We used to have this hunter…He was the biggest jerk ever. We were in Naxxramas and he was telling the guys who were with us for a dire need of gear, that they needed to pick up their DPS or they should be kicked. So in return, being one fo teh healers i elt him die and made him run back I think I did that about 5 times that night hehe
He never learned his lesson and later left us because we weren’t as l33t as him >.> (in his opinion of course)

But on the contrary, The DPS/Damage/Healing meter can be helpful. I used ti to improve my healing and changed my spec. Now I’m the second best healer :)
As you said it’s all about how a guild uses their meter
Moonlite´s last blog ..Introduction!

The figures are of course interesting, but they are not everything, they are not enough, they dont give the whole picture.

I sure want to know my own figures for my own improvement. That is the way a meter is best used. Not to be a besserwisser to other players.

I am not interested in supervising other players and I dont comment on their performance. How others “should” play and how much damage they “should” do and so on is their own business.

Some people seem to use the meter because they feel a need to win the “dps contest” they seem to think a race is. The wonderful thing is the meters tend to turn up in the partychat mostly from the player who is proud to top the list. Sometimes I wonder when no meter turns up: is that because people dont have meters or is it because they didnt top the meter ? Who knows.

Others act like this. First boss is a nice clean kill and everyone is saying it is a perfect team. Next boss is a wipe … damagemeters are immediately used to control which players fault this was … the hunter who was told to do traps and the mage who was told to sheep are clearly the too bad players who made the party wipe, because they dont top the damagelist, it is there in the figures, no debate … the natural action is now of course to immediately say sorry, not enough damage done, you 2 are too bad, bye, kick and replace.

Another measure of performande is to look at the consequences of runs I have done.

First Run:
I am a new 80 in the guild and suddenly one of the officers, a feral druid tank decides to do an heroic for shards and reputation. He invites my mage, and soon we have a party and enter the instance. I play it safe, consequently target same target as the tank, slows it down, then dps it with an eye on the treat, making sure to never pull too much aggro, all the time keeping the target slowed. Repeat on next target. I stay on a “safe” distance and need neraly no healing in all the run. If the tank wants some cc i do that, after checking which way the tank needs it done. It is a very good run, no problems and no wipes.

Second Run:
I am in a PUG. I play the same way as in the first run I described. It is a very good run. Everything works out fine. The tank is not complaining on me, nor is the healer. But. There is someone who uses a meter and discovers that I, the mage, who “should” top the damagemeter is not topping it … someone is “better” in terms of having made more damage… and points out to the party that I must be a “bad mage” because I dont top the list, like any mage “should”. This is said no matter there has been no problems at all with the run … perfect run and I had a nice, good feeling, but now I lose that feeling.

Third Run: PUG again. I have had enough of being accused of being a bad mage who does too low damage in some other dps opinion. Now I will show people I can do damage … arcane power to push up my power , then precence of mind, which together makes for an empowered instant flamestrike AOE, and on top of that, with the over time damage from the flamestrike still going on, I cast a blizzard … ATTACKING YOU ! shines red on my screen and all the mobs charge for me, tank scrambling after them … but no worries, I cast mage invisibility which makes the mobs forget me and while I sneak away from them, invisible, they attack the healer instead …

Result of the Third Run : Wipe, stunned compact silence on the party chat, kicked mage decides to never repeat this “top the meter show”

The result of that first run by the way: next time I logged in something was wrong, because I could suddenly read the officer chat, and I was a newbie 80 and it was only 2 days after I joined and … a look in the guild log informed me I had been instantly promoted from newbie to officer by that tank from the first run

I was pugging heroic culling of strathholme, and got 4 at the damage meter overall, why? I am a MM hunter i dont do burst damage but steady damage in longer fights. So the survival hunter that got a pretty good burst damage fired on every zombie he could see drew aggro from tank and so on. So at the end he showed the dps meter i got a long version of why i suck so badly.

And then i tell him please link the boss fights where i was way higher than him, “Overall data is all that counts” came from the hunter then i had a long declaration why i ended so low on overall data and such. So at the end he ended up on my “never to run with list”

Anyways great post

My pet peeve is people who join PUGs, blast the hell out of the mobs, pull aggro left and right, and then ask in party chat, “Anyone have damage meters?” Those people are clearly only looking to have their e-peen stroked, and I never, ever post meters for them. If they really cared about their performance and not their e-peen, they’d be running their own damn meters.

The bad experiences I have had with people using damage meters happens in PuGs, where all too frequently we get a dps class (usually a mage, but yesterday it was a boomkin) who loves to spam those meters after every trash pull, kill every critter in the game and of course, get aggro on just about every pull. Interestingly enough, these idiots fail to reset their meters so they’ll spam some ridiculously high number (”zomg i did 80k damage after first pull I r l33t!!!”). Obviously you need enough dps so that dungeons don’t take ten hours to finish, but you also can’t finish if the entire party is dead.

I use this Damage Meter, but it is so much more. I use it to track CC breakers, whispering them and tell em to watch their , and to determine how much tps i can gen to give dps ample time to burn the mob to the ground. Even had a “huntard” pull aggro from me in heroic SP tonight, as he was focuses intently on his meter, throwing out massive aggro shots before I even attacked a mob. -.-

Let the morons show their damage meters with pride, as long as they do not mistake the threat meter for the damage meter. I will give them one warning, then stop taunting a mob until it oneshots them, then go back to burning it down.

This being said, I am a decently geared feral tank, 32k armor, Over 50% combat dodge, and constantly score 3-5 on damage meter, which shows, hell, I can gen threat like a mofo :P

Good Hunting and Good Luck.

Back to teh value of teh tool. (couldn’t help myself) I am glad to see people talking about using the tool for evaluation. I myself am a class leader and regularly use the tool to guage the performance, shot rotations, miss rates, and general effectiveness of my co-huntards. I have been trying to teach them to “stay the hell off the treat meter.” By the light L2FD, L2MD, L2pot early, learn when to slow dps, learn when to blow everything and go all out. These are valuable raid abilities to maximize your effectiveness and value to the raid. The hunters in our guild are some of the best geared members I expect them to be high on the damage done chart for boses, but on trash I would much rather see effective CC.

At the end of the day, much evil can come. But so much good can too. Use the tools wisely and have fun, don’t wory about how big your epeen is. If you have to go do some arenas and get it out of your system.

As for heals, as long as they are not overhealing till they OOM, I would much rather have a overhealed raid than a dead one. Let them whisper among themselves about effective healing and gross heals.