Guild Wars 2

He said he has electric discharge, so his build has neither of persisting flames or aura share :p

I do see how arcana extends the duration of buffs, thanks …
What I am telling you is that I can only do a full calculation if you give me your full build.

Haha guys I don’t think Haviz automatically assumes any Guardian is support, or at least not any the guardians he plays with!!

ThiBash, I have only done the c/s calculation. This is a preliminary step towards full dps calculations. I can only do a full dps calc if you give me your exact build. But I don’t even need to do this to tell you that with this rotation and your 30 points in arcana you are doing very little damage (to my standards).

There has been a recent change on the wiki for http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triple_Chop

Now the total damage on the last hit is said to be 470 + 504 instead of the previous 858.

Can someone please confirm this is valid for me? This change boosts the chop chain c/s from 1.36 to 1.46, which is ridiculously high.

Well I am just talking about skills
I will discuss balancing later, when I have more information about the relative strength of our skills.

Even without conjures we are legendary-free: staff is bad and daggers disappear when you do an attack animation

ImProVocateur.5189:

Let’s say the next patch adds a playable turtle class that has one skill. A cannon that does 50k damage is mounted on its back. The only downside is that every other class can one-shot the turtle, and the turtle moves at turtle speed. Now, if we do a dps comparison, then are we having the right conversation?

tldr – Look! I can make hand puppets!

Yeah we are because the only place where dps is worth calculating is PvE and in such mode no player will attack the turtle.

Oh but wait i’m not even doing a dps comparison … !

Now can we get to comparing skills or people want to keep asking whether I take class hp, amor dyes and hair style into account ?

So if I am not mistaken you rotation is as follows:
Fire: lava font
Water: Ice spike
Air: proc electric discharge, lightning surge
Earth: stoning four times, eruption
Fire: lava font, flame burst, three fireballs, lava font, three fireballs, flame burst
repeat

That would require you to have pyromancer’s alacrity of course.

The end c/s is 1.14
As a comparison, lightning whip alone has 1.22 c/s

Now plug this number in my calculator with your build and you will see how little damage that deals.

This is because, like I told you, you need arcana to use your spells out of fire, and arcana reduces your damage because its traits are very bad.

so 30/10/0/0/30 I suppose ?

Ot not, since you have lightning discharge …

How many points do you have in arcana?

Ok let it be said then: I am the only one abilited to draw conclusion here

Give me a rotation and I’ll get my machine working, probably only tomorrow though

Yep but that comes at a later stage

No harm in comparing skills slot by slot for now, no serious conclusions have to be drawn from that, but it is interesting as a start

The worse thing with staff is that you cannot benefit from FA too much with it, since its damaging element is fire. This means that if you want to use the poor support that staff provides you will have to put points into arcana, and these points reduce your damage potential. Staff’s air should be completely rebuilt.

I have run the numbers and TCed staff builds many times, there is nothing to do with it. It’s either support of dps, not both, while daggers can do both with ease.

Yes you are wrong. The stacking limit only applies to weakness and a few other non-damaging conditions.

The title of this thread is “are our skills really weak?” not “is our dps that low?”.
It’s a specific question. When I want to work on dps, like I have done in the past, I make it clear. Here I am comparing skills of other classes to ours, in order to determine if our skills are weaker. Why would I include anything else but the skills in the comparison ??

I am using data for cast times + animations to the best of my knowledge. There are actually quite a number of people data-mining for the ele at the moment, if I did a mistake in one of my numerous posts it will be noticed.

Two skills can be compared, I don’t see why not.

Yes I take the two hits of LW into account for the 1.22 c/s figure.

Let’s try not to get into the class VS class debate but rather in skill VS skill

Haviz is a bit angry because I just took many arrows in volcano fractal, so bear with him

But he is right: staff is really not that great in PvE

Guys please try to understand that I am not trying to solve the debate of which class is better. So no, I won’t do anything “realistic” because way too many factors would have to be included. I want to stick to comparing skills. From this comparison we may conclude something on class balance, but this is a later step.

@Illusion
Yes the dependent would be damage, expressed as a coefficient per second.

That sounds like the things I usually do!

haviz.1340:

Coefficients of autoattacks don’t show whole picture.

I agree but “showing the whole picture” is a task that requires many preliminary steps in order to be accurate. I am just making one of these steps here.

Thanks Wiz

Yes I should wait until the 15th but I am in a 5 hour train and I am awfuly bored ^^

As for amor, I think it’s the point of this discussion to not include it, along with traits and class mechanics, in order to evalutate the skills in themselves not the class as a whole. If I was to include armor in my evaluation I would also have to include many many more factors specific to the classes which are hard to measure.

Carrying on: arc lightning (scepter AA) versus spatial surge (mesmer GS auto)

• coefficient per second: 0.47 for AL versus 0.38 for SS (on average over full range), 24% difference
• max range: 900 AL versus 1200 SS.
• comittment: high on AL, low on SS

I would like to get into a scientific analysis of our skills compared to that of other classes. For this evaluation to be meaningful we would have to include all factors affecting a skill.

Let’s take an example:
Elem’s lightning whip versus warrior’s axe chop chain.

• coefficient per second: 1.22 LW vs 1.36 Chop
• range: 300 LW vs 170 Chop
• commitment: must not interrupt chop’s chain to deal its damage versus uncommitted LW

So the question for these skills is as follow: are the extended range and commitment freedom enough to justify the loss in damage?

It is almost impossible to answer this question without further data. This is why I am asking for your help: I would like the community to do comparisons similar to what I have just showed you in order to establish the “price” of range in terms of damage, for example.

I am actually planning to use regression analysis in order to accurately determine the “price” of all factors in terms of damage

Please help me settle this debate scientifically!

Not that true Haviz: a build comprising FA and elemental attunement on D/F can achieve that easily. The damage won’t be qual to warriors but it won’t be far from it either.

Oh it wasn’t about the OP

Some skills’ conditions are restricted to a 5 stacking limit while others are not. Usually it is mentionned in the tooltips.

Comrades!

Over the past week I have been contacted by many. I have received a lot of feedback and numerous suggestions for the Ascension Project. I am truly amazed at the number of people willing to participate or contribute.
I have noticed that willing contestants are often in lack of a proper group sharing their ambition to tackle the challenges. It is not easy to form adequate teams. This is because challengers often don’t know each other or their friends are not aware of the project.
Therefore we have decided to start a second player-driven chain of challenges in parallel to the already existing one. The first chain will now be dedicated to group challenges, while the second chain will be about solo challenges. This move will give everyone the opportunity to participate. The solo chain works just like the normal Ascension Challenge: complete the challenge to become challenge master and design your own test for others to claim the title in their turn.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Solo Ascension Challenge

First challenge, the 11th of October, “Green, super greeeen”
Aggro and kill three orrian drakes in Arah explorable
No reflections/absorption allowed.
No movement other that backward allowed! (Dodge has to be backward, movement skills are nor restricted. Basically you should just not press any other normal movement key than backward)

Remember that winners will have their names added to the scoreboard for eternal fame, and whoever will have completed most challenges will get a special prize at the end of the season

Good luck!

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 !!

Sanderinoa’s advice when I tried to train to solo GL

“yeah well eh, you know, you’re bad …”

Hey but wait, it’s ok, we have this awesome perk !!

I’m frustrated today.

it means the damage is related to the mass of the targets

But Sabull, I want to play the way I want !!!
Don’t impose something on me!
Also when I am in a group no one can tell I am not switching attunements if I wave my arms around pretending to be busy!

Oh wait they can …
Attunements icons should be removed, they are elitist!

I don’t complain that warriors > elem often because I think it is not really true in PvE, and I often say that since we often have 10 in earth we just need signet of earth to be a heavy but…

Just crunching numbers for fun:
Warrior’s base hp = 9212
Elem base hp = 1645
Difference in hp = 7567
Difference in vitality = 756 (rounding down because I am a gentleman of course)

Hm interesting number, right?
It’s almost exactly the amount of one minor stats we get from a fully ascended gear. Take berzerker gear for example, it gives you 1073 power, 70 crit damage, and 734 precision.
So basically warriors have a full set’s minor worth of stats more than elems.

Now we can talk about class balance all we want, you have to keep this in mind.

Edit: oh and if we take the armor difference (291) as well, and add it to the vitality difference we get 1047, which is almost a full set’s major worth of stats

Crescendoll.7612:

I like how people in this topic are claiming that HB is the god of all DPS….

Sure, that video of 100k+ damage on a single HB is quite impressive, as burst damage. What happens if you have to use it more than once in a fight? Will it always hit for 100k+? No, it most likely will not.

Lets give that dude a good average, and say it hits for 70k per activation, thats 70k dmg over 3,5s with a 8s CD, thats 11,5s for those 70k, that’s a bit more than 6k dps. Sure, it absolutely decimates trashpacks, but on bosses where he’s going to have to use it several times in the fight, not as impressive anymore, is it?

The mobs on which this video was done have low armor.

Comparing big numbers with other numbers in different situations has no value.

That’s why we use spreadsheet. Controlling the situation is key.

Spreadsheets tell us warrior’s damage isn’t that high. Actually warriors are good because they provide valuable buffs for the group.

No I think they should give the best rewards for achievements: there is not better thing than getting awesome loot for text.

Oh wait, that’s also already in the game!

Scale 70+ is exploit

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?

It’s a truly awesome guide, great job!

Ex….Eeeexx…Exxxxxploïïïïïïtz !!

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 ?

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

FinalPatriot.8034:

I read a post not too long ago talking about a D/D condition build that was very effective in WvW and PvP but sadly enough, I can’t find it now. Would any of you remember this build or have a link to it?

Thanks!

The almighty and wise Kodiak used to have a link for a “condimentalist” in his sig but he not anymore … where is Kodiak when we so desperately need him?

STRanger.5120:

You’ll be able to kill ppl which are AFK, does that suffice?

Edit: It’s like if you wanted to play a warrior with two and a half weapon skills, would you like that?

Kodiak would disagree

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!!

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.

Inverted.7439:

The first rule of the forums is that you NEVER listen to the forums. These people dont know what they’re talking about 90% of the time. The only thing i’d suggest is trying it and if you like it, play it. Yes bunker ele doesn’t have as much dps as a warrior but it has a kittenload more aoe heals and team support & survivability.

I’ll follow your advice and won’t listen to you then

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?

And exactly when you thought you had accomplished everything there is to accomplish in this game, this happened

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?

Thx
It’s not just “stay in fire”, in fact the stay in fire rotation calculation done before was an inital experiment. My intent was to calculate dps for staff + LH rotating attunements.

I don’t have accurate definitve results yet, but it seems that with a 30/10/10/20/0 rotation in water for LH then eruption in earth and the rest in fire gives 6% less damage than when not rotating. However the rotation enables you to have one more blast.

I’ll keep you posted