.. i play spell breaker right now.. its dps is trash compared to some others.. gurdian is just stupid strong in pve.. the balance right now is just bad..

In fractals the fb doesn't give protection. The renegade gives protection. Only heal firebrand can give protection. Condi quickness firebrand needs to sacrifice too much for it.Currently there are only 2 classes that can give aoe quickness and chrono was just nerfed to death and is almost unplayable in fractals now. Raids would be fairly balanced in the dps area if firebrand/chrono stacking wouldn't exist and confusion wouldn't be that broken on some bosses. The only outlier is necromancer but that one has at least a good support spec.But like i said earlier, the shroud mechanic is just too limiting for raids and scourge just shouldn't be able to do high dps. It is fully ranged and poops out condi cleanse and barrier while doing damage.Spellbreaker dps is btw not that bad. Berserker is jut way easier to play and has higher dps. If anything the dps is quite balanced, its the support that needs help. Either remove quickness which would feel horrible since i really like having boon supports and impactfull boons instead of heal only supports or create more specs that can fill that role.Players here mentioned the 39-41k benchmarks here multiple times but those builds are almost never played especially condi weaver. Max benchmark dps isnt the reason why builds are meta. And in necros case espesially in fractals its 99% of the time the players i dont want and not the class. Actually really like to play it when there is npng so the ren doesn't have to suffer.

[Josiah.2967]

I raided on a few characters this weekend. This included some introductions to Raids/Strike missions, as well as gold carries. This week marked the point where another guild I know no longer trains Necromancers for raids. The imbalance has gotten so bad that multiple "Raiding Guilds" no longer justifying training Necromancers for their main raid teams.

I wanted to restate/clarify some of my points that have been twisted over time.

1.) The 9-10K difference between fights is actually based on the raid boss encounter benchmarks. While we have a boss encounter that has a 12K difference, 9-10K seemed to be a common spread between raid bosses for the top performers. Even during training, the same professions at the top are the same professions that beginners are doing better with who are interested in raiding. One glaring issue is Guardian vs Necromancer. Guardian now has 5 raids specs that are viable.

2.) 10K difference applies to Golems. As you can imagine, there is a strong correlation between this benchmark to Strike Missions and Raid Bosses that allow you to stay grouped and on the boss most of the encounter.

3.) I keep encountering more guilds that simply aren't willing to train Necromancers for raids. It is considered a waste. The spread is so big, the decision is understandable.

4.) Some professions/specs are so overpowered that they allow you to bypass end game raid/strike mechanics. This makes fights much easier. It feels like you activated easy mode since it is both quicker and easier during the encounter.I am guessing this is an oversight and the top DPS specs need a heavy nerf.

5.) Healing needs to be equalized. The low end after the last few patches has caused a imbalance. Please fix this before we end up in the same place we are for DPS.

6.) It is now apparent that you can balance PVE vs PVP. I am asking that we take that one step further and balance Open World PVE vs End-game PVE (raids/fractals/strikes) vs PVP. This will allow you to adjust numbers without impacting the open world experience.

7.) The current imbalance results in justification for toxic behavior.

a.) The top 5 DPS specs have now been on the top for years. It becomes understandable that they are extremely vocal against balancing end-game content. They have played and perhaps re-rolled for the advantage they have had for years. While the lower end needs a buff, the top needs a nerf if you do not want people to be able to bypass mechanics.

b.) Without all professions being viable, you create an atmosphere where certain professions are shunned for certain types of game play. The longer this goes on, the longer it will take to revert this stigmatism.

As someone that does raids and strike missions regularly, it would be nice if all professions had competitive specs. I would consider within 5% DPS to be viable. People should be able to play the theme/gameplay they enjoy while remaining competitive.

If you are following the money, you know my friends and I are "cash cows" that care about the game.

[Erzian.5218]

Another thing to consider is that it’s not necessarily about how you perform compared to other players on other classes but also about how you perform on the class you enjoy playing vs how you can perform on another class. After an almost 3 year break I did some dummy parses as well as some of the older raid wings (which I am still familiar with) and I pulled consistently higher numbers on radiance dh, power (both versions) and condition soulbeast and power weaver than on reaper in both scenarios which makes me doubt that reaper only looks worse on paper.Is reaper tankier? Absolutely, but I don’t think that justifies lower utility, active defense AND dps. However, seeing how necromancer has been at the bottom of the pve barrel for the vast majority of gw2’s existence I doubt that this will change anytime soon.

[arrgy.6105]

All these posts on these forums boil down to a single thing...

Everyone thinks their profession sucks when compared to another. 1% of forum posts start with "Hey I love my profession". It just as bad here as it is in any other MMO (BDO with its what 17 classes is now really really bad).

And if you think about it, its all rather silly. Whether you swing a stick, a sword, cast a spell, shoot an arrow, use a signet or a pet, whatever, the goal is the same...kill your target(s) OR keep your team alive with heals, buffs, or tanking. That's it, not much else. The only real difference is what you look like doing it (light, medium, heavy armor). If swinging a stick kills something quicker then casting a spell, well you have a choice of what to play, but to come on forums and state the obvious and expect something to change is also rather silly. Your like someone in a casino, getting beat in blackjack by the dealer 10 hands in a row and complaining the deck is stacked against you...well go play at another table.

[Nimon.7840]

@"arrgy.6105" said:All these posts on these forums boil down to a single thing...

Everyone thinks their profession sucks when compared to another. 1% of forum posts start with "Hey I love my profession". It just as bad here as it is in any other MMO (BDO with its what 17 classes is now really really bad).

But there's other games as well, that do the balance much nicer. There's like every patch another class on top. Which is pretty nice.And "let's you play your favourite class once in a while".Sure you can always play your favourite class. But certain comps make kills much easier (for example stacking dragonhunters or firebrands).And when you get your easy full clear every week with your static. Then there's nothing more to do than doing optimisations.And you are going for better kill times. Which doesn't allow you to play your favourite class anymore. Cause you don't want to hold back the group for example.

People were complaining about stacking necro's and bouncing epi. Well yeah it was very strong/op. But if you stack firebrands or dragonhunters and basically can't die anymore, that's pretty op as well.

Or killing bosses in <1minute because the burst of a class is so absurdly high. That lets you basically ignore all mechanics.

And if you think about it, its all rather silly. Whether you swing a stick, a sword, cast a spell, shoot an arrow, use a signet or a pet, whatever, the goal is the same...kill your target(s) OR keep your team alive with heals, buffs, or tanking. That's it, not much else. The only real difference is what you look like doing it (light, medium, heavy armor). If swinging a stick kills something quicker then casting a spell, well you have a choice of what to play, but to come on forums and state the obvious and expect something to change is also rather silly. Your like someone in a casino, getting beat in blackjack by the dealer 10 hands in a row and complaining the deck is stacked against you...well go play at another table.

Well this last comparison doesn't really work. Cause the blackjack deck should be random.The game is not random. It's what the devs are giving us.They can easily "manipulate the deck of cards". While you can't manipulate the deck of cards of the blackjack game you're playing.

[Black Storm.6974]

@Josiah.2967 said:.6.) It is now apparent that you can balance PVE vs PVP. I am asking that we take that one step further and balance Open World PVE vs End-game PVE (raids/fractals/strikes) vs PVP. This will allow you to adjust numbers without impacting the open world experience.

Please ArenaNet, never do that. They are both endgame PvE.

I don’t want numbers to be split even there and I don’t want the constant shake we have in PvP builds to ever reach PvE.

It would be very annoying and could ruin my enjoyment of the game. It is also unnecessary.

Also, the vast majority of players doing T4 Fractals is composed by “casual players”. Even a high percent of people doing raids is clearly composed by “somewhat casual players”.

[Black Storm.6974]

Players ignorance (the ignorance of the “toxic players”) is the main reason for “toxic behaviour”, not the difference in the Benchmarks that could eventually be made smaller.

There is no need to split the balance of Open World and instanced content to do that.

[ZDragon.3046]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Brujeria.7536 said:

Truth be told, the necromancer have half of it's mechanisms (boon corruption/condition manipulation) only really working in sPvP environment while the other half (the shroud) hover in an awkward state where it can't deal to much damage due to it's fondamentally defensive nature yet is the recipient of all the effort of the balance team to give the necromancer some dps. Design wise it's like trying to put a large round piece into a tiny square hole, it's no wonder it doesn't work.

Its actually not that hard to balance necro for DPS even with these things in mind. All condition manipulation comes from traits or some utility skills, if you bump up the utlity skills that should increase damage and also the traits that should increase damage you fixed the problem. Pick either DPS or these aspects. The best part here: it are just number changes, you dont need to do any mechanical changes at all.

That's not fixing the problem that's just adding damage by playing with numbers. Not acknowledging that some designs/mechanisms are broken and need fixing is the main issue of this game.

My friend who is a weaver pulls roughly 10k dps higher than me in some situations (he is running condi weaver) when i play power reaper in raids.the thing is though he is much more likely to go down or even die than I am.He will often go down 3-5 times in some fights where i wont go down at all.

In the case where he may not down his dps ends up 10k higher than mine. (last night for example he hit 29k on a boss while i was at 23k no one downed)If he downs alot we may end up roughly the same. (In another case from last his dps was 18k and mine was 16.5 he downed 3 times in that fight while i didnt at all)If he dies then well my dps passes his.

Reapers damage is solid and of course it also depens on how coordinated the group is.The less coordination or dependable your group is with things like healing and boon support the stronger reapers value is especially in dpsIf you have a group with perfect healing and boon support reaper will drag behind.

IMO if anet wanted reapers damage in pve to be higher they could easilly just bump up the numbers and it wouldnt really hurt anything because balance is now split between game modes. How ever raids is a niche area and outside of raids reaper feels much nicer imo to play than weaver which pulls considerably higher numbers in raids with perfect boon support.

while yes boon corruption is not very utilized in pve or in raids thats a general issue that needs to be fixed and that would be on the skills team less than the balance team to fix. I dont think its high on priority either. Necro already has other options for dps utility that are currently used and if anet wanted to up the numbers even on out of shroud skills they could easily do it without touching or reworking boon corrupts. Things like minions or even wells which have out of shroud dps components to them could easily help bridge the gap. You could even say some dps traits simply are outdated and could use some love. Things like close to death having benefit purpose till sub 50% or Death perception having no ferocity bonus out of shroud where it could be split half and half etc.

I wish you would stop trying to blame the shroud defense (get rid of shroud) for the reasons that necromancer cant deal damage (especially in pve situations) Fact is some professions are just out right busted with pve balancing the burn condition is insanely strong and everyone knows that its always been insanely strong. I think ive said enough tbh. Ill keep playing my reaper even if it sits at the bottom of the test charts. Its always nice to out dps people playing professions sitting at the top ;)