DPS vs Damage DoneFollow

Yeah you want to minimize your movement on Hodir of course, but sometimes the RNG monster doesn't let you.

Well, tonight I had to make DPS vs Damage Done called. A few guildies and I alliance side decided to make a naxx 10 pug. We wanted to have some fun and just get some emblems. So to it we went! It took a little bit of time finding DPS at 12:30am for naxx. But we did it. Well we go to it. I apparently had the Damage Done meter on because I popped it open and noticed one of our DPS doing HALF the damage the other DPS were putting out. He was doing 2.1k which was midline for DPS, but HALF the damage.

I take a look at activity log. Watch him through Farlena, Maexenna. I give him a warning. We get to Noth and he DCs for the upteenth billion time. He was gone the entire fight. I booted him. He didn't come back until we started clearing more trash.

Now we had some players in our raid doing 1.5k dps... about 600 dps less than him. Who were pulling more than twice his total damage on boss fights. He was DCing and lagging like crazy. I hate to have done it. I don't like kicking for any reason. But seriously...half? So off he goes.

One of the very few times I have ever in the history of my wow playing made a decision based on DPS vs Damage Done.

DPS=rate
Damage=total output
Put them together and you get statistics. Statistics can be used improperly by anyone who wants to bolster their arguments without adding any real substance. If you replace a hunter doing 2k DPS with a rogue that does 5k DPS, seems like you gain 3K DPS. But if that hunter was the sole member that gave replenishment, you might have just gimped your raid by limiting the mana users.

As has been said by others, meters are a tool. We use tools to make our jobs easier. You don't compare a hammer to a saw and say that the hammer is better because a saw can't drive a nail.


Majivo hit the nail on the head. The numbers suggest nothing else except this. If you feel compelled to make comparisons or justifications by reading more into the data than is actually there, you need to get more detailed data or go into politics, where you can not only use tools, you can be one!

I top tps meters.

But no seriously! DPS vs Damage done like many have said before are entirely relevant to each other but fail miserably on their own as a statistic.

A paradox if you will.

As one of my guildies once said. DPS is the measure of your gear's ilvl. Damage done is the measure of you using that gear.

... and don't forget to look at stats like number of interupts performed, cc broken, ailments cured and all that good stuff. Not that they mean anything on their own either.

Damage Done / Gear Score

The ones who score highest there are the ones you'll want to invite back.

No and No.
Gear score is insignificant, damage done is only significant on bosses.

The ones you invite back are the good players.
You don't see a good player from dps/damage or gear, good players get more out of their gear, anticipate, move better and less and are capable of correcting the ******* they make.

You know it when you meet a good player.

Which sums up the massive problem on my realm. Nordrassil is near the bottom of the barrel. Very, very near bottom of the barrel. The main problem lies in that our raiding guilds are ONLY recruiting *geared* players. The problem with that is we only have maybe 5 total progression guilds. Only three of which anyone takes seriously. This means the only people they are recruiting are people who are back wash from another raiding guild OR a transfer player who more times than not was so socially inept and pathetic that his own server drove him away.

Leaving us with pathetic progression and pathetic raiding guilds because our raiding guilds are looking for gear scores and DPS rather than looking at people who are pulling ridiculous DPS for the gear they've managed to earn themselves.

For example, my shaman joined a 25 naxx run a month ago hosted by one of our retarded "top" raiding guilds. My shaman, an alt of mine, only having been playing enhancement a week, who had not even cleared Naxx 10 yet, was topping the DPS and Damage done charts. I had the lead over their own guild DPS by 600-800dps. My guildie who also had emblem/heroic/naxx 10 gear mostly was a very close second.

Because of our "pathetic" gear we would never even be considered for our realms raiding guilds. Even though we can out perform in every way, whether its reaction time, learning capability, DPS, damage done, or complete usage of our characters skills Ulduar 25 geared players.

Eh. I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing. When I find myself in the middle of the pack, I want to know why. What is their gear relative to my gear? What was our role in the fight? Do I have a way I can perform better? Is that way feasible given the boss mechanics?

If someone just says "I can't top easily therefore I suck therefore I can't play therefore I need buffs!" then they honestly are neither intelligent nor that great of a player.

I think you wouldn't want to run a heroic with me Maz
I chain MD onto the tank until the healer breaks down in tears, crying for mana.
It makes for quick and fun heroics, although the healers might disagree.

Hand of Protection comes in handy for this type of situation...

Damage meters have their use, both in DD and DPS, but not for any of the reasons the OP pitifully states. DD is good for raid leaders to make sure everyone is pulling their weight. In larger guilds (mine has 2 ULD 25 / TOC raid groups) people are competing for core raid spots, and if someone is not pulling their weight compared to their gear, DD tracked weekly can be an effective tool for raid spots.

Secondly, DPS can be a highly effective tool for boss encounters. (If you are looking at dps for trash mobs, gtfo of this thread). Example: Anub in 25man - we had to take our two highest single target DPS toons and leave them on the boss the entire fight. It had no bearing on class, just whomever can pump out the highest level DPS for 10 minutes got the job. Thorim is another fight that comes to mind, when you have to balance single target vs multiple target DPS. Tracking these stats using recount helps to determine best raid setup for arena vs. gauntlet.

If you are in a decent group, the top DPS should be within a few 100 of eachother, if not closer. The dmg done will be separated by a few 100,000 most likely, although percentage wise it's going to be within a few tenths (or should be) of a percent. But no one should be caring if they are #1 or #3, as long as the raid dps is high enough to full clear. Looking at raid end dps and DD doesn't take into account that rogue that stayed alive thx to evasion to eek out another 100,000 dmg after the rest of the raid wipes.

If they do higher damage when you have higher DPS but have to stop due to threat you are doing it wrong. Threat puts an upper maximum for the amount of total damage you can do during a fight and assuming your TPS matches the tanks TPS then no one should be able to surpass you in damage due to you having to stop, this is of course assuming no threat wiping mechanic. Now one could make an argument on how neither might matter if you have a tank who simply isn't outputting a high enough TPS and the people on the top of the charts are simply those who have the best threat reducing talents and abilities.