dps-meter
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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!
Blood Pact: On the usefulness of SimulationCraft
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill will tell you how she became the princess warlock of a continent called Pandaria by switching to saur'lock spec. You know me: I play a warlock spec that starts with a 'D' only over several dozen copies of my cold, dead body. I'm diehard affliction whether the spec is on top or not. But that doesn't mean I don't ever pay attention to the DPS simulations. I just think the vocal playerbase hedges their bets a little too much on what comes out of the BiS heroic simulations. Fortunately for me, Ghostcrawler also feels players put too much emphasis on SimulationCraft when it comes to spec balance in PvE. Does this mean SimulationCraft is not valuable? No, it just means that players should be more aware of what's going into a particular simulation and how to interpret whatever data comes out.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: New training dummies make testing raid DPS more accurate
Have you ever wished you could shackle your entire raid team to the wall behind the the training dummies in Orgrimmar? You know, so that whenever you needed to test your DPS, you'd be fully raid-buffed. What? It's not like I wouldn't leave them food ... Anyway, Blizzard finally came up with a solution to this little conundrum by adding new training dummies in the Mists of Pandaria beta. Check out Ghostcrawler's post about them below. Ghostcrawler -- Raid DPS Test Dummies As an experiment, in the next beta build, you may find some new kinds of test dummies. In order to keep them out of way in less travelled areas, they are located in Shattrath. (The Aldor and Scyers miss you!) The dummies have 50 million health, can be killed, and respawn quickly. They are spread out so you don't accidentally cleave or interfere with someone else's test. They won't turn to face you, so you can attack them from behind, if that's how you roll. The dummies also should buff you if you get near them with a full suite of temporary raid buffs, including food and flasks, and debuff themselves. These won't stack with your group buffs or debuffs, so it doesn't matter if you buff yourselves or not. (We're only talking about main raid buffs here, like Battle Shout or Blessing of Kings. If it's an individual buff or debuff, you'll still need to apply it normally.) We are leaving this thread open if you'd like to post your DPS or link to logs such as World of Logs. It will be very easy to sandbag or cheat in this testing, so understand that we'll have to take all such numbers with a big old grain of salt. However, in order to compare apples to apples, we suggest purchasing a full set of PvP gear, including one on use and one on proc trinket, but no enchants or gems. Reforging is fine. If you use different sets of gear, please state that in your post. Also keep in mind that target dummy DPS is not encounter DPS. :) Please keep this thread clear of class feedback -- it's just for numbers. Again, the main purpose of this experiment is to make it easier for you get consistent DPS testing. It is only for beta and may get turned off at any point if it becomes disruptive. source Curiously, the new training dummies don't look anything like the ones we're all used to. Instead, they look like miniature versions of Patchwerk. Ha, I see what you did there, Blizzard. The new dummies aren't currently up on beta servers, though they were yesterday before server maintenance. Another post from Ghostcrawler yesterday evening mentioned there were bugs, some of which would require server restarts to fix, while another would need a whole new build to correct. So I guess we probably won't see them again for a bit. All the same, it's a very cool idea for players who are concerned about their DPS. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
