Guild Wars 2

Would it be possible to add a damage meter in the game? Something similar to the addon called “recount” Im sure you guys know what I’m talking about. Sometimes its tough to know who’s doing what especially in dungeons. It would be nice to see damage, heals , and condition removal stats etc. I think it adds fun to the game and it helps players learn more about each others class. For instance if a certain class in your party has abilities that can help the group but is unaware of the ability the rest of the party would know because they can see in the stat window that this person isnt up to par with heals etc.. I actually played alot with people who never even knew they had certain abilities that would help keep the group alive etc. I also think this is part of the fact why some people say 5 abilities is just too boring.. I know that some of these people don’t really know that they could be helping much more than just spamming 5 abilities. I have grouped many times with elementalists that never switched specs to help heal the party simply because they don’t even really know about using water spec etc..

Information creates standards.
Standards promote elitism and separate players.

It has a huge negative impact.
The same negative impact as Gearscore and Armory.
Go check the state of the community in Diablo 3 and WoW and you’ll get an idea.

I’m going to be honest – Diablo 2 had the best way to tell you how much damage you’re dealing:
- No numbers shown during combat
- You only see player and enemy health “move” as you hit and get hit.

I see what your saying about elitism and how this can promote to that. Oh believe me I know all to well about Diablo 2, 3 and wow.. I was thinking it would be fun to see but now that I think about it this could actually lead to alot of trash talking putting other players down etc. If they added it in that would be cool but if they don’t no worries, I guess I understand what it can cause.

PS: If a moderator would like to delete this topic feel free to.

As a numbers geek, I’d love to get my hands on the stats. While I’m curious to compute and compare things like the overall dps and time-in-melee-range dps (would a scepter offhand help, or should i just greatsword leap back to the action?), the time between skill uses (do I really use that 20% cooldown reduction?), and so on, nefarious people would use this data for nefarious purposes.

Not only do I run these numbers for myself, I run them for my friends. Well, ran, I can’t quite do it in GW2. But I’d rather leave it a mystery and rely on empirical evidence than usher in an era of elitism. Just because GS meant nothing doesn’t mean people weren’t rated on it.

When the elementalist doesn’t switch specs to heal, the best recourse is to talk about it. Some people will own up to a mistake, some will learn something new, and some will declare “I’m a fire elementalist, deal with it.” If you can’t tell the problem area based on results, looking at potential causes won’t give you a full picture either.

you also can’t measure cc, combo fields, avoidance effects (mass aegis or protection, stealth), and so on.

Good players will continue to be good without the need for a stat stick. If you wanted to really truly just compare a build with 2 particular weapon sets or some other very specific thing, the pvp vendors in the mists sell ‘steady’ weapons that are supposedly good for theorycrafting.

I don’t want a ridiculous DPS numbers race like other MMOs, but I would very much like some sort of personal method of testing things. The game does so much to hide information from you that it’s kind of silly. (Stacking damage numbers, DOT damage for bleeds increasing tick speed as it stacks) Comparing damage is almost impossible without a standard measurement, like DPS. It would be like trying to tell which of two cars goes faster, but you don’t get to look at the speedometer, or know how long the stretch of road is, or how much time it took each one to get there. Currently the best way to get damage measurements is to attack something with a stopwatch, then go back to the combat log and add up all the numbers and do the math yourself, and that will only give you a very rough estimate.

I’m starting to wonder if they don’t want an easy measurement for damage output because of the flood of tears that would come from ‘class X does more damage than class Y nerf buff nerf!’

So you ask for ezmode, child-proof, spoon-feeding, elitism-spreading, gimmick-creating damage meters.

No, thank you.

I think the training area in the heart of the mists is fine for figuring out build effectiveness. I don’t think the value of a DPS meter outweighs the drawbacks.

No.

/15characters

Looking for <Inster numbers here> <insert profession here> for <insert things someone wants to do here>.

I’d rather not have that around…

If you want to see how good you build is, the best way is using it in actual gameplay.

BobTheJanitor, the DoTs do not increase tick speed as they stack.
Each stack has an individual duration and damage.
Essentially, if you see 5 stacks of poison, in reality it’s just 5 different poisons using 1 icon.
They tick individually, and you’ll notice the stacks go up and down as the “older stacks” falloff.

The stacking of DoTs and boons is actually a way to economize “aura” room.
So instead of having 25 poison icons, you get 25 stacks on a single icon.

Other than that, the condition stacking system is very lackluster as it penalizes players in a way direct damage dealers don’t get affected.
—-

I suppose players could be given access to more detailed info on skill tooltips – but not something they can “report to party” or anything, otherwise it will be abused like I stated above.