Guild Wars 2

Answering your question yes/no isn’t too hard, it’s simply not applicable. The implications of answering “I want to complete the content” are simple enough as well. Simply put, performance is never part of the equation one way or another. It’s not I don’t care about performance (as to imply if I’m being bad then I don’t mind being bad) as to say it’s not even considered (as to imply I don’t even ask if I am being good or bad).

The only time I even remotely consider performance at all is on a group level perspective. I’ll use a reference that you probably won’t get. Imagine you’re driving on the Highway and you’re around 4 other people. The law states if traffic speeds up even past the speed limit you gotta drive faster because it’d be reckless to drive slower and put others around you in danger. The same law states if traffic is slower than the speed limit then you gotta slow down with them. Those are certainly two extremes so typically you will end up mostly around the middle with someone driving slightly slower than the limit, few people driving faster, and few people at the limit.

I take that parallel back to grouping and game play. If I’m in a group and they are going at break neck speed then I keep pace to that. If I am in a group and they are crawling through the dungeon slowly killing everything I keep pace to that. Most groups tend to hover somewhere in between skipping some mobs/encounters and killing at a reasonable pace.

An example would be my various Arah runs. Now most groups I joined did Lupicus from range. They simply were incapable of doing him fast as melee. If I tried to force them to do the encounter melee which would be faster, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the content because they wouldn’t have been capable of doing it. Conversely when doing a few runs with higher end groups and individuals who wanted to do him melee and backing out and doing range could also potentially not enable us to do the content because melee stacking is usually based on the idea of everyone stacking together. Again, content wouldn’t have gotten done.

So you can see from that example, the metric is not about what is better, but about completing the content.

I know I am not very clever but I can understand an analogy when it is clear and it makes sense.

Would you say it is possible that a group is under-performing enough to be unable to complete the content? If you were in such group what would be your behaviour?

No I don’t think it is possible outside of possibly Simin in Arah P4 in which is one of the only encounters in the game that is an actual DPS race due to the high healing HP mechanic. Even then when I last did Arah P4 we didn’t have a high DPS team and we still did it because we understood the boss mechanic and how to properly wrangle the Sparks back to the altar each time.

Hundreds of PUG runs and not a single failure was due to a lack of performance. Almost all failures are due to a lack of understanding of boss mechanics such as not dodging properly or when to take appropriate action.

Performance is a word with a broad meaning, it doesn’t necessarily mean dps.

Let’s take an example: CoF p3, the even where you have to hold the zone through several waves of attacks. Would you say it is possible to fail this event? What are the possible causes of failure?

You guys could take this to PMs or something. You are not going to change each other’s mind and this thread became a clutter of back and forth verbal snipes.

There’s no point in taking it to PMs. I already asked him there to stop bothering/harassing me and responding to me publicly but he continues to do so anyways. This all stems back to a time when I said calculating a 1.1% difference in DPS was a huge waste of time and ever since he’s been obsessed and jumps onto just about anything I have to say.

Personally I’d rather he just ignore me and stop responding to me entirely but he seems to be incapable of curing himself of his obsession with me. Eventually though I get bored and stop because he usually doesn’t comprehend what’s being said (his own admission) so it’s usually like talking to a brick wall or small child who is incapable of understanding. Yet I continue to try to engage to explain hoping he might understand one time but no luck to date.

Thankfully other people seem to understand and get it so it’s not a total waste of time.

Saying you want to complete the content isn’t a real answer, who the kitten goes to a dungeon and thinks “I’m not really in the mood to finish it, I’ll just leave midway,” his question wasn’t whether you want to complete the content or not, his question was do you perform well when in pug groups?(bring the optimum gear, do what is expected to be done from your class)

Bismuth.3165:

Saying you want to complete the content isn’t a real answer, who the kitten goes to a dungeon and thinks “I’m not really in the mood to finish it, I’ll just leave midway,” he’s question wasn’t whether you want to complete the content or not, he’s question was do you perform well when in pug groups?(bring the optimum gear, do what is expected to be done from your class)

Quite true. Actually I wouldn’t even give a definition to performing well. It is a subjective notion. I am just interested in how Kodiak feels about what he does in a group.

He is still not answering although the question is simple.

Well, however someone spins “it doesn’t matter”, the fact of the game mechanics, how the system works, still favors “what type of staff elemental best excels at”. The answer is really situational, as this game has no ‘holy trinity’. In such a system as that, things are more clear-cut, there is less confusion on what a player should be doing, and mostly just matters on how you gear for what you are to do. Such as in some cases, I could regear my cleric to be more like a paladin, and heavy armored clerics in that game having a greater aptitude for fighting undead that makes them strong as a front line fighter, at least against undead. That’s about the greatest flexibility you get with a trinity system, and which I do enjoy too.

So pure healers here, that is a different story entirely, they really don’t exist at all. And really, this game content favors DPS above all. As a water ele, you are not just healing, but providing DPS at the same time. And the problem with focusing on healing a group is that some content makes the group very mobile and hard to heal with a staff healer. In that case, DPS is all you can really provide, and much of your healing goes to waste.

But that is not every situation, so being heavy on healing does work in some situations, though limited those situations may be. But if you focus on nuking, aoe’s and the like, say with fire or whatever, then generally you are going to be more versatile in the broad sense of the game content and mechanics of it. You can still switch to healing in an emergency, but with any class in this game, they are most going to “excel” with their damage output in the majority of situations. That’s just how this game works not being a holy trinity type of game. Both styles of games have their limitations.

edit: My comparison, just to mention, is EQ1, early in the game. Progression themeparks share many commonalities, most games among them are more like clones of older games but with a new spin. Not even to mention skill-based sandbox mmo’s, which in some cases do have dedicated healers of sorts that do work. Here though, it may seem open and free on the surface, but you are still dealing with progression themepark mechanics under the hood, so you will still find limitations in some form as all such games have and maintain to keep them functioning.

Bismuth.3165:

Saying you want to complete the content isn’t a real answer, who the kitten goes to a dungeon and thinks “I’m not really in the mood to finish it, I’ll just leave midway,” his question wasn’t whether you want to complete the content or not, his question was do you perform well when in pug groups?(bring the optimum gear, do what is expected to be done from your class)

It actually is a real answer and if you don’t understand why it’s a real answer then you don’t really understand the position being presented by it. To repeat, essentially performance doesn’t matter because all that matters is that the content gets done. Whether I’m performing well or poorly is never even considered. All that’s considered is whether or not the content gets done. From that basis you can see the logical disagreement take shape.

All I and others care about is that the content gets done. We’re there for tokens/gold/whatever and long as we get that fantastic. Mission accomplished. Fast or slow doesn’t matter to us. Consequently build doesn’t really matter because long as the content gets done that was the only metric set. Ignoring hyperbolic examples (such as people wearing white gear with no traits selected) your average player with an average spec is more than enough to contribute to downing most of the game’s current content.

In opposition to that standpoint all that matters to them is that they are doing dungeons in the most efficient method possible. They have reasoned out that going maximum DPS is the core to this route and consequently try to build and recommend others play under this same banner. The idea being is that if everyone is kicking out maximum DPS the content will get done faster and people can move on and get more done in less amount of time. In addition this play style is somewhat reliant on others also having similar spec’s because their spec’s aren’t designed to last very long meaning they also need the group to have high DPS so they don’t have to. They also feel that anyone who doesn’t follow this mentality automatically is leeching on their group members because they aren’t contributing the maximum amount of DPS they could be.

So you can see where the two clash. Why we have to clash or why we can’t co-exist on the forums is kinda beyond me. Obviously the people who are looking for a maximum DPS source have multiple threads and multiple places to seek out information. Why the people who champion max-DPS builds constantly try to argue with people like me or give their maximum DPS advice to people who don’t want it (as the original poster said he didn’t want it) is really beyond me. You certainly won’t see me going to a max-DPS thread and telling them not to worry about it and it doesn’t matter.

If by “them” you mean the elitists on this forum then are wrong. None of them is concerned only with max-dps. However they are concerned by performance. By performance I mean: speed and ease in completeting content, which in turn generates satisfaction.
It seems you are too, to a certain extent, since you say that people need a basic understanding of the mechanics in order not to fail in most content.
you have flexible goals Kodiak and I would give you credits for this. But you see, there is always a limit to what people accept in terms of performance. While “all you want” is to complete content, I am sure you would not be okay if it took your group 30 days to finish a dungeon path. This is an extreme example. It serves only to show you that everyone’s tolerance on performance is finite. Therefore we can say that there is a certain level of performance that is accepted by the community in general. Drifting away from this level will generate dissatisfaction for your group. Of course some groups will be more okay than others with underperforming because they are tolerant or playing with friends. On average, however, an underperformer will be a liability for his group.

It is true that it is not easy to spot an underperformer in a group. So this person may never suffer any consequences for not contributing enough and he may keep his “free rider” without being confronted. Therefore your position could be valid Kodiak: if no one can tell you are underperforming and you are still getting almost all the benefits, then why bother?

This is a situation similar to that of the prisoner dilema. If one can cheat the system to get more (same rewards for less effort) than others then he will. He will, unless he fears that the others may have the same stance, in which case he would get much less. This is true in-game: if no one cares about what they are doing then the group as a whole may fail to accomplish what it attempted to do. Back to the prisoner dilema analogy, it would be better for everybody if all participants agreed not to “cheat” on each other.

In game, if everyone agreed to try as hard as they can to accomplish the goals set by the group then everyone is better off. This is why we are giving advice. We are doing this not “just to dps more” but to complete content faster and more easily. We are not imposing anything. We are helping people get satisfaction from this game.

You comments such as “don’t worry, do what ever you want” and “no one can ever tell you are doing bad” only creates free riders who generate dissatisfaction. Anyone doing so in a group game is selfish and harmful. You should always care about your group.

Kodiak if you entered a group where the four other people underperformed to the point the group would fail constantly, you would leave, wouldn’t you? If you entered a group filled with highly performing people you would try to keep up, wouldn’t you? Well then you are concerned with performance.

So why would you try to stop people from receiving valuable advice?? If people want to get better at this game, let them!!

I argee with kodaik.

Your entire argument is predicated on the idea that by under-performing then groups will fail and content will not get done. This is entirely theoretical and virtually never happens (with the usual reason being content doesn’t get done because people don’t know the content). It’s a spectre or boogyman that has no basis in actual reality.

This means people can do whatever they want in terms of character build and gear build and the content still will get done. Therefore that advice holds true and ultimately no one is harmed because the content still gets done at the end of the day.

Do you see me replying to any thread where people are asking for maximum DPS builds and telling them it’s pointless? No. Do you see me going to the min-max threads discussing max DPS builds and telling them they are pointless? No. Do you see me finding people who want to know about the maximum possible DPS and attempting to dissuade them from being max DPS? No.

You have a lot of opinions, but nothing to really back up anything you have to say.

Would you be ok if it took 15 hours to complete a dungeon path?

The entire idea of your question is problematic because there’s (likely) never been a 15 hour dungeon run and nor would it be the result of the advice that I am giving and is therefore irrelevant to this conversation. If you want to ask a question that is relevant and based on the real game that we play I will be happy to answer it.

Kodiak.3281:

It actually is a real answer and if you don’t understand why it’s a real answer then you don’t really understand the position being presented by it. To repeat, essentially performance doesn’t matter because all that matters is that the content gets done. Whether I’m performing well or poorly is never even considered. All that’s considered is whether or not the content gets done. From that basis you can see the logical disagreement take shape.

That’s the bad performance mentality since 95% dungeons excluding high level fractals can be done even if you’re not wearing any armor.

Kodiak.3281:

The entire idea of your question is problematic because there’s (likely) never been a 15 hour dungeon run and nor would it be the result of the advice that I am giving and is therefore irrelevant to this conversation. If you want to ask a question that is relevant and based on the real game that we play I will be happy to answer it.

I’ve seen people say it took them 10 hours to do arah p4. a bad group will spend an average of 4-5 hours to finish arah p4.

It’s amazing how you avoid answering anything properly

Anyway there has never been a 15 hour dungeon because people care about performance and so they try to play so it takes less time!

And why is that?

Because they don’t listen to people who tell them to just wave their arms around. Because people want to be good at what they do.

How is this so bloody hard to understand ?

Bismuth.3165:

That’s the bad performance mentality since 95% dungeons excluding high level fractals can be done even if you’re not wearing any armor.

This has been my entire point.

Zelyhn.8069:

It’s amazing how you avoid answering anything properly

Anyway there has never been a 15 hour dungeon because people care about performance and so they try to play so it takes less time!

And why is that?

Because they don’t listen to people who tell them to just wave their arms around. Because people want to be good at what they do.

How is this so bloody hard to understand ?

It’s pretty amazing how you think stripping down a complex issue into a yes/no format is really going to prove anything.

There’s never been a 15 hour dungeon because your average player in average gear is capable of completing the game content easily enough not to take 15 hours. What is not required is people min-maxing their performance in order to complete content as you’re implying.

Pretty much everyone gets that but you.

You don’t have to minmax every run. I usually pug, in fact. And it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a good group and a bad one, and the difference is pretty much 95% to do with gear and traits.

There’s been one guy in dungeon forum who claimed he had spent 16 hours on pre-nerf simin.

The fact hat you fail to reply simply to a very simple question is something I can live with. The fact that you fail to understand a very simple issue is something that won’t prevent me form sleeping. But the fact that you keep defending with so much determination that “no one should care about what they are doing” is out of the range of my understanding.

Kodiak tell me:

• is it possible to fail the encounter in CoF p3 where you have to hold the zone while getting attacked by multiple waves of mobs?
• is it possible to fail against Giganticus Lupicus?

Ermagerd… elitists versus non-elitists… It’s obvious that you are trying to pigeonhole Kodiak into giving yes/no answers in an effort to steer him towards your already prepared argument of why performance is so utterly important for dungeon runs. Asking questions like, “is it possible to fail X” are pointless. It is possible to fail at beating a quaggan for a skill point. I guarantee that it has nothing to do with gear.

From what I’ve seen, dungeons either go quickly or slowly. The slow ones never have to do with gear, it has to do with experience. This is especially true for PUGs, in which you never know what kind of group composition you can get, unless you specifically ask for “LF1M epxerienced L33T zerker warrior only.”

I personally do not care one way or another if a dungeon takes 5 minutes or 2 hours, as long as it gets done and those running it have learned something, including myself. If your ignore list is full of people that you disapprove of solely based on their dungeon run performances, you may need to rethink how much of your interests you have invested into this game.

You know the very last sentence of my guide is saying that ultimately performing well in an encounter is depending more than anything on when and what skills you use. Not the gear, not the traits, not the utilities, the skills.

But.

The reason why I am writing guides and giving people advice, is because it is easier to do well in a dungeon when you have the right traits, gear and whatnot. This is undeniable. Being optimized is not required, but it helps a lot. This means that if you don’t care about being optimised then you don’t care about your group mates. I may be a bit too humanist, but I’d much rather play a game where people try to achieve more together rather than selfishly leeching as much as they can.

In the end it is not an argument of Elitists VS non-elitists, it is a debate of advice-givers VS “don’t-care-about-others”-tellers.

Of course you should play the way you want. But you should not play selfishly !!

I wholeheartedly agree. I am extremely grateful for folks like you, who actually take the time to write guides and crunch numbers. I can tell you, however, that although I enjoy playing as well as I can, I try to find a build that suits my play style as well. In the end, I suppose I’m halfway selfish, and halfway supportish (groupwise). I have yet to find an ele build that will suit both needs to the fullest, nor do I think one is possible. Not with the play style I enjoy.

Zelyhn.8069:

Kodiak tell me:

• is it possible to fail the encounter in CoF p3 where you have to hold the zone while getting attacked by multiple waves of mobs?
• is it possible to fail against Giganticus Lupicus?

It’s possible to fail anything. It’s possible to fail COF P1 in fact.

What’s the point of this question?

Zelyhn.8069:

In the end it is not an argument of Elitists VS non-elitists, it is a debate of advice-givers VS “don’t-care-about-others”-tellers.

Being elitist, by very definition, is implying that the way you are doing things is better than the other ways people are doing things. This is fundamentally incompatible with:

Zelyhn.8069:

Of course you should play the way you want.

According to you, if we don’t play with trying to min-max and optimize our game play then we are selfish and leeching off the group and not caring about others. This leaves no room to play how we want.

Your problem isn’t that you’re too much of a humanist it’s that you’re simply wound up too tight and worked up over a non-issue. You are making something out of nothing. This isn’t some great philosophical debate that will kittenoed into eternity. It’s a video game. In video games you’re supposed to have fun and relax and not worry about things. Some people have fun by working out how to be the best they can possibly be. These people tend to stick to each other and look for other speed run groups. Other people just like to hop in and do whatever. I have a guild member who hates any kind of speed runs or skipping any dungeon content and she likes to clear out everything as we go through. Do I think she’s wrong or bad or otherwise? No. She just likes different things than me and has different standards. At the end of the day long as everyone is having fun and the content gets done then that’s all that matters.

This is why it’s important to give the right advice to the right individual and really listen to what they’re looking for. Big Tower was looking for a support build because he has fun playing support and supporting his team. He isn’t looking for the min-max route even if you think that would be the best way to support his team because that wouldn’t be fun for him. You need to learn to accept that there isn’t one size fits all advice.

Kodiak why do you even bother writing responses? You’re wasting your time. Threads like these are why ANet face-palm and laugh at the players on these forums.

Of course you can play any way you want, just like “You can have any color, as long as it’s black!” -Henry Ford

This is a progression themepark at it’s heart, you are very limited to what works and what doesn’t work, and that by design (yes, some things designed not to work and to fail or cause failure). It’s also an mmo, so you are not a single player but part of a unit if you are grouping. Unit cohesion.

I used to think this long ago, do whatever I want, but realized I really wasn’t doing whatever I wanted, just trying to play poorly with what I didn’t even want to play in the first place. I mean until they introduce carbide bounty hunters with a touch of medic, pro-bots, swoops and Lord Kitten Vader, I’m just not playing the way I want to play :P

So in this game I do what best fits the parties I join/start, and I expect others to do the same in my groups. And before you read in elitism, can only think in one extreme or the other, there are many different situations that are fine for various builds, different parts of the game world. But to really play your own way, perhaps stick to newbie zones?

I’m happy that you play the way you want to play. Overly enthusiastic, even. Where your elitism starts to shine, however, is when you start talking down to others because they don’t share the same mindset as you. Luckily for me, the LFG tool easily shows the parties I do NOT want (anything that has to do with speed runs or gear checks or any of that horse crap), and I actually have a ton of people I can party with, dungeon with, wvw with, pvp with, etc. I find myself fortunate that I will never have to go through the pains of being in your group, since I can enjoy playing the game exactly how I want to play… stress-free.

I agree that everyone should play as they want… but not in my party.

Everyone should decide if they want to be a good or a bad. If you know the meta for PvE is full dps and you want to go support because “its fun” you are not thinking about the rest of the party, so you are being egoistic. You want to have fun while the others carry you through the content. You are also making everyone waste time and If its someone like me who has limited game time a week, its even worse.

Sorry Kodiak, you have a bad mentality and I hope people here dont listen to whatever you said.

Brigg.3961:

Overly enthusiastic, even. Where your elitism starts to shine, however, is when you start talking down to others because they don’t share the same mindset as you.

Who? Or you talking to yourself? Yeah, we are already running a group of four and with enough healing, and on the move a lot, didn’t need a water ele built for dedicated healing, but the people starting the game on their first day could probably better use those services. Just mechanics. I mean, if someone insists to play it that way, their way, there are just better places in the game for them to do what they want to do, other groups, or even solo which is probably the whole undercurrent of the debate. Elitism? uh-huh. Sounds more like some derogatory name calling probably originating with WoW players in their game.

Karazul.2934:

I agree that everyone should play as they want… but not in my party.

Everyone should decide if they want to be a good or a bad. If you know the meta for PvE is full dps and you want to go support because “its fun” you are not thinking about the rest of the party, so you are being egoistic. You want to have fun while the others carry you through the content. You are also making everyone waste time and If its someone like me who has limited game time a week, its even worse.

Sorry Kodiak, you have a bad mentality and I hope people here dont listen to whatever you said.

I think the mistake is that impression is that the “advice” I’m giving doesn’t already happen on a day in and day out basis in the vast majority of PUG groups.

There’s already speed run groups clearly defined as speedrun groups for people who want to be min-maxed out to be a part of. There’s also super slow crawl runs where people who don’t want to skip anything and clear everything, too. Vast majority of the rest of groups already are doing what I’m saying and are just there for the rewards and don’t really concern themselves with things too much.

The only egotistical part is saying that one way is better than another.

Every person has specific requirements for people they want to play with. Some want dps-oriented people while some want polite people. From neutral perspective where every player is equal, the best situation is when every player is happy with playing everyone else in the team.

Now your advice to him is to do whatever he wants because other players can’t detect it. If he has something to hide that means other players wouldn’t want to play with him. From neutral perspective, that’s not the optimal situation. Instead it is extremely selfish because you are overriding other people’s wishes with yours.

Better advice would be to find likely-minded people who don’t mind him running support builds.

There’s such a thing as wanting to do a pug run that isn’t downright horrible. For example, I gearchecked last night and did a pug run with a GS/Drake ranger with Spotter, two GS warriors with banners, and a D/D thief with venom spam and it went really well. Wasn’t minmax speedrun by any means, but it was MUCH better than the average run where you have to carry two bearbows, an AH/staff guardian, and a healshout warrior.

Just because you’re not running with your guild on Mumble doesn’t mean every 10-minute dungeon run now has to take over an hour and involve multiple wipes.

Wethospu.6437:

Now your advice to him is to do whatever he wants because other players can’t detect it. If he has something to hide that means other players wouldn’t want to play with him. From neutral perspective, that’s not the optimal situation. Instead it is extremely selfish because you are overriding other people’s wishes with yours.

The only advice in that scenario is essentially to not worry about it because virtually no one calls each other out on DPS and if they are paranoid and crazy and do try to call you out on your DPS they have no way to factually prove how much DPS you are or aren’t doing.

Naturally, people being people, decided to run with the clearly never would happen hyperbolic scenario I mentioned and now want to draw the conclusion I’m advocating to leech off your group. All I can really say is good luck with that.

Kodiak.3281:

The only advice in that scenario is essentially to not worry about it because virtually no one calls each other out on DPS and if they are paranoid and crazy and do try to call you out on your DPS they have no way to factually prove how much DPS you are or aren’t doing.

Naturally, people being people, decided to run with the clearly never would happen hyperbolic scenario I mentioned and now want to draw the conclusion I’m advocating to leech off your group. All I can really say is good luck with that.

This game might lack explicit dps meters but doesn’t lack implicit ones.

Kodiak.3281:

Wethospu.6437:

Now your advice to him is to do whatever he wants because other players can’t detect it. If he has something to hide that means other players wouldn’t want to play with him. From neutral perspective, that’s not the optimal situation. Instead it is extremely selfish because you are overriding other people’s wishes with yours.

The only advice in that scenario is essentially to not worry about it because virtually no one calls each other out on DPS and if they are paranoid and crazy and do try to call you out on your DPS they have no way to factually prove how much DPS you are or aren’t doing.

Naturally, people being people, decided to run with the clearly never would happen hyperbolic scenario I mentioned and now want to draw the conclusion I’m advocating to leech off your group. All I can really say is good luck with that.

Not being able to “factually prove” it won’t stop me from kicking you regardless.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Kodiak.3281:

if they are paranoid and crazy

Not being able to “factually prove” it won’t stop me from kicking you regardless.

Yeap.