Breakfast Topic: Damage Meters

by Elizabeth Harper Aug 3rd 2006 at 8:30AM

If you've ever played in any sort of group, chances are you know about damage meters. In my own playing, I notice rogues especially to be suspect of posting damage meter numbers, asking about damage meter numbers, or downright bragging about damage meter numbers. This becomes more amusing when said rogues forget to use feint because they're in heavy competition with someone else for top damage - and as a healer, yes, I see that you have the highest damage in the group, but why did you need more healing than the main tank?

While some players realize after a death or two that perhaps there are more important things in the game than how high you are on the damage meter, some don't seem to reach the same conclusion - and are always competing with others for the prestigious top spot. So what do you think of the various damage meter addons available for World of Warcraft? Are they really the only thing worth knowing?

Filed under: AddOns, Breakfast topics

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Dahlaine Aug 3rd 2006 9:07AM

There is a very good reason for why rogues are constantly mindful of the damage meter; its all we have. Every other class has a chance to feel important for one reason or another, whether is be healing, buffing, pulling, summoning water, or tanking. Rogues have no utility to a raid group other than their ability to output huge low aggro damage. If your rogues are pulling aggro because of their single minded focus, you simply need to find new rogues or find someone to teach them how they should be approacing encounters. The rogues in my guild are almost always top 1-5 for every BWL boss, with the occasional exception of a mage or two hitting the top for a boss with elemental weakness like Chromagg. I simply cannot remember a time when we have pulled aggro on anything unless the maintank/OT dies.
And rogues are not the only Meter Greedy classes out there. Priests always want to see the healing and decurse meters, and hunters always want the Death Meter to show off their annoying feign death skills.
These meters are honestly very helpful for class leaders to gauge the ability and/or commitment of the members of your raid. It allows you to reward those who are pushing themselves as hard as they can and cast out those who are obviously slacking.

Tazrach Aug 3rd 2006 9:28AM

Could not have said it better myself Dahline. The class leader part in particular. I try and ensure that what cross class rivalry exists is purely for fun. The meat of the DM is comparing similarly geared folks and asking questions about large disparities.

One aspects that the damage meter haters like to pick on is the supposed inaccuracy of them. Here is the thing, joining the sync channel is not enough. You have to set up a sync id and then trigger manual syncs during down times. if you are not doing those things then you are getting inaccurate data. The other thing that can effect accuracy is the classes of people running damage meters, I like to have as many as possible with a good mix of melee and ranged to ensure solid coverage. A 40 man raid with two hunter on dm is going to provide crap data.

Coanunn Aug 3rd 2006 9:31AM

Well I'm of 2 minds..

First and foremost I am a rogue through and through and I ALWAYS strive to be number one on the damage meter for the reasons stated above. Damage is what I'm there for, if I am not doing damage you would be better served with another class/player in the group/raid. That being said I am also a guild and raid leader and a damage meter tells me alot!

If I see the Healer is 10th out of 10 in damage and there have been deaths it was probably bad aggro control or pulls, but if the Healer is 3rd out of 10 in damage and their are deaths it's because they aren't doing their job right. If I see a Hunter being out damaged by a priest who is using a wand when not healing I know that hunter needs to woken up as they are obviously asleep at the keyboard. If I see the MT is not at the top of the "healing taken" list then some idiot is making the tanks job harder by pulling aggro. All of this can be learned by reading the meters reports.

All things being equal, the only class that should EVER beat a rogue on the damage meter would be a mage, and even then that mage would be pulling alot of aggro and wiping the group alot. I have seen a VERY well geared Lock beat a rogue by dotting everything in sight or a very well geared hunter beat a poorly geared rogue but rogues, especially raid specced rogues are built for 1 purpose, pure damage. Don't knock your rogues asking for damage meters, praise the fact they want to know how they are doing so they can get better. Only by using damage meters did I find where I was using the wrong skills at the wrong times.

Brudus Aug 3rd 2006 9:52AM

Everyone who uses one needs a nice swift punch to the taint.

Luka Aug 3rd 2006 9:57AM

The most useful damagemeter around is the threat meter : http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-3488-1-klhthreatmeter.html

So now you can slap the rogue who took aggro from your tank :)

evilm Aug 3rd 2006 10:06AM

I use damagemeters as a personal motivator in raids. Yes, there is something to be said for getting to driven to beat each other and making bad decisions. However, in my experience as an end game rogue this happens very little. I have found that damage dealers who are seriously interested in completing a raid successfully and maximizing their class' potential will refer to a damage meter to see if their gear and spec are working at the top of their game that night or whether they're having a little trouble. It can also be a fairly decent judge on new gear as well as group composition.

With all that being said, there is no quicker way to alienate yourself from your guild than to brag about your spot on the top of the damage meters. We can all see how well you're doing (or not well as the case may be) and don't need to be reminded every time you get a cold blood crit over 2k. Finally, some guilds/people are vehemently opposed to damagemeters as they blame them for aggro mismanagement and raid wipes, while this does seem misguided from my point of view, that does not make theirs any less valid.

Basically, use the damage meters for your own personal motivation and bragging rights in your DPS channel, just be conscious that not everyone cares .

Stimps Aug 3rd 2006 10:28AM

Well said, Luka.

My guild switched to KTM a while back, and although it has some shortcomings, it helps to show when people should ease off the DPS a bit to avoid messing things up.

Compare that to the traditional damage meters which quite often encourage all out DPS with not much thought to aggro management, and you can see which meter is the more useful...

Dahlaine Aug 3rd 2006 10:30AM

You have to be EXTREMELY careful when using the threat meter, as many bosses like the broodlord and drakes in bwl, or onyxia have parts of the fight that effect the numerical threat output and throw off the meters. My guild used it for a bit, but stopped as it was seen as a crutch and an unreliable one at that. Plus, in order for it work, everyone has to have it and have it updated to the same version.

Ghostle Aug 3rd 2006 10:37AM

The damage meters are important for rogues because of what has already been said. We are there to deal out damage. If for some reason, a rogue is coming up 10th, or 20th in damage, 1. he has a messed up spec or 2. he is not doing his job and hurting the raid in general.

Ebulum Aug 3rd 2006 10:49AM

Damage meter is like a 12" ruler. Guys that have happy wife/girlfriend do not need to use a ruler.

Kaylos Aug 3rd 2006 11:16AM

DMG meters are important. When my old guild first started doing MC, the GM refused to let anyone post damage meters, and we struggled. Then he started watching them and realized withoput the accountability damage meters can bring, people were slacking, leeches for free loot. So then he challenged people on the dmg meters and held them to accountability and that if they weren't holding their own, they wouldn;t be attending raids.

My current guild uses the damage meter, healing meter, decursing meter, and overhealing meter. All our tools to hold people to be accountable for doing thier job.

as for rogue always topping the dmg meters, you obviously have not seen a well specced and geared warlock can do, and on fights that aren't aggro sensitive, fury warriors beat rogues too.

James Aug 3rd 2006 11:36AM

I love the first two comments made. My guild focus's a lot on damage meters. Our best mage is 80% of the time always 1st. I have no idea how, but he is (almost every BWL and AQ40 run). With 2-3 rogues behind him before another mage. The hunters in the guild are always having a competition of who can stay in the top 10 before being pushed out by rogues and mages, haha (and I guess locks). Though we can't compare to the massive DPS the mages and rogues can do. It is very helpful. There is much debate over a survival Agility spec compared to a marksman build. So our damage is very helpful. Though rogue's like having a marksman hunter in their group (100 extra attack power for the win), there's an almost 140dps difference with full tier 2 and agil rings, trinkets, weapons and necklace to go agility build than marksman. Last night we did BWL, and I ranked 10th on damage meters, 2nd on hunters, with 3 mages and 5 rouges (and yes our best mage was in 1st followed by our grand marshal rogue) ahead of me.

jpc Aug 3rd 2006 11:36AM

@3 Hunters should often be ahead of rogues, they too, can do very high dmg without pulling aggro courtesy of feign death. Who *should* be at the top of the damage meter is encounter dependent.

ih8myfellowrogues Aug 3rd 2006 11:43AM

Ok there are good points about having meters for healing and dmg.
It's so highly abused though. I really couldn't stand fellow rogues who would always spout off "Dmg meter please"
Every other fight. Im the rogue who is way over them in skill and gear and NEVER do I ask about it.

I have been closely watching other rogues in guild and they would do nothing but go for the dmg dmg dmg dmg...
wtf....ever hear of Kidney shot,Feint, and or vanish cheapshot.....stuned mobs dont dodge, dont attack which result in
less healing needed, less mana wasted, and helps the tank keep mobs under control if they dont have to play chase.

I swear to god MOST rogues think its ONLY dammage that they can do. I've off tanked doing stuns,gouge,blind, and vanish cheapshot rinse repeat
just to off tank for nearly 30 sec without taking any heals...blind and bandage...rinse repeat .

I swear there needs to be a Feint meter....if you dont use it..you should be kicked outa raid. Frustrated me to no end.
I do more dammage than fellow guildie rogues...yet take alot less healing. I also stun lock vs go for the eviscerate 5 points every chance I get.
Ill rupture over that any day....its called controlled dps.

ARgh sorry im going on a tangent.. Im just so sick of Rogues even though I am one. SIck of the majority of Noobs behind the PC mostly.

Dahlaine Aug 3rd 2006 1:06PM

Stuns barely work on anything until you get to aq40 or naxx and even then, you really only need 1-2 people kidney shotting before an add is dead. #13, almost everything you pointed out was in refence to trash mob clearing and if you are needing a rogue to tank trash mobs, then your group has plenty of problems to deal with before you start to worry about people requesting a damage meter. As we stated above, meters help gauge post boss-fight performance and help people tweak their playstyle to improve performance.
And just a point of advice here. If you have rogues pulling aggro on anything, give them a warning and if it happens again kick them from the raid. Any rogue who pulls aggro on even a semi-regular basis knows absolutely nothing about their class as we have several ways to mitigate threat on top of our base 20% reduction. As well, combo points are for Slice and Dice as its the only finisher we have that scales with gear currently.

ih8myfellowrogues Aug 3rd 2006 1:34PM

I agree it just drives me nuts when I see the lack of feint,vanish ...and not every pull goes perfect so rogues need to stun lock mobs on the healers till they can be controlled...

Trash mobs cause wipes if taken lightly. And far too often im the one pulling 1-3 things off the healers cause my death isnt as bad as a healers death for sure.

I didnt say there was no use for these meters. I just see them abused on requests by fellow rogues..you dont need to know every other damn fight yah know.

Lynn Aug 3rd 2006 4:23PM

My hardcore guild is in Naxx now. The newest rogue is a little too concerned with his damage, because he's badly geared but used to being top. During the spider boss fight he refuses to switch targets to get the little bugs with 6000 hp, even though they will wipe the raid if not dealt with swiftly. The raid leaders are not yet aware of this.

They *say* that they're looking at things other than DM. I doubt it.

Lori Aug 3rd 2006 6:03PM

I'm in a new guild for me which just starting ZG and AQ20. And I'm a lock. We are also doing a lot Strat, etc. gear runs. My worry is that I need to be as high on the DM as I can get so that they think I am good for something more than summoning and stoneing and the occasional AoE. The problem is that I'm not doing as much damage by useing CoT on anything with a blue bar or CoR to stop runners, as I would be with CoA. So sometimes, I lay on the damage Curse to stay up in DM.

From what I seen in all groups, there is usually a mix of Rogues and Hunters at the top followed by a mix of Mages and Warlocks.

Gritz Aug 4th 2006 10:53AM

I've found that the best use for the damage meters is the "raid DPS" feature, which is good to post after each boss fight- The RL can then check the:
decurse (are the mages doing their job),
healing (are the shammies/pallys/druids trying to DPS instead of heal?),
overhealing (are the healers using the appropriate rank healing spell?),
healing taken (are there any non-tanks getting aggro/getting out of AoE range in time, etc?)
and damage meters (are the DPS classes doing their job?)

to pick out the individuals which might need more guidance.

-Gritz
Orc Warlock
Eldre'Thalas