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Comment on Game Update Notes: September 26

Ravi@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

You are talking about a problem that is independent from the dps output of the classes: players aren’t told how core mechanics work. This has been addressed in the recent updates with the adventure guide and the beginning of EoD. You have to seperate this from the damage balance though, because a dead dps doesn’t do any damage, regardless of potential.

On the dps side of things there are also two main aspects: baseline and maximum potential (floor and ceiling). You are talking about low performing players, that are on the floor side of things. But neglected the ceiling part. If you raise the ceiling (like soto did) you trivialize a huge part of the content for most players. Especially in raids there are mostly mixed groups of players, with low performing and high performing players. If you have just two players doing 80% of the benchmark dps, the group skips entire parts of the fight ruining the encounter as it was intended. This also affects the low performing players, that are in the group as well.

Now let’s talk about the baseline (floor) of dps. Yes there is a big difference between baseline dps and the ceiling you can achieve, maybe they could tweak this a bit for some classes. But in my experience bad baseline dps often comes from bad preparation or bad support. Before last patch I tried to benchmark the power soulbeast standard build on the golem, with only doing sword auto atracks. I did get 17k dps out of it. That’s more than enough to beat almost all content. You literally don’t have to press any buttons, just do the mechanics.

Heal and boon dps is another thing. It’s a shift of focus, your dps isn’t that important anymore, now it is keeping the team alive and providing utility. This is traditionally harder than pure dps, because you need to adapt to the encounter you are facing and know the kit you are using. But there are easy variants too, that can provide the core boons without breaking a sweat.

All in all it’s not “git gud”, but just “git okay”. Invest 15min for preparation once to setup your class and you are good to beat any non cm in the game. If you want to get into raids, strikes and fractals invest another 10mins to watch a mechanics video or go into a training raid before joining experienced groups.

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necropola@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Before last patch I tried to benchmark the power soulbeast standard build on the golem, with only doing sword auto atracks. I did get 17k dps out of it.

I assume you have been using the suggested raid buffs, i. e. Fury, 25 Might, Quickness, (Alacrity,) 25 Vulnerabilty, … and were auto-attacking a stationary target golem, right?

What amount of average DPS (over the total fight duration) would this equal to in a “real world scenario”, i. e. a PUGed Cosmic Observatory?

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- Ravi@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes I just did the easy thing and used the standard golen setup for benchmarks.
  
  I don’t think you can just convert the dps to any actual encounter. It strongly depends on the fight and how long you can stick to the target. It just shows how much damage is possible without doing anything for your rotation.
  
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  - necropola@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I don’t think you can just convert the dps to any actual encounter
    
    Is it not even possible to estimate this for the Cosmic Observatory case? I’m surprised.
    
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    Ravi@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    With experience you can probably do it. But there is no formula for it. My guess would be around 8k, but you can get unlucky with mechanics or get good/bad support, so it’s not that reliable.
    
    If you want to see how you perform, I recommend the golem in the aerodrome. As a boon dps I usually run a more utility orientated build in that fractal to boost my groups dps.
    
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necropola@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think we can agree that the main balancing issue is the huge gap between “floor” and “ceiling”.

I wasn’t ignoring the ceiling by the way. My argument is that the ceiling equals a tiny fraction of the player base and is hence not as relevant as it appears to be on the forums, reddit, lemmy, youtube, … where it is overly represented.

And even, if I count in the “floor” of players doing end game content, we are still talking about a minority of the player base total.

What needs to be done is narrow the gap which means

help players to “git okay” (as you put it). But this shouldn’t be mostly rely on external resources. The game can still do far better in this regard.

limit the DPS increase you can achieve by reaching perfection. I don’t mean a hard cap, but a flattening curve that throttles individual DPS the higher you go. Which means that the best of the best can still compete against each other but are not as easily capable of carrying an entire squad.

Meanwhile the “over-performers” could run less OP builds, equip white gear or play naked, if they find the content too easy. Yes, I’m kidding. But just a little. 😎
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- Ravi@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah that’s a good goal to get to. But that’s also hard to achieve, without making skills feel weak, because you basically have to make auto attacks very strong.
  
  We can totally agree though on the teaching of mechanics. Gw2 has a lot of mechanics per encounter, that seriously reduce your dps output if you don’t know how they work. We rarely have classic “punching bag” bosses like other older mmos. Anet did a good job with the two new strikes though. They are very easy to understand, so easy that you can beat them on the first try.
  
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  - necropola@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    you basically have to make auto attacks very strong.
    
    Why would this require auto-attacks to be stronger? I don’t think that the average player (apart from the very lazy. Yes, I know those exist.) is only (supposed to be) using auto-attacks. I think that most players like to use their (impactful) skills. What makes it hard or rather makes a huge difference in DPS is that timing matters a lot, e. g. Blight stacks and their consumption on Harbinger.
    
    I’d also assume or rather hope that less experienced players are making slightly more defensive gear and trait choices which allows them to make a few (minor) mistakes during the course of a boss fight without getting downed or being a constant burden for the healer, i. e. trade some (max) DPS for more survivability.
    
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