I just started playing again and am very disappointed to see that GW2 has dps meters. The lack of them was a huge boon in my eyes. They stress me out and turn what should be a cooperative experience into a competitive one. I became accustomed to topping dps meters all the way back in vanilla WoW and ever since then I find it completely unacceptable to not be in the #1 spot. What should be a chill, fun group activity where everyone works together becomes the opposite as I stare down some meter to make sure that I am above everyone else, hoping that they screw up so that I can pull farther ahead and feeling like garbage whenever I make a minor mistake that doesn't matter at all but does reduce my damage for that run. I find myself constantly doing dangerous things for the sake of ensuring the highest uptime possible, even though the group would be better served by playing it safer. I don't like buffing or helping others because they are competition on the meters and I try to avoid doing encounter mechanics, instead letting others deal with them and the associated loss in dps. I'll pad out my meter on things that don't matter, even blowing cooldowns to do so when they would be better used elsewhere. You could say that this is just a "me" problem, but coming from other games with dps meters, this mindset is incredibly, incredibly pervasive and is difficult to escape from. What's more is that they are completely unnecessary. Before GW2 had meters I had little issue figuring out who the good players were. Last year I was playing project1999, a classic everquest 1 private server which only has very limited parsing tools that almost nobody uses, and it was still perfectly possible to tell who was skilled without everyone having to obsess over a somewhat arbitrary number at all times. Another issue that I take with this is that it solidifies meta even more. Without meters I don't really mind if I'm playing a class that doesn't quite pump out the same numbers as another. We still get through things just fine. I played ranger and necro in dungeons/fractals pre-HoT on a semi-regular basis even though they were pretty terrible, and it wasn't an issue. But with meters, playing a weaker profession means that you are going to fall lower on these ever-present rankings which is a real quick way to make you dislike a class that you may otherwise really enjoy and that is perfectly capable of smoothly clearing content. I do think that these sorts of addons hold value in helping you personally improve as a player. They can assist you in getting your rotation down, they can help you test new builds, and they can let you know if a certain encounter strategy is paying off. But group dps meters are a curse that have no place in a cooperative game, and if I had to lose the former to eliminate the latter, I would say it is 100% a worthwhile trade-off. I think that Anet should step in here.