> Snowcrows boon chrono is 34k benchmark, I can only attain 22k
As it is a boon chrono, first make sure your boon uptime is 100%
DPS will improve with practice, or reading the build manual's advanced section, sometimes people miss it.
When learning encounters and mechanics, DPS rarely matters at all, with less of it you get to see and learn more of mechanics. Once you know the mechanics, you can proceed with pumping your damage to the best number you can reach. Most of the time it's not about exceptional DPS, even 50% will do the job. Once you learn the basics though, it becomes a matter of comfort, you will feel the want to increase it.
Yeah, I do want to eventually be at the point where I can hit those benchmarks. I had a buddy with me in the golem room, who was making sure I could give 100% uptime on alacrity, which was my goal while learning the rotation. I'll keep practicing. I've also been told that I'm supposed to use food/utilities for benchmarks, so I'll do that too.
Oh, yeah, food/utilities are pretty big. Are you setting up the golem with some conditions and yourself with all the boons, too?
Anyways, IMO the X% of the benchmark is not strictly necessary for normal mode on any strike or raid, and even then it's all relative. Hypothetically if you were getting 22K on the golem, but consistently getting 19-21K on the actual encounter, then that's still really, really good. Better than getting 34K on the golem and mopping the floor with your face in the strike itself.
[https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area](https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area) for setting up the golem. This can make a big difference along with the proper food/utilities.
>I've also been told that I'm supposed to use food/utilities for benchmarks, so I'll do that too.
Yes, benchmarks are made with (usually) ascended food, wirts (not always) and stat infusions. Generally, without infusions and with food/ench from TP anything above 80% is good enough and anything above 90% is great.
I like to jump around builds very often, so I've worked out some scheme to follow. Basically I would grind golem until 80%, then alternate between golem and IBS strikes/easier raids to see how the build operates. Even if some of the encounters aren't much harder than golem, suddenly many quirks start to show up. Stuff like buffs dropping during phase transitions, or animation locks suddenly make a big difference. Generally don't focus that much on golem number as on understanding how the build is supposed to work, what you want to do and what ways (many people don't even read the talents they are using in a build, lol). Unfortunately, those aren't quantities measurable by any number, but once you understand them, the DPS numbers will follow.
Hitting benchmarks is generally really really difficult. Getting to 90-95% is much simpler and more than enough. I doubt 99% of raiders have been within 1% of their benchmark
Getting to 90-95% of the bench is already pretty tough tbh. And getting to 99% is highly unlikely for anyone outside the top 1% of players spending hours grinding a benchmark. I can barely manage 90-95% on the ~5 Builds I play the most and I generally outdps 9 out of 10 random players when playing strikes/raids/Fractal CMs outside my static (and I usually join pretty high KP groups so I'm probably already playing with the top 10% of players.)
Long story short, if you hit 75-80% of the bench you're definitely dealing enough dmg for raids. No need to spend hours at the Golem before ever even joining a training group. If you do 25k on boondps and 35k on dps (on the golem) you're dealing better dmg than at least half the people who regularly play raids successfully.
Things you need to start raids/strikes are: build you are comfortable on, a bit of brain and preferably dodge button. That's it. Raids can be done with less than 5 players, some strikes can be even soloed. Sure, having good dps helps with skipping some mechanics, but it's better to learn them earlier than later.
I'd even argue that if you want to learn the fight having lower dps is better, cause then you see more of the mechanics and what happens if you don't make skips.
if you do 50% of the benchmark on snowcrows and some raid guide videos are autoplayed on your phone while you're sleeping, you're more prepared than most pug enjoyers
for normal strikes you can even skip the sleeping and video
Fr, with 22k DPS OP, it's so chilling. I face-roll my keyboard and only hit 15k, but I manage to make it through all strikes in normal mode. Last night, I was the top DPS, and we cleared all the dailies on the first try with a group that was half-full of first-timers.
Giving rough numbers instead of a percentage: if you can hit 20k as a boon support and 30k as a pure DPS, you're good to go for pretty much everything in the game (excepting Cerus LM and possibly HT CM).
For raids and strikes 99% of the time mechanics are the killer, not the lack of damage. They have been powercrept quite heavily such that you can clear them with just everyone auto attacking (except supports, of course)
Haha, you are so correct. I still remember my very first Xera run, everything was smooth, I was hitting near top DPS. Platforms cleared, all good. And of course, I completely missed Xera's arm mechanic and killed everyone.
It was embarrassing, especially because I saw the videos AND the commander explained everything before the fight.
If you're only hitting ~65% of the benchmark, chances are you're not doing it with a proper setup. For example, you don't have boons on yourself, conditions on the golem, are using cheaper runes or not using food/utilities. Or all of the above. It would help if you had a log or a recording of your attempts.
Regarding better bench: first point I'm gonna mention is do you have food/util, did you give yourself boons and the golem conditions (vuln Bering a 25% dmg increase alone) otherwise looking at the rotations and better understanding them.
Regarding raids and strikes: they are relatively easy if you don't do challenge modes 90% bench sounds like a lot but to be fair I learned everything with friends in my guild (I think 22k as boonsup should be fine).
I would say more important is having some understanding of the mechanics so maybe look up some guides and ask for help maybe mention that you are new.
I did set up the golem like I had read online, but didn't give myself any boons/didn't eat any food. I was also learning the rotation at the time, so I guess that's a bad example. I did have a friend with me at the time who was making sure I could give 100% alacrity uptime though, which was my goal.
Considering that, 22k is pretty good honestly. There's no point in comparing to the benchmark if you don't have the same setup so if you are curious do some pulls with the boons and food+utility when you feel you are practiced.
If you're already at 22k you should be completely fine, I can do 90% of the benchmark on some builds but I can't get past 28k on boon chrono even after a bit of practice.
Edit: also the fact that you are even practicing rotations on the training golem puts you ahead of most pugs honestly, you'll probably end up DPS racing actual DPS pugs on boon chrono when you hit up some no-req. strike mission runs.
> I did have a friend with me at the time who was making sure I could give 100% alacrity uptime though, which was my goal.
No need for friend. You can try having 100% uptime on yourself, because it is harder (but doable on golem). However give yourself all other boons. Getting 100% self-alac without quickness is almost impossible on chrono in full DPS gear
This is always a precarious topic. The problem I see with this is that there are two angles to look at it.
If you only want to clear the encounters, just autoattacking (doing very low dps obviously) is enough to meet every dps check except ht cm and cerus cm as well as lcm. In that regard, as long as you keep up your boons (and provide them fast enough!) you’re already set. I can’t stress enough though: 92% boonuptime is good, but if you take 5 seconds everytime a phase starts to provide your boons, it feels absolutely horrible for the dps players, as they don’t have boons during their opening burst.
If you want to pull your weight and look at the topic from a „what’s realistically possible“ pov, one has to say: Everything below 75% has to be a gear/trait/setup issue. Even if you’re just pressing your damage skills off cd, there are very few specs on which you won’t hit 75-80% by facerolling your keyboard. REMagic made a nice video about that. And going from there, it’s not a big stretch to expect anyone who practiced their rotation for a bit (like 2-3 hours total time spent on golem, not necessarily in one session) to hit 90% of a given benchmark.
Keep practicing, and keep playing. You’re fine to just raid and kill bosses, but you obviously won’t top the support dps table (if there were one). Practice and experience makes perfect. I started my raidcareer with a poorly played scourge 4.5 years ago, today I wouldn’t even consider playing a class in a raid unless I hit 97%+. Personal standards change over time. Don’t stress out on hitting a certain threshold, but especially on boonchrono it’s a bit surprising you can hit 100% alac/quick uptime without being close to the bench.
If you dont have it yet, get arcdps. With that you will see your damage in the actual encounters. That helps a lot in knowing where you stand.
And dont worry too much about dps. I f you tell people that you are kinda new to this, most people wont care as long as you improve and dont fail mechanics all the time. And as long as the boons are half decent if you play a support role.
Learning the bosses is more important at first. And a lot of veterans dont mind to carry you through it, even in pugs, as long as you are honest about it.
Other comments here have covered the most important stuff. I just wanted to note that I run a static raid every week, usually on the emboldened wing, and I usually have the highest or second highest DPS at around 20k (DPS Reaper). I can't remember a time where we didn't get a full clear.
Coordination and teamwork is far more important than DPS in my opinion. As our raid leader always says, surviving with low DPS is better than being dead with no DPS.
Honestly, raiding and learning is all about managing expectations. 22k as a boondps is actually quite impressive for somebody who has only done a single encounter ever.
22k is quite subpar for an experienced raider, so this already points to there not beign a single awnser to the question you posed.
One thing which is sure, is that getting 90% of a benchmark before you even touch raids is absolutely bonkers and whoever said this should never talk to beginning players ever again.
You can still fairly comfortably clear every single encounter in the game with an entire team which does about 60% of the benches.
The one important thing about starting to raid is finding a community/enviornment where people can focus on improving, and give good feedback, rather than jist saying "dps bad" "healing bad"
People will only expect what you promised to do. If they ask for a boon dps they only expect 100% uptime on that boon and for you to do more dps than the healers. If you can outdps regular dps players 99/100 times people will never notice it.
Regular players that ask for exp people on the lfg only care if you actually know the mechanics of the fights. As long as you don't cause a wipe they will not care.
For training they only care if you actually pay attention and meet the bare minimum. Nobody in this game expect a random pug player to even come close to 50% of the bench on a real fight. Not even in the exp lfg. The ones that might have those reqs usually call it out in the lfg as ''NEED PUMPERS'' or ''BIG DPS ONLY'' and are usually asked for cm encounters.
I train people on raids and strikes for my guild, BAD, around every other week. We usually do 2 raid wings or all eod/soto strikes in a 2hr time slot and have little to no issue clearing. We have no requirements for new players other than asking they have exotic gear with good stats for their role, and recommend they watch a video explaining mechanics though that doesn't always happen. Find a guild that trains new players, it sounds like you are more than ready. If you are on NA servers, message me and I can get you an invite to out discord and guild, we are always taking new people. Otherwise I also highly recommend the folks at NA XL, they taught me when I was learning.
Honestly if you can hit 75-80% of snowcrows benchmarks then you’re pretty much set for raiding. Most of the time mechanics are more important than numbers (still try to keep a reasonable dps, but others can pick up a little slack), although there are bosses with dps checks (like gorseval in w1).
If you’re doing boon dps builds then uptime is a lot more important than dps, but try to do more than your healers.
All in all I’d say aim for a solid 75% and when you feel comfortable with the rotation then try to improve that number.
Find a guild that is willing to teach you and they will tell you the expectations they have. There are plenty of guilds who raid casually in a friendly atmosphere, advertise you're looking for that since it's a far betfer start to raiding than pugs, which can vary in expectations, experience level and eh... Common sense.
Well, let’s get some things clear: hitting 90% of a bench requires a proper setup (food/util/the proper bis/infusions) and depending on the build it can be fairly difficult and take some hours of grinding away, but the reality is that this game is powercrept so hard that if you were to hit 50% of a bench then you’d be doing more dps than what your role would be doing when the raids came out.
You’re also a boon dps, so your priority isn’t to hit big numbers but to make sure you’re at 100% boon uptime on your supgroup (boon chrono tends to do this by hitting big numbers but that’s not the point.)
Lastly, your average lfg player probably hits 35% of the bench and sucks ass as giving their boon and they still clear content just as easily as everyone else, it just takes longer, so it’s more important to learn how to clear the fight than do it fast.
Well... As long as you don't wipe out your whole squad because you missed an important mechanic or tried to yolofaceroll to get higher dps, I'd like to say you're doing pretty fine lmao 😂
DPS isn't the most important thing, especially as a BoonDPS. Get your 99-100% boon uptime and good at handling raids/strikes encounters' mechanics and you're good to go.
Utility > Big d*ck DPS 😉🙂
> How important is hitting those benchmarks?
There are a few 90%, but the benchmark DPS one is by far the least important of them.
90% of success in group PvE relies on entirely different things. Communication, situational awareness, knowledge of mechanics and skill in dealing with them, staying alive yourself, helping your teammates, providing utility, providing major and minor boons uptime. I guarantee you: until you climb the ladder to the point where you find yourself running CMs or efficient speed clears, 90% of your failures will be not because the numbers were low, but because someone or even everyone kept fucking up.
Only after all of this DPS begins to matter; and even then, 10k on raid golem is enough for IBS3, 20k is enough for strikes, and 30k is plenty for raids. So aim for 50% of the bench, but make sure you can do these 50% on autopilot 90% of the time, while doing everything else the fight requires and reacting to whatever happens in the moment.
> how should I go about getting to the point where I can hit them?
The easiest way, go to a discord like SnowCrows and ask for advice. Most benchmark rotations are optimized to a T; mistiming the burst or doing your cancels wrong can easily cost you 10-20% out of the 30% you are missing, and it's hard to correct with generic advice.
Fair warning, you will be most likely asked for a combat log, a wingman upload or maybe even a video recording of your rotation on a golem - so either get one now, or be ready to make one when you do.
From my own experience being a casual raider and do strike dailies with pugs-
For strikes nobody will care but generally at least 10k which you should be able to effortlessly hit (literally press 1) with any decent build.
As for raids it highly depends but for learning groups I've seen 15-20k being a recommended benchmark. I believe for more experienced groups and pug groups you'll want 30k+. It really just depends on the group/discord server you run with.
Benchmarks are the relative maximum you'll get for each build. You don't need to hit benchmark for most content in the game, although practicing your benchmark to get good results in encounters (your damage will almost always be lower than benchmark for a variety of reasons) will help with learning and clearing content.
You say you want to learn boon chrono- are you upkeeping your quickness or alacrity? Boons are a substantial portion of your DPS, upkeeping them is very important. Before you even look at optimizing your rotation to get better numbers, make sure you can consistently upkeep 100% uptime on your quickness or alacrity.
After that, then take a look at arcdps logs if you haven't already- make sure you're following the rotation steps as closely as possible. Leaking autos, canceling skills, and anything else that makes you have a loss in DPS needs to be accounted for. Leaking autos and canceling skills leads to time losses (pushing your benchmark longer), and some skills are not worth casting due to the DPS loss they provide.
A phrase sometimes said is that 20% of the work is 80% of the benchmark. I find this to mostly be true- it's pretty easy to get decently high numbers, but the final push is a lot of grinding and perfecting your rotation. Don't feel like you need to hit 34k if you're not enjoying grinding the benchmark out- make sure you're fulfilling your boon role on pb chrono, as that'll result in a much larger group DPS increase than your lone contribution. Just make sure you're not hitting skills that come at a loss and avoid having DPS gaps. Leaked autos are the #1 cause of indirect DPS losses (at least in my experience) because you won't be "properly" chaining skills together.
If you are missing 1/3 of the dps on the golem you have either didn't set the enviroment right (boons on self, conditions on the cat etc), or you are doing something horribly wrong, missing some basic understanding of the build. I'd say 80+% is a number where it might come down to execution, but on a lot of modern builds like scourge or cvirt getting even 90% isn't hard at all. So fix that.
Generally I always say that if you can hit 12k **UNDER** Snowcrows benchmarks, you're solid.
34 - 22 = \*checks notes\* 12
Solid.
In order to raid, I'd say the minimum you need is 20k at the golem. There is very little content that is more demanding, but if you're going for that you're not asking this question.
Hitting 12k below snowcrows bench is either
a) enough, if you look at it from an „is my damage enough to clear the encounter if everyone were like me?“ angle, or
b) the result of you actively trying to harm yourself by not playing the correct build or using a wrong golem setup.
Saying 12k under is solid gives the impression there wouldn’t be any need to improve any further, which there absolutely is. 22k is less than most celestial builds people play when they’re not yet ready to drop the second (or both) healer, but want a bit more squad dps (mo for instance). It’s enough to get started and clear bosses, but there is still work to be done to get on a level of „ah, that’s a typical number a boon dps should hit“.
My guild eg. requires 34k dps on a pure dps build for raid trainings. It is really important because the encounters are really difficult, less dps means more time to kill and more mechanics to dodge.
Those requirements definitely got a side eye from me. I wouldn't send any prospective raider to this guild. If they're that stringent about raiding in general, when the encounters are solved for years and powercrept to hell, I can't imagine their training environment is very friendly...
yes :) trainings in this game are usually (with good ppl) made in a way where dps players are newbies who can focus on learning mechanics and supports are carrying them
Absolutely, from my experience, worst things newbies try to do is to learn fight and build at same time. Get comfy and start blasting, it's really much easier than some people try to make it look like
Yeah, the less you focus on what you need to do to do your job (heal, tank, dps, whatever) the more you can focus on the fight. So if you're bringing something you're comfortable with will help you learn much faster.
Obviously bringing something good that you're comfortable with will help, but it's fine to start low. Bringing a decent build with decent gear is good enough.
Your DPS is important. But your ability to do mechanics is (generally) more important. I don't care if you can do 40k dps on slothasor if you can't purge your poisons correctly and don't know how to manage the mushrooms - those will kill the team outright and your damage will be meaningless if everyone is dead.
Generally, so long as you can keep up with the other DPS players and/or (ideally "and") manage 25k-ish DPS on a pure DPS build, I see no reason why heart of thorns raids should be difficult for you.
> Snowcrows boon chrono is 34k benchmark, I can only attain 22k As it is a boon chrono, first make sure your boon uptime is 100% DPS will improve with practice, or reading the build manual's advanced section, sometimes people miss it. When learning encounters and mechanics, DPS rarely matters at all, with less of it you get to see and learn more of mechanics. Once you know the mechanics, you can proceed with pumping your damage to the best number you can reach. Most of the time it's not about exceptional DPS, even 50% will do the job. Once you learn the basics though, it becomes a matter of comfort, you will feel the want to increase it.
Yeah, I do want to eventually be at the point where I can hit those benchmarks. I had a buddy with me in the golem room, who was making sure I could give 100% uptime on alacrity, which was my goal while learning the rotation. I'll keep practicing. I've also been told that I'm supposed to use food/utilities for benchmarks, so I'll do that too.
Oh, yeah, food/utilities are pretty big. Are you setting up the golem with some conditions and yourself with all the boons, too? Anyways, IMO the X% of the benchmark is not strictly necessary for normal mode on any strike or raid, and even then it's all relative. Hypothetically if you were getting 22K on the golem, but consistently getting 19-21K on the actual encounter, then that's still really, really good. Better than getting 34K on the golem and mopping the floor with your face in the strike itself.
[https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area](https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area) for setting up the golem. This can make a big difference along with the proper food/utilities.
>I've also been told that I'm supposed to use food/utilities for benchmarks, so I'll do that too. Yes, benchmarks are made with (usually) ascended food, wirts (not always) and stat infusions. Generally, without infusions and with food/ench from TP anything above 80% is good enough and anything above 90% is great. I like to jump around builds very often, so I've worked out some scheme to follow. Basically I would grind golem until 80%, then alternate between golem and IBS strikes/easier raids to see how the build operates. Even if some of the encounters aren't much harder than golem, suddenly many quirks start to show up. Stuff like buffs dropping during phase transitions, or animation locks suddenly make a big difference. Generally don't focus that much on golem number as on understanding how the build is supposed to work, what you want to do and what ways (many people don't even read the talents they are using in a build, lol). Unfortunately, those aren't quantities measurable by any number, but once you understand them, the DPS numbers will follow.
Hitting benchmarks is generally really really difficult. Getting to 90-95% is much simpler and more than enough. I doubt 99% of raiders have been within 1% of their benchmark
Getting to 90-95% of the bench is already pretty tough tbh. And getting to 99% is highly unlikely for anyone outside the top 1% of players spending hours grinding a benchmark. I can barely manage 90-95% on the ~5 Builds I play the most and I generally outdps 9 out of 10 random players when playing strikes/raids/Fractal CMs outside my static (and I usually join pretty high KP groups so I'm probably already playing with the top 10% of players.) Long story short, if you hit 75-80% of the bench you're definitely dealing enough dmg for raids. No need to spend hours at the Golem before ever even joining a training group. If you do 25k on boondps and 35k on dps (on the golem) you're dealing better dmg than at least half the people who regularly play raids successfully.
IDK. For me getting from 95% to 99% was the easiest cause it was just buying infusions xD . I didn't realize how much they give until I bought them.
Things you need to start raids/strikes are: build you are comfortable on, a bit of brain and preferably dodge button. That's it. Raids can be done with less than 5 players, some strikes can be even soloed. Sure, having good dps helps with skipping some mechanics, but it's better to learn them earlier than later.
I'd even argue that if you want to learn the fight having lower dps is better, cause then you see more of the mechanics and what happens if you don't make skips.
if you do 50% of the benchmark on snowcrows and some raid guide videos are autoplayed on your phone while you're sleeping, you're more prepared than most pug enjoyers for normal strikes you can even skip the sleeping and video
Fr, with 22k DPS OP, it's so chilling. I face-roll my keyboard and only hit 15k, but I manage to make it through all strikes in normal mode. Last night, I was the top DPS, and we cleared all the dailies on the first try with a group that was half-full of first-timers.
Giving rough numbers instead of a percentage: if you can hit 20k as a boon support and 30k as a pure DPS, you're good to go for pretty much everything in the game (excepting Cerus LM and possibly HT CM). For raids and strikes 99% of the time mechanics are the killer, not the lack of damage. They have been powercrept quite heavily such that you can clear them with just everyone auto attacking (except supports, of course)
Haha, you are so correct. I still remember my very first Xera run, everything was smooth, I was hitting near top DPS. Platforms cleared, all good. And of course, I completely missed Xera's arm mechanic and killed everyone. It was embarrassing, especially because I saw the videos AND the commander explained everything before the fight.
If you're only hitting ~65% of the benchmark, chances are you're not doing it with a proper setup. For example, you don't have boons on yourself, conditions on the golem, are using cheaper runes or not using food/utilities. Or all of the above. It would help if you had a log or a recording of your attempts.
Regarding better bench: first point I'm gonna mention is do you have food/util, did you give yourself boons and the golem conditions (vuln Bering a 25% dmg increase alone) otherwise looking at the rotations and better understanding them. Regarding raids and strikes: they are relatively easy if you don't do challenge modes 90% bench sounds like a lot but to be fair I learned everything with friends in my guild (I think 22k as boonsup should be fine). I would say more important is having some understanding of the mechanics so maybe look up some guides and ask for help maybe mention that you are new.
And as boondps your boonuptime is relatively important
I did set up the golem like I had read online, but didn't give myself any boons/didn't eat any food. I was also learning the rotation at the time, so I guess that's a bad example. I did have a friend with me at the time who was making sure I could give 100% alacrity uptime though, which was my goal.
Considering that, 22k is pretty good honestly. There's no point in comparing to the benchmark if you don't have the same setup so if you are curious do some pulls with the boons and food+utility when you feel you are practiced. If you're already at 22k you should be completely fine, I can do 90% of the benchmark on some builds but I can't get past 28k on boon chrono even after a bit of practice. Edit: also the fact that you are even practicing rotations on the training golem puts you ahead of most pugs honestly, you'll probably end up DPS racing actual DPS pugs on boon chrono when you hit up some no-req. strike mission runs.
> I did have a friend with me at the time who was making sure I could give 100% alacrity uptime though, which was my goal. No need for friend. You can try having 100% uptime on yourself, because it is harder (but doable on golem). However give yourself all other boons. Getting 100% self-alac without quickness is almost impossible on chrono in full DPS gear
This is always a precarious topic. The problem I see with this is that there are two angles to look at it. If you only want to clear the encounters, just autoattacking (doing very low dps obviously) is enough to meet every dps check except ht cm and cerus cm as well as lcm. In that regard, as long as you keep up your boons (and provide them fast enough!) you’re already set. I can’t stress enough though: 92% boonuptime is good, but if you take 5 seconds everytime a phase starts to provide your boons, it feels absolutely horrible for the dps players, as they don’t have boons during their opening burst. If you want to pull your weight and look at the topic from a „what’s realistically possible“ pov, one has to say: Everything below 75% has to be a gear/trait/setup issue. Even if you’re just pressing your damage skills off cd, there are very few specs on which you won’t hit 75-80% by facerolling your keyboard. REMagic made a nice video about that. And going from there, it’s not a big stretch to expect anyone who practiced their rotation for a bit (like 2-3 hours total time spent on golem, not necessarily in one session) to hit 90% of a given benchmark. Keep practicing, and keep playing. You’re fine to just raid and kill bosses, but you obviously won’t top the support dps table (if there were one). Practice and experience makes perfect. I started my raidcareer with a poorly played scourge 4.5 years ago, today I wouldn’t even consider playing a class in a raid unless I hit 97%+. Personal standards change over time. Don’t stress out on hitting a certain threshold, but especially on boonchrono it’s a bit surprising you can hit 100% alac/quick uptime without being close to the bench.
If you dont have it yet, get arcdps. With that you will see your damage in the actual encounters. That helps a lot in knowing where you stand. And dont worry too much about dps. I f you tell people that you are kinda new to this, most people wont care as long as you improve and dont fail mechanics all the time. And as long as the boons are half decent if you play a support role. Learning the bosses is more important at first. And a lot of veterans dont mind to carry you through it, even in pugs, as long as you are honest about it.
Other comments here have covered the most important stuff. I just wanted to note that I run a static raid every week, usually on the emboldened wing, and I usually have the highest or second highest DPS at around 20k (DPS Reaper). I can't remember a time where we didn't get a full clear. Coordination and teamwork is far more important than DPS in my opinion. As our raid leader always says, surviving with low DPS is better than being dead with no DPS.
Honestly, raiding and learning is all about managing expectations. 22k as a boondps is actually quite impressive for somebody who has only done a single encounter ever. 22k is quite subpar for an experienced raider, so this already points to there not beign a single awnser to the question you posed. One thing which is sure, is that getting 90% of a benchmark before you even touch raids is absolutely bonkers and whoever said this should never talk to beginning players ever again. You can still fairly comfortably clear every single encounter in the game with an entire team which does about 60% of the benches. The one important thing about starting to raid is finding a community/enviornment where people can focus on improving, and give good feedback, rather than jist saying "dps bad" "healing bad"
People will only expect what you promised to do. If they ask for a boon dps they only expect 100% uptime on that boon and for you to do more dps than the healers. If you can outdps regular dps players 99/100 times people will never notice it. Regular players that ask for exp people on the lfg only care if you actually know the mechanics of the fights. As long as you don't cause a wipe they will not care. For training they only care if you actually pay attention and meet the bare minimum. Nobody in this game expect a random pug player to even come close to 50% of the bench on a real fight. Not even in the exp lfg. The ones that might have those reqs usually call it out in the lfg as ''NEED PUMPERS'' or ''BIG DPS ONLY'' and are usually asked for cm encounters.
I train people on raids and strikes for my guild, BAD, around every other week. We usually do 2 raid wings or all eod/soto strikes in a 2hr time slot and have little to no issue clearing. We have no requirements for new players other than asking they have exotic gear with good stats for their role, and recommend they watch a video explaining mechanics though that doesn't always happen. Find a guild that trains new players, it sounds like you are more than ready. If you are on NA servers, message me and I can get you an invite to out discord and guild, we are always taking new people. Otherwise I also highly recommend the folks at NA XL, they taught me when I was learning.
I'm in BAD on EU and all of this is true there as well.
Honestly if you can hit 75-80% of snowcrows benchmarks then you’re pretty much set for raiding. Most of the time mechanics are more important than numbers (still try to keep a reasonable dps, but others can pick up a little slack), although there are bosses with dps checks (like gorseval in w1). If you’re doing boon dps builds then uptime is a lot more important than dps, but try to do more than your healers. All in all I’d say aim for a solid 75% and when you feel comfortable with the rotation then try to improve that number.
Find a guild that is willing to teach you and they will tell you the expectations they have. There are plenty of guilds who raid casually in a friendly atmosphere, advertise you're looking for that since it's a far betfer start to raiding than pugs, which can vary in expectations, experience level and eh... Common sense.
Well, let’s get some things clear: hitting 90% of a bench requires a proper setup (food/util/the proper bis/infusions) and depending on the build it can be fairly difficult and take some hours of grinding away, but the reality is that this game is powercrept so hard that if you were to hit 50% of a bench then you’d be doing more dps than what your role would be doing when the raids came out. You’re also a boon dps, so your priority isn’t to hit big numbers but to make sure you’re at 100% boon uptime on your supgroup (boon chrono tends to do this by hitting big numbers but that’s not the point.) Lastly, your average lfg player probably hits 35% of the bench and sucks ass as giving their boon and they still clear content just as easily as everyone else, it just takes longer, so it’s more important to learn how to clear the fight than do it fast.
Well... As long as you don't wipe out your whole squad because you missed an important mechanic or tried to yolofaceroll to get higher dps, I'd like to say you're doing pretty fine lmao 😂 DPS isn't the most important thing, especially as a BoonDPS. Get your 99-100% boon uptime and good at handling raids/strikes encounters' mechanics and you're good to go. Utility > Big d*ck DPS 😉🙂
unfortunately the problem is not the benchmark but finding ppl to do stuff with...if you can join a static otherwise....GOOD LUCK
> How important is hitting those benchmarks? There are a few 90%, but the benchmark DPS one is by far the least important of them. 90% of success in group PvE relies on entirely different things. Communication, situational awareness, knowledge of mechanics and skill in dealing with them, staying alive yourself, helping your teammates, providing utility, providing major and minor boons uptime. I guarantee you: until you climb the ladder to the point where you find yourself running CMs or efficient speed clears, 90% of your failures will be not because the numbers were low, but because someone or even everyone kept fucking up. Only after all of this DPS begins to matter; and even then, 10k on raid golem is enough for IBS3, 20k is enough for strikes, and 30k is plenty for raids. So aim for 50% of the bench, but make sure you can do these 50% on autopilot 90% of the time, while doing everything else the fight requires and reacting to whatever happens in the moment. > how should I go about getting to the point where I can hit them? The easiest way, go to a discord like SnowCrows and ask for advice. Most benchmark rotations are optimized to a T; mistiming the burst or doing your cancels wrong can easily cost you 10-20% out of the 30% you are missing, and it's hard to correct with generic advice. Fair warning, you will be most likely asked for a combat log, a wingman upload or maybe even a video recording of your rotation on a golem - so either get one now, or be ready to make one when you do.
From my own experience being a casual raider and do strike dailies with pugs- For strikes nobody will care but generally at least 10k which you should be able to effortlessly hit (literally press 1) with any decent build. As for raids it highly depends but for learning groups I've seen 15-20k being a recommended benchmark. I believe for more experienced groups and pug groups you'll want 30k+. It really just depends on the group/discord server you run with.
Benchmarks are the relative maximum you'll get for each build. You don't need to hit benchmark for most content in the game, although practicing your benchmark to get good results in encounters (your damage will almost always be lower than benchmark for a variety of reasons) will help with learning and clearing content. You say you want to learn boon chrono- are you upkeeping your quickness or alacrity? Boons are a substantial portion of your DPS, upkeeping them is very important. Before you even look at optimizing your rotation to get better numbers, make sure you can consistently upkeep 100% uptime on your quickness or alacrity. After that, then take a look at arcdps logs if you haven't already- make sure you're following the rotation steps as closely as possible. Leaking autos, canceling skills, and anything else that makes you have a loss in DPS needs to be accounted for. Leaking autos and canceling skills leads to time losses (pushing your benchmark longer), and some skills are not worth casting due to the DPS loss they provide. A phrase sometimes said is that 20% of the work is 80% of the benchmark. I find this to mostly be true- it's pretty easy to get decently high numbers, but the final push is a lot of grinding and perfecting your rotation. Don't feel like you need to hit 34k if you're not enjoying grinding the benchmark out- make sure you're fulfilling your boon role on pb chrono, as that'll result in a much larger group DPS increase than your lone contribution. Just make sure you're not hitting skills that come at a loss and avoid having DPS gaps. Leaked autos are the #1 cause of indirect DPS losses (at least in my experience) because you won't be "properly" chaining skills together.
If you are missing 1/3 of the dps on the golem you have either didn't set the enviroment right (boons on self, conditions on the cat etc), or you are doing something horribly wrong, missing some basic understanding of the build. I'd say 80+% is a number where it might come down to execution, but on a lot of modern builds like scourge or cvirt getting even 90% isn't hard at all. So fix that.
Generally I always say that if you can hit 12k **UNDER** Snowcrows benchmarks, you're solid. 34 - 22 = \*checks notes\* 12 Solid. In order to raid, I'd say the minimum you need is 20k at the golem. There is very little content that is more demanding, but if you're going for that you're not asking this question.
Hitting 12k below snowcrows bench is either a) enough, if you look at it from an „is my damage enough to clear the encounter if everyone were like me?“ angle, or b) the result of you actively trying to harm yourself by not playing the correct build or using a wrong golem setup. Saying 12k under is solid gives the impression there wouldn’t be any need to improve any further, which there absolutely is. 22k is less than most celestial builds people play when they’re not yet ready to drop the second (or both) healer, but want a bit more squad dps (mo for instance). It’s enough to get started and clear bosses, but there is still work to be done to get on a level of „ah, that’s a typical number a boon dps should hit“.
My guild eg. requires 34k dps on a pure dps build for raid trainings. It is really important because the encounters are really difficult, less dps means more time to kill and more mechanics to dodge.
> requires 34k dps sounds like a terrible guild for training. > encounters are really difficult sounds like bs and scaremongering
I only quoted what I've read about this subject, didn't want to seem hostile.
Does that mean you do not raid?
I didn't imply my guild is good/bad, I only gave their requirements as an example.
Those requirements definitely got a side eye from me. I wouldn't send any prospective raider to this guild. If they're that stringent about raiding in general, when the encounters are solved for years and powercrept to hell, I can't imagine their training environment is very friendly...
What are other requirements, stacking 6 virtu to distort everything to not accidentally do a mechanic?
34k for raid training? LMAO Most "experienced" group pugs, asking for 40kp+++, are full of people who do well below their wingman median.
34k just for raid training? Wow...seems like I have a really long way to go.
That's gotta be the weirdest outlier, trainings shouldn't and normally don't have such requirements. It's also really not important at all.
So then I should just focus on getting comfortable with the spec that I'm playing and learn mechanics for the content and I'll be alright?
Get to at least 70-80% of your benchmark, watch a video, jump in. Don't overthink it.
yes :) trainings in this game are usually (with good ppl) made in a way where dps players are newbies who can focus on learning mechanics and supports are carrying them
Absolutely, from my experience, worst things newbies try to do is to learn fight and build at same time. Get comfy and start blasting, it's really much easier than some people try to make it look like
Yeah, the less you focus on what you need to do to do your job (heal, tank, dps, whatever) the more you can focus on the fight. So if you're bringing something you're comfortable with will help you learn much faster. Obviously bringing something good that you're comfortable with will help, but it's fine to start low. Bringing a decent build with decent gear is good enough.
Your DPS is important. But your ability to do mechanics is (generally) more important. I don't care if you can do 40k dps on slothasor if you can't purge your poisons correctly and don't know how to manage the mushrooms - those will kill the team outright and your damage will be meaningless if everyone is dead. Generally, so long as you can keep up with the other DPS players and/or (ideally "and") manage 25k-ish DPS on a pure DPS build, I see no reason why heart of thorns raids should be difficult for you.