Belorn.2659

No thanks! Variation is good.

I prefer that each class has their own uniqueness, and the clone mechanic is nice. Necro has epidemic, the single highest damage skill in the game when used correctly. Weaver has the special power of doing 15k more damage for exactly one raid boss that is designed to take extra damage from power and is stunned for the whole of the burn phase (ie KC). Rangers has a healing specialization, spirits, and nowdays give 25 might for 10 people. Warrior has banners.

Instead of taking away variation, please add more around classes mechanics that are currently not used in fractals/raids. Stealth from thieves has not seen active usage outside of dungeons which are today dead. Blocks from guardians are unreliable and somewhat underused, through wing 4 did a few steps in the right direction. Engi turrets has only ever been used as a farming tool. Rev is in a bit odd place like ele, but without a unique raid boss where they and only they excel.

> @Cyninja.2954 said:

> > @Belorn.2659 said:

> > If I understand the numbers right, the average might during mat is 18.5, or about 75% of maximum. quickness is 65% on average. Every mechanic in that fight disrupt rotations in a significant way and wells has the least efficiency compared to any other raid bosses.

> >

> > With those averages, using tactics give on average 2 more might per player and 6.5% more quickness. If you translate that to dps, how much is that and is it bigger or smaller than shattering blow?

> >

> > On average I would guess that tactics is superior for that fight.

>

> Doesn't actually matter since even though tactics might be useful during matthias, cc is also a requirement. Having a warrior not take Wild Blow needs to get worked around yet again.

>

> Also don't mistake average might uptime with damage loss. Matthias has invulerability phases during which cPS will not stack up might and wait with their rotations. Once the phase is over and the boss can get redamaged the group will be quite fast at max might again. Having average 18.5 might or 65% quickness (which would be unaffected by tactics since chronos are at cap boon duration) does not mean that the group is not at cap boons for damage phases. It just means that during parts of the fight the boons will run lower, usually during his bubble phase.

Good point about chronos already having maxed boon duration. CC however has become less of a concern with current meta if you got 2 condi mirage for DPS. With 4 moa and potential of 2 additional through cs, CC checks should never fail. Shattering blow is the main contender.

The main question then becomes, how much of the missing 6.5 might stacks in average is caused by invulerability phases, and how much is caused by disruptive mechanics and misplays? Since we can disregard quickness in the calculations, and I will also disregard healing in this context, it really just the damage from the extra duration to might vs damage from Shattering blow.

If I understand the numbers right, the average might during mat is 18.5, or about 75% of maximum. quickness is 65% on average. Every mechanic in that fight disrupt rotations in a significant way and wells has the least efficiency compared to any other raid bosses.

With those averages, using tactics give on average 2 more might per player and 6.5% more quickness. If you translate that to dps, how much is that and is it bigger or smaller than shattering blow?

On average I would guess that tactics is superior for that fight.

I have seen it for exactly one raid boss: mat. Its an encounter where you currently have a bit of flexibility and one of the main mechanic is very disruptive to rotations..

The thread regarding DPS meter privacy policy was locked by anet for a good reason and continuing the discussion here won't do anything good. Please create a new thread if you want to reopen the discussion, until they lock that one again. Read Anet privacy policy if you want their view: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/arenanet-privacy-policy/

@Wanze.8410, beyond what the privacy settings do on the website, you should be aware that account names are fully visible in-game if you hover over other players in a squad. Anet do not protect account names or consider them sensitive information, which is rather obvious since even here on the very public (and google indexed) forum your account name is fully visible. Even if you opt to not join squads (which excludes raids which is the purpose of raidar), any player can get the account name of any other player they just happen to see in the game by right-clicking the name and adding them to their block/friend list. Even in wvw/pvp where the name is hidden, the account name is still accessible through that method. There is no opt-out or opt-in method to prevent other players in the game to find out your account name, and anet has in every possible situation shown the account name when it has had the possibility to do so.

What is the use case behind your questions when anet has made it explicitly impossible to keep account names hidden from other members of a raid squad?

In order to save gold/maximize gold, I always sell at sell price minus one copper and buy at buy price plus one copper. Only if I am in a really rush (or been posting offers for a long time) do I skip and do a instant buy, and I only instant sell if the buy price is close enough to sell price that the risk isn't worth the difference.

Flippers earn their profits by taking the risk for you, mostly by holding it for a prolonged time as an investment in the hope that a future patch will make it worth several time more than it does right now.

What would be an improvement is if anet would extend the API model so that the information that the DPS tool gather is derived from their API. It would not be a massive step from what we have now, but a small step to make everything easier for everyone.

@dusanyu.4057

That is perfectly fine. When I go farm currency I don't do it as competitive activity. I do it as form of relaxing meditation, and since it solo, I don't get any rage from anyone if I take a break, watch TV while doing it, or perform suboptimal. The game has all kind of content that is suited for different play styles and different levels of engagement. Enjoy the part you enjoy, and don't do things you don't enjoy. Perfect way to live.

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> Regardless of whether there are actual issues involved, this thread no longer seems to be interested in discussing them. Unfortunately, a small group of people have dominated the last five pages since @"Chris Cleary.8017" posted a clarification of ANet's policy and they seem to be talking **at** each other instead of with each other.

>

> I'm sympathetic to the OP's presumption that "Opt In" is always a better policy than "Opt Out." However, as long as DPS meters exist as 3rd party tools, ANet won't be able to require that, even if they agreed (which, by the way, they don't).

>

> So if I felt as strongly as the OP about this, I'd stop posting in this thread and instead of insisting that the policy needs to be revised, instead start a private conversation with @"deltaconnected.4058" about just what would be involved in making ArcDPS "opt in". The coder might be convinced that there's a need for it or the OP might realize it's really a lot more complicated than it sounds and perhaps not as important as they first thought.

While you are at it, can you also convince developers of streaming tools that the visibility players should be "opt in"? There is no way to consent in WvW if someone is streaming the combat.

> @"vesica tempestas.1563" said:

> Meters are designed to encourage competitive measurement, it's design builds a culture where numbers > people. As for Guns its not really an appropriate thing to compare with in a games forum but look at the average kill rate per head in first world countries - USA is in the lead by a mile and is so desensitised and perverse it actually has to debate things like silencers while being influenced by lobbying.

That is false. Meters are designed for self improvement by measuring performance in comparison to those you play with in real game play environment. It is a improved version of the golem, which is a form of advantage but not the kind that people is implying in this thread.

> @Rennie.6750 said:

> They wanted a gun analogy so let's give them one: give a weapon to a mad man and he'll kill you. If weapons didn't exist then he might be annoying in different ways but you'd still be alive. There are ways to increase toxicity in games. Whether dps meters are a major contributing factor is still unknown but if you play with pugs it sure feels like giving a gun to a psycho and telling him to "have fun" since it's used for drama, kickfests and whinning. Note that I haven't been excluded before for low dps, it's just the overall drama and whiny atmosphere that pisses me off. Remove the tool they use to moan and they will keep the moaning to themselves.

The last gun was AP number and the class icon. Worse those where (to use the gun analogy) automatics with hallow points. DPS meters removed all those and replaced it with precision strikes (still using the gun analogy).

Before DPS meters we also had pug guilds, which implemented their own restrictions. A famous test was to solo lupi. Not sure where on the gun analogy scale that would be, but I for one welcome our new pug requirements that also don't take a guild slot.

I don't find the requirements that vague. If you join a __fractal group__ and sit idle in the the whole time, you are technically not violating the explicit LF requirements but using common sense you are violating the implicit requirements that a fractal group want to finish a fractal and not just idle and do nothing. The implicit requirements is that each member contribute to the group in some form or other, which generally means damage, support, or at minimum staying alive and ressing the other team members. I have seen people being kicked because "the class you bring don't have support, dps tool report less than 1k, and we are spending most of our time ressing you". Seems fair to me during CM and when LFG ask for experienced player.

> @Bunter.3795 said:

> So if I start a group and say no dps meters are allowed, what power do I have to stop a person from obtaining my combat information and using a dps meter? There is none.

You have the same power as someone who say no to be video recorded. Do everyone online have the power to prevent streamers? __No__. Is that a major problem? __No__. Most people are nice and respect other players wishes when they are made aware about it, and will either cut you out of the recording or stop streaming when asked.

We don't need Anet to have a policy against streamers (which would also be bad business, harmful to the community, and ineffective even if tried). Video recording is technically 3rd party software, but it is not against the EULA to use. It just a part of playing online that you can see the actions of other players and other players can see you.

My advice to you is to stop worrying about people secretly recording your game play and assume some good faith in your fellow player. Ask politely that people turn of DPS meters when they join your group and they might very well do it.

Things I know that won't be added but always wanted:

* Additional Guild slots!

* Skip for spirit run. (any price!)

So to things that might be possible:

* Multiple account ID for increased privacy. Instead of buying two accounts to achieve the same objective, allow people to do the same thing within a single login for gems.

* Buying a new account for gems. Same reason as above.

* Projectile skins mixer. Would enjoy having my staff randomly using animation for different skins, and it would add variance.

* Resource node locator. Instead of having to run around in a map to locate nodes, have an item to ping on the map every lumber/Forage/ore node of choice.

> @Kheldorn.5123 said:

> Choose whether or not my account is being monitored of this tool.

The whole premise that the tool is monitoring your account is false. The tool simply make a copy of the data stream that the server provides to the client in order to reconstruct what events has happened to the boss. It might feel like monitoring because it allow people to infer, but no one is taking data from your client. __There is no client to client communication__!

In order to play the game you have to tell the server the action you as a player do inside the game. If a person stand at the exist of a jumping puzzle, they can see who finish it. If they write down the names on a piece of paper or video record it, they will have a record of it. EU law do not forbid this. EU law is not going to go and shut down online game streamers because "they are breaking the privacy of other players by monitoring the actions of other players". This is not how privacy laws work, nor the intention behind the law writers. EU is mostly civil law and intention carries similar weight as precedence work in case law.

To implement such laws, online streamers would not be allowed to stream without people opting in to be on the stream. No PvP! No WvW! No PvE outside instances, and even then no pugging! There is no setting inside the game that grant consent to streamers to use my in game actions in their videos.

> @Paladine.6082 said:

> I can also tell you as a fact that gamer privacy is a focus with legislators in Europe and that technically under Article 5(3) of 2002/58/EC this type of activity would already fall foul of European law as this makes it unlawful to gain access to any information on an end user's terminal equipment without consent - given the data for DPS meters is generated on the end user's terminal equipment it is pretty clear cut.

This is false. The information is not accessed from other end user terminals. __Each client emulate what every other player do to the boss and there is no client to client communication involved__. It is similar to emulated car traffic in big simulation, which is different from real time spying on drivers. EU law do not forbid simulations, even if it emulated behavior of real people. Similar DPS meters only measure the emulated actions which their own client is reconstructing based on server information.

For us older players who been here since gw1, I would like to remind people of the old spectator mode in gw1 GvG. If you recall, battles was stored but had imperfect information about player action and movement. Occasionally the script went off record and did things which the players themselves never did. The reason is that the server only recorded action that happened like "player X got hit by skill y" and "player Z used skill y". The client then guess that the likely order of events is that player Z moved into range of X, used skill Y within mana limits, and X got hit. The benefit was that the servers used less traffic, used less processing power, and gave less laggt game play. GW2 is largely based on GW1, and is a large reason why most people don't experience daily lag issues.

They should change the system so that using a shield to block a shot should reward the player with the same participation as a player hitting a wall with the shot (ie, 2m). Same goes for siege disabler. Seems like anet simply did not consider that use case when adjusting the participation system.

The dps benchmark don't consider total DPS contribution for a 10 man setting. The king for that is PS condi warrior, with just the two utility banners brining about as much DPS as a whole other player. It just won't pop up as numbers on a training golem.

As for the QT benchmarks, it is really only a hint. An other list is the average dps from raiding logs, which gives a better view towards which classes actually achieve higher dps compared to others. DPS numbers for math will for example be very different from KC (two extremes). Each boss and game mode has a unique bias towards specific form of DPS.

When talking about weave dps, please keep KC encounter out of it. Similar to math and condi mesmers, the details that makes up for the DPS numbers are very unique to the boss mechanic and don't translate to any other game content, be that other raid encounters, pve, wvw, or pvp.

It should be clear that a class that has drawbacks should also have benefits. Weaver has the lowest health pool, lowest armor, skills that root players, conjure weapons that need to have placement planed and has a timer on it, second to hardest rotation, and time delayed access to mediocre CC. A high dps ceiling is fair. We should all remember that during the time when engi had the highest dps in game, 5 engi was not meta. At some point, increased difficulty and increase dps ceiling will stop translating to become meta for DPS, a point which condi engi achieved.

Many seem to think that "Training raid" is supposed to be about learning the basics of a raid encounter and once you got a few kills it means you are done and should move up in the world. I understand the confusion, but training raids is more than just training. It is also the way guilds recruits, fill new/old raid groups, and assess player ability to be part of static groups. It 25% training, 25% audition, 25% recruitment, and 25% for fun. Go into them with the mindset of finding players you can regularly do raid content with and you will likely end up with a group in a rather short time.

I find that pugging is for those who can't dedicate time for a regular group, and a such it is much harder to both join and get good result than in a static group.