Showing Posts For Timberwolf.2413:
Good guide! Some new idea I found: the shift-click “escape preparation”. Thanks jabberjabber!
I think a formula of a players HP-Pool and the enemies DPS is not the proper approach to calculate a players “survival time” as soon as we talk about bosses or champions. The aforementioned formula assumes, you are exposed to continuos boss damage during a fight, a situation that – regardless of the DPS you can put out, and regardless of your life pool or toughness – you will never win. So, even “adjusted enemy DPS” which takes into account your healing, vitality and toughness, will definitely kill you.
Most of us who are observant of their HP-pool, can probably confirm that the total amount of HP damage they suffered during a boss battle, overweights their maximum HP many times. A boss DPS is either so high, that he can kill us in a few seconds, or his HP pool is so huge, that regardless of our DPS, we will never kill him faster than he can kill us.
The “enemy survival time” formula, on the other hand, does more justice to the boss fights as we know them. Bosses are rather exposed to the players summarized DPS the whole battle time, they don’t roll out, they dont use healing skills comparable to ours, and, they don’t kite us. They just have a huge HP pool.
So, how do we win boss battles ? We kite, we dodge, we use our skills, we burst and we disengage, we REZZ the downed, we eat hits, but survive them, we heal, we regenerate in combo fields and so on…
How do we lose boss battles ? We lose men. Not only our DPS, but our aggregated “skill pool” and “endurance pool” decreases. From five to four to three players…We run out of options, up to a point, where we HAVE to eat the boss full DPS, which WILL kill us in seconds like I pointed out above.
My conclusion is, the pure “my HP-pool vs your HP-pool, my DPS vs your DPS” equation doesn’t win boss battles. The formulae in this thread partially oversimplify to a moot point.
The one I can agree on is: “Enemy survival time”. The duration of a boss battle depends on our DPS and the boss HP pool. The difference between a high DPS group and a low DPS group decides, whether the fight will take a minute, or three, provided everyone survives.
But our own survival and therefore success of the team is decided by the situations, when we individually have to deal with boss damage. Those situations may take only fractions of the whole battle time, but to master them is crucial for the team’s success. For these situations, team DPS doesn’t count. To win the battle, you have to survive those special situations, and not shorten the overall battle time. (“Stay there, we kill him before he can kill you !!” is only viable, when the beast is technically slain :-))
Our survival depends on: Can we pull another trick of our hat, which is not on cooldown ? Can we eat the damage, and heal it later with a skill ? Can we use a damage prevention skill right on time, or roll, teleport, blink..etc out of harms way ?
And here comes the advantage of high DPS groups as I see it: If they can shorten the boss battle by a significant amount, most of their skills will be needed only once during a battle. That means, they will have less skills in cooldown when they need them.
What about the hits you eat, that don’t bring you down instantly ? I’d say, that toughness or vitality to sustain one ore two more hits before you have to roll out of combat, allows you to hit the enemy one ore two times more, and with that, provide additional damage.
In other words, a player can go full GC, but he will have to dodge more often, and spend more time withdrawing, dealing zero damage.
Maybe there is a middle ground for maximum damage in the maths ?
There is no “correct” price on a market. If there was, we wouldn’t need a trading post. Who would sell below ? Which buyer would overpay voluntarily ?
There is also no “monopoly”. No one is restricted from finding a precursor, or buying one. It’s just a very scarce resource.
The problem is:
We have extremely rare goods on the one hand, and a in-game currency that loses value by inflation day by day on the other hand. Comparable to the art market: A precursor is like a Renoir or a Picasso, they are very limited, you can’t reproduce them, and therefore people are buying them just for investment return.
The solution to put pressure on the market prices is a slight increase in drop rates. But I have a sad feeling, that a lot of people that are complaining, want the exclusivity of the precursor weapons maintained, and just belong to the elitist club.
If ANet wanted that lawn cut, they would spawn it cut already.
My theory is, that a lot of PvE players take the WvW zones for a cheap travel to Lion’s Arch. That would result in a permanent full queue, on the one hand, but not much WvW participation on the other hand.
Maybe ANet could monitor the times, how long players actually stay in WvW regions.