Damagemeters/CombatStats/Recall/etc: good or bad?

[RTM]

I have DamageMeters installed and keep an eye on it when grouped with other people. I'm somewhat of a stat whore by heart and this kind of stuff makes me a bit giddy but is there really a need for it? The only good thing I can think of is that it gives you a goal:

- Be the highest-damaging member of the party during an instance run as a mage, without drawing aggro
- "Can I make my 28 druid outdamage my wife's 32 hunter while we do some easy quests?" (answer: no :( )

Other than that, the only good I can see is for stroking one's ego. I've heard of it causing problems during instance runs/raids where members attempt to stay ahead of the pack by doing too much damage and thus drawing aggro and endangering the party. I think Bolty mentioned in a thread somewhere that a hunter in a SM run he was in actually got upset when he found out that Bolty was doing more damage than him.

So what are your thoughts on these mods? I doubt the capability will get removed from the game, so they're probably here to stay. And I'll probably still run mine for kicks unless asked not to for some reason.

[Drasca]

1) All damage is meaningless if the boss mob is not dead and loot is not distributed.
2) Raid leaders will keep spam out of chat, this includes damage meters
3) They're good for personal amusement and charting damage sources, and class comparison. You also see who's poor in healing, and damage doing when someone of your same class does signifigantly more or less than you.

Mobs die fast, and so do bosses. As long as that's the case, damage meters will only be a source of extraneous amusement and self-comaprison. Nothing more.

[Roane]

Personally, I just like using mine for parsing which of my attacks are most effective, how often I'm critting, how often I'm missing, etc. I rarely pay attention to damage comparisons, unless it grabs my attention because someone unusual is hitting the top in a single fight. Even then, it's just a quirky point of interest. I dislike the idea that someone could turn to me and say, "Well, Person X outdamaged you by leaps and bounds. Keep up better, or you're out of the group."

Side note: And lately I'm also seeing that I should probably respec Starsong if I want to feel like I'm contributing effectively to high level encounters, because even though no one has said anything like the above to me, I know I'm not keeping up on damage, at least to where I think I should be, and feel guilty about it. This damage meter thing is pushing me toward playing as a min/maxer, instead of how I want to play, and that bothers me. So maybe in that respect they're even bad.

As you can tell, my thoughts about this evolved as I was typing. It's situational. I like them for myself. They make me uncomfortable when used as a group comparison tool.

[Quark]

Don't blame the tool; blame the users.

I consider Warlocks the most powerful class in the game right now, 60 blues equipped. I wouldn't have an inkling as to who was where without DamageMeters. I wouldn't see Mages winning AoE (barely), but losing to all but Hunters for single targets. I wouldn't see Hunters never too far behind, but never really in competition either.

I wouldn't see the differences between a stunlock and a Backstab rogue. I wouldn't see just how skewed the speed effect on weapons is, when a lower dps dagger that's .1 slower gives a big increase in damage.

Taken constructively, it's a great way to compare builds and users to help make them better. I've seen more than one person low on the chart one time, then after a respec or new techniques they're higher up. They're not sacrificing anything, they're just playing better. It's a way to compare classes to see where the balance really lies - assuming the group knows damage isn't everything.

There's so much information you can take from the damage addons. Sure, it can be abused, but so can macros. Is anyone gonna claim macros in general are bad?

Edit: Addition: We had a non-Lurker in a UBRS raid with us, a priest. We wouldn't have known just how useless this person was if we didn't know that I almost did as much healing as her (Lifesteal+Bandages) and the other priests both outdamaged her (so she wasn't going DPS).

[Brista]

I find them fascinating

As Quark says they're very good for exposing people who are not doing much. I don't think I'd always embarass someone in chat but I would note who it was. For dps classes it really does give one something to aim for.

It's also watching how damage changes with situation. On my Hunter I built a long lead on our Mage in a Sunken Temple run. Then we had lots of AoE encounters and he rocketed up. Then a tough boss fight allowed me to pinch the top spot. I found that very interesting to observe and it taught me something about where a mage is at his most effective

Another run was quite interesting although this is one where the statistics don't tell the whole picture. I was on my priest grouped with a lower level priest and he out-healed me and out-damaged me. However he was always empty 10 seconds into the fight. I thought quite hard about that outcome and decided I was much happier keeping mana in reserve and being outshone

One small note on Hunters, I usually top with mine. Whether that's because the people I group with aren't very good I don't know. Only Rogues consistently beat me for damage. (31/16/- build, level 56 with Broken Tooth. Cat damage is really good, it does 40% of my dps output)

[Arethor]

I enjoy using them, as people have said, to tell how effective I am. Before my forced respec I was disappointed with the damage I was putting out. It just didn't seem like i was contributing as much as I could. After the respec I've found that I'm doing too much damage. I need to readjust my play style to accomodate for it. In UBRS I was drawing aggro too often because of it and my new super-crits. However in a place like Onyxia's Lair I was able to fully open up and was surprised to see myself now well outpacing the other casters in damage. Gave me a sense of satisfaction that now I know that I'm contributing to burning down mobs. Of course because of this change I now have to be more aware of damage in situations where the tank doesn't have as much aggro built.

[LochnarITB]

My problem with damage meters is that I don't believe they pick up all damage in every situation. Example in point, after Onyxia last night, damage lists were posted. Lochnar was not on the list. I don't think the meters pick up damage if you are far enough away for it to not be viewable in the combat log, which I understand to be the source from which damage is parsed. I was watching my damage log for a while and noticed that I was seeing heals on the MT but was not seeing the damage he was doing. I was seeing damage from players closer to me. They would also depend on how well they parse out all forms of damage. I certainly take them with a grain of salt.

[Trien]

They're okay for seeing if someone's not doing much. I also like using it to check 'damage taken' as a rough gauge of tanking effectiveness. However, one of my biggest gripes is people equating 'higher up on list' as 'better', especially for healing. While it can show you someone's not pulling their weight, just because someone comes up on top doesn't mean they're a better healer.

High DPS/damage done? Sometimes fun to see :)

[Quark]

Non Onyxia/MC/BWL situations typically don't experience this problem, leaving the numbers generally accurate.

To accomodate for the problem, multiple players spread over the field should be using DamageMeters with it synched up (using a hidden chat channel) so that everyone's damage is counted. We've synched before, but between differing DamageMeter versions (*poke* Arethor) and the non-intuitiveness of setting up a synch, we haven't done it yet for Onyxia.

I'm really only tracking Damage in there to make sure people aren't attacking when they're not supposed to be.

[lfd]

3) [...] You also see who's poor in healing, and damage doing when someone of your same class does signifigantly more or less than you.
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Absolutely, categorically not.

I hate the "healing done" damage meter because the data it collects are so easily flawed by over-healing or unnecessary healing. Someone topping up a 6k health warrior every time he drops to 5k is always going to "beat" me if I only ever heal him when he drops lower, especially with mods that cancel heals if the target has over a certain percentage of health left. I'll have more mana left, but that isn't a concern of the meter.

In a typical instance healers are generally doing a lot more than just healbotting. Fortunately most people seem to appreciate it and frankly don't care where their healer ranks; I've not been on 40-person run yet, but I dearly hope to be able to avoid the competition that this player-generated content seems to engender.

[Concillian]

My stance on this is like my stance on firearms.

damagemeters = good
Some people who use damagemeters = morons

[Bolty]

Absolutely, categorically not.[right][snapback]83586[/snapback][/right]

Seconded. Tracking amount of health healed is idiotic and detrimental to the overall health of the raid. It encourages overhealing and wasted mana to the point where I wonder how many wipes occur with healers all out of mana because they wanted to be #1.

If a 6000 hps warrior is at 5000 hps, you know what I do? Cast Renew. It's far more mana efficient at that point to cast a Renew and get to Flash Heals or (situation willing) Greater Heals later. That will be guaranteed to get you at the bottom of the list in healing stats when another priest slaps a 1000 hp Flash Heal on the warrior and your renew points are wasted.

Just as CombatStats encourages people to push the envelope too much, get aggro, and blow the mana of the healers to keep the DPS Monkeys alive, tracking healing done has the same horrible effect - terrible team play.

CombatStats doesn't lead to bad party play, but people who take it seriously DO. I have yet to prove that a wipe in a party I've been in was caused by a CombatStats-crazy player, because that would be hard to do, but I know that the game feel has changed somewhat since this mod's release. To someone who's not into number crunching, I bet it would drive them insane. I don't care about the numbers so that aspect doesn't bother me; it's impact on results that I care about.

Anyway, to close out, back to healing: the only way I'd ever be at the top of a healing list is if my own personal group wound up needing a ton of healing to pull it out of a fire. I treat my mana pool as sacred and preserve it as much as I can for when Things Go Wrong™ so that I can do my job best. That will never make me #1 according to pure number crunchers.

Good players in a raid will get a decent feel for who are the better healers, and hard numbers are not necessary to back that up. The Priest who shoots his load less than 1 minute into the fight by overhealing is USELESS, but will be #1 in healing done! So when his partymates die because he was out of mana, it must be the other Priests' fault, no?

-Bolty

[MongoJerry]

Anyway, to close out, back to healing: the only way I'd ever be at the top of a healing list is if my own personal group wound up needing a ton of healing to pull it out of a fire.  I treat my mana pool as sacred and preserve it as much as I can for when Things Go Wrong™ so that I can do my job best.  That will never make me #1 according to pure number crunchers.

Good players in a raid will get a decent feel for who are the better healers, and hard numbers are not necessary to back that up.  The Priest who shoots his load less than 1 minute into the fight by overhealing is USELESS, but will be #1 in healing done!  So when his partymates die because he was out of mana, it must be the other Priests' fault, no?

Yep, I hated when these mods first came out, because I do think that for a couple of weeks, our whole raid got worse for it. Not only were people trying stupid things to shoot to the top of the list, but also it encouraged individual play rather than thinking about the group as a whole. It's not so bad now, since they don't show the damage meters as much as they used to, but I never liked them.

Like Bolty, I'm almost never near the top of the healing list. Actually, it's usually the druids who are near the top, because the way their spells work, they end up overhealing a lot, which the damage meters don't take into account. For myself, I'm proud of the fact that I do two things: I dispell a lot, which is often much more important than actual healing, and I know *who* to heal. My raid tanks do not die on my watch, darn it. If I wanted to shoot to the top of the list, sure I could pop some Flash Heals and renews on random mages and rogues not in my party. But if we want the raid to survive, it's the main tanks that count, and it's their health I focus on. I conserve my mana for their sake just in case something goes wrong (i.e. an add comes, or some other priest let their tank die in a multi-mob raid fight). I'm not going to go around blowing my mana on other players who aren't my responsibility and then find that I don't have enough mana to keep my main tank alive. It's not going to matter if a mage has his or her life topped off if the tank dies and a Molten Destroyer decides to go tearing off after that mage.

[Kevin]

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.

[bonemage]

My stance on this is like my stance on firearms.

damagemeters = good
Some people who use damagemeters = morons
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I like the logic here on the comparison with firearms. DamageMeters (and similar mods) are very powerful tools and can improve teamplay if used properly. However, there is a temptation for abuse/misuse that can be very destructive. There are lot of people that just can't be trusted with the information.

The types of practices that some people have adopted that are bad have been discussed elsewhere in this thread, so I won't comment much on it, but I will on my experience with the mod:

We have a fairly regular group of guys, and I had DamageMeters installed for our 3 instance run on Friday.

Who is getting too much aggro is pretty clearly displayed when looking at Damage Taken (be sure to consider any off-tanking done). In RFC (with alts) my rogue clearly got too much aggro from the tank (I'm a new rogue) as I had 22% of the damage taken. I did do a little off-tanking when there were too many or with some of the casters in the bigger pulls, but not enough for me to take that much damage. I clearly need to pace myself better, but I also lack any aggro reducing abilities at my level, and the tank doesn't have all of his tools yet either.

It was a great way for us to gauge the performance of one of our newest members. He's a new player, and as a hunter he consistently was #3 on the damage done (he lacked traps, only DPS mode curretnly, and for most of our instances, numbers 1 and 2 were WAY overleveled) but also one of the lowest on damage taken. Might be able to increase his damage a bit, but it also means his target selection was good as he wasn't grabbing mobs the tank hadn't locked down.

In SM Library, where all of us were a bit underleveled (33-34) except for Concillian's overleveled tank (41), the mage briefly took flak for not being higher on the list of damage done, until we remembered how much sheeping he was doing, and how often it needed recasting due to level differences.

Utility contributions are completely ignored by DamageMeters (no way to track that like the other things that DamageMeters tracks) so it must be used properly and people must remember what those skills add to the group. It would be nice if there was a way (there isn't) to calculate the DPS reduction received to the party for the duration of the sheeping or similar abilities. Also, a warlock can spend quite a bit of time banishing a target and using curse of recklessness to stop runners. These are large contributions to a party (runners are SO bad) that don't show up to in DamageMeters.

In conclusion, I think that Damage Meters can be a very nice tool for a regular group to further study themselves, but in pickup groups, the mod itself often becomes the goal rather than group success, and this is bad. Use the mod wisely.

[Alram]

The meter won't show who falls in the lava either!

[Xanthix]

Clearly what we need is a mod that tracks damage done and healing, and also debuff curing, CC applying and breaking, shielding, mana conserving, potion and bandage use, combat ressing, and that gives negative points for overhealing and stealing aggro. (Hmmm we may need to get a few UI events added...)

Once we get this working, we can take some data, do some curve-fitting, integrate the function, and create a bot that always takes the proveably-correct action. Who's with me?

[Mavfin]

[snip]

Who is getting too much aggro is pretty clearly displayed when looking at Damage Taken (be sure to consider any off-tanking done).  In RFC (with alts) my rogue clearly got too much aggro from the tank (I'm a new rogue) as I had 22% of the damage taken.  I did do a little off-tanking when there were too many or with some of the casters in the bigger pulls, but not enough for me to take that much damage.  I clearly need to pace myself better, but I also lack any aggro reducing abilities at my level, and the tank doesn't have all of his tools yet either.
[snip]

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One comment on this....my protection warrior almost always ends up #2 or 3 in raids in damage taken, even though I *know* she tanked well, because of one thing: her damage reduction is so much higher than the (usually) rogues who end up higher than her, that she may have soaked up more mob damage than those rogues, but still didn't *show* as taking so much. Also with approx 16/11/16 block/dodge/parry and 404 defense skill, she's also simply avoiding a lot of hits, but still tanking the mobs. The numbers can't always show the right things.

[Brista]

It was a great way for us to gauge the performance of one of our newest members.  He's a new player, and as a hunter he consistently was #3 on the damage done (he lacked traps, only DPS mode curretnly, and for most of our instances, numbers 1 and 2 were WAY overleveled) but also one of the lowest on damage taken.  Might be able to increase his damage a bit, but it also means his target selection was good as he wasn't grabbing mobs the tank hadn't locked down.

Is it tracking the pet? My Hunter is usually close to 0% damage taken even when I off-tank since it's not me getting hit

[RTM]

Interesting responses, thanks!

I've been toying with Recap (yeah, the Recall in the thread title is a mistype) and it looks to be a bit more full-featured than DamageMeters but is more complicated as well. I've only grouped once with it so haven't really had a chance to test it but apparently there is an option in there to track overhealing. Also, it has the ability to merge pet DPS with owner DPS. Very interesting indeed, as the one time I was partied the other 2 classes were a mage & warlock + succubus. The mage was only ~2 dps higher than the warlock + pet. It also can act as a single-person DPS meter when not partied (which DamageMeters cannot), thus allowing me to get rid of CombatStats.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying it out with a group during an instance run sometime soon here.