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So, did a heroic last night (Throne of Tides). Needless to say, we had a bit of trouble, there were many wipes, but we finally beat the last boss.

One of the DPS in the group had been arguing with the tank all night (the tank was being bad, letting mobs pwn the healer, etc.), and so he bitched at him after we finished the final boss.

The tank goes..."whatever man, you suck" then links the DPS meters where he was the highest for the final boss as proof that he is good, and everyone else sucks.
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This got me thinking. What do DPS/Healing meters really mean? Should they be the end-all be-all of determining if someone is "good" or not?

I think DPS meters and healing meters are great, but only because they can tell you who is really bad. They are good for pointing out "wow, this person is really sucking." But to use meters to say "oh look how good I am" I think is foolish.

Consider all the things that can affect your spot on the meter:

1. Does the boss have abilities that hurt casters or melee (meaning they have to stop DPS at some point)?
2. Is there a lot of movement in the fight that would help classes with lots of dots?
3. Are there other responsibilities that a DPSer might have that would hurt their numbers (locking down an add, kiting an add, etc.)
4. For healing, are you simply tank healing? Are you assigned to the raid...is a lot of AOE damage going out that might give you higher numbers than someone just focusing on a tank?

I could go on and on...think again to what blizzard says about how hybrid classes shouldnt have higher DPS than pure DPS classes. Think of how retarded-good mage DPS can be. Do I suck because there's no way I can pull that kind of DPS with my current gear?




TLDR - People consider healing/dps meters too much without thinking about how individual fights can affect DPS. Yes, they can show you who really sucks...but to make that the only judgement of being "good" or to "brag" about your DPS on a specific boss is silly.

I gauge DPS by my threat meter.

Also:

If your tank doesn't do an asston of damage at the end of Heroic Thrones he's bad. Sup Vengeance on a billion health and many adds to aoe down.

It depends on context. Generally speaking, if certain individuals' numbers are higher or lower than all other participants, there's a reason why. That said, meters aren't the end-all, be-all so far as performance goes.

The other day, I did Grim Batol with some mage who went on about how amazing his dps was, but I pointed out he failed at killing his add due to glacial reaction time. In my experience, reaction time, the ability to switch targets on the fly, is more significant than raw DPS capacity.

By the same token, pickup is one of the prime measures of tank skill, and it's far more significant than TPS. I frequently have discussions with "theorycrafters" who do nothing but parrot on forums and don't get out there and tank stuff, and say "BUT IF YOU NEED EXPERTISE/HIT FOR TPS ITS CUZ UR BAD"..."no, it's for reliable pickup" "BUT Y YOU NEED EXPERTISE/HIT FOR PICKUP UNLESS YOUR DPS IS BAD"... It's really amazing how these guys just don't get it.

Another highly overlooked measure of skill - one I particularly excel with, and Jushiro is singularly good in this regard as well - is using game mechanics and support skills in unorthodox ways to dramatically alter the outcome of encounters. Examples include BoPing other players through Cosmic Smash, using Guardian to eat swings from Erudax while affected with Feeble Body and helping kill an add, careful use of interrupts and stuns to allow a tank to survive damage that would otherwise be lethal (Cobalt Frag Bomb lulz), using Shield Wall/BoSac as ret, taunting off a tank that is about to die two seconds before a heal lands...Those do not show on meters, but that kind of creativity can be far more decisive than any level of DPS.

Tank DPS due to insane Vengeance scaling is really BS. Undergeared DPS, or DPS with long ramp-up, stand no realistic chance of beating a tank on damage, especially on AoE.

Absolute DPS numbers are stupid. I've given up debating with people who try to get into my pugs by citing some arbitrary DPS number, Usually I say something like, "ok, if you don't do that much, you don't get loot", then get told that holding them to their claims is somehow unfair.

I especially despise so-called "theorycrafters" who say X piece or spec or whatever is supposedly Y amount of DPS greater. This is especially dumb since different DPS stats scale in dramatically different ways in a variety of actual raid conditions. AP/Intellect and haste, or haste and crit, scale very differently on encounters tha may have some mechanic such as a multiplicative damage bonus, or with high mobility, or with incidental AoE.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

It's all situational. I would pay attention to DPS meters when there was another Feral Druid in raid just so I can see if I was performing better than he was. If I slacked on my DPS compared to the other Ferals then I could find out what I'm doing wrong by comparing gear, spec, gems, rotation, etc. with them.

You don't need to pay attention to healing meters, either. Did the tank die? Yes? Healers suck. Really, over-healing meter has always been more important to me and only for select classes because AOE healers get fucked.

Incorrect.

DPS doesn't matter. Damage done does.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

I really only look at my own numbers. I have yet to raid on my priest, but I used to get pretty bummed at my numbers until I disregarded trash (it's only trash, but I wanted to do well if I could) and only focused on bosses.

Really though, this is spot on:



I always loved playing classes with a lot of options. Paladin, Rogue, Priest, I felt like I could do a lot of things outside the straightforward damage/heal. Some of the most fun times I've had in pve were the terrible pulls or the extra pull half-way through a pack of mobs. Before you over-geared everything and everyone had to think on the fly and react.

I remember and epic pull during 10 man UBRS, starting above the Father Flame event and the knock-back Orcs. One thing just kept leading to another and when we finished the entire room of orcs had been killed up to the dragons before Rend. We didn't have any raid gear and it was super dicey a number of times, but everyone kept cool and dealt with the packs as they were pulled (as dummys were knocked into them).

mmo-champion had a guide-writing competition recently, and if I weren't so lazy I had the idea to write a guide about all the side stuff that people (dps) don't do anymore. I'm amazed at the number of dps that don't dispel, offensively or defensively, or who just keep on dpsing when a healer dies instead of at least attempting to heal. I can't think of the last time I saw a DK hungering cold, and there is always a dk in a lfg group.

Dvergar /
Quisling

In most cases you are right. There are a hand full of exceptions. I prefer on healers to look at their over healing, mana efficiency, and their particular roll. Then I look at the assigned role and if there are issues with the targets. For example, if a tank healers is running out of mana because they overheal like crazy, they need to learn how to mix up their spell book a bit to get the best heal for the time, but if a healer goes oom because the tank is in half dps gear and wont flask or eat buff food, than we have the saying "you can't heal stupidity". If tanks are dieing because someone assigned to heal tanks decided to heal the raid and throw token heals at the tank, thats the healers fault.

Basically you have to look at the situations and what is causing deficiencies.

9 level 90s and 10 85s, Damn I need another hobby.

Most healer failure is psychological - the result of mass panic, or raid mood. Healers stuck together with other healers they do not know well, or in a poor state of awareness, will fail.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Using distracting shot to allow a tank to get a battle rez in ICC was one of my favorite moments of that God forsaken place.

9 level 90s and 10 85s, Damn I need another hobby.

I think this is the biggest thing I've noticed since I started playing again. I've literally seen people die to curses/disease etc. then yell at the healer for not healing them when they were perfectly capable of dispelling it themselves.

My last dungeon run I had about 25 dispels while no one else in the group had more than about 5 or 6.

That and melee seems completely incapable of moving out of any sort of boss ability that hits them.

The dps meters are one of the elements of being good (for a dps class of course). All other things being equal, the job of a dps is to cause damage.

However, obviously, the more complex the fight is, the less you can say "all other things being equal". Attacking the right mob at the right time, avoiding damage taken (that is intended to be avoided), correctly participating in fight mechanics... those are all more important. The dps total as a metric is only really applicable within the times/conditions you're supposed to be doing damage.

Of course, unless your tank was doing something to lower his capacity to tank in order to do more damage, the dps being below the tank does generally mean they suck.

Akina: bitch I will stab you in the face

Groundhuggers do zero DPS.

I don't run with meters. My gauge of how well I'm doing is how many cooldowns I need to pop to take aggro off the tank or get one of those high threat warnings.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

tank dies = healer fault

healer dies = healer fault

dps dies = dps fault

if none of those things happen adn you beat the enrage timer, super.