07-13-2006, 06:39 PM
Quote:I'm going to state this once, and once only, damage meters lead to sloppy play.
Certainly a lot of people fall into that trap, but I think most get over it pretty soon. It's only information after all, how you use it is up to you. It's easy to use it to judge epeen but it's not the only stupid epeen flexing herring out there. My favorite is the one that started this -- bragging about a healer's mana pool (irks me no end).
If I change my healing tactics or ranks, or take a different assignment, I like to see how it affects my overheal (I guess DamageMeters doesn't do this but SW_stats does). If I know the % of my healing that is done via renew, or flash heal, or greater heal, then I can prioritize my talent point distribution and gear based on that.
It's fashionable to bash meters etc. (especially here with us snooty folks at the lounge) because of their abuse... but like teske says it can be very useful. And Bolty, even using it just to identify bad play has a lot of merit, particularly if you are in a fluid guild alliance. If a particular healer averages over 40% overheal over a couple of runs, you've identified a problem that you can address somehow. With SW_stats, you can even see who healed who and find those annoying snipe healers that drive up others' overheal.
If you've got a priest that doesn't do much healing, doesn't do much dispelling, and doesn't do much damage... what is he or she doing? Buffing? Saving their mana for a rainy day?
A DPS example: if you consistently see someone with inferior gear outdamaging others of that class (hello Marntruehorn;)) without pulling aggro... I bet the other members of the class in the raid might have something to learn.
You switch weapons -- how does your damage change? You switch specs... how does your white/yellow ratio change? What does it tell you?
Sure you have to make sure you take all the factors Bolty makes fun of into account. But just because it's easy to misuse the information and change your tactics to be #1 doesn't mean it isn't useful for many good purposes.