starkerealm wrote: »

Winstonshead wrote: »

I mean, if you are raid leader of some pve static group, soon you will get requests to join your static from dps players who never passed vMA

And that happens now. If you want to insist on a vMA clear for a player, you need to ask. Even simply looking at a character's gear is no longer indicative, since the vMA weapons appear as outfit pages.

If it still care about this, it's worth remembering that VMA TEACHES YOU NOTHING ABOUT HOW TO APPROACH GROUP CONTENT.

If I had a nickle for every vMA shuffler I've seen in vAA doing their best to wipe the group... I probably wouldn't be able to afford a cup of coffee, but I'd have a couple bucks.

As much as it's a right of passage, vMA encourages bad behavior. Things that will not fly in group content.

How will DPS learn? By actually learning to DPS. If they don't want to do that, then vMA wouldn't teach them before.

Hell, vMA was explicitly designed to be completable for healers and tanks. DPS was never the only solution.

On the bolded, no it doesn't that's complete nonsense. It's one thing to say that there's things it doesn't teach or encourage, and another to say it encourages bad behaviour. What's the bad behaviour it encourages? To not stand in red? To pay attention to mechanics? To DPS while moving? To prioritise targets?

If you think vMA shufflers are the worst thing to bring through vAA/vHRC then you clearly haven't done enough raids with pugs. There's a great deal of others who come to a raid with their toughest previous experience being vet dungeons where they were probably carried in every aspect (dps and survival) by the >1k CP experienced dudes they were running with because they are so bad that they are a waste of soul gem to res.

For vet trials nothing compares to vet trial experience of course. But if you don't have that experience due to not being in a trials guild or something, a Flawless Conqueror achievement is a good indication. There are other tougher achievements these days like The Unchained from BRP but these tend to be people from PvE guilds with trials experience already. Hence they have teammates they worked together with.

If you are not able to survive vMA you will never survive let alone vAS+2, even vAS+0 or vCR+0. Movement is important thing and vMA is one of the best places you can learn it.[/quote]

I agree with this. vMA teaches movement and survivability not DPS. It will make you a better player.

The big issue, and I and others pointed this out during the recent LA/HA PTS fiasco, is that there is no progression in the game that teaches you how to be a DPS. Either another player tells you what a rotation is, you watch a video, or maybe you stumble across it eventually. This has nothing to do with weaving or animation cancelling as these things won't really improve DPS until you have a decent rotation in the first place.

Maulkin wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Winstonshead wrote: »

I mean, if you are raid leader of some pve static group, soon you will get requests to join your static from dps players who never passed vMA

And that happens now. If you want to insist on a vMA clear for a player, you need to ask. Even simply looking at a character's gear is no longer indicative, since the vMA weapons appear as outfit pages.

If it still care about this, it's worth remembering that VMA TEACHES YOU NOTHING ABOUT HOW TO APPROACH GROUP CONTENT.

If I had a nickle for every vMA shuffler I've seen in vAA doing their best to wipe the group... I probably wouldn't be able to afford a cup of coffee, but I'd have a couple bucks.

As much as it's a right of passage, vMA encourages bad behavior. Things that will not fly in group content.

How will DPS learn? By actually learning to DPS. If they don't want to do that, then vMA wouldn't teach them before.

Hell, vMA was explicitly designed to be completable for healers and tanks. DPS was never the only solution.

On the bolded, no it doesn't that's complete nonsense. It's one thing to say that there's things it doesn't teach or encourage, and another to say it encourages bad behaviour. What's the bad behaviour it encourages? To not stand in red? To pay attention to mechanics? To DPS while moving? To prioritise targets?

If you think vMA shufflers are the worst thing to bring through vAA/vHRC then you clearly haven't done enough raids with pugs.

So, worth understanding, "not being the worst," is not the same as, "being okay," or even, "being an asset." Much like, "it could be worse, we could have all been killed," is a pretty poor consolation for, "I guess getting your hair set on fire isn't the worst." Maybe this entire mess could have been averted.

Maulkin wrote: »

There's a great deal of others who come to a raid with their toughest previous experience being vet dungeons where they were probably carried in every aspect (dps and survival) by the >1k CP experienced dudes they were running with because they are so bad that they are a waste of soul gem to res.

I've seen some truly abysmal performance in PUGs. Including one, honest to god, snipe spammer trying to run vet trials. Would I rank people who've completed vMA among the worst? Of course not. However, I have seen plenty of players who were told, without any reservation, that vMA teaches you how to play, who then immediately afterwards stopped listening to any information, and started shuffling away.

Maulkin wrote: »

For vet trials nothing compares to vet trial experience of course. But if you don't have that experience due to not being in a trials guild or something, a Flawless Conqueror achievement is a good indication.

Of absolutely nothing except that they've mastered vMA.

Maulkin wrote: »

There are other tougher achievements these days like The Unchained from BRP but these tend to be people from PvE guilds with trials experience already. Hence they have teammates they worked together with.

The problem here, and you actually hit it on the head is, the best preparation for any activity in the game, is that activity. If you want to get better at vMA, the solution is to run vMA. If you want to get better at trials, run trials. For dungeons, run dungeons. For PvP, kill other players. For Overland? Take a nap, it's overland.

All of this will make you a better player overall, ironically even overland, as it will try (and frequently fail) to teach you basic system mechanics as you go. There's overlap, and while vMA is a good cross section of things that will turn you into paste later, it's not the only answer.

The other problem, and I rarely see this brought up is that vMA is very predictable. I realize mine is the distorted perspective of someone who's probably spent far too much time in there, and is less true for someone going in blind, but vMA does not teach you awareness. It primes you to deal with a very specific sequence of events. Running vMA effectively is not about responding to mechanics, instead you're encouraged to preempt them. At best, yes, it could lead you to paying more attention, however, that is not a certainty.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it can't help a player's situational awareness, but the skill it's actually testing is your ability to memorize long event chains. That's where a lot of the initial difficulty comes in. Players are told, "react," but, what they really need to do is learn what will happen and when it will occur. Once you have a round's event chains down, and the mechanics necessary to neutralize the enemies, the rest is rote. That's fantastic for vMA, it's not information that translates anywhere else in the game.

For example: if you want to learn the event chains for vMaw, you need to run Maw of Lorkhaj (normal or vet), enough times to know what will happen, where, when, and how to respond. However, because you're working together in a group, content tends to feel more erratic than vMA, because other players will affect how the AI responds, while vMA is comparatively predictable, once you understand how the AI will respond to you.

To be clear, I don't think vMA is bad content. I don't even think it's a bad training ground to work in. However, the idea that it will universally produce good results is what I take issue with. Much like any form of solo exercise, vMA permits you to get into, and reinforce, bad habits without anyone who can observe or respond to your progress. Shufflers are the most visible symptom of this, though they're not the only ones who suffer as a result.

I would much rather, prospective players get into trial and dungeon groups with other players who can see what they're doing, and offer constructive critique. I realize that's a much more involved activity, but if you want a good team, you have to be willing to take some time and teach. VMA will not do that for you.

cheifsoap wrote: »

Equating Flawless with being good at DPS is like equating playing guitar with being good at Guitar Hero.

I suspect many players actually cheesed that with Plague Doctor

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

cheifsoap wrote: »

Equating Flawless with being good at DPS is like equating playing guitar with being good at Guitar Hero.

At least they are good at not dying, a valuable skills that many DDs Ive met still have to learn.

Not if they built for survival when they went into vMA, and are rocking parse builds in general content. Seen that more than once.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

cheifsoap wrote: »

Equating Flawless with being good at DPS is like equating playing guitar with being good at Guitar Hero.

At least they are good at not dying, a valuable skills that many DDs Ive met still have to learn.

Not if they built for survival when they went into vMA, and are rocking parse builds in general content. Seen that more than once.

I just drop 1 skill from my bar and place an extra heal there. It’s normally Barbed Trap that swap out.
Apart from that, I use the exact set up.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the players who significantly alter their builds for survival to flawless. Stuff DKS, Rattle, Plague Doctor, even Warrior Poet. Stuff you'd never want to see on a DPS in group content.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

cheifsoap wrote: »

Equating Flawless with being good at DPS is like equating playing guitar with being good at Guitar Hero.

At least they are good at not dying, a valuable skills that many DDs Ive met still have to learn.

Not if they built for survival when they went into vMA, and are rocking parse builds in general content. Seen that more than once.

I just drop 1 skill from my bar and place an extra heal there. It’s normally Barbed Trap that swap out.
Apart from that, I use the exact set up.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the players who significantly alter their builds for survival to flawless. Stuff DKS, Rattle, Plague Doctor, even Warrior Poet. Stuff you'd never want to see on a DPS in group content.

If you are going for a flawless run, it’s clear that you have completed it before.
VMA teachers you to focus on many different things at a time.

Which I've already talked about.

Except, it doesn't really do that. It teaches you to memorize the exact sequence of events. By the time you're in there creeping up on Flawless, you're already at a point where the basic rhythm is second nature, and you're just honing in on the sequence.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

Stage 2 - you need to try an avoid as my blades as possible while dealing damage. (I never activate the freeze switch)

The blades are on a schedule. Ironically, the e-stops will knock them off of that schedule, so once you're at a point where you can go flawless, they start to become more of a liability than an asset. Pretty sure they can also end up out of position if your DPS waffles erratically, but the basic result is, these things are very predictable, and you don't really need to keep track of them, just have a vague awareness of which one will be on top of you next.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

Stage 5 - you need to keep an eye on the last boss health, look which island the troll is going to try and smash to interrupt it.

I'll be honest, most of the time I just nuke the troll rather than bothering to interrupt. They don't have much health, but interrupting is an option if your DPS is low. However, they follow a specific pattern. In fact, you can screw up your rhythm if you start on the wrong island and don't realize it. With a little practice, you don't need to keep an eye out for the troll because you'll have a feel for when the troll should appear, and you'll know where it's going.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

Dreaded Stage 7 - Need to prioritise many different targets at different stages. Archers when channeling, random Spawning Poison need to be quick to dodge roll out of it and if you get it, heal and try and purge it, the lady that makes poison grow, pick which 1 of the 2 Mages that is away from any poison mushrooms, that you are going to kill and be protected by the other.

Stage 7 has one of the few cases where I"ll give you the situational awareness bit. As far as I've ever been able to tell, the spore spawns are random. Also, thanks to latency, it's easy to end up with virulent poison, even if you got out of range before it went off. Dodge rolls are a bad idea because of how the game manages those on the back end. You'll end up with virulent poison way more frequently than if you'd just sprinted out of the AoE.

Archers aren't a problem, their spawns are non-random. It's just a matter of learning when they appear, and dealing with them.

I'm not sure about the spore minders (?). They're fragile enough that you can check each of their four pads in the moment, and see which one's up. I think they spawn in a fixed order, but, like I said, I've never really bothered to keep track. Once you know the mechanic, these guys are a nothing enemy that can be quickly disposed of at range.

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

Stage 9 - Interrupt Arches when Titian has just been killed. Summoning Mages to prioritise.
Last Boss, dodge roll his attacks, dodge roll out of his AoE attack, interrupt his channel attack,
Priorities Lizard, Kill shards but at the same time need to keep heal going, watch for meteors dodge or block attack.

This is just off the top of my head and just to name very few of what is going on.
you can learn all the mechanics but it’s still a challenge to get it right.

Again, if you're trying to wing it, it's actually much harder. If you've spent some time in there, you start to remember the sequences in greater detail and the content becomes much easier.

My serious respect to @Gandork, dude can probably rattle off the entire spawn sequence from memory at this point. There's some stuff I'm shaky on. Get me in there, and I can clear it no problem, but I can't sit down and say, "this is the entire spawn order for round 6." (Also, I'm not 100% certain the pylon weaving spiders aren't semi-random, or reactive. Not a huge deal, because it's not a fail state if they web a pylon, but still.)

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

All in all vMA definitely makes you a better player.

No. VMA can be useful, but it won't always succeed in making you a better player. There's a real limit to what you can learn in there, and the more time you spend, the more those lessons will fade, as you start to understand exactly what vMA is expecting of you and adapt to make that easier.

If you want to learn to do better DPS, vMA is a dumpster fire. You will never find a cluster of endgame enemies as fragile as the ones in vMA. It's fantastic popcorn fun, but this isn't how DPS works. Excessive, vMA practice can actually encourage bad DPS habits, because you'll be used to alphaing through mobs. If you ever see a DPS who thinks Caltrops and Acid Spray is sufficient to form their entire rotation, you may have vMA to thank.

This is before we get to things like shufflers, who bounce around more than an over-cafinated toddler.

If vMA is part of your practice, and when you're doing your first run through, sure. There are absolutely lessons to be learned. However, the entire, "this is a panacea for all ills, doesn't really hold true.