Guild Wars 2

So, in the PvE community there are many casuals that hate the idea of damage meters because it deduces the PvE experience to a “who can get the highest numbers” approach.

In PvP that doesn’t happen at all, because: if you do twice the damage as me in a fight and yet I still win, I’m better (or my class is). Your damage is moot.

I say that to say this: Why isn’t the PvP community absolutely going bonkers over the lack of this feature AT LEAST in the Mist? With damage being such a huge part of builds and how much your damage changes vs your survivability, it is essential to know every small damage change. If I add 2 skills that reduce offensive abilities and adds survivability, how much EXACT impact did that have on my damage? I don’t care to post my meters, I only care to test.

The DEVS love when people defend the idea of omitting the damage meters because that is one of the single greatest factors in showing balance. As long as meters don’t exist, people mostly only have anecdotal evidence that a thief’s burst is 4 times that of another class or how a bunker ele can still produce as much damage as another class.

This HAS to be added to the game. Why are people so silent on this feature?

You do know that steady weapons exist, right?

You can literally determine exactly how much damage each minute change effects your damage with steady weapons.

Ostricheggs.3742:

You do know that steady weapons exist, right?

You can literally determine exactly how much damage each minute change effects your damage with steady weapons.

I use them. They help to determine the difference against dummies and changes in your own trait changes. I want to know damage of class A vs. damage of class B and how much damage changes against players with varied levels of toughness.

I’m sorry, but steady weapons are a very small piece of the overall puzzle that I would like to see.

Kind of have to agree with this. If some people got to see how much damage some classes were doing over a time period (say a sPvP match) it will help determine who really is the highest damage class in this game, and not just burst.

Same goes for healing. Even though there is not dedicated healers, there is still healing builds. They already have the combat log now that data needs to just put tallied into a scoreboard.

you kinda deafeated your own argument.

you said that DPS meters are OK in PVP because raw damage doesn’t matter. so how would ading a DPS meter show balance? you said that what it shows is not relevent.

Couldnt you get a friend and test this in an empty server? Sure you wont see a number with your dps but you can see the difference when using toughness and between classes A and B.

Also pvp players dont care about dps meters because you simply wont often be standing still doing your best dmg rotation. Moving or dodging will reduce your dps and its more about burst in pvp. Maybe you want a ‘dmg done’ statistic at the end? That’d be cool.

I would love to see a better combat log…the one we have is really very limited

I think people are a little too concerned with how much damage they do. I preferred the system in GW1 in which all the professions had locked base stats, aside from their attribute points and maybe rune choices. The severe min-maxing nonsense in GW2 is unwelcome.

I’d like a full performance summary, to include: total damage dealt, damage mitigated, total healing, number of successful blocks, time spent invulnerable, time spent invisible, total distance traveled, number of boons applied, number of conditions removed, number of rock dogs summoned, and total a.i. damage, for starters. Someday…

IDK i found that damage meters or numbers really dont help that much when determining what works/doesnt. Honestly the best way to figure that out is to play, practice and figure out a strat that will work with your team.

Many times information like that will distract you of what’s really going on. I.E. my opponent is doing way more damage than me his build must be super strong… when in fact it’s probably because you or someone else wasnt dodging or mitigating damage at the correct time.

theirs no way to sim damage in this game at the moment and anet refuses to let us install addons

this isnt just a spvp thing too, you should be able to theoretically test pve damage on those dummy’s too, the mist lobby is an excellent simulation environment

the game would benefit if there was an invincible dummy in LA too (but you can still see the damage it takes)

The gw1 damage tester was nice he would say in chat “You are doing X damage per second” every ten seconds or so.

because pvp is about spike dmg and not continuous dps as pve is and thus dmg meters are completely and utterly useless to pvp players with a brain

Okay and how are you going to compare damage from someone who AoE’s 5 people on a point compared to some thief who is backstabbing a single target. A damage meter is not going to tell you anything of worth in an uncontrolled environment. There are so many factors that affect the outcome.

I really don’t see the need for a damage meter without content that requires high DPS.

It makes sense if you have cutting edge raid content but without, there’s really no need as long as professions are balanced in themselves.

Adding damage meters would just make people QQ for the wrong reasons. They’ll realize Warriors do the most damage…..and they’ll demand to draw even, without understanding that DPS is one of many sides of a specific profession.

People like to boil down profession performance into a single metric. I wouldn’t even give them the opportunity.

Pray.9751:

because pvp is about spike dmg and not continuous dps as pve is and thus dmg meters are completely and utterly useless to pvp players with a brain

Agreed… especially in pvp theres SO much more to being good than the damage you do. We don’t need no shtinking meters!

Z

ZNICK.8537:

Pray.9751:

because pvp is about spike dmg and not continuous dps as pve is and thus dmg meters are completely and utterly useless to pvp players with a brain

Agreed… especially in pvp theres SO much more to being good than the damage you do. We don’t need no shtinking meters!

Z

This is mind-blowing to me. I understand that it is a small part of the fight and in no way determines who will win, but it is a part of the fight that at the moment is an enigma. I don’t understand why anyone would be against it being in the game.

The implimentation of it would allow for much more indepth testing of things. For instance, there is a fantastic thread going on where an Ele and a thief are debating the effectiveness of air runes over a prolonged fight. Well, if you had damage meters, there would be no more debating. You can have solid evidence without having to sift through combat longs and do a bunch of mathmatical equations on your own.

What I’m asking for is something that already exists; yet, it’s not displayed. The gathering of DPS could be done after each fight by anyone masochistic enough to try it out. I’m just asking for a way in-game to do it. I’m not asking for a healing mod that auto heals or a macro system to let your program your CnD- Steal-Backstab combo. I’m asking for something so small, yet so big for those who would use it.

And for those of you saying “it would just cause people to complain about 1v1 balance and the game shouldn’t be about that”. I would say you’re nuts. These forums currently have some of the highest level of 1v1 balance complaints I’ve seen. The problem with those complaints is that most of them are anecdotal complaints because we don’t have hard evidence.

P.S. – Just let that sink in. You’re not arguing against a feature that will determine outcomes of fights or throw off the balance of the game. You are opposed to a feature for data collection. You don’t want to know more, you love guessing. Great.

I think the biggest reason I’m against this, is we already have people complaining that there’s too few viable builds for each class. If we had meters, people would crunch numbers and we’d have even less. It creates the FOTM on steroids.

I also hate how it creates elite-isms in PVE. People being asked to leave groups, people being refused entry to groups because they don’t have the right build or the right skills…

I just prefer to leave some things in the dark.

Z

damage meters don’t mean anything to PvP. Almost every ability has something non-damage related tied to it, whether its an evade, a movement effect, a combo-field, a boon generator, a condition generator or otherwise none of those things can be weighed on recount (and I say recount because I know that the reason you want this stems from your reliance on it in World of Warcraft).
And what has that done for that game? Degenerated entire classes into an exact series of button-presses that experience minute fluctuations based on surrounding events. WoW is filled with abilities that ONLY do damage, or only contribute to damage. Therefor, knowing how to use those buttons together is valuable. Such is not the case in GW2.

Take this, for example.
Assume there is a damage-recording metric in place, and over the course of time, damage has been flatlined. Every class does the same damage — the game is balanced as far as ignorant gamers are concerned. But then, there are thief’s who can play with a perpetually infinite energy pool. Mesmers who can keep an opponent blinded almost 100% of the time. Elementalists who can travel from node to node faster than any other class in the game while maintaining large stacks of most every boon. Guardians who’ll never die, to any class, under any circumstance (because damage is the same). And people will continue to blame it on damage, because things like protection will prevent it and mutate the meter. blind will prevent damaging abilities from ever landing. dodging will continue to evade. and all of these things that’ve been put in the game to be appreciated. To be valued to us more than a damage meter ever could be, will be overshadowed by this ‘balanced damage’ bullkitten thats been forcefed down your throats by previous, less enjoyable MMOs.

Just get over it. You don’t need to keep making excuses for why you lose. Every class can perform. The game is young. You have so much time to learn what you need to to catch up to your competition, and with enough dedication, even surpass them, that butching about other classes will (as has been true for games like WoW for almost 10 years) ultimately eat away at your and your peers overall enjoyment of the game.

That thief beat you? Tough luck, you just rolled that necro just as quickly. And I bet that necro will probably also win some, and lose some, and those wins and losses will be based on how he plays his profession, not on how much damage his 1-5 keys do.

AOE damage destroys meters and gives an unrealistic view of the state of damage output and also does not account for effects, which to be honest are arguably more important than raw dps output – I mean if your opponent is shutdown/controlled they aren’t helping thier team…

Anyway just my 2 cents.

Ebola.1907:

AOE damage destroys meters and gives an unrealistic view of the state of damage output and also does not account for effects, which to be honest are arguably more important than raw dps output – I mean if your opponent is shutdown/controlled they aren’t helping thier team…

Anyway just my 2 cents.

You’re right. AoE damage does destroy meters.

But also, this game doesn’t have healers. You’re not spreading dots that are being easily healed by hots. The AoE damage you do in this game is highly effective because of the lack of healers.

Guarantee you the team with the most damage is also winning mid. Can also see who the team’s killers are and how they’re doing.

For example, if a thief on a team has less damage than their tank guardian and also has 5 deaths, you can tell that the other team is doing a good job at shutting him down. The thief’s team can also see that and adjust accordingly.

If this game is going to move into e-Sports I fully expect a more statistical scoreboard with k/d, damage, self healing, points neutralized, how long points held, stomps, etc.

All these stats play into why one team is winning/losing and the playstyle of individual teams.

Moxrox.2496:

I would love to see a better combat log…the one we have is really very limited

This I would agree with. A combat log that counts condition damage as well as healing (and showing condition removals) would be great.

But Just NO to damage meters…

To defend OP, the damage meter in GW1 was used to determine whether you spike was strong enough to kill a character flat out. Yeah you can mention of the other factors but that was the main use, and the dps values as well.

Bsquared.3421:

Moxrox.2496:

I would love to see a better combat log…the one we have is really very limited

This I would agree with. A combat log that counts condition damage as well as healing (and showing condition removals) would be great.

But Just NO to damage meters…

Just so you know what you are arguing against. Damage meters take those exact thing that you want in the game and crunches the numbers for you. What again was the reason you didn’t want this? Is it because you’re afraid a 14 year old elitest may use it to post how much damage he did? I’m just really confused why you want the data to be in the game, but not usable unless you break out an excel spreadsheet.