Guild Wars 2

I can’t believe how hugely misused this term is. I’m in a dungeon and I hear barbarities such as “DPS that boss guys”. Really? “Damage per second that boss”? Does that sound English to you?

Now I don’t mean to be a grammar kitten but come on this is just basic MMO knowledge. I know GW2 is more of a PvE game than it is a PvP game and so people don’t need to care about knowing such terms with as much finesse as a Starcraft or Dota(1 or 2) player, but here’s an easy explanation in layman’s terms.

Let’s imagine two characters with two different classes, A and B, ok?

Class A has a spell that hits 1 000 000 damage in a second, but only once every hour.
Class B has a sword that hits 1000 damage every tenth of a second.

The DPS of class A is 1 000 000 : 3 600 = 277 DPS
The DPS of class B is 1000 × 10 = 10 000 DPS!

Class B has hugely more DPS than class A!

Now I don’t know what class or build in Guild Wars 2 has the most DPS, but stop refering to nuker classes (tons of damage but huge cooldowns or casting time) as DPS classes because they aren’t! (except if they actually are, in GW2, I don’t know, never bothered to calculate which class had the highest DPS) Also DPS is not a verb for antarctic phoque’s sake.

Thanks.

i know the problem, i get all kinds of bashing like “we need DPS not a necro” while in the long shot i do more damage.
i see ppl saying they need a guardian and a thief because of DPS but end up doing something several times because of glass cannon problems, i get in and kill a whole group.
i don’t kill fast but i can hold my own, i don’t even see why DPS is misused so many times while they are better off with a stable but successful battle.

sorudo.9054:

i know the problem, i get all kinds of bashing like “we need DPS not a necro” while in the long shot i do more damage.
i see ppl saying they need a guardian and a thief because of DPS but end up doing something several times because of glass cannon problems, i get in and kill a whole group.
i don’t kill fast but i can hold my own, i don’t even see why DPS is misused so many times while they are better off with a stable but successful battle.

Great point, now that condi and necros are viable options it makes even more sense to know the difference between DPS builds and nukers.

The problem with your “example”, especially in dungeons, is that fights are so short now that the only thing that matters is literal damage per second. You are calculating under the assumption that fights are going to take a long time, but they really don’t. Even in raids, some groups are so coordinated that they can take the bosses down in 3 minutes or less.

Mate, English stopped making sense when it became a world language Nowadays you have to use deductive reasoning to understand what someone meant to say. In most cases, when someone yells out DPS in-game, it means stop what you’re doing and focus your attack on something. The damage you apply is assumed to be satisfactory for the objective, so it’s not to be taken literally. For example, in Underground Facility you have to lure the ice elemental boss around to each molten furnace to weaken it. There comes a point when its health is low enough that you don’t have to waste time luring it over to the next furnace. Someone will yell out “dps” and that’s a queue for everyone to stop luring and focus your attack on the ice elemental.

And of course when someone refers to DPS on the forums, they’re talking about a closed-minded version of Guild Wars 2 that has only 1 profession and nothing else matters

You’re right about the semantics but as mentioned above, everything goes down too fast for real DPS to be actually relevant. In lack of a more widespread short term, we adopt that one under the “new meaning” that’s not even what DPS stands for. A strange state of affairs but that’s how language changes over time, eh?

Now, things going down so fast that damage over time is irrelevant are a problem but also a solution: for a long time GW2 has been the go-to game for those without time to spend on MMOs but still wanting to enjoy what this kind of game has to offer. Log-in rewards, dailies and how fast raiding is are prime examples of how this works.

So, since everything is supposed to go by in 2 hours or less (there are even threads around about how you’re doing it wrong if fractals take more than an hour), DPS as an actual measure of damage per second is not as important as the average value of total damage per fix amount of time. Kind of like the difference between actual instantaneous speed (distance per second) and average speed over a certain distance and time interval. With that in mind, DPS can be extrapolated to mean what would actually be average DPS and you can be sure the nukers are champions at that right now (Elem, for example, has the amazing damage you mention and still very low cooldowns to boast, because fights are not supposed to last long and standing still is boring as Mo would probably say).

That’s not to say actual DPS like what condi builds can do is totally irrelevant. It just gets that much outshined by raw damage due to the fast pacing of the game. And this pacing is unlikely to change because it’s a main selling point.

I find the title of this post and your complaint ironic. "GW2 needs to learn what “DPS” means." How is GW2, a game, supposed to learn anything? You created a title doing the very thing you complain about!

It’s not strange at all when the jargon of a niche subculture doesn’t conform to the greater language standard. Is there a particular reason this surprises you or have you never been involved with any serious hobby ever?

I hope you’re also looking for DD (damage dealers) instead of DPS when forming groups.

Nothing like engaging a World Boss or a Legendary Bloodstone Crazed creature with some jackhole screaming in map chat “MOAR DEEPS!!”

Really kid? That’s your solution?

DeanBB.4268:

I find the title of this post and your complaint ironic. "GW2 needs to learn what “DPS” means." How is GW2, a game, supposed to learn anything? You created a title doing the very thing you complain about!

I did think, when opening the thread, it was going to be about the game (Devs) learning something, rather than the player-base. Misleading title.

I don’t think game (any game/hobby/workplace/setting) jargon has to conform to any particular global standard. People make up words/slang/abbreviations/joke terms all the time. /shrug

DPS this thread!!

I see that learning new things is a concept that is met with fierce resistance on these forums.

After reading the OP what are we supposed to do? Go thru all the classes and all the spells and do the calculations as to which are most dps then in the middle of a fight use this math to decide whether or not to say MOAR DPS?

no one appreciates pedantry. As long as the meaning comes across, I don’t care if you say dps, burn, kitten up, punt, whatever.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I see that learning new things is a concept that is met with fierce resistance on these forums.

Nothing against new things, this just isn’t one.

This is more like complaining that people want to go do Tixx when in fact they want to go do Tixx’s infinirarium.

Ameepa.6793:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I see that learning new things is a concept that is met with fierce resistance on these forums.

Nothing against new things, this just isn’t one.

This is more like complaining that people want to go do Tixx when in fact they want to go do Tixx’s infinirarium.

But Tixx is hot!

Its annoying I agree, but its an universal term at this point. Everyone understands what others are trying to say with it.

Well… OP arguments are fine hoever a bit off. In GW2 profession are close to each other when it come to damage per second however, those profession are not equal when it come to their ramp up power.

So yes, when they ask for DPS profession/build they ask for profession that ramp up faster than other and have the most potential damage in a short duration fight since ultimately in a short fight those profession will dish out more “Damage per second” than professions/build that ramp up slowly. This case is especially true for dungeon.

Other than that, the word “DPS” is also used as a lot of other word in game with a different meaning tan the litteral meaning. This is the world of gaming and yes, in the world of gaming you ave to learn the different codes/langages used by other players. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that lagages deviate but it’s just the reality and we gotta go along with it or just sink.

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

I agree…

We should burn this thread faster than we misuse the term DPS, and literal!

Lahmia.2193:

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

Emergent wordplay!

But seriously, this is an interesting quick read on the subject. English is like a quickly-mutating virus.

/mutant

Lahmia.2193:

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

It’s a good thing, otherwise we’d have to prioritize using “set priorities” instead of a verb. Plus, “Holy Trinity” would always refer to a tenet of Christianity and not be of any use in discussing gameplay in MMOs.

TexZero.7910:

I agree…

We should burn this thread faster than we misuse the term DPS, and literal!

I am literally done with the irony of this thread.

Lahmia.2193:

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

So you’re saying that the term “Damage per second” has evolved to mean something else than damage per second?

To think about how ridiculous this is, imagine you’re talking about km/h, as in kilometers per hour. Any car dealer would ridicule you for saying “how km/h is this car”. Go around flagging it under “words evolve” and the scientific community would also laugh at you.

DPS is what it is, it’s damage per second. It’s a calculation of how much damage an attack is dishing out on average per second based on its raw damage and cooldown. Saying “DPS means to do high damage”, is as silly as saying “km/h means to go very fast”.

Some words evolve, yes, because they’re used very subjectively, abstractively or loosely. But words that stand for scientific measures don’t evolve, because a second will always be a second and a meter will always be a meter.

DPS in this game is about using Berserker gear and hitting 1 in the monster, that is the dps

Pardon me chaps, let us damage per second this boss until it expires. Annihilate it with pyroclastic doom.

Taking it way too literally. I used to think it was strange when I’d see DPS used like this too, but just about every MMO uses it as the term for a primarily damage-dealing class. It’s like when a person asks for heals by saying “hp” (and I’m understanding hp as hit points or health points). It may not be correct, but its an accepted usage of the term. Granted one could understand hp as “heal please” but then you could also view dps as “damage person” or “damage please” whether asking for a class or for attacks.

I think it’s especially useful for games that may have users of different languages playing together. While saying “Attack the boss please everyone” may sound nicer, it may not be as readily understandable (in the MMO world) to some as “DPS” would be. Plus it’s a lot shorter to type (which may be the most significant reason it’s used?).

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Lahmia.2193:

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

So you’re saying that the term “Damage per second” has evolved to mean something else than damage per second?

To think about how ridiculous this is, imagine you’re talking about km/h, as in kilometers per hour. Any car dealer would ridicule you for saying “how km/h is this car”. Go around flagging it under “words evolve” and the scientific community would also laugh at you.

DPS is what it is, it’s damage per second. It’s a calculation of how much damage an attack is dishing out on average per second based on its raw damage and cooldown. Saying “DPS means to do high damage”, is as silly as saying “km/h means to go very fast”.

Some words evolve, yes, because they’re used very subjectively, abstractively or loosely. But words that stand for scientific measures don’t evolve, because a second will always be a second and a meter will always be a meter.

Jesus you just refuse to accept the fact that you can be wrong, can’t you? Words evolve all the time. Xerox evolved into a verb even though it started off as a Company name. Google is almost a verb. The word “literally” was used incorrectly by so many people that all dictionaries caved and ended up adding the “wrong” definition since no one was ever using it correctly (and now, that definition is technically one of the correct uses of the word). You’re getting upset because people don’t have perfect grammar in a game? My bad. I didn’t realize that was a requirement to playing GW2. Because when the bar is broken, everyone wants to wait for you to type out, in correct grammar mind you, that we can “now attack it and do maximum damage in the 5 seconds you have before the exposed debuff wears off”. Oh wait, no one wants to kittening do that.

Everyone, literally everyone, knows what “DPS this boss” means. You are the only one who has a problem with it, so maybe the problem isn’t with the phrase at all. Maybe it lies elsewhere. Hmm?

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I can’t believe how hugely misused this term is. I’m in a dungeon and I hear barbarities such as “DPS that boss guys”. Really? “Damage per second that boss”? Does that sound English to you?

Now I don’t mean to be a grammar kitten SNIP!

Fear not: there is a layer of the (Forgotten Realms) Abyss reserved for those people who started using “DPS” as a verb.

DeanBB asked you something, OP.
Taking literally your post’s title (because you love to talk in that way), you did not stated yet how, being GW2 a game, you (or anyone else) going to teach it your “real” definition of what DPS means.
Thinking about the game as an entity, GW2 is not a game based on IA, Pattern Recognition, Difuse Logic or nothing like that.
Good luck trying, sure you going have lots of fun!

Maybe it’s not a ‘what’ but a who ?

Perhaps, the acronym changed in definition, rather than the phrase/term the 3 letters stand/stood for.

Would that be acceptable to the OP? Or should I say, Opening Post-creator? Not to be confused with Over-Powered, or other game-related terms.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Would that be acceptable to the OP? Or should I say, Opening Post-creator? Not to be confused with Over-Powered, or other game-related terms.

Opie?

I"m as pedantic as the next guy, often more, but when I know what people are actually talking about, it doesn’t really matter. This is just nit-picking . It’s pointless.

It’s like people talking about the meta and not knowing what a meta really is, or people calling a champ a boss. For all practical purposes it changes nothing.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I can’t believe how hugely misused this term is. I’m in a dungeon and I hear barbarities such as “DPS that boss guys”. Really? “Damage per second that boss”? Does that sound English to you?

Now I don’t mean to be a grammar kitten but come on this is just basic MMO knowledge. I know GW2 is more of a PvE game than it is a PvP game and so people don’t need to care about knowing such terms with as much finesse as a Starcraft or Dota(1 or 2) player, but here’s an easy explanation in layman’s terms.

Let’s imagine two characters with two different classes, A and B, ok?

Class A has a spell that hits 1 000 000 damage in a second, but only once every hour.
Class B has a sword that hits 1000 damage every tenth of a second.

The DPS of class A is 1 000 000 : 3 600 = 277 DPS
The DPS of class B is 1000 × 10 = 10 000 DPS!

Class B has hugely more DPS than class A!

Now I don’t know what class or build in Guild Wars 2 has the most DPS, but stop refering to nuker classes (tons of damage but huge cooldowns or casting time) as DPS classes because they aren’t! (except if they actually are, in GW2, I don’t know, never bothered to calculate which class had the highest DPS) Also DPS is not a verb for antarctic phoque’s sake.

Thanks.

This is no different than to your reference to ‘Fighters (melee DPS)’ a fighter is not a ‘melee damage per second’ he is a character who does melee damage.

The real point however is that it doesn’t matter, after 15 years in mmorpg the mmorpg community understand what is meant by ‘dps that boss’ and we don’t need to be told off.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I can’t believe how hugely misused this term is. I’m in a dungeon and I hear barbarities such as “DPS that boss guys”. Really? “Damage per second that boss”? Does that sound English to you?

Now I don’t mean to be a grammar kitten but come on this is just basic MMO knowledge. I know GW2 is more of a PvE game than it is a PvP game and so people don’t need to care about knowing such terms with as much finesse as a Starcraft or Dota(1 or 2) player, but here’s an easy explanation in layman’s terms.

Let’s imagine two characters with two different classes, A and B, ok?

Class A has a spell that hits 1 000 000 damage in a second, but only once every hour.
Class B has a sword that hits 1000 damage every tenth of a second.

The DPS of class A is 1 000 000 : 3 600 = 277 DPS
The DPS of class B is 1000 × 10 = 10 000 DPS!

Class B has hugely more DPS than class A!

Now I don’t know what class or build in Guild Wars 2 has the most DPS, but stop refering to nuker classes (tons of damage but huge cooldowns or casting time) as DPS classes because they aren’t! (except if they actually are, in GW2, I don’t know, never bothered to calculate which class had the highest DPS) Also DPS is not a verb for antarctic phoque’s sake.

Thanks.

Also, just to come back to this. OP, you added another dimension to your “DPS analysis” without admitting it.

In your example,

• Class A is doing 277 DPS per hour
• Class B is doing 10,000 DPS per hour

If we shifted this back to look at just a minute of time, then the numbers change in Class A’s favor

• Class A is doing 16,667 DPS per minute
• Class B is doing 10,000 DPS _per minute_

As long as you are adding in this extra dimension of CDs (btw, since you are talking about GW2, you should use relevant skill CDs. 180 seconds or less, though if we are being honest with ourselves, the CD would be ~40 seconds or less since most damage is applied via weapon skills), you should be tailoring it to the game environment. No individual fight takes an hour, look at slices of time that are 10 minutes max.

They are Professions, not ‘classes’, no? If we must use the term ‘DPS’ correctly, one must also use the correct term in GW2 designating character combat-type choice.

It’s a very clear thing to understand in GW2 as there’s such a thing called “skill rotation”.
Simply put when someone says “DPS” it means to use your most efficient damage dealing rotation. This typically entails not using your CC or evasive rotations which tend to do minimal damage. For example, a Ranger using CC’s instead of more efficient damage skills. The damage from Point Blank is far weaker than the basic Long Range Shot or Warrior Pin Down compared to Dual Shot. Unless you’re one of those idiots who faceroll their KB just because the skill is not on cooldown.

It’s also much quicker and easier to say “DPS that” instead of " primarily focus on using your damage on that instead of crowd controls and other less damaging abilities "

On top of that I’d rather hear “DPS” than “give it the D, give it the D”

Are you trying to tell me that people saying lol aren’t actually laughing out loud? I’m a bit skeptical.

While i do understand your first part where people use the “dps” when refering to anything regarding attack or attacking..when it comes to actual dps its a bit tricky in this game.

Now that we have golem that we can test out the dps of our skill rotation i will never show the real dps you will do in its fullest.

firstly, when people test their builds/skill rotation and wanna show off their dps they always seem to apply every single boon and damage increase possible in the game and apply constant 25 vulnerability on the golem.

Okay, you wanna try to simulate the buffs and conditions on a boss battle in raids, but you are doing a perfect skill rotation on a standing golem with you standing next to it.

The real dps includes moving, dodging, healing, raid boss mechanics which all drop your actuall dps.

But hey, at least we can messure what profession with what set up and rotation can do the most amount of dps…inside a lab

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I see that learning new things is a concept that is met with fierce resistance on these forums.

This might be true of your own participation in tbe thread but other respondents seem to be doing fine.

As an aside, ALL damage, even when delivered by, “nukers,” can be expressed as damage over time, or DPS.

OP are you telling people to take the elevator, that ask how do I level fast.
Since that is the fastest way to go from level 1 to level 10 of a building.

MoarChaos.8320:

Are you trying to tell me that people saying lol aren’t actually laughing out loud? I’m a bit skeptical.

D’oh! Knew I should’ve clarified that better. I meant, people who actually say “LOL” when communicating verbally, and then don’t laugh. It’s a sad loss of real expression.

Although saying DPS is the much lesser crime by far, since it’s simply a lingistic change based on a mutual understanding, if not a grammatic one. We all know what is meant when somebody says DPS in a gaming context these days. Conversely, failing to laugh and saying LOL instead in spoken conversation is just tragic (and in a similar vein, laughing and saying LOL at the same time when communicating face to face is just weird).

Now if you’ll excuse me from this otherwise serious thread*, I’m just going to pop on my LOLlerskates and make for the nearest ROFLcopter.

*see below

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Have peopel nowadays really not something better to discuss, than what kind of “terms” people use in their language when they talk about something specific?

Seriously…

Games like this aren’t even at all to be taken serious in regard of this, because every game like this develops partwise over time its own mixed form of some kind of ingame related “Meta Speech” that is absolutely normal, because people are lazy as **** and try permanently to shorten down long terms to as few letters as possible, hence this DPS (Damage per Second), WvW, PvP, PvE and so on and so forth

In someones view it might be possible misused in a common sense of logical english grammar to say to someone else that he should “DPS a boss”…
For someone, whos absolutely into that kind of ingame related “Game Meta Speech” this means simply directly, that this person should stop doing any actions, that do not add a contribution to the teams effort of increasing the total damage per second value that you could dish out together maximum to kill the enemy as fast as possible.

This thread is pure nitpickery over uninportant things, just because someone doesn’t understand here how speech in all areas of our life constantly evolutionizes and changes itself cause of the nature of the human wanting to have everything easy to understand and short, thus we will see always and everywhere abreviations of longer words to make them easier to use in our daily life – and from that are Games like GW2 no exception.

That certain terms can have even multiple meanings, shouldn’t be for English now really a surprise, or?
This is even one of the very first lections everyone learns when you learn English, that this language has alot of words, that have multiple different meanings (synonyms) based on the situation, the time, what you did before and so on and so on and so on….
So shouldn’t native English speakers be kind of openminded for that, due to being absulutely used to this by their very own language, that abreviations are also a great part of their language, especially due to it being the world language number 1?

But is all of this a reason to get worked up over something like this?
I think not.
Or did you have something from it to make a thread over somebody, who used under your opinion the term “DPS” wrong OP?
Will this thread now suddenly change the way of how people communicate in GW2?
NO

Will this thread now suddenly change what kind of terms people use for specific meanings, when there exists already basically from begin on, older than GW2 even, a kind of RPG related Meta Speech that defines what kind of words stand for in RPGs, like the mentioned DP`S, esprecially when it works perfectly fine and people instantly know what is meant by it from just reading/hearing it?
NO

As long people don’t overexaggerate it with abreviations, then is everything absolutely ok

Because only once it starts to become so confusing that nobody understandy anyone anymore, because everyone uses for every single thing abreviations to such an extreme, that sentences totally lose their context if you don’t know exactly for what every single abreviation stands for, then I would understand such a thread to be neccessary to wake up people, that communicating in such a way isn’t good.

But to make extra a thread over one single word “DPS” now ..
Don’t you think this wasn’t absolutely unneccessary OP?

MoarChaos.8320:

Are you trying to tell me that people saying lol aren’t actually laughing out loud? I’m a bit skeptical.

roflysst (rolling on floor typing yet somehow still typing)

Not really sure what the point of this thread is. It’s pedantic at best. Is this a +1 or something?

Yeah – “DPS the boss” isn’t proper English, technically. So what? It’s basically slang and has been used across any number of MMO’s for years now. It’s a shorthand way of typing something when you don’t really have time to be typing to people in the first place.

Honestly have no idea why people choose to take the term so literally in this context.

OriOri.8724:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Lahmia.2193:

It’s almost as if words evolve to gain new meanings or are used in different ways.

So you’re saying that the term “Damage per second” has evolved to mean something else than damage per second?

To think about how ridiculous this is, imagine you’re talking about km/h, as in kilometers per hour. Any car dealer would ridicule you for saying “how km/h is this car”. Go around flagging it under “words evolve” and the scientific community would also laugh at you.

DPS is what it is, it’s damage per second. It’s a calculation of how much damage an attack is dishing out on average per second based on its raw damage and cooldown. Saying “DPS means to do high damage”, is as silly as saying “km/h means to go very fast”.

Some words evolve, yes, because they’re used very subjectively, abstractively or loosely. But words that stand for scientific measures don’t evolve, because a second will always be a second and a meter will always be a meter.

Jesus you just refuse to accept the fact that you can be wrong, can’t you? Words evolve all the time. Xerox evolved into a verb even though it started off as a Company name. Google is almost a verb. The word “literally” was used incorrectly by so many people that all dictionaries caved and ended up adding the “wrong” definition since no one was ever using it correctly (and now, that definition is technically one of the correct uses of the word). You’re getting upset because people don’t have perfect grammar in a game? My bad. I didn’t realize that was a requirement to playing GW2. Because when the bar is broken, everyone wants to wait for you to type out, in correct grammar mind you, that we can “now attack it and do maximum damage in the 5 seconds you have before the exposed debuff wears off”. Oh wait, no one wants to kittening do that.

Everyone, literally everyone, knows what “DPS this boss” means. You are the only one who has a problem with it, so maybe the problem isn’t with the phrase at all. Maybe it lies elsewhere. Hmm?

The fact is that I’m not wrong. “DPS” isn’t a word, it’s an acronym, and it stands for a specific measure, in this case of damage over a specific amount of time. Measures are rarely ever changed, if ever changed at all. While some words evolve, especially if we’re talking about abstract or subjective words such as adjectives, there’s no reason for the acronym DPS to evolve. There’s a good reason Google and Xerox as names evolved too: because they’re names, they stand for the companies they represent and nothing else and those companies provide very specific services, there was room to turn them into verbs. With DPS there isn’t.

Do you walk into a car dealership and say “how km/h is this car?” Do you refer to a supercar as a “km/h car” instead of just saying a fast car? No, and yet those terms have been used for a much longer period of time by a much larger amount of people. They still haven’t evolved because people have common sense and understand the difference between “fast” and “km/h”. Even a hillbilly would laugh at you for saying such absurdities.

And the last card you play is pretty much, “I know we’re doing something wrong, but I want to keep doing it wrong because tradition”. Really? This is your ace? Come on.

Time’s never been wasted learning new things. Begin by learning how to use simple terms properly. And don’t go around saying “I can km/h my car a lot” because you’ll look silly, just friendly advice.

Example:
Myriad: If you had a myriad of things 600 years ago, it meant that you specifically had 10,000 of them — not just a lot.

Units of measure do evolve. You on the other hand…