07-16-2005, 05:54 AM
Some things it is nice for. Some things it is bad for. Since the people I play with realize it is just a tool and a curiosity I find I kinda like it.
I installed it today. Mainly to get some more hard numbers about how close Taranna can stay to Etheramwen in damage while in cat form because I really don't believe that cat druids are that bad for DPS but since Treesh doesn't run any mods that give her DPS numbers and she is curious too this was a simple way to find out for us. Of course this is without epic gear. The better gear Treesh gets the bigger the gap will be because I cant' upgrade my cat claws and +str for more attack power only helps so much. But I would still like to know. I know that we can bounce aggro regardless of who gets the opening shot. I know that she will generally have aggro more than I will if we start on the mob at the same, or almost the same time (both want our stealth openers). But I don't know how close we hang in the average damage game. Would be interesting to know. Would have been more interesting to know without my extra feral talents as well, an interesting guage of how much they help.
I want to test if Aleri (holy priest) out DPS's Gnolack (protection warrior) when they duo. I have suspected that she has for awhile now but again Treesh isn't running an individual DPS meter and she doesn't want to, so combat stats will help.
I also used it to check something else I was curious about. I've suspected that Balador my retribution/holy spec paladin was out damaging Gnolack my protection spec warrior pretty well at the same stages in their career. So I partied up with RTM's L45 warrior with my L45 paladin to do a few quests and for me to test this. Hit (the warrior) is arms/fury spec. We flip flopped who was on top a few times and while Hit did outdamage Balador it was very close and there was in combat healing I was doing. We were using the exact same weapon and we were both blessed with might the whole time. So gear differences would be minimal. I know an arms/fury is going to do more damage than a protection spec like Gnolack has been his whole career so I'm very confident that my suspicions about a pally doing better damage than a warrior at least up to L45 were correct. It wasn't exhaustive testing but it was good enough to check and damage meters was a nice tool for it.
Healing done is pretty pointless. However it was partly what sparked my starting the healing in raids thread. When I came in somewhat close to Aleri on healing and she had the MT and most of the major AoE people in her party I figured I might have been cross healing too much. Soulstealer was way down but was in a party of hunters and rogues. So had we all just healed our own parties the rankings would have stayed the same but I probably should have been farther back. Again with Treesh and I being in the same room we were able to keep the cross healing efficient but that isn't the point. So that is one potentially good thing about it. Other than that I really don't think healing done tells the story of a healer at all.
Damage done by the MT and damage done by everyone else with a knowledge of how much aggro was pulled can be somewhat helpful to know. I know very well that tanking has very little to do with damage (though it helps some, even if that is mostly with rage generation) but it can be nice to know that you can 4 or 5 times the damage of the tank and not take aggro from him. But again that is of little use since you should be able to quickly get a feel for your damage output and aggro pulling. It's just a curiousity.
The tool can help with testing some stuff as well, I've already pointed out a couple of examples.
But the bad play it can encourage is real. The bitter feelings it can create are real (Quark is already feeling that way about rogues vs warlocks because of damage meters), it can have an easy to see negative impact on the fun some people get out of the game. I don't like that about it at all.
It can also create warm fuzzies. Gnolack finished 5th in a Baron raid in damage where I wasn't MT behind a mage, rogue, warrior (Tal's Shalandrax), and about 200 damage behind a hunter (pets counted seperately). I was in front of another hunter a paladin, the MT, the druid and the priest. The run went extremely well (it was all Basin and tal and I). I think tal was like 12% of total the hunter and I at 10% each. So it isn't like anyone was way out there on damage either. It made me feel that I did contribute something while not tanking (though there was one add of 3 ghouls thanks to a fear) in an already somewhat messy pull so I dropped to defensive and tanked those three till the MT could get over and peel them off me after dealing with all the other stuff and I knew that was something that helped the raid out as well.
I also got a warm fuzzy seeing Gnolack at the top of the pile in a 5 man zerg of Zul'Farrak. I beat out Katrin (L60 paladin), Galgamesh (L47 rogue), Aleri (L60 priest) and Dragoon (L42 warlock). And yes I listed them in the order of damage done. Holy Nova was a big help for Treesh in the divine-o-matic event for damage and with the little bugs. I got to be in berserker and whirlwind, cleave and execute a lot to help me out. But that gave a protection spec warrior a warm fuzzy too because well it was all just silliness anyway. :)
There is very little that it can do to help someone improve play since good play is only partially about damage and dependent on your spec. It would be bad if it pushed everyone to the same build so they could "keep up" on damage. It would be good if two people with similar gear and specs were doing vastly different numbers while not causing any group issues and both were trying to do damage. In that case the higher damage person could share some tips with the lower damage one and help improve someone's play. That is a case where it could help improve play. But if the person doing the lower damage with the same gear and same build was doing that because he was shutting down a caster or peeling mobs off a healer or doing more stuns to ease the healing on the tank, while the other one was mainly focusing on damage then saying the low damage played worse isn't true at all. It's a tool use it for what it can actually help you for.
So yeah I share the feelings of a lot of other people.
I installed it today. Mainly to get some more hard numbers about how close Taranna can stay to Etheramwen in damage while in cat form because I really don't believe that cat druids are that bad for DPS but since Treesh doesn't run any mods that give her DPS numbers and she is curious too this was a simple way to find out for us. Of course this is without epic gear. The better gear Treesh gets the bigger the gap will be because I cant' upgrade my cat claws and +str for more attack power only helps so much. But I would still like to know. I know that we can bounce aggro regardless of who gets the opening shot. I know that she will generally have aggro more than I will if we start on the mob at the same, or almost the same time (both want our stealth openers). But I don't know how close we hang in the average damage game. Would be interesting to know. Would have been more interesting to know without my extra feral talents as well, an interesting guage of how much they help.
I want to test if Aleri (holy priest) out DPS's Gnolack (protection warrior) when they duo. I have suspected that she has for awhile now but again Treesh isn't running an individual DPS meter and she doesn't want to, so combat stats will help.
I also used it to check something else I was curious about. I've suspected that Balador my retribution/holy spec paladin was out damaging Gnolack my protection spec warrior pretty well at the same stages in their career. So I partied up with RTM's L45 warrior with my L45 paladin to do a few quests and for me to test this. Hit (the warrior) is arms/fury spec. We flip flopped who was on top a few times and while Hit did outdamage Balador it was very close and there was in combat healing I was doing. We were using the exact same weapon and we were both blessed with might the whole time. So gear differences would be minimal. I know an arms/fury is going to do more damage than a protection spec like Gnolack has been his whole career so I'm very confident that my suspicions about a pally doing better damage than a warrior at least up to L45 were correct. It wasn't exhaustive testing but it was good enough to check and damage meters was a nice tool for it.
Healing done is pretty pointless. However it was partly what sparked my starting the healing in raids thread. When I came in somewhat close to Aleri on healing and she had the MT and most of the major AoE people in her party I figured I might have been cross healing too much. Soulstealer was way down but was in a party of hunters and rogues. So had we all just healed our own parties the rankings would have stayed the same but I probably should have been farther back. Again with Treesh and I being in the same room we were able to keep the cross healing efficient but that isn't the point. So that is one potentially good thing about it. Other than that I really don't think healing done tells the story of a healer at all.
Damage done by the MT and damage done by everyone else with a knowledge of how much aggro was pulled can be somewhat helpful to know. I know very well that tanking has very little to do with damage (though it helps some, even if that is mostly with rage generation) but it can be nice to know that you can 4 or 5 times the damage of the tank and not take aggro from him. But again that is of little use since you should be able to quickly get a feel for your damage output and aggro pulling. It's just a curiousity.
The tool can help with testing some stuff as well, I've already pointed out a couple of examples.
But the bad play it can encourage is real. The bitter feelings it can create are real (Quark is already feeling that way about rogues vs warlocks because of damage meters), it can have an easy to see negative impact on the fun some people get out of the game. I don't like that about it at all.
It can also create warm fuzzies. Gnolack finished 5th in a Baron raid in damage where I wasn't MT behind a mage, rogue, warrior (Tal's Shalandrax), and about 200 damage behind a hunter (pets counted seperately). I was in front of another hunter a paladin, the MT, the druid and the priest. The run went extremely well (it was all Basin and tal and I). I think tal was like 12% of total the hunter and I at 10% each. So it isn't like anyone was way out there on damage either. It made me feel that I did contribute something while not tanking (though there was one add of 3 ghouls thanks to a fear) in an already somewhat messy pull so I dropped to defensive and tanked those three till the MT could get over and peel them off me after dealing with all the other stuff and I knew that was something that helped the raid out as well.
I also got a warm fuzzy seeing Gnolack at the top of the pile in a 5 man zerg of Zul'Farrak. I beat out Katrin (L60 paladin), Galgamesh (L47 rogue), Aleri (L60 priest) and Dragoon (L42 warlock). And yes I listed them in the order of damage done. Holy Nova was a big help for Treesh in the divine-o-matic event for damage and with the little bugs. I got to be in berserker and whirlwind, cleave and execute a lot to help me out. But that gave a protection spec warrior a warm fuzzy too because well it was all just silliness anyway. :)
There is very little that it can do to help someone improve play since good play is only partially about damage and dependent on your spec. It would be bad if it pushed everyone to the same build so they could "keep up" on damage. It would be good if two people with similar gear and specs were doing vastly different numbers while not causing any group issues and both were trying to do damage. In that case the higher damage person could share some tips with the lower damage one and help improve someone's play. That is a case where it could help improve play. But if the person doing the lower damage with the same gear and same build was doing that because he was shutting down a caster or peeling mobs off a healer or doing more stuns to ease the healing on the tank, while the other one was mainly focusing on damage then saying the low damage played worse isn't true at all. It's a tool use it for what it can actually help you for.
So yeah I share the feelings of a lot of other people.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.