dps-meters
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Global Chat: Die, DPS meters, die!
Hey you! Yes, you! Are you sick of damage meters ruining your life? Do you rebel against the virtual man by questioning such long-established gaming tropes as levels? Then have we got the column for you! In our last community blog round-up of the year, we've collected some fine pieces of discussion, debate, and introspection -- not to mention a first impression or two to tide you over until 2015. We've also got an essay about the joy of healing, what it's like to play an MMO as a bear, going back to the Isle of Refuge, and more!
The Daily Grind: Are DPS meters bad for MMOs?
In the comments of Eliot's Soapboxes about MMO raiding, one Massively reader declared his own most-hated element of the raiding scene: DPS meters. In MMOs that allow mods, players invariably find a way to slice and dice the combat logs with a plugin that parses who did what and how much of it, spitting those data out into a tidy list that shows who's king of DPS and who's just being "carried." I don't think most MMO players want to see math and numbers driven from the genre in favor of rock-paper-scissors simplicity -- I sure don't, anyway; I like my crafting spreadsheets. But the vast majority of MMO combat really truly doesn't require the rotational precision of the top raiding guilds in the world, so why do we see DPS meters being trotted out for every basic dungeon? Repeatedly seeing people as numbers isn't exactly generating warmer MMO communities, and sometimes I wonder whether our obsession with judging everyone around us "by the numbers" is a crutch to help us avoid unpleasant conversations. Did we really need a DPS meter to clue us into the fact that Bob is half AFK tapping his 1 key over and over instead of paying attention to the fight? I think we knew that without the mod. What do you guys think? Are DPS meters bad for MMOs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Spiritual Guidance: Diagnosing bad shadow priest DPS
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. Shadow priests are in a glorious place right now, just as they've been for most of the Cataclysm expansion. We top the DPS charts on a number of different fights. We're no fire mages, but shadow priests are all over the Warmaster Blackhorn and Madness of Deathwing top 10 DPS lists. Unless you're in a raid with one of the best fire mages in the country, there's no reason why you can't be at the top of the DPS charts too. If you're not, though, there's hope. The website World of Logs (and its equivalents) offers a lot of great ways to analyze your own personal performance and the performance of your fellow raiders. But how do you use it, what should you look for, and what metrics actually matter for shadow priests? Let's take a look.
Ask the Devs 10: DPS answers revealed
The ill-fated Ask the Devs series continues to limp forward, this time fielding a number of questions on the topic of "damage dealing." The development team chose to answer 12 queries dealing with issues specific to DPS classes, from DPS warrior/DK threat, to shadow priests' ramp up ability, to the devs' basic philosophy for deciding when a buff or nerf to a DPS ability is needed. Enhancement shaman get a lot of a love in particular -- three enhance-specific questions were answered. The full Q&A is available on the EU and US forums -- and, of course, right here at WoW Insider just after the break.
In defense of gear simulations
Josh Myers is not a scientist. The closest he's ever come to being one is winning the Science Fair in 8th grade and getting straight As in physics in high school. Despite these clear signs telling him to look for a career in science, he decided instead to go for a degree in English. His wallet hasn't forgiven him since. "Just sim it" is a phrase almost everyone who has played World of Warcraft in the past few years is familiar with. Should my enhancement shaman use Tunic of Failed Experiments or Voltage Source Chestguard? Sim it. How much of a DPS increase is the four-piece Firelord's Vestments bonus? Spreadsheet it. How much DPS am I losing since I can't afford a Flask of the Winds on my hunter? SIM IT! I'll be the very first to say that saying "just sim it" isn't a constructive thing to say. Beyond being slightly rude, it doesn't explain why simming is such a good idea. However, while I find "just sim it" to be in poor taste, the actual act of simming or spreadsheeting gear choices is a really good idea. This post aims to address why we encourage spreadsheeting your DPS choices.
The middle of the pack is a fine place to be
When I was a young kid, I was a ball hog. This was most often obvious when I played soccer, when I'd spend entire minutes running the ball down the field in an attempt to score when my teammates were wide open and available. Sometimes, I'd get lucky and score a goal. Most of the time, my unwillingness to pass got me blocked by half the opposing team and earned me a nice, cozy spot on the time-out bench as my coaches tried to instill some sense of being a team player into my young mind. This seems to be a lesson a large number of us playing World of Warcraft missed from our childhood. We may not have a literal ball to hold away from our teammates as we sprint down the field, but we have Recount and our own personal DPS. Last week, I was doing my daily ritual of browsing the official Damage Dealing forums when I came upon a thread about fury warriors. The title of the thread was clearly designed to grab attention, some title along the lines of "Fury Warriors NEED a buff NOW" or something else as startlingly original. The body of the thread was what really got to me, though. It said, paraphrased, "Fury warriors are in a bad place in terms of PvE DPS right now. We're in the middle of the pack in terms of DPS and need to be buffed to be higher."
The Queue: Son of Q
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Michael Gray will be your host today. While Adam yesterday (rightfully) pointed out the necessity of the occasional Star Trek reference in this feature, he failed to point out its natural outgrowth. While there is always Q Continuum, there must also be the Son of Q. He goes by q, in the lower case. That leads to some funny sounding dialogue like "I will always be your soulmate, little-case-q." Or something more awkward like "I am the great and powerful little-case-q." But that's okay. For the continuum, it's all third person references. Which leads me to . . . Transit asked . . . "At he beginning of Forge of Souls (Horde version) Lady Sylvanas says; "The Dark Lady watches over you. Make haste!" Who is the Dark Lady? She could be talking about herself in the 3rd person, but I don't think so. It seems she is talking about a particular entity. I also noticed the "Dark Lady" in the phrase is capitalized, which I think is also significant." I had actually wondered the same thing, once. I briefly believed that maybe this was some kind of generic dialogue, and maybe Blizzard didn't update it to be spoken by Sylvanas. Now, however, I have learned the error of my ways. Sylvanas is The Dark Lady. She's just referring to herself in third person, as you pointed out. It might seem a little up-on-herself, but it's more that she's being regal and queenly. Imagine King Wrynn urging Alliance soldiers forward, shouting at them "Go! Your King commands it!" You wouldn't think anything particularly odd about that phrase. In this case, it just looks a little funny because The Dark Lady isn't a title we're accustomed to seeing elsewhere.
AddOn Spotlight: Skada
AddOn Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience - the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond - your AddOns folder will never be the same! This week, we do some mad-deeps. Before I start my first Addon Spotlight, I wanted to quickly give a primer on my Addon/UI preferences and the way I hope to spotlight and review addons here at WoW.com. World of Warcraft is over five years old now, and in such a short period of time a ragtag bunch of Addon coders and modders fashioned thousands of addons, making the game playable. Over five years the addon environment has evolved so greatly that now, in addition to discussing form and function, we can judge addons from an aesthetic approach. Addons that allow for greater customization and tailored appearances are now the norm. I strive to help players find not only the most useful and functional addons but also the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch. I hope everyone reading will appreciate the mix of form, function and aesthetics, creating a better UI for everyone. My first Addon Spotlight is a great example of what I love about a good addon. Skada is a DPS meter following in the footsteps of Recount, the current ubiquitous DPS meter and bragging device currently in WoW. Recount, however, always gave me memory problems and felt sluggish. And, as a personal pet peeve, I never liked the bugle. We'll get to the bugle later. Recount does the job, however, and most of us never look back. So why switch to Skada?
Arcane Brilliance: Why I hate DPS meters
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that used this boring screenshot of a damage meter graph for one reason and one reason only: Arcane Brilliance needs more of your pictures! There are still some languishing in Arcane Brilliance's email folder, for use in future columns, but not nearly enough. The strong initial outpouring of excellent screenshots has now petered out, and Arcane Brilliance would like to humbly request more. Send your pics to arcanebrilliance@wow.com, and see this column for the rules. The comments section of last week's column on mage mistakes was an absolute treasure trove. It was full of wisdom, good advice, relevant in-game experiences, and the occasional trolling warlock (always welcome... we love it when the fireball-fodder comes to us... speeds the whole process up). But one comment stood out to me, so much so that I felt compelled to write an entire column about its topic. It's far too long to simply reprint here, and so I highly encourage going to the comment itself and reading it. There's actually another by the same commenter later on that is just as awesome. In fact, I will reprint one of the paragraphs from that second comment, because it pretty much encapsulates what I want to discuss this week. Sarabande wrote: Please don't remark on low DPS or complaining that DPS is barely above the tank's (esp. if tank is doing pretty high dmg) or constantly spam Recount in group, if everything is dying in a timely manner. This encourages the atmosphere of competition and pressures DPS into concentrating only on the numbers. If there is some kind of timer (such as HoR, VH, etc) which the DPS is not able to meet, that's a whole different thing. In fact if you happen to notice some DPS being considerate by holding back on purpose (even though most likely they want to be blowing stuff up, shooting stuff, stabbing things to death) and it's really helping, you might say something positive. That might encourage that behavior further and let the other know that that's something they might want to do as well. This week's topic: DPS meters, and why I wish they'd just go away.
Tips for raiding faster
I am definitely an advocate of the fast instance or raid -- when I played a tank, I pulled pulled pulled (according to the healer's mana, of course), and even now, mostly as a Hunter, I still get impatient. When the healer's mana is full and the tank is not /afk, I sometimes just throw a Misdirect up and go. That's probably why I really liked Naissa's tips for speedy raiding -- she lays out a few really practical things you can do to get your raid moving faster, from only marking skull and X when necessary to only worrying about the healer's mana. It's not the end of the world if the Mage or Hunter has to drink for a second after the pull. While you should always get back to full before a boss pull (and as she says, that's a perfect time to break down the basics, only the basics, of the fight), usually as long as you've got the tank and healer ready, a quick pull will give you time for aggro to settle down as well.I don't completely agree with her DPS meter remarks -- I do think that beating the raid is much more important than trying to win the DPS meters, but as a DPS player, I like viewing the meters as good feedback on where I should be. If I'm super low in the meters, it's time to look at my gear and rotations and try to figure out why so I can get better, and I think it's valuable for DPS, as long as they can keep their attention on the raid, to do the same thing.But all of the other tips are great, and in general, "pull pull pull" should be the order of the day. Some groups are better at rolling through content than others, obviously, but as long as you've got a solid tank and healer in play who know the instance and know how to handle what comes, most raids and groups can move through the content pretty quickly.
