Guild Wars 2

I was watching some of Helseth’s shatter video yesterday, and he was talking about total damage contributed in a fight (I think he mentioned a scrapper could contribute 1,000,000 total damage…)

I’m trying to understand how to use this number appropriately when I’m looking at my performance in a fight. Is it actually valuable or does it depend too much on role, map, etc?

For reference, I’m playing a condi build and my total condi damage usually ends up around 200,000 with between 50K and 100K of direct damage on top of that. I’ve seen the condi damage total get as high as 400K, but that’s rare.

My role is usually to cap home and then come support mid while being able to get back home. How much I’m fighting and how many targets I have can vary a lot between fights.

So the basic question is – how, if at all, should the total damage stat be used to help improve performance? I can see how tracking this over many fights would be helpful in assessing changes I make in my build or playing style. Anything else? Are any of the other stats particularly meaningful?

Damage Output is pretty irrelevant for classes/builds that focus on single-target damage and don’t rotate into teamfights.
If you got a fair number of AoE abilities and spend 60% of a match in teamfights, the damage you dealt in total will obviously be higher because there’s simply more fodder running around.
A Shatter Mesmer as displayed in your example will rotate in to +1 get a single quick kill (avg. 20k or something health at most give or take random AoE dmg from your shatters which is almost trivial) before rotating out for another quick single kill on another point.

So yeah, don’t use the stat if want to find out your effectiveness if your role isn’t around the teamfight (as a Shatter Mesmer, rather look at kills if anything on that page).
To be fair, there’s not much to deduce from the combat page other than fun facts if you’re just rotating for the +1.

I agree with vornollo, just want to add it’s very useful for comparing stat choices – if you run carrion but consistently do 70% power damage, maybe drop the Condi. If you switch to a more aggressive amulet and damage drops because you die too much… Switch back! That said, even then it can be misleading because bursting someone faster can lower damage too ( they don’t get to heal up)

The other thing to consider is what the opponents your fighting as well. You could easily walk away having done your pb of 400k damage, but that could have all been towards a bunker/healer who soaked all that damage like a sponge. So, in the end, you got a total net kill of 1….and 400k damage output.

Damage output is irrelevant. If the matches stay on for so long you get a lot of damage.

Now think about it, If you manage to get a lot of damage bec you have a lot of AoEs, but you never kill anyone.

Therefore that is inefficient.

StickerHappy.8052:

Damage output is irrelevant. If the matches stay on for so long you get a lot of damage.

Now think about it, If you manage to get a lot of damage bec you have a lot of AoEs, but you never kill anyone.

Therefore that is inefficient.

Listen to Uncle Stickerhappy.

I can easily get 10-20 kills on zerker berker but have very little overall damage in the end. Why? Because a headbutt into arc diviner + hundred blades is enough to down a person before a stomp. Do that over and over and you get a lot of kills with very little to show for it in dps totals :D

Thanks much for the feedback. I hadn’t really been trying to use any of the stats as a measure until I heard Helseth mention it.

As someone who never played ranked pvp until this league started, I have quite a lot to learn.

In WvW roaming, I record video with the combat tab open and then go back to watch what I screwed up and where I played well. But in the pug pvp teams, I need the chat visible to see communication. I still record little bits of the fighting from time to time, but I was looking for some numbers that might help.

Well, I personally pretty much always play the role of a Roamer. Get quick/sneaky decaps (not necessarily full cap, a neutralized point is often enough), +1 fights before rotating to the next point etc.
So yeah. While you do a lot in such a role and can be the deciding factor of a match, your statistics will be low. If my allies outnumber the enemy after my +1 I leave, “deciding” the outcome of that fight with only 5 points to my name for it. Same for decapping, if an ally shows up on the point, I leave it. I may get 0 points for it, but staying there would be a waste of time.

So yeah, the statistics are really just fun facts outside of potentially using it to compare the efficiency of your build within the role you made it for, like Toeofdoom mentioned.