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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Compromise for DPS Meters: Tooltip Numbers
Bardtic
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
So as we know Ashes of Creation will most likely not have any DPS meters. I am personally all for this as I think it becomes a form of Gatekeeping and actually forces a Meta rather than open discussions on how to improve. When it is easy to tell the exact best way to play the game, it ruins the fun and becomes about following the guide you have pulled up on another screen.
However, I would like to propose as a compromise that we do have Tooltip DPS and/or Raw Numbers on the Tooltip. That way it is easy to tell how much you gain or lose by putting on a new piece of gear. Somewhat similar to how Path of Exile does it.
What is everyone's thoughts on this?
However, I would like to propose as a compromise that we do have Tooltip DPS and/or Raw Numbers on the Tooltip. That way it is easy to tell how much you gain or lose by putting on a new piece of gear. Somewhat similar to how Path of Exile does it.
What is everyone's thoughts on this?
1
Comments
Will do
Ok I was hoping for some reasoning behind why you think its a bad idea. Obviously seems like a good idea to me.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
If you do some actual math, you can see they are out by a factor of 10 at the end game. People that rely on those numbers really don't have that much they should say on the topic.
Following guides can be OK. Strict adherence to max DPS ruins the foundation of what an RPG is intended to be.
Again, that's why we have some people already expecting that Tank/Tank will have the best numbers for a Tank and will therefore become the only "viable" and acceptable Tank at max level.
By design any of the 8 Tank classes should be a viable Tank at max level - it shouldn't matter which one has maximum DPS or maximum aggro based on a parser. What should matter is whether the Tank can perform their role well enough to help the group/raid overcome the challenge. And, tweaking the overall strategy may have more to do with other forms of synergy - synergies with the various augments everyone in the group uses - than with an individual's DPS/numbers.
In an RPG, rotation shouldn't just be about individual rotation, but also about how one character's abilities can fit into the tactics of other people in the group.
In PvP Tank/Tank won't be effective if Tank adds extra threat either. Tank/Tank could add extra Protection, extra Threat, extra Evasion and extra CC Duration. I don't see Tank/Tank as being a better DPSer than Tank/Rogue or Tank/Mage. I don't understand the current meta people are pushing. It is a bad method to make metas with so many unknowns.
Each Secondary will have 4 schools which can be applied to the base skills. I suppose DPS could be one school for Tank but as a Tank in other games, I can tell you that you don't expect a Tank to do massive DPS. If you think a Tank/Tank will make you run a dungeon or raid faster you could be mistaken. You'd be better with a DPS Tank or an evasion tank, leaving the Damage Dealers to choose DPS and thus have better DPS than a Tank.
If we didn't have threat generated by Tanks then Tank would have to pump higher DPS to compensate for the aggro gleaned by heals and damage dealers. I do not understand the threat tables at the current time because some of the classes haven't been revealed. What's better, 1 to 4 Tanks doing extra DPS or 30 DPS players doing DPS because the tank players are geared to be actual tanks and not the DPS Bench.
Now, it may well be that you can tank with a class that hasn't doubled down on being a tank. However, the tweaking of strategy, the working out synergies, the changing in and out of augments, all these things that you plan to do instead of taking the best tank for the job, these things all add time to the raid.
If you delay a raid of 40 people by 90 seconds, you are wasting an hour of player/time. When you spend 90 minutes on something that doesn't work, that is a waste of 60 player/hours.
You may accept this as being ok, I do not. Most players that I know also would not. It is the raid leaders responsibility to take all the options they have at their disposal - which in Ashes includes augments, synergies between augments, strategies as well as class choice - and lead the raid with the combination of these things that said raid leader believes will give the raid the best, fastest chance of success.
Not making use of the fact that characters are able to change their secondary class is akin to having a hammer and a saw, and claiming you are going to make a table with the scrap wood you have using only the hammer.
You are literally foregoing one of the major tools in your toolbelt for no actual reason.
I would blame the DPS Department for slow kills, not the tank. If the tank dies and the raid wipes, you might have a case to improve the tank department but you can't say the tank not dying and tanking through all of the damage for the extended period of time doesn't make a great tank. Tanks will understand the scope which seems to suggest your lack of ability to build a competent raid team.
I don't want to tell my tank what to do, how to spec or how to gear. I want my tank to have the same general opinion that I do in regards to the tools that we have available to us to take content on, and the same rejection of the notion that a waste of time on a raid is acceptable.
Any tank that looks at these things the same way I look at them will have no issues running the spec (which includes secondary class, augments chosen and gear used) that is best for the content.
The last paragraph makes no real sense to me. A raid can have fairly substandard DPS and still kill any content that doesn't have a time limit (as long as those DPS are able to meet encounter scripted conditions). However, a raid with a substandard tank or healers isn't going to get far. While slow DPS may make kills take longer, a kill that takes one pull of 20 minutes instead of one pull of 10 minutes is a lot less of a waste of time than trying to work out how to take on content only using half of the tools available to you by not having a tank willing to be what ever specific class is best suited - or an attempt at an encounter that takes 10 pulls instead of one.
Once you understand the challenge you can then kill the challenge in single pulls. That's with any Tank who plays like a tank. It is difficult to translate my tanking experience to the situation you've stated because I don't just tank the boss, I tank the adds too when I tank. I'm not even sure how viable my playstyle will be in terms of the Ashes Tank.
If you mean by one pull instead of 10 pulls when facing 10 different threats then I think I understand your complaint. Otherwise, it is unlikely the tank can do anything better than the raid allows. If the tank dies to the boss mechanics then there is an argument to improve the tank. If the tank group survives but the DPS are picked off/slow it is a DPS problem. A Tank having a small boost to DPS isn't going to compensate for the lack of DPS from 30 other players.
It is important to assess the whole raid engagement, not just skim over the DPS issues when you want to pin the tank down for a beating. Some raids I've tanked mean you can't put fire on the boss, some raids I've tanked mean you must spread toxins around a room. These two encounter types take different skillsets. I also can't be certain of how well a Tank/X will compete with a Tank/Tank but if a Tank/X can tank the same encounters which IS have stated to be true, then Tank/Tank would be an overkill. I would consider any Tank/Tank to be unsure of themselves, not see Tank/Tank as the holy grail.
I am all up for the game not being infested by community addons and solutions being provided by devs when they are actually needed but if someone thinks that lack of DPS meter changes something for good then sorry but you are being delusional.
I am completely unsure what any of this has to do with what I am saying.
My point is - and has always been - that a raids main tank should be willing to run what ever spec the encounter needs. Since tank/tank is the character doubling down on tank, that will be the default that you will start all encounters with, and will only change from it if there is a need to do so. This applies to everyone in the raid, but mostly the tank since there is only one tank, and multiple people in every other role.
If the content requires us to bring a specific healer build, I have 8 healers to ask if any of them want the responsibility that comes with running that specific build (a specific build is only ever needed for a specific reason). The same is the case for DPS and other support.
With my tank though, I have one main tank in my guild. If the content requires a specific build for my tank, then my one and only tank needs to run that build.
Sure, we have other tanks we can bring in for content that requires multiple tanks, or for if the main tank is away, but other than those two situations, if a specific tank build is needed, the tank has to he that build.
It isnt as if I am talking multiple tanks along on content that doesnt need it - why would I? In general, I expect my tank to tank everything that needs to be tanked.
I honestly doubt there is much in the above that you would disagree with. You just seem to have not thought through the implications of it all, and seem put off by those implications.
Forgive my suggestion, but with the passion your replies and the wealth of topics you cover, perhaps that investment might be worth your while to upgrade your position and provide critique from actual first hand in-game experience than just the second hand forum information.
And perhaps your experience might be valuable as feedback from the real issues that are far more apparent than these entertaining paper discussions.
Three points.
First, I have three accounts for this game. I only post from this one.
Second, I am mostly talking about generalizations across multiple MMO's, and in this thread, I am only talking about them because this topic is not well suited to the specifics of Ashes.
Three, you should be looking at the points a person is making and debating them, not looking at what access level they appear to have or not have.
Do you wish to continue this line of discussion further? I mean, I could mention how your founders tier from Kickstarter is a $150 pack, while the Intrepid pack I have on this account was $500, and comes with access to all alphas and betas.
Or we can just agree that this isn't a topic that is worth discussing, which would be my suggestion.
Edit; wasn't it you that attempted to connect me to ACT and suggested I was trying to make a profit off of trying to get more people in Ashes to use combat trackers, despite me not being involved with Act at all, and ACT being completely free to use?
If that was you, you really need to lay off from this shit. I mean, even I'm embarassed for you.
That wasnt the point of this. Obviously everyone used PoB when playing. The point is that at a glance you can tell DPS increases when equipping certain items. Especially for some of the more straight forward builds.
Don't get me wrong, I love PoE - I'm actually alt-tabbed from it right now. I'm just saying that this doesn't seem like an overly well thought out idea.
Remember that in the top guilds there are members that dont actually play the game, but only create specific tools for the guild to use in order to get an advantage over others
― Plato
U.S. East
can't wait to double my damage output with my sweet new weapon and have that bar prediction on the raid boss increase from one pixel to.... one pixel
I totally understand
― Plato
More to the point - DPS meters make you a better player if you use them correctly. If I use the DPS meter to improve my DPS (or threat generated per second as a tank) then that's most certainly not a form of gatekeeping and in fact better prepares me for content.
While a ban on DPS meters will make a meta take a bit longer to come out, eventually some players are going to record their gameplay, use something like the above method to figure out the "best" rotations or develop spreadsheets or apps to sim data, and then were right where WoW is right now.
I understand some people hate this, but it's an unavoidable reality.
So, perhaps a better question than whether dps meters should exist in game would be what will we do to make the meta less important, or to encourage non-meta builds and classes to exist on a somewhat equal playing field... whether that's from group buffs or debuffs, unique utility, or some X factor I'm unaware of.
Excellent point that has been mentioned a lot of times and almost every time it was completely rejected by "nah meter ban"
It is honestly so sad that honestly majority of forum posters about this topic is mainly hurt by some bad experience of meter misuse and because of that just cannot have a level headed conversation and try to weigh facts, pros and cons
The saddest thing in this discussion on this forum is the fact that people confuse booting from groups on meters instead of instant teleportation from a queue system that groups up players from different servers. Literally encouraging to boot anyone that seems being lower than average, because statistically in a few seconds you get a replacement that should be better
― Plato
Maybe true, but if we keep a level head we can all come out of these discussions with an enriched prospective.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.