DPS vs Damage DoneFollow

This varies to me. In 5man content I almost always average 5 to 6k DPS for the whole run.

I also often (not always) find myself tanking as much as the tank should be because of it. My particular spec allows an extra 20% effect out of all heals done to me and I'm crit immune being in cat form because of talents.

There is simply no way I could allow myself to cut my dps in half or more because of an intro to 80 tank assuming the healer appears to be geared enough to heal such a tank. If they're good enough to heal all blues geared tank, they are good enough to heal me at the very least for burst moments where I have access to barkskin cd. -20% damage taken (barkskin), +20% heals (talents), crit immune, decent dodge. At that point, the tank to me really becomes just an initial aggro getter so I can make the choice of being more or less aggressive with dps depending on barkskin cd, the amount of targets in the pull, the amount of dps the others are doing, etc.

Because I receive 20% more in terms of heals, the damage taken portion is already a bit misleading for me specifically just because it doesn't take the same healing throughput to heal the damage I'd take.

I'm there and I want to move through the instance quickly. If a heals is not intro to 80 themselves, they should have no troubles keeping me up. So many healers have had no problems healing me through Berserk tanking almost every single 5man boss (save heroic toc), most generally make some commenting to the effect of "lol kitty tank". I've watched tanks taunt 4 or 5 times off of me on a 5man boss and I still rip it back off of them. If you want to avoid me like the plague because I took more damage than the tank, be my guest. But the whole time I was acting tank through dps, I also managed 35 to 50% of the total damage done for the whole 5man and cut off 5 to 10mins of the total time in the instance. As that's pretty much what I'm between for every single 5man I've done. And usually if it's only 35%, the healer does so little healing because if I'm only doing 35%, stuff is dying so quickly it's just silly.

Now, in 25man content, I would totally agree. I remember watching hodir damage taken and comparing it to damage dealt. I saw the 2nd place DPS almost always be the 2nd place damage taken. I thought it strange when I was #1 dps and almost always in the bottom 8 for damage taken out of the whole 25 people. It's almost a clue of someone tunnel visioning on their dps rotation/cycle and not paying near enough attention to their surroundings.



As far as this whole Damage Done VS DPS. It's really a rather silly and fickle thing.

Most of these addons today are tracking individual dps. Not dps from the time the first person engaged to the time the boss is dead, some of these addons are even smart enough to stop recording dps for an individual if they don't do any offensive actions in a certain period of time. I can look through and say with something like 95% accuracy how long everyone was engaged on any specific encounter. So I could end up spotting someone who was only dpsing for 42 seconds and did 6k dps vs someone who was engaged for 57 seconds and did 4k dps. Damage done for both is probably close to the same. The person who did higher dps probably decided to engage much later knowing he may pull threat. But how can you really judge? For all you know, without more experience with the players, the person that did 4k dps might have had a lot more to give, but because they engaged so quickly, they couldn't give anything more than that 4k dps because of threat limitations. If the person that only did 4k dps on this particular fight was indeed so heavily limited, and they can't be broken of the habbit to engage so soon, it just skews a lot of overall numbers, but on boss fights this is masked a bit because of the duration of the fight.

If I have to go track down a body and brez someone, guess what? Rip and Rake are still ticking. Savage Roar as a buff is still ticking. Feral is hurt badly when target switching or other boss mechanics have you on and off consistently through out the fight. More recently blizzard seems to have added some of that to ret DPS too, but they don't often find themselves being asked to go brez that guy that died on the other side of razorscale's area relative to where you were. For some classes this sort of target switching isn't as hurtful. Damage Done (keeping in mind brez/innervate (lower cd and now a bit more spammable/requested)) isn't a great measure of the druid's capabilities because you have to also take into account the running around (and it sucks even more if you brez someone and they went afk or alt tabbed and here you are standing there waiting for them to accept so you can innervate them). You can't really look at DPS either because the druid's dps kept ticking with the bleeds, energy kept pooling up and never got used, etc.

DPS and Damage Done are tools.

Damage Taken is a tool. mimiron is quick to mess this number up, go ahead and get hit by a missile after someone calls to wipe it up and watch as you quickly over take the tank's position in damage taken with just one hit.

You have to understand the tools, the surroundings, the gimmicks, the people, the specs, the extra side tasks, etc.

The thing I do is set recount to look at the current fight and also have it only keep boss segments. So if we do 5 bosses in one night, I have all 5 bosses recount logs. If you limit the meters to a single fight then you should just look at damage done as dps is just the damage done/time in combat.

As a healer, I only really use it for port-mortems when we wipe on a fight.

This.

I've been called out in a raid for being behind another mage by a large margin. Then I link that I had 75% of interrupts, like 20 spellsteals of a dangerous buff, and a large portion of my damage is on adds that were running all over (not aoeable) while Mr. Hotshot did 100% of his damage on the boss while standing still and only dpsing.

People forget that most boss fights have certain tactics that need to be done in order to successfully beat the boss, then bow down to the people that completely ignore said tactics to boost their own personal damage.

If I get called out by someone who doesn't have the sense to check these type of stats firsts, I tend to ignore them rather then get defensive about it. Usually there is someone in the group smart enough to reconcile the stats, and if there isn't, well I am probably better off getting booted.

I still hear it from time to time as a disc priest from noobs in raids. If they persist, I change to holy and proceed to serve them a warm mug of stfu.

I guess I am as guilty as the next guy at caring for my e-peen

Torzak, I guess my main issue is with you making it sound like you do it to the tank and healer's great surprise. You're crit immune and presumably have quite high avoidance, but you do lack something like 20,000 armor rating or so, right? If the healer isn't aware of you pulling aggro intentionally, you'll just frustrate, not only the healer trying to keep the tank alive while also healing you, but also the tank who might be watching aggro meters and will try to regain aggro on the mob you pulled.

It's because of stunts like that we had to do two corpse runs in OK heroic. I was more than geared to heal that place, but I wasn't expecting a DPS to suddenly tank stuff.

Sort of directed to Mazra, or at least, directed at that side topic of this conversation here dealing with comparisons that include damage taken relative to damage done/dps. Feel free to TL:DR and move along if you want.

I just did a combo HoL/HoS run.

I did 4596DPS average between the two. 42.6% of the total damage. I took 551k Damage between the two instances. I never died.

Looking at melee hits done to me, 89 hit me, 92 were dodged/missed. Average Melee Hit done to me was for 2579 Damage (no crits). Melee damage accounted for 42% of the total damage I did take. The rest was random aoes, spell damage, storm of grief (hos), poison tipped spear (hol), Whirlwind (hol), and other misc stuff/etc.

The next guy was an elemental shammy doing 2448DPS weighing in at 22% of the total damage. He took 468k Damage between the two instances and died twice. He was bored, I guess, and pulled a pack of mobs instead of letting the tank do it. So that at least explains one of the deaths. If you want, you can imagine this silly death as a way to visualize what an ele shammy might have endured if this guy were doing closer to 30% of the total damage with this particular tank.

28% of this guy's damage taken was from melee. Only 2 of the hits directed at him missed. Another 2 landed as crits for average 11,293 damage. The non crits averaged 2638 of which, there were 41 normal hits that landed hitting Mail


This is actually not quite a fair assessment of the #2 DPS as that individual had to go between the two heroics and was replaced with someone else. So on my charts, what would have been the #2 and best candidate to compare damage done vs damage taken can't really be used since I'm looking at total numbers between two instances to give a better average than just one lucky 5man I ran. So based on that, I used the 2nd most damage done from a guy that was in both heroics.

The tank took 1.22 million damage while doing ~1200DPS and managing 13.8% of the total damage. Warrior Tank; I had vigilance on (Go Go -3% damage taken). Something to note, this was 4'ish AM and he made it pretty clear that he was tired. I can only assume that the targets that did get away from him was influenced by this to some degree. In other words, a fairly average tank working below his average ability.

The group felt just a little bit loose to me. I went bear a little more than I generally would have and not for my own survival either, but rather because targets were going after other members of the group, namely the healer.

18 Barkskins
2 Tranquilities
41 rejuvinations (6 of which were for the purpose of casting thorns; the new rejuv procs 234SP Idol) Another 5 or so were during the Brand Spanking New portion of HoS just because in that particular instance and that specific area, things can be a little hectic, there's enough time between some of the packs that it doesn't hurt to rejuv yourself while waiting for the next targets to come running at you. Another 2 probably after the x2 rez I did. The rest scattered through out just to help out. Topping someone off or the likes.

6 casts of Thorns
4 Moon Fires (Two of these were because I got stuck in caster gear redoing one thorns so I just moon fired and wrath spammed until I could change back gear) The other two were the last boss of HoS that did his AoE deal and I ran out and popped two moon fires since it was basically dead.
4 Innervates
1 Maim
1 Bash
3 Growls
1 Rebirth
1 Revive

And in the end, the healer (Gear Score 4368) said none of the feral druids they knew do as well as I do. No complaints that my dps was too much and ripping targets off the tank was making things harder, instead a compliment.



If this were the case, I wouldn't bother to brez a dps in the middle of combat, I wouldn't growl targets off the healer, I wouldn't tranq in the middle of combat, I wouldn't go bear to save a healer, etc.

I do as much DPS as I can in a 5man at the expense of taking some damage/tanking some things in cat form for brief periods. That said, I also try my damnedest to not die or be a burden on the group. My position in a 5man is one in which things are done as quickly as it is possible.

I hope some of this information I've presented here helps to show the difference between two classes/specs and how damage done compared to damage taken is a whole different thing between the two. Most DPS classes that pull threat will die as a result of a critical hit and conjunction with other splash damage/normal physical hits.

As a Feral Cat, I can actually spend a lot more time tanking than an Ele Shammy or STR based class, largely because of the kind of dodge I'm working with and crit immunity.

In the end, the time I spent tanking was actually 4 or 5 times higher than his for only a 90k difference in damage taken, and a difference of at least one death if you don't count the silly one. At the same time, I did basically twice his damage output and probably required as few of heals as he did because of Nurturing Instinct talent (+20% potency to all incoming heals to me while in cat). The few unlucky times he did gain the attention of a target, cost him almost as much damage taken as I did who was basically making an attempt to go all out in dps.

The only reason I didn't do my usual 5 to 6k between these two runs, I spent a bit of time in bear, a brez, 2 tranqs, a misc rejuv here or there in mid combat, I dps'd a big single target in caster gear spamming wrath for a whopping 12 or 1300 dps, and whatever other loose ends this particular group had going for it.

This is my attempt to show how much you'd really have to know and understand in order to make an educated opinion of someone in a 5man while trying to compare damage done and damage taken. It's a different ball game between different classes/specs. As such, it's a tool that you still have to understand certain things in order to use it. And if you use it blindly, you might be ignoring/blisting people that are potentially carrying your group despite taking so much damage.

Edited, Sep 11th 2009 5:45am by Torzak

From your posts, I assume you are skilled to a point that you have found "the corner", so to speak. What I am speaking of is the point when you know "the rules" and have progressed further. Things like threat management and situational awareness are important skills for all players to develop. It is clear that you possess these skills and are familiar enough with them to amend certain aspects in order to achieve your goal- a fast and efficient run.

To elaborate further on "the corner", each class/role begins by learning what their capabilities and responsibilities are in an average group. The general rule for dps is "don't pull aggro from the tank". It's a good rule. Not only because the tank is geared to take the hits, in some cases the tank needs to get hit in order to max out their potential. It appears that you have amended the rule in order to reach your goal. Your decision to allow your threat to overcome the tank's rather than throttle down may be a sound decision- your results favor it. By changing "the rules", you force others to accomodate your decision, which they may or may not be willing or happy to do.

As for myself, I welcome a little excitement in a PuG, they can be dull and tedious. I also enjoy watching new players develop their skills in heroics. It often makes the runs last a little longer, but if they are showing signs of skill, I feel it is worth my time to have more skill in the ranks. Actually, having a dps constantly out-threating a new tank would be beneficial to them. They do have to learn when to just let go of a mob instead of fighting for control.