Artificial Difficulty

[Bloody]

Artificial difficulty is, as several others have said, when player skill is minimalized or removed as a factor of success or failure, and is instead based heavily on gear checks (hp, dps, etc).

Memorization, adaptability, reflex, rotations are all measures of a player's skill and thus things that create the difficulty of an encounter. Having mechanics based on having X amount of HP or being able to do an amount of DPS that is unachievable without certain amounts of gearing is what adds artificial difficulty to an encounter, but this game is designed to have tiered gear and tiered raids.

[StrejdaTom]

Memorization, adaptability, reflex, rotations are all measures of a player's skill and thus things that create the difficulty of an encounter. Having mechanics based on having X amount of HP or being able to do an amount of DPS that is unachievable without certain amounts of gearing is what adds artificial difficulty to an encounter, but this game is designed to have tiered gear and tiered raids.

I agree with you.
In my opinion Artifical Difficulty related to DPS check can be only DPS check that is impossible to pass with gear that is obtainable at this moment. Currently anyone should be able to do A1-A3 savage, and if we aren't able to clear it (I am at 8th wave in A2s at this moment) it only means we aren't as good as others (or our raid mates aren't) and we should improve. Problem is, that some people like to blame nonexistent artifical difficulty for their bad performance (I do mistakes in my rotation under pressure too), instead of thinking why it is possible that some people cleared the same content with worse gear than they have. But it is like talking to a wall, you can still meet people who have ilvl180 gear and can't or won't do T9, because it is not difficult, it just stacks ridiculous amount of mechanics and it's just "artifical difficulty".