Damage per second (DPS or dps) is a measure of the damage dealt by a person or group over one second. DPS is a more practical measure of damage output than plain damage, as it allows characters of differing levels and classes to effectively compare their damage output. The term dps is also sometimes used to describe the act of applying damage to a target (as in "all dps on the boss" or "stop all dps"), or to refer to a class whose primary role in a group is dealing damage (Wowpedia)
In my previous MMO (a.k.a WoW) DPS is essential, most of WOW's raid boss have enrage timer that increases their attack speed if they don't get killed in a set of time which will cause a wipe, some Raid Boss have something called DPS Race which when the boss have extremely large pool of HP and set of attack that has increasing damage per rotation or per phase or when it's HP gets low, so DPSers must try to maintain a as a steady DPS and pull everything they got before the healer ran out of mana or the tank can't stand the heat, as a dedicated DPS myself I know how DPS is essential on Raids and Dungeons, and DPS meter become a necessity for raiders.
Enter Guild Wars 2 where holy trinity is nowhere to be found and all damage have one attribute: the damage itself, and when it come to dungeon bosses (and some legendary enemies) DPS becomes unnecessary because depends on how you mitigate or evade the bosses attacks and also healing you won't be damaging the boss unless you have some kind of traits or condition on it, and so come the sweet taste of variation that's been lacked on WoW and other 'holy-trinity' MMORPG.
Unfortunately, variation isn't what some people looking for, as a mesmer I enjoyed dodging, lasergunning, and stabbing my enemies, a warrior however prefer to up close and personal with an enemy and brutally cut it down with greatsword skills, we both managed to kill an enemy but what differs us is time of the killing, I need 10 secs of evading and slashing, while the warrior can hack'n'slash it in 4. And so the segregation begins, on Citadel of Fire a level 75 dungeons it's explorable path one has become so easy and people are starting to farm it, of course there is always a catch in form of dinimishing returns where your loot rate and rewards diminished as time goes by when you're in the dungeon, or when a path is taken repeatedly, and so the zerg against time begins. This is when DPS term returns, most of the PUG party prefers hard hitting heavy armorer like warrior clad in berserker armor and have their offensive traits maxed out because the bosses don't have hard hitting AOE or skills to compensate with the player's DPS output, and the hard hitting trash mobs are entirely skippable.
Well, it happens before in Ascalonian Catacombs, and Anet buffed it, made it harder and even deadlier than before, and so...people stopped doing it, of course some dedicated people are still cool with it, especially the token collectors, and so AC's back in their respectable niche of players. I always complained that 'dungeons r hard' before but now I started to see the silver lining it of it, if dungeons are easy people are gonna start farming it, the class becomes segregated, chats are filled with "LF WARRIOR/GUARD COF", have their own DPS meters, gear checks and stuff and make DPS a necessary factor of the dungeon game again.
Damage Per Second isn't a term fit for Guild Wars 2, because instead of pulling 10k per sec you have to dodge, heal yourself (and allies), debuff, create combo fields for your teammates, buff yourself and others, switch weapons, ress downed characters, and of course all the while damage the boss. Sometimes you'd heal more than you damage, sometimes condition is your only weapon, sometimes kiting while evading is the only way to lure the boss from your friends and sometimes you just strive for not dying because zero HP means zero DPS and when your teammates tried to resuscitate the defeated you, the situation can quickly become -1 DPS.
In my previous MMO (a.k.a WoW) DPS is essential, most of WOW's raid boss have enrage timer that increases their attack speed if they don't get killed in a set of time which will cause a wipe, some Raid Boss have something called DPS Race which when the boss have extremely large pool of HP and set of attack that has increasing damage per rotation or per phase or when it's HP gets low, so DPSers must try to maintain a as a steady DPS and pull everything they got before the healer ran out of mana or the tank can't stand the heat, as a dedicated DPS myself I know how DPS is essential on Raids and Dungeons, and DPS meter become a necessity for raiders.
Enter Guild Wars 2 where holy trinity is nowhere to be found and all damage have one attribute: the damage itself, and when it come to dungeon bosses (and some legendary enemies) DPS becomes unnecessary because depends on how you mitigate or evade the bosses attacks and also healing you won't be damaging the boss unless you have some kind of traits or condition on it, and so come the sweet taste of variation that's been lacked on WoW and other 'holy-trinity' MMORPG.
Unfortunately, variation isn't what some people looking for, as a mesmer I enjoyed dodging, lasergunning, and stabbing my enemies, a warrior however prefer to up close and personal with an enemy and brutally cut it down with greatsword skills, we both managed to kill an enemy but what differs us is time of the killing, I need 10 secs of evading and slashing, while the warrior can hack'n'slash it in 4. And so the segregation begins, on Citadel of Fire a level 75 dungeons it's explorable path one has become so easy and people are starting to farm it, of course there is always a catch in form of dinimishing returns where your loot rate and rewards diminished as time goes by when you're in the dungeon, or when a path is taken repeatedly, and so the zerg against time begins. This is when DPS term returns, most of the PUG party prefers hard hitting heavy armorer like warrior clad in berserker armor and have their offensive traits maxed out because the bosses don't have hard hitting AOE or skills to compensate with the player's DPS output, and the hard hitting trash mobs are entirely skippable.
Well, it happens before in Ascalonian Catacombs, and Anet buffed it, made it harder and even deadlier than before, and so...people stopped doing it, of course some dedicated people are still cool with it, especially the token collectors, and so AC's back in their respectable niche of players. I always complained that 'dungeons r hard' before but now I started to see the silver lining it of it, if dungeons are easy people are gonna start farming it, the class becomes segregated, chats are filled with "LF WARRIOR/GUARD COF", have their own DPS meters, gear checks and stuff and make DPS a necessary factor of the dungeon game again.
Damage Per Second isn't a term fit for Guild Wars 2, because instead of pulling 10k per sec you have to dodge, heal yourself (and allies), debuff, create combo fields for your teammates, buff yourself and others, switch weapons, ress downed characters, and of course all the while damage the boss. Sometimes you'd heal more than you damage, sometimes condition is your only weapon, sometimes kiting while evading is the only way to lure the boss from your friends and sometimes you just strive for not dying because zero HP means zero DPS and when your teammates tried to resuscitate the defeated you, the situation can quickly become -1 DPS.
This is mainly a problem in Citadel of Flame: Explorable Path 1... Since most of the bosses attacks are set in powerful-but-slow pattern, rendering the whole dungeon as a DPS race once again.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I believe Mesmer is the key in this dungeon (esp on speed-run), and the role of striker fall to all other class specced in berserker attributes (which is Power-Precision-Crit Dmg) with warrior as its most favorable class, due to his banners and shouts.
This dungeon become a DPS race due to the bosses attack pattern which can be nullified by feedback, and the relatively "low" health pool that can be drained completely within one Time-Warp period... (first boss only took 25 seconds to finish if done right)
Heck, the whole dungeon might be finished within 5 minutes 40 seconds (counting from contact with first enemy), yielding around ~75 silver for the first 3 run and ~50 silver for the repeated attempt. Not including the rares and exotics you can get from the chest.
A farmer's dream isn't it? =)) But the one that brings the problem is the take of community on this, Gw2LFG.com is now consisted of 75% CoF with 'looking for specific class' attached to it (also 'experienced' and 'zerk' tag) and by saying that mesmer is the key some other class like a Necro is probably crying at the corner somewhere =))
DeleteI'm not saying it'll be a huge impact since Anet will buff it later (hopefully/maybe), but they have to take this on carefully, farmers are also players, they will do anything to maximize their run, which can include purchasing boosts from the gem store, and by the looks of gold to gems conversion right now it'll be much more simpler to simply buy it with hard cash.
By taking profits into the system the debate of profit vs fun will eventually get hotter, so I won't even come to that, what I say is Anet have addresses this matter cautiously, nobody likes to play a game where a class is seriously 'not needed' (like my elemental shaman on WoW :P) on a 'endgame' event (dungeons, raids, scenarios, world bosses, whatever you called them). Believe me even a simple answer for a player like "Well... we prefer class x than your class, but it's not mean you're bad" or "Run dungeon with your guildmates" can be considered an euphemism for a "sucky" class =))