compare what ?.. you dont have any rangers remember. ACT parses are fine for lookin at whats hitting your MT, for who's breaking that mezz or a hundred other things.. for how much overall DPS roughly is being put on a mob. I've seen a number of times 3 different people's parse look completely different.. they are further or closer to the action, or a number of other things that can skew the parses. Not to mention you cant accurately compare what I parsed in Labs tonight with what your raid parsed in Lyceum the other night, or even labs last night. Too much changes.
Yeah and I don't look at 2 parses and determine Rangers need help either. I look at hundred's of parses over 6 months of raiding, I look at tons of parses from other raiding guilds, 1st hand accounts of ranger damage. And honestly raw server data like they would be collecting does no good either as far as I'm cocerned since it has no context. It has no real game play factors taken into consideration. Their are a ton of intangibles raw data like that will never pick up but a smart player with a parse will do absolutely that. This isn't just about Top Dps, it's about Potential DPS also.
Perhaps we should allow an experienced and well geared ranger to app, with an offer to guild them if they can make the top 6 parse on any raid. IMO, that would provide the most credible proof possible that what we know is correct and what the devs believe in this matter is incorrect.
Sigh. This is just what I was afraid of. SoE's dps measurement tools are crude averaging data collectors. They don't follow specific raids...they take server-wide averages. SoE probably defines a "raid" as any grouping of more than 6 players. Their automated data collector probably tabulates data with that definition in mind. Face it, there are a lot of pretty poorly constructed "raids" out there with some pretty poor players. Think pick up relic runs...those are probably called "raids". Think of "random casual guild 01" who raids 2 or 3 times a week...a relic run, Lyceeum (where they don't beat all the names and/or get their heads handed to them) and some T6 content. Now multiply "random casual guild 01" times 10 or 15 for the other so-called raid guilds on each server. Tabulate all that data...average it all together...and its no wonder that rangers do ok relative to the other classes. The dps performance of rangers (and other classes) is going to be overall craptastic...rangers in those events are probably just a bit less craptastic. Server averages such as these are in no way representative of what occurs in high end guilds fighting high end content. Just by weight of numbers the server dps averages will be reduced to the lowest common denominators. So you might say "Well, what's the problem? Averages are averages...and rangers on average are better at dps than rogues, etc." I'll tell you: because averages don't indicate how classes scale in dps when in high performing raids with high performing players. An analogy. Think of racecars. Now "driver R" drives a late model Pontiac. He races in short track and dirt track races all over the country. In these races, all of the cars are recent models but with mostly stock parts. No one has a lot of money to get the best engines/tuning/etc. The drivers are all one step above amateurs. "Driver R" with his Pontiac drives in 25 races and he generally finishes in the top 2 or 3 spots. He's on average pretty good, right? So one day "Driver R" with his Pontiac get to race at a real NASCAR race. His sponsor gives him a little money. His Pontiac gets a bit of race tuning, but no major overhaul. He gets a first class pit/support crew, just like all the other cars in the race. "Driver R" and his Pontiac finish 10 laps behind the next to last finisher. "Driver R" must suck...right? Not really. His car is simply outclassed. No amount of tuning will overcome the basic inferiority of the car itself in a real NASCAR race where only the best drivers race and all cars have the best equipment and are tuned to perform to their maximum potential. "Driver R's" Pontiac needs a completely new engine, tires, and other racing modifications to compete in NASCAR. So after the race, "Driver R" goes to his sponsor and says that his car needs a complete overhaul to be able to compete. But his sponsor says "No way. On average you've been finishing in the top 2 or 3 spots in your races". "You just need to drive better". Unfortunately for "Driver R", NASCAR officials, upon hearing of "Driver R's" sponsor's obtuseness, tell "Driver R" that he and his car are no longer welcome at NASCAR races...others will provide better entertainment and be more safe to the other drivers. So "Driver R" is condemned to race the rest of his career on short tracks. He wanted to fly with the eagles but he will only waddle with the turkeys. But on average, he'll be a 2.2 turkey.
Say I post a 3 Princes parse that has me and the conjuror doing 1500 dps for 5 minutes, the necro and wizard doing 1200, and the rogues at 1000. Would you (or anyone) be able to post a parse of 3 Princes with the same classes and a ranger in it? That would let you compare my parse to yours (by what classes did what) and then where your rangers are at from there. Yea, there's a lot of variables, but we're talking high end raiding here. If you're not in a group where your stats are capped and you're getting buffs that benefit you, then you aren't exactly raiding high end yet. If mobs aren't being debuffed to their fullest, then you aren't raiding high end yet. It wouldn't be the perfect comparison, but it's better than the current comparison you guys have, which is nothing at all.
seenow that i can agree with pretty much .. but its the same for parses. you mentioned above you'd get some parses to compare, but with so many of the variables being different, who isnt to say that the things that are "not the same" across the 2 parses arent whats making them different ? you probably did this in junior high science class, you cant compare 2 sets of data where you arent controlling the variables, not effectively anyhow. You can draw vague conclusions from it perhaps, and maybe thats what people are doing. But you cant compare the damage you as a ranger did against what skratch does unless your in the same raid fighting the same mobs with the same debuffs on them with the same equipment. Take ALL of the other factors out of the equation so its just your raw CA's against his... and even then its not going to be really effective unless you have the same person playing both, who knows how to play both. Probably not going to happen.. but you could get pretty close to ruling out alot of the variables.. the biggest ones is fighting the same mob with the same debuffs and using the same equipment so your stats should be pretty similar. I dont think even Sony has that data. The data lockeye is talking about takes all fo that out of the equation by not comparing 1 ranger and 1 assassin, but ALL rangers and ALL assassins. In that comparison it doesnt matter what equipment or level of spells any one ranger has because its averaged across all of them. Its not perfect data either but it certainly HUGELY reduces the amount any one ranger or assassin can sway the results.
Here is my problem with what lockeye has said and gamewide parsings... It doesnt take into account the damage diffrence on the rangers dance for top end raiders. Rangers do double the typiccal auto attack then all other classes because we exploit it to stand out to be our very best. While, what I have put effort into has shown CA's only it does not take into account the ranger dance. Assassins do 20-30% more damage on there CA's, the part I have a problem with is more effort should equal more dps.. But unfortunatly in the ranger case, more effort exploiting the auto attack system ultimatly results in this.. Unfortunatly this is a point I cannot put on papper, and even if I try and debate it with a braindead idiot.. I will loose.. What I CAN do though is call out for every ranger, and every other class to post parsings on each raid they go to. And, to let everyone know if they are doing the rangers dance or not.. It makes a diffrence. I will be posting anything I do, with how many people I had on that raid from labs trash to large raids from day to day. Just remember, that most of my raids have 3 groups or less in them.
you and Khalan should try to get something like that sorted out. Going to be real tough though to get it similar across both raids, might be able to get it close.. who knows. I know both of you know your classes well,. I still think though that its got its own set of problems just like lockeyes data, but his is less succeptable to being shifted by the differences like that.
Ok lore, I always agree with you but ffs stop calling it the rangers dance. That's what I call normal ranger play, it's not a dance. Stand 4m From the mob and do your stuff. no Dancing Required. You make it sound like it's this big complicated thing, it really isn't it's how I play every day with my ranger. Every ranger should be doing it, if he's not he needs to Learn 2 Play. It's standard Stuff. I think your overhyping this ranger dance nonsense. If rangers don't stand 5m from the mob, then they suck, their is a sweet spot to stand where you can do ranged and melee attacks, no exploiting about it.
the real problem with lockeyes data is that raiding rangers are the minority, so even if every raiding rangers DPS dropped by 100 DPS lets pretend, it wouldnt shift his averaged numbers much if any at all. If it raised the same amount, it wouldt go up much either. His data is across lets pretend 50,000 Rangers.. the DPs of 1000 of them isnt going to move the averages alot either way. There are flaws in both systems i guess.. i'm thinking through both areas as i type alot of this and i see his POV, Rangers as a whole, across all game styles are showing up fine in the data. Raiding rangers and those more serious grouping rangers see in individual parses this isnt true.. his data also probably included rangers of all levels maybe.. thats gonne be changing it alot too. anyhow.. i dont think the difference is a large as people think.. but i'm a newb assassin and happy with where I fall in the parse.
The thing is. if Skratch does 1500Dps, and Ishbu does 1800. And I do 1200 on my parse, but our Summoner still does 1500. You could argue "blah blah blah" parses don't mean anything since numbers are different. Thats not true, all the really matters is that Overall Placements and ratio's are similar. If our Assasins does 20% more DPS than me every time, it doesn't matter if he does 1000, 2500 or 1000000 dps. As long as he's doing more then me on a regular basis along with he rogues and summoners, the actual numbers don't matter. The underlying argument that rangers are underpowered in COMPARISION to other classes still remains, the actual numbers are irrelevant.
The only way I can make any sense out of this is that they were looking at Predator class only DPS. Then I totally agree that Rangers come in 2.2.
Sorry if I'm intruding, saw this thread on the dev tracker and felt the need to post. I'm seeing a lot of aggression towards Lockeye in this post, and it doesn't seem entirely justified. If the server-wide parses that SOE has isn't showing a problem in ranger dps he isn't going to be able to just pop in here and say, "We're fixing you, Yay!!" is he? Some people are taking what he said personally; he didn't call anyone a liar or a bad player, he simply said that he wasn't seeing the same problem from his end. That said, I'm not saying that the devs shouldn't do anything. There's obviously some sort of disparity between what the devs are seeing and what the players are seeing, and the devs should take some steps to investigate that. But getting all pissed off at Lockeye isn't going to solve anything Good luck with it guys,
Rangers suck. I'm sure Lockeye will eventually find out. I mean everyone else knows. There is a reason we don't have rangers, I mean trust me, Axkiva didn't want to quit playing his.
Sorry dude, but people expressing their concerns about a real problem involving playability (e.g. DPS) is not whining. Whining looks something a little more like: Badd Boy wrote: And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, pet animations on the zombies. And instead of redoing exact same pets at different levels can they maybe aquire a weapon on 2nd reuse or armor on 3rd reuse? Something to differentiate them a little better? Beside having no credibility, your priorities seem a bit... Off.
It's very easy to explain. Average for all players is not maximum potential. All SOE's data is probably is saying is that, on average, rangers do more damage. It could mean many things - rangers can do more damage more easily, ranger players are better on average, etc. This reflects what we all know, that rangers in most guild raids do very well, but when you get to high end guilds who play the classes to the max, they fall behind. I think they should compare the top .5% of raid parses for rangers versus other classes or something along those lines. Or there's several options, really.
Yeah there is no way SoEs parseing tools are correct if they think rangers are at the top,, They are nothing but plain wrong and they just cannot admit they have no idea what they are doing.
We have every right to take it personally. Some of us have looked at this issue for months. He comes in... and with 2 posts, tells us we are wrong. Let me tell you something about an Average. When you take an average... there are 3 spots... 1st spot - a few that suck 2nd spot - a MAJORITY that are decent 3rd spot - a few that are good (<-- these are your hard core/casual raiders) Well your average just gives you data on that 2nd spot. Well that IS NOT the raiding bunch. Your raiding bunch is in the third spot... which are completely thrown out on an average. The majority of crap in the middle out-weighs the few who are hard core raiders.. and therefore their parses are nulled. That is no surprise why your "raw data" does not match player experience and data. Message Edited by Peston on 07-28-2006 10:52 PM
now thats something i hadnt thought of. I think though that lockeyes data would point to that just as much if not more than a bunch of random parses though, if that was the true trend across the classes, not just in raiding, but everywhere then his data wouldnt put rangers in the top 1-4 (or average of 2.2). His data is exactly what you say..its not X class does 123DPS .. its Rangers are in the top 4 across the board. His data says that Rangers as a whole (not just raiders and i think thats where the gap lies) are not way down the DPS totem, but up near the top with other T1 DPS. Sadly if thats what his data says then I doubt there will be any fixes forthcoming. He already upped ranger DPS prior based on the same data.
you get the idea but what it means is that the concerns of the vocal minority (read nerfbat.com for a writeup by blackguard on that) wont be influential in changing the class. it doesnt mean raiders are thrown out, but rather whether they are up or down isnt going to shift the average much and the average is what they wil use to tweak the class.
