damage-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!
Pro Tip: Damage meters don't tell the whole story
Some people /ignore others in random raids or dungeons for language or bad play. I add to my instant /ignore list those who spam the meters in raid chat. Anyone who cares about whose bar is the longest is already measuring on their own screen. Not only is the reporter almost always on the top (and conveniently never reports when s/he is below), but displaying the damage done for a fight to the same raid who's on the meter is just pure epeen spill. Asking for a damage meter is just laziness (or, in rare cases, a really crappy computer paired with a log-intensive fight). Let's not forget that problem of boiling a player down to a single number. All three roles of the holy triad have a complex set of abilities for every encounter.
Blood Pact: The importance of heroic Spine
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill, Savior of Azeroth, revisits some old patch 4.3 raid fight that everyone might have forgotten about and reflects on the insights into DPS it gave her. Heroic Spine of Deathwing, 25man: I hated this fight with a passion. At first I hated it because I could not possibly contribute as my favorite spec affliction and call it even with the rest of my guild's raid. I could pass by on normal, blaming my lack of burst for my low-metered results, but that wasn't going to cut it on heroic. Then I started to hate the fight as I struggled to squeeze out every last drop of damage I had in me, even min-maxing my offspec demonology to progress with. Warlock hell, they called it. What a lockblock! My anger started to extend to things outside of WoW, emotionally and physically, because I was so frustrated with my apparent failure to kick some Destroyer derriere. But the fight really opened up a lot of the finer points of DPSing an encounter. Heroic Spine reminded me that the fight isn't all about the end DPS number when the combat logs stop flowing.
Breakfast Topic: Do you run damage meters?
I don't usually run damage meters. I had one for a long time when I wrote about cats and moonkin for Shifting Perspectives, but after going full-time to bears and trees, I uninstalled mine and never looked back. Most of the time I just didn't want to know how much damage or healing someone in a group or raid was doing, and particularly for PUGs, it felt like overkill. As my guildies always posted the night's raid data to World of Logs, I didn't want the distraction of trying to own the meters as a healer, and I sure didn't need the extra lag that having Recount running on my system always seemed to cause. I reinstalled Recount after the Vengeance changes in patch 4.3 because I was curious about how much damage it was adding to 5-man tanking (answer: a lot), and then again to see the damage differential between PvE and high-end PvP gear. Afterwards, I just never got around to uninstalling it. If I'm more than 50% of the group's damage as a tank, it's generally best not to stress groups by asking if they want damage-dependent achievements, and a few pulls into Zul'Aman, I'll have a good idea of whether aggressive pulling for a bear run is likely to pay off. Spamming the meters doesn't help anyone, but if you're just using it to inform rather than dictate the play experience, then I'll admit it has its uses. Do you use damage meters? Why? And what's the best use -- and the worst abuse -- of them that you've seen?
Patch 4.1: Combat log addons cause framerate issues
One glitch I noticed when testing on the PTR recently was that my DPS meters caused ridiculous, terrifying framerate issues. The issue's been long known on the forums, of course. Skada, the addon I use, had been completely unusable on the 4.1 PTR for pretty much its entire existence. It seems the issue is with addons that parse the combat log. There supposedly are fixes available, but at present, if you're running a damage meter or other combat log parse, you should most likely turn off your out-of-date addons until they've been updated. I can attest that at present, Skada does not seem to work at all with 4.1, and I'd definitely recommend turning it off. Updated: Check your favorite addon sites for updates to patch 4.1. While I can't promise your personal favorite addon will be up to date, Skada has released an update that makes it usable with the current patch as of 5:29 PM eastern. WoW Patch 4.1 is live, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from guides of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.
WoW Web Stats reveals the ins and outs of your raid
WoW Web Stats(or WWS), if you're not aware, is a popular raid assessment tool written by Lossendil. It has recently received some sweet loving from the author in the form of an overall revamp, and now bears a shiny new orangey-brown coat to accompany that same great taste we know and love. Using an uploaded combat log(/combatlog in-game) pulled from your WoW folder, WWS parses it into a neat and clean report for your perusal. Right at your fingertips is your basic overall damage meter and healing meter, and if you dig a bit further, there's so much more. With the ability to see each boss encounter and attempt individually, each players' spell usage, the buffs and debuffs on a character in any given encounter as well as a variety of other things, this is a tool that shouldn't be overlooked if you're in the raid game.
AddOn Spotlight: Recount
Damage meters in World of Warcraft can be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, they can give you detailed information about incoming and outgoing damage in order to help you decide on the best gear, the best talents, and the best spell or ability rotations to get the most out of your character. On the other hand, their list format can turn instance groups into a competitive game where the person at the top "wins" -- a dangerous thing when a DPS chart can't tell you anything about threat or deaths, nor utility abilities such as crowd control or dispels. However, I always like having Recount -- not only because it collects a metric ton of data about you and anyone you group with -- but because the information it tracks can help put DPS in the broader perspective. To the right you see Recount's main window. Right now it only lists two items -- my Rogue alt and the elemental pet of someone I was grouped with before taking this shot -- but in a large group there will be a line item for every group member and pet, showing total damage, DPS, and what percentage of the group's overall damage they've done. If you mouse over anyone on the list, you will see the pop-up to the right, listing the top three attacks, top three attacked, and the damage done to each.But Recount goes in to much more depth than this. Want to know the wealth of information that awaits you? Keep reading!
