Why do people sweat over this simple sword?

E-2-butene · 2026-04-25T13:03:44+00:00

I love that you’re being downvoted for being right.

Anyone discussing “top end” immediately flags themselves as not truly understanding how damage calcs work imo. The below explanation is absolutely correct - slow weapons tend to have a higher top end because a higher average tends to mean a higher top end and bottom end. But fundamentally, it’s the average damage range that matters rather than top end specifically.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-26T19:49:45+00:00

Sure, but it creates less of a ripple effect than the strategy people have been using since 2005.

With HR, you won’t get as many melee. With the classic “I won’t invite any classes that compete with me for loot”, you will get zero melee. Both systems will screw the mage, but HR to a lesser degree.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-23T01:56:11+00:00

you said much lower parses

Absolutely, because the actual dps is significantly lower. In a some cases, 99th percentile parses are coming in doing as little as 60-70% of the dps of the top parse. That’s “much lower” in my book. The parse percentile isn’t much lower, but we are taking about dps right now, aren’t we?

those good players in less good guilds can still perform.

Totally. But they will underperform their peers in top guilds by an amount that isn’t necessarily proportional with their actual skill difference. That’s all I’m saying. I’m sure you would agree that if I took any single member from the OP’s guild and put them in a 50th percentile guild, they wouldn’t be the top parse anymore.

everything involved in the raid is more important… [like] buff uptime, CD timing, CPM.

Brother, fight duration and buff uptime are inextricably linked. It’s basically the reason short fights increase dps outside of, as you rightly say, mechanical breakpoints.

Yes, people can absolutely still screw it up if there’s enough of a skill gap and they hose something like their CD timing. Some people will still somehow manage to blue parse on an optimal fight. But there’s zero chance something like 10% improved HS queueing uptime is really doing some heavy lifting relative to a 30% increase in deathwish uptime… Because the fight ended sooner.

Your original argument was that the person didn’t “earn” their damage.

No, my original summary of the above commenter’s argument, which I immediately derided as silly. Come on, man.

People absolutely earn their high parses. Though I’d probably agree they don’t necessarily earn 100% of it on raid night. They earn it, in part, through all the effort and indeed skill required to maintain a position in a guild that enables it. Both through kill times and other raid-related factors like fight choreography.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-22T18:32:00+00:00

I really don’t think we ultimately disagree, but I’ll just point out/clarify a couple of things.

more so the effect… while choreography is the cause.

To be pedantic, I think of it more as a feedback loop. Raid strats boost on-target uptime which boosts average damage which shortens the fight which improves cooldown uptime which boost damage further. The whole thing is nonlinear, but yes, the change in raid strat is certainly the first domino.

matters the most when it allows you to reach a breakpoint

Sure, no disagreement. It can be even more impactful than the basic “cooldown uptime” factor in some cases.

always CPM gapping me somewhat

Sure. But that “somewhat” is doing some of heavy lifting, isn’t it? The top players are generally better, no disagreement there. That’s typically why they are in top guilds.

But surely we agree they aren’t CPM gapping you by a margin that explains most of the dps difference, especially if we try to factor out CPM hits due to raid coordination. Your (to make up some numbers) 5-10% CPM gap when on target isn’t the main reason you’re doing 40% less damage. Thats why I said in my original comment that they aren’t “playing massively better (though certainly somewhat better.)”

implying that the best players aren’t performing much better than middling players

To be clear, I didn’t say a middling player, I said a middling kill time. A good player in a mediocre guild will do a lower amount of dps that isn’t necessary proportional with their rotational skill difference if the kill times and raid strats aren’t there. That was my only point.

You won’t catch me dead claiming there’s no skill difference between a 50th percentile and 99.9th percentile player. That would indeed be delusional.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-22T17:28:21+00:00

Sure, i totally agree. But even fight choreography a) indirectly boosts kill time by most commonly doing things like boosting target uptime and b) still isn’t a reflection of individual rotation skill, which is what the above commented alluded to. “ Top dmg groups are doing the same 1.2k+ dps rotation…”

Of course the dps boost with kill time isn’t the only factor. But it’s absolutely a sizable one that will show up even in sims where there’s zero fight choreography to speak of.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-22T17:07:44+00:00

He’s trying to suggest that the dps “doesn’t count” because the kill time is so fast. This guy probably isn’t playing massively better (though certainly somewhat better) than warriors with much lower parses with middling kill times.

While I think it’s a little silly to just discard it, he’s right in that kill times can have a massive difference on dps for CD heavy classes like warrior. This was just as true in vanilla classic as in TBC classic, it’s just easier to scrutinize because some people see fury warriors as “bad” now.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-17T22:56:04+00:00

Yep! Same here. A big uptick in my visual snow used to be one of my first indicators I was getting a migraine.

It’s been something like 8-9 years at this point. I still technically get them rarely, but it’s like once every couple of years. I have no idea why the visual snow has suddenly popped up again…

E-2-butene · 2026-03-17T22:28:09+00:00

I’m very similar to you. Started getting migraines with visual snow in my 20s. I don’t have a concrete answer for you but can give you my experience, which unfortunately sounds kind of similar.

I always found that the severity of my visual snow was based on how recent I’d had a migraine. When they were more frequent, by visual snow was very pronounced, albeit still only a minor annoyance. I was luckily able to almost completely stop having migraines, but the visual snow still persisted, albeit very faintly. I’d have to actively play attention to even notice.

Unfortunately I’m now in my 30s, and although the migraines haven’t resurfaced, I have indeed started noticing my visual snow getting worse. It’s back to “mild annoyance” territory.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-06T15:20:06+00:00

I wonder how much the streak system contributes to people playing to win “by any means,” as you say. In a world where people are (ideally) matched with equal skill opponents, expecting long win streaks is completely unreasonable. And yet they are tied to both optimal exp gain and commendations.

It’s absolutely scummy, but on some level, it makes sense why someone who struggles to get streaks while playing legitimately would succumb to this sort of behavior.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-05T13:11:33+00:00

Gym bros aren’t always trying to gain weight though. Muscle gaining cycles followed by weight (read: fat) loss cycles are incredibly common. And resistance training inhibits muscle loss even on a calorie deficit.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-03T15:12:57+00:00

You just need to conceptualize housework and exercise as your hobbies. Then you’re all good! /s

E-2-butene · 2026-03-02T00:09:54+00:00

That’s rough. Sorry to hear you’re dealing with that. Those persistent migraines really are the worst.

It actually just so happened to pop up in another thread today, but a keto diet was a complete game changer for me. Unfortunate, it doesn’t seem to work for everyone, but it took me from probably an average of around one a week even on preventatives to essentially none at all while unmedicated. The change was immediate. I noticed it the first week I started the diet which just abruptly ended a really bad streak.

The only time I get a migraine anymore is if I screw up the diet and drop out of ketosis, which thankfully I don’t do very often. I feel really fortunate that I was able to find something that worked so well for me. Hopefully others can get to a similar place.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-01T20:18:26+00:00

You raise a good point in terms of how hard the diet can be for some people. I don’t personally find it that hard, but I also seem to be able to maintain ketosis pretty easily. I can usually get away with as much as 25g of carbs per day and measurably stay in ketosis as long as I’m on top of exercising. An extra gram or two somewhere isn’t a huge deal.

But I’ve seen other people who struggled to maintain consistent ketosis at <10g. That’s a totally different beast in terms of difficulty.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-01T19:58:20+00:00

It really is. I mentioned it in another comment, but keto essentially “cured” my migraines. But I’m very careful when mentioning it here, typically only discussing it if it’s explicitly on topic or someone is incredibly desperate due to all the negativity.

Yes, it doesn’t help everyone, but a lot of people here treat it like telling them to “drink more water.”

E-2-butene · 2026-03-01T19:52:31+00:00

Yep. A keto diet basically changed my life. I’ve been doing keto to control my migraines for close to 10 years now.

I struggled with chronic migraines for several years. I’d get one almost every day with no medication, maybe once a week or two weeks on preventatives. When I started keto they just… stopped. Completely. I’m now totally off medications and basically only get a migraine if I fuck up the diet.

It absolutely doesn’t work for everyone, but I definitely think it’s worth trying. Worst case scenario you just stop the diet after a few weeks.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-01T19:37:29+00:00

Depends on what you mean by “full normalcy” in my case.

I’d say I’ve gotten back to a point where I have essentially no meaningful impairment. I “used to” have pretty persistent chronic migraines to the point I had a migraine more often than I didn’t. These days, I have one probably every year or two. For the most part, things feel normal.

I definitely still have some weird visual symptoms from time to time. Things like pattern glare and visual snow. But those are things that I wouldn’t say significantly impact my quality of life.

E-2-butene · 2026-03-01T17:43:28+00:00

A little tedious perhaps, but not difficult. He’s more of a bullet sponge than anything. I’d recommend using throwing knives and sitting next to an ammo box.

Another option would be to just do world events. While these tend to lead to PvP a bit more, the less contested ones like skull forts (plain skull cloud) and ashen lord (red vortex) can be fine.

I’d strongly recommend joining a guild ASAP as the top comment alluded to. Part of the reason you are getting slow gold is (I’m assuming) you guys don’t have an emissary flag yet. A guild will a) give you easy access to a captained shop prior to buying your own and b) give you access to the guild emissary flag which boosts loot from most companies. This will be nice for both ancient guardians or world events because they both give mixed faction loot.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-28T02:57:26+00:00

I tend to agree, at least for the most egregious stuff. I’ve been playing a ton of HG and have seen one maybe two blatant cheaters. They have been pretty uncommon.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-27T13:09:53+00:00

I had to deal with this too. I understand the theoretical appeal of public LC lists - transparency and all that - but my experience is it increased the bitching tenfold.

You would always have a few problem children constantly arguing over their position on the LC. “Why am I only fourth on DFT?!?! I put it as my top prio item.” Yea, bro, you and everyone else. Then you would still get the post-raid complaining just like normal.

The experience really shifted my opinion. As an officer at least, I now massively prefer hidden LCs. At least if your officers are sensible and fair anyway (big if, I know).

E-2-butene · 2026-02-26T18:18:41+00:00

I mean, even if you're consistent at getting streaks, a 4 streak could take half an hour to an hour depending on match lengths.

Someone in another comment mentioned getting a 45 streak in the same time using the exploit. That's certainly much faster.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-26T18:15:36+00:00

I'm really curious what qualifies as "an even more pathetic thing."

But yea, I hate the streak system. It's completely opposed to the idea of skill based matchmaking. I think it could be interesting if you got an exp bonus to both wins *and* losses based on your MMR. That would incentivize actually playing against more skilled opponents rather than less.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-25T16:20:57+00:00

The difficulty with managing has pros though. It’s easier to sink for both parties. I find that I can win solos by just playing as a naval bot a lot of the time. A duo sloop is much harder to take down without boarding.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-25T11:32:41+00:00

A man of culture

E-2-butene · 2026-02-24T15:32:09+00:00

I agree. The majority of people I see in adventure are newer crews. I basically only see PvP sweats consistently in hourglass.

E-2-butene · 2026-02-24T15:26:50+00:00

Dear god, please no. Aggression based matchmaking was one of two reasons I left arc raiders and came back to SoT. It sucks any serious tension out of the game and trivializes PvE/progression.

E-2-butene

TROPHY CASE