Guild Wars 2

Spoichiche.1290:

If you decide to continue playing the game, or decide to come back, you should really try out gw2spec, which is a legal, pretty well made, dpsmeter for gw2.
However, due to the kind of combat system gw2 have, numbers like dps, healing done or damage received are easily misinterpreted. For example, chronomancer have very low dps, but their damage contribution to the rest of the party is huge thanks to quickness/alacrity. Same goes for warriors. Or in fractals, the best guardian is not the one with the highest dps, but the one who knows best how to time aegis/reflect/stab/condi clear ect.
We have this kind of stats in pvp at the end of the game, but really, if you break 1M damage dealt at the end of the game, it doesn’t mean you contributed a lot to the damage of your team, but most likely that you fought a lot of bunkers or minion mancer necro/mesmer clones.
These statistics brings very little as long as there is no strict enrage timer to the encounter like in raids.

It goes without saying that supportive classes bring more to the table than just dps. That’s a carboncopy of how it was/is in WoW (not that that’s a bad thing, I can’t come up with any way to eliminate that). Tanks do less damage than pure damagedealers. Healers do less damage than pure damagedealers. Condi damagedealers do less damage than pure damagedealers on targets with reasonably low armour. Supportive (reflect, barrier, buff) classes do less damage than pure damagedealers.
That is how it should be, in my opinion.

As far as I’ve been told, Guardians aren’t good in high fractals, so that example in particular is rather mute.

And PVP has it’s own competitive system. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 or 5000 dps in PVP. What matters is that you win, which in theory could be done without touching the enemy. It’s the rest of the game that’s lacking a fundemental part of its player progression.

BrotherBelial.3094:

No, do you not get what PvE is? ANet wants PvE to be a friendly place where people help each other on the fly, not make it a “I’m not helping you scrub! You can’t even DPS!”

Maybe good in WvW, or guild missions but it really has no place in any game. There is really no real reason for it. The stats we get in PvP are for the purpose of knowing how effective your build is.

If PvE was supposed to be a friendly place where everybody is welcome to come and go as they please with any amount of effort invested into the group’s wellbeing, the raids, dungeons and fractals would not have such punishing mechanics.
Take Slothasor as an example; if one person doesn’t react to the poison cloud debuff, he will cause the entire raid of 10 people to die.
I get what you’re saying and inclussivity is great. It’s particularly great in GW2 (or maybe I was just lucky?). When I was new I often landed in groups that were perfectly content with telling me what to do and where to stand. Being nice and honest about it helps, I guess, but still.
I have only met a single elitist in the game so far. He’s toxic as death itself and worse than any player I ever encountered in WoW! What’s particularly toxic about him and the entire situation is that nobody can refute him, as nobody actually knows any of the players’ throughputs. So we just have to accept his word that everybody except him is trash-tier.

I have enjoyed my time in GW2 and I wouldn’t want to force addons on anyone, but I can’t continue playing blind either. I want to know what’s happening on my screen. Sure, I can see that approximately twice per second I deal 6k damage on a stationary target and from that I can make a vague guesstimate that I have around 12k dps. But what’s the point of the floating combat text when it isn’t used for anything concrete other than displaying how heavily armoured the target is and whether you’re actually hitting or not?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Filth.1479:

I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Bosses simply have billions of health.

The thing is.. having pugged a lot of fractals, I really start to notice that sometimes I get these groups where the boss dies in seconds and then other times I get groups where it takes several minuttes. I’m mostly referring to Molten Boss, but it is the same in other fractals. It’s just more noticable on the Molten Boss.

That bothers me a great deal. The fact that the majority of the GW2 playerbase is either oblivious of that fact or chooses to completely ignore it, scares me. How can anybody play a game for years and just accept that their contribution to the group is 0?
If nobody can see that persons nonexisting output, nobody is going to tell him what to do to improve. And we’re just fine with that? As long as he wins the fashion war?
This game is too good to just die off like that.

Ryou.2398:

Did I miss it or did you not do living story season 2 or hot yet?

I’m not going to buy living world season 2. I bought the first episode wrongfully thinking I got the entire thing for 200 gems.
I haven’t completed the HOT story yet. I kinda wanna do it with my friends, but they don’t wanna play GW2 anymore. So RIP. . .

And as I stated somewhere in my post, I’m really not a fan of the first story, nor the second story so far. I mean.. it’s cute and all, but I don’t care about that stuff. I didn’t care about the roleplay in WoW either. I’m all about overcoming obstacles in the form of hard boss encounters, not escorting some npc around to pick up cogwheels while sleepily 111111111ONEONEONEing a pair of mobs down. Which sums up the stories, so far.
But in spite of that, the game is still overall amazing, don’t get me wrong. There has to be content for the casual roleplayer, of course, it’s an MMORPG. No complaints there. It’s just not for me.

Ranael.6423:

I am no fortune teller, but I just want to make you aware that you may feel the game empty soon, but please if it happens look back at that post to remember that there was a time when you felt the game was kindda good

Oh and by the way, personal DPS meter exist (Jaxnx should not be bannable) but you will never see what others are doing. Play with people you know and compare after fights.

Only seeing yourself on the DPS meter is the issue I have. Without some form of frame of reference, it’s just a number.
I think I wrote it somewhere up there, but I only have one friend to play with and we do share our data somewhat.

The game already feels empty to me. I am not really onboard with the PVP thing, been there done that. I’ve already won the fashion war, I’m a fabulous Asura. The only game I’ve got left is some form of competitive PVE and that doesn’t exist. The bored wall has already hit me, and that’s fine, I didn’t expect this game to last all the way through my summer holidays. That’s fine! Completely fine.
What I’m trying to say is that this game is absolutely fantastic and it deserves an element of competitive PVE. I’m sure the hardcore guilds already have this, internally, with their grey area 3rd party programs, but the rest of the community is left in the dirt.

I totally get that people have bad childhood memories of being bullied out of LFR in WOW because of their blue gear and 0.1% dps, but that would never be the case with the way gear scales in GW2. And ultimately, there’s more to the game than just DPS. It’s a game of survival, teamplay and overcoming a variety of obstacles.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Its a dated and toxic mechanism, but for those that must have it, there is a program i believe that acts as a damage meter (i believe people still use this kind of thing with GW2 raids. To Op though, you need to get out of the mindset of competitive contribution, that’s not what GW2 is about, you don’t need to worry about what other people are doing – the beauty of this game is that you have extreme flexibility to adjust your skills and behaviors to compensate for any perceived weakness you see.

As for gear progression to make things easier as you repeat dungeons, thats a WOW thing again, the reward in GW2 is different, its all about learning to adapt your playing behaviours and skills sets – this is where the experience pays dividends.

I understand. But this also invites and rewards the “doesn’t matter what I do, the others will carry me and they won’t even know that I’m not doing anything lmfao” mentality. It’s a plague in all MMORPGs.. all games even…, but most games take steps to ensure that those who actively try to better themselves and perform to the best of their abilities claim rewards fitting their level of play.
Frankly, I think it’s sad that such an amazing game is completely without a competitive element in PVE. Imagine how popular GW2 could be if it had a worldoflogs.com equivalent.
I can’t fault anyone for thinking damage meters/healing meters as being a toxic mechanism. In some cases it is. I’ve experienced hundreds of wipes due to metertunnelvision, but it can also be an invaluable tool for increasing your personal and your group’s performance.

Serophous.9085:

Was this a veiled attempt at yet another “damage meter plz” thread?

Yes.

Hey everyone.

As the title states, I’m new to gw2.
I am playing a Tempest Elementalist wielding a staff and I’m Asura. I have played for 268 hours over the past 21 days and died 393 times.
I am currently at 74 agony resistance with 6 Ascended items (Shoulders, Gloves, Staff, Amulet, Ring, Ring). I have killed all raid bosses, except Matthias and Xera (no ley line gliding).

I played WoW for a decade, peaking at world#37 in PVE and a single gladiator title, as a warlock. I quit WoW years ago after finishing heroic Siege of Orgrimmar (25) in MOP. I haven’t bought the subsequent expansion(s) and don’t intend to.
I have also tried, very briefly, Elder Scrolls Online, Wild Star, AION and SWTOR.

I will try to put my thoughts into categories, as I have attempted to cover most aspects of the game in my relatively short time spent playing it.

Leveling 1-80:
It took me a bit over 2 days to level from 1 to 80. I liked how quick it was and how the time spent per level was approximately constant. I leveled to about 35 using karma hearts (“quests”) and from 35-80 using world events.
“Weakness makes me sick”, anyone?
The leveling process was entertaining and challenging enough to keep me entertained. Mostly because as an elementalist I could pull 5 mobs at a time and AOE them down, if I used my abilities correctly. I liked that. Unlocking all 5 abilities at early levels really made the game a lot more fun. I never felt like I lacked the necessary tools to level efficiently (unlike in WoW, where the best leveling tools were unlocked at max level).

Personal Story (Original):
I suppose the personal story is fun and games, if you like leveling inefficiently, getting insignificant rewards and roleplay. I like none of the 3, so I skipped every cutscene after level 40 and rushed through it as fast as I could, just for the sake of having it completed. I regret doing it. It was boring, grindy and ultimately entirely unnecessary.
That is my opinion and I appreciate the fact that others may like it.

Dungeons:
The dungeons are pretty complicated, if you’re used to linear WoW-type dungeons where you kill stuff, move further, kill more stuff and eventually collect loot. You rarely had to talk to npcs or click hidden objects (puzzles). That’s refreshing, although, at this late stage of the game veteran players will rush through the content like it’s nothing (in spite of the virtually nonexisting gear scaling curve, more about that later). That makes it pretty difficult for a new player to pick up on what’s actually going on and how it’s supposed to be done, because it’s generally already finished before you’ve even found the area where the action is (was) happening. However, the dungeons are great fun and once you understand enough to keep up, it’s amazing. I really like most of the mechanics and only wish there was more incentive to actively do dungeons.

Fractals:
Like dungeons, fractals can be hard to catch on to. They’re fun and mechanically challenging, but they are full of objectives and tiny puzzles that new players need some attempts to understand and navigate. Once that was accomplished, fractals quickly became my favourite objective of the game. What bothers me is that most of my friends are too casual to keep up with me and my one other hardcore friend, so we are a 2 man team most of the time, pugging the other 3.
I have nothing against pugs, but with no way of telling if they’re pulling their weight or only mastering their “1” DPS rotation, I feel punished and at a huge disadvantage for only having 1 real mate.
Both in fractals and in dungeons I often feel like we are the only two people interrupting, healing, tanking and dealing damage. Sadly, with no way of telling, this only leads to more frustration which doubtlessly will eventually cause me to quit the game for good. I know a lot of players are scared of damagemeters. If they were casual wow players, I can understand that, as casuals would have been destroyed in LFR instances by veteran hardcore players. That is the consequence of the too steep gear progression of WoW. That is not the case in GW2 (10% statincrease from Exotic to Ascended, 0% statincrease from Ascended to Legendary), so even if you are in full Exotic gear and competing against a player in full Ascended gear, the damage difference should be pretty small.
I like to understand things and I like to improve. Without a tool to measure my own performance and compare it to that of my peers’, I lose interest due to the ever increasing frustration I feel at not knowing what’s actually going on.

World Bosses and Events:
I can understand the argument that “dynamic world events and world bosses” on a very exact timer (GW2timer.com for more info) feels awkward, it also allows for them to be completed frequently, efficiently and smoothly, which I really like. I am often on the world boss train, going from A to Z killing bosses as soon as they spawn.

Raids:
The raids in GW2 are excellent. The bosses are diverse and very entertaining to learn and defeat. I fear that GW2 suffers from the same issue that Wild Star had though, which is that the gear progression does not really smoothen raiding at all. The very slight increase of stats do not allow for quicker and easier fights, which I imagine makes raiding every week excessively grindy with little to no reward (assuming you’re fully geared, which I reckon everybody is at this point). Complacency was a killer at end-game raiding in WoW, even with our heavily inflated stats. I can’t begin to imagine how horribly a raidcontent-dry-patch in GW2 would look, farming the same bosses in the same equipment for months. Maybe nobody does that, I don’t know. I can understand why nobody would.
That said, the instances are amazing, although it has the same issue as fractals and dungeons, with the individual player having no real knowledge of his/her performance relative to that of his/her comrades. Unless everybody has a (probably) illegal 3rd party damage meter that is hooked up to a server to share the data across the group to accumulate a full damage meter depicting the entire raid (or atleast everybody who went through the steps of installing the 3rd party program and hooking up to the server).

World vs World:
I haven’t done much of it, because it appears largely unrewarding and it’s not my endgame. It’s also a frustrating and confusing zergfest of following around the commander tag and avoiding fullscale combat at all costs. Whenever I got into a 1v1 or similar small scale skirmish, a thief would pop out of invissiblity oneshot me and then bow-dash to africa before I could even blink. I’m in full berserker gear and I SINCERELY HOPE that’s the reason I’m getting instakilled with no chance of defending myself.

“PVP”?:
I did my PVP dailies a few times by joining the organised win-trading games in the PVP lobby. As handy as that may be, it seems to be the perfect place for botting software. I’ve never tried real PVP or arena.

Appearance, Dyes and “Fashion Wars”:
Since this is apparently the real end game of Guild Wars 2, it seems odd that there are full awesomely looking sets available from the gem store. Once you learn to recognise all the €10 suits it’s easy to separate the real farmers/pros from the casual scrubs, ofcourse, but to a new player that’s not so straight forward with the huge number of dyes available.

Guild Events:
Easily the most frustrating and exclussive content available in guild wars 2. I’ve managed to get through them once, but currently Ascended Accessories seems like the absolutely last piece of equipment I will obtain. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be so exclussive, rare and frustrating, or if that’s a consequence of them having been available for so long, at all gear levels.

GW2 in general (TL;DR):
Mechanically the game is amazing. Combo fields, dodge rolls, boss mechanics, events, currency types and event-gated vendors etc. The game feels responsive and very fluent and in spite of raidwipe-causing and map-removing client crashes, it’s a pleasent experience.
What is driving me away is the absense of a way to measure my output and compare it to that of my group members. I often feel like I am the only person healing, damaging, tanking and interrupting all at once. With no damage meter telling me I’m either right or wrong, I only end up feeling more and more frustrated with every dungeon, raid or fractal I do. I’m a humble elitist, but I’ve already won the fashion war with my demi-god appearance, without knowing my worth in terms of HPS, DPS and interrupts, I am nothing. I would legit use an illegal damage meter and risk getting the ban, if I could find one.
I know there’s a golem to test it on. I’ve done that. That still doesn’t show me if I’m the only one actually trying to do good or if the boss simply has billions of health.

Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion of Guild Wars 2, so far.
I’ll see you when multilooting or at Tequatl.
– That Filth