The general player base needs to improve

[Shurrikhan]

Not true. When I'm raiding, I'm very good at mechanic in raid. Because every time a mistake is made in raid, I got punished for it, either I gonna die myself or I gonna wipe the party, both equivalently undesirable outcome. If I don't know my rotation, I will hit enrage, so I have to become good at what I do, there is no choice. In dungeon though, like I said the "if it doesn't kill me I don't have to move" prevail. Why should I move out of that AOE, or get way from that proximity marker if I gonna hit for 33% of my health anyway even if I'm in it or near? Why do I have to try and stack with the group for stack marker, when I know as long as two people in there, it only gonna hit them for 50% HP?

I do believe people learn best via re-enforcement. You can't teach people to avoid AOE by just putting a bunch AOE in the fight for them to 'practice'. In fact, it's actually counter productive to the goal. Because if every time someone got hit with an AOE and it doesn't do anything serious to them, the behavior you're reinforcing is "I don't have to dodge this, does nothing to me anyway", you're not training people to avoid AOE, you're actually training people to stand in it. Now, all you need to have is 1 AOE in the fight, but if they get hit, they die. You'll be surprise how fast people will make a conscious afford on their own even without the pushing of others to NOT stand in that AOE next time.

Right. It wasn't optimal there. But when it doesn't kill you, and you can complete a task or end a fight more quickly -- lost healer DPS included -- by just taking that damage in order to keep dealing damage of your own, then that is the "good play". And this will continue into Savage raiding, even, such as when using Veil and Feint not to flee from Doomtrain's proximity damage knockback, propping yourself up with one of the ghost squares.

It's not just a matter of what you can survive; it's a matter of what you can get away with in terms of throughput and what's worth more. And more damaging effects, by themselves, don't teach that. It's a start, but it needs more.

[Raven2014]

Right. It wasn't optimal there. But when it doesn't kill you, and you can complete a task or end a fight more quickly -- lost healer DPS included -- by just taking that damage in order to keep dealing damage of your own, then that is the "good play". And this will continue into Savage raiding, even, such as when using Veil and Feint not to flee from Doomtrain's proximity damage knockback, propping yourself up with one of the ghost squares.

It's not just a matter of what you can survive; it's a matter of what you can get away with in terms of throughput and what's worth more. And more damaging effects, by themselves, don't teach that. It's a start, but it needs more.

No, no, and no: you are only playing this scenario in your head as ideally how you want it to happen, that not what happened 5 years ago, not what happened last year, not what happening this year, and it ain't gonna happen next year. You don't have to talk about optimization to me in raid, I do that a lot, and that's not even the topic being discussed here. This is about how to get people do basic algebra problem, not making the jump to calculus. Again, these examples are what really happening in the game:

- Me and some static mates were doing Sigma normal a few weeks ago. I noticed the O8 we were doing took a lot more time than usual to clear. In the end we cleared it no problem. but during loot roll, a RDM said something "well, that fight is a lot easier than I thought". And one of my static mate immediately burst out laughing over discord. I asked why, and she told me THAT RDM who just said the fight was easy was doing really low DPS, it wasn't below the tank, it was below even the healer.
- That "Shield blob" tank in another thread. Same thing, he did just about every thing wrong, yet after some argument he said he went in with another group and "clear it just fine", and just about any average player reading his thread know it is not fine.

See, the problem here is, from their perspective they are doing "fine", because that's basically what the game is telling them. That RDM saw a clear with no wipe, and believe the fight was easy. Maybe that tank believe "we clear it just fine" because to him, if he can clear the dungeon, than it's fine, and he did nothing wrong. And see, more often than not because this is the belief the game bestow on them, it's very difficult to convince these people they should improve. I don't think telling that RDM to play better will work. That tank made the thread because he basically reject singular advise from his group, and he would have continue to believe he's fine if he hadn't made that thread and 20 other people tell him he's wrong. The players can only do so much but ultimately, they can't swim against the current that is the system.

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Let's review:

Not true. When I'm raiding, I'm very good at mechanic in raid. Because every time a mistake is made in raid, I got punished for it, either I gonna die myself or I gonna wipe the party, both equivalently undesirable outcome. If I don't know my rotation, I will hit enrage, so I have to become good at what I do, there is no choice. In dungeon though, like I said the "if it doesn't kill me I don't have to move" prevail. Why should I move out of that AOE, or get way from that proximity marker if I gonna hit for 33% of my health anyway even if I'm in it or near? Why do I have to try and stack with the group for stack marker, when I know as long as two people in there, it only gonna hit them for 50% HP?

I do believe people learn best via re-enforcement. You can't teach people to avoid AOE by just putting a bunch AOE in the fight for them to 'practice'. In fact, it's actually counter productive to the goal. Because if every time someone got hit with an AOE and it doesn't do anything serious to them, the behavior you're reinforcing is "I don't have to dodge this, does nothing to me anyway", you're not training people to avoid AOE, you're actually training people to stand in it. Now, all you need to have is 1 AOE in the fight, but if they get hit, they die. You'll be surprise how fast people will make a conscious afford on their own even without the pushing of others to NOT stand in that AOE next time.

I would have thought this obvious since you raid as well, but since you've seemingly misconstrued my reply, I guess I'll retouch on this.

At minimal ilvl, avoiding enrage goes beyond knowing your rotation and not dying. It depends on CD sync and uptime as well. And there are absolutely times where taking that extra damage, where still not fatal in the short-term, in order to more safely surpass enrage is absolutely optimal. You make the calculation. But, it's a calculation. It requires weighing TWO things against each other. We need BOTH to be visible to players.

Without that actual calculation going on, you simply trade one absolute for another -- neglect for classical conditioning. "I see AoE; I move." Doesn't matter if it hits for 10 HP or 100,000. Despite all evidence to the contrary based on mob type or locale, it might kill me, so I move and stay out, wasting, wasting, wasting... uptime.

And again, I am NOT saying that the game shouldn't have stronger AoEs. But instant-death damage, especially at random, encourages scarcely, if any, additional game sense nor any additional calculation. Without that other half, damage, one is "fine" in just abandoning whatever they're doing, and running back to the start of the hallway or far end of the arena as not to die. Why should there be a need for a final GCD, or quick reentry? That's not going to kill him. So, like a whimpy AoE, why should he care?

The damage is already sufficient to teach how not to siphon uptime away from your healer. That's not to say it can't be a whole lot more punishing as to be obvious. The balance is certainly tilted too close to leniency, at the moment. But at least, being non-fatal, instantly or effectively, it allows for experimentation. It allows people to learn their reaction limits, the AoE timings, and so forth, without being yelled at by others. And that will actually go a whole lot further towards teaching them how to deal with Savage, ultimately, than being viably forced out of uptime by any AoE that might possibly one-shot them.

That's why I said it's a start, but it's incomplete. Mechanics are only half of Savage, for instance. Doing mechanics WHILE still maintaining proper throughput it what makes Savage... "Savage".

Short of that, you're only replacing one irritating form of blatant neglect with another.

This is why I advocate a proper difficulty curve. It's why, especially in the absence of such due to allowance for especially casual players (or, more accurately, negligent players, as plenty of casual players can learn just fine in those fewer hours), I advocate an official in-game (relative potency rDPS) parser. We need danger, but we also need appropriate context for something real to actually be endangered (which, when you consider what death actually does, can only ever be uptime -- throughput).

The sad thing is that all you really need in order to push even small amounts of damage into bad form even in the present system, is a better understood standard of healer DPS. When you get hit unnecessarily, you slow the run, because now your healer's dealing less damage.

[Raven2014]

snip

Again, one last time: what you say are only your ideal dream, a scenario that run in your head that completely detached from reality. We are spurred to do what necessary, but rarely beyond that, that's just our nature.

- The reason Optimization only exists in raid because not only of the need to clear, there are a level of competitive exists among the raiding community.
- That's why you don't see optimization in dungeon. Your example about healer DPS is completely superfluos at best. Between taking 1 hit or 3 hit make little difference to healer most of the time, since it'll take them one heal to top you off either way, factor in their OGCD and it's largely irrelevant. Source: I play all 3 healers.
- That's why you don't see optimization in 24 raid. 99% of time, the most accurate word to describe an alliance raid is "lazy". And the reason it's the case because you can be lazy and still clear.

Most people work because they have to afford their life somehow, you're talking as if we'll aspire to work to become a millionaire one day. Yes, some of us are, but most don't. Right now, the game is set up in a away that say "oh the only thing you need to do is to show up for work and put in minimal afford, and you still walk home with the pay". As long as that system exist, there is no reason for the majority to try any harder than minimum afford even if you have co-workers constantly tell them "hey, can you please put in some more afford?" You need the system itself shift to a mode where it raises the expectation that you MUST do better if you want the cake at the end of the day.

[Shurrikhan]

Again, one last time: what you say are only your ideal dream, a scenario that run in your head that completely detached from reality. We are spurred to do what necessary, but rarely beyond that, that's just our nature.

- The reason Optimization only exists in raid because not only of the need to clear, there are a level of competitive exists among the raiding community.
- That's why you don't see optimization in dungeon. Your example about healer DPS is completely superfluos at best. Between taking 1 hit or 3 hit make little difference to healer most of the time, since it'll take them one heal to top you off either way, factor in their OGCD and it's largely irrelevant. Source: I play all 3 healers.
- That's why you don't see optimization in 24 raid. 99% of time, the most accurate word to describe an alliance raid is "lazy". And the reason it's the case because you can be lazy and still clear.

Most people work because they have to afford their life somehow, you're talking as if we'll aspire to work to become a millionaire one day. Yes, some of us are, but most don't. Right now, the game is set up in a away that say "oh the only thing you need to do is to show up for work and put in minimal afford, and you still walk home with the pay". As long as that system exist, there is no reason for the majority to try any harder than minimum afford even if you have co-workers constantly tell them "hey, can you please put in some more afford?" You need the system itself shift to a mode where it raises the expectation that you MUST do better if you want the cake at the end of the day.

I see optimization even in leveling dungeons and exp grinds. The question is who is running it far more than what it is. When people want things done faster, they make the effort to do so, even in the absence of fixed challenges. The question is knowing how.

Fixed needs are not the only creator of improvements. Knowledge of the requisites for improvement, and finding the due efforts worthwhile, are every bit part of the equation.

And, for the third time now, again, I am not recommending that dungeons have such pathetic short-terms benchmarks than any amount of AoEs can just be soaked or where amount of DPS can pass through a boss fight. (Note also that these things didn't use to be case. Even our very first 60 optional dungeon, Amdapor Keep, had hard enrages upon release. Later, Pharos Sirius and even Copperbell HM likewise had borderline hard enrages. I can hardly go 3 posts in any relevant topic without lamenting this fact.)

But there is a difference between information given only upon death, and information given throughout against which that bimodal result can be compared. I am suggesting that the latter also be included.

Just as there is a difference between threat and risk. Threat of death risks nothing, and provides no real learning opportunity, if it is not staked against something that encourges that risk, such as uptime or throughput. Providing just half the picture, as per your suggested AoEs that should invariably force immediate movement due to their risk of one-shotting, with no counterbalance to make that threat and actual risk or danger, does little to force learning on anyone as it would apply to the end-goals of this game. And what possible reason would they have to learn difficulty steps A through F if it is irrelevant to or inverted within all sections further?

You continually mention "the system" or "that system" in a continually negative light, as if such were an opinion you need to impress upon me, and yet how are we (both) defining it?

• Too lacking in danger to force learning opportunities.
• In need of presented necessity of game sense to proceed.

The only parts we seemingly disagree on are these:

• I feel that the calculations we encourage onto players should draw them towards what we expect of them at the highest levels of play. It can take its time, but it should at least consider the whole picture and lead towards an actual benchmark of usage. Apparently I cannot understand your position in this respect; I can only guess that any visible improvement, even if derived from the same internal errors or similarly free of understanding, is a step in the right direction in your opinion. In contrast, I feel that towards the final destination or content group thereof is the only possible right direction.
• I think there should be further support tools. Why should the "Yes"/"No" of a fight's conclusion be the limits of information given? I cannot understand why you think the idea of their being useful to be "detached from reality". But alas, I guess that's just my insanity.