JusticeRetroHunter.7684

> @"Obtena.7952" said: >I'm more than aware of Nemesis ... and one of the things he's shown us is how to measure DPS ... very helpful when assessing what is meta and what isn't ... so yes, we have a REALLY good idea of what is meta and what isn't. Certainly knowing the winning condition of an encounter, we know the bandwidth in the meta for non-DPS considerations for highly skilled players is intentionally minimized for the sake of highest DPS output. What you are presenting here is bordering on the the opposite of that. The idea that there is bandwidth in PVE optimization that involves healing just doesn't go with how the game is designed. You are aware of Nemesis right. He uses the same kind of calculations. He words things a bit differently, but he calculates the potential of skills, and then correlates it with how each build is built to deal with specific encounters to make the most usage of the build...this is akin to efficacy. I would link his video's, but he's got quiet a few gems and I wouldn't be doing his work the courtesy by just linking a single video...instead here is a picture where he uses a potentials calculations in order to find that Epidemic was one of the strongest skills in the game... it's no surprise that he was in fact correct and it became meta. 

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > Because dodging big DPS hits more effective damage mitigation than healing them ... and I don't need a measurement to know that. Again ... just the measurements for healing is insufficient in the _practical_ consideration of the game because of the things you CAN'T measure. You can't measure how much DPS mitigation Aegis gives, or dodging or even protection but I can assure you with a _high skilled_ player, those things are worth more than any heal they can get. > > > > that's simply not true Aegis, Dodging, protection and a slew of other things can be measured in terms of healing. I already outlined how you do this earlier in the thread. > > > I'm just going to disagree ... you can't measure those things because how much they mitigate DPS is variable. how much they mitigate is variable, but it's reconciled by doing a mathematical exercise, by being able to be be brought into a practical range that you can evaluate as an average of how much a dodge or an aegis can negate damage for. I explained this already but ill just say it again. A Dodge or a block can potentially negate an infinite amount of damage. But what you are interested in, is taking the average potential. Logically, any number that is above the number of damage for which you would have otherwise died, is the range at which these negations are between. So if your average health is 20,000 then a hit that would have otherwise killed you is the maximum potential for for a dodge or a block for that one attack. In other words, the range that you could dodge an attack for is 0 - 20,000. All hits in between this range is what really matters because anything above hits that would otherwise kill you anyway is basically mathematically meaningless. This is what's called normalizing, in which the effective range of a unit of measure is squashed between 0 and 1 where 1 is infinite and 0 is 0. so the average would be the median of that range, which in this case is 10,000. So for every attack, the AVERAGE POTENTIAL of that mitigation will be 10,000. This means that sometimes you will block an attack for 25k (get's normalized to 20k), or an attack for 1k, or an attack for 7k or an attack for whatever-k and on average it will hover around 10,000, the median of that range. Again any number above 20,000 is normalized, because it is in practice meaningless to talk about any hit above 20,000 which would have otherwise killed you anyway...in other words, saying that the range could be infinite is like saying that on average you will negate an infinite amount of damage, which is just not mathematically true nor in practice. Beyond that, you can go out and measure how much damage you actually took from a fight and use that to figure out the potential average for particular encounters. If you look in your combat logs, and you see that you took 4k, 2k, 10k, 3k 1k in a fight, then you just find the mean average of that data, (in this case 4k) and the average potential would be for that encounter, 4k. The more accurate and lengthy the data, the more accurate the average you can calculate, and when you do that encounter again, you can expect an average for how much damage you are essentially negating when you go out into the field. The information above tells you something. That if you were to use your aegis, dodges or blocks on cooldown at 100% efficacy (which means always mitigating attacks that would have otherwise killed you), you would on average be negating X amount of damage during an encounter. That information alone is quiet useful, especially when you are giving AEGIS or some other mitigation buff to other players, in which you don't know what attack will be negated, therefore an average can still tell you a lot of useful information. Not as useful as an exact number, but still useful enough to make decisions about how and when to use it. The point then becomes how well you can try to attain 100% efficacy, and that's the performance part of how you utilize those mechanics in a fight. > Sure, but it's a pretty well informed opinion because if heals were valuable to higher skilled players, you would see such things reflected in the meta and build comps for raids and such. I disagree. We could go into this but I don't feel like doing so right now. Mostly comes down to players accepted beliefs...and some people are unwavering in what they believe is meta even when video's, images, mathematics are thrown directly in their face to the contrary. I have topped cleansing charts on every single cleansing class in WvW by significant margins (using the same philosophy in calculation), and even on classes and builds people didn't think were possible. I've provided evidence and what do people say? I don't believe calm your ego >.> Okay. Nothing to do with ego just frustrated people can't do the mathematics on their own and when I show evidence of so and so to be the case, it's like attacking a religious sect. "You don't believe therefor you are wrong. and nothing you show me can change my mind." I am friends with...many high level players (particularly from pvp) who have the most backward thinking of these sort of mechanics...i do not believe that there are any correlations between being a good player, and applying logical analysis to understand how to play a game good. Some people just have intuitions and philosophies that co-align with the actual science behind it. This to me is the difference between the theory crafters, and the high level players. Boots is a good example of a guy who really understands theory-crafting, and has made builds that most people didn't even think were possible. The reason rev's with Mad-king runes exist the way they did in this current time is because of people like boots (actually boots himself) and also necro builds have their origins in philosophy defined by Nemesis...probably one of the most controversial and hated players because of his way of looking at the game...which didn't surprise me that the meta community would go after him...and yet the builds we use today are linked directly to him. Just saying that just because the meta doesn't reflect certain builds doesn't mean those builds aren't as good if not better than the meta...or that the meta itself isn't a farce to begin with.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > Because dodging big DPS hits more effective damage mitigation than healing them ... and I don't need a measurement to know that. Again ... just the measurements for healing is insufficient in the _practical_ consideration of the game because of the things you CAN'T measure. You can't measure how much DPS mitigation Aegis gives, or dodging or even protection but I can assure you with a _high skilled_ player, those things are worth more than any heal they can get. that's simply not true Aegis, Dodging, protection and a slew of other things can be measured in terms of healing. I already outlined how you do this earlier in the thread. > See, that's really leading us to a valuable line of thinking about who you're trying to sell the value of this assessment to and what questions your answering with it. I'm going to make this generalization: Heals are more important to lower skilled players than higher skilled ones. This just has no basis it's literally an opinion.

> @"Kuma.1503" said: Hey Kuma glad your trying to bring the conversation into a more civil realm. Personally, I think people's frustrations come from #2 in your post. People can't engage or disengage from a thief on their terms. It's common knowledge because they have the best mobility. Balance patches have messed up things, and so classes that us-to be able to do damage to a thief can't anymore...and so we have harder to kill thieves with good mobility. The balance has basically dumbed down the game to make not just thief but all classes less risky to play. Thing is that thief was screwed by the balance patch and massacred it's damage. Before the idea was that thief should be able to kill another thief...now thieves can't kill each other and can reset if they want cause damage isn't high enough. The build's suck, nothing does anything of real consequence anymore basically. So ya someone can play DP backstab, but the most you will be doing is evading, running away and decapping and that's it, their damage is so low, and their tolerance for reset is so low that after hitting a target once or twice they already have to disengage a fight...it's really just a joke what happened to thief and the overall balance of the game. That is my personal thoughts...nothing objective there.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: >The BEST damage mitigation in this game are things you can't measure. But how can you prove or show that if you can't measure it? If it's the best it clearly must be measurable to some extent and if it's measurable it can be broken down into components of healing. What are the best damage mitigation mechanics that your referring to btw? I talked about Aegis and Protection already so i'm curious.

> @"UNOwen.7132" said: > > Try failing a burst with a d\p thief, then try failing a burst with a fresh air ele, come back to this forum and report to the rest of the community what happens when you fail and CAN'T reset 100 times. > > So you concede that your original logic was in fact stupid, since you reduced an entire class down to *one* facet of it? That was the whole point. he's purposefully manipulating the burden of proof from "provide thief video" to "provide Ele video" lmao.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > Well, I think that's the point ... we can wax academic all we want ... but healing potential is not really relevant to how the game is designed. Sure, you can determine it ... but the practical value of that information is low for numerous reasons. Maybe if the healing potential of some build was SO large that it would allow even the worst players to facetank to complete content or the best players to execute perfect DPS rotations ... then there would be something in all of this to consider. > When i look at the game's design, I see 3 things. Damage, Healing, and Control. The reason I see the game like this, is because that's what you can identify and measure in your combat logs. Control (buffs,debuffs,utility etc...) can not be measured in any meaningful sense. For example we can't compare the value of immobilize to the value of stability. They are too estranged and can't be measured in terms of value...and it all comes down to judgement call...Is immobilize gonna help you land this burst damage? Or is stability gonna help you land this burst damage? Honestly it's an interesting topic but it has nothing to do with this thread...it's a completely different thing that is so far removed from talking about the other two things in the game's design. Now the other two things, Damage and Healing are measurable and comparable. Those mechanics are skills, traits, boons, conditions etc., that can be broken down into components of either damage or healing. This thread focuses on healing. A lot of things like boons and utility fall under this umbrella, so long as whatever it is, can be measured it can be condensed, calculated and compared with all other things in that category. The above is just a way to analyze information that's all....it's how you are able to extract, analyze and then use that information which determines how useful it's gonna be for you. But the information here is public and not personal...everyone here has access and is universally applicable (math) of course if we play in a zero-sum it will always be in your favor to have more information available to you.

> @"maddoctor.2738" said: > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > I hope this information was helpful for those that want to become better healers. > > I want to stand on that "better healers" part. > > It's math that can be used to find out your own healing potential, if you care to find it the first place, I find it pointless information. But I'd never use math like that to compare the effectiveness of players as healers, to find which is a "better healer", that's because the results of such math is gonna be irrelevant in any practical application. Let's say 2 players are playing Druid on Vale Guardian, using the exact same build, different squads, different times, not on the same run. Using your calculations, player 1 gets a 30% efficiency and player 2 gets 12% efficiency. Which player is the "better healer"? You can't say that player 1 is a better healer just by their efficiency numbers alone. Congrats, player 1 healed more, but what if player 2 didn't need to heal as much in the first place? > A good question. Glad you pointed this out because it's a logical question to ask when it comes to this kind of calculation. The more healers you have with you in an encounter, then each players healing effectiveness decreases. This doesn't say anything about which healer is better...it means that the efficacy at which you are utilizing the build has dropped...and your performance will drop and rightly so. If you were solo-healing you can more effectively utilize your build, and thus the your performance goes up. This doesn't say which healer is better or worse. make sense? This is the same reason why if you were to look at an HPS meter, If you and a friend healer heal a boss for 11k HPS and 9k HPS respectively, then if you were to solo heal the same encounter, you'd be mistaken to think you would be doing 21k HPS. If you can't heal 21khps (maybe you can only heal 13kHPS) then something must be going on right? What if it were the case where your friend who did 9k earlier, can heal 18k HPS as a solo healer. The squad would think that the 11k HPS healer is better than the 9k HPS healer even though solo he could heal nearly twice as much. You can see the flaws in trying to gleam information about which healer is better or worse based on HPS numbers alone...and especially when trying to compare players performance relative to one another, rather than your efficacy to it's potential. If the player that can heal 13khps solo has a potential of 13khps...then he's reaching nearly 100% efficacy, which means he's fully utilizing his build (and thus has near perfect performance as he can get with the build. If the player that can heal 18khps solo has a potential of 40k, then he's barely reaching 50% efficacy. which means his build is underutilized. This can be due to performance or to his actual build having higher potential than the encounter demands for. The above is a great example of why when you look at just HPS numbers, alone, it doesn't tell you enough information about whether you are performing well or not. The calculation allows you to determine the potential HPS (it's rather just total healing over the course of any period of time) so that you can assess the limits of which you can perform, and then try to meet those limits. It says nothing and it's never meant to say anything about comparing performances relative to other builds or classes.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > I mean, sure, we can look at a healing 'rotation' and determine what class is most appropriate for different things ... but that's not an accurate or even appropriate way to play the game. The thing i keep repeating in this thread, is that this is not how you are supposed to use the calculation. It's about calculating a potential of a build, and the efficacy at which you reach the potential of that build to determine relative performance between what you did, and the potential to what you can do...It's not meant to compare builds between each other. This is why people actually get mad when what build has a potential higher or lower than another but that reaction is silly and cyninja points out exactly why just a post ago....if you take a utility, or do any other sub task that is not healing, the potential for HEALING is going to be lower. That does not mean that the efficacy to which you meet that potential is going to be lower... just means it can't meet the demand for an encounter that requires a higher healing potential. If you fight a boss that usually does 2 million damage to your group, and your potential for healing is 15 million, then in this encounter you are always going to have a low healing efficacy. This is information that you can use to assess why your performance is not good in this fight...and the reason is because the encounter doesn't do enough damage for you to heal...therefor if you were to do this encounter again, you can change things on your build where if you don't need X Y Z you can replace them with A B C and do something else because you can still meet the demand of that encounter. Mad doctor above basically said exactly this. He finds he doesn't have to heal in certain fights therefor he tries to do some DPS...that's the whole point of the method...it gives you better information as to WHAT you should replace so that you can know how much potential you sacrifice for utility/damage or whatever else you want to do. >For example, It might help someone choose a class if they have a question like 'what class has the biggest 3-skill burst heal'. But even then, these are pretty specific or weird questions to ask because that would mean a 3-skill burst is assumed to be the most optimal healing scenario....If anything, the most optimal heal builds are the ones that give the most exact healing (ie, no over healing) with the fewest skills ... so the analysis is really lacking in considering number of skills needed and 'bandwidth' to execute healing. To me this is a perfectly valid question. And your conclusion even though it seems "specific and weird" is actually true, except the calculation says nothing about optimal healing scenario. You can, using the calculation, find out what the strongest 3 skill burst combination of healing in the game....and that information is meant to inform you about the skills you are using. Just because you have the most optimal potential, does not mean you will be able to use it to its most optimal efficacy. If these 3 skills give you the biggest burst healing potential, then that is going to be the most optimal healing when you need to do a big burst heal... But if you are using this 3 skill burst to try to passively heal players, then the efficacy to which you are using those skills may go down, because when the demand for healing arrives, and your most valuable skills are on cooldown, you can not meet the demand for that healing at that period in time, and would have to resort to use low priority skills instead. This is also one reason why you can never have a perfect efficacy, because if you could, you'd have to be clairvoyant and use your skills at exactly the right time where each situation allows you to use each skill at 100% efficacy. I stated this way earlier in the conversation to another person, but ill requote it again > For example, a boss can do 10,000 damage every 10 seconds in two ways. Either 1000 damage per second, or 10,000 damage in 1 second and do nothing for the remaining 9 seconds. In both situations, a skill that heals for 1000 healing per second will at the end of 10 seconds, heal all 10,000 damage in both scenarios. Likewise, just as an enemy can inflict burst damage on you, the same applies for when you apply burst healing to allies. You can either heal 1000 healing per second, or do 10,000 healing in one second, and do nothing for the remaining 9 seconds. In practice, it's always a combination of both happening in tandem, where a burst will occur followed by pressure, or pressure is followed by a burst, and will always go back and forth between the two, and one of your jobs as the healer is to respond to each situation with the appropriate counter situation so that you and your allies health is always returning to100% as soon as possible so you can deal with the next phase of bursts and pressure. In other instances, some skills are just more valuable than others in so many ways, that using those less valuable skills will almost ALWAYS give you lower efficacy than if you just used higher valued skills...therefor in any healing scenario, it means you'd have higher efficacy by just using higher priority skills at anytime. This is kind of like looking at Stone Spirit and Water Spirit on Druid. Stone Spirit is so valuable, that not upkeeping protection for even 4 seconds in a 3 minute fight, is worth the grand total of water spirits contribution to healing in the entirety of those 3 minutes. Think about that for a second. Focusing your brain power to cast your healing ability 30 times in a 3 minute fight is less valuable than forgetting to refresh stone spirits active for 4 seconds. In almost all scenario's, Stone Spirits is too important to not prioritize at all times over anything else.

Now the idea of the game was > @"Valfar.3761" said: > The best time I had in GW2 was the HoT expansion. I liked the vertical maps (namely Verdant Brink). I also liked the feeling of "threat"; the mobs were very dangerous and you really had to pay attention. I don't like damage spongey mobs, though. I liked the story. The writing wasn't great but the spectacle set pieces were fun. I think the writers knew that their writing was weak, so they played to the strength of their setpiece spectacles and tried to minimize the amount of character stuff and talking as possible, so there was little filler. The voice acting of Rytlock and Canach was great, though. > > The post-launch patches is where they lost me. They removed the danger from the mobs, so they just turned into long, tedious damage sponges that were no fun to fight anymore. The maps weren't interesting to traverse like Verdant Brink. The story also slowed down and the writers were no longer playing to their strengths. Rather than getting to the next setpiece, there is a lot of talking and character stuff and since the writing is bad, well... it's just not enjoyable at all. So I lost interest. Nobody cares about Marjory talking about curtains. People do care about running with an egg while being chased by a spider. I love FFXIV and Trails for their story, but GW2 falls woefully short and I think it's been clear for a long time that GW2 really shouldn't try. > > For End of Dragons, if they can make a map like Verdant Brink again, maybe Kaineng being a dense city space that goes up to a very tall height so you can jump off and fall for a long time and open your glider and fly to multiple levels, that'd be cool. Dangerous mobs that aren't damage sponges, so a high time to kill experience where you have to pay attention. Maybe some revamped underwater combat. For the story, minimize the talking and get straight to business, even if it had to be a short campaign. I agree that the writing is very poor. Really I think it just lacks actual storytelling elements...basic ones. Like how to build characters, moving a plot from point A to point B...and of course theme...there's no themes...no lessons, no questions being asked of the audience. Everything is basically exposition dump->exposition dump->exposition dump->Character makes a joke...gets emotional about their past-> exposition dump. It's not easy to write stories, but there are some very basic things that a story requires in order for it to be cohesive in any way. It doesn't help that our character is "The commander" rather than an adventurer. There exist story archetypes where "The commander" should fit a story archetype of "The Ruler." This simply doesn't happen in gw2. Here's an exert with a quick summary of what a rulers story should structure itself as _**The Ruler jungian-archetypes-the-ruler**_ _**Also known as the king, queen, boss, leader, politician, role model, manager, or aristocrat, the Ruler is always at the top of the food chain, and is generally wholly responsible for the atmosphere of the world in which they inhabit. For this reason, it is quite common to either find the benevolent ruler killed or otherwise maimed early on in the story, or the evil dictator, who is the main villain the heroes must overcome by the end. Why is this? Because if the Ruler is available and doing her job properly, there would be no story to tell!**_ _**The Ruler is concerned with creating wealth and prosperity, and in order to do that, they must obtain absolute power. By the end of the story, many Heroes may, in fact, be on the path to become Rulers themselves. Unlike the Hero, the Ruler isn’t concerned with a singular purpose—they must weigh the entirety of the community they oversee, and as such, are rarely universally loved. In fact, there may even be a benevolent ruler who appears wholly the villain, simply because they can not grant the requests of their followers. They exert their power as a first course of action, with or without counsel.**_ Now, we as player characters simply do not fit into the shoes of a ruler...nor do our goals seem to be this way. If anything we are "hero's" except we don't go on a hero's journey....we could also be considered adventurer's, but we don't follow an adventurer's tale either. Really the story has no structure, doesn't follow one, nor fit any archetype which would definitely help give it a direction of some kind...and with some kind of meaningfulness to the story and its characters. Right now i would literally describe it as being a mess...closest thing it resembles is being a political drama.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > I will give you props though, by looking at a classes utility, even if only relating to it's healing output, in this case protection, you did show that bringing 2 druids is not beneficial if compared to other healers (not new information and also not an issue for a long time, but still now we have mathematical proof for those missing it). Now imagine how useful this information would be if incorporating other utility skills as well, which brings us back to what I said about mainstream healer: > Since utility is the deciding factor for which healer to bring, a comparison between healing output WHILE a support is providing it's unique benefits and a comparison what the maximum healing output is when fully focusing on healing (while geared and skilled in his regular build since one can not expect or plan for things to go wrong) is the information which would be most valuable and even then only if it actually disrupts the current assumptions and status quo (unless to confirm). look please stop with this. This thread isn't about utility...its about healing. You can play whatever you want with whatever idea you can come up with...this has nothing to do with utility. Its a thread about healing, calculating that healing and how to derive an analysis about your performance from that calculation...why do i keep having to repeat this over and over again. >How is this an argument? If each player brought enough healing, there would be no need for healers. If each player brought enough might, there would be no need for might boons from support. right exactly...that is the point. Druid's most valuable healing ability is something that is not unique to the class, therefor the idea that boon utility defines healer performance makes no sense because those specific utilities are not unique to just healers let alone the druid class. It's like saying that because Tempest can't provide stability, they are bad healers... Again this thread has NOTHING to do with utility. The utility you bring is your build you decide what you want to bring for encounters. This thread is about calculating HEALING effectiveness...The two things are mutually exclusive.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > I'll abbreviate what you wrote for simplicity: > A. know which skills to use when for boons or cc or utility, which is the actual dictation of the rotation for support builds > B. know which skills are your primary heal skills in case things go south and you need to deviate from your ideal rotation thus sacrificing boon uptime and other utility in favor of healing > > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > So If 3 skills on your build have a lot of value, then your just using those 3 skills, and everything else just becomes filler, rather than the other way around which is how rotation deals with playstyle. Personally that's a much easier playstyle than trying to remember very complicated rotations and such. > > and in PvE the primary value comes from NOT the healing aspect of most support builds. Thus a pure healing analysis is very limited in its usefulness besides knowing your big heals. > > How is this news? You literally provided proof that outside of maximizing healing, which happens when players know which their primary heal skills are, your analysis is useless. I refer you to what was said earlier multiple times: in PvE pure healing output is NOT the deciding factor in most cases for support builds or choice thereof. > > You indirectly even criticize this in your comment on 10 player protection uptime of druid. That too falls under utility which this build would have over certain other healing builds unrelated to healing output, and it matters not that it skewes the values in anyway (on the contrary, it just proves how certain utility skills far supersede pure healing). Can other classes provide protection? Sure, but not all can do so to 10 players thus that is something which needs to be accounted for on at least 1 of both supports (if running a 2 player support composition, with 1 support this gets drastically harder given the choice of support is reduced to only 10 player protection providing support classes if protection is desired). Sigh...let me say this one more time. This is not about utility vs direct healing...I don't understand WHY you keep bringing it up it has nothing to do with the topic. And also, the analysis completely flew over your head. I'm not criticizing protection AT ALL. I'm criticizing how druid's most valuable healing ability is something that is NOT UNIQUE to the druid class, and in addition, anyone in the group that also provides protection reduces the efficacy at which you are able to utilize the build...because again protection isn't unique to druid. If each player brings enough protection output to cover a squad, then your efficacy at which you are using stone spirit plummets to at most 1/10th of it's potential. That is what I was criticizing here...is that druid is not some special healer above all other healers because it provides "utility" which isn't even unique to druid class. Now if you are solo healing on a druid, and you can fully utilize protection, then that's actually more power to it, and allows specialization to your group allowing them to not need to bring protection. That's optimal thinking...but 2 druid healers...why exactly would you do this if your most valuable healing abilities (Regeneration and Protection) get cut in half by doing so.

> @"Terrorhuz.4695" said: >You don't get revealed if you fail. Havn't played thief in 2 years. I went and edited my comment to correct that. But anyway, let me step back a bit because i attacked a strawman and failed to even focus on what's important about your comment. >Someone has yet to explain in which universe stealth into backstab for 15 minutes is high skill cap, Firstly, this comment is just extremely biased and its no surprise i fell for this strawman cause it wasn't so obvious. Thief is not just "stealth into backstab for 15 minutes." I think if you actually fought good thieves, you'd realize how wrong of a statement this is. I honestly don't really know what to say to you because i think you just won't understand it. But Cluster2 was a thing, Predicting Steal is a thing, using mirage cloak icon as a way to always land steal is a thing (also landing steal in general on all classes is a thing) Clutch Impact Strikes were a thing...i mean i could go on and on about all the things on thief that take skill to pull off, and these are the non-obvious ones that exclude the more rudimentary things like not dying in mid from being sneezed on. Anyway id put 300g's on it right now, I'd send you to the shadow realm on my necro if all you did was stealth into backstab. like i told the other guy...go do that in ranked and see how far you get doing stealth+backstab spam and record a video for all of us to see.

> @"Terrorhuz.4695" said: > Someone has yet to explain in which universe stealth into backstab for 15 minutes is high skill cap, 'cause for the life of me I can't understand it. Maybe because it requires you to be behind a target? And it costs initiative or a utility to gain stealth in the first place? And Backstab does 2k damage which is half of a Reaper auto attack? and it cane be blocked, blinded, negated in every single way like all other abilities that require absolutely no set up at all? And the incredibly short range? need i continue?

The problem with talking about "fun" is that it's very subjective. One persons idea of fun, is another persons idea of not fun. it's too abstract to quantify "fun" in any meaningful sense. But about the content of your post, all 3 things should be a thing. We all want the game to be fun, we all want choices to mean something and matter, and we all want content to keep us engaged when things start to get stale and boring. But...and a big but...is that these 3 things are basically "easier said then done." We've seen what happens when new content is introduced...it fails miserably...why? Maybe because it wasn't fun... Meanwhile other newly introduced content seems fun...but for no real particular reason. I could go on, but basically these things are way to abstract to talk about with any measure of objectivity. We can tell the devs to make the game more fun...but what does that exactly mean? how? What do they need to exactly do to make it fun. etc... Diversity on the other hand can at least can be objectively talked about because there are sciences related to it that's been explored courtesy of biology. Diversity is not a simple to understand concept its very deep and requires a very heavy level of understanding about some math and science to really understand what needs to be done in order to INCREASE diversity. The problem with what you said in the post is that the exact behavior you outline in the conclusion is what leads to LESS build diversity. I would go to explain why but i've explained why so many times that im actually exhausted of saying it over and over again. Abridged version: nerfs and buffs (especially to outliers) are equally as useless as trying to ask Santa for presents. Balance, is like someone said recently, an illusion. It can not be achieved through numerical nerfs and buffs alone and CMC's vision is a farse so long as he can not change skill functionality and mechanics. In addition, trying to balance in the above manner actually means compromising diversity in order to do so. This kind of thing is called "Complementarity." Both things although seemingly contradictory or separate phenomenon, are part of the exact same structure...You can't have diversity if everything is equal to one another. Think about that for a moment and try to understand what that means. Diversity is the MEASURE of differentiation...the measure of how different things are to one another. If two things are different how can they be equal? It's fundamentally impossible to reconcile that.

> @"Murdock.6547" said: > First of all, friend. Thank you for giving me these formulae and methodologies to use to theorycraft healers and offhealers > (and some dps builds that happen to have healing and barriers in them by happenstance). > > I'm someone who experiments *a lot* but I often just feel things out and only do basic math, often with little idea of how effective things might be until I field test them with friends in a fractal, raid, or dungeon. This info will save me some time and gold. And would have saved my friends from the dreaded healer thief I bumbled awkwardly at them. But I feel that even THAT catastrophe might have been doable if I had calculated the value of each healing skill instead of just "hm. this make green number go brr. I press." > > Second of all, please don't let the haters tell you otherwise: But this information is highly valuable. Maybe not to the average joe schmoe who's going to 111 his way through another AV farm, and maybe not even to the average raider. But I'm sure speed-runners would love to make use of stuff like this (If they aren't already!) > So let me just say again very overly dramatically: > > Thank you for doing what you can to share knowledge with us. Thanks friend. really appreciate that and I'm glad you found it useful. I find that this method is good for everyone that wants to find out how exactly they are performing in a general sense. Rotations are in theory the most optimal way that one can use a build in practice, since it assumes that all gaps between cooldowns of abilities are filled with just the right skills in order to never have downtime. Thing is that priority rotation is essentially the same thing, where the priority are on skills that give more value than those of lower value, even if those lower value skills fill gaps in rotation. So in a priority rotation, abilities like Med-Blaster take priority since it gives you the most value per use, rather than in a rotation where you'd use skill XYZ then Med-blaster in between. In some instances rotations can sometimes be worse than a priority rotation, for example if the value of XYZ is lower than the value of single use of MedBlaster, then the amount of effort expended could have been better spent using medblaster instead. In theory-craft they have a special name for this called "Value per unit of effort" or something like that. When building a priority, it becomes easier to manage a class because your just utilizing the most valuable skills when they come off cooldown. So If 3 skills on your build have a lot of value, then your just using those 3 skills, and everything else just becomes filler, rather than the other way around which is how rotation deals with playstyle. Personally that's a much easier playstyle than trying to remember very complicated rotations and such.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > > @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > _Snip!_ > > I get what You say, but the fact is that there is neither more or less builds diversity. What was called "flavor of the month" was simply replaced by what we call "meta build" now. Because players simply seek to be the most effective possible when they play and could care less about builds that are slightly less effectives. The only real difference in build diversity is that before players actually tried to pioneer new directions while now almost everybody simply follow the "meta". The number of options didn't go down, they've gone up in fact, what changed is the player's readiness to thread new paths. > > Players have lost the notion of viability, they have a misconception of the "meta" being synonimous to "viable". And the worst is that when a non-meta build start to show a bit of efficiency they rush in this very subforum to beg ANet to bring down this build. I'll be mean but in reality it's not that the build diversity has gone done, it's that players hate build diversity. I don't full agree with this conclusion, but i don't disagree either. Players indeed have shot down builds the moment they crop up, and it's why i hate the "nerf this nerf that" mentality that was basically supported by CMC ever since he gained control of balance changes. We have seen builds appear since the nerfs...but then those builds within weeks are taken down...and some of these are not just nerfs to put it under control, but drastic nerfs that "essentially" remove it from accomplishing any meaningful goal. The truth is that the flavor of the month kind of balance is what we should be having...but that is not the case in gw2 as of right now. I don't think that players lacking the motivation to pioneer new builds is the reason for this...i think that it is just bad balance that makes more and more options not viable....and thus theory crafters like me are pushed more and more toward the current meta builds as those are quickly converging as being the only builds that can actually be used to accomplish SOMETHING rather then being a punching bag with a feather for a weapon. I've had probably 6 different reaper builds at HOT (Proc-shoutmancer, Heal-Rezbot necro, Condi Reaper, Boonmancer, DM/SR Power Reaper, and then plain ol' Zerk Reaper.) Now i just have 1, which is zerk reaper...and frankly nothing else seems to even work well enough to compare.

> @"Moradorin.6217" said: > LoL bounding ftw was funny when it was OP > > Bounding: > February 25, 2020 Competitive content update: > > (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient from 1.33 to 0.5. Increased bonus damage from 10% to 15%. > > May 16, 2017 > > Bound: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 24% in PvP only. > > April 28, 2020 > > This skill no longer ignores the immobile condition. > > Vault: > February 25, 2020 Competitive content update: > > (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient from 2.25 to 1.82. WvW will now use the PvP initiative cost of 6. > > December 11, 2018 > > The damage of this attack will no longer occur if the thief shadowsteps after the skill has begun. > > May 16, 2017 > > The initiative of this skill has been increased from 5 to 6 in PvP only. > > Weakening Charge > February 25, 2020 Competitive content update: > > (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.7 to 0.45. Reduced weakness duration per hit from 2 seconds to 1 second. > > > Hey Justice, you said you no longer play this game so by your definition of walking the walk you have no legs. So you link the changes page as if this somehow proves a point? literally trying to deflect by changing the subject upload a video of you playing thief spamming 5555. conversations stops here till' you go do that.

> @"Moradorin.6217" said: > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > > @"darren.1064" said: > > > kitten, nobody can show that thief is ridiculously OP. That's wild. > > > The response's in this thread is sad. These people have no idea how good thief actually was, how garbage it is now, and how good thief players can actually be. > > > > The veteran thieves play the class like an artform. The skill cap on it is extremely high, and that video is a good example of how hard a thief has to work in order to put a dent in a backpeddling skill clicking mesmer. > > > This is meaningless blather. The same can be said of "top" Mesmers gameplay Jazz X man comes to mind. Im sorry you feel butt-hurt that thief has FINALLY been taken down a peg, even tho it still has too much reset potential and is STILL too low risk in many situations. Sad for you. Honest... > > Thief artform of the past: p/p DE 33333333 > Staff DD: 55555555 dodge 2 555555 > DE of past: kneel mark 1 done > LOL skillz of the artform Okay, how bout you go record a video into ranked on thief and try doing a 5555555 and see how far you get. hint, you won't get very far if you are a skill clicker. Please i would LOVE to see this video. You talk the talk, now walk the walk.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"Avatar.3568" said: > > I am not sure how far cmc's plan goes and how many changes he will numericaly make but I believe that you can't make some proper balance with the elitespecs in this game, since they showed up the game went down in build diversity > > I'll be honest then: this isn't true. Here's the thing. We can't calculate definitively the diversity now versus the diversity back then. There is a way to calculate diversity, and you can mathematically show whether it increased or decreased, but you need at least two sample sets. One from now, and one a period of time before or after for comparison. When people mention that diversity has gone down it's due to this very important line of thinking that needs to be distinguished; Adding more options should yield more builds. The above statement is true, in that more options do introduce new combinations to create new builds...but that is not what people are really talking about. What people are really talking about are VIABLE builds. If you have 20 viable builds before introducing Option A, and you now have 10 viable builds after introducing option A, then build diversity has gone down, even though you've introduced another option. To drive home the point above, if you have 20 builds, then introducing Option A should increase that number to AT LEAST 21 builds. The above should fill you in, that simply adding more options does not have any correlation with increases or decreases in diversity. This begs the question as to what exactly changes diversity, and the answer to that is complexity. Hard to explain this one without going into full on detail...but essentially mechanics define how complex the interactions of each choice has with one another. The more combinations that can accomplish goals, survive and become popular and those that can not accomplish goals die out and become extinct. The idea is you want mechanics to have complexity to be able to have a wide range of builds that can accomplish goals. Using the above example, lets say you have 20 builds, and you introduce option A. Before we said the number of builds should be at least 21...but this number can be considerably higher...exponentially higher, and it's easy to understand why. If you introduce an option A that synergizes with other options on those 20 builds, then for instance, with at least 1 synergy per build, that's 40 builds. 2 synergies per build, and that's 60 builds. If option A could synergize with every trait you've selected in a build, we are talking hundreds....thousands of potentially new builds that use option A. However, what limits this number is the complexity of the mechanic of that option. If option A requires you to choose option 1 2 and 3, then you are exponentially limiting the number of builds that trait can be used with to any effectiveness. Pretty sure you can start examing skills and traits in the game that are like this, and you notice how only 1 build can actually make use of these kinds of traits and abilities. You might also find how Elite specs are self contained in this way in design, in which in order to use A you need B. If you are using B you need C. Those things contribute to the decrease in complexity of the game, and thus the diversity will suffer when these builds can no longer compete with other builds.

> @"darren.1064" said: > kitten, nobody can show that thief is ridiculously OP. That's wild. The only video shown so far is a backpeddling, skill clicking, AI abusing mesmer that is complaining about thief 2k backstab. I'm actually stunned that this person thought it was a good idea to link that video. The response's in this thread is sad. These people have no idea how good thief actually was, how garbage it is now, and how good thief players can actually be. The veteran thieves play the class like an artform. The skill cap on it is extremely high, and that video is a good example of how hard a thief has to work in order to put a dent in a backpeddling skill clicking mesmer. Anyway, i've long since dropped this game...it only makes me super toxic and i hate feeling that way.

> @"MrForz.1953" said: > > @"Kuma.1503" said: > > Some of us come in and inspect the hole, we notice that the sides are all lumpy. It's much too big in some areas and much too narrow in others. We can't exactly blame the diggers... they've been digging with hammers. > > > > We suggest adding dirt back to the areas where the hole is too wide. "No", say the people digging the hole "We just need to take more from the other side. It will even things out". > > > > "But then the hole will be too big" Say the onlookers. > > > > "We can't add dirt back or we'll end up back at square one" > > > > So they begin hacking away at the other side of the hole with their hammers... > > > > > > I guess that can come full circle afterwards. The point that Kuma is making here, is that they are in a hole to begin with using tools that only further to address the shape of the hole rather than addressing that the hole itself is the problem. It's [Plato's Allegory.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave)

> @"Jekkt.6045" said: > > @"suialthor.7164" said: > > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > > More meaningful means a variety of things, but even that basically breaks down into doing reworks of the abilities and systems in the game to give everything more meaning...and in particular more meaningful interactions with other skills. > > > > > > > How does reworking abilities not result in nerfs/buffs for classes? If all you do is give more complexity you are still buffing many builds. > > reworking stuff does result in nerfs/buffs but not in the same way as if you would directly nerf or buff them. something different can be better or worse than what it used to be, that is undeniable. > > more complexity is a buff too, even if the skill keeps the same power level. more complexity more often than not means more ways to use something, therefore you have more choices to make which automatically makes it better than a skill that is bland and has only one use. > > but is that bad? > > we have many bloated skills currently that do too much and don't require big brain plays to get maximum value. the goal should be skills that do multiple things under different circumstances, making them strong when used correctly instead of just... making them strong. right exactly. @"suialthor.7164" There's a lot of nuance to it all that it's almost akin to an artform...it's one of those things that requires tact in order to get right, because its the design of the thing that decides how meaningful it's going to be in the broader scope of the game. Looking at the binary option of a computer where it's just 0 and 1 creates a syntax, and this leads to endless...endless possible things and that designing that simplicity is itself the artform. You can have a skill that does something but the extent to which that skill can be used could be massively rich...it all depends on the design of it. On the same end you could have an extremely bloated skill that does 20 non-consequential things and still be basically useless because it can't accomplish a certain goal. This above is just one example of that nuance. The other like Jekkt mentions is that idea of trade-offs...or lack there of that leads to skill bloat. Trade-offs are also a delicate subject because the ones we have no in game currently aren't actual functioning or meaningful tradeoffs. Me and Jekkt speak about this in the thread linked there, but it should become apparent why the tradeoff's we have now don't serve a real purpose, since they either make classes completely irrelevant or have no consequence at all.

> @"suialthor.7164" said: > People gravitate to a few builds because they are the most efficient. Then how do you encourage variety without using nerfs/buffs? The only other major factors is number of players and the map objectives. It's intuitive to think of it this way, but it's not true. There is a way to increase variety and differentiation, without introducing nerfs and buffs, because the truth is that numerical nerfs and buffs in an attempt to make skills equal like the OP mentions, actually brings the game closer and closer to a homogenous game. I went and showed some proof that this is the case by just running through a logic experiment: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1344346#Comment_1344346 Aside from the above, you should read through Kuma's entire thread cause what I will say now is fully explained over there: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1376183#Comment_1376183 Basically, variety, or the level of differentiation is a consequence of how good things are able to accomplish goals, and how many ways a single goal is accomplished is the measure for how much variance there is. So the question you should ask here, is then how do you make changes, so that players can accomplish the same goals, and have higher and higher number of different ways to achieve those goals? the answer is...and I think people are sick of hearing me say this...but it's from understanding how complexity theory can show us how to answer that question. Long story short (because the story is indeed very long), the answer is to just make choices more meaningful. More meaningful means a variety of things, but even that basically breaks down into doing reworks of the abilities and systems in the game to give everything more meaning...and in particular more meaningful interactions with other skills.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > This thread would have been very useful IF it had been done with the mainstream support builds So i went ahead and did this calculation. I ended up not taking kitty's build because it was basically the same thing as the meta druid build with just slight variation. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ## MetaBattle Druid Healer Calculation was done using an arbitrary 3 minute (180s) long engagment. This calculation was also done with no quickness and no alacrity. For calculations that involve quickness or alacrity, there are footnotes and ranges specifically to address the impact of those boons on those skills. **Healing Modifiers** 10% - Natural Mender 10% - Transference 10% - Food 13% - Utility 20% - Runes of The Monk approx: 60% **Stone Spirit Passive** >! -33% Damage can be broken down into components of healing in the form of >! "preventative healing." Assuming that 15,000 health is the average >! health pool of a group of players, then we would take the maximum amount >! of damage one could take from an enemy and use that as the maximum >! limit for how much protection can protect a player for. If a player takes >! 15,000 damage in 1 second, protection will protect them for 33% of that >! damage, or approx 5,000 damage in that one second. >! >! 5,000 x 10 allies = 50,000 preventative healing in 1 second. We now provide >! the range at which one can upkeep protection. Without Alacrity, this would >! be 16 seconds out of every 20 seconds. With Alacrity it can effectivly be >! permanently maintained, giving us the value below as the potential limit. >! >! 7,200,000 - 9,000,000 7,200,000 - 9,000,000 **Cosmic Ray:** >! 1,483 x 5 allies = 7,416 x 30 uses every 25 seconds = 222,480 x 7 uses over >! the course of 180 seconds = 1,557,360 1,557,360 **Regeneration:** >! The following assumes that the player can maintain regeneration in perpetuity. >! This is done using a combination of quickdraw procs between Sublime Conversion >! Call of the Wild, and Water Spirits Active Effect. For purposes of easier >! calculation, the potential healing effectiveness of these three abilities >! will be labeled under the umbrella term "Regeneration." >! In addition, sublime Conversion and Water Spirits Active can effect 10+ allies, >! and thus will be calculated as such below. >! >! 504 x 10 allies = 5,042 per second x 180 uses = 907,605 907,605 **Seed of Life:** >! 1,478 x 5 allies = 7,392 x 10 uses per 25 seconds = 73,920 x 7 uses per >! 180 seconds = 517,440 517,440 **Nature Spirit Passive** >! 244 x 10 allies = 2448 per 1 second x 180 uses = 440,640 440,640 **Rejuvenating Tides:** >! Below assumes the player is not an idiot and is given charitable interpretation, >! in that they would have effectivly tried to make optimal use of quickdraw procs. >! >! 1,336 x 5 pulses = 6,680 x 5 allies = 33,400 per 10.75 seconds. Can be used >! once every 25 seconds, for a total of 7 uses per 180 seconds = 233,800. If >! utilizing quickdraw procs, this ability can be used twice every 25 seconds, >! for a total of 467,600. 467,600 **Lunar Impact:** >! Again, this calculation assumes that the player is given charitable >! interpretation in that the player would utilize quickdraw procs to make the >! best usage of these skills. >! Note: Quickdraw can only be used on one skill. So if quickdraw is used on Lunar >! Impact, Rejuvenating Tides potential drops in exchange, and visa versa. The sum >! of the calculation at the end will however ignore this discrepancy. >! *read notes below* >! >! 6,009 x 5 allies = 30,048 per 8.75 seconds. Can be used once every 25 seconds >! for a total of 7 uses per 180 seconds for a total of 210,336. With Quickdraw >! procs, this ability can be used twice every 25 seconds for 420,672. >! >! Notes: It is possible to use at least one of these abilites twice in one >! transform of Celestial Avatar. Celestial Avatar seems to not obey an >! exact 15 second duration. Therefor, the previous mentioned quickdraw >! discrepencies will be ignored, and the higher potential will be counted, >! to make up for the difference. 420,672 **Ancestral Grace:** >! 4707 x 5 allies = 23,536 x 12 uses per 180 seconds = 282,432 282,432 **Solar Beam:** >! 153 x 3 pulses = 460 x 3 allies = 1,382 x 144 uses per 180 seconds = 199,008 199,008 **Water Spirit Passive:** >! 863 x 10 allies = 8,630 x 18 uses per 180 seconds = 155,340 >! notes: Water Spirit Passive is not effected by player healing power >! or Outgoing Healing Modifiers. 155,340 **-------------------------Total**  12,148,097 - 13,948,097 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Take a moment and reflect on what the above information is saying here. Now it's obvious that some abilities can not be used over and over without sacrificing the healing of other abilities due to the gating nature of the spec. For example, when you look at a particular segment of time, if you use only Seed of life, Lunar Impact and Rejuvenating Tides in a rotation during your time spent in Celestial Avatar, that is the equivalent of just spamming Cosmic Ray over and over and over again every time you are inside Celestial Avatar. This kind of information means that you don't need to break your neck focusing on Quickdraw procs...but it gives you the option to do one or the other based on whatever situation you find yourself in. Another thing to note is the hilarious contribution of protection on the build. The only reason the number is this large, is because the class is able keep it on 10 players permanently. Protection however is not unique to the druid class, and it means that your effectiveness goes down if someone else also brings protection. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of analysis of the build, and can give you some information about what is exactly contributing to the build and what isn't. In conclusion, you also should have an efficacy when doing the potential calculation for a build, so that you can compare theoretical information with practical observation...otherwise it's just an HPS in a vacuum with no context.