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Breakfast Topic: Are you there to down the boss or top the meter?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Apologies to those who just got flashbacks of an angry raid leader from reading that headline, but it's something I don't think enough players ask themselves. It may seem like a leading question, but I'm not sure the answer is as cut-and-dried as it appears.

The automatic response might be, "I'm there to down the boss," because isn't that what it's all about? The loot, the points, the achievements and the titles all make up that carrot on a stick that keeps us playing. (I'm not the only one who still has that thing in my bank, right?)

Meter hounds, on the other hand, have valid arguments, too. Damage is the name of the game. We might jokingly tell the warrior to "tank it to death" when the rest of the group has wiped, but we all know it doesn't work that way. Statistically speaking, the person at the top of the damage meter can take a larger share of the credit for the boss's demise.

Being a healer means that I can look at this controversy from more of a third-party perspective. Meters might help identify a significant healing issue in a raid, but outside of that, those numbers say very little except how much damage a healer's assigned target(s) received. Just because I don't put much stock in meters doesn't mean I'm not interested, though.

So, damage-dealing types, care to satisfy my curiosity? Do you focus on utility to make your contribution, or do you feel like leading the damage meters is your contribution?